Category: UPSETTING DAY

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UPSETTING DAY

1,001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic šŸŒ­

As fans of the site know, in 1991, a talentless hack named Gregory Godek published 1001 Ways To Be Romantic. It was a poorly edited list of song titles and saccharine cliches useless to anyone except prison guards trying to de-escalate active sex crimes. But it was also a huge hit, so two years later, a less talented hack named Joe Magadatz published his “comedic” take on it: 1001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic. In several minutes, you will fucking hate Joe Magadatz. He is a bottle of novelty Fart Pills who wished to be real on a magic bottle of novelty Fart Pills.

The book claims to be “For Real Men” and “Frustrated Women” and “Couch Potatoes.” Wait, ha ha, did he say Couch Potatoes!? He went there immediately! If the inside of the book is anything like the cover, nobody is safe from the zings of Joe Magadatz who an unattributed quote calls “the Al Bundy of romance– the Homer Simpson of love.” And for a total fabrication, it’s pretty honest. The author absolutely has the sense of humor of a popular sitcom viewer with ordinary interests who strongly identifies with everyman characters. He might be closer to the “Andrew Dice Clay Album Owner of romance– the Bottle of Novelty Fart Pills Joke From Earlier of love,” but the point is he’s what any wacky dad joke enthusiast would call banal and contemptuous.

The back cover has five more unattributed quotes taken from rave book reviews Joe never went on to receive, and there was still some space left so Joe listed some chapter titles. They’re descriptive of nothing other than Joe Magadatz’s pedestrian zaniness. They’re from a production designer’s list of “MICHAEL SCOTT MUG IDEAS — MAYBES.”

This motherfucker named titles in his book “Excuuuuuuuuuuse Me!” and “Go Ahead, Make My Day!” and “Beam Me Up, Scotty” and was proud enough he put them on the back cover without context. He also has chapters called “Burp!” and “Going Bonkers” and “Hooters!” and “Aaaaauuuugh!” because once a writer realizes they’re satisfied with unaltered catchphrases from Saturday Night Live being complete jokes, they are free to simply type random words and sounds, schwing(!) queef ambulance.

Anyway, ugggggggggghhhhh, let’s get started with this bullshit.

Joe opens the book with a very indulgent About the Author section chronicling his adventures in leading an uninteresting life and never learning how to construct a joke. Which is a nightmare since he set out to write a 178 page “NOT!” joke and thinks “parody” means “sincere attempt at recreating the exact same thing but for less pleasant people.”

Joe is governed by one rule: if it has ever been on TV, saying the name of it is humor. In some ways this is a great parody of 1001 Ways To Be Romantic because it’s a panicked author, probably with a weird dick, but definitely out of ideas with 973 entries to go. And like Godek, once Joe has found a structure with modular parts, he will keep adding songs and TV shows until he has strangled all the joy out of it. He will set a joke in a world where “celebrating 7 Days of Superbowl Week” is a thing just to get one more precious step closer to finishing the thing he obviously hates. That’s what comedy is supposed to be, right? A cranky person grinding their teeth through a huge project any idiot could have known would be a nightmare? Anyway, I have several hundred more entries from 1001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic to get to.

Every now and then the book achieves its stated goal through open cruelty or passive aggression. If you think calling your wife fat and decorating your kitchen with pornography are, all by themselves, a complete punchline and set up to a joke, the word for that isn’t “Unromantic.” This is more like the answer to the question, “Ma’am, were there any warning signs leading up to your husband stabbing you?”

This was meant to be a hilarious skewering of a romance guide, but here we are reading a transcription of Jeff Foxworthy’s audio notes. “Note to self: something about The Three Stooges? Come on, Jeff– think.”

This dipshit gave himself the task of listing four cute differences between men and women and this is what he came up with. This is nothing. It’s not possible to say less about men and women than this. Of all the things women don’t do, the funniest ones he could think of were “read on the toilet” and “Air Guitar?” What about celebrating Superbowl Monday? What about celebrating Superbowl Thursday? What about stabbing your wife!?

I’m not actually sure where Joe was going with this. I only wanted to point out he’s wrong about comedy, but also everything. This would be a lazy entry in a book called Dumb, Pointless Things To Say About Drinks. In a book meant to hilariously skewer romantic advice it’s possibly the worst thing he could have written. There’s no whimsy or edge or truth. It’s less than not a joke– if a child found this on a candy wrapper, they’d assume they won some kind of Laffy Taffy Find-The-Jokeless-Wrapper Sweepstakes. Joe isn’t 10% done with his book and he’s already landed on the perfect closing argument for why he is incapable of writing it. He has utterly failed at a task with the lowest of expectations. This line is like an oil technician looking at your car and saying, “I’m going to fuck that big red bird with my ponis.”

From his chapter BURP!, Joe writes “Onion bagels.” as a complete thought. “So true,” thinks a hypothetical reader. “I can’t wait to see what he does for number 126. Oh my God, can you imagine?”

The other thing about Joe is that he’s a pedant. A lot of the book is spent attacking romantic cliches with the smug logic of a FOX News guest explaining how it’s actually the races who are the actual racists. Look at Joe fucking dismember champagne with the weapons of Aristotle. You ladies don’t like burping but you like champagne? Well, ha, let Joe tell you girls something you never knew about bubbles. Oh, and you say want men to help with the cleaning? Then explain why you get so mad at us when we sneak into your home and lick your bathtub spotless, so spotless. Check, um, mate.

Joe Magadatz looked at what he had done and thought, “One hundred forty nine jokes about relationships! That’s got to be a record for an oil technician’s lunch break!”

He began his ritual of dry masturbation on the break room toilet before returning to work when a 150th idea for a relationship joke occurred to him. Desperate to capture fleeting inspiration, he rushed back to his notebook and scribbled down his idea before it was lost to the workday bustle of fucking all those big red birds with his ponis. “Could it be this simple?” Joe said aloud. “Have I cracked the start of my next chapter!?”

