Long ago, before cell phones, when caller ID and *69 call-back were fine luxuries only seen in aristocratic telephony, prank calling was a great way to stave off the ennui of adolescence.

For years, Ryan A. (name withheld to protect the overtly guilty) was thought to be the greatest prank caller of all time for creating the legendary Suicide Hotline Routine:

Ryan A.:           [Haggard, frantic tone, near tears] “Hello… is this… the suicide hotline?”

Chump:            “No…”

Ryan A.:           “Damn it! I can’t do anything right!”

One stormy night, in the eleventh grade, I was cleaning my room, and sorting through what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to give to Salvation Army, when I stumbled upon a wooden train whistle from my childhood.

I knew what had to be done.

I grabbed our cheap-ass cordless phone, and unscrewed the antenna most of the way before calling Luc, who is highly astraphobic, and I knew this.

I called Luc when the storm was at its peak, and screamed:

“Dude! Get in your basement dude! Tornado warning dude! TORNADO WARNING!”

“What?” said Luc. I could hear him turn pale over the phone. It was priceless.

“Dude, there’s a supercell of storms that they’re tracking on Channel 35, it’s right over the ‘Boro and it’s headed your way!”

“Shit, oh shit…” said Luc. “How far is it?”

“Dude, you need to get to your base–,” I say, as I start blowing lightly into the train whistle. “–ment and…”

Then I start blowing into the train whistle fairly hard.

“Oh shit!” I screamed. “No! Fuck no! NOOOOOOOOO–” at that moment, I pulled the telescopic radio antenna out of the worthless-ass cordless phone that I had at the time, so the line crapped out into a torrent of static. Then I shut the phone off.

The phone immediately rang. I didn’t have caller ID, and I didn’t need it to know who it was. I dashed into the other room to unhook the answering machine before the fourth ring. Then I chuckled to myself, and went back to cleaning my room.

Luc’s house didn’t have a basement. I knew this. He ran full sprint in a torrential downpour down the street to his neighbors house, who did have a basement, and frantically banged on his door in hysterics. His neighbor, from what I was told., had to spend some time to convince Luc that there was in fact, no tornado. Luc walked home alone in the rain, knowing that he had been had. Rather than holding this against me, Luc bowed to my skill.

I’ve never prank called anyone since, because until someone, somewhere can top this story, there is simply no reason to do so.

For those of you fortunate enough not to live in Indiana, you may have missed this story.

A 750 pound woman died in Indy last week, of terminal fatness. Since there is no specific procedure for bloated hambeast carcass disposal in Indiana, the cops and the coroner were forced to play it by ear.

The authorities dragged her lifeless body, still attached to its mattress, across the courtyard of the apartment building to the road. However, since the coroner van was designed to transport humans, the lady wouldn’t fit.

So, the cops called the auto wrecking yard, and they sent over one of them flatbed tow-trucks to load the 0.38 tons of moldering, and likely unwashed flesh onto.

The cops then tossed an old carpet over her unsightly visage to keep the birds from picking at it. Her boyfriend and thirteen year-old son were watching this as it was going on. They, and some other people in the area, apparently have a problem with this procedure.

I for one, do not.

“What was that?!?! What the @#$% was that?!? I mean… what was that?!?” These are the words of my friend Amy as we watched this week’s movie, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. I had assembled a new team, as my original Kung Fu Friday team has grown apart over the years and, in general, these movies are not to be watched alone. These new recruits were bright eyed and enthusiastic enough at the start and I thought they were ready. I had everyone. Joe, Nick, Amy. The analyst, brash young gun, the girl to sneer disapprovingly. But they weren’t ready. I hadn’t prepared them enough. They didn’t know what I was leading them into. And what were they in for on this fateful night? What were they about to be unknowingly exposed to? Only the greatest piece of cinema ever created by human hands!

Some movies waste time on silly novelties like special effects or plot, but not Riki-Oh. Riki-Oh focuses solely on being awesome. That is it’s one and only purpose. From the prisoner falling eye first onto the conveniently located bathroom board-with-nails-stinking-out-of-it to the man who eviscerates himself in an attempt to strangle Ricky with his own intestines, Riki-Oh is awesome, start to blood-spattered, gore ridden finish.

