The Ultimate Warrior was known mainly for his ability to get insanely PUMPED and his penchant for clothes-lining dudes fucking heads off, but few people really commend the fellow for his prose.
Was the Ultimate Warrior the greatest poet of all time? Many would argue otherwise yet are they simply dismissing him and his poetic abilities simply because he doesn't look like the average poet? When people ponder who the greatest poet of all time was...do they simply discard the Warrior due to him not fitting the mold of what they believe a poet should look like?
Poets usually look like this:
Dainty, Fragile, Wimpy, etc.
Poets don't usually tend to look like this:
Streamers, Face Paint, Championship Belt, etc.
In order to assess his abilities with the utmost of justice, his poems must be presented in text similarly to how older-school poets submitted their works.
Let's Play a Game
This game is called "Wordsworth, Blake, or Warrior" and the rules are simple. Three snippets of poetry will be presented and the reader must simply guess which is attributed to William Wordsworth, which is attributed to William Blake, and which of the three snippets is attributed to the Ultimate Warrior.
SET A 1.
"When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." 2. "So let us not be impatient, for only desperate men act with impatience. How should I prepare? Should I jump off the tallest building in the world? Should I lie on the lawn and let them run over me with lawnmowers? Or, should I go to Africa and let them trample me with raging elephants?"
3.
"Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity."
SET B 1. "Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe its final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the bodies of others; If it makes them believe deeper in something larger than life; than his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized."
2. "Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence... I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow."
3.
"Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future."
SET C
1.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can."
2.
"What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care... The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind." 3.
"No Sleep. No Food. No Nothing. Just Maniacism. As a skeleton we still walk as Ultimate Maniacs therefore what are you gonna do? Bury us now?"
SET D
1.
"I saw the walls. Walls that build them with fear. Dig your claws into my organs, scratch into my tendons, bury your anchors into my bones. Nightmares are the best part of my day. The desire to withstand the pain, and give you the utmost."
2.
"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour." 3.
"That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."
Answers Set A: 1. Blake, 2. Warrior, 3. Wordsworth Set B: 1. Warrior, 2. Blake, 3. Wordsworth Set C: 1. Wordsworth, 2. Blake, 3. Warrior Set D: 1. Warrior, 2. Blake, 3. Wordsworth
Assessment
William Wordsworth and William Blake are like fucking legends when it comes to poetry and prose and shit...but don't you feel they come off as a bit preachy and emo? I do. Also, did either Blake or Wordsworth ever hold the Intercontinental or Heavy Weight Championship at any point of their lives? No, not even close.
Is it then safe to conclude that they were total jabronies and not the greatest poets of all time as everyone seems to claim they are? Probably.
Trash TV is officially dead, its run is over. Talk shows now a days fall into a very basic formula which promote various products (actors, actresses, consumer goods, etc.). The wild wild west known as Trash which brutalized the air waves for a good 30 years seems to be on its last legs. So, now that the genre is officially accepted as being close to or already dead, it is a good time to take a look back and attempt to crown a champion.
Some TeeVee historians tend argue the founder of the genre was one Alan Burke...who in the 60s would do an open show in front of a live studio audience which would sometimes be filled with very conservative people mixed in with the hippies/yippies of the era. The open audience would tend to boil over at times and it would get sort of unruly at times.
When other people started to emulate this genre, they not only tended to let small melees boil over in the audience but actively began to willingly encourage it or even plant actors in the audience to incite/instigate bedlam.
We shall focus on four particular hosts (or 3 and 1 honorable mention more like it). These 3 people are in my opinion the finalists for being King of Trash TV.
Preamble
To be considered as King of Trash, the show in question must have been highly controversial or even completely retarded, it must have been filmed before a rowdy or even asininely feral studio audience, and the studio audience must have been allowed to express opinions upon the subject matter despite how silly or fringe those opinion may have been.
One notable omission is the Howard Stern show. This show is more a of an interview/comedy show more consistent with a late night formula than the Trash genre. The "Channel 9" version of the Stern show is close to meeting the criterion of Trash yet I would still classify that show in the genre of a comedy/interview late night program. It displayed many of the qualities of a Trash genre program yet it is definitely not caste in the Trash format and thus is not considered. Stern may indeed be the self-proclaimed "King of All Media" yet he is surely not King of Trash.
Total jabronies who are worthy of mention but who did not make the final cut: Donahue, Sally Jesse Raphael, Joan "Skeletor" Rivers, Wally George, that big one Ricky Lake, Geraldo, Maury, Steve Wilkos, etc.
If anyone is unclear of what the Trash Genre is, the following is a short parody by Mr. Weird Al which sums up the genre quite compactly...
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced into Weight Loss Programs!
On to The Trash
1.Jerry Springer
Sub-Genre: ScriptedTrash Show Biz Percentage: 100%
The poster boy of the genre himself, the mayor of Cincinnati turned Trash iconoclast. This was the show that really honed the facets of the genre that selled to the audience best and took the Trash genre to its epitome and peak level.
The things that sold best were ridiculous ass shit, fights, tits, and just general weirdness. The producers figured out that if you script all the fights and pay women to show tits then you can have this each and every single show. The cutest thing on this show was after all this scripted nonsense was done...Jerry would offer up a sobering and downright silly "final thought" to attempt to summarize the circus that had just ensued. The "final thought" segment was so darned odd that it was pretty hilarious. You'd have like 21 straight minutes of brawls from some whacky hill billy lesbian love triangle...and then Springer would read his inner most and somberest thoughts concerning lesbian hill billy love triangles as per prepared for him before hand.
Sobering thought...
I think this show is still on which is literally like kicking a dead horse at this point. In this case I guess it is literally like marrying a dead horse at this point I should say (if you watched this show back in the day, a fellow indeed came on to marry a horse once).
Since it is scripted, 100% show-biz, and mostly features actors it is hard to laugh at it sometimes, but the scripted whackos still rarely fail at being funny. Everything considered, this was a pretty decent program.
2. Morton Downey Jr.
Morton is mediating...
Sub-Genre: RAW Show Biz Percentage: 25%
Oh goodness. Morton Downey Jr., oh my goodness. This was a wild one, and I really believe close to 3/4 of this mess was not a shtick. They put two opposing groups of people into a room, surrounded them by a non-screened studio audience, and refereed it with an in-yer-face chain-smoking maniac.
The format was Loudmouth #1 vs. Loudmouth #2 vs. Loudmouth #3. Three or four guests expressing usually fringe and polarized opinions. Downey remained unbiased to the discussion and mainly just told everyone they were wrong and that they were idiots in order to fire them up and get them to open up about even more or their opinions.
