My Politics

Retirement sucks. I think I'm gonna come out of retirement after like 4 days and write in my stupid blog thing again.

Writing a 7000 page small-text novel is REALLY DIFFICULT. No one really ever tells you that, you know? I can write really really fast after 7 years of training in this dopey blog ... but writing like a real-ass book is really hard. The characters have to be made to feel alive and really full of life ... it's not about how fast you can write a 7000 page small-text book it's more about knowing how to construct a novel.

I changed my blog address so now all of the stats are re-set at ZERO. It feels like I'm starting from scratch ... it's kind of a fresh feeling. I think my default persona is going to start from scratch too. The "D" character I believe kind of evolved into what I'd describe as Buckminster Fuller meets Morton Downey Jr. or say Carl Sagan meets Wally George or maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson meets Earl Weaver.

Basically, I think the "D" character wanted to be a popularizer of a science-based worldview yet with the dynamic audacity of a deeply aggressive and argumentative person. I wanted "D" to come across as a really really smart guy who swears and is mean. I thought it was an interesting persona.

(side note: I think I actually caught Carl Sagan swearing once in Cosmos. Because he speaks in such a broken-up pace ... there's an episode of Cosmos where he says the word "Constellation" and he pronounces it CUNT (loooooong pause) Stalation. The pause is too long and like he basically just walks up to the camera and says CUNT.)

I want to ditch the anger persona part of it. I still want to promote a rational world view but now I wanna be thoughtful and more better, you know?

If you were by some crazy chance a reader of Writings on Subjects 1.0 (which I doubt I had any repeat readers to be honest), you'll like Writings on Subjects 2.0 too. It's still got no-ads, and it's still just the babblings of a dope ... but if you for some reason liked its first incarnation .... you'll like this one too I bet.

Anyways, Politics is on everyone's plate these days so let us review and summarize my favorite song about the subject of politics which is My Politics by the 80s/90s/2000s rock-and-roll group Nomeansno. I first heard this song probably like 15 or 20 years ago but unlike other political songs which are locked in the time frame of the era they existed .... this song transcends eras and gives us a base-emotion view of the field of Politics.

It will serve as a quick guide to Politics and also give me a chance to inter-weave some of my own opinions about Politics as we go.

My Politics


Don't ask me what to do 
I get sick just thinking about you
 
And when I look at all we've done
I want to walk away just hang my head and pray
That you will, look at me, what do you see?
Am I the king of the hill, standing over his kill?
 
Well baby
The taste of blood is sweet and I'll lay this carcass at your feet
but only if you'll keep me company
 
This is it, my politics, this is it
I've learned to hate, it's much to late 
This is it, my politics
 
I stand before you, a simple man
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics 
This is it

I've seen more than I can stand
But in my acts and deeds I'm a political man
I'll give you, I'll give you all my worn out tools
Another brutal shot of my rhythm and blues
 
I need to
To draw you close, to take your hand
And in your shining face I see the promised land
 
Well baby
Maybe you can share with me the depths of our complicity
In these crimes of humanity
 
This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great 
This is it, my politics

(DISCO INTERLUDE: BOW NOW WUGGA DOOP DEE DEEE DOO!)

-(HEAVY PART!) -
Out on the edge between the living and the dead
I try to throw you off with a shake of my head
I try to drag you down and bury you alive
But when I fall asleep that's when you open your eyes
You gotta You Gotta You Gotta look me in the eyes
You laugh, you cry, you look me in the eye with your hang-dog face
That's when I put you in your place
Can you tell me... how will you survive?
You have to be the biggest fool alive
I lay awake all night but all that I can see are the vicious clever lies of my mythology
I'm beating my head up against the wall 
and on each single separate brick there is a picture of you all
This is it, the end, I'll tell you what I'll do
I'm going to pick you with a stick and look inside of you
But when you wander in the dark there is nothing to see
I'm on a desperate search for reality

-(END OF HEAVY PART!)-
 
(~Reggae Stylings~)
To tell the truth, you can all get screwed
I'd like to give you a kick, you little son of a bitch
Just let me Let me get my hands around your throat
And I will choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke
What is the bitter explanation for the violence of my indignation?
Well, it's as plain as the nose on my face
I am a member of the human race 
(~End of Reggae Stylings~) 

This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great
 
This is it, my politics
I stand before you, a simple man
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics
 
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate

Musically, I like this song because it's a heavy-enough ballad but unlike other heavy rock groups I can clearly understand word-for-word what the singer is saying. The pacing is really good too. Like it goes rock-ballad, weird disco interlude, HEAVY PART, brief reggae stylings, then rock-ballad again. I like the pacing and the fact that it can be heavy yet still have discernible lyrics.

Man, I didn't realize this was my favorite band of all time until they Retired last year or the year before. I've seen them live probably like a dozen times in my life ... and when they retired, I was like .... oh shit, Nomeansno's like done now. Wow.

Let's stay on topic though. I want to de-construct this song because I think it is pertinent to today's current society. The reason I believe this song is pertinent is that political elections fall into the Human realm, okay? We don't have self-driving elections ... we don't have robotic replacements for politicians yet like we have for virtually every other job out there ... Politics is a Job done by Humans.

.... and Human Beings are deeply deeply deeply flawed creatures.

Maybe in the year 3336 when Renex Greenbaum runs against Xerex Obama III we'll have a very orderly election process where the best Man, Woman, Robot, Cyborg, Android, Hybrid wins .... but as of 2017 this is not the case. When Human A runs against Human B it very quickly turns into a spiteful, angry, attack-ad laden, crazy-go-nuts festival of banality.



Alright let's look at the lyrics of the song more in-depth now,

"Don't ask me what to do  
I get sick just thinking about you"

We place these politicians on high pedestals and invest our hopes and dreams into them. The downtrodden, the humble, the sick, the blind, the lame .... they all place their hopes and dreams into their politician of choice. We know we don't have the answers to our problems but maybe some larger than life character has these solutions ....  but do these larger-than-life personas who run for high office have the answers we seek? Probably not ... and in their own hearts and minds these characters probably don't even really like you and don't want you to ask them what to do because they probably get sick just thinking about the weird poor people who voted for them.

"And when I look at all we've done
I want to walk away just hang my head and pray
That you will, look at me, what do you see?
Am I the king of the hill, standing over his kill?"

....great Mr or Mrs Politician ... you won your little election thingie. Good for you. You defeated your opponent. You're the Winner! Yay! You fought a long and hard battle of attrition where you attacked, beat down, and virtually destroyed your opponent and now you're tired. You're tired. The popularity contest took a lot out of you, didn't it? No time to rest though .... you didn't lose ... you won. You might wonder, after that brutal election when you lift your head back up and look at the people you are now the leader of .... do they like you? Are you the powerful king of the hill who slaughtered the evil opponent and is now the toast of the town ... or are you wondering if maybe a great portion of the people have a less favorable view of you after that long war-like campaign?

"Well baby,
The taste of blood is sweet and I'll lay this carcass at your feet
but only if you'll keep me company"

Throw your opponent's bleeding carcass to the feet of your fanbase. They like you. If I destroy my opponent ... will you people like me? Will you all really like me? Like Sally Field winning an Oscar type of "Like Me"? Please like me. Please.

"This is it, my politics, this is it
I've learned to hate, it's much too late 
This is it, my politics"

That's Human politics. It's no different for anyone. You destroyed your opponent and won. You tasted blood, you tasted victory ... and you liked it ... you really really liked it. Now you've learned to hate and it's much too late to ever go back. Hate always wins these things and not only do you now have a taste for it ... but you also have a knack for it.

