B-Movie Review: 'SpaceCamp' (1986)

You know exactly what America needed right after the Challenger disaster? A movie about goofball teenagers accidentally being sent into space by a robot that hacked into the NASA mainframe. 

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo___X

If you're looking for reasons why NASA ain't doing much of shit anymore, Jan. 28, 1986 is your answer.

That morning, the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after takeoff, killing all seven people on board. Strangely enough, one of the people who was originally slated to be onboard was the bitch who played Big Bird on Sesame Street, and the only reason why she wasn't was because NASA couldn't find a helmet big enough to fit her big fluffy head.

The administration didn't even bother launching anything for another three years, which coupled with the collapse of the Soviet Union, pretty much ended the great Space Race. Business picked up a little in the 1990s, but when history repeated itself with the Columbia disaster in 2003, NASA more or less packed it up and hasn't tried to do anything ambitious with live crew members since.

Pictured: something no one has ever fapped to.

Now, I wasn't around back then, but to say the Challenger disaster really fucked with people back in '86 would be an understatement. For 30 years the space program had been one of the nation's greatest symbols of pride, a testament to American technology and our engineering ingenuity. When those seven people got blown the fuck out (literally), all of a sudden we had to come to grips with the fact that - maybe - we weren't the mechanical masterminds and aerospace whizzes we thought we were. Remember, this happened right around the same time Japan started to eat us alive with electronics tariffs while rice burner sales slowly began eclipsing American-made rides. For three decades we thought our superior intellect and unparalleled craftsmanship would give us an eternal leg up on our Asiatic competitors, but as soon as the panels started flying off the shuttle, all of a sudden we just knew we weren't the industrial (or aeronautical) titans we had convinced ourselves we were. 

Which, naturally, made the timing of SpaceCamp about as unfortunate as finding poison gas Pokemon Go monsters running around at Holocaust memorials. 

In the mid-1980s, Patrick Bailey and Larry Williams wrote a book about the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. (more on that in just a bit.) ABC Pictures thought the premise of kids getting accidentally launched into space and having to learn to work together to survive interstellar death was a dandy idea for a feature and groundwork on the feature film began in 1985. A June 1986 release date was targeted, with the filmmakers expecting it to be the family-comedy breakout hit of the summer.

To say the Challenger disaster put the brakes on the project is kinda' like saying the JFK assassination kinda' hurt Kennedy's chances of re-election. Since the film was almost 100 percent done at the time of the shuttle explosion, the studio felt it was too late to yank the plug on the $25 million movie, so despite the deluge of bad publicity, the film was released as planned that summer. 

Pictured: something everybody has fapped to.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the movie was a colossal box office dud, failing to earn back even $10 million. Thanks to endless repeats on Saturday afternoon cable throughout the 1990s, however, the film has since gone on to become something of a minor '80s cult classic, with enough people having seen it to garner at least one or two passing gags on Family Guy.

But does the movie have any sort of intrinsic value beyond rudimentary nostalgia? Well, how's about we fire up our old VHS cassette and see for ourselves ...

The movie opens with a little girl in a cornfield wishing on a shooting star. She says it's like John Glenn is winking at her from space and shes' destined to become an astronaut. Well, flash forward 20 years and she's all grown up and played by Kate Capshaw and married to Tom Skerrit. She's pissed because she just got turned down for an astronaut gig because she's a woman (probably) and has to operate a junior cadet space camp alongside her hubby for the summer.

The kids show up and it's your usual grab-bag of multi-ethnic teens (and LULZ a plenty when they assign the Asian kid to the yellow team.) So we get some exposition on the history of the space camp (it's a real place in Mobile, Ala.) and then we're introduced to Kathryn, this dorky girl (played by Lea Thompson) who knows everything about the lead space camp woman and kinda' idolizes her. And of course, the token black kid yells a lot, and displays several tendencies that suggest he is literally mentally retarded. We also meet Tish (played by Kelly Preston) who looks like your basic valley girl and says her dream is to become an extra-terrestrial dis jockey. Then this annoying ass white guy named Kevin (played by Tate Donovan) pretends he's the Asian guy so he can be on the same team with Tish, prolly because he wants to hump her and stuff.

The adults show off the shuttle simulator and here's where Jinx - the film's iconic robot - makes his debut. The crew refer to it as a "$27 million handyman" while the kids simply refer to it as "an extra-terrestrial midget." Then this one little kid (played by Joaquin Phoenix, back when he was trying to convince everybody to call him "Leaf" instead) starts complaining about how badly he wants to move up from the cub scout program to the teen cadets, while the  girls talk about the size of all the boys' hands (get it, because it's an allusion to their penis sizes!) Kathryn and Tish start to bond and as it turns out, Tish is actually something of a savant with an encyclopedic memory of everything, including piloting controls, for some unexplained reason. She then tries to convince Kathryn to let her give her a makeover while "Walk of Life" plays in the background.

Holy shit, the black kid says his big plan is to open the first outer space McDonalds. Then Kevin tells him "not to take any of this shit seriously," because this is an edgy family-friendly adventure-comedy, that's why.

And it's still not as high as his brother River was in 1986.

The little kid hides Jinx in the closet and the older kids start bullying him. Then he hears somebody say "shit" and the robot starts talking about solid waste disposal. The kids quickly realize Jinx literally does anything you tell it to and after a series of contradictory orders, it malfunctions. So, yeah, I guess that makes it the world's first autism-bot. The little kid repairs Jinx, so now it says "yo, man" as a greeting, then calls all the older kids "jerk-offs" and "monkey-glutes" for messing with him. He attempts to convince the robot to not take things so literally, but since it's a robot, it clearly don't give a fuck what some eight-year-old thinks.

Time for a montage of cadets testing out equipment. Man, those blue tee shirts are bitchin'!

Kathryn the nerd girl can't figure out how the gyroscope stabilization thing works (you know, that giant, spinning hamster ball thing from The Lawnmower Man) and feels bad. Kevin tries to reassure her and gives her a ride out to the lake in his jeep to look at the stars. His pick-up line: "so, you're really into this space stuff, huh?" She talks about watching the sky as a kid and how she couldn't wait to grow up. The romantic tension is so taut, even my fucking TV is sweating right now.

Jinx tells the adults the two kids snuck out and they catch Kathryn and Kevin making out by the waterfront. Kate Capshaw gives 'em a stern talking to and says she sees a lot of herself in Kathryn and that she has a lot of potential and she better not screw this up. Then the little kid starts crying, because he wishes he was in space instead of on Earth. Goddamn at the angst, eh? So Jinx takes over the control room and starts talking with NASA's mainframe. He LITERALLY puts the kid in the astronaut database, because he takes everything literally, remember?

Later, the kids go through a mechanical spacewalk simulator and rush through a power failure drill. Kevin does a Cheech and Chong impersonation when the adults tell him to take over. And he keeps telling more bad jokes while they simulate crashing and burning. 

Naturally, Kate chews the kids out for not taking all this make-believe space shit serious enough. Meanwhile, Jinx is still finagling with the NASA super computer to put an eight-year-old aboard the next shuttle. And OOPS! Jinx unwittingly manages to convince the computer to LAUNCH while the kids are doing a test run inside it! Despite the fact it just sentenced half a dozen tenth graders to certain death, Jinx rationalizes his actions by declaring he and the little kid are "friends forever" and that by causing a thermal curtain failure, he's actually giving the kid everything he's ever dreamed of. 

