When Ames was going under, Mike immediately ran out and got one of those inflatable chairs, because they were popular at the time. It became readily obvious as to why they went out of style, because it was a total pain in the ass to inflate and keep inflated. It came with patches for when it sprung leaks, but we’d gone through them all within the week.

It was a cold Saturday afternoon. I arrived at Mike’s house, as it was the de facto assembling point at the time. Joe was there, so was Mindy, the chick he was dating at the time, along with Tim ‘n’ Rick, and maybe Jered and Ken. As we were loading up out cars to head over to Behrend for sledding, Mike walks out with the inflato-chair.

“Are you throwing inflato-chair out?” I ask.

“Yeah, but I’m going to ride it down the sledding hill first,” said Mike.

“Oh, so you’re going to deflate it and sit on it, like one of those roll-up toboggans?” I ask.

“No, I was just going to keep it as it is, and ride down the hill on an easy chair,” said Mike.

I collapsed with laughter, because the movie in my head was just that great. So we all drive to Behrend, and trudge up the hill. There were about thirty people there, all of whom smiled at the prospect for fun upon seeing the inflato-chair. Mike mounts the inflato-chair, and we push it down the hill, except that we just wound up pushing Mike off the chair.  We repeated this another six or seven times to collect enough data to conclude what was going on. Apparently inflato-chair had a coefficient of friction large enough to render it unusable as a sled. We also found that to keep from being pushed off, you had to recline almost, by leaning back. Even then, the chair’s bottom would remain in place, and the rest of it would just ooze over that point, kind of like a Caterpillar drive, eventually ejecting the passenger. WD-40 could not correct this. In anger of the massive disappointment that was inflato-chair, we kick it into the wooded thicket atop the hill.

“Stupid inflato-chair,” mutters Mike.

“I hate inflato-chair,” declares Joe.

So we sled for a while, I had some pretty neat jumps and wipe-outs on the Saucer of Doom, but nothing as epic as last time. Little kids kept coming up for a hit of WD-40, and their parents would pull them away, fearing for their safety. Eventually, I discovered the solution to our problems.

“Dude!” I shout. “We need to put inflato-chair on the saucer!”

Everyone’s eyes light up, then fade away as Joe points out:

“You’ll just be pushed off of it.”

“No, I wont, because you’re pushing the saucer, and not the chair,” I tell him.

Without speaking, we all run into the thicket to retrieve inflato-chair from the woods. I WD-40 the saucer and set the chair on top of it. Everyone backs the fuck up, I align the chair with the jump in the middle of the hill, lean back, and give a thumbs up. Joe and Mike pushed me down the hill. It worked flawlessly. I was about halfway to the jump, when a little kid, maybe about six or seven — old enough to know better — was standing in the middle of the hill. No one saw him before because the jump had obstructed him from our view. It was a really sweet jump. I started shouting at the kid:

“Dude! Move dude! Get out of the way dude! Dude! Move!”

The kid didn’t move. He just stood there for what seems like a minute. I want to think that his brief life was flashing before his eyes, but that couldn’t have been it. He hadn’t accrued nearly enough life experience to cause him to seize for that long. He stood there because he was too damn confused, because a twenty year-old man with a beard and a silly hat was hollering all kinds of sentence fragments at him, while barreling towards him in a bright yellow Barcalounger at thirty miles per hour. I drew closer and closer, and screamed louder and louder.

“Dude! Get the hell out of the way dude! Run, man! Run! Move dude! Dude!”

I want to say that everything was ok.  I want to say that kid was… well, fuck, sentient. He wasn’t.

I totally crushed that kid. Bad.

I should be in jail, that’s how bad it was.

Imagine a hovercraft running over a speed bump. That’s an accurate portrayal of events. He didn’t even have time to scream as he got sucked under.

“Oooooh!” shouted the thirty people atop the hill in unison.