Alright, that being said, to truly enjoy this movie one must first turn off your senses of logic and reason and release your current conception of reality. This is essential as your current schema is insufficient for grasping what you are about to undertake.

(This acurately describes the feeling experienced while watching Riki-Oh)

I’m not going to go into to much detail regarding the story as I want you to go out and watch this movie (I mean right now. Finish reading my review, leave a comment, then go to Amazon or Netflix and order this movie.), but I will take you through the basics. Set in the “not to distant future” of 2001, prisons “like parking lots” are privately run. We meet Ricky, a super powered master of Chi Gung (The art that takes strength and grows stronger and stronger), as he is being lead into one of these corrupt prisons in shackles. He sets off the futuristic metal detector because of the five bullets lodged in his chest. When asked why they are there, he simply says “souvenirs.” From here the craziness ensues. A kindly old prisoner takes a hand-held wood plane to the face and we are off to the races. I can recall, with no real effort, 20 individual moments where I was both shocked and amazed.

This movie is certainly not for those with a weak stomach, but the immense amounts of gore are so over the top that it isn’t hard to parse apart the ridiculous, the terrible, and the awesome.

The prison is run by a warden (with an obese, spoiled, comic relief son) and his one eyed, hook handed assistant warden. Each cell-block is run by a super powered prisoner. Ricky battles his way through them all, discovering and destroying the opium fields that finance the prison, leading to a flashback explaining how he got into prison in the first place.

*Side note: This flashback is actually misdubbed. It shows Ricky’s girlfriend being kidnapped by a heroin dealer and inexplicably throwing herself from the roof of his hideout. Ricky kills the dealer (while wearing a very stylish camouflage poncho), taking 5 bullets to the chest. It leaves out the part where they addict her to heroin, which makes the suicide make more sense. I prefer the nonsensical version.

The point when I realized that this was the best movie ever made was where Ricky, having been cut in the arm, reaches into his cut and reties his own tendons in a nice neat bow. That was it. ‘Nuff said.

So go out and watch Riki-Oh. Right now. You won’t be disappointed.

My earliest thoughts on religion were always confusion. I attribute this to my dad, who taught me faith and doubt simultaneously in the same lesson. I was about four, and standing in our kitchen when my dad taught me to pray.

“Before we pray, we always make the sign of the cross, like this…” he tells me, and demonstrates, and then adds “…unless you live in the Brave New World, then you make the sign of the T, like this…” which he also demonstrates.

“The brave, new world?” I ask. “What’s that?”

My dad then explained every aspect of that book to me, in lurid detail. I was four. Because of this, I can’t remember the entire ensuing diatribe, just a few points that stuck with me.

“It was a book written by an Englishman…” said my dad.

“Like Jack the Giant-Killer?” I said.

“Yes! Exactly! Except his name was Aldous Huxley. In his book, people didn’t worship God, they worshiped Henry Ford, and the measured years in A.F. — After Ford, and not A.D., like we do.”

“Why did they worship Henry Ford?” I asked. “Who’s Henry Ford?”

“Why, he invented the assembly line! He’s the reason that we have all the things that we do!” Realizing that I was only four, he explained to me how consumer goods used to be individually manufactured in toto in a slow and inefficient process by skilled craftsman, and Ford came up with the notion of having legions of unskilled laborers working specializing on one small task of a larger project, lowering the cost of production, and therefore the cost of the overall product such that they could be afforded by all. I was four.

“Henry Ford came up with this idea to build cars. That’s why they make Ford cars, like your uncle has. The Model T was the first car to be built this way, so they make the sign of the T,” said my dad.

There was a minute of pure silence.

“So why don’t we do that?” I ask.

“Because, it was just a book, and we don’t follow that,” said my dad.

“What do we follow?” I ask.

“We follow a different book, called The Bible.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because,” said my dad. “We’re Catholics.”

Fast-forward twenty-three years. My dad has passed on, and I’m a grown man who decided to lift his ten-year moratorium on literature to research dystopias for my book. I checked Brave New World from the library, and as I read it, I thought to myself: “This all seems eerily familiar.”