Thankfully, Kate's character remains aboard, so naturally, she screams "we're going to explode!" when the shuttle starts taking off, because that sure as sugar won't scare the dookie out of a bunch of 14-year-olds already crying their eyes out. So, to avoid a very Challenger-esque mishap, ground control has no choice but to send Kate and the kids into orbit. 

After some stock footage plays, the kids continue to panic and say very adult words like "shit" and "goddamn." Still, they can't help but "ooo" and "aww" when the window panels open and the see the curvature of the Earth. And just like that, the pants-pissing horror of literally two minutes ago is supplanted by joy and mirth as the kids point out Africa and the Swiss Alps.

Huh. Who'd thunk the people who made Mega Man would've had a direct line to NASA headquarters?

Back on terra forma, Tom Skeritt says the president wouldn't believe him if he told them they just launched his wife and five kids into space, so NASA - rather realistically - decides to keep this one mum. Now, as to how D.O.D. radar, civilian aerospace monitoring systems, Soviet detection modules and everybody within a 50 mile radius of the goddamn launch site wouldn't realize a shuttle just took off with no explanation nor warning, of course, is never diegetically addressed. In orbit, the kids realize they have 12 hours worth of air, but oh shit, they're going to need at least 13 to survive re-entry. So they decide to hook up with a space station that's conveniently right beside them to get more oxygen. And of course, Kevin the comedian is still making jokes about 7-11, despite the fact there's a 99.999999 percent chance he'll be dead as shit in half a day's time.

The kids eat some tube food and come up with this convoluted plan to communicate with ground control by Morse Code. Kate puts on a space suit and seals up a loose hatch. Then she does a full suit space walk and is absolutely awestruck looking at the Earth. As in, it literally sounds like she's orgasming while looking at it. Unfortunatley, she doesn't have a jetpack and can't reach this satellite thingy she's trying to get to. So - naturally - they put the little kid in a space suit to save her. Of course, he starts freaking out once he's out there, but then Kevin starts doing an Obi-Wan Kenobi impersonation and that inspires the little twat to rescue his adult supervisor "using the force."

I ain't bullshitting you when I tell you the rescue sequence goes on for about 20 minutes. The kid eventually lets go of a sandbag anchor and goes flying off into space and Kate isn't even that concerned at first. Shockingly, the greenscreen effects aren't that bad for a mid-80s production. Of course, she manages to save him, because the idea of leaving a child to suffocate all alone in the vacant nothingness of space is probably too much for a PG-13 movie. 

The black kid is tasked with connecting the oxygen tubes to the shuttle. Kate lets him know if they connect the wrong tubes, the whole thing is going to explode. He and Kathryn bicker back and forth whether the red wire or the yellow wire is the right one. Anyhoo, the black kid was right, which means that if the nerdy white girl had the final say, she would've been responsible for a sextuple fatality space explosion. The moral of the story? Never trust women with math.

God damn it, now Kate gets hit by the runaway sandbag and the little kid has to rescue her. A bunch of dudes smoking cigarettes at NASA headquarters tell them to get out of there, but the crew says "fuck that" and do a manual override to open the cargo doors. Kevin takes the lead as shit gets real and he pulls her back into the pod. Now the nerdy girl is kvetching to Kevin about not being as good a captain as he is - you know, right in the middle of a life or death struggle for space survival. Kate, who is still passed out from spinning around in space for so long, is wrapped in duck tape to keep from floating around the shuttle bumping into things and the kids decide to land in the middle of the desert because ... well, I don't know why, to be honest.

Now Jinx relays the Morse Code back to NASA (remember that plot point from like 45 minutes ago?) and Tom says he is going to "treat him to a can of oil" for his good work (even though the entire situation is solely the result of his up-fuckery.) He then lets them know about an alternate landing site in the desert, then Annie wakes up. The kids prepare for re-entry. The nerdy girl takes the controls and has to stabilize the craft. Hey, just like that exercise she couldn't do in the movie's first act! She has a flashback of Annie's pep talk from earlier, and re-entry begins. Unfortunately, it's too little too late and they all crash and die. Nah, just bullshitting 'ya, they survive unscratched. Everybody celebrates not getting blown to smithereens and that, kiddos, is all she wrote ... no Goonies-esque post-climax character resolutions or  resolved subplots or nothing, just the shuttle hitting the tarmac and the credits a-scrollin'. 

The most advanced artificial intelligence lifeform ever designed, and the government is using it as a janitor at a kids' summer camp. Welcome to Reagan's America.

You know, I always wanted to see a sequel with everybody at NASA losing their jobs for child endangerment and Jinx being declared an enemy of the state for hijacking federal I.T. Alas, fortune never smiled upon us, and regrettably (well, no, not really) we never got ourselves a SpaceCamp 2: Space Harder. 

If you're looking for the definition of "a mediocre movie," I think SpaceCamp is the perfect bellwether. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just kinda' there. About half the movies you'll watch in your lifetime will be better than this, and about half the movies you'll watch in your lifetime will be worse. It's the most average movie I've ever seen - one sans any notable qualities, nor any notable defects. It exists in an impenetrable sac of absolute, total and perfect unremarkableness ... being asked to give an opinion on the overall objective quality of the movie is akin to being asked to write an essay on how water tastes.

I don't hate SpaceCamp, I don't love SpaceCamp, I can't find anything to praise SpaceCamp for and I can't find anything to condemn SpaceCamp for. It's a movie forever vacuum-sealed in its own meager existence, and in that, assigning it any kind of value judgement is pointless. Some of you may really, really like the flick and some of you may really, really dislike it, but being the peculiar jumble of particles and protoplasm I am, I just can't muster enough psychological energy to describe the film as anything other than "meh."

Really, all I can tell you is that the name of the guy who directed it was "Harry Winer," which is really, really phonetically close to sounding like "hairy wiener." And according to the iMDb, the original ending had the kids being rescued by a Russian shuttle, which ... hold on to your panties, M. Night ... was manned by a bunch of Soviet children. And, perhaps most importantly of all, that I still would like to fuck Kelly Preston, preferably missionary style. 

And in a nutshell, that's all I've got to say about SpaceCamp ... and just as a general rule of life, be wary of anybody who's got any more to say about it than that. 

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MS-DOS Review: 'Avoid the Noid' (1989)

If you're looking for the most aggravating video game of all-time, buddy, you just hit the jackpot.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

In the late 1980s, Domino's Pizza drummed up one of the decade's defining advertising mascots - the Noid. Long story short, the character was a dude inexplicably clad in a red bunny suit who - equally inexplicably - had an obsession with royally fucking up people's pizzas. Numerous commercials were produced starring the Claymation critter, ultimately making the phrase "avoid the Noid" a short-lived household saying. Like every other stupid popular thing in the 1980s, the Noid produced a merchandising bonanza, with the character's visage showing up on toys, cups, playing cards, car covers, buttons, tee-shirts, towels and fucking tambourines. And while Capcom's NES game Yo! Noid is certainly the most popular video game starring Domino's spokes-sonofabitch, it was far from the character's only appearance in the interactive entertainment medium in the decade.

Enter Avoid the Noid on MS-DOS systems. Developed by the preposterously soulless-sounding California Merchandising Concepts, the ShareData published offering is one of the most frustrating video games I've ever played. The game isn't just difficult, it's practically engineered to make gamers pull their hair out and sling their keyboards across the room in unbridled e-rage. In fact, you could almost consider the title a precursor to all that "unironically meant to be frustrating" platformers like Syobon Action and I Wanna Be The Guy. Except, at the time, the folks who made Avoid the Noid weren't aware that irony - as an abstract concept - existed and pretty much all of the irritating aspects of the game aren't intentional, but the aftermath of really, really shitty programming and substandard level design. 

