Man Up and Face the Rain

The frequent commenter known as ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER, from The Onion's AV Club blog, used the phrase that titles this blogpost in a challenge to one of the Onion's writers. He was referring to Blair's Death Rain Habanero Chips.
Now, mainly I enjoy the phrase 'man up and face the rain' because it's so in the mode of ZoMofo. He writes consistently in all caps, and does his best to act like a fourteen-year-old boy (suggesting once that a "Star Wars" prequel called "DERTH VEDER" would 'own'), despite the fact that he/she is probably not. Also, the phrase sounds like a bizarro-world John Fogarty lyric.

On the other hand, that fella up there left is named, I believe, Boukun (and on the right: Boukun's ghost?). Or maybe that's the name of the company. I don't know. I do know that I originally bought a bag of these things at Uwajimaya, having no idea what I was buying (habanero-flavored potato rings, it turns out).
The product itself was no great shakes, but I immediately became curious about what the website (www.tohato.jp) would hold.

A lot of time and care is put into Japanese products' websites: games, cartoons, etc. But isn't that also the case with, say, Budweiser's website? Probably. I don't know. But Bud doesn't have an adorable spokescharacter named Beano, who is an eyeglass-wearing soybean who sometimes weeps with fear. Especially in (the one cartoon I can't find) where he has to wrestle a Sumo giant.

Boukun, on the other hand, isn't afraid of shit. He's the prototypical pepper with a bad attitude; from that family of products that dare you to try them. But this guy goes wayyy too far.
What does this bruised wonder do, upon noting his honored status as a famous food product? He decides that (his) best move would be to hold a press conference, and when you are asked about -say- your vacation plans, let out a red cloud of noxious steam that causes the journalist's heads to explode. (I hope you all can see that cartoon, as I am not able to export it, not being able to read the text over there. It's the one on the far right, second line down. Just hit 'play'.)

He also has totalitarian dreams, as we all do, as referenced by this terrifying evil pepper bus tour idea. God help me, I want one of those masks.

This also, for some reason, reminds me of the movie Viva Knievel! (1977). Well, I know why: it was another topic of discussion on the AV Club. It is not a good movie, but like all the time devoted to a demonic potato crisp by Actual Professionals, it makes you note all over again that you can make a big deal out of anything.

This goes double for Evel himself. On his early '70's album Evel Speaks to Kids (I think that's the title: I don't actually own this album), there is the usual overdramatic theme song; some histrionic man is singing, "He's a maaannn...With a promise to keeep..."
What promise? To make as much money as possible by largely failing to do what you were paid to do? To who? 'The kids'? Promoters?

Better still, there's a sequence on the album when he is asked by a grade schooler; "When I jump my bike off the roof of my house, should I wear a helmet?"
(...and instead of suggesting that maybe the kid shouldn't do the initial bad idea he is asking about...)

An odd little smack! noise is heard. Evel asks the kid, "That hurt?"
The kid says, "No."
Smack! "That hurt?"
"No."
SMACK! "Ow!", the kid says.
"Get a helmet," Evel concludes.

He has conducted this entire interview in that entirely flat, emotionless lack-of-affect that made Evel seem badass -yes- but also would seem to preclude him being the focal point of a movie. That doesn't stop America from demanding just this, though, and Evel never ceases to be just that.
He is introduced to a sassy, vaguely feminist photographer played by Lauren Hutton. I don't remember her character's name, but it doesn't really matter since her name pretty much is The Women These Days I Don't Understand 'Em, What With Their Liberation and All. Then he is introduced to the crowd by pre-senility Frank Gifford:




I love that he seems to suggest that five or ten years worth of drugs will be just fine. Unfortunately, you will then explode.

Gene Kelly does a little too well as his drunk mechanic. Red Buttons is...Red Buttons! Frankly, I forget. There is an adorable little boy named Tommy that Evel is looked-up-to by, which leads to many awkward exchanges that are supposed to be tender, but aren't because Evel doesn't do emotion.
So lines that are supposed to be warm-hearted , delivered in flat-affect tone, come out as "tommy.yourdaddylovesyouverymuch.tommy."

I suspect that there should be some romance between that ball-breaker photog and Evel, but I don't knooowww...Gene Kelly having a breakdown after being "drugged", thrown into the looney bin, FREAKIN' OUT!!! Oscar, baby.

Leslie Nielsen as a bad guy! People forget that he spent the better part of twenty years playing a heavy. He has the entirely well-conceived and certainly not needlessly convoluted idea that the easiest way to smuggle "drugs" into the United States is to lure a popular stuntman/daredevil down to Mexico, kidnap him and his crew, drive a full scale replica of Evel's distinctive and highly recognizable mobile home into the States whose walls are filled with "drugs". The thinking goes that everybody loves and trusts Evel, and is well aware of his bizarre views on what "drugs" will do to you. Certainly his bus would be the last place anyone would choose to do th' smugglin'.
Evel, upon first hearing this unlikely invite, is lying in bed, shortly after -as usual- failing to make a jump without also breaking one of the eventual thirty-five bones he broke.
A bit tactlessly, he says, "Viva Tequila!" to his mechanic, who he knows is battling the bottle. They go.

I don't need to tell you what happens. You already know. It puts me in mind of this other great idea I had for a screenplay. Not Derth Veder, the story of an intergalactic warlord with a speech impediment, but a movie based on Elvis' '68 Comeback.

And, as of three years ago, the folks over at Rejected 'Love Is...' Comics gave us such things as that over there....
That's one of the tamer ones, by the way. But the greatest part of all was how the blog, for its brief tenure, was haunted by someone claiming to be the original author of the comic, who apparently has been dead since 1997.

Her contributions to the discussion included:
"Y DONT YALL GET SOME LIVES AND KNOW THAT IF ONE MORE FAKE LOVE IS... GETS POSTED KIM IS GOING TO SUE YALL...B/C I AM KATI AMYO"

and
"Don't Stare at My Adam's Apple you are the dumbest broad ive ever met im my life...i forgot u knew me sooo well...and you know how to spell my name...Kim is coming to get you...I AM KATUI AMYO BIATCH...Copyright infringement... yeah thats right ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS

HINT ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS..............kim is coming for you adams apple...aka i am a man and a woman....ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL CAPS ALL"

Like every decent troll I've ever met, they only created a blog profile to bother other people, which is a shame since I would have loved to hear what this person actually had to say. In any case, another one of those places where a very very big deal got made of something relatively meaningless. C'est la Internet.

The one claiming to be Catharine Mayo (who could not, unfortunately, spell her name in any other case) commented on each of the posts. Other people tangled with her (as 'Don't Stare At My Adam's Apple' did), but ultimately the whole thing petered out, and now most of the comments are from lonely spambots, drooling in the night.

Ahh. Well, especially to all our peeps up in da NW, man up and face the rain. Back soon.