The thing I like the most I think on this show is when a heckler is getting loud and crazy...they don't kick the person out...Downey summons him down to the stage a la Rod Roddy or goes into the crowd and fishes them out and gets them to a mic to express whatever opinion they are hooting or hollering about. Chances are its either gonna be funny, crazy, or insane but it will be heartfelt and real that's for sure. Sometimes they were opinions that may well have been correct but were simply too harsh that no one wanted to admit they were true.
One day it might be jezus freaks, wiccan weirdoes, and new-age kooks yelling at each other whilst being presided over by Dracula (note: the lady with the poodle head hair is the only person in this episode not in costume). Another day it might be rap stars versus white supremacists or some other volatile situation. How 'bout one about cult experts versus nutty scientologists? That one's good too.
He'll even get all post-modern and existential on you and do a rude talk show episode about rude talk show hosts. Hey, why not?
The piece de resistance may have been a show in a rented out Apollo Theater, with a sold out audience of rabid christians, gathered together for a good old fashion debate between atheists and christians. The rowdiness and fights that break out in the Apollo were not scripted...that's raw right there. The only thing that was scripted in this debacle was when he dumped water on "loudmouth #2"...the guest obviously had a hat ready to take out to sell the gag.
Downey passed away over a decade ago from lung cancer (the chain-smoking got 'em) but this show left its mark for better or worse.
3. Timothy Stack
Sub-Genre: Parody/Satire Show Biz Percentage: 110%
You've probably seen T. Stack pop up somewhere here or thereon some show or other. He's a longtime character actor. Here for example he's bit playing some bit on Seinfeld and you've probably seen him some other place on some show...probably.
He's sort of forgettable I guess, but on the two shows where he was given the headline time he really had some moments. Stack was of course Notch Johnson on the Bay Watch parody show "Son of The Beach" and he was also Trash TeeVee host Dick Dietrick on the short lived "Night Stand."
Trash Talk was already done-to-death at this point and this parody version was probably the best way to go with the genre. It is a stage show more than a Trash Talk but the audience is there and allowed to yell and stuff so it meets the criterion.
It's odd to parody things that are basically ridiculous to being with. I love that movie Black Dynamite for example which is a parody of Dolemite...and Dolemite was incredibly ridiculous to begin with meaning the parody became a parody of a parody which makes it a Dual-Parody. Stack's "Son of The Beach" parody of Baywatch fits the mold of a compounded Dual-Parody as does his work in Night Stand.
How do you parody Morton Downey Jr. or Springer? The end result will be stupidity multiplied by 2 is what it will be. Stupid times stupid is stupid squared. Double Stupid is something original at least...it's not something you see everyday anyway. Having more stupidity is better than having no stupidity.
4. Honorable Mention: Wally Sparks Sub-Genre: Fiction Show Biz Percentage: 110%
This was a film about a rude talk show host starring the Legend of Comedy Legends Mr. Rodney Dangerfield.
The son of a respected governor thinks it would be a hoot to invite his hero, trash talksman extraordinaire Wally Sparks, to a ritzy party his father is hosting. Misfortune erupts as Sparks gets injured whilst accidentally riding a horse through the gathering. The governor reluctantly lets Sparks host his show at his mansion while he heals his wounds. As you'd expect all kinds of ruckus breaks out and Sparks does what he can to boost ratings and deliver the sleeziest trash teevee from the governor's mansion.
This movie isn't that good...it's not an A+ Rodney movie by any stretch but it should still be included in this retrospective. I've wrote a comedy oriented blog for like a few years now and I've never once even mentioned Rodney yet....so squeezing him in here seems like a good moment.
Rodney is a freaking amazing comedian, top 5 of all time no doubt, but he's definitely not the King of Trash Teevee (at least not in real life).
The Official King of the deceased genre known as Trash TV is...
It was between him and Springer and though Springer is a funnier show, Downey's show was plain nuts. He was not necessarily always a likeable dude but his show was intense and freaking wild. It's probably the one and only legit trash talk show that ever existed. Some parts of it were literally crazy and at some times it was so raw it was freakin' real as fuck. More real than anything you'll see on a so-called "reality" show on modern day TV that's for sure.
"Ya Drug Dealin', Slime Sucking Son of a BITCH....I hope that you die sloooooooooooow"
-Morton Downey Jr. (1932 - 2001)
EDIT (Sept. 20/2014): I gave Downey props for doing an odd idea of doing a rude talk show about rude talk show hosts. The idea was kind of silly yet highly original.I recently watched this episode of the Bill Boggs Midday show in which he did a talk show of a talk show host talking to other talk show hosts about doing talk shows:
Seeing as Bill Boggs was the producer of the Morton Downey Jr. Show, I'm gonna go and assume that the idea of doing an episode of a rude talk show host interviewing rude talk show hosts about doing rude talk shows was in fact Bill Boggs's so the props for that original idea should be given to Boggs.
Protests broke out en masse in the Ukraine after the Ukrainian government cancelled a free trade agreement with the European Union.
I'm not going to pretend to understand the ethnic/socio/linguistic history of the region and any feuds the sects of people living there have. Squabbles of a racial/tribal/cultural nature are pointless and can never be mediated or resolved because there is no actual problem to identify and solve and thus the cycles of hate usually wind up spinning for eternity.
Yet since the initial spark that set the thing off was due to a cancelled trade agreement...is it correct to assume this is an economic issue? If it is, then the answer to the conflict may lie in the domain of mathematical formula(es).
Once you are out of the murky waters of the silly tribal or linguistic reasons for conflicts and enter into the domain of the world's only official and accepted language (Math) then maybe some actual reasoning can take place.
Ukrainian Economic Analysis
GDP: 176 Billion Global Economic Power Ranking: 54/193 Style of Govt.: Gangsterism Population: ~46 million Grade: D-
Ukraine has the population and the scientific literacy rates to be a B grade economy yet it is it is being hindered by various factors.
After the fall of the soviet union many satellite states of that "union" (it was not a popular union) were left having to start their economies again from scratch. The soviet production chain had factories all over making specialized parts mostly for stupid war gadgets. So something like the tank tread factory was in one area, the turret factory was in another region and maybe Ukraine had a munitions factory...etc, etc, etc all sending the parts to be assembled in another factory in another region of the soviet union.
When the union collapsed in 1991 these specialized war gadget factories closed down. The supply chain become obsolete because no one was assembling these tank parts (or whatever widget) and the specialized factories making these parts closed.