The game has a very simple premise. You play - fittingly enough - a pizza delivery guy and your mission is to get the piping hot pies delivered to the top floor of a humongous skyscraper. Naturally, the Noid is all over the fucking place, doing everything he (I'm guessing it's a "he," right?) to ruin your pizza, get your fired, and make sure you have to live on welfare for the rest of your natural born life.

If this looks like fun to you, it's officially time you got off drugs.

So here's the big problem with all of this. You see, all the Noid has to do is touch you and it's game over. Now, that wouldn't be such a pain in the anus if it wasn't for the following design flaws:

1.) The hit-detection is extremely poor, and sometimes the game registers a "hit" against you even though the Noid is visibly several pixels away from making contact with your character.

2.) The only defensive move at your disposal is a shitty looking somersault. Strangely enough, if you touch the Noid while you're somersaulting, the game doesn't register it as a hit, but if you just complete the somersault animation and you're still touching a Noid, it's an instant-kill. 

3.) There are booby traps everywhere, with absolutely no visual cues whatsoever. So basically, you have to somersault the entire game to avoid activating a falling platform.

4.) To advance stages, you have to use an elevator. The Noid can also use the elevator, and because the thing is so fucking slow, a lot of times you find yourself going up and down to simply avoid letting the Noid aboard. And the moment you do get out of the elevator, obviously the Noid is going to touch you and you're going to fucking die anyway.

5.) And last, but certainly not least, not only does the game throw a preposterous number of Noids at you even in the game's early stages, the sons-of-bitches are easily twice as fast as your character, which makes fleeing from the buggers when all other options have been expended an absolute impossibility.

Granted, the game designers were gracious enough to give you a power-up that clears all the Noids off the screen, but of course, you can only use it a finite number of times and - of course - the fucking things still respawn just a few moments later. Alas, as ass-blisteringly aggravating as this game is, you have to be thankful they even included something as basic as that, because a good goddamn, do you need as much help completing this one as you can get.

We begin the game with a very brief cutscene showing your delivery boy entering the high rise (which, presumably, has the word "DOOM" spray painted on it, because FORESHADOWING, that's why.) The game is laid out very similarly to that old arcade game Elevator Action, with three pastel-colored levels per screen. The idea is to collect keys strewn about the stage to unlock the elevator so you can travel to the next screen. Yeah, it sounds really simple in theory, but just you wait - the pizza chunk-encrusted shit is about to hit the fan in a real hurry. 

As soon as the second stage begins you can see the error of the developers' ways. Now you've got a steady stream of the Noids coming at you in waves of three, and you have to time your jumps and rolls pixel-perfect to avoid hitting any of those pie-fucking-up bastards. Even worse, there's this second or two-long animation that accompanies your character unlocking a door, which is bollocks to the nth degree because you can STILL get hit by a Noid during the animation cycle. And as frustrating as that is, it's still like, only the eighth or ninth most irritating thing about the title.

Holy shit, this is more intense than playing Gunstar Heroes. While being gang-raped. Multiple times. Over the course of one afternoon.

The third screen is where shit starts getting nigh-impossible. Now, not only do you have to deal with a wave of Noids, you ALSO have to avoid rockets that are next to impossible to avoid while rolling or jumping in the air. Another awful design choice was the inclusion of the telephones. Not only is that incessant ringing annoying as fuck, you really have no clue which one has a key hidden inside it or one that's actually a death trap that will send you plummeting to the equally death-trap ridden level beneath you. And THAT is doubly annoying because every time you fall, your avatar lets out a warbled Mr. Bill "uh-oh!" sound and it makes you want to kill everybody. Oh, and by the way, if you die, you get a cutscene of the Noid mocking you and letting out a chip tune giggle so annoying, that if you hear it more than three times, you WILL become homicidal. Holy hell, this game is good at pissing you off. I mean, really, really good.

Screen four can go fuck itself, because that's when the Noids start arming themselves with rocket launchers. Also, now you HAVE to investigate every telephone booth because they start giving you the digits for a security code you have to enter to access the game's final level. But on the plus side, at least they DO change the music from screen to screen. You have to give 'em points for that, I guess. 

So naturally, you keep looking for keys and security code numbers and avoiding Noids until you get to level 30, which is where the EXECUTIVE SUITE is. Once you get there, you'll have to get on top of the roof to collect more keys, and wouldn't you know it, now the Noids are commandeering biplanes and dropping water balloons on you. Once you collect three of them, you can FINALLY enter the CEO's office, where you are rewarded with a completely dialogue-less ending scene where your avatar - who bares an uncanny resemblance to Bob Denver - wipes sweat off his brow while some unseen rich white motherfucker takes a break from snorting heroin out of strippers' buttholes like in Wolf of Wall Street to enjoy a slice of pepperoni and mozz. And after all that, they don't even TELL you how much you got for a tip, which to me, is way more agonizing than wondering what was in that FedEx box in Castaway.

So, uh, is your avatar supposed to be Asian, or just really, really tired from lugging around pizzas all day?

Conceptually, anyway, Avoid the Noid is a game you can beat in five minutes. That is, you could if the controls were worth a shit - odds are, you're just going to keep dying from cheap hits over and over again until you get your fifteenth game over screen over the course of half an hour and scream "fuck it" and go back to watching tranny porn. The 30-minute in-game timer theoretically gives you enough time to beat it, though, and once you figure out where all the booby traps are and figure out how to game the elevators for all they're worth, I suppose you can muster up enough autism power to actually complete it.

But man oh man, do you have to be OCD as fuck to get that far. I've played some punishing games over the years, but this one may very well be the most annoying per capita gaming experience of my life. This isn't some hard ass fighting game or a SHMUP with a million billion things onscreen at once, it's just a crappy platforming game hobbled by piss poor controls and some of the worst hit detection you've ever experienced. Even as a novelty throwaway it's an absolute chore to churn through, and even the two hours or so I spent documenting it for this site feels like two hours of my existence I'll never, ever get back. 

If you want to play a game that will make you want to break everything you own and burn the local Domino's to the ground like Mookie did in Do the Right Thing, then yeah, Avoid the Noid ought to be right up your alley. Just don't say I didn't warn you when you wind up chucking a remote control out the window or punching a hole through you laptop ... just like that sumbitch Noid would've wanted you to. 

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Fuck EVERYBODY Running for Georgia's 6th Congressional District

Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter - representative politics is a load of hooey, and nothing demonstrates that better than this Tuesday's congressional runoff.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

I hate politics. But as boring and annoying as international geopoliticking may be, at least at has some cool stuff in it, like laser guided missiles and bacterial warfare. Unfortunately, you won't find robotic death machines and empty threats to invade rival nations to loot their precious natural resources in state-level politics, and you sure as hell won't see 'em in local level politics. Instead, you'll just hear a bunch of bickering and bitchin' about zoning ordinances and millage rates - i.e., topics about as interesting as the prospects of waxing your big toe. 

I should know that better than anyone, since I spent a couple of years covering local level government when I was a shittily paid reporter back in the day. There's no real way to adequately describe how boring it is to sit in city hall for six hours watching a whole bunch of cracka' motherfuckas' take turns debating the merits of increasing business license application fees and applying for block grants. I guess it's kinda' like sitting in a REALLY boring church service, except worse because at least at church you get some songs and if you're lucky, a wafer and a cup of juice. But when it comes to the great secular worship service, the only thing you get is uncomfortable seating and so much hot air, you kinda' want to run your hands underneath the podium to dry 'em off. 