A second later, I hit the jump, and became a projectile. I flew in a parabolic path, similar to an Olympic ski jumper, but without skis or training. As the ground rapidly approached, I tucked my chin and did a proper ukemi, and log rolled about 300 feet down the hill. I laid there for a second, testing each joint to make sure my spinal cord was still intact. When it was, I walked in a sine wave back up the hill, picking up my saucer and inflato-chair, breathing deeply to get the stars to stop. Towards the top of the hill, sitting next to the jump, was the crying child who I completely and totally destroyed, and his dad. He was angry.

“Why did you do that?” asked the dad.

“I tried to tell him to move,” I explain.

“You could’ve done something,” snaps the dad.

“No, I was stuck in that that thing. I couldn’t move, he could,” I explain.

The dad wants to be angry, but can’t.

“C’mon,” he says to his brutally crushed and p0wn’d son. “Let’s go!”

I want to feel bad, but I can’t because it’s not my fault that his kid was too dumb to move. At least that’s how I think the conversation went; my razor-sharp memory fails me in this instance. I likely suffered a minor concussion, so I get a by for that.

I went to see Ninja Assassin for my birthday.  After seeing the preview, I had high hopes.  I wasn’t disappointed.  Ninja Assassin gave me everything I wanted, ninja, explosions, and extreme, gratuitous violence.  What else could I want for my birthday?

Honestly, I really enjoyed this film.  It tells the story of Riazo, played by Korean pop star Rain, an orphan who is brought in by the Black Sand Ninja clan, from his training from his eventual defection from his clan.  Lots of flashbacks and training sequences smattered about between the intense action sequences, I just really liked the movie.

Within the first minute, the tone is set as the top of a triad gang member’s is lopped off with his body spurting blood on his friends.  Repeat for the next 99 minutes and go home happy.

I also like how the movie follows the ninja henchman paradox.  This theory states that the toughness of a ninja is inversely proportional to the number of ninja present.  While one single ninja represents an unstoppable killing machine, in large groups they tend to die rather easily.  We also see the impact of this theory in that as the ninja henchmen are killed off, the individual ninja get tougher and tougher.  So a small piece of financial advice to you, a ninja bodyguard is a better investment than an army of ninja henchmen.  Just an FYI.

So, in summary, see Ninja Assassin.  It is worth it.  It is gruesome and fun, everything you would want it to be.

Earlier today, Ray “Bananaman” Comfort and Kirk “College Kids are to Young to Remember When I was Famous” Cameron, went viral with their remix version of Charlie Darwin’s smash hit, On the Origin of Species.

Their version intentionally omits a few chapters, and includes a fifty page reductio ad Hitlerum introduction, which Comfort wrote/plagiarized.

These doctored copies were then distributed around the country to be handed out to random-ass people on the campuses of top universities yesterday. That makes sense, because when I think of a fundamentalist Christian jihad, I immediately think of MIT and Caltech. They came to Purdue a day later, since I guess we were a second-round draft pick.

I’d review the introduction in detail for all of you, since they were being handed out here, but I didn’t get one, which sucks. I knew I should’ve taken the long way home today.

However, since turnabout is fair play, I have come out with my own version of the Holy Bible. The SuperFunAdventureBible clears up and confusing or flowery passages and allows the reader to concentrate on the real crux of the Christian faith:

Christians should be thanking me, as I carefully removed (with a utility knife) all of the times the Bible urges people to participate in:

• murder (Ezekiel 9:5-6)
• genocide (Deuteronomy 20:16-17; Exodus 17:13-16)
• incest (Exodus 6:20; Genesis 19:30-38)
• abortion (Hosea 13:16)
• cannibalism (Jeremiah 19:9)
• materialism (Proverbs 14:20)
• domestic violence (Proverbs 20:30)
• shit-eating (Ezekiel 4:12-15),
• genital mutilation (Genesis 17:9-13)
• …and Communist party membership (Acts 4:32-35)

Thanks to me, the Christian apologetics have less to apologize over. Now, Christians can concentrate on the central themes of intimidation and greed without the requisite cognitive dissonance.