The words seemed to glow on the page like a lost treasure. There it was. The perfect joke. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

If you were wondering how long it would take for Joe to bring up the holocaust and start telling racist jokes: 153 entries. Although it’s hard to call these racist “jokes.” They’re more like racist references. And even that’s not quite right since these aren’t traditional stereotypes. For instance, the intolerant don’t list their grievances with Latinos as “33% of them are bankers.” What Joe is doing here isn’t being racist– it’s suggesting the notion of racism itself is enough to be funny. Like how Eskimos.

“I mean, where’s the challenge in being romantic to a life-sized blow-up Barbie doll?”

– Joe Magadatz, 1993

I wanted to show you this one so you could see Joe’s remarkable decision, in a satire book, to include plugs for real sex devices. Any other writer would have made up a silly, outrageous romantic product, but Joe has chosen to say “Get a load of this wacky thing! Can you believe anyone would pork an inflatable woman? I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t ever! Anyway, here’s how you order one; the ‘Tina’ model has a waterproof milk reservoir in the butt! Don’t trust Tina’s idea of ‘waterproof’!”

Um, and guys, here’s a tip from ol’ Pedantic Joe: if your woman says she wants to be treated like an Equal, ask her if she really wants you to tear off her head and pour her into your coffee. You see, “equal” shares a name with a zero calorie sweetener, and I kill women.

I get we’re only having big laughs here, Joe, but let’s go over the premise. I need a woman who has dated me long enough to have a least favorite tie, but not long enough to introduce me to her parents, for whom she is planning a romantic evening which involves me. And I ruin it by smuggling in an unlikeable necktie. These are the unlikely circumstances that have to come together for this to be anything other than a stupid fuck stringing together random letters, Joe.

I have no notes for these three. Great stuff, Joe. I bet when Joe Magadatz sees a sheet of “I HATE MONDAYS” stickers he genuinely says out loud, “Oh no they gave this to the wrong guy! Ha ha ha, oh man. OH NO.”

Another wacky foible of this kidnapper-vibe scamp is that he seems to think Gregory Godek, author of 1001 Ways to Be Romantic, is some kind of high class sophisticate. Gregory J.P. Godek is the man who gives his wife a “Good for one free pizza, any toppings!” coupon every anniversary. He’s the man who gives his wife a “Good for one small pizza of YOUR choice (because you’va gotta pizza ov’a my heart)” coupon every birthday. He’s fucking trash. But to Joe, Godek is the fanciest of pants. I say all this because it will help you to understand Joe better if you realize he thinks parody means sneering at rich boy shit like “adult” dates who “tolerate sex” and eat at restaurants with silverware instead of “chili gloves.”

Here’s the thing: I’m both a leading genius and the only person who will ever read this book in its entirety, and I have no idea if Joe means “personal computer” or “political correctness,” or why he thinks “Partly Cloudy” is some kind of punchline. This entry, more than any others, is a genuine mystery. Was entry number 403 (buy a pool table) such a struggle his mind gave out? If this was published to give encoded commands to “Unromantics” embedded in our book stores, that would actually explain a lot. I admit I’m making a lot of wild speculations about who Joe is and why he wrote 1001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic, but it’s only because the simplest explanation -a man tried to be funny and missed by this goddamn much- seems too impossible to consider.

You might remember this one from earlier. Joe often returns to the rich comedy well of “You aren’t as pretty as the women I masturbate to, you bitch. You fat bitch.”

You have to consider how when Joe was writing this book, People Magazine gave the title of SEXIEST MAN ALIVE to Nick Nolte (left below). This had to have given average-looking men more unearned confidence than normal, which might explain why Joe feels comfortable implying how fat his wife is so soon after telling his fat wife she’s fat.

Okay, sure, this entry is basically the same as the last two, which are all the same as several others from earlier in the book, but Joe has added a bit of Fat Wife Science to explain how calling your wife fat in mid-February is more hurtful than, say, late-June. It’s still not funny, but all great comedians have to go through a phase where they humorlessly abuse women for a couple decades. I believe it was Mark Twain who once said, “The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue” while giving a thumbs up and then, “Your sad tits, my dear,” while giving a thumbs down.

“I’m barely halfway through this piece of shit book and I’m already so out of ideas I’m listing novelty gifts from novelty gift catalogs,” thinks Joe in a rare moment of self awareness. “Oh, did I do fart pills yet? Let’s see… what else is funny. Beavis and Butt-Head? Okay, but, like, how do I make it work for this book? Let’s see… oh. Oh my god, Joe. Joe you’ve done it again!”

Joe called his publisher and got the answering machine. He screamed, “Fuck you, Geraldine! Fuck. You. You told me you were going to need the advance back if I didn’t get you the 521st and 522nd entry by today? Well, fuck you, I crushed them. A mistletoe belt from a catalog I found, and listen to this, you cow: 522. Not romantic: Beavis and Butt-Head. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. You’re welcome. I’m keeping the money, Geraldine.”

He hung up, missing wildly and smashing his gross, weird dick. “Bitches!” he blamed.

This is not a gag, but a true story. Earlier in this very article I had a line where I said, “Call Joe whatever you want, but don’t call him… late for dinner!” It’s my standard placeholder for “character makes a dad joke to be determined later,” and then I saw he actually, sincerely wrote it. I know he’s probably still going through his Funny Side Up catalog from 75 entries ago and stealing more ideas, but however he came to be this thing he is, no God or science will ever create a more perfectly terrible sense of humor. Joe Magadatz is a world-class decathlete of funereal zaniness. He is a worst-case-scenario of a person reading bumper stickers out loud in a souvenir shop.

Once he got into the 600s, Joe went all-in on the premise of romance being for uppity snobs and unromance being for the workin’ man. And even that gets shaky. He is a weird, lonely man declaring cultural divides and assigning two groups of people who don’t exist to one side or the other without comedic observation. This book is the gasps of a drowning mind who saw a bottle of fart pills and thought, “This is exactly me! Why didn’t I think of this?” and then fucking found out. Imagine the existential terror Joe must be feeling at this point. Going into this, he was certain he was a “funny guy,” and now reality had proven how wrong he was, 604 times in a row and counting.

