Have you ever wanted to visit Cleveland, Georgia? Probably not because you know someplace is shitty when itâs not even the name brand version of Cleveland. Or, maybe thereâs just something about the place that seems off-putting to you. An otherworldly chill that creeps down your spine at the thought of Cleveland, Georgia, and thatâs because even though you donât really know whatâs there, a deep, primal, part of you knows itâs the home of Babyland General Hospital.
It takes a very specific kind of psychopath to say, âHey, we should take an old hospital and stuff it full of dolls. Children will love it!â That psychopathâs name is Xavier Roberts, the creator of The Cabbage Patch Kids. Iâve always found Cabbage Patch Kids hilarious because they seem like the creation of someone who just really didnât want to say the word vagina to their kid and then let things get way out of hand.
The Cabbage Patch Kids origin story actually has more mythology to it than you might expect. Itâs high concept 80âs sci-fi that involves magic crystals that fertilize the cabbages with the help of Bunnybees, alien creatures sent to earth to destroy it through overpopulation, or something. Thereâs also a stork named Colonel Casey who oversees the Cabbage Patch Kids, but apparently, he doesnât do a great job because the children are constantly begging to be adopted by someone, anyone else.
A fun fact about Colonel Casey that I learned at Babyland General Hospital is they really donât like it if you ask if he fucks the cabbages. Theyâre very firm on the fact that nobody fucks the cabbages, and magic crystals arenât a euphemism for anything.
Xavier Roberts opened his toy store designed to traumatize women into buying dolls in 1978. The employees dress as doctors and nurses because you know, everyone loves the vibe of a hospital. They actually play recordings of babies crying in some of the cribs to up the drama. In the early days of the hospital, they would occasionally have an ambulance pull up and bring in a doll on a stretcher for media events. They went out of their way to combine the joy of a childâs imagination with the horror of living in a decaying human body.
If you donât feel traumatized enough by the idea of all these dolls begging for your affection, in an old abandoned hospital, you should check out the floor show! The big attraction of Babyland General is a live birth. Thatâs right Mother Cabbage, (who is a big tree for some reason) gives birth once an hour. An idea that, by itself, is traumatic enough.
This involves an LPN (Licensed Patch Nurse) reaching into mother cabbage with both hands as they crack jokes about the horrors of childbirth. âThe procedure weâre doing today is called an easyotomy,â they say jauntily as every woman in the audience pales. I wonât tell you what an episiotomy is because itâs not something you can unlearn, but letâs just say no woman on earth has heard this joke without experiencing the same feeling a man gets watching someone else get kicked in the balls.
All of the jokes in the show involve pretty in-depth knowledge of childbirth to be understandable, which is so confusing because this is a show for children, right? When the doctor says, âHeâs coming head first and not feet first, which would be a branch delivery.â Are you supposed to lean down and whisper to your child, âSo, a breech delivery is when a baby is born bottom first instead of head first. It only happens in like, 3-5% of pregnancies, and it can be extremely dangerous causing fatalities for both the mother and the baby, but this is a cabbage so he said branch delivery instead, which is funny.â
Once mother cabbage has a baby ripped from her womb, the crowd is asked to name it. This sounds fun, but let me tell you, no matter how many times you yell Baphomet The Blood Pisser, theyâll never name it that.
Babyland hosts tons of special events. They have a ballroom that seats 30 available for birthday parties, weddings, meetings, and conferences. During these events, they will occasionally have performers in horrifying life-size Cabbage Patch Adult costumes go around and beg guests for even the tiniest bit of affection.
Man, if they want people to adopt these kids they really shouldnât advertise that this is how itâs going to look when it grows up. Can you imagine trying to dodge that thing at a corporate retreat? Do the companies that have meetings there use it as one of those haunted house, âWhoever survives the night gets the promotionâ kind of deals?
If you do make it out of Babyland General Hospital alive, you donât necessarily have to take home a doll as a souvenir. Their shop sells all kinds of sweet merch, like mugs, bibs for your babies real or fake, and a shot glass for when mommy needs to get litty.
BabyLand might be a creepy reminder of a bygone era now, but I canât stress enough how popular it was in the 80âs at the height of the Cabbage Patch craze. In 1983 people would pay fifty bucks just to sniff a cabbage patch kid. Three million dolls were sold that year alone, and there still werenât enough to supply peopleâs insatiable demand for sad orphans.
Babyland has a wall dedicated to pictures of celebrities who visited the facility that includes John Travolta, Fred Savage, Whoopi Goldberg, and Henry Winkler. Hey, none of them disappeared under mysterious circumstances never to be heard from again, so itâs probably an ok place to visit!
Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to skywrite a new penis every day of the week. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. ItâsâŚ
Note from Brockway: Most people got this just fine, but I did take some heat for it. For the record: the lesson here is not that gentle bigotry is okay. Gentle bigotry is like Bud Light Seltzer – just as bad as the real thing, but marketed toward pussies. The point is that even âpositiveâ racism sucks. In general, keep one thing in mind while reading any story in which âBrockwayâ is a character: IâM THE BAD GUY. DONâT AGREE WITH ME.
“I’m pretty sure Mexicans enjoy things more than me,” I grumbled, picking at a cowlick of fine white thread jutting from the seam of a black leather sofa.
“Why do you think that?” The therapist replied.
