Back in 2003, our parents and grandparents were distraught that our generation didn’t have a Vietnam. So, to rectify this, they consented to a needless and prolonged war, with the intention on dashing out  before the waiter came back with the check, to take refuge in their snuggly graves.

A couple of months went by, and I was still pretty angry about this, so I drove to Erie to get a good workout in. The people in my dorm told me that if I was going into Erie, that I ought to avoid Upper Peach, since it was blocked off. I didn’t have any business up there, and it didn’t seem like anything of consequence until I realized that Upper Peach Street being blocked off was the top story on goddamn CNN.

Thus began the strange tale of one of Erie’s biggest celebrities, Brian “Pizza Bomber” Wells.

Earlier in the day, a couple of people ordered some pizzas. When they came, they locked a time bomb around the deliveryman’s neck, and gave him a homebrew cane gun and a list of banks to rob.  For every bank he robbed, he would be given extra time. When time ran out, game over.

So he went to the PNC bank, o’er by the K-Mart on Upper Peach, and explained that he had a gun, and wanted $250,000 or his head would asplode. The teller explained that they didn’t have that much money in the drawers, and that they had to get the money from the vault. So, Wells told them to open the vault. The teller told him that she couldn’t open the vault, and that no one could. A timer was part of its locking mechanism, so the vault could open at the beginning and the end of the day.

So Wells left and kinda chilled in the parking lot.  Right around this time, the cops decided to make an appearance. Wells told him his side of the story, and after about half an hour, the cops realized he was serious. Then Wells blew up. Shortly thereafter, the bomb squad showed up. The local TV stations actually filmed his death, but never used that footage out of respect for the deceased, which is doublespeak for “the FCC won’t let us.” It was leaked onto the internet within five days. eBaum still has it, because it’s interesting and he didn’t make it.

I remember my mom, shocked and appalled at that news: “I can’t believe it! People would let something like that get out… and actually watch it?”

I too, was shocked and appalled: “I can’t believe it took five days for that to get on the internet. That’s waaaay to long…”

Well, the FBI stepped in, and seven years later, all guilty parties are jailed or dead. It’s a long and convoluted tale of extramarital affairs, bodies in freezers, hitmen, and killing your way into an inheritance. The FBI knew there were three people involved, and the twist in the plot was that the Pizza Bomber himself was in on the plot. I only knew it was a matter of time before the Pizza Bomber fiasco was made into a movie. I just always thought it would be a trailer trash version of Chinatown, and not a buddy comedy.

I’m still going go see it. I just think it would be better as a noir.

I didn’t think yesterday was going to be epic, oh, but it was.

I went to work and plotted some points, and managed to leave work such that the rain started right when I opened the door to my building, and made dinner such that I was done right when the tornadoes started. After that, I read some journals, and washed the dishes, and read more journals. And then, right around midnight, Mike Brownstein left a post on my Facebook. A link to a one-line news article that said that “Touchdown Jesus” off of I-75, was on fire.

Then, like that, I grabbed the ol’ SuperFunAdventureCodex, and crossed one more item off my list.

A transcript of the list is given below.  (The items are listed in order of importance.)

Things I’d Like to See:

• Christopher Walken performing a spoken-word version of David Bowie’s “Heroes”
• Ally Sheedy naked
• Jesus Christ on fire
• solid room-temperature superconductors
• Nuclear power renaissance
• identity of “Deep Throat” revealed
• functioning and economical EUV lithography system
• destruction of the Roman Catholic Church
• a cure for diabetes
• Labyrinth II
• electric cars gaining widespread popularity
• the Kurzweilian Singularity
• the domestication of the Komodo Dragon
• old-school breakdancing making a comeback
• the identity of who killed Laura Palmer
• Sarah Palin running for office again, so we can continue to make fun of her.
• Dolph Lundgren fighting Jet Li
• Reliable jetpacks
• Gene Hackman in drag
• Concise, coherent, and preferably closed-form solution to the Problem of Evil
• Collapse of the Kim Family Regime
• Passage of the ERA
• Passage of a amendment to legalize same-sex marriage
• Men everywhere wearing fedoras and flat caps at all times, like they did in the 1920’s
• Freddy Kruger fighting Jason Voorhees
• all my friends living happy and fulfilling lives
• repeal of fireworks laws
• to see BP go under

For those of who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, a little backstory.

Shortly after I moved to Ohio to start grad school, right around the time the neo-cons and Christo-fascists went mad with power, the Solid Rock Church spent $500,000 to build “King of Kings,” a 62 foot bust of Jesus Christ facing I-75. The statue was ostensibly to help people by serving as “a beacon of hope and salvation,” but in practice, the colossal eyesore merely served as a navigational marker to lead people to the flea market. Within minutes of its dedication, the people of the greater Cincinnati area rechristened the statue “Touchdown Jesus,” for obvious reasons.