“Why won’t the ideas come? Where is my fart pills?” he whispered to his bathroom mirror. “Unromantics prefer steak to swordfish,” his reflection hissed back. “Go type it, you piece of shit. Go tell your readers Unromantics prefer steak to swordfish.”

Joe is so bad at joking, fucking, and writing, this book should have been a tear-soaked polaroid of his penis that says, “Go ahead and let it ruin your day, you fat, frigid bitch. It’s all it ever does. It’s all it will ever do!!! You want swordfish, but I don’t even have steeeaaaak!”

What the shit? This man spent two hundred entries explainin’ how real Unromantics like a little tractor grease on their ‘taters, and now he makes a sudden reference to Cubism and Giacometti? This is not a tone change. This is like stopping a wedding toast to pull off your face and shriek, “Your Trevor has been harvested, Emily and David beasts! Behold our true form!” Unromantics prefer Giacometti? How the, what? I don’t even know what is happening; I guess this one’s for the museum curators who love MADLibs but hate love? But the joke doesn’t work on them either. Does Joe think Alberto Giacometti took so much effort to vitalize the negative space surrounding his figure sculptures to not make passionate love within it!? Ridiculous.

I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear yet, what with all my comedy romping, but of all the troubling things in this book, the most troubling is how Joe Magadatz seems to think it’s the sex part of a relationship that’s particularly unromantic. I’m not saying I have enough to convict Joe of any sex crimes, but it’s suspicious how he finds the idea of any woman enjoying sex to be unthinkably absurd.

If you’re anything like me, you might have thought, “huh?” But assuming this isn’t another coded message for when the Unromantics are supposed to strike, April 15th is the day Lincoln died and the Titanic sank. It’s also the birthday of some other major tragedies– the Boston Marathon, America’s bombing of Libya, and the publishing of The Fountainhead. So, sure, Joe. If you have any of these dates memorized for some reason, you’re right. And as any comedy-head knows, being right about the date many people died is a sure laugh every time. December 8th! Wait, no, the 7th. Sorry I fucked up the joke.

With only 24 entries to go, Joe picked back up his Funny Side Up catalog, selected a random item and literally only contributed the words “Need I say more?” This is like the slowest NASCAR driver stopping after 196 laps to have sex with his sister. You could never have predicted such a total and insane failure, but you guess it sort of makes sense after it happens?

Let Joe make it very clear: he did not buy Sexual Positions: A Sensual Guide to Lovemaking at the, hey look at that, affordable price of $24.95 to share with a lover. Joe is too impish to type the word “tits,” but he absolutely wants you to know he jerked off to this video by himself. Remember 980 entries ago when you thought this would be a lifeless parody of the self-help/romance genre? Well it turned out to be one man’s war on women, and like all men who wage that war, it ended with him giving up, angrily pulling on his own dick to pictures of them, and vowing revenge. How hard would it have been to just do some silly or outrageous versions of those free pizza and backrub coupons?

Oh, he did. And they fucking suck too.

Edit: 11:30am 11/20/2020
Hot Dog reader Joe Dacey discovered something from the transcript of a podcast about “selling disruption” that will make total sense after you hear it: Joe Magadatz, the author of this parody of Gregory Godek’s book, was Gregory Godek himself. That’s how completely and perfectly awful Gregory Godek is.


…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Adrienne Hisbrook: who prefers IBMs and swordfish and actually likes Brancusi. Haha YOU know what we’re saying!
Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Elvis’ Spanking Classic Blue Hawaii

Very few things about Elvis in 1961’s Blue Hawaii aren’t upsetting, from the way he holds his dog:

To the way he greets his girlfriend after two years in the army: by tonguing down a stewardess, laughing, and saying, “good, she’s jealous!”

The moral of Blue Hawaii seems to be, yeah, Elvis is a dick, but you know you’re horny for him anyway. It’s a thesis that’s outright stated in the last few minutes of the movie when Elvis proposes to his girlfriend by telling her he won’t put her last name on the business they plan to start together.

“In case you didn’t recognize it, that’s a proposal,” he says.

“You’re sure?” his girlfriend asks.

“Well, I suppose I could get romantic about it, but you’d say yes anyway,” Elvis replies. A line so dickish if he were saying it today, he would legally have to exhale a quarter-mile long puff of vape smoke afterward.

It’s like the movie was written by a man whose wife left him for Elvis. I mean, the dudes that wrote Elvis movies obviously weren’t trying too hard in general, as evidenced by the title of the 1965 film Girl Happy. 

It’s a movie whose plot involves a mobster hiring Elvis to keep his daughter out of trouble during spring break.

MOBSTER: ā€œHey, you, the hottest man on Earth, get over here and make sure no one fucks my teenage daughter!ā€

You’ll never guess what happens, you guys– Elvis falls in love with the mobster’s daughter! It’s cool, though; because Elvis is portrayed as a protector of virginity in his movies. In fact, that’s what leads to the most upsetting part of Blue Hawaii.

The main plot of Blue Hawaii is about Elvis trying to figure out what to do with his life after his return from the army. His parents want him to work for his father’s company, but Elvis wants to do literally anything but that, because he doesn’t want to use nepotism on his Dadā€™s part to build a career. So, he decides to use nepotism on his girlfriend’s part to get a job at the tourism company she works for.

He ends up leading a tour group that consists of a pretty schoolteacher and her four teenage pupils. His interview for this job consists of the teacher asking, “Do you think you can satisfy a teacher and four teenage girls?” While pretty much winking at the camera.

There’s one teen girl in the tour group who is a horny nightmare. She’s mean and stuck up and tells Elvis to call her Ms. Corbett instead of Ellie, but then three minutes later, she’s hitting on him. She’s got two modes: hate mode and horny mode, which is honestly not that inaccurate of a portrayal of what it feels like to be a teenage girl. 

Elvis tries to get Ellie to enjoy herself. He even gives her a little nickname, “Duchess.” There’s a scene where Ellie’s finally like, why won’t you have sex with me? And Elvis says, “I don’t rob cradles.”