“Anything I’m doing — I don’t know, it just seems like thereâs a Mexican out there enjoying it way more than me. Like, say I go have a beer: Iâm okay. Iâm vaguely happy. I turn my head, and three stools down there’s a Mexican guy, just loving the shit out of his beer. He looks like a beer commercial. I swear to God he exhales frost after every sip. And the worst part — do you want to hear the worst part?”
“Go ahead,” he frowned at me as I continued plucking at his precious string.
“It’s not even a better beer than mine. It’s a goddamn Coors or something.”
“Maybe you’d like Coors better.”
“Maybe I’d- no! Fuck Coors. That’s just an example. I could be stuck in line at the grocery store behind a lady trying to use expired coupons. I’m standing there nurturing an ulcer, thinking, ‘Theyâre expired! Expired! You can’t haggle the unceasing forward movement of time! Pay the 15 cents extra! I’ll kill you! I’ll wipe your seed from the Earth!’ Then I look back, and three spots behind me, there’s an old Mexican woman just smiling away. She’s not even doing anything. She’s just looking at the mints, smiling. What the fuck is that? Those are funny mints? Fuck you! This bullshit is burning irretrievable minutes of your life, same as mine, and you don’t even have as much time left. Why aren’t you here, unhappy with me?”
“So you have problems with Mexicans?”
“No, that’s not it. Go out on a sunny day and walk around for a bit. I promise you, you’ll find a group of Mexicans all just standing outside, talking to each other, laughing. They look like how I picture nostalgia. I go do the exact same thing and itâs nothing. Itâs garbage. The whole time Iâm thinking âthis sucks, Iâd rather be rereading Achewood or some shit.ââ
“It sounds like you need to reevalua-“
“Black people are better at conversation.”
“What?” The doctor blinked up from his pad.
“Black people never have to worry about making conversation! They just open their mouths and start going, and it’s great. It’s friendly, it’s easy, it’s totally relatable. And I don’t mean just to each other — to everybody! I talk to any given black person and it’s always the best goddamn conversation I’ve had in months. It’s fantastic. Everybody loves talking to black people. But I open my mouth at a stranger and it’s like I’m vomiting awkwardness into their ears. Just an endless stream of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs,’ and then I start saying shit like ‘ostensibly.’ Or-“
“I think the theme here is a lack of confi-“
“OR,” I barreled through his interruption, “or worse! People say, ‘Howdy’ on the street, and I shakily whisper, ‘Good, and you?’ And that’s if anything comes out at all. Sometimes it’s like they’ve snuck up on my throat and all I can do is squeak.”
“We all have our-“
“I squeak. At strangers. On the street.”
“Casual interac-“
“Like an incel chipmunk. SQUEAK,” I squeaked, “SQUEAAAK.”
“Casual in-“
“SQUEEAAAAK.”
We glared at each other in silence. He took a deep breath, scribbled in the corner of his pad to get his pen going again, and exhaled.
âI think-â he started.
“I’m just saying: Never been squeaked at by a black man.â
He frowned at his notepad. I finally got a good, solid grip on that stray thread and started to work it back and forth. The rattling pen fell quiet, and the therapist harrumphed at me.
“Sorry,” I said, making a big show of releasing his stupid thread. Which I didnât even want anymore.
“Yes, well, you clearly have some racial issues to work through. Now, most patients that enroll in my program-“
“Enroll? Is that what you call it? The only ‘enrolling’ I did was the cops ‘enrolling’ my ass through that doorway.”
“I was just trying to be polite, but if you insist: Most offenders placed in my program have some hostility to work through, but yours seems to be rooted almost entirely in jealousy. You’re laboring under the impression that other groups — essentially all the other groups — have it easier than you: A white, straight, middle-class American male.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, and surreptitiously raised my knee to block his view so I could really go to town on that thread. “I totally get that I have it easy, and a lot of other people have it way harder. I watched Fresh Prince; I know all about racism. I’m just saying that some groups do some things better than others, and pretty much all of them do everything better than me.”
“And you don’t see how that statement might be insulting or unreasonable to some people?”
“I totally do not. Is it racist to say that Chinese people are more resilient?”
“Yes, absolutely, that is basically the definition of racism.”
“You put me in a Chinese guy’s shoes — basically any Chinese guy’s shoes — and no way could I handle that. I’d be dead in a week. You know there’s a Chinese guy downtown that pulls tourists around in a little wheeled cart?”
“Rickshaw?”
“I don’t know his name dude; he’s the guy that pulls the fucking cart.”
The doctor inhaled through his nose for a very long time.
“I get winded walking up hills,” I continued, really getting my sweet unravel on. “If I had to strap a cart full of fat Germans to my ass just to earn some sandwich money, I’d probably lay down somewhere quiet and try not to starve to death in anybody’s way. Not Rick, though. Rick fucking endures.”
“While it’s clear you have just a … an ocean of issues to work through, let’s talk about what brought you here, to my office today.”
“A squad car?â
“The incident,” his scribbles were coming more often now. His pen was running low. “You know which one I mean.”
“The Native American guy,” I admitted.
âYes, the one you assaulted and forcibly stripped on 4th street this morning.”
The man’s tone had shifted from casual to factual.
“Yeah,” I said, “… yeah.”
“Why did you do that?” The doctor leaned back and fumbled for something on the desk behind him. He came back with a new pen, the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Extenuating circumstances,” I answered.