With a blank sheet of paper to start any sort of industry to power its economy, the future may have looked pretty bright for the Ukraine. They could have gone high-tech, they could have gone to electronics, or anything really. The sad reality of the matter was the governments in these newly formed independent countries were not formed by the brightest and best individuals in the region...but for the most part formed by the most dangerous gangsters in the region.
So the Ukrainian economy of today isn't at its full potential. The only high tech production is in the aerospace industry, the Ukraine relies for much of its GDP on old school shit like coal mining. It has a lot of great potential yet the corruption and gangsterism has handicapped that potential greatly.
People in the Ukraine understand this and know they want better. They have the option of throwing their economic poker chips in with two catalyst organizations and the options are the following...
Options
To keep any nationalistic/historic/etc biases from clouding the economic analysis of their "options" so to speak we will refer to the economic catalystic organizations as Option A and Option B.
Option A
GDP: ~17 Trillion Global Ranking: 1/193 Style of Govt.: Varying (party-democracy, pseudo-democracy, gangsterism) Population: 507 million Grade: A
Their first option boasts some pretty decent numbers for an economic organization. Throwing their chips into this pot with the right agreement would be pretty tempting.
Option B
GDP: ~2 Trillion Global Ranking: 8/193 Style of Govt: Pseudo-Democracy Population: ~145 million Grade: B
Option B is ok too. It's this nice country with a lot of potential. The style of government is a bit odd. They use this sort of revolving door gimmick to bypass the term limit law (max time a head of government can serve) and basically the same guy has been the head of state for 12 years and has 4 years left in his current term (in 2018 he will be head of state for 16 years).
A good cut off year where you can no longer be called "head of state" and might have to be referred to as a "dictator" a la Gaddafi or Castro is probably a nice round number like 15 years. When the head of state crosses the 15 year mark I think its style of government variable can be changed to "Dictatorship" instead of "Pseudo-Democracy."
Ukraine has already been in a union with this organization in the past.
Decisions, Decisions....
Who would you throw your chips in with? Option A or Option B?
I'm sure you've figured it out but...
Option A is the European Union Option B is Russia
Many would come to the conclusion that Option A is the wise decision.
As stated in the first paragraph in this article, the protests started the day after the Ukrainian Government rejected a free trade deal with the European Union. I understand the protesters anger I think, it seems like a logical decision to want to deal with the EU.
Is it possible that they could have free trade agreements with BOTH the EU and Russia thus maximizing their economic opportunities full scale? I don't know...there's too much bullshit in the way.
I mean theoretically all three concerned parties in this region could realize we are living in 2014 and become best of pals, get along, and start devoting their time and efforts to the advancement of science and maybe even getting started on the infrastructure for the Global Power Hyper-Grid in that area.
But what's more likely going to happen is they are going to conveniently bypass the fact that we are currently in the year 2014, they will pretend we are living in the year 18-fucking-53...and have a second Crimean War.
Whatever, at least people get to play with those cool gun toys. That's going to be fun for them. Shooting guns and having a fun war is cool too.
A lot of people were wondering why the reigning Norris trophy winner and excellent hockey player P.K. Subban was benched during the Olympic games in Sochi.
I was excited to watch these games and was sort of disappointed that Subban only appeared in 11 minutes of one game during the entire tournament.
Everyone seems to hate on Subban all the time, all the time, over somewhat pointless things and I'm not sure I understand it.
One thing is for sure, he doesn't look like your average NHL player. He looks more like an athlete you'd find in the NBA, or NFL, or MLB than someone you'd find in the NHL. He's charismatic and flashy...he's rather Fresh, I'd say.
He has an urban flair to himself that is more common in other sports. The NBA especially has the most urban feel to it, The NBA has a sort of hip hop persona that gives it a lot of flavor. Urban freshness is not only accepted in the NBA but encouraged.
The NFL is the next most "fresh" sport, and even MLB baseball which was once regarded to be as "country club" a sport as golf has a had a major make over during the last five decades or so.
Yet even baseball shuns urban elements as not being part of its image. Take the case of Lastings Milledge who created a big hub-bub over releasing a rap album while in the Mets triple-A organization. (Article by Deadspin on Lasting's rap fiasco).
The writer in the article linked above states this would have caused no one to look twice if it were the NBA and Milledge was releasing a rap album, but baseball doesn't want "rap" in its image. It still sort of wants to retain a golf-esque country club atmosphere to its institution...which is odd considering only 63% of baseball players are still howdy doody white guys in the present era.
I don't know if anyone's really noticed...but there's not a whole lot of guys in the NHL who are not howdy doody farm boys. In fact Subban might be the only player in the NHL today who could be described as being "urban."
Which begs the question...
NHL: Fear of Freshness?
Is fear of freshness a real phobia that I didn't make up? Of course it is, it's called Chill-A-Phobia and it's not a made a up mental condition by any means.
The NHL comes across as being super uptight and lame...
It details the shocking behavior displayed by Subban which SHOCKED an entire nation. What did he do? Well, he had the nerve to dare to preform a "triple low five."
What is it? Well, as opposed to the "high five" which we are all familiar with, Subban and his teammate Carey Price would turn the high five upside-down and preform the greeting/soul-shake at a below-knee vantage point...and then had the audacity to multiply the quantity of the "fives" by three resulting in the aforementioned "triple low five."
Can you believe it? That someone would turn a high five upside down and raise the frequency by 2 units? It's....it's....it's....deplorable is what it is. I myself was shocked, amazed, and horrified (that so much could be so compromised).
The TLF was banned by the Canadiens organization in response to the collective shock that the nation felt whilst viewing this obscene gesture by Subban and Price.
Now if you're sitting there and thinking to yourself..."wait, what? All this fuss over a low-five? What the flying fuck?" then you are probably a good and normal person. Yet to truly understand the shock generated by this you really have to immerse yourself in the customs of the region to truly understand why this was such a huge deal.
Canada Itself: A Fear of Freshness?
It's time for some Canadian trivia !!
Didja know: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air starring Will Smith was originally banned in Canada? It's a fact jack.
Didja Know: Milk comes in these weird ass bags in Canada because Mennonites in Alberta believed milk in cartons promoted promiscuity and lobbied the government to outlaw milk in cartons? You can't make this shit up even if you tried.
Canada is kind of weird sometimes. Its leader for instance is an Evangelical Christian who doesn't believe in evolution. It can be sort of an odd place at times.
