PiGGY: Professional Loser

I was a big Ziggy fan when I was a kid and I thought it would be funny--as an homage of course--to put compromising words into Ziggy's innocent mouth. Maybe it's a little juvenile or too easy, but it makes me laugh. Also, one of the comics is featured in Friday's edition of the Phat Phree.com!





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Fuck the Care Bears: A Manifesto by Brave Heart Lion

[Ed. Note: Read this entry at The Phat Phree.com]

I've had it up to my hairy yellow balls with the Care Bears.

All I ever hear about is how cute the Care Bears are. Oh, how they laugh and play and fuck around so merrily in Care-A-Lot, occasionally saving some pussy kid from having a bad day because he ate too many cookies or took a dump in his pants or something. Way to go heroes; why don't you make another straight-to-video ass pie for the kids?

I say, fuck the Care Bears! What about the Care Bear Cousins? Why are we relegated to Scrappy Doo status just because we came second? We were fresh, original players to the game that got bent over by the network bigwigs when they started packaging us with the Care Bears. I'm a lion, how am I going to be some bear's cousin? Look, maybe I didn't finish junior college, but I know enough about science to know that this "Cousins" thing is a sham. A lion is a lion and a bear is a bear and if a lion and a bear get busy, you don't get a Care Bear Cousin. That's ridiculous. You get an abortion, that's what you get.

But I digress. My point is that the Care Bears were hacks. They were just rehashed Smurfs and nobody said dick about it. Don't believe me? Think about it:

Champ Bear was just Hefty Smurf without the alcoholism.

Funshine Bear was clearly just the gayer version of Vanity Smurf, and yes, Funshine was really a dude. Actually, I've got to give some credit to Funshine because Vanity was already gayer than a three-dollar bill and Funshine made him look like Wilt-fucking-Chamberlain.

Bedtime Bear was actually taken to court by Sleepy Smurf in '87. Sleepy contended that there was only room for one adorable, blue narcoleptic on children's programming and that Bedtime was liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. Sadly, Bedtime Bear was murdered by his Ludes dealer before the trial got underway which is really crazy because, really, who does Ludes?

Then there was Grumpy Bear. You have to realize that Grumpy Smurf had been around since '81 and that Grumpy Bear had the rocks to actually steal his name four years later. That's a whole new kind of bullshit if you ask me, but no one does.

Then, you had us: the Care Bear Cousins. We were fucking rad and nobody gave a day-old dog shit about us. The Care Bears were thieves; we were heroes. The Care Bears were all about feeling happy and prancing around like Snuggles after a jaunt in the spin cycle. We stood for bravery and loyalty and nobility and all that other crap that's supposed to get you laid. You think we got laid? I'm a lion with a fucking heart on my big, fat stomach. The Battle Beast White Lion had a heat-activated flame on his chest and a bitchin' sword. I, on the other hand, was a joke to the lionesses. I couldn't get laid with an eight ball of catnip in my jockeys and a dead gazelle riding shotgun in my H2.

I don't have an H2...

The Care Bears had H2s. They were spoiled jerks who lived in an awesome castle in Care-A-Lot. They had sidewalks and street sweeping and a very respectable school district. You know where we lived? In a fucking jungle, that's where. The Forrest of Feelings was no West Beverly. We didn't even have sewage, bro; we pooed on the ground. You never saw the Care Bears pooing on the ground. Hell, you never even saw the Care Bears coming down to the ghetto to visit us, either.

Wish Bear and I used to be boys. We played high school football together. Now he's always like, "Yeah, Brave Heart Lion, I'd love to play squash, but why don't you come up here instead? The Bentley's making this weird clunking noise and, well, you know..."

Yeah, I know. It means my poor ass is taking the bus if I want to score a free meal at the country club I'm not allowed to join. Typical.

The absolute worst thing about the Care Bears, though, was their arrogant-ass Care Bear Countdown. They loved that stupid Countdown. To make matters worse, we had to do a Care Bear Cousin Countdown that was basically the same thing except that we didn't look like homos when we did it; we looked like unoriginal homos. After doing the Care Bear Cousin Countdown ten or eleven times, I just stopped caring and started drinking and running with a pretty tough pride…

I’d rather not talk about that part of my life.