I had this thread thing down, now: Smooth, slow, even strokes were the key. You had to keep a constant light tension going, so as not to break the fragile strands. It was unraveling into little loops that settled in the space between couch and cushion. My secret treasure horde.
“Go on,” he prompted, uncapping his new pen and settling in.
“I was walking down 4th, just doing how I do — kicking at people’s heels then gesturing to the guy next to me when they turn around — when I bumped into this huge crowd on the sidewalk. After a few minutes of angry elbowing, I noticed they were all looking the same direction: Up. Then I saw it: Some girl was out on the roof of this ratty little hotel. Out on the ledge. Something in her body language — I don’t know what it was — but I just knew she was going to jump soon. And there was nobody there yet. No cops, no paramedics, no firemen, nothing. Just the crowd of us, all the way down on the street. People were trying to yell things up to her, but she was too far away. She couldn’t hear. I knew, I just knew that she would do it before anybody got up there to stop her.”
“And … how, exactly, did this lead to your fourth-degree sexual assault on Mr. Kohana?”
“Well it seems stupid now, but I guess I just panicked. We’re all standing around, knowing that there was nothing anybody could do: She couldn’t hear us, we couldn’t get to her, she was going to jump and she was going to die. That was it. Then I looked over and saw a Native American guy. I thought I saw a chance — no matter how remote — and I took it.”
“The police report here says that you ‘leapt upon Mr. Kohana’s back, pulling at his shirt and screaming ‘transform, you heartless bastard, take eagle form and fly to her! There’s no time!'”
The doctor looked up at me.
“Are you going to make me say it?” I whined.
He stared. I pulled thread.
“I secretly believe some Native Americans can shape shift,” I admitted, ashamed.
“Why on Earth would you believe something so preposterous?” He started to note something on his little pad, but almost immediately moved the pen back up to the corner and began scribbling again. He groaned.
“Well, why is it so ubiquitous, if there’s not some truth to it?! Every comic book, every sci-fi novel, every horror movie, every anything with a Native American guy in it has him transforming into some kind of animal at some point!”
“Those are just stories,” the doctor answered tersely, tossing his pen in the wastebasket and reaching for another.
“Right, but what’s the common theme for say, Puerto Ricans in pop culture? That they’re passionate? You know what, in my limited experience, I have found them to be kind of passionate. The French? Sophisticated. Sure, there are some hooligans and idiots, but generally speaking, theyâre a pretty cultured people. White American guys? Ignorant. Well would you look at that? Here I am, a white American guy, thinking Native Americans can turn into wolves if they just want it badly enough. Sounds pretty ignorant to me.”
“Well, it’s hard to argue that,” he admitted, clicking the new pen and touching it to paper.
My busy fingers. Idly twisting thread. Around and around. Steady, even pressure.
“So when it came right down to the wire, when the stress kicked in, when it was really life or death on the line, yes: I figured there was like a 30 percent chance that man could turn into a bird. Is that really so stupid?”
The room was quiet, save for the thirsty rasp of an empty nib tearing through paper. Windows broke behind the doctorâs eyes.
“YES!” The doctor screamed, his cashed pen bouncing off my skull. He stood and yanked at his tie. His face went flush. “IT IS STUPID! IT IS THE STUPIDEST THING! IT IS STUPID AND RACIST AND HARMFUL AND THEN STUPID THREE MORE TIMES AGAIN!â
A soft pop. I had broken the thread loose from its last mooring, and a long flap of black leather plopped over onto my belly, revealing the wispy cotton padding of the couch beneath.
“RRRRRRAAAAAAAGH!!!” A scream tore out of him, ripping him open from crotch to throat. His skin burst like an overcooked sausage and sloughed off into a pile of rubbery meat. In the therapistâs place, there was now a slavering black bear. It dug its claws into the pulpy bamboo floorboards, muscles visibly pulsing beneath layers of fat and fur, and exploded through the closed door. It loped down the corridor beyond, a tide of panicked screams receding with it.
The stunned receptionist stared in at me from the waiting room.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “Rosenberg’s a Native American name?”
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This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme: Adrienne Hisbrook, who has gotten away with every human crime, and six dog ones.
In 1980, Archie Comics Group published Archie #298 of the Archie Series, and I am here 40 years later to make the case for it being the craziest comic ever published. It is the first media of any kind to ever score the rating of MAXIMUM!? on the Archie Derangometer, which says it all making everything past here mere whimsy in support of a point already perfectly made.
The story begins like nothing has or ever should start– with Archie shrieking the word “PLASTIC!” at no one and with no context. He’s furious, screaming it like a curse. Archie is filled with a dark insanity and the people around him live in constant fear of it bursting out like Anne Frank’s family watching her hold in a sneeze. When it comes out, the rules of everyone’s universe suddenly change and nothing can escape the wet spray of Archie’s madness. Welcome to Archie #298.
Note Jughead and Betty are not saying, “Oh this plastic bullshit again.” This is the first time Archie has ever spoken to them about plastic, much less lost his mind at them about plastic. There’s also no plastic on or near him which means he was on a walk with his friends in the park and his own thoughts wandered to plastic crimes so awful he had to stop and scream “PLASTIC!” He continues…
Archie exists in a fiction with loose rules. He has addressed readers directly to sell Twinkies, fought the Predator, and killed wizards by calling on the actual Christian God. So it isn’t unusual for the horny Riverdale gang to stop rubbing their pubises on Archie to do something like an environmental PSA. But are we sure that’s what this is?