The average Canadian person spends their day cutting down trees or some thing like that, then at night they say their prayers to their beloved God, and then they fall asleep with pleasant dreams of painting the Queen of England's toe-nails.
They are a simple agrarian society who lead very boring lives. Hockey is the one saving grace that they can hope for. Hockey represents the golden ray of hope that every illiterate Canadian huckster can become a multi-millionaire.
Forget just millionaire, it's a way for an illiterate man to be appointed to government and live off tax payers money. For example, take Jacques Demers who is 100% illiterate but was appointed a senator and is now an official in the Canadian government. What other country on earth could you be both illiterate and a government official? Wow what a place!
The image the NHL is going for...is the Super Hoser image. The prototype is the illiterate good ole country boy who rose against all odds and made a million bucks and got his name into the hall of fame. You can do it too! Your illiterate in-bred son who drinks paint all day can have his name in the hall of fame too!
Now, P.K. Subban is the furthest thing from an illiterate in-bred country boy. Some might say he's even breaking the mold and adding a real urban flavor to the NHL...and most if not all hard-line traditionalists don't like this very much.
NHL: Time to Catch Up?
Look, there are seven big huge sports leagues in the Americas and their popularity and revenue go in this order:
1. NFL 2. MLB 3. Formula 1 4. NBA 5. PGA 6. CONMEBOL (South American Soccer League) 7. NHL 8. PGBA (Professional Girls Badmington Association)
The popularity of the NHL in the Americas is over-estimated at best by its fans. A new image really wouldn't hurt a silly ass league that makes a fuss about low-fivin'.
The only thing that sells the league right now is the fighting. If they took fighting out of hockey no one outside of 5 cities would ever go to any more games.
I've seen the NHL referred to on the internet as "furpuck" lately. It seems people are implying that if all sports were porno genres then the porno genre most comparable to the NHL would be a disturbing niche porn like furry porn. It's mean and I would never compare anything, even my worst enemy to furry porn (which is an abomination to the eyes and brain)...but I just want to point out that most people view the NHL as being super lame and with good reason.
I found the MLB's reaction to Lastings Milledge's rap album as being way over the top and silly...so I have a hard time understanding a league like the NHL who can't even handle "low fives" without getting their panties in a knot...it is almost unheard of to even think about how that's even possible.
In Conclusion
Now, this is a story all about how
Triple Low Fives turned the NHL upside down And I like to take a minute Just sit right there I'll tell you how P.K. became the prince of the NHL
In west Ontario born and raised On the playground was where he spent most of his days Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool And all shootin some slaphshots outside of the school When a couple of guys Who were up to no good Startin being super lame in the neighborhood
I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 And I yelled to the cabbie 'Yo homes smell ya later' I looked at my kingdom I was finally there To sit on my throne as the Prince of The NHL
A little bit of freshness never hurt nobody. GO HABS GO!
I've wroted blog articles (bloticles?) on all sorts of shit. The ones that get most of the hits are the silly ones about video games though. So, here's one 'bout video games.
Well, I must say I do enjoy a nice video game every now and then. A nice warm cup of tea, a relaxing arm or wing chair...and a good old fashioned side-scroller or two. Sometimes I feel like a nice Super Mammal Side Scroller if I find the fancy. If I must say, at times, I do indeed find the fancy. Without any further meaningless set-up, I would like to now present the award for Super Mammal Side-Scroller of the Ages.
The finalists for this prestigious award are:
- Cheetah Men 2 (by Active Enterprises)
- Bio Force Ape (by SETA)
Obvious Omission
I'm a let me finish, but yo, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had some of the best damn sides-crollers of all time.
Ok, yes it is true that the TMNT games on NES were the shit (the motherfucking shit) but the fact remains that Leo, Raph, Donnie, and Mikey are not mammals...those guys are reptiles, dude. Reptiles have cold blood, but mammals have warm blood....and, I think reptiles stalk their prey with heat vision.
Either way, no Ninja Turtle side scrollahs can be considered for Super Mammal Side-Scroller of the Ages due to them not being mammals. Thus they are obviously omitted from consideration for that sole reason.
Those Cheetah Mans know how to get down. Anyways, who are the Cheetah Men?
Oh fuck you, Morbis.
Story Synopsis: The unrelentlessly evil Dr. Morbis murders a cheetah whilst vacationing in the vast Serengeti region of Africa. The dastardly mad scientist proceeds to kidnap her three cheetah cubs and keep them as prisoners in his lab.
Dr. Morbis preforms terrible genetic experiments on the poor defenseless cheetah cubs. By the time they reach adolescence they became fully cognizant cheetah-men (half-cheetah / half-man men).
Realizing the evil intent of Dr. Morbis our three protagonists Aries, Apollo, and Hercules break out of the lab and vow revenge on Dr. Morbis. In defense Morbis creates dozens of evil genetic monstrosities to kill the Cheetah Men ranging from half-man/half-hyenas to half-man/half-rhinos...to the dreaded Ape-Man.
Is this game good?NO.
It was only released on something called "action-52" which sold 52 games on one cartridge. The reason this cartridged had 52 games on it but cost the same price as a cartridge with one game on it is because all 52 games sucked ass and were bad.
It sucks, man. Like things don't even blow up when you kill them or anything...they just disappear. What kind of side-scroller doesn't make the things you kill blow up or explode? A stupid side scroller that's what kind.
Cheetah Men 2 has good music for a DJ to spin at one of those drug-people rave-parties...but it's not a good video game. No way, Jose.
Final Score: -34/100
Bio Force Ape
Intense Mine Cart Level
Story Synopsis: BFA is a pretty crazy dude, man. He was once the pet monkey of a brilliant non-mad scientist yet when a rival science gang kidnaps the non-mad scientist and his family...the monkey gets super pissed off and drinks a vial of serum from the research lab and undergoes a mass transmogrification into a roided up testerone-ridden Super Ape Man hellbent on all sorts of crazy revenge.
BFA has to track down the kidnapped individuals through 3 levels and obstacles aplenty stand in his way. Henchmens, half-man / half-bees, half-man / half-crocodiles, and all sorts of shit don't want BFA to achieve his goal.
Guys you kill in this game don't blow up either though...but at least they fly off the screen pretty ceremoniously. If it's a sub-boss or a boss, they get reversed german-suplexed, piledrived, or perfect-plexed...and THEN fly off the screen ceremoniously. So it's all good.
Is this game good?Yeah, I guess.