“Did you ever see anything like this in a cradle?” She replies, ripping off her dress to revealā€¦a very modest one-piece bathing suit. Elvis is pretty much like, “Yeah, that looks like a babies onesie, now GTFO.” 

However, thirty seconds later, he sings a love song directly into this lovesick teenage girl’s ear.

I think it’s important to point out that Elvis would never have responded to actress Jenny Maxwell’s affections in real life because she was 19, which made her way too old for him. When he met his future wife Priscilla, she was 14 and he was 24. According to her memoir, they divorced because he couldn’t have sex with a woman who had a child. At 19, Jenny Maxwell was divorced with a three-year-old son because the sixties were GRIM.

So at this time — when the movie Elvis was telling the 17-year-old Ellie he doesn’t rob cradles — he was maintaining a real-life relationship with 16-year-old Priscilla through letters and phone calls. He wasn’t a robber of cradles. He was the goddamn pirate king of cradle robbing. Again, whoever wrote this movie fucking hated Elvis (rightfully).

Ellie continues to be mean to her friends and cranky towards Elvis as the trip goes on, until she meets a middle-aged man at a luau whom she hits on right in front of his wife. Even more upsettingly, his wife is just like, ā€˜get it, girl,ā€™ as the older man tries to drag her onto the dance floor. Movie Elvis, who again hates when older men try to have sex with teenage girls, steps in to defend Ellie’s virtue and ends up punching the married guy right in the face.

This punch leads to the kind of fight that only happens in the movies, where everyone goes nuts and starts hitting each other for no reason and with no affiliation or opposing sides. I don’t know what insane person thinks that if you’re in a bar and you see someone else get punched in the face, your response should be to turn to the person next to you and punch them in the face for no reason. Punching isn’t like sex where you see another person doing it, and you’re like, ā€˜that looks fun. I should go do that too!ā€™ Except in Blue Hawaii world, where it totally is.

That one punch devolves into a full-blown riot that makes absolutely no sense and ends with Elvis in prison. It was very clearly shoehorned into the movie, so Elvis could sing a sad song about being in jail.

Elvis gets bailed out and returns to tour guiding (a bunch of other things happen because this is wildly only a B-plot in this movie, with the A-plot being a lot of songs about Hawaii and also, I think classism?)

Ellie assumes Elvis punching the married adult man who tried to have sex with her is a declaration of his true and undying love. So she steals her roommate’s outfit and perfume and heads to Elvis’s room at night to throw herself at him again. Her roommates show up and are not at all concerned about finding teenage Ellie in the room of their adult tour guide; they just want their stolen shit back. Now Elvis has three underage girls in his room at night, and he’s likeā€¦

Of course, their teacher shows up because guess what, it looks like she’s also horny for this terrible man. She kisses Elvis right on the mouth, and all of her students who are hiding on Elvis’s porch see it. Ellie, in the world’s biggest overreaction to witnessing a man be mildly kissed, steals a jeep, wrecks it, and runs into the ocean in an attempt to drown herself. This movie is rated PG.

Elvis, of course, dives into the ocean and pulls her out, the whole time treating her with tenderness and care because she’s suicidal. I’m kidding. He tells her she needs “a good old-fashioned spanking.” That is a direct quote. Then, even more upsettingly, she agrees with him. 

“Maybe I do. Nobody ever cared enough about me, even for that.” She says. And then Elvis proves to the teenage girl he cares about her, via the ass. 

That shot fades out, and we close-up on Ellie in a New York City therapist’s office where she’s getting the help she needs for — obviously I’m joking, it fades into a close-up of Ellie’s recently spanked ass. Elvis has fixed the woman by hitting her!

We pan up to reveal Ellie is happily eating breakfast with her friends! And she’s nice to everyone! And they’re nice to her! Who needs Prozac when you could get spanked by Elvis!

And the moral of the story is: if you know a woman with mental health issues, you can slap that shit right out of her. Also, teenage girls really want to have sex with Elvis, but he would never ever have sex with them, only sing them love songs, give them cute nicknames, and spank the crazy right out of them. 

If you follow Lydia on Twitter @youknowlydia she will promise never to mention this again. 

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

1,003 Great Things About Being A Woman šŸŒ­

Let’s talk women, ladies, and all the things that make women “Great!” Shoes! Underpants! Shoes! Shoes! Can you name 999 more? Stop, don’t bother! In 2005, “authors” Lisa Birnbach, Ann Hodgman, and Patricia Marx already did it! Their shitlike but feminine minds wrote the definitive guide to dingbat stream-of-consciousness, 1,003 Great Things About Being a Woman.

Lisa, Ann, and Patricia never tell the reader who wrote which ones, but there are three distinct styles in the book. One of the lady authors thought it was her job to just list tired gender stereotypes without context or comedy. I think her goal was to create a collection of lady driver references so joyless it could be sent back in time to undo Steve Harvey. Speaking of tired gender stereotypes, one of the ladies is the kind you find in any group of women two or larger: horny as fuck. She is single-minded in her interest, and it’s cock, yummy and now. And finally, one of the ladies is 107 years old and her brain is misfiring as it accesses ancient pop culture references and debunked social theories.

In what might be a stupid-fucking-tidbit-book record, Lisa, Ann, and Patricia exhaust their premise 2% into the writing of their book. It’s page 11 and their idea of “great things” has turned into trying to think of the female sidekicks from cartoons and nursery rhymes. And it doesn’t even make sense. “Without Olive Oil, Popeye wouldn’t have eaten his spinach?” She doesn’t have anything to do with his spinach. That’s just an unrelated element of the show. It’s like saying “Without Wonder Woman, Superman couldn’t Aquaman and Garfield!” It’s like Olive Oil having sex with a gorilla after a murder rampage and saying, “I did something!”

Thank your local women for “for annoying child actors” and “hell.” And again, fantastic job on the book, ladies. Terrific stuff. Pointless, but not “funny” pointless. Technically words, but not “meaningful.” Congratulations, Lisa, Ann, and Patricia. Most doctors would never be brave enough to put their patients’ dementia on display like this.