It seems to be an environmental rant, right? Maybe Archie read something about the dangers of non-biodegradable waste and he’s simply having trouble remembering it or expressing himself? Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for this famously conservative and known psychopath to be howling about the plastic apocalypse?
Well, aside from violent, philanderous, stupid, cruel, and ginger, the best way to describe Archie is “a teenaged cranky old man.” This comes out here because the first reason he gives for his seething hatred of plastic is not how it kills seagulls or overcrowds landfills– it’s how plastic prevents him from listening to goddamn records before he goddamn buys them like he used to.
I’m not sure this is plastic’s fault since plastic has been around at least as long as vinyl records because vinyl is fucking plastic, but Archie accidentally makes a good point– retail trends have eliminated nearly every opportunity for consumers to masturbate in record stores.
So in case you fell for my masterful misdirection up there, no, this is not an environmental story. This is Archie deciding he hates the shit out of plastic and desperately trying to justify it while his loved ones try to reason with him. And to be clear, this is not a genius writer hiding a metaphor for American politics in a children’s comic. This is nothing more than what it is on the surface– a fictional character losing his mind because he’s being written by someone losing his mind.
Oh, by the way, Archie comics in the ’80s had three stories inside each issue. Let’s take a quick break from this plastic one and look at a scene from the second Archie feature!
Oh. Oh no.
Let’s maybe go back to the plastic one?
So Archie’s second reason for hating plastic is because of fastener packaging. Not because it refuses to decompose and its manufacturing causes carbon pollution, but because teenagers can no longer go into a hardware store, paw through a vat of unlabeled nuts and purchase a single unit. Again, I’m not sure this is the doing of plastic. This is like declaring war on zippers because no one will let you suck them off.
Anyway, Archie’s third reason for dedicating his afternoon to destroying plastic is cheese. CHEESE! SEE IT IN THERE?
Fucking try to open cheese! Archie DEFIES YOU! Oh, you say it’s got an e-z opener tab!? AN E-Z OPENER TAB!? BETTY, YOU TRUSTING, IGNORANT BEAST DID YOU SAY IT’S GOT AN E-Z OPENER TAB!? TO ARCHIE!? YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS TO EAT CHEESE OR BE LOVED! PLASTIC CONSPIRACY HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE YOU’RE IN ON IT I’LL KILL YOU I’LL RIP YOUR FACE OFF AND PRESERVE IT FOREVER IN Y-YOUR PRECIOUS PRECIOUS PLASTIC!
With no one taking Archie’s warnings seriously, he does what every ranting lunatic does– he merges his new anger with his previous frustrations and loses all perspective of the original problem which he was wrong about this entire time and all contradicting facts are evidence of a deeper conspiracy. Archie is now only this rage and obsession, and he declares to a grocery store that sealing albums, wood screws, and cheeses in plastic will lead to the end of all things.
Let’s take another break from the plastic story and check back in with the one where Reggie leapt out of the bushes to sexually assault Midge.
I’m not fucking with you; I didn’t edit any of these panels. The full context is this: Reggie saw Archie running and had an idea: if he blinded and face raped Moose’s girlfriend, it would look like Archie was running from the sex crime! The one hitch in his plan was how he chose to commit this act on a girl in Riverdale, each of whom can identify Archie by taste.
So to sum up, the less crazy story in this Archie comic is one where Reggie ambushes Midge, licks her mouth to frame Archie for sexual assault, it doesn’t work because she doesn’t care, and then it also doesn’t work because everyone licks her mouth all the time, the end. Let’s get back to the plastic thing.
Archie has become so defined by his hate for plastic and so detached from reality by trying to make excuses for it, he is now willing to literally die rather than give any ground in a deranged argument he started for no reason. He’s willing to sacrifice all his dignity and relationships in the name of some unclear vision of the way things used to be. I want to stress again: we have no reason to believe this is a metaphor for American politics. This is ordinary Archie craziness wobbled slightly off its axis to accidentally create exceptional Archie craziness. Assuming this meant anything would be like watching a cat run across a typewriter and thinking it wrote “Help me I didn’t die from heart failure I was poissned you need to solve my murder hi this is mom, *poisoned, sorry typing is hard w/ ghost hands” on purpose.
As if this would end any other way, Archie self-destructs. His plan (to drive himself mad with cheese packaging rage, close his eyes, and sprint into the street) backfires almost immediately.
While Jughead and Betty try to find all of Archie’s neck shrapnel, let’s take a look at this comic’s third Archie feature. Maybe it’s not the troubling work of a lunatic!
Jesus, I’m not glad we did this at all. If I’m following the plot, this story is about Jughead smashing an unattended boy’s toy boat? Who would write that? And why? Surely there must be some kind of denouement that…
Oh. So in the ’80s when a group of strange teenagers broke your toy you… went with them into the open ocean? They didn’t even put a life vest on this boy they kidnapped. They just let him stand on the deck while Veronica cranks that shit into the chop like a racing motorcycle. She’s 15-years-old and her boat doesn’t have railings! There should be another panel of this comic where the gang takes a blood oath to never speak again of the boy, whose name they never learned, who they borrowed without asking and lost at sea.
So now that we’ve finished the backup stories of whimsical sexual assault and well-intentioned child abduction, let’s get back to the final page of Archie’s plastic adventure and see if he learned a lesson.