"I stand before you, a simple man
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics 
This is it"

It's simple enough this process. There's no big secret to a big popularity contest. There's nothing really amazingly intricate or fascinating about the whole political process. That's it, it's politics. No big deal.

"I've seen more than I can stand
But in my acts and deeds I'm a political man
I'll give you, I'll give you all my worn out tools
Another brutal shot of my rhythm and blues"

The act must go on. Give 'em what they want. All those worn-out bits and beat-up shticks. Dust off a catch phrase you haven't used in a while ... give 'em a good shot of that rhythm and blues, baby.

"I need to
To draw you close, to take your hand
And in your shining face I see the promised land
 
Well baby
Maybe you can share with me the depths of our complicity
In these crimes of humanity"

You've now created this political character, this foolish simple being of a persona who promises great promises  ... and now you have a fan base ... who seem to really like you. Draw them close, take their hands .... they trust you .... just don't like bring them to Guyana and make them drink poisonous Kool-Aid like Jim Jones did, ok? Because that was like beyond fucked up, you know? They'd do it though, I mean Mr or Mrs Politician won their trust and they really trust you ... they'd probably even drink Jim Jones Kool Aid for you if you asked them nicely.

How deep are those depths of complicity in regards to crimes against humanity? Was Jim Jones more at fault for giving his followers poison kool aid? Were his followers at fault for blindly trusting an insane person to the point where they moved to Guyana to live on some broke ass commune? Or do both parties ... leader and followers ... share complicity in those grievous crimes against humanity?

"This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great
This is it, my politics


(DISCO INTERLUDE: BOW NOW WUGGA DOOP DEE DEEE DOO!)"

Yep, it's fucking great.

"-(HEAVY PART!) -
Out on the edge between the living and the dead
I try to throw you off with a shake of my head
I try to drag you down and bury you alive
But when I fall asleep that's when you open your eyes
You laugh, you cry, you look me in the eye with your hang-dog face
That's when I put you in your place
Can you tell me... how will you survive?
You have to be the biggest fool alive
I lay awake all night but all that I can see are the vicious clever lies of my mythology
I'm beating my head up against the wall 
and on each single separate brick there is a picture of you all
This is it, the end, I'll tell you what I'll do
I'm going to pick you with a stick and look inside of you
But when you wander in the dark there is nothing to see
I'm on a desperate search for reality
-(END OF HEAVY PART!)-"

Oooooh it's the Heavy Part, time to lash out at the world. Lash out at the world who's against you. Come on baby let's get PARANOID for a change! Whadda we have to lose? Let's get all PARANOID and maybe a little CHRONIC SCHIZOPHRENIA couldn't hurt either. Come on, let's lash out and keep lashing. Slash, Slash, Whooossh, Crash, Slash. Lash out! Lash out at the church and the state, the rich and the great, and everything in between .... and when you're done lashing out ... take a breath and look in the mirror, re-read what you wrote, re-watch your show ... and wonder to yourself ... Who am I lashing out at? Is the whole wide world really against me? Because when you re-read what you wrote and re-see what you said .... all you're gonna read or all you're gonna see is your own voice or your own words. You are lashing out at You.

(~Reggae Stylings~)
"To tell the truth, you can all get screwed
I'd like to give you a kick, you little son of a bitch
Just let me Let me get my hands around your throat
And I will choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke
 
What is the bitter explanation for the violence of my indignation?
Well, it's as plain as the nose on my face
I am a member of the human race"
(~End of Reggae Stylings)

Welcome to the jungle baby, it's fucked up out here. It's a dog eat dog world out here, baby. Rat eat rat, even. A jungle? The jungles of lions and tigers and monkeys are TAME compared to the humanized world. Lies are WAY MORE BETTER than Truths in this world, honey. Welcome to the jungle, baby? More like Welcome to the Human Race, there baby. Ya, you won the Human Race Contest .... but who the fuck knows what the prize is.

"This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great
 
This is it, my politics
I stand before you, a simple mask
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics
 
[it's] Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate"

Oh wait, hahahaha, that's what the prize is that you've won. It is Hate and it's fucking Great. The prize for the big Human Race Contest was a big ol' bag of hot n' frosty Hate.

Congratulations! Congratulations! Tell him what they've won Rod Roddy .....

Well, you and a guest will be taking an all expense paid trip to HATE, you and a guest will be staying at the lovely Hate Estates in the Beautiful Peaceful Hate Valley! But that's not all you've won!

You also get to be the Leader of Your Fucking Country!

 

Yeeeeeeeeee Haw!

Conclusion

Politics lies in the realm of Humans ... and Humans are kinda fucked up. To expect a flawless leader is insane ... I predict the first flawless leader will be an Android built circa 3312.

To hold these Human Popularity Contests and be surprised that a flawed Human won is crazy, you gotta expect that these thingies are gonna end with some pretty whacky results sometimes.

Sometimes the one with the cheapest heat and the most acute demagoguery wins .... but it's not a flawless victory .... moreso than victory and spoils .... the demagogue usually walks away with a big heapin' helpin' of Hate as his/her parting treasure.

Look politicians and other wielders of influence .... do whatever you want, ok? The average person doesn't even pay much attention or cares about politics. I mean usually almost half if not more of the country doesn't even vote in these things. Do whatever you want you wielders of influence you ... just don't fly your guys off to Guyana and make them drink poisonous Kool Aid or some shit. Ok?

The bright side of politics is that just like every other thing .... robots are gonna take these jobs one day. We'll all be doing our super fun stuff by like the year 3333 .... like flying our flying boats and petting our flying cats .... and when we tune in to the year 3333 Election ... we'll finally see a civil, hate-free, election ..... of robots.

And it'll be cool.

Gunna Write a Book

I'm gonna semi-retire now from "bloggin". I practiced my writing skills for the last 7 years or more and I think I've improved enough where I can now concentrate on my Manuscript (as such).

It's gonna be a doozy. Like, it's gonna be about 4 people who do a helluva lot of walking ... I mean a lot of walking. Big time. It's going to be about 7000 pages (small text too not big text) .... split into two volumes. These volumes are gonna be heavy like drop it on your foot and you break your foot heavy.

I'm gonna do all the description of stuff in the book in italics and centered ... thus if you want to skip the description parts and just read the main story you can too. Like the format's gonna be:



"Main story, important stuff, doings a transpiring left and right, call-back to something that happened two chapters ago, conflict, macguffin, main story, important stuff etc.

Poetic description of the surroundings, very flowery description of what the room looks like. It'll probably even rhyme too or be in some kinda pentameter (whatever a pentameter is). Beautiful language to describe the person the main character(s) just met .... etc, etc.

Then back to the main story after the descriptive poetic break,  important stuff, doings a transpiring left and right, call-back to something that happened two chapters ago, conflict, macguffin, main story, important stuff etc."

-example



So that way if you don't wanna read all the extra fluff description parts in the 7000+ pages you can get through it more faster if you skip the poetic description parts (which don't alter the main story but just add a descriptive flavor to the whole shebang). The main story is tool-oriented where nothing is mentioned or brought up if it isn't focal to the story .... the italic parts will be like wicked poetry about how people look and stuff. That way you get the best of both worlds. The meticulous and methodical weaving of a well segmented story interceded with italic/centered description which is not central to the story but is extravagantly crafted as if by an expert poet.