It's not as bad as Cheetah Men 2 but it's certainly no Turtles in Time that's for god damned friggin' sure.It's by no stretch a Metal Slug and that's a fact jack. Yet, this game has some pretty fluid (6?)-frames-per-second animations and at least BFA is a fucking bad ass dude who knows a heckuva lot of wrestling moves. Plus, a lotta games have minecart levels but not many are as intense as the BFA minecart level, son.
Final Score:39/100
Well it looks like Bio Force Ape by SETA is the Super Mammal Side Scroller of the....wait...hold the phone....
A CHALLENGER APPEARS
Yester-damn-day, someone got tired of Super Mammal Side Scrollers sucking and released what appears to be a genuine Super Mammal Side-Scroller and it might very well give these Cheetah Mens and Bio Force Apes a run for their money when it comes to crowning a SMSS of the Ages.
This game was made by the same great people who made Abobo's Big Adventure so you know this game is on the up-and-up right off the bat.
Story Synopsis: A gorilla was chilling way down in the jungle deep, doing his thing and not bothering nobody when an evil corporation happened upon him and straight up kidnapped him.
The mad scientists brought the poor gorilla to the corporation's lab where they routinely test products on poor defenseless animals. They had a new line of chainsaws and pogo sticks coming to market and they decided to test them out on their new gorilla specimen. Naturally they removed his arms and replaced them with chainsaws and then obviously removed his legs and replaced them with a pogo stick. For good measure they hot wired his frame to an internal super computer which gave him advanced bionic six-million-dollar-man-esque capabilities.
Turns out this wasn't a good idea as the Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla escaped from the lab and now has to navigate his way through various sub-basements of the facility in order to reach the top and exact revenge...BIONIC CHAINSAW POGO REVENGE !!!
Is this game good? Yeah.
Yo, when you kill stuff in this game it blows up, that's for damn sure. Even christmas trees and vending machines were blowing up into bloody messes of blood and explosions. Man, I was holding down the pogo button, the chainsaw-spin button, and the extendo-chainsaw-spin button all at the same time and rushing through the levels...everything in those levels was getting blowed up, exploding, and bleeding, and dying around me...I was like..."holy, shit."
I thought I had a seizure...but I didn't. I think my brain was just trying to tell me that this is The Super Mammal Side-Scroller of the Ages that it had for so long been seeking.
Man alive. Man alive. Some of the power-ups in this game are vicious and awesome, and they are all yelled at you when you get them by Roger Barr's iconic voice-over voice. MEGA-SAWS! EXTENDO-SAWS! MASSIVE DAMAGE! DEATH SPIKE! SHADOW CLONES! PROJECTILES! INVINCIBLE!
Dang, that cat Roger Barr really seems to enjoy yelling...
Over the vast intertwining years in the calendar of life there has no doubt been many Super Mammal Side-Scrollers yet only one game can be Of the Ages and that game without any regret, second guessing, or further deliberation can be declared...
I write a lot about Expos stuff...because I miss them. I don't want to be bias though so I'm going to write a baseball piece about non-Expo related matters for a change.
I don't follow much baseball any longer (after 2004) but if it was from 1986 until 2004 then I know a lot about that era. Also, with internet these days it's becoming easier and easier to look into past eras (data logs, video logs, newspaper articles, etc.)
Alright, so other than Timmy Raines, here's a quick look at some other great mans that are not in the Hall of Legendary Fame.
Alan Trammell
I was more into the National League back int the day but I followed AL too. Two guys that were fixtures in the AL back in my day were a tandem of middle infielders in Detroit. The second baseman was Sweet Lou Whitaker and the shortstop was Alan Trammell.
Aside from Cal Ripken Jr., Trammell was the premier shortstop in the AL during the eighties and into the nineties. Over in the NL the main guy was Ozzie Smith. Let's look at these players career stat lines, even though Gold Gloves are an arbitrary judge-voted stat I will still include them. First look at the stat lines without the bias of knowing who's name is next to the stats:
Player A: .767 OPS, 1231 Runs Scored, 1003 RBI, 236/345 Stolen Bases, 4 Golden Gloves (in 9376 plate appearances)
Player B: .788 OPS, 1645 Runs Scored, 1695 RBI, 36/75 Stolen Bases, 2 Golden Gloves (in 12883 plate appearances)
Player C: .666 OPS, 1257 Runs Scored, 793 RBI, 580/728 Stolen Bases, 13 Golden Gloves (in 9396 plate appearances)
Players B and C are in the Hall of Fame, yet player A is not. The stats denote the following:
A: Trammell B: Ripken C: Smith
Now, I think defense is a huge part of the game and I think Ozzie Smith was a great player...(but, let me finish)...there's no way anyone can say that Ozzie Smith was a better player than Alan Trammell under any circumstances. I love Ozzie, but, he was a gimmicky guy, he'd take the field by doing a series of acrobatic flips and tumbles...
I admit this was a fan favorite gimmick and totally awesome but doing parlor tricks doesn't make you win more games. If people were voting for the Barnum and Bailey Circus Hall of Fame then I could understand why Ozzie Smith would be a first balloter while Alan Trammell is left out, but this is not the circus Hall of Fame, it's the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Smith and Trammell have similar plate appearances and played in the exact same era (albeit in opposite leagues), there is no conceivable way that Ozzie Smith is a first ballot inductee while Trammell doesn't even get in. This is kind of absurd.
I dunno, maybe Trammell should have done a magic show or a couple of card tricks prior to taking the field to ensure the voters liked him better. Having an OPS over 100 points higher won't make you better than the Wizard of Oz, you needed a gimmick dude.
Mike Marshall
This one is cheating a bit because Mike Marshall did pitch for the Expos but either way Mike should be in.
Marshall pitched for 9 different teams in his career. He started with the Tigers then quickly went to Seattle, Houston, and then to Montreal...he pitched for 4 different teams in his first 3 years in the bigs. Why? Mike earned the label of "non-conformist" early on in his career and was not the type of guy coaches and management wanted around.
Mike Marshall has an interesting back story. He was a Man of the Science and he took a strange approach to pitching that most would not have considered. He took a fully full-on scientific approach to pitching. The physics and kinetics or the movements the arm makes while trying to achieve the right speed/movement/break on pitches are understandable to the human brain that wishes to observe them. Knowing the biology of the human arm will also help you understand how to manipulate it and operate it in a way that will not cause excessive damage to the arm.
Marshall perfected the pitch called the "Screw Ball" with his scientific approach to pitching. The pitch is basically a breaking ball that breaks the OPPOSITE direction of the throwing arm (a right handed pitcher would throw a pitch that broke away to the right of his arm instead of to the left).