What the fuck? Archie didn’t learn anything! A fucking ice cream man could have pulled up and said, “That’s why you don’t ignore reason and implode your life over nothing, son! If you want to stay safe, make sure all your products use Real Plasticâ˘!” and it would have been fine. Instead, Archie heard a doctor say the word “plastic” and he recreated the exact circumstances that just injured him. And is it “a long story,” Betty? Or is it, “Our mentally ill friend decided plastic was attacking him 10 minutes ago and we’re children with no means of helping the criminally insane.” And then it just says END after the main character has a mental breakdown and flees from his own delusions.
This is a targeted attack against everything you know to be true and right. It’s so deranged the author gave a Story By credit to the abortion ghosts who shrieked it at him in the night and it should have been the last Archie story ever told. The idea of Archie coming back to Riverdale High in issue #299 for another everyday framed-for-facerape story seems absurd. He’s like a wild animal. These kids can’t be around someone capable of assaulting them and running into traffic any time he can’t open cheese. Every issue of Archie after this should have been about the authorities hunting him, END.
…
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Anthropologists believe the very first joke was invented some two million years ago, when a Homo habilis held an oversized elongated object up to his crotch and said, “Whoa, look at this! Haha. Eh? Honey, are you looking? Hey.” But modern humor as we know it wouldn’t be invented until much later, when Homo sapiens learned to trick each other into drinking piss. All subsequent jokes have simply been variations on this theme.
So when attempting to quantify the Most Important Comedy Scene in Cinema History, we are all but obligated to draw from Hollywood’s deep, fizzy well of nonconsensual piss-chugging scenes. Perhaps we could dip our ladle into one of the specific subgenres — who can forget the iconic scene in Dumb and Dumber in which Jim Carrey tricks a police officer into guzzling his piss, or the scene in Hollywood Knights in which Robert Wuhl also tricks a police officer into guzzling his piss?
But I feel our choice for the top spot must honor a true prodigy, a man considered the Mozart of comically weaponized urine: Fred Savage. When he was just eight years old, he appeared in the 1986 film The Boy Who Could Fly (from Escape from New York writer Nick Castle), a film which did what all great comedy should do: it pissed the envelope. The creators involved asked the question no one else dared: “What if we had a child force another child to gargle his piss? And what if we could make America cheer when it happens, to the point that the Washington Post will call it, ‘soaring … a refreshing catharsis for the whole family‘? Would that not secure a place for us in comedy history, if not a seat at the right hand of Satan’s very throne?”
For reference, here is the resulting scene, presented in the format it most deserves: as a fuzzy ten year-old YouTube upload from someone in a filthy living room shakily recording their television.
First, you should know that Fred Savage does not play the titular Boy Who Can Fly, he’s the eight year-old little brother character in a movie mainly about a budding relationship between a teenage girl and her neighbor with autism who (spoiler) can fly. This was a period in Hollywood in which studios heard the complaints from disabled populations loud and clear, that they were tired of being portrayed as inhuman monsters. Studios nodded and said, “You all want to be portrayed as mysterious, magical beings. Got it.”
Savage, who three years later would star in a film about a boy with a mental disability that makes him magically good at video games, plays Louis. He is introduced wearing a t-shirt that says “KILL ‘EM ALL – LET GOD SORT THEM OUT” and the expression of a man who from birth has seen every mouth as a potential toilet.
He exists in the movie only for the child-on-child piss crime which occurs in the finale, the culmination of a subplot which slowly builds in the background while this suburban neighborhood learns the heartwarming lesson that people with autism are to be celebrated as long as they are also superhuman. Said subplot kicks off when, just minutes into the film, Louis encounters a pack of bullies led by the teenage Sonny, alarmingly leading a gang of much younger children.
Sonny blocks Louis’s path like a mythological troll demanding a toll for passage, stating, “Nobody goes around the block in this neighborhood unless they get our okay, and you don’t got it.” Louis attempts this trek repeatedly, always to the same result, until the film’s final moments. Finally, after everyone in the neighborhood has been inspired to overcome their personal challenges by the titular aerial teenager (the protagonist literally gives a climactic speech that culminates in the demonstrably untrue, “Anything is possible if you really try!”), Louis mounts his Big Wheel one last time and heads into Sonny’s territory.
The gang leaps into action, driven into an inhuman bloodlust at the mere sight of this eight year-old they barely know. They chase their prey down the sidewalk until he is cornered by Sonny himself, who steps out with a baseball bat, ready to bash in this second grader’s skull.
I should interrupt here to explain something to our younger readers. Remember that scene in Stranger Things where the teenage bully puts a switchblade to the throat of one child and forces another to jump off a cliff to his death? That scene was an homage to 80s movies in which the teenage bullies were usually sadistic spree killers on the side. Every kid who grew up watching these movies entered high school assuming their academic career would end with their own intestines splayed on a locker room floor.
Thus, our Neganesque bully stands ready to decorate his bat with some child brains. Fred Savage’s Louis pulls a squirt gun that is an exact Uzi replica …
… and I guess I should interject again to note that in the 80s, squirt guns were indistinguishable from actual guns, with no colorful markings to ease the minds of any nervous cops nearby. I actually had one just like what he’s carrying up there, it even had a fake spring-loaded cocking knob on top and a removable plastic magazine — we wouldn’t buy a toy gun back then unless you could 100% rob a bank with it. “Jeez, it almost sounds like the grownups wanted you to die,” you say. Haha. Yeah.