Which brings us to my home state's 6th congressional district runoff - i.e., the most annoying fucking thing that's happened in Atlanta all year, and considering that also includes the time traffic was slowed to a crawl for two months because a crackhead set Interstate 85 on fire, that's saying a lot. 

Here's what you need to know about the state's 6th congressional district (and trust me, there ain't a whole lot for you to learn.) It encompasses a swath of about 700,000 people over a suspiciously arbitrary sliver of four different counties. The district is overwhelmingly white (about 72 percent of the total populace is mayonnaise colored) and stinkin' rich (the average household income is $72,000 - the average for the rest of Georgia is just $50,000.) Since 2000, the district has been more or less owned by Republicans, with Johnny Isaakson (now one of Georgia's U.S. Senators) and Tom Price (now the U.S. Health Secretary) being the only two men to represent the district over the last 16 years.

So, yeah, basically, it's been totally unwinnable RINO territory for liberals. That is, until this year, when this young up-and-comer named Jon Ossoff entered the race as a democratic challenger and actually won 48 percent of the vote - thus, facilitating a runoff against leading republican challenger Karen Handel on June 20. 

We'll get back to the specific candidates in just a bit. But first, we've got to talk about the national resonance of this particular election, which is apparently is so strategically important that even the fuckin' President of the United States is tweeting about it. 

Now, it's kinda funny that nobody gave a shit about the 6th district until recently. Remember, I lived and worked in the damn place for the better part of a decade, and nobody anywhere considered it a nationally significant congressional district. But all of a sudden, the fact that a dimmicrat might actually win the whole kit and caboodle has all them politicos in D.C. in a tizzy. After all, this is solid red clay Republican soil, and the idea of some lanky liberal coming in there and wresting the territory away from the conservatives just HAS to be a proxy referendum on Trump and a sign that the rural hoi polli are finally shying away from the G.O.P., right? 

Don't believe the narrative, kids. The way the national media has spun it, you'd think Georgia's 6th congressional district was home to NOTHING but MAGA-hat-wearing N.R.A. members with 17 different rebel flags on their trucks. Well, take it from somebody whose actually paid taxes in the district - that ain't the kind of "deep south" we're talking about here. 

Georgia's 6th district is basically a lily-white suburban stronghold, predominantly populated by out-of-region transplants. These aren't guys named Clem and Cletus who work on trucks for a living and spit tobacco on their kitchen floor. The aggregate 6th district voter is some guy named Chad or Gerald, who works as a financial planner or I.T. specialist for one of them big tech firms in Atlanta. He drives an Audi, he has 2.3 kids, and he was probably born in Pennsylvania or New Jersey. If by some chance he actually was born in the region, he almost certainly went to a big name SEC school and his family's wealth can probably be tied to owning a plantation at some point in their bloodline. Yes, he's more likely to vote republican than democrat, but he's anything but a populist. He's a firm believer in status quo, establishment conservative politics and he probably jacks off thinking about open trade and globalization when his wife is shopping at the latest and greatest "mixed use development" shopping behemoth. He probably doesn't own a gun, but he's in bed with Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and the rest of their ilk because they'll keep his taxes relatively low and provide him plenty of opportunities to offshore or outsource jobs to guys named Habib instead of paying a local worker to do the same job at double the cost. 

So, in other words, most of the voters in the district are what we would call "elitists." They've got money, they've got wealth, they've got retirement plans and they're every bit as entitled and class-conscious as your average first-year liberal arts college social justice warrior. In that, it makes sense that so many of 'em would jump ship from the post-Trump G.O.P. and its populism uber alles message to the dimmicrats, whose anti-economic-nationalism platform is actually more attuned to their own financial wants than the republicans.

Then again, you might be wondering how some scrawny, Jewish, 30-year-old kid with a Brillo Pad haircut who's never held any kind of public office before could have ever been catapulted to take over Georgia's 6th congressional to being with. Well, there's a simple answer for that one: because a whole hell of a lot of democrats from out of Georgia are bankrolling him.

As in, the guy's received more than $8.3 million from liberal sympathizers, and just 5 percent of it came from in-state donors.  Irony of ironies, he doesn't even live in Georgia's 6th district and not only did he attend college out of state, he attended it out of country at the London School of Economics. 

Basically, he's the very definition of a neo-carpetbagger. He's LITERALLY being funded by democratic elites from the northeast and west coast to impose their political ideals on Georgia's native born (you know, the few left in the district who haven't been displaced by U.N.-approved ethnic cleansing "resettlement projects" and socially-engineered migration "cultural enrichment" programs.) His campaign is basically a putsch to enforce alien rule on a nominally sovereign community simply for the sake of bolstering the dimmicrats' voting power in congress. He has no idea what the needs of the community are and he doesn't care. He's just there as a liberal puppet, another warm ass in a seat in D.C. to help the dimmicrat agenda.

It's not surprising the attack ads against him have focused on that - something he hasn't even tried to refute in his own campaign clips. In one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life, one anti-Ossoff ad brilliantly shows a whole bunch of stereotypical San Fran liberals talking at length about how happy they are to see Ossoff running in Georgia, complete with hippie chicks talking about how glad they are to see military spending cut because, in her words, "ISIS is overrated." There's also another good 'un showing Ossoff dressed up like Han Solo in college that busts his balls so hard that it's pretty much a guarantee that he's going to be pissing dust for the rest of his life. Needless to say, you need to see both of these things right fucking now:

The problem is, his opponent - 55-year-old, approximately 300-pound MIL-to-definitely-not-F Karen Handel - is every bit is annoying and full of dookie. If Ossoff is your dime-a-dozen liberal turd, Handel is the all-too-predictable republican counter-shit in the other stall that's just as damn stanky. 

Although Handel does have some experience in public office, it's not like her track record is that impressive. She's been Georgia's secretary of state and a member of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, and before that, she was a veep of public policy for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure "charity" until they decided to start giving money to Planned Parenthood (she even wrote a book about it, but fuck it, nobody's got time to slog through that mess.) She also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014 but (obviously) lost. She also ran for governor in 2010, but lost there, too. Basically, Handel is a bitch that loses a lot, but because she has kind of a brand name, the Republicans keep propping her up as *their-girl*. So basically, she's kinda' like John McCain, except I'd prolly have an easier time fucking him than her wrinkled, flabby, whale-hipped ass. 

As for the Ossoff counter-attack, they're basically saying she's a self-centered fat whore who spends taxpayer dollars on chairs and her own SUV and that she would - and this is a direct quote from one of the commercials - "fit right in in Washington." Of course, the Ossoff campaign never mulled the idea that if D.C. is a haven for self-serving turdwads, what does it mean when THEIR candidate wants to go there so much - but hey, by now, nobody expects consistency or logic in politics, especially down here in Georgia. 

Now right here I could give you a quick rundown on where the two candidates stand on issues like health care, military spending and the economy, but a.) you already know what they're going to think based on their political affiliations and b.) like you'd give a fuck, anyway. I'd like to say one of them is the lesser of two evils, but here, each candidate is especially annoying and irritating in their own unique way. Ossoff is literally there just to shoot down everything the Republicans propose in Congress (and possibly social engineer even more native Georgian jobs out of the market to appease his liberal bed buddies), and Handel is just a hammy Republican broad that brings nothing to the table and is going to swallow whatever crap the rest of the Republicans in Congress shat out without ever giving it a second guess.

The sad thing you realize with this runoff is that the concerns of the people who actually live in the area the candidates are representing is literally the least important thing in the minds of either Ossoff the Jack-Off or Karen (the floor can barely) Handel (her weight anymore.) This isn't about giving native Georgians their voice in federal policymaking, it's about the republicunts and demofags marching into our backyard and shoving these two dildo queens in front of us and telling us we need to vote for one of 'em because they'll help carry the red or blue flag of the Great Ongoing Political Culture War in that big old Thunderdome in D.C.