His early coaches in Detroit, Seattle, and Houston told Mike not to throw this crazy ass science pitch because they viewed it as being retarded. Umpires and opposing coaches accused him of cheating or using a substance (spit, vassaline, root cream oil, etc.) to break the ball like that.
Marshall didn't want to stop throwing the pitch which he believed wasn't retarded and he knew wasn't cheating. This refusal won him the label of "non-conformist" throughout the league and almost got him blackballed by baseball.
The fourth team Marshall wound up with in his first 3 major league years was the recently added Montreal Expos franchise. Still in the expansion years and losing game after game, coach Gene Mauch told Marshall that he didn't give a shit what kind of pitch Marshall wanted to throw because the team wasn't going to be in contention in 1970 anyway.
Mike freely developed his scientific take on the screw ball and by 1972 was pitching over 100 innings out of the bullpen for the Expos while putting up ERAs of 1.78 (not bad). He went on to put up similar stats out of the pen for the Dodgers and even won the Cy Young award in 1974.
People who watch baseball now a days have to understand that pitcher use was different in these bygone years. Now a days a starter does 5 innings, then a middle man comes in to do 2 innings, then a set up guy comes in for the 8th, and finally a closer in the 9th. Even in a low scoring game of 2-1...we see a team use up to 5 pitchers.
Back in the day it was 4-man starting rotations, you had one or two good pitchers in the pen, and a bunch of bums to pitch in blowouts and meaningless/nothing-on-the-line games. Healthy starters used to get close to 400 innings pitched per year and some relievers used to get well over 100 innings per year.
The "best" relievers now a days are judged by the Saves stat...yet it is probably the most gimmicky and pointless stat ever. How many games are won and lost in the eight innings prior to the ninth? Is the ninth inning some sort of magic inning where if you keep the opposing team to a goose-egg in that inning you automatically win the game? No. There's nothing more special about shutting a team's hitters down in the 9th inning than the 4th inning or any other inning.
Dick Allen Mike Marshall was labelled and stigmatized as being a "non-conformist" and trouble maker, another player, Dick Allen, was perceived under much worse labels. Dick's name around the league was never in good standing and it really hurt him when Hall of Fame voting came up. His back story is interesting too and his label as a trouble maker was undeserved as well. Dick came up through the Phillies system at a time where Frank Thomas (no not THAT one, this Frank Thomas was an ugly white guy) was a fan favorite and recently added to Phillies organization. Frank was an old veteran guy of 35 years old and he was pretty old school. He'd make fun of the black guys on the team and the way they shook hands (soul shakin') by pretending to be down and offering up a hand for a soul shake...but then Frank would grab the kid's thumb and pull it back as hard as he could. Dick Allen even as a "kid" was a pretty big dude, we're talking a low-center of gravity 5'11 187 pounds. When he was coming up in 1964 he didn't really care for the way Frank Thomas was abusing the trust of the sacred soul shake with the brothers on the team. He told the 6 foot 3 / 200 pounder Frank Thomas right to his fucking face that if he pulled that shit again with the soul shake that he'd get him back. Truth be told, Frank kept pulling the stunt and lo...Dick Allen got mad and apparently Thomas hit him with a bat...leading to a violent fight.
As told by that historian, Thomas was released and Allen was forbidden from talking to the press about the incident. The Philadelphia papers framed the altercation with Allen as the antagonist and Thomas as the protagonist. The fans in Philly took to booing and hating on Dick Allen every time he took the field in his home park of Connie Mack Stadium. The label of Dick being a trouble maker took shape at that moment and it never let up. Allen had an OPS of OVER 900 in his rookie year (earning the rookie of the year award in 1964)...yet was the most hated player in Philadelphia history. That's kind of fucking ludicrous. It's abso-ludicrous.
Dick went on to have an OVER 900 OPS his whole entire career...finishing with a .912 career OPS. Yet his max Hall of Fame voting % only climbed to 18% at its highest point. Maybe he needed a gimmick too like Ozzie Smith...oh wait, he even had a gimmick.
Hey, listen to Dick's sweet singin' voice from his album. If you don't feel whimsical and begin remembering fond memories of a past love while listening to this song then you probably have no emotions:
...and when Deceeeeember came and my dreams still echoed your name...
Jeez...he had a killer career and a gimmick, what do the voters want? No one can ever tell. You can see from his voice that he's a soft and caring guy. Obviously swimming in the fish bowl of hate which was Connie Mack stadium in the mid-sixties was difficult for him and the jeers didn't exactly roll off his back.
Dick took to writing things in the dirt while in the field. People saw this as a sort of protest from a trouble maker...but it wasn't that. He would write things like his mother's name while he played and listened to the boos...or sometimes he'd even write "boo" in the dirt.
This wasn't a trouble maker, this was a soft hearted guy trying to deal with constant emotional stress. His dirt scribbles were just something to regain his composure and to lean on. That's why he'd write something like his mother's name in the field..to lean on it.
Remember that Simpsons where Homer explains why he has no pictures of Maggie in his home? It was because they were where he needed them most...at his horrible job. The pictures were something for Homer to lean on at a place where he hated being. Dick Allen's scribbles were more along those lines than a trouble maker trying to provoke the fans as it was perceived back then.
Conclusion
Trammell, Marshall, and Allen were really good at baseball.
It's a very silly article which sort of pokes fun at the absurdity of today's human world by attempting to create humor by using examples from a very old video game. The conclusion attempts to compare the concept of "Economy" to the concept of a giant dinosaur.
I'm not trying to offend when I poke fun at things, you know. I just don't think any topic should have a sacredness surrounding it. I don't think religion should, I don't think nationalism should...and I don't think a concept as presently in-style as "economy" should have any sacredness devoted to it either.
The concept of Economy is becoming the new religion of the times. It will or already has become the flavor of the week in our ever-transgressing human timeline. The results of elections in most countries are decided by how a politician talks about the Economy. Re-wind to 500 years ago, rulers and rule-makers were decided by how a person talked about Religion.
Now, we look back at the way things worked in the 1400s and laugh. We think, "wow they really trusted some king because he said he was sent down from heaven by some whacky god?Haha." Or we think, "holy crap, they really honestly believed that someone lived in the sky and watched over the earth? What a bunch of dorks."
