WXPFL: HOT LEAD

August 9, 2010 29 Comments read Live Shows, Reviews

On Thursday, Tobie and I attended the World Extreme Pencil Fighting Championships VI: Hot Lead at The Funhouse. Pencil fighting started in the schoolyards, but most experienced pencil fighters dropped the sport upon graduation. Only the truly dedicated went on to the Pro Leagues and risked all for the chance to call themselves champion. Many organizations and leagues formed, each claiming to be home to the real Pencil Fighting Champion…UPF…WCCPFC…WWPFW, but the true fan’s choice and gold standard for Pencil Fighting was always the WPFL. In 1995 longtime WPFL owner Silas Ticonderoga III sold the company to his oldest son Silas Ticonderoga IV, who took it to the “Extreme” and rechristened it WXPFL. This move angered and alienated longtime fans, but opened up pencil fighting to a whole new generation of young fans. These Extreme Pencil Fighters – now called “Gra-fighters” – are now touring the world and bringing the splintered wood and bloody knuckles of Pro Pencil Fighting straight to you! In these matches, Pro Gra-Fighters take on each other and some randomly-selected audience members for the highly-coveted Pencil Fighting Championship Trophy.

In pencil fighting, two challengers face off, each armed with a regulation wooden pencil taken from a factory-sealed pack. The only recognized regulation competition pencil is the Dixon/Ticonderoga #2 yellow – graphite core, cedar shaft, latex eraser with aluminum stay.

The pencil may not be sharpened or altered in any way prior to initial combat.

A Pink Pearl Eraser flip determines which fighter strikes first.

The loser of the eraser flip becomes the “Defender” and holds his or her pencil firmly with both hands in a horizontal position.

The winner of the eraser flip becomes the “Striker”, and then brings his pencil down in a vertical strike across the opponent’s pencil with full force, attempting to break it in two.

If the Defender’s pencil does not break from the Striker’s attempt, then it becomes the Defender’s turn to strike.

This repeats until one player’s pencil breaks in two and cannot continue.

If a pencil is cracked, but not fully broken in two, referee determines whether said pencil can continue.

The current WXPFL Champion “Balls Deep” Brian Chesbrough was suspended by WXPFL Officials for using a body-enhancing steroid OTHER than WXPFL Sponsor Buff Nuxx. So, WXPFL owner Silas Ticonderoga IV has vacated the title, and now the tournament was a direct shot at the championship…if the most dangerous pros in the business can be beaten!

There is a lot of crossover in this league from Seattle’s other extreme sport, SST: Ronald McFondle, Big Show, etc. There are even MORE theatrics in Extreme Pencil Fighting, however. The first competitors, the Asshole Brothers, came out to loud boos from the audience–they whipped out pencils from their too-tight pants, broke them, and flung them at the audience. I myself was struck in the vulnerable right boob with a shattered pencil from one of the Assholes. Real danger abounds around every corner in this club. I should consider myself lucky that I took a pencil to the chest as opposed to the lit incense that was chucked out into the crowd.

Two Assholes entered the ring, and only one Asshole left: the remaining Asshole was moved into the next bracket toward the championship. After the Asshole Brothers came Ronald McFondle, who has also taken up MCing in addition to flashing his balls at the audience. He performed a number about fisting his clown hos with the current Top Pot Donut Eating Champion, and then got down to the business of fighting with the first audience member: benzarius.

Somehow, Ben ended up with a crotch full of clown paint and a broken pencil.

The next match was the Yellow Dragon versus the Librarian, in which the Librarian was victorious.

Then came Big Show vs the next audience member, who dubbed himself the Annihilator, I believe.

The Annihilator…annihilated Bill Bates, and then it was time for one more audience volunteer to take on the Hundred Dollar Man.

That volunteer was me.

I stepped onto the stage, informed everyone that I was a dildo barbarian, carefully selected my pencil, which was then inspected by the judges, lost the eraser toss, and held out my pencil for the first strike. It was broken on the very first strike. The referee said he’s actually never seen that happen before, which are words that I am sadly getting used to hearing. It’s my family curse. “I’ve never seen that happen before!” Yeah, buddy? Stick around.

The Hundred Dollar Man eventually went on to win the championship, so I don’t feel as badly about my loss. The swag bag I got for participating helped ease that sting as well. Plus now I have two new classy shirts to wear should I ever have occasion to throw another White Trash Extravaganza.

All of the good photos are by someone other than me who I fully intend to credit when I find out their name. If it is you, please tell me and I will credit immediately, or remove your photos, whichever you would prefer. All of the shitty ones are me or someone with my phone.

“No foolin!? I’m from North Kilt-Town!”