I'm not lying that my goal with this thing is a 7000+ (small text) page meandering foot-based journey so it's gonna take up most of my time devoted to writing I think.

The post stats said over the last 7 years I wrote about 35+ essays per year. That's gonna be a lot less now. I'll probably do about like 5 a year. I'm basically retiring from this. It was a great learning experience but as of now my writing tools/skills are probably good enough to like "level up" I guess and attempt a bigger-more challenge.

My book is gonna be good but I don't know how shit gets published and whatnot and it's gonna take a long time so chances are the only person who's ever gonna read it is me ... but whatever. It's my new "writing goal" so to speak and I'm gonna smash it loose as they say.

As for bloggerin', I thought it would be so bad ass to just like delete everything cause like that's so bad ass ... but then I thought some of this shit is actually pretty good. So I'm leaving this archive up .... a "best of D" I guess. It's around 175 essays this archive. The heavier ones are omitted. I'll keep a couple of religious/political/heavy ones up but most of them didn't make the Best Of D.

New essays, barring insanity afoot mind you, will be more uplifting and positive in nature. There's enough angry silliness in the world today as it is.

I don't wanna say bad stuff about religion no more. Everyone believes in something, you know? You got to. I found my personal religion in the form of combining the intriguing world of Baseball Statistics with the Tenets of Buddhism. That's all these things are anyways, these religions, just numerology and mysticism. Baseball stats as Numerology and Buddhist folklore as philosophical Mysticism sits pretty well with me. I'm a Baseball-Buddhist ... and my religion is surely not anymore smarter than any of the other ones so I'm done saying bad stuff about religions.

I also want to apologize to Oprah. I wrote a negative article about her very early on, it was about her and humorist Zach Anner circa 2011 ... back then I was less cooth at writing and I won't include it in this "Best of D" archive. She's a great lady ... and if she's serious about running for the President next time around... I hope she does. She's a great lady and she could even win.

So, yeah, any new entries here are gonna be more positiver and more better. I'm a new D.

I am now D 2.0

Has Expos Fever Reached its Crescendo ... It's Fever Pitch?

Montreal is a festive City, it is a City of Festivals galore.

But last weekend that festive nature was transported to a small hamlet by the name of Cooperstown, New York. A total of four tour buses came to see the great man Tim Raines elected to Baseball's most Respected of Shrines ... The Baseball Hall of Fame.

I've written every winter time over the last six years on Tim Raines' Hall of Fame candidacy and now I can finally retire that tradition now that Tim Raines has a plaque in Cooperstown and will forever be enshrined in the temple of the immortals of Baseball. It's no secret that my childhood idol was the one and only Rock Raines.

There was about 3,000 Montreal Expos fans there in full Expos Regalia (I see this couplet of words used sometimes and I think I was one who invented the cool term of "Expos Regalia"). Judging by the news that surrounded it ... it looks like people noticed.

Many national American and Canadian media outlets did stories on this, for example:


ESPN: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20204017

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/sports/baseball/tim-raines-expos-hall-of-fame.html

CBS: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/look-raines-dawson-bring-expos-flavor-to-cooperstown-with-help-of-guerrero/

CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/tim-raines-hall-of-fame-montreal-expos-nation-fans-1.4225928

NewsDay: https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/tim-raines-baseball-hall-of-fame-induction-brings-out-expos-fans-1.13861669

CTV: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/tim-raines-inducted-into-baseball-hall-of-fame-1.3525197

RDS: http://www.rds.ca/baseball/mlb/mlb-cooperstown-est-assaillie-par-des-partisans-aux-couleurs-des-expos-1.4592524

USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/07/29/tim-raines-hall-of-fame-induction/523005001/


.....Lots of news. Lots of news.


As a LIFE LONG Expos fan, this media attention for the city is so good. But as someone who's been following the "Journey" as Cromartie calls it of getting the team back, I knew that the last Expo going into the Hall of Fame with an Expos cap might be the crescendo-ing Fever Pitch of this Movement. Where will the Momentum come from after this?

What's next? Maybe I wrote all those articles about this moment because I knew it might be the last time ever we Expos Fans really have a moment like this. A moment of the entire Baseball World giving us shout outs and stuff.

But something tells me it 'aint over. Something tells me this isn't the last hurrah ... this is not The End to this Journey .... something tells me this is only the Beginning.


The Fever

Lots of Expos things are popping up left and right these days it seems.

1. The Cro is down in Japan and he's decked out in FULL Expos Regalia!
See: https://www.facebook.com/mtlbaseballproject/videos/1443391762410061/ 

2. Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) has billboards ALL OVER TOWN selling Beer with Expos Names on it (Rock's 30, Vlad's 27, and Alou's 18). Check it out:

Merci Montreal | Thank you Budweiser pic.twitter.com/CnemoEHlB7

— Vladimir Guerrero (@VladGuerrero27) July 24, 2017

Budweiser? That's a big big company man ... and all their Beers have Expos names on them! Vlad's speaking in his native Spanish with French subtitles in that above video ... it translates to English as him thanking Montreal fans for cheering him on.

3. Mr Batting Stance Guy has an Expos Hat on:

All-Star? MVP? Hall of Fame? 125 win season? Tim Raines, you have climbed every mountain. pic.twitter.com/CsmUWp2pHO

— Batting Stance Guy (@BattingStanceG) July 29, 2017

4. Oh Snap. Look at this one. A Very Popular Journalist is in Full Expos Regalia, getting full of emotion over Expos related matters. Wow, look at this:

Here are the couple of minutes @TimRaines30 spent talking about @jonahkeri: pic.twitter.com/M4eQ3JpAfe

— Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) July 30, 2017

5. Oh man. This is too much .... too much Exposness for me in one sitting. Oh man, if I hear a Rap Rock n Roll song about Tim Raines and the Expos right about now I might just lose it myself:

Oh my gosh. Yo, I was in the grocery store the other day buying my frozen Jamaican Patties and my sundries and whatnot .... and I saw FIVE people in Expos t shirts one after another in there. I haven't seen five people with Expos shirts in a public setting since like 1997, man. Like, this Regalia is EVERYWHERE!! I thought I was in a Twilight Zone episode seeing people in every aisle of the grocery store with Expos shirts ... I thought I was dreaming and that Rod Serling threw me back into like 1993. Expos stuff is everywhere I look right now. I cannot honestly believe it. The whole place is getting all Expofied.

Conclusion

Has the Fever hit its High Note and will start receding from here on? I don't think so. I don't think so. I got so much Expos Fever right now I'm rightly breaking out into a Cold SWEAT! HA! A COOOOLD SWEAT! HA! I GOT THE FEVER! OOOOOOH! I GOT THE FEVER!

OOoooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW! 

I was worried this would be the last Expos Hurrah. That Rock making the Hall would be last time we'd be tippin' these caps. But, it's not. At least I don't believe so.


Bill Boards talking about Expos, Rappers are Rappin' 'bout Expos with a rip rock n roll sorta sound, and people are in the grocery store DECKED OUT IN EXPOS REGAAAAAAAAALIAAAAA!


OW!


This is not The End of This Story .... This is only the Beginning.

The Seeds of Human Forgiveness ... The Most Powerful of Seeds that Can be Sewn.

When the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series a lot of thoughts crossed Baseball's collective mind. Jubilation obviously, Triumph especially, apparently Sex as well as Chicago's health authority reported a HUGE spike in pregnancies in the area after the Cubs won the World Series.