I know it's a drum I've been banging for a long time, but shouldn't we be doing shit truly democratically instead of this Mandaean "representative" bull crap? There's 700,000 people currently residing in Georgia's 6th district, and instead of leaving it up to old Brillo-pad-head or Thunder-thighs, why can't they directly vote in federal referendums? Shit, we don't even need senators or congressmen - every month, we'll just march on down to the polling precinct and pick apart the a'la carte legislative issues and let it come down to good old fashioned majority rules democracy. If we just have to have senators and congresspeople, at least limit their ability to make decisions. Sure, we'll vote you in to make laws on our behalf, but before any of that shit is official let the VERY PEOPLE YOU ARE REPRESENTING have the final say on what Capitol Hill is pushing through the sausage factory.

Representative democracy is, has and always will be a crock of shit, whether it's on the federal, state or local level. It ensures that party politics will always trump regional need, effectively signing away citizens' rights to lobby for their own interests. What we call "democracy" in the States is hardly anything more than an electoral war between dueling oligarchies, and nothing demonstrates the abject sadness of the system more than the two twats duking it out for control of Georgia's 6th district. 

So fuck Jon Ossoff, fuck Karen Handel, fuck everybody who's voting for either one of them and double fuck anybody who actually gave them campaign contributions. Neither Turd A nor Turd B is truly going to represent the hearts and minds of the people, and at the end of the day, absolutely nobody - regardless of their status as "elected official" - should be considered a proxy for your own voice.

Nobody - not no liberal democrat Jew or no fat ass republican she-beast - should lay claim to representing you on anything, and in that, no matter who wins on June 20, Georgia's 6th is hosed. Like thermonuclear war or Tic-Tac-Toe, the only responsible choice on Tuesday is to not vote at all, and if you run into anybody wearing one of those stupid "I'm a Georgia Voter" sticker, you have the Constitutional right to sock their shirt over their head and give 'em a Terry Funk piledriver. 

Every ballot cast - whether it's for a municipal city council seat or President of the goddamn United States - is a vote for politics as is and a ringing endorsement for elitism uber alles. "Representative democracy" is a scam, a scheme, a ruse and a shakedown, and anybody who's proud to forfeit their right to home rule direct democracy in order to promote some counterfeit political savior and his or her dogmatic devotion to the party line ought to be ashamed of themselves.

And the fact that human sanitary napkins like Ossoff and Handel are deemed good enough to represent the public in federal policymaking should tell you all you need to know about the utter futility of politics in these United States, don't it?

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Revisiting UFC 1: The Beginning - The First MMA PPV! (1993)

Who'd thunk a bunch of Street Fighter II wannabes punching each other in the nuts in Colorado would've spawned a multi-billion dollar a year mainstream industry?

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo___X

I'm pretty sure I've said this a million billion times by now, but mixed martial arts remains my favorite sport. Yes, I do love football, hockey, boxing and hardcore Japanese death match 'rasslin, but unlike any of those sports, I was actually around to watch the first MMA event in history. Nobody alive today can say they witnessed the first Major League Baseball game live as it happened, but I can lay claim to literally watching the birth of mixed martial arts as a mainstream sports competition.

Granted, this kinda' thing is inherently up to debate. Some folks say the first real MMA event was the premiere Shooto event in 1989. Others say the first real MMA event took place in Pennsylvania in 1980 under the "Tough Guy Competition" banner. And there were boxer vs. wrestler clustefucks being booked as early as the late 1800s, so I suppose calling UFC 1 the "first" MMA event naturally invites controversy. Still, the very first UFC show in 1993 was most certainly the highest profile MMA event up to that point on U.S. soil, and unless somebody out there has some well-hidden information I don't, it was obviously the first MMA Pay-Per-View event. Between the extensive previews in Black Belt magazine and the constant barrage of "ORDER IT NOW!" commercials on the Prevue Channel in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 12 spectacle, it was pretty much impossible to ignore the inaugural UFC card, and as a hardcore, pro wrestling and boxing loving second grader, I was absolutely pumped for the PPV mega-event. 

Of course, us being the cheap-ass no cable TV-having motherfuckers we were, I couldn't actually watch the PPV - instead, I had to set the tube to the static, snowflake channel and listen to the warbled play-by-play from the show like it was a radio program. Still, I clung onto every word, even though the commentary left (as you will soon see) quite a lot to be desired. So when the show finally got the full VHS treatment a couple of months later, you better believe I was there day one at the video store to see that sumbitch with all my rods and cones and shit.

It's pretty hard to believe that what started that evening in Denver would eventually morph into a billion-dollar industry with a huge national network TV deal and in-depth coverage on ESPN. At the time, the UFC was being vilified by EVERYBODY from John McCain to Mad Magazine as little more than human cockfighting, so the idea that such a thing could EVER become accepted in the mainstream still throws me for a loop. Needless to say, the sport has grown by leaps and bounds over the last quarter century, and what we saw at the original UFC event doesn't look anything close to the Ultimate Fighting Championship product of today. Back then, there were no rounds, no judges and to be totally honest, hardly any rules (while it was technically "illegal" to punch an opponent in the balls or claw his eyes, that resulted in purse fines and not instant disqualifications.) While today's UFC fighters are multi-disciplined, highly skilled technicians and world-class athletes, back in the day Ultimate Fighters were barely a step above any old drunk fat guy in a bar with a beer belly and a sawed off pool cue. They didn't box as much as they sloppily swung awkward haymakers and rabbit punched the fuck out of each other; as far as "technique" goes, about the most advanced thing anybody did was a kick to the head of a downed opponent - so primitive this UFC, when Royce Gracie broke out a basic-as-basic gets rear naked choke, nobody in the crowd knew what the fuck he was doing. 

In many ways, I can see why the current stewards of the UFC brand tend to shy away from the sport's less than savory roots. I can't recall the last time I saw footage of any UFC show from before the first season of The Ultimate Fighter hit the airwaves on TV, and even in historical retrospective pieces the modern incarnation of the UFC tends to suspiciously sidestep what the "old" promotion was about. While the UFC may not be 100 percent embarrassed of its origins, it's pretty clear they're doing what they can to avoid equating the modern product with the "no holds barred" product of yore; which - naturally - is all the more reason for us to revisit the sport as it USED to be. 

And - of course - there's no better place to start than the very FIRST UFC show, is there? Gather 'round, folks - it's time to pop in this old, old Vidmark VHS cassette and relive the magic of the good old vale tudo days all over again.

Following a trailer for an undoubtedly shitty no-budget thriller titled An Occasional Hell, we get a graphic displaying the Sephamore Entertainment Group logo. The show opens with some super cheesy 1980s rock and roll guitar music and the UFC: The Beginning logo ... complete with a bald dude jumping on the globe and beating the shit out of it.

Sagat, seen here kicking E. Honda right in the fucking face, hard.