Fast-forward to 1995. I sold my name and my story to Mel Gibson when he decided to do a movie about my life and times as a Care Bear Cousin. He told me he really wanted to use the power of cinema to convey my side of the story: the trials and tribulations of living life in the Care Bears’ shadow. I jumped at the opportunity.

As it turned out, “Braveheart” had nothing to do with me! It was all about some smelly Irish dude that hated the English and combing his hair. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only thing I hate more than the Care Bears are the Goddamn Irish. Regardless, I made enough money in residuals from the movie to be able to afford a tight little condo in the suburbs with Gobo from Fraggle Rock.

I like Gobo because we see eye-to-eye on most things like hating the Care Bears, the Muppets and pretty much everyone involved with Eureka’s Castle. Gobo and I have been talking about putting a reality show together about us and the wacky things that happen in our everyday lives. I swear, sometimes when we’re just hanging out, we come up with the funniest shit. Like, this one time, we were fixing a cabinet in the kitchen and I said, "Hey, could you grab those knobs for me?" and Gobo was like, "That’s what she said!" Classic!

You put a camera on us and you’ve got television gold.

Please, put a camera on us…

Hey Japan, Quit Freaking Me Out

I’m twenty-two years old and I’m not Amare Stoudemire. Thus, the best place I could afford to live while avoiding the shame of living with my parents was in the basement of my buddy’s townhouse. It’s big enough for my bed, desk, armoire and pile of clothes on the floor that I use instead of my armoire. It’s got carpet. Frankly, it’s a pretty decent room for what I pay except for three things:

1. There are no windows, so it’s pitch black at night.
2. The water heater is in a recess in my closet and it makes creepy noises all the time.
3. Japanese people won’t quit making pants-poopingly scary movies that make every night in my room a journey into a dark void of unfathomable terror.

Alright, Japan. We get it. You’re fucking scary. I don’t know what’s going on over there when the sun goes down, but if it’s anything like the shit that went down in The Ring, The Grudge or The Ring 2, then I’m staying the hell out of Japan. Don’t even get me started on The Audition… By the way, if you haven’t seen The Audition yet, don’t ask me about it because I haven’t seen it either. I only saw a clip and that was enough to make me throw out the “J” from my 1996 Encyclopaedia Britannica set.

“J” for Japan…

My bed is parallel to and a foot away from my closet, which, in the dark, looks amazingly like the closet in which they found that girl in The Ring. That means that I go to sleep looking right at a mirrored sliding door with a water heater groaning away behind it every single night. I have a sheet, a blanket and a comforter with a flannel duvet cover to hide under, but guess what? Ghosts don’t give a shit! “Oh what’s this? A 200 thread count blanket? I’d better get going…” Psyche! That never happens! Plus, I can’t afford 200 thread count, so even if it could happen, I’d still be ghost food.

That’s not even the worst of it; my closet also happens to have a deep recess reaching upward, much like the closet in The Grudge. So, the worst thing about sleeping in my room isn’t guessing if I’m going to die, it’s guessing which popular Japanese demon is going to do the deed. Thanks a lot Japan; you’ve ruined sleep, my second favorite thing in the world. What’s your encore? A monster made out of chili fries? You guys want to take away my chili fries? Grow a soul!

Enough already; you win. Maybe America rules at making homing missiles, heavy metal music, dogs that aren’t gay-looking and episode after unbelievable episode of The OC, but we’ll concede on scary movies. But that’s not enough for Japan, is it, you big dick? You’re not going to be satisfied until I have to sack up and move into a real apartment with real windows and natural light and closets without water heaters looming behind sliding doors making scary noises that force me to keep the TV on as I go to sleep, are you?