August 9, 2010 27 Comments read Attractions, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

Last weekend, I went to the Scottish Highland Games in Enumclaw, which served as a lesson in expectations versus reality. For instance, I’m not quite sure what exactly I expected to see as soon as I crossed into Enumclaw’s borders, perhaps dudes getting it on with horses on every streetcorner, but no, it was merely every other streetcorner. At the games themselves, I expected an authentic Scottish experience…and that wasn’t so much the case, either. First things first: I entered the grounds only to discover that the Scots have not learned their lesson from not merely one, but FOUR Terminator films, and have doomed us all by creating Skynet. The second thing I learned is that while the venue may be low on commodities like flush toilets, they do believe in providing group showers. Somewhere along the way, I realized there wasn’t really an authentic Scottish experience to be had. Much ado is made about the storied history of kilts and the exclusivity of individual tartan patterns to specific clans, but they’re neither as old nor as traditional as many people believe. No matter what Mel Gibson donned in Braveheart, William Wallace was not wearing a kilt in the 1300s: the kilt wasn’t invented until 1725, and it wasn’t adopted as a symbol of national identity until the ninteenth century. It has since been reclaimed by schlubby men who don’t want to wear underpants and who always have mysterious chef boy ardee stains on their wifebeaters in the form of the Utilikilt. As for tartan designs, “The sixteenth century writers who first noticed the Highland dress clearly did not know any such differentiation. They describe the plaids of the chiefs as coloured, those of their followers as brown, so that any differentiation of colour, in their time, was by social status, not by clan. The earliest evidence which has been adduced in support of differentiation by a clan is a remark by Martin Martin, who visited the Western Islands at the end of the seventeenth century. But Martin merely assigns different patterns to different localities: he does not differentiate them by clans; and in fact the evidence against differentiation by clans is strong. Thus, a carefully painted series of portraits of the different members of the Grant family by Richard Waitt in the eighteenth century shows all of them in different tartans; the portraits of the Macdonalds of Armadale show at least ‘six distinct setts of tartan’; and contemporary evidence concerning the rebellion of 1745–whether pictorial, sartorial, or literary–shows no differentiation of clans, no continuity of setts. The only way in which a Highlander’s loyalty could be discerned was not by his tartan but by the cockade in his bonnet. Tartans were a matter of private taste, or necessity, only. Indeed, in October 1745, when the Young Chevalier was in Edinburgh with his army, the Caledonian Mercury advertised ‘a great choice of tartans, the newest patterns’. As D.W. Stewart reluctantly admits, this is a great stumbling block in the way of those who argue for the antiquity of the patterns; for it seems peculiar that, when the city was filled with Highlanders of all ranks and many clans, they should be offered not their ancient setts but ‘a great choice of the newest patterns’.”^(source) I get it, people want to feel a connection to history, to their ancestors, but is inventing tradition the best way to do it, instead of actually learning about their history? All they’re doing is making it easy for purveyors of bullshit to make a buck off of them. Buy a printout of the names of your ancestors, matted in whatever pattern was registered for them in the ancient 1960s!

^{I bet these guys wish they knew they could have gotten something other than puke-colored kilts. Woof!}

Whatever the intentions of the Scottish Highland Games were initially, it’s pretty well become like any convention gathering: a place to sell elf-ears to true believers. I saw, in no particular order, GothScots (“You may take our lives, but you’ll never take our black lipstick!”), druids, pirates, Legolas’ groupies, a dude fully dressed like The Crow–it’s like history has come to life right in front of me!

^{Oh shit, it’s Stevie Nicks!}

Instead of hot men in kilts battling one another on a field with their bare hands, there was a dog parade, and not-so-hot guys in kilts handling their poles.

There was also a booth selling a variety of authentic Highland weapons…like Frodo’s blade Sting, and Link’s Master Sword. Notable Scottish warriors, both! After ingesting some greasy ‘Scottish’ fair food, mocking the GothScots with some bored teenagers working the lemonade stand, and listening to some Celtic ‘singers’ yowl like dying cats, I joined Jeanine at her booth and helped her card jewelry/misuse her supplies. That’s where I also met the lovely loree_borealis. We were seated next to the Sketchy Brit Foods booth, and across from a business with an unfortunate name. When I first looked over, I thought it said:

^{“We’ve got a fix on your anus’ RFID chip, ma’am, it’s crossed the border into Canada!”}

When Laurie looked over, she thought it said:

^{New terminology for a cheating bastard?}

So, we had many a laugh at the poor proprietors of Wandering WAngus. Eventually, I crafted a handpuppet out of a brown bag, named him Brownie McCleod, and tried to sell people their fortunes for a dollar shoved through his mouth-hole. Apparently there is a market for elf ears at the Highland Games but not so much for paper soothsayers.

^{Who wouldn’t trust this face?}

After we posed for a photograph in front of the shop, we put it up for the night and then went to Muckleshoot to taste of their buffet, which devolved (of course) into an eating contest of sorts for me. Apparently my stomach does have upper limits and those were reached and nearly breached as I groaned my way out of the restaurant. After we’d finished, piemancer joined us and we were off to another restaurant in the casino for drinks and chatting. It might not have been a day full of history, but it was a day full of awesome! Here is a bonus ‘fair bear’ peeing out the name of the expo:

Shakespeare in the Park in the Dark with a Knife

August 5, 2010 48 Comments read Live Shows, Reviews

I confess to having little fondness for the works of William Shakespeare. As with many classics, all of the joy was dragged out from it in school and flailed with whips and chains, driven away with promises of ever-more severe beatings should joy ever find its way back to the classroom.