Well, last night, Touchdown Jesus was struck by lightning by the same thunderstorm that not-killed me with tornadoes, cloud-to-ground lightning, and baseball-sized hail, proving once again that Yahweh is some linear combination of retarded, incompetent, and/or drunk.

Also, their was apparently the Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was completely undamaged, signifying that Larry Flynt is truly favored by the Lord.

Also, apparently statues can catch fire.

That kinda threw me for a loop, for we tried to set literally everything in the universe on fire back in Boy Scouts. Then I found out Touchdown Jesus was made of styrofoam, and everything made sense. It was a giant metal frame, next to pond, covered in styrofoam with a fiberglass skin. Apparently it had a lightning rod, but it didn’t work. I’d like to take this time to point out that lightning rods are a proven technology and have no moving parts.

The comments for that YouTube video are priceless, by the way. I could say more about this, but I’m going to let Percy Shelley take over from here:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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.

Joe called me up one July 4^th, and told me to travel to Easy Street, where Ted Thompson*, brother of Tom Thompson* was going to “…set off some big ones.”

It took me considerable time finding the place, because “Easy Street” is apparently not an actual street, though it was clearly specified as such in Joe’s directions.

I introduced myself to Ted Thompson, and from what I was later told, though a convoluted chain of events which I do not fully understand, he was thoroughly convinced that I was an undercover cop, and was plotting my murder for most of the night.

Joe, Ken, and I spent the afternoon in the pool, flinging Joe’s teeming legions of cousins around in the pool, and into each other.  When we got out the pool, the cousins kept on coming, and in greater numbers. Ken and I were immobilized, as we had children latched onto our backs, chests, legs, and arms. We tried to walk away, but were encumbered by the 300 lbs. of people we were wearing. Eventually, Ken and I mustered every ounce of strength into having a fist fight, using the horde of Joe’s leech-like cousins as a form of ablative body armor.

Once freed, Ken and I were surrounded, but we were able to hold our ground by throwing Joe’s cousins into Joe’s other cousins. By “throw,” I don’t mean “push,” “knock over,” or “shove,” I mean “lift over our heads, and in a shoulder-press like motion, launch into two other people like goddamn Lou Ferrigno,” as shown in Fig 1.

FIG 1: The Incredible Hulk finds a grizzly bear, and proceeds to completely ruin its shit.

This went on for about twenty minutes. There was simply no reason — including divine intervention — why anyone survived, let alone escaped uninjured. I later learned that this was a re-occurring theme at these parties. Eventually adults who the children feared and respected stepped in, and told them to leave us be. Ken and I were relieved. The powers that be then told Joe, Ken, and I to play with a near-infinite supply of fire and explosives for the amusement of the children, to tide them over until dark, and the real insanity began.

Joe made an immediate B-line for the Roman Candles, and gave me one, because no one ever gave me Roman Candle before. And that was pretty neat. When my dad would smuggle fireworks across state lines, he only bought ladyfingers and Moon Travelers, because that is where dFun/d$ is a maxima. I set off a Roman Candle, Joe sets off a Roman Candle. We both set off a Roman Candle.

See, the thing about explosives is that showmanship is a huge component — each feat must be more and more spectacular than the last. Thus, Ken had to dual-wield Roman Candles, while spinning them around. However, unbeknownst to all of us, Ken, through no fault of his own, had damned us all.

He didn’t pick up Roman Candles, he picked up Happy Bees, which look like Roman Candles in every shape, way, and form, except they have a different name and behave in no way like a Roman Candle would.

See, a Roman Candle is a stick, about 1 foot long that when lit, periodically shoots 1 cm fireballs of various colors.  But these weren’t Roman Candles, these were Happy Bees.

Happy Bees are like Roman Candles, but they shoot their fireballs in random directions, with a distinctive “Vvvvwwwooo! Vvvvwwwooo! Vvvvwwwooo!” noise. It would’ve been great if we knew that. Live and learn.

So, we light the Happy Bees in Ken’s hands, and run back.

Multicolored sparking death spews forth towards all of the defenseless women and children, who threw themselves to the ground and hid under blankets. Ken went into shock and screamed maniacally. Eventually he gained enough composure to turn away from the general direction of the innocents, towards the safer path of directly at me and Joe.

This story takes place shortly after The Matrix was released to DVD, so the bullet-dodging scene was a popular meme at the time, which everyone mimed for comedic effect, and in our case, as a survival mechanism. That shit is real, I know.

After this, it became sufficiently dark to set off the real fireworks, and all the males spent the next two to three hours setting off approximately $1,800 worth of Wile E. Coyote rockets and amusement park grade mortars.

The rest of the night passed without incident, and we all left happy, and with a healthy fear of Happy Bees.
____________________________________________________
* Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

To anyone who questions the awesomeness of the last post, I give this in evidence. After eleven years of searching, I have found the footage of Luc’s performance.

No seriously, that’s exactly what happened. Everyone was that blown away, and I’m not speaking metaphorically. Also, the resulting EMP bricked the camcorders.

“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.