A few months ago, I reported on the semi-serious internet campaign to get me to re-grow my mullet.  Well, a few weeks back, I was invited to a large-ish party to celebrate another successful Nuke Week and to commiserate with those still recovering from the aftermath of the thermohydraulics midterm. Shortly after the festivities began, someone found a ginger mullet wig laying about the apartment. (I never really had a chance to figure out whose apartment it was, but that’s besides the point.) The wig was being passed around, and I knew that I had to try it on.

My co-workers were mortified.

“It…it…it…” said Doug.

“It…kinda works…” admitted Tom.

I looked into the mirror…

…and I saw what should have been, for a fleeting moment, before the wig was passed on. The important thing is, we now all know what I look like with a mullet. Will we ever see it again? It remains to be seen.

X-mas is coming, by the way…

A few weeks ago, a bunch of the Non-Theist Society and I packed up the ol’ SuperFunAdventureBus with magic and good times and trekked through the pre-apocalyptic wastelands to Bloomington, IN, to the see the famed evolutionary biologist, popular author, and rabble-rouser Richard Dawkins speak as part of his international book-signing and lecture tour. During the question-and-answer session which followed, My friend Jen, the BlagHag, asked Prof. Dawkins:

“I had the misfortune of visiting the Creation Museum this summer. While there were many scary things there, the scariest was how it was full of children. When you see kids like this or those who are home schooled or going to religious school, they’re effectively being brainwashed. Is there anything we can do to teach them science, or are they a lost cause?”

This sent Dawkins into a stirring diatribe, but he never explicitly answered Jen’s question. He’s human, and he doesn’t have all the answers, and I’m sure if he knew how to reach those …well, lost souls, he’d already be doing that. It’s hard for us, because we have no default person or think to consult with our problems, we have to be crafty enough to solve each problem as it arises and to have the strength to look within ourselves to find the answers. Fortunately, I have both and have taken the liberty of solving this problem.

To reach the deceived youngsters, Richard Dawkins must undergo either DNA splicing, the Fusion Dance, or the unholy powers of the Necronomicon to combine all of his powers and abilities with those of 80’s metal legend Don Dokken, to form Richard Dokkens, who must then go on tour. The mind-bending awesome that would ensue would permeate through every strata of society, exposing everyone to the Gospel of…well, no one really. For those who doubt the feasibility of this plan, I present, in evidence, the last half of Dokken’s “Dream Warriors”:

Now, take that, and multiply it by an integer greater than one. That is the power that Richard Dokkens would command. The only fault in this cunning plan is that the human mind would not be able to process awesome of this magnitude, so we may have to delay this until after the Kurzweilian Singularity. I’m doing my part with that, so to all the genetic engineers, ascended Sayians, and Kandarian translators out there: the ball is in your court.

One time, while at Joe’s mom’s house, we came across a MicroMachines garage playset, which wasn’t his.

It belonged to Mindy, Joe’s ex, and was the only thing of hers that we were able to confirm was entirely hers and that she’d forgotten when she moved out of the basement.

Being the well-adjusted individuals that we are, decided to destroy it, and in the most spectacularly awesome way possible.

Without hesitation, we decided to pack it full of fireworks, and blow it the fuck up. That wasn’t going to happen though, since Tom Thompson* had used up all of his quarter sticks, so the best we could do was melt it, but we tried to blow it up, Cthulhu help us, we tried. I ran home and grabbed whatever fireworks were there, leftovers from Tom Thompson’s parties and a bunch of PA legal bullshit that I bought when I was twelve. We packet that shit tight with ladyfingers, M-200’s, Moon Travels facing outward to cut in half, disco flashers, and paper towels soaked in Aqua Net hair spray.

It was all sorry and half-assed. We were rightfully ashamed.

So I went home and got some old model rocket engines from when I was a kid. We packed a handful of model rocket engines in there, and that made it novel, fun and acceptable. We sealed every hole with study tape, to keep the explosives in and though we knew the tape would blow out before the walls, we at least tried. We laughed, because now the toy garage looked like it was all boarded up and abandoned.