Then, from the deep recesses of my brain, this story emerged, and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

No, seriously.

He called me the other day, and told me to get the movie JCVD from Netflix. He went off for about three minutes about how great of a movie it was. In August’s defense, JCVD really is a good movie, and you really ought to check it out. It’s a well-written, well-executed movie, and easily the best thing that Van Damme has put out since Universal Soldier. However, this isn’t a blog about the movie. I can’t do that — that’s Joe’s job. This is a blog about August’s reaction to the movie, which led me to conclude that August has no penis.

When he was telling me about the movie, he told me “I cried. Tears were flowing down my face. It’s…ooogh…”

At this point I felt a terrible pain eating at me. My friend was in dire need of help, and I was hundreds of miles away.

“I only have one request Coons,” he tells me.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Watch it alone.”

“Okaaaaaaay…” I tell him with hesitation.

So I added it to my queue, and watched it. It made August cry. I invite the reader to take a bite of sherbet, like a pretentious rich person, to cleanse their pallet and swish that last sentence around in their mouths to savor its many flavors.

August cried during a Van Damme movie.

I haven’t cried since 1996, when Rob Liefeld was granted complete creative control of Captain America. I’ve had a lump in my throat a few times since then, like during my dad’s funeral, when I used to tell this one story you haven’t earned yet, and at the end of A.I. However, the next morning, I woke up, looked out the window and said “Space aliens? Really?” and never thought of that movie again.

Holy shit, August cried during a Van Damme movie. He has no penis. He must have a Lee Press-On Schlong that he bought at the Halloween store, which he affixes to his nether-region with spirit gum in order to service his wife.

I’m trying to assemble the events of the night in question in my head.

After having a good long cry, he must have went to the bathroom and meticulously lit three hundred candles, making the place look like some lame adult contemporary music video, and used $60 worth of scented soaps and oils to take a four hour-long bubble bath. In this time, he then consumed a bottle of red wine, and masturbated with the detachable shower head.

After his bath, August then put on flannel pajamas, sat in front of the mirror in his bedroom, and brushed what precious little remains of his natural, living, breathing hair one hundred times with a stiff-bristled brush. Then, August climbed under his 186,000 blankets and fell fast asleep.

This had to have been what happened.

Crying during a Van Damme movie! Fuck! This is a serious misstep — he must atone, and I can’t help him because I don’t know any Level 7 Clerics.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t always painfully awesome. It took hard work, determination, and a good balanced breakfast. A big part of being painfully awesome is to be bold enough to face improbable odds, and to be content with who you are to the point where you can degrade yourself for the amusement of others. That’s what I’m about to do. I have too. This is considered by many to be the funniest thing ever written.

I met Erica in the first week of college, when we were watching movies with my friend and neighbor Steve Balsomico.  She became a member of the tight-knit group of movie buffs who assembled every Friday night to watch bizarre films in the Earp Hall lounge. She had that wonderful whacked-out Italian hair, you know, it looks kind of wavy and greasy, but it’s not either.  She also had the most spectacular, exquisite ass that I had ever seen — and I’m not even attracted to asses — but there was something about that ass that beckoned me.  It was a truly magical ass. We’d eat brunch together every weekend.  After several months of this, I thought I would ask her out.

So after spending several days trying to amass the testicular fortitude, I finally call Erica. I get her answering machine, and left a message, unaware that they did a Seinfeld on this very subject.  Erica was the first girl that I ever asked out, and I was nervous. I go with a simple:

“Hi, Erica? This is, uh…Ryan Coons, the Yellow Hat Guy, I was wondering if you could call me back at…”

Then it hit me –I’d never even given a girl my phone number before — and that’s what killed me. I had never given it out before, hell — I didn’t even know it! I called a girl, wanting to ask her out, and left a message, and I didn’t know my own home telephone number. I totally disintegrated:

“… call me back at…732-49…um…ah…um…oh…umahblahphenadadayeaaba (continues for twenty seconds, when the machine cut me off)…”

It was horrible. I dropped the phone and curled up into a fetal ball on the cold, cold tile — and somehow, when things could not possibly get worse, somehow they did. After five days go by, I hoped that she forgot about it or that her roommate deleted the message. From the many nights that have since followed, I have replayed this scenario over and over again in my mind, and I found that everything that could have possibly gone wrong did.