This one is a good look inside Lisa, Ann, and Patricia’s creative process. Because if you’re idiots listing female side characters from TV and history to frantically fill a book called 1,003 Great Things About Being a Woman, Eve is going to occur to you. And then it’s time to brainstorm what makes Eve great. “She’s made out of a rib? Two of the numbers from my childhood address followed by a sharp pain in my arm? I say we go with the rib one.” Many fools will live their entire lives and never say anything this useless or dumb. This is nothing. This is not the start of an idea; this is not helpful or cute to any person real or imaginary. Fuck this world for allowing anyone to be this bad at anything without breaking any international laws.

Sure! Who knows? Lisa, Ann, and Patricia don’t! They’re not sure why they brought it up! Or kept it in the book! Or which 4 o’clock it is right now! Or if their nurses are robots like Greta Garbo told them in a dream!

These women barely have a handle on one language and now they’re bragging about how easy it would be for them to learn a second one. Like Ann Hodgman is going to take Aramaic night classes after her nephew comes over to show her again how to add the little flower in a Wordstar document.

Yes, we heard. Truly, the wonders of the female mind are limitless.

Wait. S-so your husband doesn’t? Either these women are randomly hitting typewriter shapes to see what happens or Ann just confessed her child is the product of adultery.

It could be argued women get the better deal in polygamy? Followed by no argument? Hold on, do these three women share a husband? And they’re hoping someone, maybe outside this circle of sister wives, could make a good case for polygamy? “Look, it’d take someone smarter than me to explain why it’s great, but I’m one of the top six servant holes in a pretty exclusive sex cult.”

This is a really positive spin to put on your bitch ass high-jump, Ann.

Jesus Christ, we are 24 pages in and they’re already so out of ideas they’re listing their physical defects. Well, not the defects themselves, but their ability to detect asymmetry? They have droopy eyes? At least one of them has a-a… some kind of long foot? The minds of these three ladies are fucking done with 292 pages to go. This is like signing up for a marathon and shitting out all your blood on the way to your car.

Oh, this is the catty side I was hoping to see out of you ladies! You are bad. This will teach Shelly, that insecure bitch, why she should have confided in you about her low self-esteem!

Well, except Shelly. Fuck you, Shelly! You ruined everything again!

And Shelly knows while she’s up there getting married you goddamn bitches are back there whispering about how she’s definitely pregnant. “I’m so fucking fat,” she thinks on the happiest day of her life.

I know we’re only screwing around here, but I think it’s important to take a step back and remember: this is a book listing reasons women are great and Lisa, Ann, and Patricia chose to include “sometimes we have a hunch babies are boys.” Let me be clear: if the universe allows anything less related to female empowerment than that to appear in a book called “1,003 Great Things About Being a Woman,” it will prove, definitively, we are ruled by nothing but chaos.

“There is no God and we have proven it.”

– Lisa Birnbach, Ann Hodgman, Patricia Marx

Look, I know this is an embarrassing level of horny, but when Senator Joe Biden fucks you in your dreams, you write it down and publish it in a list of feminine achievements. “I haven’t had a chance to read the latest pages yet, but I’ll get back to you after the weekend,” said this book’s editor before dying on a boat trip.

I’m not well educated in gender studies, so I don’t know what’s happening here. Is this like a story? Did one of them have a straw hat with… I swear I’m reading this wrong, w-with fake hair attached to it? And then they lit one of their heads on fire to lure single men from the nearby firehouse? Am I interpreting this correctly? And if not, what the fuck are these ladies talking about? You horny idiots, can you not think straight near the word “fireman?” And, of course, there are socks with false teeth in them. Firemen bring both balls to the bathtub. Oh great, now I’m doing it.

I honestly don’t know enough about panty girdles to know if these facts are great or irrelevant. My gut tells me one of these authors had to pee while she was trying to remember which talkies had girls in them and she put that inspiration into her writing.

This one is kind of fun. Men get cancer in their ass and have to watch each other pee. “Not us ladies,” say Lisa, Ann, and Patricia!

When I consider all the things that set women apart from men, “eligible to fight in the U.S. military” might make my top 4.008, but definitely not my top 1,003. Honestly, if I had to write this book the whole thing would be Susan B. Anthony jokes. Just offensive nonsense about how she’s some lady on the shittiest dollar and nothing else.

Oh my god, yes! Precisely this! This was my exact terrible idea, Lisa, Ann, and Patricia!

I know this one, Patricia. “You point a gun at his panda!”

PATRICIA: Gals, I think we should do an entry about Sex and the City.

ANN: I never watched it, but I heard it was a very popular show.

PATRICIA: Oh my god, Ann. Ann, say that again.

ANN: What?

PATRICIA: Say that. The fuck. Again.

ANN: That, um, it was a very popular show?

PATRICIA: That’s it! That’s the entry right there! “Sex and the City was a very popular show.” Ann, you magnificent slut!

Picture yourself as a teacher teaching any grade in any country with any level of advanced placement or special needs. You ask your class “What are some things that make women great?”

A kid raises their hand and goes, “WHY DO THEY LIKE TRUCKS SO MUCH?” 

The kid asking that, without question, would be the dumbest piece of shit to ever disrupt your classroom, right? You would instantly know that child was going to die from an aerosol overdose. You would quote “WHY DO THEY LIKE TRUCKS SO MUCH” while trading drunk stories with other teachers about their dumb pieces of shit. And yet here, in this written book by three professional adult authors, nobody thought it seemed out of place.

It’s the battle of the sexes and the stakes could not be higher! Men are in the lead after liking trucks so much for some reason, but women answer back with how their houses aren’t really clean! Then the ladies follow up with how they, if reminded, will send postcards to their nieces and nephews at camp! Women win again!

Okay, I am choosing this word very carefully here, ladies: lol

Look at the balls on these women. They have all the intellectual curiosity of elephant seal cows waiting their turn to get impregnated and they’re quoting Charlotte Bronte like she was talking about them. They led into this quote about the gender-spanning power of the written word with the words “You finally found the perfect red T-shirt!” It’s beyond the scope of irony. This is like John Travolta telling you to always be yourself while your dick disappears into his face’s elaborate disguise.