“Look at it!” said Mike. “It’s all ghetto now!”

I picked it up and proclaimed it “The Ghetto Blaster.”

Joe keeled over from laughter in the spiteful schadenfreude that I had brought into his house.

We detonated the Ghetto Blaster to initial disappointment, before it erupted in white flames which completely and totally ruined all of its shit. Post-blast analysis, combined with out extensive fireworks experience brought us to conclude that the PA legal fireworks did the most damage, because the Disco Flashes have magnesium in them, and a little burning magnesium goes a long way.

____________________________________________________
* Names have been changed to protect those with outstanding warrants.

This is Chapter IV of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapters I, II, and III.
______________________________________________________

As I sat there talking to Joe about my research, I saw this off-white rumbling steel cube inching towards me.

Eventually I saw that it was being pushed by a petite brunette woman, 1/17^th the volume of the cube, putting all of her weight into the cube to get it to move inches per second. X-ray Chick was machined from a single block of steel, with a nurse’s uniform heat shrunk on to her. I could have bounced quarters off of any part of her person. She was probably so fit because she had to push the x-ray machine around all day, kind of like Conan the Barbarian. She wore no rings, and thus, she was a legal target.

Clearly, I had to bed this woman. I would be a crime not too.

“Hey, I’m here to take a few x-rays, it won’t be long,” she tells me.

“Yay! High-energy photons!” I cheer. She smiled. Being a physicist and nuclear engineer, I occasionally with x-rays, so I know exactly what they do. Still, I hadn’t got my hormesis in a while, so it wasn’t that bad.

Apparently, the doctors didn’t think I could make to the x-ray room, partially because I was a shoutin’ shirtless karate ape-man on drugs. Instead, they brought the x-ray room to me.

At the speed of thought, X-Ray Chick threw some levers and the cube deployed into a complete x-ray lab, like something from Command & Conquer. It seemed familiar to me, for some reason.

She came back with a leaden washcloth to cover my penis and testicles.

“Thanks, I need that,” I told her.

She smiled and threw some switches. A small box lit up, except for the black crosshair-pattern on the front. As she aims the shadow of the crosshairs on my shoulder, I remember where I’ve seen this machine:

“Dude! It’s like 70’s Hulk!” I shout to Joe.

I know how radiation works, but deep down, even though its foolish,  and irrational, there will always live a little part of me that thinks this:

…and says. “Yes. Hell yes. This.”

Because of this simple joy, the first x-ray went off without a hitch. The second, not so much.

“Now, I know you’re going to hate me for this…” said X-Ray Chick.

“Why’s that?”

“I need for you to go like this…” she told me, as she performed the communist solidarity fist gesture, “…and then rest your elbow on this sponge.”

“Yeah, ok,” I tell her. I moved my arm to the desired position very slowly, because I did not have a functioning skeleton at the time. It was fairly excruciating; but I knew I had to play it cool to be able to score a slice of this righteous meow.

“Hey Coons! You’re sponge-worthy!” shouts Joe and she inserts the sponge to support my arm.

X-Ray Chick looks up in horror and disgust, for the jig, much like my girthy schlong, was up. To add insult to my injury, Joe used his camera phone to preserve this moment for all time:

Ever have a raging hard-on while wearing your athletic cup? Don’t. Just don’t.

So after dislocating my shoulder, putting a damper on my birthday and vacation, as well as having me pay to get stabbed, Joe fuckin’ cockblocks me. Amazing.

She was mostly silent after that, but managed to produce some wicked-grotundous images:

It was New Year’s Day, 1986. Penn State was in the Orange Bowl, my dad was in his Penn State shirt (a story in itself) and I was four years old.

My dad almost never drank, and there was rarely any beer in the house, but there was that day, because Penn State was doing well. It wasn’t my dad’s collegiate standard, Rolling Rock. This was beneath that. It was worse than Natty, or Keystone, or even Herman the German. It was Beer Beer — as in generic beer.

“Oh, Beer-30,” you say.