As I sheepishly approach her table for Saturday Brunch, she looked up from her sketchbook and told me: “I got your message.”

It gets worse. You see — I hate this story so much — Erica was actually in her room when I called. She was sleeping because she was groggy with the flu, and I woke her up.  I didn’t wake her completely up though, just awake enough to hear me babble into her answering machine, and to make her think it was all a bizarre dream. Well, at least until she woke up and found the message. She just laughed and laughed, and told me to my face while cracking up.

I was mortified.

We were still good friends, but it wasn’t the same, the magic was gone. At the end of the semester, when I went to resell my psychology book, I saw her in line, trying to resell her psychology book.  She told me that she was transferring to somewhere in Buffalo.  There was an awkward goodbye, and I never saw her again.

Sometimes in the world of Kung Fu Movies, bad does not actually mean bad. Sometimes a “bad” kung fu movie is a lot of fun, especially if you are with some friends who also have an appreciation for the ridiculous. For the films on this list, this is not the case. These movies are the ones that make you question how they could possibly have ever been created. The ones that make you go to your friend and say, “Hey Mike, I got this movie you have got to see!!! It is AWESOME!!!” just to watch the growing horror on his face as he realizes that he is trapped (Rule 1: Once you start a Kung Fu Friday movie, you can’t stop until it is over).

1) Fist of Fear, Touch of Death

The first and the worst kung fu Friday movie. For a full review check out http://superfunadventuretime.com/2009/04/27/fist-of-fear-touch-of-death/

2) Pocket Ninjas

I should have known. I should have known that this was bad… really bad. All of the signs told me. From the little kids in ninja outfits holding cleaning implements on the cover (which never actually happens in the movie) to the red, white, and blue American flag karate uniform of the instructor, this movie just screamed “STAY AWAY! STAY FAR, FAR AWAY!” I should have listened.

3) The Swordsman AKA Legend of the Swordsman

Ok, so this isn’t even close to 1 and 2 for being terrible, but it surpasses everything you have ever seen in ridiculousness. Everything gets cut in half or explodes. EVERYTHING! It starts about 5 seconds in and really doesn’t stop. Also known to cause epileptic seizures.

4) Demon Ninja Massacre

Well, there were no demons and really no massacre, but there was an exploding golden ninja. Yes, indeed, there was a stealthy assassin dressed in a bright golden uniform who exploded upon death. Also had the coolest death scene possible on a $10 budget (featuring a leaf dummy being thrown off of a cliff).

5) Ninja Strike Force

Ninja Gordon fights an evil blood sword wielding ninja to avenge his friend the camouflaged ninja. Fortunately all of the Caucasian men were clearly labeled with their ninja headbands so there is no mistaking what you are seeing. To quote Gordon, “Niiiinnnnnnnjjjjjjjaaaaaaa!!!”

About a month ago, Tim and Joe started a pseudo-serious internet campaign to get me to re-grow my mullet.

Not grow, re-grow. 1990-1992 was a just bad time for everyone involved; I don’t want to hear it. I had a mullet from fourth to sixth grade. It was awesome.

Even better, the beginning of the mullet era overlapped was right on the tail-end of my battle with lazy eye, so I had to wear an eyepatch too. The end result was me being a miniature version of that one dude from Days of Our Lives. No photos of this exist, but rest assured that everyone’s hot older sister thought that was great. Sadly, by the time my testicles were online, mullets were passé and my eyes were more-or-less fixed. I was too young to capitalize on the situation and it still kind of hurts. Pictures of a be-mullet-ed me do exist, and you’re not getting them.

I maintained that when I was done with college, I would re-grow my mullet and live like MacGyver. Fate had a way of stopping that. My light brown leather jacket got lost, and I sold my beloved Geo, which was the closest thing to a Jeep that I could afford at the time. My life is less MacGyver-like than ever. On the other hand, I met Brian, a pilot who occasionally gets me into jams. By this logic, Stevie would then have to be Penny Parker. I’m not sure who Pete would be though.