Announcer Bill Wallace - who is actually a pretty famous kickboxer, for those of you not in the know - says there is a snow storm expected in Denver tonight, but that ain't on anybody's minds. LIVE from the McNichols Sports Arena, we're going to see eight of the "deadliest fighters" in the world competing in brawls with no rules, no judges and no time limits. We then run down our participants: 

• We've got Brazilian jiu-jitsu motherfucker Royce Gracie punching air in a windbreaker. 
• There's Taekwondo expert Patrick Smith, looking so much like Alistair Overeem it's scary.
• Here's "North American cruiser boxing champion" Art Jimmerson, who screams at the camera like a retard.
• It's savate champion Gerard Gordeau, a lanky guy who looks like Dan Henderson crossbred with Alexander Volkov.
• Also in the mix is Kempo karate champion Zane Frazier, who looks like Arsenio Hall. 
• Pancrase shoot fighter Ken Shamrock is, appropriately enough, introduced twisting the shit out of some dude's leg.
• There's big old fat ass sumo wrestler Teila Tuli, who even at 400 something pounds is probably underweight compared to most Samoans.
• And rounding out the cast, it's Kevin Rosier, who has to be the single fattest kickboxer who has ever lived.

Say kids, does that cast of wild and woolly characters sound familiar? Well, it should, because it's pretty much a carbon copy of the cast of Street Fighter II. Royce Gracie is a technical fighter clad in a gi just like Ryu, and because Ken Shamrock is literally the only other person on the show who knows what submissions are, I suppose that makes him SFII's Ken by default. Teila Tuli is pretty much E. Honda in real life, while tubby ass Kevin Rosier - who's prone to scratching during bouts - is our Blanka analogue. The towering Gerard Gordeau actually does bare a pretty striking resemblance to Sagat, while Art Jimmerson is a clone of Balrog, right down to the stupid haircut. The bulky Patrick Smith could probably pass for Dee Jay if he had dreadlocks and Zane Frazier is basically the black version of Fei Long. Granted, it's all probably a great big coincidence, but when you hear announcer Wallace describe them as "street tough warriors," man, does it make one start to ponder. 

Speaking of fuck-ups, Wallace starts off the show proper by erroneously referring to the event as "the Ultimate Fighting Challenge." His co-announcer is NFL legend Jim Brown, who mean mugs the camera like a motherfucker. He talks about being around the toughest boxers and football players in the world and how they are all pussies compared to tonight's UFC competitors. Rounding out the three-person booth is kickboxer Kathy Long, who literally has three seconds of screen time before Wallace starts mansplaining to her how fighting works. 

Rod Machado is in the cage. He says if he was fighting tonight, his strategy would be to get out of the ring as fast as he can. He also predicts most of these fights are going to end on the ground and he thinks the grapplers are going to have the best chance of victory. Wallace then throws it to Brian Kilmeade, who talks about the Octagon itself. He slaps the padding and talks about it being soft. He even hops on it like a trampoline a few times.

Wallace calls Tuli "Taylor" and refers to Gordeau as "a savate player." He then commits the ultimate MMA sin by pronouncing his name as ROY-ce Gracie. Not unlike the great Sega game Virtua Fighter, this thing is really being pimped as "discipline vs. discipline" affair. Tuli comes out wearing a gold and black kimono with a tribal pattern. He's also rocking a toboggan on his head that looks like a potato sack. He's 410 pounds and 6'2 and days the strongest part of his body is his "heart." Gordeau is out next. "He looks pretty mean," Long says. And as soon as he gets in the ring, he does four "Heil Hitler" salutes in a row and I'm not even joking (even weirder, Gordeau himself is technically Jewish.) He's 216 pounds, 6'5 and hails from the Netherlands. And yes, he sounds just like Bas Rutten. Our in-ring announcer is a guy named Rich Goins and by golly, he sounds just like Paul Heyman. 

Tuli's man-titties are just majestic. The ref checks Gordeau's nails. Wallace says it's a no-holds-barred affair, except for groin shots and eye gouging. Tuli immediately rushes Gordeau and he falls down. Gordeau roundhouse kicks Tuli RIGHT in the face and his teeth go flying out of his skull. If it were a field goal, it would've been good from about 50 yards out. We have a lengthy medical stoppage and the fans boo. On the replay, it looks like Gordeau got some good head shots in before the kick of death. "The mistake there was not getting up," Brown declares. The official time is just 26 seconds.

Kevin Rosier is 6'4 and 265 pounds. And damn, this dude can't cut a promo worth a shit. Long says she detects some nervousness in his face. Well, that, and fat. Zane Frazier is 6'6 and 230 pounds. He does Ed Parker's Kempo Karate and believes God is going to give him the "power to do the right thing at the right time."

Kevin with some huge overhand shots to begin. Zane momentarily hits the mat. Both men are back up. We have a collar and elbow tie-up against the cage. Zane with a clear groin shot and a ton of knees. Zane with a huge knee to the stomach. Zane is holding his foe's hair and just firing off big shots one after another. Clumps of Kevin's hair fall to the mat. Zane lands some more power shots but Rosier survives. Zane with another big uppercut and a straight right hand. Rosier defends with some pillow soft punches, then Zane retaliates with an actual punch and another hard knee to the stomach. Rosier with a fat overhand chop to the back. Rosier puts Zane in a headlock, but Zane gets out and falls on top of him. Zane with a knee to the face, but Rosier is right back up. He kicks Zane's knees. Rosier whiffs on a haymaker. Wallace asks Jim if ever got this tired on the football field as the two fighters struggle to stay upright. Rosier misses on a kick to the face. There's actually a timer on-screen counting down until the end of the fight, so hooray for self-spoiling! Rosier finally manages to land some punches and Zane falls down. Rosier lands a million punches to the back of Zane's head, stomps him a couple of times and since he's too tired to defend himself, the corner throws in the towel. Well, I guess that's the first comeback in UFC history, so I reckon it does have some kind of historical significance. In the post fight, the announcer asks Rosier what he was thinking while Zane was kicking his ass. "Why did I come out of retirement?" Kevin responds. He says his strategy was to just let Frazier punch him until he tired himself out, which is pretty much the exact strategy Homer Simpson used in the fight against Drederick Tatum.

The official time is 4:20. Replays are shown of Rosier's clubbing blows to the back of Frazier's skull. Damn, those stomps are nasty. "If I was in great shape," Brown comments, "I wouldn't fear anybody." Ahead of the semi-finals contest, Wallace predicts that Gordeau is going to try and kick Rosier's legs out from underneath him.

And up next, it's Balrog vs. Ryu!

Enter Royce Gracie, the smallest man in the tournament, as he chugs along on the Gracie train. He's 6'1 and 180 pounds and even without knowing more than five English words, he still gives a better promo than anybody else on the show. "You know, Jim," Wallace remarks, "I think we have half of Brazil here tonight."

Like everybody else, Art Jimmerson comes out to some really, really shitty WCW sounding music. Actually, there are just two audio tracks that are alternated between fighters, so it's even more ghetto than it sounds. Wallace says that at the time, Jimmerson was ranked eighth in the WBC light heavyweight rankings, which yeah, sounds like some bullshit right there. He's 6'1 and 196 pounds and wants everybody at home to know "you can't hit what you can't see." 

Wallace says Art's nickname is "King Arthur." And yes, he does enter the cage wearing one boxing glove, and he shadow boxes in the corner while he's introduced. Royce is described as a "jujitsu  master" and there are huge cheers from the crowd, complete with a blaring lucha horn. Wallace wonders why he's wearing a gi and everybody has to explain to him how its used for clinching and grappling.

Royce with some side kicks early. Nobody has said anything about Art wearing only one glove. The crowd is already booing. Royce gets the takedown. He's on top and head butts Art in the face. He wraps his ankles around Royce. A pro-Gracie chant breaks out. Art starts scooching all over the mat. Since he's wearing a fucking boxing glove, he can't grab Royce. Gracie locks Art up and he taps but nobody even knows what it means to tap out yet. On the replay, nobody really knows why Art submitted. Royce didn't have him in an actual choke or joint submission, so maybe he just tapped out because he was tired or couldn't breathe or Royce told him he was going to send the KKK after him or something. So, your winner, by - uh, something - Royce Gracie!