Where were we? Fred pulls out his Uzi and says, “Go ahead, make my day,” which it should be noted is a catch phrase from the 1983 film Sudden Impact aka Dirty Harry 4. The R-rated movie this eight year-old is quoting is about a woman who is brutally raped and then goes on a rampage of vengeance by, no shit, shooting her rapists in the cock. This line was referenced in this lighthearted PG-rated film about a magical teenager under the assumption that all of the 1986-era children in the audience had seen this nightmarishly violent rape movie and that assumption was absolutely a safe one.
Sonny the Bully says, “Oh, I’m supposed to be real scared of a water pistol?” to which Louis replies, “Ain’t no water in this gun,” and then works the action to chamber a round, because squirt guns used to be awesome. The bully, who really should already know, asks, “So, what’s in it?”
“Piss,” declares Louis, who then blasts a laser of hot urine right into Sonny’s mouth.
It is in this moment that Sonny finally sees his adversary for what he truly is. “LOOK UPON MY FACE!” Louis’s determined scowl seems to say, “AND LICK UPON MY PISS.” Oh, this troll will be paid, all right — only this toll will be paid in liquid gold.*
The bully falls to the ground, in shock at having been so thoroughly piss-toll whipped. He screeches for his nearby doberman to come and maul this child to death. Having been trained only for this, the dog flies into frame, the promise of tender young meat having driven it into a frenzy. How many such small, screaming meals has this beast enjoyed in the past?
Louis then calls for his own dog, Max, to come sacrifice himself to defend him. The dog obeys, leaping toward the attacker and, if I remember correctly, fucks the evil dog to death.
It is over. “He was hungry for power,” Louis thinks to himself, “and I prepared for him a fine feast indeed, a liquid feast, consisting of twelve courses of my own exquisite piss.”
The greatest cinema is like jazz, in that sometimes what matters most are the notes that aren’t played. In Jaws, you barely saw the shark, because you didn’t need to — it lurked menacingly in your mind regardless of whether it appeared on screen. The unseen shark of The Boy Who Could Fly is Fred Savage, in his bathroom, awkwardly attempting to fill a squirt gun with his own untamed spray of child urine.
For you see, that plastic Uzi would have had only a tiny quarter-inch hole with a plastic plug, intended to be filled from a faucet. The process of loading that gun with his own urine would have resulted in a child — and an entire bathroom — that was absolutely glistening with errant piss, a hundred times more than wound up on that bully’s tongue. It is understood, if not stated outright, that this was the price Louis was willing to pay. For in that moment, Louis was standing up for all of us; Sonny symbolized all of our oppressors, Louis symbolized the select few bold enough to resist even if it means sacrificing everything, the piss symbolized piss. This is what great art should do, embolden us to tap into the golden spring of our own fighting spirit, to exhort us to never turn away from an opportunity to speak piss to power.
This is the theme that would define Fred Savage’s career. Just three years later, he would star in Little Monsters, which features a scene in which a regular-sized monster played by Howie Mandel pisses in a child’s juice bottle, Savage watching as that child greedily chugs it down the next day. In 2007, Savage would make his directorial debut with Daddy Day Camp, a film which features a child filling a balloon with his own piss and smashing it into the face of another child. The man came into this world with a singular vision and intends to see it through.
Hello, I am here to talk to you about the music video for the song Dog Police by the band Dog Police off the album Dog Police. There may or may not be some Dog Police involved in this discussion. Itâs best to be prepared.
We open with a woman seductively getting ready for her date by doing those mysterious pre-date things everybody whoâs never lived with a woman assumes women do to get ready for dates.
You know, slinking around in a nighty, carefully selecting a variety of perfumes to reward her man with a unique scent for every base. Instead of what they actually do to get ready for dates, which is what we all do to get ready for dates, which is try to struggle out all of the nightâs farts in advance, despite knowing full well that is not how farts work.
And then we meet the man sheâs going through all this trouble for, who looks like everything bad about the â80s physically attacked everything bad about the â70s.
Heâs got a flaccid pompadour and the ghost of a beard that died with unfinished business. Heâs wearing molester glasses back before irony transformed them into hipster glasses, and thatâs the suit theyâll bury Don Johnson in.
His acting style is âthrown out of mime school for being sarcastic.â
And his voice is sort of Devo, but that exact point 1/3rd of the way through a Devo album where youâre like âokay, thatâs quite enough Devo.â
To allow plenty of room for this terrible dating skit thatâs one raspy narrator away from an Unsolved Mysteries reenactment, the music just sort of idles. It refuses to come inside, but wonât go away. Itâs out there, waiting on the porch, peering in through the windows and repeating its strange synth sting that sounds more like a score trying to warn the audience that the hook-handed killer may not be as dead as they think. It lends the whole thing a sinister, unsettling air that is… actually entirely appropriate, come to think of it.
But despite more red flags than an Arsenal match (am I right, soccer fans?! Am I right? I have no idea if Iâm right) the woman still voluntarily gets in the car of, again, this man:
Eventually the song breaks open with four barks and a chorus chanting the titular âDOG POLICE.â Why?
Because his date is a dog! And the Dog Police are there to keep you from dating dogs!
Thatâs hilarious!
…to shithead bros of the â80s, and nobody else!