Lest you think I wax overly dramatic, for example, we were required to read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”, a book which I thoroughly enjoyed. Then, I had to give a presentation to the class, explaining the symbolism of every single piece of vegetation in the entire book, because it was ALL significant. A blade of grass was not simply a blade of grass, it was a torturous metaphor. I will accept that the separation between the forest and Boston was significant (the untamed wildness of nature in sharp contrast with the rules of Puritan society, blah blah blah), along with the rosebush next to the prison door, and the seaweed that Pearl uses to make her own ‘A’, but aside from these three, anything that the teacher pulled out was a stretch. You can attribute any sort of ridiculous bullshit significance to ANYTHING if you twist it enough. Watch, I’ll do it:

Clearly the otters function as a proxy of the average ignorant citizen, pleased as punch to take in the bread and circuses of its time handed down to it by the overbearing masters. Here, we witness the first spark of conscious thought, the realization that there might be more to life than its base pleasures, and the full evolution of man condensed to a matter of seconds: from ignorant bliss to conscious thought to bold defiance by befouling the very earth owned by his “betters”. The music itself speaks to tastes of the bourgeoisie, taking and taking of the finest things, and serves to spark the conscious realization of the lesser man; that he toils so that others may have better things, leading him to act and say “if you would take from me, take all of me, not just the products of my labors but the bitter ends as well!” A revolution is foreshadowed as others awaken to the realities of their condition. This is a breathtaking work, one of the great clips of our time.

This is precisely why I have little to no patience for symbolism, because I was taught that any bullshit thing can mean any bullshit thing you want it to. No one is right, they’re just adding their own desires and crazy to the mix. Were Nathaniel Hawthorne in my class, watching my presentation, he would have pounded the desk, screamed “I DO DECLARE THIS IS HORSESHIT,” kicked over his chair, and stomped out of the room. N. Scott Momaday would have rolled his eyes and whispered apologies to Herman Melville, saying he never intended such egregious offenses as were attributed to his book lifting directly from Moby Dick, and furthermore clarified that his main character could have two dreams and not have them be interconnected to represent his ‘inner struggle’, because just like in real life, people dream about different stuff on different days, I mean, Christ, Mrs. Jacoby, just because you were batshit insane and hopped around in your pleather jacket like a goddamned flying monkey in excitement about the idea that Abel could be a bear and ALSO be a fish and, newsflash, bears eat fish, so clearly he’s got some self-loathing issues…YOU WERE WRONG. WRONG. ABOUT EVERYTHING.

…ahem.

Shakespeare was treated in much the same manner in school, the one bright spot being the class period we devoted to Shakespearean insults–the next day, we were not allowed to enter the classroom until we had taunted the teacher properly in Shakespearean fashion. I believe mine was “Thou goatish, helmet-headed harpy!”

My momentary delight was killed the day we went to see a local production of Macbeth out in the hot summer sun in the dustiest location in all of Wisconsin with the actors drawn from a pool of the least-talented people to ever do anything. I wouldn’t have trusted any of the actors with dull scissors. Every moment was torture.

I gave Shakespeare another chance last week Friday, with Greenstage’s production of As You Like It, featuring Shane Regan (my vice-dictatorial candidate), at Camp Long in West Seattle. You’d think that I would have learned from the last time I went to support Shane in something: it doesn’t matter how early I show up, some douche is going expend his douche potential energy to meet his douche destiny and plop down directly in front of me, rendering it impossible for me to see what’s going on. This time, I was the third person on the scene: I brought a blanket and a book and read for a couple hours before the show was set to start. I’d spread my blanket somewhere near where I presumed the middle of the stage would be–I didn’t know how far back they needed as I’d arrived before the cast, so I gave them plenty of room. Far too much room, as people started showing up with lawn chairs and parking them in front of me. Who brings a chair and then sits in front of people on the ground? Who does that? The final straw was when a woman rolled a man in an enormous electric wheelchair directly in front of me, expressing her concern that he might be blocking the sightline of the people in chairs next to me, with absolutely zero regard that the girl on the goddamn ground would now not be able to see a goddamned thing. Shakespeare could not have even begun to conceive of the obscenities that flew out of my mouth as I ripped up my blanket and stalked away.

Luckily, my friends had found a spot near the front on the edge of the grounds, so I was able to squeeze in there and cool my jets a little before the show started. Once it started, I was honestly surprised at how captivated I was by the performance–the difference between talented actors working for donations and several towns’ village idiots working for prepaid school field trip money was like night and day. It took me a few minutes to fall into the rhythm of the language, and occasionally lack of familiarity with the source material tripped me up, but I overall I found it light, funny, and an entertaining way to while away a summer evening.

After the show, I finally, finally got to meet Shane, who is a delightful human being and who will make an excellent vice-dicator when the time comes. I continued to hound him over a Junkbucket DVD–if I can get my hands on one soon, I intend to show it at the next Blood and Guts and Punch and Pie.

Should you be local and wish to see this play yourself, it’s on through August 14th at a few different parks.

They also indicated that this fall they’d be putting on Macbeth–maybe I ought to give that one another shot.

^{…is that two pages, Shane? I promised two pages!}