If you are wondering, the official UFC account is Gracie winning at 2:18 by, and I quote, "mount." Machado - perhaps desperate to say something during a doldrum - notes that one police department report found that 95 percent of all fights end up on the ground. Where he got that information or how a fucking police department would even be able to know that, however, remains a mystery.

Shamrock out first. Wallace says he is the strongest combatant in the ring tonight. He's 6'0 and 220 pounds. He talks about Pancrase while lifting weights. "I think I'm going to win this fight because I am well adapted and have many tools to use," he says. Patrick Smith is 6'2 and 217 pounds and gets a huge cheer because he's fighting out of Aurora, Colo. Per Wallace, "he's the most strongest, powerfulest and craziest of the group, I think." He also says he's "resistant to pain," which makes me wonder how in the fuck an announcer would be able to know that about a fighter, let alone one whose name he keeps getting wrong. 

The ring announcer pronounces it like PAN-CREASE and we all have a hearty chuckle. He also pronounces "savate" like "souvlaki" and we all get a chance to laugh even harder.

You have to dig Ken's bright red undies. Smith, the hometown boy, gets deafening cheers. Ken and Pat clinch. Ken with a spinning takedown. Smith is on top. Ken wraps his legs around Pat. Pat with some defensive headbutts. And there is the patented Shamrock ankle lock. Smith elbows Ken in the knees and tries to smack him in the face with his free foot. Ken is still working the ankle lock. And he's got it. Patrick taps and grimaces in pain. After the fight, Smith gets in Ken's face and the crowd cheers. One of the announcers says it must be humiliating to lose by, and I quote, "foot lock." Shamrock says this was easier than it is in Japan because his opponent didn't know how to use submissions. The fans chant "bullshit" and Ken replies "I aint' afraid of the man across from me." Ken is booed like a motherfucker as he makes his way to the back. Machado says grappling fighting isn't as exciting to watch and Wallace responds by saying it's because people can't see the submissions and mounting like they can. Then Machado literally calls him "horse Gracie" and I'm still laughing about it weeks later. For those of you wondering, the official time of that last bout was 1:49. 

Ready for the semi-finals? Well, too bad, because they're starting anyway.

"The crowd is absolutely alive," Brown says, which is the most Gorilla Monsoon-sounding shit I've ever heard that Gorilla Monsoon (probably) never said during a live TV broadcast. Rosier is rocking a gray hoodie and looks just like the fat jock bad dude in every 1980s sex comedy ever. The doctors say Gordeau's right hand is broken. "That's the promise of not wearing gloves or taping your hands," Wallace notes.

You know, that ring announcer kinda looks like Joe Buck a little. Rosier swallows a squirt of water in the corner. He's got a million pounds of Vaseline under his left eye. Dude looks like the Toxic Avenger at this point. 

Gordeau with some mean leg kicks. Kevin's hurt already. Gordeau with a nice head shot. Rosier goes down, Gordeau kicks the shit out of him and hits him with several strikes to the back of the head. Kevin is turtling up, Bob Sapp-style. Gordeau with more elbows and stomps to the ribs and this fight is all over. "I can feel the concussion all the way from here," Wallace remarks. Yep - you definitely won't be hearing THAT coming out of the announce booth these days. 

The official time is just 59 seconds. "I thought the fights would be a little longer," Wallace says. "I thought strategy would come into play."

In the post-fight interviews, Rosier said he wants to fight the super heavyweight kickboxing champ, whoever the fuck that was back then. He says he didn't know anything about his opponent's broken hand and blames his poor performance on the altitude. He also claims to have lost 45 pounds in three weeks to prepare for the tournament. Still, he says he wants to compete in the next UFC event (fun fact: he didn't) and hopes Gordeau wins the whole kit and caboodle later in the evening. 

Time for the Shamrock/Gracie build-up. Wallace refers to the "Gracie Train" as a "Brazilian train," which, yeah, I guess is close enough. Ken comes out in a jacket with a towel draped over his head. Bill predicts this will be the best fight of the night. "Even if it's short," Brown immediately responds.

Because it's a good idea we know how to properly spell it for the inevitable police report.

Shamrock gets Vaselined in the corner. Kathy asks if BJJ has weight divisions. "They probably have just one big weight division, which is none," Bill replies. 

Ken is booed like a motherfucker. One of the announcers reminds us that this isn't Royce's first time taking on a shoot fighter.

Gracie immediately shoots for a takedown and there is a mad scramble on the mat. Shamrock takes Gracie down and Royce kicks the shit out of Ken's liver from the bottom. Royce takes the full mount and starts working for a side choke and Ken TAPS. Hilariously, Royce doesn't let go and just keeps talking shit to Ken for another ten seconds. The announcers have no idea what happened and Machada has to explain to them what a "back choke" is. Wallace says that in Japan it's called a "hajime," which is bullshit because "hajime" actually translates into "beginning" in Japanese.

"I was thinking too much about getting a leg and didn't protect my neck," Ken says in the post-fight interview. He says it was his first time fighting a BJJ guy. If he fought him again, Ken said he would have taken the initiative and pressed his foe from the get-go ... which is exactly what he did at UFC 5. He says he's the third best fighter in the competition but doesn't tell us who he thinks the best two are. The ring interviewer tells him John Milius (the guy who directed the original and good Red Dawn) is in the audience and might want to cast him in a movie. That actually happened, on the fifth of never, nineteen-ninety-nope.

The official time was 57 seconds. On the fight replay Wallace refers to Shamrock as "Kim." But at least he stops himself before calling him ROY-CE Gracie again.

Before the main event, Rorion Gracie - who, with that Pablo Escobar mustache, looks just like a Brazilian Magnum P.I. - gives daddy Helio Gracie a lifetime achievement award. He looks like a weird hybrid of James Cromwell and Clint Eastwood. And hey, shouldn't his name be spelled RELIO Gracie? His translator says he's very happy to be here in Denver, and that attending this event is his prize for doing Gracie jujitsu for 65 years.

And it is TIME ... for the finals of the tourney. Gordeau is out first, then we see the Gracie train for the third time this evening. Wallace says Gracie is so successful because everybody is too worried about being punched in the face or kicked in the knees to guard against his grappling.

Both fighters get pretty much the same reaction. Believe it or not, Gordeau STILL had two of Tula's teeth embedded in his foot - the doctors just left the incisors in there and wrapped the tape around them to prevent an infection. Wallace makes a remark about the mouth being the nastiest part of the human anatomy, which again, is total and complete bullshit because the navel has the most per capita bacteria. 

Gracie shoots for a takedown. He plows Gordeau across the cage and tries to leg trip him. Gordeau doing a good job clinching and defending the takedown. Royce finally brings him down. Gracie is in the full mount. Gord tries to grab Gracie's head, but Royce flattens him out. "These Gracies are anacondas," Wallace comments. Royce working for a choke. He has the rear naked locked in and Gordeau submits. 

The tap comes at 1:44. Gordeau and Gracie jaw in the post-fight. Royce says "thanks to my brothers, thanks to my family for teaching me and preparing me to go through this." He says there was no pressure for him to win, which has to be bullshit since his family pretty much created the event as an elaborate infomercial for GJJ. He says his strategy was to not give them a chance to hit him. "I want to win without getting hit," Royce says. Additionally, he said he wore the gi because all the boxers had a lot of Vaseline on them and the jacket prevents 'em from slipping away. Of course, he says he's going to use the $50,000 cash prize to go to Disney Land before backtracking and saying "I'm not here for the money, I'm here for the owner and the family." Which, again, is the same damn thing.