Thatâs right: This whole song is just a joke the least popular frat house in Tampa is not legally allowed to make anymore, not since the case of Jennifer Dogsworth v. Beta Omega Nu, 1982.
So itâs mean-spirited and basic, but at least itâs also aesthetic poison:
The lead singer mugs at the camera like somebody told him the ADHD meds were flattening him out, which is a shame, because he could be the next Jim Carrey.
While the dogwomanâs make-up looks like Godâs first-draft of the furry fetish came back with too many notes.
And the Dog Police themselves are like McGruff joined the KGB: Same basic character but dead behind the eyes and here to disappear your husband.
Iâm not entirely joking about the Dog Police being a sinister secret police force, hereâs the chorus:
DOG POLICE
WHERE ARE YOU COMING FROM
DOG POLICE
NOBODY KNOWS WHO YOU ARE
For a wacky song about dating ugly women, the lyrics sure seem to be desperately seeking answers about the role of off-the-books law enforcement squads in our community.
But listen, if this was just a song about a secret police force made up of were-dogs who keep ugly women from dating, we wouldnât be here. Thatâs not Upsetting Day material. Learning Day? Maybe. Fucking Day? Of course. But Upsetting Day requires something more. And thatâs good, because this song has one further twist:
Towards the end of the video, the singer makes it increasingly plain that heâs not actually talking about an ugly girl. Heâs been having sex with an actual dog this whole time.
No no, thatâs not the twist.
While that is indeed both gross and insane, thatâs actually just the setup for the real twist. You write a song about how your girl is a metaphorical dog and you canât take her out anywhere? That sucks, but this is the 1980s — hereâs a million dollars.
You write a song about how your girlfriend is a literal dog and society frowns on you dating her? Thatâs crazy, but this is the 1980s — I bet Frank Zappa beat you there.
No, what sets Dog Police apart is the growing concern from his bandmates as the singer reveals that heâs talking about banginâ beagles:
The looks they give him as he changes the song from âugly girlfriendâ to âfun bestialityâ mean one thing…
They were not informed about the nature of this song that they freely started playing.
That makes this whole video a meta-narrative about the rest of a band finding out, onstage, that their lead singer proudly fucks dogs, and they have been inadvertently tricked into joining a musical act that endorses dogfucking.
That is some Charlie Kaufman shit, Dog Police!
Iâve been burning you down this whole time, unaware that you were setting me up for some Adaptation âyou become the storyâ shenanigans. Wait, what does this mean? Is the song pro or anti poodle-pounding? Is it actually commenting on human beauty standards at all? Am⌠am I the dogfucker now???
How the hell did you pitch this video?
I can picture the record exec that says yes to a music video about how women are only worth as much as their looks, because thatâs every record exec. And I can picture the record exec that says yes to a video about having sex with actual canines, because somebody greenlit everything Aphex Twin ever did. But how did you find the one record exec in the world that would greenlight a video about backing musicians who eagerly promote misogyny, only to slowly discover theyâre actually endorsing bestiality? Did you just ask Peter Gabriel? You probably just asked Peter Gabriel.
One final note: Dog Police was a zany little side project for the Tony Thomas Trio — well-respected jazz musicians who played with Ella Fitzgerald, The Duke Ellington Orchestra, and Tony Bennett, amongst others. They wanted to do this song as a one-time bit of surrealism, but when it took off, they shrugged, said âguess weâre the dogfuckers now,â and tried to embrace it. To nobodyâs surprise but their own, it turns out society only had one slot open for Weird Musical Meta-Narrative About Bestiality. They never had another hit. The Tony Thomas Trio went back to playing serious jazz, the only lasting impact being that now everyone they played with knew they were willing to go all in on the dogfucking thing.
From a certain point of view, Beanie BabyÂŽ Stories is a book filled with “Heartwarming stories for Beanie BabyÂŽ lovers of all ages,” but there may have been no hobby more alien to human behavior than Beanie BabyÂŽ collecting. Nothing these people did made sense, and even today, years after the sad, dark life of mock capitalism they built for themselves crumbled into nothing, we have no idea why they became Beanie BabyÂŽ collectors. If I saw 300 grandmothers carrying Beanie BabiesÂŽ and they all turned to me and hissed “We’re fucking them!” from the one giant grandmother they are swarming into, it would actually help it make more sense. Still, with artifacts like Beanie BabyÂŽ Stories, we can at least reassure ourselves they were, to a person, pieces of shit.
The stories and art about Beanie BabiesÂŽ are compiled by Susan Titus Osborn and Sandra Jensen, who, if I had to guess by their names, are an aspiring serial killer and Richmond County’s record holder for Most “Suspicious Person” 911 Calls in a Single Year, respectively. They are not authorized or associated with Ty, Inc.; they are just two women who have no concept of happiness, personal growth, or mental health outside of buying more Beanie BabiesÂŽ.
The stories are a page or two long and Susan and Sandra were not picky when curating them. If someone in the story bought or tried to buy a Beanie BabyÂŽ, it was included. Tilted Kilt restroom stalls have higher editorial standards than Susan and Sandra. There are multiple stories in this goddamn book about an old lady receiving a Beanie BabyÂŽ as a gift and enjoying it. There are stories about sick children smiling at their favorite Beanie BabyÂŽ one last time. These torturous anecdotes are “heartwarming” like watching a puppy drown under a sign that says “God is everywhere.” I have an idea: let’s see if you can get through one.