Everyone was laughing, dancing, singing, and experiencing merriment.... except for one.

One man was in hiding, living a life of fear, solitude, and abject hate cast-upon him like a headstone of shame. A headstone of suffering followed this man wherever he went. Shackled by Shame, this man lived a Life of Pain.

And this man's name was Steve Bartman....

A lifetime Cubs fan, who had a ball hit to him in the 2003 NLCS .... and like any fan would do he put his arms up to catch the foul ball .... yet in the heat of the exciting moment of having a piece of history hit directly at him .... he failed to notice that Moises Alou had a beat on the ball and would be able to lean into the crowd and seize the ball for an Out.

This all happened in probably the span of 3 seconds ... but his torment and suffering for that 3 seconds would go on to last for 13 Years.

Lots of people think 13 is an unlucky number .... and this man's bad luck lasted exactly that ... for 13 years. For in 2016 the Cubs finally did break the seal on their thought-to-be unbreakable curse and won the World Series.

Meanwhile, Bartman made his exit from Chicago many years prior, tormented by hate-pieces by journalists and death threats from fans. A man cast upon with a black mark .... a pariah cast off from Chicago society to live in Chicago-Exile.

True fans must have had a solemness in a small part of their hearts even during the Jubilation, Triumph, and Sex that went on after the 2016 World Series. Even during the celebration some felt that something was off ...... that something wasn't right in the great order of the Baseball Universe.

That something was Bartman.


Forgiveness

Today, The Chicago Cubs organization tracked down this scorned-upon man and offered something to him. Something to say, "Hey Steve, this is for you, man."

It's not some Cracker Jack prize, baby, it's not some cubic zarconian rip-off, no sireee, this is real deal. Steve Bartman is getting his own World Series ring.

If you live in the greater Chicago area and hold hatred in your heart for this man .... it's time to let it go now. He's paid more than enough for his mistake. The Aura of Punishment which follows this man wherever he goes must disintegrate.

When I look at that photo of Steve Bartman, I see a little bit of myself in there. Like looking in a mirror. I've never played baseball professionally, I've never been a GM or anything, or even a bat boy ... I'm just a Baseball Fan .... and when I look at the photo of that man that's all I see .... I see another Baseball Fan.

There's a little bit of Steve Bartman in every single one of us. We all make mistakes.

But .... we also all deserve Forgiveness for those mistakes.

Respect, Steve Bartman.

And Thus Concludes Today's Cubs Sermon from the Mount...
Praise be to Ernie Banks, and may Ivan DeJesus be With You Always
(and also with you....)

The Wheels of the World of Satire Move On an Axle of Speed These Days....

I was following a big Twitter burst last week where someone put up a photo that showed that the talented Thespian and Impressionist Mario Cantone looked very similar to the newest White House Wise Guy in the cavalcade of whackiness that the White House has become of late.

I'm familiar with the comedic stylings of one Mario Cantone because I dig impressionists and I feel the field is sorely lacking now-a-days. I've seen old timers like Will Jordan state that the reason the impressionist trade has died over the years is that no Hollywood persons have deeply unique characteristics anymore and are just good-looking super-model types. I tend to agree with that.

Some people are still good at impressions now-a-days though and Cantone is of that select crew. He doesn't do topical people though which is maybe why he doesn't have mass-appeal. He does .... Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Carol Channing, amongst others .... and yeah, these aren't people anyone under 35 has ever heard of.

I read an article once that Johnny Depp pitched a movie where he wanted to play Carol Channing in a full length bio-pic and it sounded pretty cool ... but I can see why an exec would turn that down, I mean who in their demographics their aiming at knows who the heck a Carol Channing is.

I doubt Depp can give Channing due justice anyhow. Mario Cantone does a good Channing though. I heard this guy do a duel of voices with Gilbert Gottfried once (another guy who does impressions of people no one over 35 has heard of) ... it was Gilbert as Hervé Villachez versus Cantone as Carol Channing and it was a dueling of banjos that would probably annoy an average listener to tears .... but I loved it so much. It was so good.

Anyways,

The tweet someone did that suggested Cantone would be a great choice for new White House Press Secretary Impersonator went pretty viral and the next morning people starting suggesting/pushing/demanding that Mario Cantone be the new press secretary on Saturday Night Live's weekly lampoons of the White House and its various goings-on.

Turns out SNL is in reruns right now and off for a while ... so a curious thing sorta happened, everyone kind of realized that this new White House Wise Guy might only be around for like a couple of months or so (turned out to be 10 full days).

Oh well, what can you do you know? But, then another show called the President's Show, caught on to this fan swelling of fan support for this to happen and flew Mario Cantone down to do a live intro on their show.

I've never seen this show but I checked it out that night, President Show is on after the New Daily Show with Trevor Noah in my region. Cantone did a live open and it was pretty good:

....the World of Satire didn't let the fans down in this case. When it looked like White House Wise Guy #4 wasn't going to last until SNL comes out of re-runs and it seemed as if Cantone as Mooch would never occur ... it did. Which was beautiful and great.


Final Thought

The Wheels on the Train of Satire have begun moving at a feverish pace of late. I mean take the variables that were at play here:

The New White House Wise Guy was Born: July 22nd

The Original Tweet of Cantone's likeness to Him went out: July 22nd
It blew up on Twitter: July 25th
Cantone is flown out to do President Show: July 27th

The New White House Wise Guy was Fired/Resigned: July 31st

Wow, this White House person only lasted 10 days but someway and somehow the World of Satire managed to lampoon him and do it with the man an outpouring of demand grew out of social media for. This was a bang-bang play on this one. Wow.

As a person who follows the Wide World of Satire ... I could barely even keep up with this one. This was Lightning Satire.

History Channel: The King of Dumb-Cumentaries

I love the field of History, I always did and always will. If you don't know where ya been then how you gonna know where you're going ya dumbo? Y'Know? So yeah, I love me some old History.

One problem I have with History is that most of it is not adequately documented with concrete proof and evidence of claims and thus I find it can be speculative and romanticized at times.

Romanticization is alright because the author/producer of it usually states something along the lines of "Based on a True Story" and the audience should understand it's like 85% fiction and 15% fact ... but Speculative History on the other hand isn't usually offered up as entertainment data and the author/producer usually states it is to be taken as a truth with no disclaimer or warnings.

I find my personal hobby-related interest in Historical events is usually confined to the area of Baseball and of Hollywood Movies/Tv Shows. I know that sounds weird but as a Historian of those fields the most interesting thing about them is the amount of evidence and records those fields record. (They're not the only two fields with extensive records, mind you, these are just two fields that interest me).

With Baseball, every play for the last 100 years has been recorded and since the invention of the camera many/most/all games in MLB have been recorded with visual evidence so any claim made in the History of Baseball is usually demonstrably provable. And this is the same with Movie/Tv History because now with Youtube it seems everything ever is available to view ... so if someone claims that something was done before or some such actor invented some bit then claims of this nature can be verified 100% because all records of this field have been recorded and are available for viewing. So even though you might find Baseball History or Tv History to be of the trivial/mundane variety .... I think they are very interesting fields of History due to the ease of proving claims thanks to the vast amount of records these fields have made available.

With History in general, once you start going back before cameras, before media documentation, it starts to get a little greyer and claims are less easy to prove. You can say .... Hannibal crossed a trench with 100 Elephants .... and we'll just have to take some historian's interpretation of some ancient text as proof for that ... there's no photos of how many elephants Hannibal had .... there's no videos of it .... maybe there was 200 of them, maybe 2 of them ... maybe none at all. We can never ever know for sure since there's absolutely no proof that it ever even happened. Maybe it's just a fairy tale .... who knows. Y'Know?