Fast-Forward to 500 years from now and people will be saying the same thing about us. They might say, "Wow, those morons created a currency system based on shiny metals and then let the whole system take over and control their lives? Wow, that's stupid." Or maybe people in 2513 will say something like, "Holy crap, they used to elect their rulers by which ones used the cutest buzz-words to describe their currency system? What a bunch of dweebs"
Similar to Religion and similar to Nationalism...the notion of "Economy" has to be routinely subjected to satirical jabs or barbs to ensure that people never take it too serious or extreme.
Economy as Religion / Economy as Nation
The land of Economy is as much make believe as the lands in our minds that exist when we attempt to conceptualize Religion or Nation.
In the magical land of economy a great benevolent force known simply as "the Market" watches over us and makes sure we never come to harm. The Market will solve all problems, it will cure your aches and pains, it will make your penis 3 inches larger (or your breasts on cup size larger). The Market will never hurt you...it's your friend. You can pray to the Market...you can even ritually sacrifice small creatures to it.
Hey, if you were Ronnie Reagan you could hire an astrological see-er and have her cast astrological projections on the mysterious Market (100% true occurrence). If you live in the Asia, you can read the Book of Changes and throw sticks on the ground to try and figure out the future of the Market.
The funny thing is, just like the deities in all Religions and the heroes of all Nations...there never was and never will be a divine force known as The Market. A "free market" is literally people doing whatever they want...and you can tell by how many white collar rules and laws exist that no one can do whatever they want.
The "Market" is rigidly chained together by texts, books, sheets, and copy books of LAWS. The businesses who talk about how "free" the "market" is are the same businesses who spend billions of dollars to lobby the governments of the world to change laws to customize the playing field in their favor.
Lawyers are CEOs best friends. Don't believe me? How come mp3s and other formats are so easy to share online within seconds...yet it is 100% illegal to put an mp3 on the internet for others to save to their computer terminals? Because someone lobbied to the government of your country to make a law which disallows you from doing that. The simplest way for human A to share a song he/she likes with a human B is just to send the mp3 to their computer....but that's 100% illegal. When the simplest way of doing what you want to do becomes illegal then you know something is up.
Yo, fucking Apple has paid lawyers to patent EVERYTHING. Another company can barely even offer a service using the alphabet without being attacked by Apple's lawyers. They paid billions of dollars to get the patent on things you wouldn't even believe could be patented.
In this blueprint, Apple applies to patent "turning a phone 45 degrees."
Apple is not a huge success because of how "free" some made-up buzz-word is. Fact is, it (and many other businesses) have meticulously carved away the laws it doesn't like through litigation, lobbied to customize the rules to conform to their strategies, and purchased through bribery the patents on concepts that cannot be patented by any sane judge.
Buzz Words
Certain words, even simple and obvious words like "market," take on a new aura of ridiculousness in order to surround a concept in a multi-colored smoke.
Lingo, terminology, language. Whatever you want to call it. Words that develop some sort of hidden character behind them are very important in large scale doctrines.
For a taste of full-on business man lingo try some of these random bull shit generator sites: (just hit the button on the sites and be filled with business wisdom)
The one that always bugged me in these retarded "meetings" and/or "evaluations" with so-called "super-visors" was the term "you gotta think outside the box!" This term has become so over-used in the last decade that society might want to think about officially retiring it. A standard business meeting with your super visor at work probably goes something like this:
Team Leader: Hey Team! The higher ups just told me our productivity is way down this quarter!
Team: Oh.
Team Leader: Ya! It's really bad you guyz! This quarter we're trying to work directly with the customers to facilitate theirs and the movements of the stakeholders so that we can change the way we project and transform accounts so the innovations are maximized! But, it seems you guyz are slipping and we can't achieve our mid-year goal. Any suggestions on how we can remedy this? Team:No....but something tells me you have one.
Team Leader:Ya! I do! Get ready for my trouble-shootin', problem solvin' solution of the century you guyz!!!!
Team: Okay...
Team Leader: This coming quarter....we just have to start THINKING OUTSIDE DA BOX!
Team:Sigh.
That's the truest definition of a buzz word. It doesn't solve anything, it doesn't help anything, and it ultimately doesn't mean anything to anyone. It's easy to talk like this and the sad thing is people will actually think you're smart.
To truly be a fire-brand preacher in the religion of giving the business...you need to watch that Gordon Gecko movie a few times, buy a nice three piece suit, and fill your brain with enough buzz words to last you through the next decade (don't worry they never age or go out-of-use or obsolete because they never meant anything in the first damned place).
How 'bout we Make some New Buzz Words?
Look, I honestly believe one thing that will strengthen any economy is raising the minimum wage. If you look at common stats that economists look at like Consumption, Savings, and others you will quickly realize that no matter what country you live in...
...Consumer Spending is at least 2/3 of your country's gosh darned economy.
No joke. No matter how many times you're told otherwise by some lobby group or your government...your county's GDP is over 60% internal consumer spending.
Knowing that, what do you think wrinkly old guys like Allan Greenspan or Ben Bernacke (or the equivalent wrinkly old dudes in your country) do when they notice a drop in consumer spending (i.e. the consumption of consumer goods in a nation)?
Do they, A) Increase minimum wage to increase the spending cap of millions of their citizens to create an influx of consumption.
or
B) Lower interest rates to almost 0% so everyone can BORROW money and go into DEBT to buy the food and items they want/need in order to artificially create an influx of consumer consumption.
The answer in real life is, of course, (B) they lower interest rates so people borrow money to buy the homes, vehicles, and other items. The down side to this of course is the average debt of the average consumer in your nation synergetically rises in reaction to this.
While if they went the course of (A) and increased Wages to create an increase in Spending...it would not have been an artificial increase but a tangible increase.
It seems quite logical, yet anyone who speaks about increasing minimum wage in any nation is met with scorns of "yer a commie" or shit like that...even though it makes pretty ligit and economically structural formulaic sense.
Thus, we need to create a buzz word...I guess. Arguing to raise minimum wage in a nation should not be referred to in those terms any longer. It should be referred to as Maximizing Consumer Consumptional Power.
You think I'm joking? I'm not joking. Hey, if you go around town going "hey let's raise minimum wage!" you're gonna be called an ingrate, a commie, a bum, and a hundred other things. Yet, if you walk around town going "hey you guyz! I suggest our nation think outside the box here and attempt to Maximize it's Consumer Consumptional Power!!" you probably wouldn't even get one angry look.
Business buzz words are so ingrained in today's society that you might even be met with awe and wonder when you phrase it like that.
Conclusion
A large central core of humans abide by the religion of economy in today's dog-eat-rat world of worlds, and word on the street is...