This poor woman kept buying Beanie BabiesÂŽ because of any tiny coincidence and now she is literally trapped inside a room of only them. And that’s it! That’s the story “Hooked” by Mary Jo Hoch! This isn’t even a cry for help. It’s the death rattle of a human soul. It’s something a creative writing teacher would show you after saying, “This example is maybe a little obvious, but here’s how you could express the emptiness of consumerism using allegory.” It’s the novel a Foster Farms chicken would write if you could teach it to type, adapted for Beanie BabyÂŽ by Mary Jo Hoch. If a single person on the plane had this book in their luggage, 9/11 was worth it.
About 80% of the stories are about people suffering from tragedies or physical afflictions finding whatever comfort they can in buying stuffed animals. I don’t want to take that from them, and I honestly hope these sad people don’t find out how unmoved I am by their poorly paced stories about enjoying toys and no second thing. But when it comes to this next story, “Higgins Approves,” I would prefer it if author Diane Neal knew she wasted the miracle of life. This fucking monster. I want her to read “Diane Neal deserves to watch her Beanie BabiesÂŽ get torn apart by every high school classmate less fat than her.” This barren sack of living small talk wrote a 600 word manifesto about checking with her kitty cat to see he’d let her keep a ladybug Beanie BabyÂŽ.
This isn’t entirely Diane Neal’s fault. This dried up dingbat was probably a week away from asking her iron lung to take her to the Mayor of Robots when she wrote that story. A lot of the blame falls on Susan and Sandra. Ladies, if you’re compiling a book of stories and one of them is, “My cat sniffed a stuffed animal and reacted to it like it was a stuffed animal,” throw your idea in the trash. You’re making garbage for garbage people. And nice fucking snake, Aaron Rucker, age 8. Now that you’re 29 you’re old enough for me to tell you to fuck yourself for adding your talentless scribbles to this saccharine case against American exceptionalism.
In this story, Laura Duvall, amateur stupid fuck, couldn’t figure out how her handsomely dressed teddy bear kept moving around the house! Most people with a daughter and a cat would think, “It was one of those.” Sure enough, it was, and sorry for spoiling the ending of “Disappearing Blackie.” This is nothing. This is a story you would tell a coma victim if the weather was too mild to comment on. This is what you’d say to a murderer to convince him you’re both already dead and in Hell. If someone held a gun to a supercomputer’s head and said “generate the saddest thing anyone ever said about the color black,” this is what it would print out before formatting itself.
Susan Titus Osborn contributes one of her own stories, but trust me when I say you don’t want to read it. She complains she’s too old to use a computer, and to help cope with all her unforced Windows errors she keeps a Beanie BabyÂŽ on her desk. If you told me this was a collection of suicide notes found clutched in the paws of a mint condition teddy bear, I’d say, “No fucking shit. You shouldn’t be touching that without a cleric.” You know what? Let’s get sadder.
This is a story written by a 12-year-old who entered a raffle for the opportunity to PAY FIFTEEN DOLLARS for a teddy bear. Great job. That’s not how raffles work, Melissa, and if you weren’t dumb as shit it would be a red flag. Is there a better metaphor for the grift these idiots fell for than this– a community of dumbshits who think a kid getting fleeced out of her money by a toy store is winning. And I want to warn you right now, there’s no payoff at all in this story. Melissa is going to just slowly decay while nothing she does or anything around her means anything.
This family was so desperate for the chance to pay $15 for a beanbag they asked their priest to enter the raffle, and a different priest scolded them for it. Do you have any idea how obsessed a child has to be with Beanie BabiesÂŽ for a Catholic priest to stop having sex with them and explain God’s stance on Beanie BabiesÂŽ?
So, let’s recap: some toy store is trying to steal money from the community’s dumbest goddamn children and God refuses to help, not because it’s amoral, but because He doesn’t care.
Wait, what? They didn’t even win the fucking raffle!? I wasn’t expecting a three act structure, but what is this goddamn story? Why did you bring any of this up, Melissa Marchionna (age 12)? Are you telling me you go to a church where eavesdropping priests will interrupt you to criticize your prayers and not one of them has ever explained when you need to shut the fuck up? This is one of those times, Melissa. Telling a story about not winning the worst raffle after trying to win the worst raffle is something a Nazi scientist would do while holding a clipboard that says, “Finding the Human Limit of Disinterest – Prisoner Trials.”
You don’t deserve this, reader, but we’re doing one more. Here’s “Grandapanda” by Ramona Jean Wolfe:
This is the story of a confused woman with an actual brain injury getting taken advantage of by her “friend.” This bitch comes to the home of a debilitated woman with a crate of toys to sellthem to her? And the first one she pulls out is literally fucking named Fleece? I refuse to believe this book is anything other than Cold War era Soviet propaganda about the evils of capitalism. This is so on-the-nose it’s impossible to miss, but Susan and Sandra collected fifty others like it and called them “heartwarming.” This is a celebration of tricking pathetic lonely people out of their money. If you showed Beanie BabyÂŽ Stories to a sex trafficker eating a diaper they would say, “Ew, this book is gross.” I’ve never hated a book more than this and if this is the first 1-900-HOTDOG article you’ve read, please understand that’s a very serious thing for me to say. May your fruitless wombs cough out centipedes forever, Susan and Sandra. And Melissa (age 12)– you deserved to lose that raffle.