At least in more modern eras, in which heavy records were kept, and visual documentation in many cases exists ... we have a good idea of History. From about the 1800s and on we have access to a lot more written data, photographic evidence, and in many cases now-a-times multi-media evidence. It's easier to understand what happened from about 1800 and on thanks to record keeping and cameras.

Nonsense 24/7

Extremely Speculative History of more modern times is still in demand however. The biggest purveyor of Speculative History is the History Channel who will offer the most asinine shows and documentaries that I've ever seen ... and they will offer it with no disclaimers or anything.

The History Channel will air Bigfoot "investigations", Aliens Live Amongst Us "investigations", Robots will Kill us All "investigations" ... and that's fine and good ... it's entertainment and all but they should have some sort of disclaimer on these things telling the viewer it's for entertainment purposes. Bigfoots, Aliens, and Robots aren't running amok, ok? These are fun little stories and nothing more.

Most of the time the media doesn't latch on to a History Channel Nonsense Fest and report it as news ... but recently a case has come up that has graced the pages of just about every news media publication ... and it's a story about a new History Channel Documentary about Amelia Earhart.



Amelia Earhart: History Channel's Newest Dumb-Cumentary

Every media outlet has picked up this story and they offer it up in the headline and in the article without any second-thought or skepticism.

The claim being made in the new Dock is that Earhart didn't crash her plane and perish but she crashed and washed up on shore of a small island where the Japanese kept her prisoner until she died. This is a pretty bold claim and they offer what they call concrete evidence this happened. The evidence in question? A photograph, this one:

??????? Evidence that Japan kept Earhart as a Prisoner ?????

Okay, that's a pretty nice photo. They say if you zoom in you can without a shadow of a doubt see the back of Amelia's head in here... let's see now:

Yeah ... okay there. The back of this person's head is being offered up as concrete evidence that Earhart was taken prisoner by the Japanese after she washed up on a nearby South Pacific island? This is pretty silly stuff to be 100% honest here.



Occam's Razor 

An opposing theory on the internet has appeared today offering up a much less assumption-laden origin of the photo. There's an origin for this photo I saw today on Brian Dunning's twitter feed where one  Samantha Adams has the photo dated in 1935 and a link to a mass produced Japanese travel book:

See: http://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1223403/99?platform=hootsuite 

I put the caption of the 1935 book through a standard OCR program available online as to which we get the basic google translation of the OCR as:

 

The caption of the photo is along the lines of "Lots of interesting goods come via ship into this quaint little harbor".

So we have two competing theories here:

Theory 1: This is a photo where the back of somebody's head proves that Amelia Earhart didn't die but washed ashore this small island and was taken prisoner by Japanese soldiers.

Theory 2: This photo is from a 1935 Travel publication and depicts a small quaint harbor where boats come in to unload various goods.


Now, it's up to you to decide which theory makes more sense and there's two types of people in this world. There's people who will always choose theory 1 over theory 2. Why? I don't know. There's people who flat out will refuse a simple explanation and always prefer the more entertaining one. What if you pile more and more and more speculation on it? Let me make up a crazier speculative theory now....


Theory 1: This is a photo where the back of somebody's head proves that Amelia Earhart didn't die but washed ashore this small island and was taken prisoner by Japanese soldiers.

Theory 2: This photo is from a 1935 Travel publication and depicts a small quaint harbor where boats come in to unload various goods.

Theory 3: This is a photo of Amelia Earhart and D.B. Cooper re-united at last on the Falkland islands after both their daring high air escapades ended with each of them being sucked through a time vortex thanks to the efforts of Ancient Aliens, Bigfoot, J.R. Bob Dobbs, Elvis Aaron Presley, and Papa Legba who's combined secretive powers allowed each daring high flyer to escape death and settle on the Falkland islands where Amelia and DB Cooper had sex and made a baby and that baby grew up to become ...... 

..... Kurt Cobain.

 

Speck is German for Bacon Fat.

Fuck man, my speculative theory makes History Channel's speck look like kindergarten shit. Speck theories? Shucks homie, I was through with it before you even knew what to do with it. If you dopes at History Channel are gonna go Full Nonsense then go full throttle or go home. Go Big or Go Home, History. If you're gonna go full throttle nonsense then do it right. Your speculation/speck theories need I'd say about 700% more Elvis in them. Seven hundred percent more Elvis and maybe about 400% more Papa Legba ... and some Ancient Dwarfs couldn't hurt either. Speck it real good if you're gonna speck it up, baby.

Get a nice ol' fryin' pan there History Channel ... get a POUND of SPECK .... sizzle it up real good .... now you start with Elvis as the base ingredient, then you sprinkle on some Aliens (not too much just a drizzle of Aliens), the real scary aliens the Lizard Aliens I'm talking 'bout, now you let the fat coat up the theory 'til it's a nice golden brown then you cut up some Big Foot cutlets and really work the Big Foot meat in to the Speck fat theory ... really woooork it in there. Now you're cooking, bubba. Now you're cooking with heat there bubba. Now you're cooking up a Speculation reeeeeeeeal good.  

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo-Weeeee!



Conclusion

History, if you're gonna go full deep fried german bacon fat on these theories then please just completely lose your mind. I have no problem with you H-Channel, I think you make entertaining nonsense at times.

Media, I got a major beef on how many outlets ran with this offering zero skepticism with this story. I mean this story is abso-ludicrous. You're talking big outlets running this story as fact too not just the dumb ones like Daily Mail ... I'm talking like real news outlets here doing this story.

On a serious note, Brian Dunning who has been following this story and where I got most of my info from on this has a nice new movie out that he's offering to schools for free (it's available free online as well) ... in order to teach Critical Thinking to young persons. I think this is important and since I got most of my info on this story from his site/twitter-feed I should give his work a shout out. He's doing good stuff.

Dunning's new film aimed at introducing young people to Critical Thinking is called "Principles of Curiosity" and it's free so teachers can use the material in schools for free.



(Edit July/12/2017: I stated wrongly who first linked to the photo in the 1935 Travel publication. Dunning and Gold tweet is the first place I saw it referenced that day but according to the follow up pieces that media outlets are doing on this story the person to point out the 1935 photo was this writer: http://yamanekobunko.blog52.fc2.com/blog-entry-338.html)

Adam West .... The One and Only Batman

Rest in Peace great actor Adam West ... and the only man I consider to be a Bat Man of a man.

A lot of celebrities on twitter are making nice statements about Adam West, a lot of famous people I think were inspired and influenced by Adam West. His acting style was something that I believe a multitude of comedic actors were influenced by. The silliness of the show combined with the total thespian seriousness of West's acting is something that every comedic actor should have to watch.

The Bat Man show only lasted 3 seasons in the sixties, but you'd be hard pressed to find a person in the entire world who's not familiar with it. Kids from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s .... they all grew up watching this show. It used to be on right before supper time when I was a kid and it was one of those shows you didn't care if you've seen this episode 12 times ... you're still gonna watch it. The Theme Song alone was worth it.

It only has one word this song and that word is Batman.

This show was too much, man. It was so good. They made a movie too which was just supremely beautifully whacky. There's scenes from that movie that are like locked in my head because they were so strange to watch them as a kid. Even if I grow to be as old as 100 and get alzheimers and forget everything ever ... I bet you I'd still remember the Shark scene and the Bomb Scene from that movie.