...you gotta learn the language of business no matter how dumb and absurdly retarded it is.
From Howdy-Doody to Criminally Insane to Loved and Accepted, the wonderful character development of Bob Backlund is one of literature's greatest moments.
Glossary of Terms to be Used in Article:
Howdy-Doody: This was a puppet that appeared on NBC in various forms from the 1940s to the 1960s.It was "a freckle-faced boy marionette with 49 freckles, one for each state of the union" who represented polite All-American boys around the great nation of the U.S. of A.
Criminally Insane: To display behavior so anti-social and violent that the only recourse is to either jail, hospitalize, or exile the individual from society.
Love and Acceptance: The concept of an individual being welcomed and appreciated in a group of multiple individuals of varying quantity.
The Cross-Faced Chicken-Wing: An unstoppable, unbreakable, and ultimately undefendable arm-lock submission hold that if you refuse to tap-out will leave you with a fractured limb.
Bob Backlund
Who's Bob Backlund? The Double B was a pro-wrestler who was famous from 1973-1984 and then made a reemergence and was doubly famous from 1994-1997. As everyone knows pro-wrestling is a shtick and not a competition of athletics. It is governed by a rule structure referred to in the business as "kayfabe" which replaces athletic skill competition with over-the-top choreographed drama. Most of the time this "drama" is fantastically and laughably retarded but in some cases it manages to create some interesting characters and satire.
One of the earliest precepts of "kayfabe" was to maximize drama by pitting "heroes" against "villains." The terms were refered to as "baby faces" versus "heels" where a babyface is a well-liked good looking person who the crowd relates to and the heels were foreign people with strange customs who the viewing audience could not relate to. Examples of "baby faces" are Hulk Hogan whilst examples of heels are guys like Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik.
In Backlund's first incarnation he was the aforementioned baby face character. Baby faces, naturally, are relative and dependent on their environment, meaning if the audience was Japanese then the baby face would be someone like Rikidozan and the heel would be someone like the Classy Freddie Blassie. In the case of Bob Backlund, he was operating in 1970s America and to pull off this role in that environment it required being a clean cut white "boy" who was constantly draped with American flags.
American flag jacket, American flag undies, American flag singlet. That's what you needed to be the "All American Boy." They should have gave him 49 freckles on his ass to symbolize the 49 states in the union then he'd be perfect.
Many probably know that America went through a cultural revolution of sorts during the 1960s and 1970s featuring all sorts of movements from civil rights to women's rights to aboriginal rights and many others. This "All American Boy" persona did not sell as well as it used to as Americans were becoming less religious, less nationalistic and thus more adults than "boys" so to speak.
click to enlarge
This was the case in other sports as well. A famous case in baseball was in the Yankees organization where Mickey Mantle was regarded as the "All American Boy." You probably don't know that Mickey didn't exactly like being known as a "boy" and he didn't like the howdy-doody persona one bit. In a famous 1973 letter (shown to the left) when asked to speak about his favorite Yankee moment, Mantle responded that it was that one time he got head from some chick in the bullpen in right field, and he sarcastically signed the letter as "The All American Boy."
Wrestling noticed a drop in sales due to their "All American Boy" champion not drawing the crowd's support as it once did. Backlund was made to lose the belt to the Iron Sheik (who in turn lost it to the body building hollywood rockstar 80s babyface Hulk Hogan) and by the year 1984 Backlund faded out of wrestling, into obscurity, into the the no-man's land of "has-beens."
The Hokey Dokies and Howdy Doodies time in the sun was over. These rinky-dinks weren't entertaining anyone and were quickly being regarded as ultra lame by the society they were meant to be accepted by.
Reemergence and Total Character 180
Backlund was out of wrestling for a full decade before making this appearance in the squared circle in 1994,
I was about 11 years old in 1994 and I saw this bit as some kind of boring little tribute to some old dinosaurs from when wrestling was super boring and stupid. Then Backlund comes out and goes on some angry vicious diatribe culminating with him putting the poor old Arnold Skaaland in the dreaded chicken wing arm-lock! What the fuck is he doing!?
The All American Boy had lost his marbles. This wasn't a one time isolated appearance either, he went on a nation wide chicken-wing RAMPAGE in which he put announcers, managers, wrestlers, fans, old dudes, and just about everyone under the sun in the divine unbreakable arm-lock. No one was safe from this mentally unstable kook and his patented chicken wing.
All-American Bow-Tie?
He wore these silly bathrobes that looked like they were made in the 1930s...he looked like a relic from a past age that was dug up by an archeologist. He still wore the American flag on his person...but as a bow tie.
The bow tie is like the encapsulation of lame, no one can look tough or bad ass in a bow tie. Yes, Bob Backlund still represented America but now he was an encapsulation of everything that was wrong with it. He was a status-quo conservative backlash that wanted to place all of society in a cross-faced chicken-wing and caste it in place so it would never change. He basically wanted to put all of America into 1930s bathrobes and force them to read the dictionary 24 hours a day.
He displayed ultra-conservative views of morality and preached that society was a mess that needed intervention. He was like a fire-brand preacher spraying ludicrous invective on anyone who would approach him, observe:
Bob is now the ugly side of America...he's a living embodiment of the John Birch Society. Hold up though, did you notice something in that clip above? That he's got the belt? Yeah, in 1994 Bob was once again the Champion. Yup, the megalomaniac chicken-wing madman was now the most popular wrestler on the circuit. I'll say this right now, Bob Backlund was my favorite wrestler in that era, hands down. He was entertaining as hell.
He's a criminally insane old man...but he's so darned likeable. It was so weird to watch him look at his hands (sorta like Ren used to on Ren and Stimpy) after the aftermath of a chicken wing atrocity just took place.
Look who rises up from the ashes to challenge today's heroes...it's a relic from the past. A beloved relic from the past who the fans cheer for and chant his name. Bob Backlund is an icon, maybe even a folk hero.
Is he an icon for being the rinky dinkin' howdy doodin' All America Boy? No. He's an icon for portraying a criminally insane status-quo obsessed homogenized pasteurized marauding psychopath who wants to put today's society into a permanent cross faced chicken wing.
In Conclusion
Not through patriotism did Backlund achieve love and acceptance from society...he achieved his L&A through good old fashioned satirical kookery.
So next time you see an old bastard in a bathrobe, slicking his hair back with Wild Root Cream Oil, kicking cats around, speaking in tongues, and putting random passersby into vintage submission holds...don't hate on him, just see him as a window into the past...a chilling past where everyone was crazy.
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