No, Generic Beer is a step below Beer-30. I’ve seen Beer-30 before and it at least comes in a colorful package.

See, back in the day, there were no store brands, or stuff like Grand Union, Sam’s Choice, or Food Club. There was one, universal store brand called “Generic,” which was situated on an isle isolated from the rest of the store that was completely devoted to this line of products. They all came in white packages with the name of the contents in black capital letters, and nothing else. There weren’t even any nutritional labels, because Congress wouldn’t pass the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act for another four years.

For example, rather than having, Ruffles, Lay’s or Troyer Farms potato chips, there was another option across the store called “ONE POUND POTATO CHIPS.” If you wanted pop, there was Coca-Cola Classic, Pepsi, RC, and “COLA.” Thus, by induction, in addition to Rolling Rock, Natty, Keystone, and Herman the German, there was also a beer called “BEER.”

“What’s that?” I ask my dad, unfamiliar with the can.

“This son, is beer,” said my dad.

“Beer?” I said quizzically. “What’s that like?”

He looks left, he looks right. Then, my dad said the magic words:

“Don’t tell your mother.”

I nodded in agreement. He handed me the can, and I took my first drink.

It tasted like homeless people boiled in dumpster swill.

I didn’t drink for nearly twenty years.

(This story is Part 3 in the Tramp-Amp-Oline Saga. The other parts will follow.)

One spring evening, after karate, we went to Mike’s house because it was Kung-Fu-Friday, but since days were longer now, we figured we could play on the tramp-amp-oline for a while. So Joe, Mike, me and Amanda ran crazily across the field towards Tramp-amp-oline, flailing our limbs madly shouting nonsense.

“Tramp-amp-oline!” I shouted.

“Tramp-bop-oline!” said Joe.

“Zamp-bop-o-zeen!” said Mike.

Upon climbing onto Tramp-amp-oline, we played our favorite game, Flop-Like-A-Fish, where one person sat in the middle, and two others bounced around the parameter, while the person in the middle flopped and bounced erratically, and randomly spouted crazy talk and laughter, just like how the instructions that come with the trampoline explicitly tell you not too do.

This was wall great and fun and good times, but still we thought we could one-up it somehow.

“How can we make better?” we collectively asked.

“Three people bouncing!” we all said at once.

So, we all climb on the tramp-amp-oline, just like how the instructions explicitly told us not to do, and I was one of the ones bouncing around the perimeter. The tramp-amp-oline really wasn’t that big, so with three people you had to pick your shots, so to speak. It wasn’t obvious where you would land, and you had to think about that and adjust yourself accordingly.  On one jump, when I had reached my zenith, I realized that there was no was that I was going to land on the tramp-amp-oline. I somersault, then spin in the air, because I needed a good ukemi now more than ever.

I hit the ground hard, about ten feet away from the tramp-amp-oline. Then I skipped like a stone, and landed three feet away from the point of initial impact.

I saw stars, and the Technicolor ring. The ring didn’t last, but the stars did.

I was looking up at the tramp-amp-oline, as my chin was still tucked. Everyone stopped. Joe looked over and shouted:

“Oh my God! Cooooooooooooons issssssssss deaaaaaaaaaaaaad!”

Joe, Mike, and Amanda climb off the tramp-amp-oline and run over to me, their arms flailing wildly.

“Can you get up?” asked Amanda.

“Yeah,” I told them. “But I don’t want too…I think that I’m going to lay here for a while…take it…easy…”

They all walk to leave me be, as per my request. Mike stops, points, and laughs.

“Come here! Come here!” he shouts.

It had rained earlier, and the ground was still kind of soft., which caused my initial impact to leave a Coons-shaped crater in Mike’s lawn.

“It’s like the cartoons!” we shouted, as we inspected the hole.

We all looked at each other.

“I think we should go inside,” said Amanda. This is the only useful thing Amanda has ever said in any point of her life.

Then we went inside, and I lived to see another day.

I first walked into the main floor at WizardWorld with joy and wonder. Then Mike stopped us.

“Dude,” he snapped. “Liefeld’s here.”