There's another scene I'll never forget either in the Adam West Bat Man movie and that's one where they solve a riddler's riddle in such an mind-alteringly confusing manner. While watching this movie again when I was a bit older, not a kid anymore but like maybe 16 or something, I tried to make a logic map about how they arrived at this conclusion to this riddle. I wrote it down and I found the logic so supremely ridiculously silly that I hung it on a bristle board over my computer ... and if I look in my desk right now I think I still have it.

It doesn't show up very well in that photo I took but it was just a series of arrows that helped me try and figure out how Adam West and Burt Ward solved this Riddler's riddle. I see these charts called like logic maps or goal trees or something now a days ... I didn't about know those when I made this...  I was like a teenager and just really wanted to try to figure out a way to understand how in the world Batman and Robin arrived at the answer of "United Nations!" to this riddle.

The Riddler wrote two riddles in the sky using the wake of a plane and they were:

1) What Goes up White but Comes Down Yellow?
2) How Do you Divide 17 Apples among 16 People?

They get the answer to the first one as "Egg" quite fast but hold the phone it doesn't stop there, no way. An egg they say represents a "Container of Mother Nature" ... which in turn could be called ... "Goodwill" ... Alright and somehow the answer to Query One was "Goodwill." Alright.

Nextly, they tackle riddle two .... they get the answer of Apple Sauce right off the bat but that's not the super correct answer, no way, they had to dig deeper into this burning question. Apple Sauce as everyone knows involves the Unification of Apples and thus Apple Sauce can be said to represent Unification, okay... I'm with you so far Batman and Robin (I guess). What is another word for Unification? Apparently it's Organization...

....and put it all together and what do we get? A Goodwill United Organization....

THE UNITED NATIONS!!!!! (Well obviously!)

This flow chart (which I think is what they call them now-a-days) hung on a bristle board on a wall over my computer for many many years along with old concert tickets, sports ticket stubs, pictures, and stuff... I honestly think it's had an influence on my life. It's just total absurdity. Total 100% absurdity ... and that's what the show was ... it was totally 100% absurd. Absurdly amazingly good.


Who's the REAL Batman?


There's been so many Batmans over the years from Keaton to Kilmer, to be honest without google I could not on-the-spot name every single BatMan. For me personally there's only one Batman and it's Adam West. None of the other Batmens ever had me wrack my brain to the point where I had to make a flow chart (not knowing these even existed) of logic to map out how they arrived at their mental conclusion.

But flow charts and logic maps aside ... is there something that really separates Adam West from the others? Yes, and it's the approach to the character. If you're gonna make a show about a guy who wears his underwears OVER his pants and runs around with a sidekick wearing a green speedo and yellow cape .... it really has no choice but to veer off into a comedic direction. It did and Batman was one of the funniest shows of all time.

The over-ham, theatre-like seriousness deliveries of Adam West and Burt Ward is icing on the cake to make the show even that much more ridiculous. When you wear your underwears over your pants but play the role more seriously than 10 Laurence Oliviers .... you're on to something, man. It's beyond absurd .. it's just a new art form altogether at some point.

The newer movies gritty-up the character a bit too much, I find. It gets harder and harder for me and maybe some other people too ... for us to take a person who dresses up as a bat, puts on a cape, and runs around town fighting crime seriously. At least in the newer Batman movies he no longer wears his underwear over his pants.... but still .... It's a concept that's not exactly designed to be wicked serious.

One movie that made me just really not like the Super Hero genre movies was that Watchmen movie. In Watchmen they don't want you to take it Mock-Serious but they want the audience to take this Super Hero movie super duper like Serious-Serious-Serious. I saw an interview online once with David Hayter (the guy who does the voice for Solid Snake in the english Metal Gear localization and was involved in making the Watchmen film), and he was trying to defend the movie to critics by saying that the audience was just too stupid to understand all the subtle nuanced intellectual portions of the film. I dunno 'bout that.

The audience wasn't too stupid to understand Watchmen ... it was a dumb (and not in a good way) movie. It was over THREE DARNED HOURS long! Why in the world is a super hero movie THREE HOURS LONG for!? A good super hero action movie should be capped off at 1h and 40 minutes MAX. There's not much actual action in this movie even, the CGI was mainly used to animate a blue politician (who for some friggin' reason is always naked with a dick hanging out) who talks to people and doesn't even fight. The only part I liked was when that kid Kelly from Bad News Bears kills the midget from Seinfeld.

The kicker in that Watchmen movie is the underwears-over-the-pants characters ... and they are meant to not be whacky. There's a scene where Die Fledermaus and the spandex woman are having a deep conversation about their feelings for each other ... about the complexities, obstructions, fruitifications, and ennui of their relationship ... it's meant to be this deep, gritty, dark, love scene ... and this idiot Die Fledermaus is WEARING HIS UNDERWEARS OVER HIS PANTS!

Look, the following is an undeniable fact of life that I'm gonna state now, okay:

If your character is wearing his UNDERWEARS OVER HIS PANTS ... he is not gonna be up for an Oscar anytime soon, alright? You can't expect to be taken seriously when you have your underwear over your pants ... it's just universally silly. Go into your parents old photo albums and look at photos of you when you were a kid and I bet with a 95% success rate that they have a photo of you with your underwears over your pants and everyone in it is laughing ... why? Because it's down right funny to wear your underwear over your pants.

If you're gonna do that on film ... wear the underwears over the pants like that ... you should be doing the Batusi, trying to dispose of comedically-large bombs, and trying to solve evil Liberace's schemes against you by solving a series of nonsensical riddles .... That's what Super Heroes who wear their Underwears over their Pants DO! If you wanna be serious while wearing underwears over your pants then try to be 100x Laurence Olivier more-serious-than-serious-itself style serious instead of after-school-special style serious. Okay?

What do you have to say for yourself, Liberace?
"I would have succeeded if it wasn't for those two guys runnin' around town with their blasted underwears over their pants!"

Conclusion

Adam West was an Icon, if the world still exists 500 years from now I think kids will still be watching those same 3 seasons of Batman. It's one of those things that can't be recreated and will just live on forever.

RIP Adam West

Best Tag Team Finishers

It's Sunday, I should write something down. My humanly Writing Tools are getting pretty rusty ... like if I don't do it for like a month or two I will like forget how to do this stuff. If I don't do it for like a month and then try, I'll be sittin' there in front of the blank white page and be all like "What the Hell, Man?"

It's actually quite hard to ravenously throw down black characters onto a blank white slate. I hear Pro Writers say sometimes that they get "writers block" like a constipation but for writing ...  I can see how that's possible.

Similar to anything else in life you gotta keep at it to get better and you gotta keep doing it to stay sharp ... so ... to wash the rust off my Writing Skills .... here is my presentation to All Parties of Whom are Interested to Know this:

THE GREATEST TAG TEAM FINISHING SUPER MOVES FROM ANY MEDIUM OF ALL TIME.


The only rules for this tournament is that there are no rules. It can be a Tag Team Finisher from any medium of entertainment. Actually, there will be one rule and that's that there will be a limit of One move per source. So, for example Chrono Trigger was loaded with wicked wicked tag team moves but it'd be dumb to just list like 10 cool moves from that video game. Y'Know?

I am now gonna start slamming down keys and entries ... I'll tally it all up and make the Official Leader Board at the end of this thing.