Dear Ms. Birnbach, Ms. Hodgman, and Patricia,

We have had a chance to go over your writing packet and while it shows promise, there are no current openings on our staff. However, we can offer market rate of $29 for your joke about women’s magazines and Jell-O.

– The Office of Bill Maher

Lesser authors of a “Great Things About Women” book would have simply written random facts like “panty girdles proved control and comfort!” or “we don’t get prostate diseases!” But Lisa, Ann, and Patricia? They put in the work. They scoured lady medical journals for weeks to see if there were any health complications related to smoking, and since they’re the best– they found one.

This book was published in 2005 when any of the three women or an editor could have used Google to verify a claim like this. I promise I didn’t go into this book thinking I was going to debunk the idea of women being great, but:

The danger of this kind of error is that now I have to reconsider everything these women have taught me. Is this red T-shirt I found not perfect? Were some of those firemen I fucked married? Is the real question why they DON’T like trucks so much!?

Living through an era of chastity belts might explain why Ann can’t go three entries without mentioning rough hands and wet penises (I think I’m starting to figure out which lady is which!).

“We’re too ugly to be eaten! The side effects of menopause are good, actually! Ladies, I don’t feel so good? Good is a weird word, group cycles, where am I, Jane Austen! Jane Austen!”

Okay, no more jokes. I think Lisa had a stroke.

Oh no. Patricia, hang on! Someone help them! Don’t let them keep typing through these brain seizures! This is the most humiliating way anyone has ever died!

Please! Please!! Whatever your motivation, there has to be a more ethical way to collect data on dying brains than this! Surely some of Hitler’s scientists kept notes you could use!

I’m sorry I made fun of you Lisa, Ann, and Patricia! No one deserves to go out like this… confused and alone, punching every stray thought into a typewriter. I’m so sorry!

Ha ha this one is pretty good. She burned to death.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Benjamin Sairanen: Who can actually tell you the single greatest thing about being a woman, though the forbidden knowledge has driven him quite mad.

Categories
PODCASTING DAY UPSETTING DAY

Podcasting Day: The Duets of Movies with Jason Pargin šŸŒ­

Happy Upsetting Day! Hopefully youā€™re not upset that youā€™re getting a podcast instead. Today we discuss the important and oft-overlooked movie genre: Over the Top. 

Now, I know what youā€™re saying: ā€œThatā€™s not a genre, thatā€™s a movie! A great movie! You are not the men to bring it low!ā€

And youā€™re right. So we contacted Jason ā€œDavid Wongā€ Pargin for backup. Heā€™s known as the ā€œalternate thumb positionā€ of podcasting, and today we finally find out why. Weā€™re not here just to make fun of Sylvester Stalloneā€™s wild misunderstanding about the importance of armwrestling in modern society, weā€™re here to make fun of its entire legacy: from The Wizard to Road House, from Twister to the Huey Lewis/Gwyneth Paltrow classicā€¦ Duets? Yes, Duets! We make fun of Duets! We dare.

Haha, thatā€™s the poster for Over the Top?!

Haha, thatā€™s the poster for The Wizard?!

Haha thatā€™s the poster for Duets?!

Haha thatā€™s the poster for Road House?!

Twister is beyond reproach.

I also once again defend my title as ā€œMost Losingest Competitorā€ in Seanbabyā€™s Book Game! Guess how it goes! Hey, fuck you. Maybe it goes well this time.

Itā€¦ it doesnā€™t.

And remember, Jasonā€™s here promoting his new book: Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick. I have read this book. All the way to the end. Yes, I know youā€™re proud of me and I appreciate that, but I mention it because I know the book is fantastic. Itā€™s funny, thrilling, stupidly hilarious, and also subtly, cuttingly relevant. I donā€™t know how he pulled all that off, but he really did. Itā€™s sort of Idiocracy for the Elon Musk generation. Itā€™s sort of cyberpunk for the TikTok generation. Itā€™s funny and itā€™s deep and itā€™s compelling and itā€™s satire and itā€™s a book! You read those!

While youā€™re here, please remember weā€™re still just starting this podcast. It really helps if you like and subscribe to The Dogg Zzone 9000, and it helps immensely if you review it. Try to mention how big our dicks sound!

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Dear Nintendo My Life is a Goddamn Mess Part II

Welcome back, 1-900-HOTDOG readers! We now rejoin my responses to Nintendo Power’s reader mail responses already in progress.

Oh, here’s a fun letter sent to Nintendo Power from a Wisconsin boy named Joe Harrison who lost his home to a stove fire!

When your job is working in a Nintendo building with Nintendo employees on a Nintendo magazine reading letters sent to you from Nintendo fans, I imagine it’s hard to maintain perspective on the importance of Nintendo. But when you get a letter from a little boy who refers to a burnt Super NES as the “death of a family member,” you shouldn’t think, “Yes, of course an affordable piece of consumer electronics is exactly this important; praise Father Mario, The Tanooki-Suited.”

If you sent this letter to the child who assembled that Super NES, whose fingers would have been removed and mailed COD to their parents if they misaligned a Game Pak contact, they would have said, “Kid, take it easy. It’s just a Nintendo.” 

Joe praises and thanks God for not forsaking two of his games, and “Hala Luya” for He was listening when Actraiser called His name from the flames. I’m not super religious, so maybe it’s normal to thank the thing you worship for destroying only your copy of Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball and your home. But at the end of the letter, Joe asks the game enthusiast magazine, “do you think that my Super Nintendo and games went to heaven? I hope so.” This is sadder and dumber than a human should be capable of being. This is what you would get if you asked a brilliant writer to work backwards from the prompt, “The one question that would make Jesus Himself tell you to fuck off.”