And cue Jim Brown's all-time classic concluding line - "what we've learned tonight is that fighting isn't what we thought it was." 

Gracie gets a giant oversized check and an iron cross medallion and one of the announcers makes a joke about becoming a thumb wrestling champion and the credits, they doth roll.

And in 25 years, this was resold for $4.2 billion. Let that sink in, folks.

Well, who'd thought that would eventually become an international, mainstream sports sensation valued at $4.2 billion? In hindsight, UFC 1 hardly resembles the sport we know today, but really, that's what makes it so brutally appealing. Today's MMA product may be about things like skill and technique and speed, but back then it was about sheer blunt force trauma and hardly anything else. In the end, it's not really surprising that the only guy in the tournament with anything even remotely resembling ground skills won the whole enchilada - in fact, considering the format, structure and rules of the tourney, it almost seemed set up to benefit mat-based grapplers like Royce. Hey, did I mention that his folks were the ones who came up with the whole idea for the UFC? Well, they did, and it's TOTALLY not suspicious at all that Gracie wound up winning three out of the first four tournaments. Not one smidge. 

Considering we've had more than 200 UFC shows since this one (and that's not even counting all the Fight Nights, Fox shows and The Ultimate Fighter finales), I guess it goes without saying the sport found its cultural niche. Really, it would take an entire book to explain how the UFC went from a hyper-violent made-for-PPV spectacle that politicians railed against as "human cockfighting" to one of the biggest entertainment brands on the planet, but let's just say it entailed a lot of structural changes (including the addition of stupid things like "weight classes," "judges" and "regulations against punching people in the testicles repeatedly,") ACTUAL athletes getting on board with the product instead of overweight, one-dimensional brawlers, and - of course - a lot of masterful marketing by Zuffa and the guys behind Pride FC.

While the UFC did hold on to the one-night-tourney shtick for the next three or so years (and Pride did their part to keep the concept alive with their grand prix competitions) the whole "MMA tournament" thing has become a thing of the past, a'la leather football helmets and those old ass Jason Voorhees NHL goalie masks. While I can understand why the "tourney" concept is no longer viable in MMA (hint: it rhymes with "concussion risks"), it's also hard to dispute the hideous beauty of such grueling spectacles. In fact, the very next UFC card upped the ante by increasing the field of competitors to 16, so the ultimate victor had to win four fights in one night instead of three. There's just such an intrinsic appeal to that archaic format; no matter who wins, since they had to make their way through at least three people over the the course of three hours - surviving blows to the head, kicks to their cojones and numerous attempts to yank their bones out of their bodies - you invariably walked away with some kind of respect for the champion. As UFC 1 demonstrates, this ain't exactly the prettiest pageant in the world of sports, but at the same time, it's impossible to not be enthralled and captivated by the low-culture carnage at hand - despite (or in spite of) all the blood, teeth and swollen eye sockets. 

Interestingly enough, the old Vidmark VHS didn't include what is technically the first fight in UFC history - an "exhibition" match between Jason DeLucia and Trent Jenkins (which DeLucia won via rear naked choke, in case you were keen on the trivia.) As such, I think they nonetheless deserve a spot on the official The Internet Is In America "Where Are They Now?" special ... 

Jason DeLucia got his ass kicked by Royce Gracie at UFC 2 then he fought in Pancrase for the next eight years and got his ass kicked by Bas Rutten, Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki, among other notables. He did a one off appearance at UFC 23, where he got shellacked by Joe Slick, which has to be the obscurest fighter in UFC history to ever get your ass kicked by. His last fight was in 2006 - a TKO loss to some guy named Lance Everson at something called the Calloway Cup in Massachusetts. Trent Jenkins actually returned to the UFC two years later, only to get armlocked by Mark Hall. He had two more pro fights, all of them losses, for an 0-4 career MMA record. 

Despite his decent showing, Gerard Gordeau only had one more pro MMA fight in his career - a 1995 loss to Yuki Nakai in Vale Tudo Japan, in which Gordeau literally clawed Nakai's eyeball out. He then dicked around in Japanese pro 'rasslin in the late 1990s and early 2000s and if you're really good at finding stupid shit on YouTube, you should be able to pull up clips of him 'rassling dudes like Samoa Joe and Masato Tanaka rather easily. Unsurprisingly, Teila Tuli never had another MMA fight, but according to Wikipedia, he's probably making good money playing fat Hawaiian dudes on MacGyver and Hawaii 5-0. 

Kevin Rosier made good on his promise to return to the Octagon when he took on Joe Charles at UFC 4 - a bout Rosier lost by armbar in only 14 seconds. He had five more bouts on the indie circuit throughout the 1990s, notably dropping two consecutive bouts to Dan Severn just three months apart in two different promotions. Zane Frazier returned to the cage at UFC 9, but got ground and pounded by Cal Worsham. Believe it or not, he kept fighting on and off until 2008, even making a one and done appearance in that WEC in 2002.

Patrick Smith made it all the way to the finals of UFC 2, but unfortunately, that was the pinnacle of his MMA career. Despite getting a win over Rudyard Moncayo at UFC 6, Smith never returned to the Octagon, opting to monkey around in the indies until his retirement in 2009. He also holds the honor of being the first fighter in MMA history to ever loss a bout by "fan interference," so yeah, there's that. Ken Shamrock, of course, is probably the most prolific fighter to have participated in the inaugural UFC event, as he fought on 12 more UFC cards, including a couple of PPV-headliners, as late as 2006. In between, he did some tomfoolery in Pride FC and the WWF, and is currently a meth addict who literally lives in a  van down by the river.

While Art Jimmerson never had another MMA bout, he did continue boxing until 2002, along the way getting his ass handed to him by guys with names like "King Arthur" Williams, Adolpho Washington and Orlin "The Juice" Norris. And Royce Gracie, of course, would go on to win UFC 2 and UFC 4 before getting flattened by Ken Shamrock in UFC 5 in the fight that pretty much made judges essential for the sport's survival. After that he had three fights in Pride FC, including the legendary 90 minute war against Kazushi Sakuraba at the 2000 GP Finals. After getting murder-death-killed by Matt Hughes at UFC 60, Gracie would exact revenge over Sakuraba in 2007 and against Shamrock in 2016. Of course, he was on steroids both times, but hey - vale tudo applies to what you put in your body as much as it does what you do with you body, don't it?

As for my concluding thoughts on UFC 1? Eh, since all the fights are so short and nobody really knew what the rules were, everything comes off as extremely ghetto (although the production values are actually way better than I recall.) The Rosier/Frazier scrap is the closet the show got to a truly competitive bout, but it is nonetheless fun watching Royce Gracie and Gerard Gordeau just plow through people like WCW jobbers circa 1992. As far as sports-entertainment goes, there ain't a whole hell of a lot of athletic ability on display, but as gruesome and unrefined the product may be, it's also impossible to deny that this shit is extremely entertaining. It may not be civil or sanitary, and in hindsight, it may indeed be ridiculous slap in the face to professional fighting as an industry and an art form, but - as much as you may hate yourself for enjoying it - you're still going to enjoy it. 

This might just be the most gloriously unrefined form of entertainment not called "porn" or "Bum Fights." And even if you're not an MMA fan for some stupid ass reason, you still need to watch it ... if only to prove, once and for all, that senseless violence - no matter how much or how little you try to church it up - is going to continue to put plenty of asses in plenty of seats, for a very, very long time to come.

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