I’d have to get hair plugs, and I’m pretty sure my insurance doesn’t cover that. Otherwise I’d have a Phil Collins mullet, and I refuse to do that, as I want to use vaginas at some point in the future.

Similar to Darkseid’s unending search for the anti-life equation, i have found the formula for true Hate. G = B + A/aS, where G = Gamestop (a videogame store obviously built on a pentagram or Indian burial ground), B = Bestiality, A = Anal, and aS = additional SHAME.

Gamestop is the biggest punch in the dick to a gamer for several reasons:
1) reserving titles leads to dealing with a douche clerk. Allow me to explain. I’m going to go out on a limb to assume that 90% of all gamestop customers on a day-to-day basis are well within the ‘male age 18-32 range’ that already know what titles are coming out and when. They also know when to reserve titles and when there is no need. It’s a simple economics lesson: If there’s a new Grand Theft Auto coming out….YOU DON’T NEED TO RESERVE IT, ASSHOLE. It will be everywhere. Supply/Demand, come on!

on a random Saturday, i walked into Gamestop to reserve a copy of Suikoden III for the PS2 (because Gamestop would only get 3 copies or so). As i was perusing the selection, some asshole manager came up to me and asked me if i wanted to pre-order Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I told him that i’ve never played a GTA game, and that I had already reserved another game and just wanted to look around. Instead of saying “that’s cool, let me know if you have any questions,” He replied “I guarantee that you won’t find that game ANYWHERE when it comes out!” I told him that i didn’t care, because i never played GTA, and I said thanks for asking. He replied (obviously not getting the hint): “if you can find GTA: Vice City anywhere on day 1, i’ll give you any game in the store.” I said ok, whatever and walked out. I was angry because i kinda felt violated in my butt-hole. Why would you harass a gamer to that extent unless you had a quota of reserves to meet? Douche. Gamestop Corporation is run and owned by Satan. Satan cares not for gamer preferences, only making money.

Three months later, i was walking in Best Buy, and it happened to be the day that GTA: Vice City came out. They had 150 copies on the shelf, at least. They were organized into a fucking pyramid, that’s how many copies they had. I was immediately enraged, and remembered my moment of anal fingering by the store manager at Gamestop. I purchased a copy, had the cashier sign and note on the receipt that i did not pre-order the copy, and went back to Gamestop. I showed the manager the copy and reminded him of his ridiculous promise to give me any game in the store. The store clerks laughed at him as he wrote out a gift card to me for $25 (not what i expected, but hey it’s free) and immediately purchased Resident Evil for the Gamecube. Fuck him, and fuck pushy sales clerks that don’t know their demographics.

2) trading games in is a SHAM: If you buy a game there, beat it and trade it in….you get barebones bullshit for it. I remember trading in a $60 game and they wanted to give me $20 for it a week after it came out. No way. THEN, i noticed that the USED PRICE for the game was $54.99. That’s only five bucks cheaper than the new price. SHENANIGANS. The store makes, like, fifty cents or so on selling a new game, while making over $35 dollars on used games. And if a game is rare, they won’t tell you and jack the used price even more when they turn around and sell it.

My advice to you: sell your used games on eBay or some other website, you’ll get the money you should there. Know when to reserve titles, and don’t be afraid to lay into those asshole sales clerks for selling stupid shit to you. They should be ashamed of themselves for selling out as corporate slaves.

One of my friends from Purdue, Jen over at Blag Hag, was sent a free copy of The Professor and the Dominatrix, which is apparently an erotic atheist crime thriller book. She then proceeded to tear it to pieces.

Hilarity ensued. Apparently, she’s received some 10,000 hits from this. At this hour, 12:50 AM May 4, 2009, hilarity is still ensuing and brewing, with more to follow. Please watch for updates.

UPDATE: 5/4/09 11:16 PM.  It’s turning into an epic flamewar. No, seriously, check it out. It’s hours of fun.