The editorial staff at Nintendo Power would sometimes try to bend the Player’s Pulse section to its will by asking for specific types of letters. Here they asked readers to send in wacky humiliations they would endure to get a Super NES, and oh boy did they disappoint! Jamie Overstreet from Mobile said he would, get this, dress up like a chicken and sing a royalty free song!? Ha ha ha, can you imagine!? I get there’s no reason for anyone to expect this part of the magazine to be good, but try to think of any single way this could be less entertaining. I wouldn’t give you a wet sack of used Billy Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball ashes for this idea, Jamie. I mean, someone had to have told Nintendo Power, “I’d kidnap children from the park until I found one whose parents had $199. Then I’d suck off the dad for 67 of those dollars and repeat the process two more times. Pilotwings looks fresh!”

As you can see from the other response, many readers had the same knee jerk idea of “silly costume + patriotic song” because we’ve apparently always known in our hearts that being American was one of the more embarrassing things a person can be. Nintendo Power probably received 7000 variations of these exact responses, but I like how revealing Jason Destroismaison from Tynsboro’s answer was. When he thought about what he’d do for a SNES, the first thing that popped into his head was “Wear my sister’s clothes WEAR MY SISTER’S CLOTHES AND LET FISH FUCK ME IN THE EARS! USA! USA! U!S!A!!!” I hope you got that Super Nintendo, Jason.

Let’s change things up from letters about things that might happen to letters about things that fucking absolutely didn’t happen:

So let me understand this situation, David Landers from Richmond. It was 2am and you were about to ritually drive over Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy with your 18 wheeler. And “this guy” runs up to you, at 2am, who recognizes exactly what you’re doing. And this guy spying on people in a truck stop parking lot had all the maps and secrets of Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy either memorized or with him. And then he sat there waiting, at 2am, for you to load up your save game and implement his strategies? David. Come on, David. Maybe your wife and Nintendo Power believe this excuse for why a strange man got into the cab of your truck at 2am, stayed there for half an hour, and then left a hero, but come on, David.

The less fun among you might be saying, “How do you know this is a lie? How do you know he has a wife?” Because duh and I found his obituary. He died 25 years after he told Nintendo Power this unlikely story and if his wife ever figured out what he really meant when he said he was “Heading out for some Final Fantasy Legend with the boys,” it was not brought up alongside his surviving family and final resting place.

I’ve mentioned this before, Nintendo Power, but you can just not print some of these letters. This idiot kid invented the idea of going door-to-door and asking for free money. In a state where people spend their days digging meat out of crabs and, maybe partly because of that, murdering. And Nintendo Power didn’t say, “Stop this, Nick. You idiot fuck.” They were like, “Giggle, you’re quite the card!” He might have done this. There’s a decent chance Nintendo Power killed Nick Fulton of Maryland. That may sound like a crazy thing for me to say; however, look at it like this: I am strongly against murder, but ask me again if there’s a knock on my door and it’s some asshole asking me to buy him a Nintendo game. He’ll probably be okay, but I walk away from that less against murder.

Okay, this entire concept has jumped the shark. Masando Jenson from Port Orchard wrote to Nintendo Power to tell them their envelopes taste like carrot juice, nothing else, and they printed it without a response. The Nintendo Power letters section just opens these windows into worlds where a lunatic might be somewhere in Washington sucking off envelopes like a Final Fantasy Legend expert in a truck stop men’s room. Who benefits from knowing this? What need, what fetish does it fulfill? If you lived in Sarasota, screamed “Bayou Billy” into a jar, and told Nintendo Power it had no effect on the mayonnaise would it have any less meaning? Could it help you understand what’s wrong with Masando, this monster searching for the tastiest glue? I don’t know if my mind can take another letter like this, so the rest of the article will be reviews of cakes sent in by readers.

Jason of Corfu, this looks like the last act of someone who died from being terrible at making cakes. “Happy Birthday, kid. It’s a lopsided Mario, but I didn’t have time to draw it all so you have to imagine that’s not a skeleton hand waving a dildo.”

Jason of Corfu, your friend’s mom decorates cakes so badly her ex husband brings it up during family court. And speaking of the law, if you asked a grocery store for a Mario cake and they made you this, they would legally have to sell it to you as dog food.

Happy 41st birthday, Phillip! Are you the cake being held by this 60-year-old sexual solicitation suspect?

You’ve lost control of your life, Phillip J. Vanover from Mesa, Arizona!

I hope you were ready for MORE BAKERY A C T I O N ! Joshua Blalack, named after me trying to explain which Joshua I’m talking about when the other one is white, celebrated in action with this soggy tangle of shapes. Hey, Joshua’s mom, when you’re making a novelty cake, how do you fuck up the rectangle part?

Happy birthday, Jose from Lufkin. Nice Street Fighter II cake you got. Fucking piece of shit looks like a courtroom sketch of Chun Li on trial for trafficking counterfeit cakes. This is a Fightin’ Spirit or World Heroes cake at best, two expertly selected references you can’t even look up because your cake was so dull you fell asleep swallowing it and choked to death.

Hey, Matt Smith of Dayton, did your mom bake this on the engine of a moving tractor? This looks like you’d cut it open and find old pets that went missing. It looks like something the President would use to call an airstrike in a Ghanaian action movie. Anyone who gets a cake like this should be proud their mother was able to overcome so many security measures meant to keep her out of her psychiatric hospital’s kitchen.

You really came close to making frantically smeared infant shit look like a Game Boy screen, Matt’s mom. Fun fact: this 2.0 score is out of a possible 150.5. This is an autopsy photo of a Game Boy corpse found in a swamp, Matt’s mom!

I was making fun of that kid earlier for asking if his fire-damaged Super Nintendo went to Heaven, but seeing Bread Boy makes me think there should be an afterlife where vengeful gods can punish game consoles for crimes against humanity. Giorgio and Daniele, your terrible baking has spawned a thing not bread nor boy, but an abomination violating the laws of both.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Love Beyond Circuits, Love Beyond Flesh

Making fun of fan fiction is tricky. On the one hand, it absolutely deserves to be mocked. On the other hand, youā€™re absolutely an asshole for mocking it. For starters, a professional writer making fun of an amateur writer is generally considered punching down, and people frown on that, despite it clearly being the best direction to punch from. You get extra momentum from gravity! 