Let's get Started ..... Now:

Wait, hold the phone, maybe not everyone knows what this crap is so let's Term Define it out quick,


Term Define: Tag Team Finishers

This is a fighting move which combines the input and skills from two or more individuals to form increasingly powerful combination attacks. Once two singular moves are combined they thus become greater than the sum of their whole ... they become ... More Better.


Okay, Now let's get started ..... Now,

No wait, I might as well provide the inspiration that lead me to have the idea to sit down and write about tag team finishers.


What Got me Thinking about Writing This:

I was watching Dragon Ball Super which after the first two pretty bland story arcs (I wasn't crazy about the Purple Goku one either) is starting to get pretty cool... the show is hitting its stride and getting pretty cool. The next arc is a big ass 80 Man tag team Battle Royale ... it's gonna be like that Survivor Series where like 100 guys were standing on the apron. Yo, Dragon Ball Super is getting pretty buck, like word.

Dragon Ball was good from the original series all the way to about the Cell Saga in "Z". I stopped really liking that show around the end of the Cell Saga where like everything started to get a bit boring. I don't even remember the Buu one ... and that garbage nonsense "GT" made no fucking sense ... but yo, Dragon Ball Super is pretty buck and I like it.

Anyways, Piccolo and Gohan were like training in the mountains and eating dinosaurs like it was 1989 again and reminiscing about Old Times when Gohan says to Piccolo, he says, that they should come up with a Combination attack ... and I was like ... Word. Dragon Ball with Combination Tag Super Moves is a GENIUS idea! It is. I LOVE tag team finishers. I'm not even joking, like WORD to your MOMS tag team finishers drop BOMBS and if they put them in Dragon Ball ... forget about it ... it's gonna rule.

Okay, that's why I got Tag Finishers on the brain ... now, Let's Get Started Now,

The finalists are:



The Bush Whacker's Patented Battering Ram:

Wrestling has had some cool tag team finishers like when Ax would hold a guy in a back breaker clutch-hold and Smash would jump from the top turnbuckle and elbow the idiotic opponent in the face ... thus breaking the guy's back and his face at the same time ... but that move is peanuts compared to the Power which was unleashed by the Bush Whackers patented Tag Team Finisher, behold Ladies and Gentlemens, The Battering Ram:

It's in there, you might as well watch the whole video, there's some cool stuff in there like them making cheese, eating extra large 12 foot long hogies, and puking on each other and shit. The Battering Ram is in there somewhere or other.

Basically, Butch put his cousin Luke's head into a standard headlock and then both propelled their legs, which when combined gave them the Power of Four Legs (instead of two) charging Luke's Head into the idiotic opponent. No one got up from that, no one, not Barry Horrowits, not the Brooklyn Brawler, not Maxamillian Moon .... no one got up from this finisher.

It's simple but effective and it melded seamlessly into their act/stage-show ... they would frangle about the ring licking people, biting people's butt cheeks, and hollering buffooneries ... and this was the setup that lead in to the piece-de-resistance ... the Battering Ram which not only combined Butch's and Luke's leg strength but also combined their comedic skills into their wrestling skills. The Ram was the perfect cherry to put on the top of their perfect Double Fudge Sunday of a match.

I respect the Bush Whackers with many fibers of my heart, no doubt.


Raw Power: 76
Finesse: 74
Aesthetics: 79

Overall: 76



Crono, Frog, and Robo's TRIPLE RAID:

Word to your Mom, Lemme drop a Bomb!

When I first saw Lucca throw a buncha fire into Crono's Cyclone sword whirl .... forget it ... I almost flipped my lid and ran screaming out of the house. It was called a "Dual Tech" and holy moly a la macaroni was it friggin' COOOOOOL. Word to your MOMS on Mother's Day (today) it was cool. The "Fire Whirl" was the first Dual Tech most people would learn in the game, I think, if memory serves me right, so chances are many many people flipped out to it like yours truly.... but ....

.... forget about Dual Techs, that shit is for BABIES. If you flipped for a dopey Dual Tech wait until your party learns a TRIPLE Tech. Yo.

I remember learning my first Triple Tech like it was yesterday. I was in Magus's Castle and then all of the suddens it writes on the screen "You Learned Triple Tech, Triple Raid" ... and I was like .... "a what?" .... "a TRIPLE TECH!? GET THE HELL OUTTA TOWN!"

In this Triple Tech, Frog and Chrono start by doin' the tried-tested-and-mother-approved bread and butter Dual Tech "X Strike" but it doesn't end there, people. IT DOESN'T END THERE! After Cro and Fro rip the enemy asunder in a X-like pattern, guess what? My boy, Ro, winds up a Robo Tackle and SMASHES into the idiotic opponent! Man alive, as if X Strike wasn't enough ... it literally became a TRIPLE RAID! Unreal.

I flipped. 100% Flipped.

My Heart ... it just Stopped.

Magus is the mid-boss of that game, and I was in his castle just MASHING THE CLUB UP! MASHING HIS CRIB UP with those TRIPLE RAIDS! I was mashing that pasty-face Magus's club up, like word. If I was outta magic or one guy was confused then I'd let loose a coupla Bubble Snaps or maybe a couple Spin Cuts ... who me? I don't give a fuck. I do not care or am scared of some ghosts in some haunted pasty-man castle. Forget about it. I WAS MASHING THE CLUB UP, ASUNDERS!

Man, I was in school back in Le Day when this Masterpiece was out and I was learning that junior algebra shit. Everything in those silly Mathematics Exercise Books was hokey stuff like "Solve for X", ya right, you think I'm gonna solve for any X after learning Triple Raid there Math class? Word to your mom, NO WAY JOSE. You never caught me in no math class solving for no X, no siree, Woo-eeeeee, I was up in those exercise Hilroy copy books drawing ROBO smashing into all the Xs I was supposed to be solving for. Smashing the math book up! WORD! No math book can tell me what to solve for, funk that .... those Xs were uncompleted X-Strikes, that's all they were! They needed a Robot to smash into them Xs and make Triple Raids outta 'em. I even imagined in the sound effects whilst drawing robots all over my math book Xs ... Triple Raid sound effects all like SLISH - SLASH - KURTAW - KUURRRR - PAAAAATOOW!

My Math book loooked COOL back in Le Day. Word up.

Raw Power: 88
Finesse: 86
Aesthetics: 87

Overall: 87



Gantetsu, Bolgan, and Long-Chan Chan's Disco Inferno Bald Headed Seizure Nonsense Technique:

People always say that Video Games aren't literature ... but very idiotic people like that have never like sat down and played a game like Earthbound, or Final Fantasy VI, or Chrono Trigger ... and those morons have surely never sat down and played Suikoden I, II, or III.

The stories of the Suikoden games are just down-right well presented and I would describe them as wonderful, yet, we are not here today to be talking about the stories of the Suikoden games ... we are bringing Suikoden into this article because it has one of the silliest Tag Finishers these eyes of mine have ever laid into.

Male Pattern DISCO INFERNO!!!!

Not to get into the story, I'll just describe the move. In your band of 108 heroes you have three of whom which happen to be bald. Yes, they have shiny, no-hair-having heads, which sit atop their necks ... and if these three baldinies are in your fighting party at the same time they can combine the power of their bald heads to create a disco inferno which then morphs into a liquid-plasmic seizure inducing light show which ultimately culminates in every idiotic monster on screen dying like a big idiot.