No way, not a chance. You’re just getting warmed up. For lo! what was the first trailer I saw last night as I was innocently trying to watch Ice Cube get loco on some fools in XXX: State of the Union? Coming soon, to a theater dangerously near me, from the author of The Ring, Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly stars in… Dark Water.” Five bucks says I leave the theater with a fear of water, the dark, dark water, normal-to-light water in the dark, and Jennifer Connelly. Actually, I’ve feared Jennifer Connely ever since she did The Hulk. Plus, she’s like 6’6” which gives me the heebie-jeebies anyway. But I digress. The point here is that I already can’t open closets, turn on the TV, watch video tapes, sleep on the floor, wash my hair, pet cats, answer the phone, hang out in wells or make out passionately with Sarah Michelle Geller without crapping myself thanks to these movies; now, I’m going to be afraid of water which makes up approximately 65% of my own body. Sweet.

I also heard that they’ve got a The Grudge 2 in production for 2006. Wow, thanks again, Japan. More pale bitches jumping out of closets to kill people; more paralyzing clickity-clack throat sounds; more of me closing my eyes and screaming like a woman in front of my date who will now say no to sex way before she even finds out that I live in a basement.

Fuck you, Japan.

You know what, fuck sushi too. That shit’s always cold.

Rock the Rock, Rock

If you're going to rock, you might as well rock as hard as you possibly can. So, if you rock, you might as well rock the rock because the rock is the rockin'est thing around. If you happened to be The Rock and someone said, "Hey, rock the rock, Rock," then complying with such a request would involve a truckload of rocking out!

Plus, you'd be strong; you know, because you're The Rock. So... you could move stuff easier.

Nobody is The Paper. Nobody "papers" anything like a verb. Even if you were to "paper" something, you certainly wouldn't "paper the paper" because paper sucks! Paper, furthermore, has no personality. In fact, you have to invent the personality of a piece of paper by drawing or writing on it. Paper can't determine any part of its own destiny.

Still, the truth is undeniable: paper beats rock.

Here's the tough one, though: would scissors still beat paper if you drew a rock on the paper? Think about it, if someone showed you a piece of paper with a drawing of a rock on it and said, "What's this?" you'd undoubtedly respond, "That's a rock, dickshell."

Well, maybe you wouldn't call the guy a "dickshell," but you would certainly call the drawing a "rock" rather than a "paper." This is why I love ro sham bo, or rock paper scissors or whatever you call it: the complex strategy; the intangible elements; the potential for inventive meddling; the three elements battling perfectly against one another in splendid harmony. Just like Battle Beasts.

Battle Beasts, if you're too young to remember or sucked as a kid in the 1980s, were these little animal dudes with guns and knives and weapons and stuff that you could use to beat the hell out your friends and your friends' Battle Beasts. The second best part, though, was that they each came with a heat-em-up decal on their chest that had an icon of either water, fire or wood. Water drowns fire; fire burns wood; wood... um... floats all the fuck over water. So you could have a Battle Beast Penguin against a Battle Beast Lion and, if the Penguin had a better icon than the Lion, it didn't even matter that he was a worthless penguin; he would still win! That kicked ass!

"So, Mike," you are probably wondering to yourself, possibly with a finger jammed way, way up your nose or butthole, "what was the best thing?" The best thing about Battle Beasts, my probing friend, is that after about a week, the decal would totally fall off and you could revert to the rules of the jungle or total chaos. I preferred the latter. In fact, I liked to throw the Battle Beasts at one another and see which one knocked the other furhter back after the mid-air collision. There's your fuckin' winner right there!

Nobody, though, was ever as big of a winner as Steve Perry, lead singer of Journey. God dammit... what a winner. That guy was so cool. He had the coolest voice, the coolest hair and the coolest fucking face of any dude around. "Don't Stop Believing," "Any Way You Want It," "Wheel in the Sky"... those songs rocked! They rocked so hard that they rocked the rock. Back in the day, I'll bet The Rock rocked the rock to the rock that Steve Perry rocked out.

So, if you think about it, rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, paper beats rock, water beats fire, fire beats wood and wood beats water (somehow). If I remember correclty from his films, The Rock beats scissors, water and wood but not fire and, of course, not paper. Steve Perry, however, beats everything.

If you're going to rock, you might as well rock as hard as you possibly can. But, if you're not going to throw rock, you should throw Steve Perry because you'll never lose and you'll totally piss off the chump who throws stupid paper.

Rock on!