Thereā€™s also a level of protective irony inherent to the genre: Half of fan fiction is written to make fun of fan fiction, and the other half just uses that as an excuse if you happen to make fun of theirs. Itā€™s called ā€˜troll ficā€™ — purposely writing bad fanfiction to get the internet to make fun of you for, I assume, sexual reasons. I am aware of these pitfalls, and I have figured out an ethical way to get around them: I donā€™t give a shit.

Weā€™re going to talk about Love Beyond Circuits, Love Beyond Flesh. 

Egatro and Potimus sound like bit parts in Hamlet, and Iā€™ll never call the good guys from Transformers anything but the Autoboys from now on. This is so bad that I immediately worry itā€™s on purpose, but hereā€™s the thing — even if this is supposed to be terrible, we still need to talk about it. We need to talk about the important work itā€™s doing in Transformers lore. Specifically in detailing the sexual anatomy of a robot that turns into a truck. 

But before you fully explore an asshole, you must first care about that asshole. Thatā€™s what separates erotica from proctology, and why my proctology erotica can never seem to find a good audience. 

The setup for Love Beyond Circuits, Love Beyond Flesh is thus: 

That is some lean storytelling. We are a total of perhaps 200 words into this story, and weā€™ve already successfully merged the Transformers and Star Wars universes. Some fan fictions burn hundreds of thousands of words just trying to get their two properties to play nicely, and this motherfucker pulled it off in the span of like six fortune cookies. 

I mean, yes, all they did was say ā€œfuck you, theyā€™re the same universe, fuck you againā€ — but the simplicity of genius looks a lot like idiocy from a distance. Sometimes it looks like that up close, too. Like when Jabba announces that his pleasure barge is actually a fuck-barge, which never needed any clarification. When Steve Bannon drags a cringing young woman onto his mega-yacht, he never needs to specify ā€œthis is the boat where I give you diseases in terrible places.ā€ Itā€™s assumed.

Optimus Prime apologizes profusely for the horrible atrocities his robot cock is about to commit, which is the gentlemanly thing to do when one finds oneself to be an outsized robot on a fuck-barge, but thereā€™s no need. Leia just soldiers the fuck up:

Here. This is what Iā€™m talking about: The Transformers dick-building is both casual and astonishing. Of course Prime would have a crotch gate! The author is not just making that up out of thin air, thereā€™s a precedent: On the original Optimus Prime toy, he kept his entire head in a flippable platform inside the cab. It was a silly but elegant solution — of course it would work the same way for both heads. This is how you do worldbuilding: The author actually takes the existing functionality of the toy design into account before extrapolating the location and functionality of his cyberdong. And let us not ignore the metaphor here: Optimus Primeā€™s dick is both lead and gold — the least and most valuable metals. Thus symbolizing the way Optimus Prime both treasures and is ashamed of his sex. This is literature!

And of course, graphite for lube. If you ever have to fuck or get fucked by a robot — and the way 2020 is going, you absolutely will be doing both before Christmas — youā€™ll remember this storyā€™s advice and you will thank it with every fiber of your laser-targeted orifices.

I say again: Yes. The worldbuilding! The anal cavity of a sexually conservative robot like Optimus Prime would absolutely be neglected, even rusting. But heā€™s still a caring friend who knows people love to crawl up his asshole, so itā€™s also full of special lighting and even a little visitorā€™s center. Maybe a gift shop, to remember your special time inside his cavernous metal anus. 

Holy shit! True to his name, Optimus opted for every Prime add-on when kitting out his butthole. Heā€™s got the Luxury Package, the Entertainment Package — motherfucker even sprung for the Comfort Package. Writing is about the words you donā€™t write. You donā€™t need to specify it: I know this robotā€™s ass comes with zoned climate control and a moonroof. 

Great art changes your view of the subject forever. Look at Optimus Prime again without picturing the special thrust elevator installed inside his butt. Hear his soothing, fatherly voice without recalling the special neon rainbow lightshow he gives visitors who tickle his ā€œsoft pinky pillows of pure petuniaā€™s cotton.ā€

I defy you: Watch R2D2ā€™s antics throughout the Star Wars films and don’t think ā€œthere he goes — the freak of the robot school.ā€ 

Look, George Lucas, if you didnā€™t want R2D2 — the lovable inhuman jester of Star Wars — to one day be used for anal play by a bigger robot, then why did you shape him like that? This was inevitable. R2D2 has always been Chekhovā€™s Buttplug.

Sadly, after this section, Love Beyond Circuits falls apart. Things get stupid fast. Jabba grafts Jar Jar Binksā€™ penis to the tip of Optimus Primeā€™s shaft, then:

Optimus just makes a space long-distance call to the brother of the woman heā€™s currently fucking with somebody elseā€™s dick, and thatā€™s it. See, Jabba was too busy micro-managing the Dick Transplant Lab to install basic communication jammers, and the only reason Optimus Prime didnā€™t call for help before now was because he didnā€™t know a good number for it. Well, that and heā€™s getting double-teamed by what are, to him, basically just super horny lilā€™ elves. 

Fuckinā€™ Jar Jar lets us all down one last time:

In the end, Leia reveals that the entire Star Wars love triangle – already complicated by one of the participants turning out to be her secret brother roughly 40 years before our culture decided we were actually pretty into that — was bullshit and she was just playing both men, because once you fuck truck, youā€™re straight out of luck.

But listen, none of that is important. Remember: I didnā€™t bring you here to mock the character development, or the plot, or even the grammar — I came here to do one thing and one thing only: Introduce you to the complicated worldbuilding of Optimus Primeā€™s fully-loaded butthole and, in the process, forever ruin both Transformers and Star Wars for you.

Oh man, not for one hot second did I think you were actually George Lucas trying to set the record straight anonymously. But itā€™s so weird that you felt you had to specify you werenā€™t that I completely do think that now. 

Thanks for the expanded (butthole) universe, George!