We all sprung into crisis mode.

“What do you mean?” said a surprised August. Liefeld was not on the list of guests, but about three booths to the right of the door was “Liefeld” in that sketchy, completely linear Rob Liefeld font.

“Oh shit!” said August. He still has a soul, so he worries about other people and their feelings. I, on the other hand, have nothing but my dreams, and apparent they came true. I knew what to do. We were joking about this on the car ride over, what to say if Liefeld were to magically show up. I knew what to do.

I walked up to him and spake: “Hi, my name is Ryan Coons…”

“Hey!” said Rob Liefeld. He didn’t even look up at me; he just kept sketching away at yet another blocky, disproportionate, and overly-linear picture of one of my beloved childhood heroes. This time, it was Wolverine, in a mirrored swipe of Jim Lee’s cover for X-Men #11.

“…I am a huge Captain America fan…” I tell him with jazz hands and a huge fanboy gleam. “…and as such, I demand an apology for Heroes Reborn.”

Rob stops. He gives me an action hero sneer and said, “Hey, it was nice to meet you,” and followed it up with a fuck-off get lost nod. You know, the upward one. I walk off and hyperventalate for a while, because I can only process a set amount of awesome at one time. That’s why it took me four hours to watch 300 the first time.

Rummaging through the boxes when I came across a copy of Lee & Buscema’s seminal text How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. We were in awe.

“Coons! You need to buy that!” shouted Mike. I was thinking about it, because I’ve wanted a copy of that for some time now.  “You need to give it to him!”

“You’re right! Rob needs it more than anyone!” I said.

“That’s why we’re here Coons,” said Mike. “The planets have aligned.”

“What’s this?” asked Javier, the dude who was working the booth we were at.

“We’re going to by a copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, then he’s going to give it to Rob Liefeld,” said Mike.

Javier was awestruck.

“How much is this?” I ask.

“All trades are five dollars, but if you’re giving that to Rob Liefeld, then I…I…well, I can chip in,” said Javier, digging through his wallet. “Here’s two bucks.”

I give the man three.

“I’ll be back,” I tell Javier.

I waited for a bit, I wanted him to forget about me, I wanted him to think he was in the clear and have him let his guard down. Also, I fully expected to get thrown out for these shenanigans, and I wanted Mark Millar to sign my copy of Superman: Red Son, and that wouldn’t be for another few hours.

In the mean time, I took the time to personalize his gift.

On the blank front page, I wrote:

Rob,

I know you aren’t willing to apologize right now. This manual will help you in you future endeavors. Please study it carefully, and consult it before rebooting another comic title. If you still wish to apologize for “Heroes Reborn,” you can do so by emailing me at YellowHatGuy@gmail.com.

Let’s make things right.

Sincerely,

Ryan Coons

Then, I slipped my business card in between the pages, to make sure that Liefeld knew my name, website, email address, and cell phone number. Then I put his gift in a nice bag…

…and I was ready.

“So, you’re going through with this?”

“I have too. It needs to be done,” I said.

“What are you going to say to him?” asked August.

“I’m not going to say anything,” I told him. “I’m just going to set it in front of him, and then walk away.”

“…and then what?” asked August.

“I don’t care,” I sad. “I don’t care what happens. You can watch if you like.”

I started sweating pretty bad, and started to hyperventilate. “You okay Coons? You gonna make it?” said August.

Immediately, I regain my composure.

“No, I have to do this. I’ve waited thirteen years for this,” I tell August.

So I walked over to Rob Liefeld, who was busy ignoring everyone in the entire convention center. I set the package in front of him, and patted it a few times, and the walked away. According to Mike, the following ensued:

“Rob didn’t look up, but the bald guy did, and pulled it out and showed it Liefeld. He shook his head and got all pissed off. Then the bald dude opened it up and red the inscription, and busted out laughing, and laughed for like, five minutes straight, and Liefeld’s face just tightened up and he just got more and more pissed off.”

I’m not a bad guy. All I want is an apology.