Side Note: I have a bone to pick with that Gantetsu, because I read the books this series of games is inspired from (Outlaws of the Marsh) and that brother Gantetsu is obviously based on the Sagacious brother himself Mr. Lu Da .... and if you're gonna do a Lu Da character then that mammer jammer should be MASHING UP the CLUB like word to your mom. They made this character a Mage who sits in the back row and uses his 108 beads to like cast ghosts out ... man, he should have been wielding that iron cudgel like Lu Da did in the book and just mash idiots to pieces. I can't stay mad at Gantetsu though, because you have to push him like a sumo wrestler to recruit him (which is cool) and if you put him with Bolgan and Long-Chan Chan he can become 1/3 of a force of Bald Men so Powerful that they become a walking drug induced rave party ... which I must confess is the type of thing that Dreams are Made of.

Raw Power: 66
Finesse: 71
Aesthetics: 108 (limit breaker)

Overall: 82




Black Hole and Pentagon's What The Hell is Going On:

 

May we Sloooooow da tiiiii-hiiiime!

Ah yes, what list of this nature could claim to be in completion without first visiting the Tag Team finisher of the tag team known as the Four Dimensional Killer Combo who participated in one of the grandest of Tag Team Tournaments ... the Tournament Mountain Tag Team Tournament ... which started when an internal under-sea volcano erupted and jettisoned a new mountain range onto the earth's surface ... one that came complete with a wrestling ring and an ancient trophy to be awarded to the tag team which reigned supreme on Tournament Mountain.

I should explain these two pro-wrestler/super-men's super skills before explaining what their Tag Finisher entails.

Black Hole started out in Buffalo Man's stable of Super Men / Wrestlers who were banished from earth for their brutal ways (by means of getting locked in a giant roach motel and being shot into outer space). He's one of the original Devil Super Men ... and since he was born in the bermuda triangle he has the power of the Black Hole. Black Hole has a big hole in his face that leads to a cold and eternal void. His theme song is pretty good.

His Theme Song: The Bermuda Mystery

As for the Pentagon Man, he is a super man made by the Pentagon in the USA and wasn't a big deal on this show ... mainly acting as a jabroni to Wars Man in the Olympic Games story arc. The Russian super man known as the WarsMan carves him up pretty easy. Personally, knowing how retarded this show is, I honestly don't think Pentagon is his original name ... I think he was changed to Pentagon Man after the company told the authors of the work that he can't go by his original name which I believe was The Flying Jew Man. That's just a theory though and I can't prove that to be true. His powers is he can fly around like a bird man and he can spin his Jew Star to make time stop momentarily (which proves to be annoying in the Tag Tournament for his opponents). His theme song is good too, I love the english chorus of "May Weeeee Slooooooooow the Tiiiiiiiiiiii-Hiiiiiime!

I wish I could Stop Time myself.

Okay so, now Mr./Ms./Mrs. Reader understands that Dude A can suck things into an eternal empty void inside his face and Dude B can fly around like a bird and can also spin his face star-of-david and make time literally stop.

So, when these guys fight in the Tournament Mountain Invitational Geological Tag Team Whatever-the-Fuck-Thing Championship .... they develop a combination attack that combines their powers to create a combo that's way more better.

Sooooo..... Okay, what happens is. Um, let's see here, 

1. Black Hole disappears into the Void inside his own face which causes his idiotic opponents to run right past him and to clothes-line each other and look stupid.

2. Pentagon whilst flying around like a bird grabs one of the idiotic opponents who is still whoozy from being clotheslined by his own tag partner.

3. Pentagon thus flies gracefully through the air, high in the sky like a bumblee bee, and then holds his opponent in a reverse german suplex and begins his ferocious descent to the ground ... but instead of smashing his opponent's head into the ground ... he SLAMS HIM INTO BLACK HOLE'S FACE whereby he disappears (forever?).

4.  Next, while the other opponent (the one not currently inside Black Hole's face) regains his composure after the botched clothesline, Pentagon STOPS TIME ITSELF to keep this interloper in his place. Then, he grabs this opponent and similar to the first one, Pentagon flies gracefully through the air upwards and then places the second of the opponents in a reverse german suplex hold ... and similarly again ... he slams him into Black Hole's face (which you remember is an empty universe to itself).

5. Now, you following so far, Black Hole jettisons both opponents that are trapped in his void/face and launches them into the air.

6. Now both Black Hole and Pentagon jump into the air, high into the sky like a bird or a plane, and then grab an opponent each .... and then ...

7. PILE DRIVE THEM SKULL FIRST INTO THE GROUND.

They do this obtuse special clutch hold power move to Kinnikuman and his partner Prince Kamehameha* ... but I can't find a clip of it to show you gentle reader ... so if you'll excuse me we'll have to settle for a demonstration of this move from a Kinnikuman video game:

- 4D Fusion -

Well, there it is. There's some other cool moves in this tournament too but I'm gonna pick 4d Fusion as the entry for the Kinnikuman series. Some other cool ones are BuffaloMan and RamenMan (the 10 Million Power Having Powers) do one where RamenMan puts BuffaloMan on his back and then bends forward so Buffalo Man's horns are facing in front of RamenMan and then he runs at a top speed, as to which I'm not sure if it's symbolism that they turn into a horned freight train or if they do transform into a freight train with horns ... either way it's pretty cool. The Muscle Brothers voltron-esque Muscle Docking tag finisher is cool too.

(*Side Note: If you're wondering why Kinnikuman was in this pairing it's because .... Kinnikuman teamed up with his original trainer the Hawaiian Super Man known as Prince Kamehameha because his long time friend Terry Man had already promised the Native American Super Man known as Geronimo he would team with him and didn't want to break his word. But since the Prince Kamehameha exceeded the age limit for the Mountain Tag Tournament he had to wear a mask similar to Kinnikuman and thus they called themselves the Muscle Brothers.

-end of Side Note.)

Raw Power: 83
Finesse: 98
Aesthetics: 84

Overall: 88

Assessment of Ratings 

Okie humanly Dokie my reader of readers (if anyone is still reading which is doubtful) let's review the assessments now!

*** 1. Black Hole and Pentagon's Insane Nonsense Flying Bird Void Thing ***

2.  Crono, Frog, and Robo's TRIPLE RAID.

3. Gantetsu, Bolgan, and Long-Chan Chan's  Disco Fever Laser Light Show Bald Guy Attack.

4. Bush Whackers Battering Ram.  

Bird Nonsense Void Thingie wins because it's Word to Moms I'm Here To Drop Bombs COOL. It barely beat Triple Raid (which I should confess has a special place in the fibers of my heart so I might have a bit of bias on the Raid, baby).

Conclusion

As for Dragon Ball Super, it rules, and if it's gonna become tag team finisher city down at this wicked-sounding Tournament of Power between the Universes ... oh my goodness .... I hope those writers and artists know what they are doing. I hope they all grew up playing Crono Trigger, and Suikoden, and watching Wrestling and Kinnikuman. I hope some of these tag finishers blow my socks offa my feet on this show! 

They did one yesterday where like Goku and Tien team up to practice against Gohan and Piccolo. Gohan fends off Goku and Tien whilst Piccolo charges up his Super Explosion Wave ... it was pretty cool. There's so many ways they can go in this 80 man Multi-Universal Battle Royal though, I'm fucking excited, I haven't liked this show since like they beat Cell in like 19-whatever-dee-7. Who knows what these fucking aliens from these other fucking universes can fucking do, you know? Maybe some dudes are gonna be throwing dudes into other dudes faces (of which said dude's face is actually another universe) for all I know.