Never Ever EVER EVER Fight a Brazilian

Especially If They Are Mixed Martial Artists

*shout out to ModernMan.com!

Let us pretend, just for kicks, that you, the reader, have suddenly found yourself in a precarious situation, faced with the prospect of having to defend yourself against a citizen or former citizen of Brazil. Maybe you started it, maybe he started it...doesn't matter. If there is one thing that being a loyal fan of mixed martial arts (MMA) has taught me, it is this: never ever EVER EVER fight a Brazilian, not under any imaginable circumstances. I mean, I suppose you could conjure up a scenario wherein you've entered an office pool, aptly titled the Poorest Decision Contest, or you're a contestant on that new reality show, "Who Wants to Live the Least?"...and there is a lot of money on the line. But even then, you are probably making a mistake.

Why? The answer begins at the root of mixed martial arts, long ago, when the Brazilians inherited and developed the ancient...you know, let's skip the history lesson. It's because of dudes like Mauricio "Shogun" Rua. 

For all the UFC fans out there, I know what you're thinking: Rua was recently the victim of a brutish mugging at the hands of American wrestler/soulcrusher Jon "Bones" Jones, causing the Brazilian punisher to lose his UFC Light Heavyweight title. Yes, this is true. But we were talking about YOU getting in a fight, weren't we? Jonny Bones might have been able to handle the feared Shogun, but try it for yourself, and within about five seconds they will have to call NASA to locate your head after Shogun soccer-kicks it into the stratosphere. Here's what ESPN's Sport Science had to say about Shogun's formidable foot (and leg, obviously): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvU8vzrBjeQ(it's basically the Kick of Death).

You know who Rua's best bud is? The guy who you would ostensibly be the one to pull Rua off of you while he stomped your skull as casually as most of us make a pot of coffee? Shogun hangs with a gentleman who goes by the moniker of "The Axe Murder". Meet Wanderlei Silva.

You don't get that nickname for selling more popcorn than the rest of the boy scouts in your troop; you get it for causing bloody violence to occur, for fighting as if you are the only natural predator in the jungle. Like Blanka from Street Fighter II (another legendary Brazilian beast), this guy will choke, kick, knee, punch and possibly claw you without mercy (at least he can't give you electric shocks) until you are no longer recognizable to loved ones. After the bloodletting, though, he might help you up and give you a few pointers. People say he's a heck of a nice guy.  He looks it.

So what, right? You could spotlight a couple of superhuman aggro pain-administering borderline psychotic scalpers from any number of countries, right? No matter where you go, you're bound to find at least a couple of guys, often fighters (or inmates), who don't have that hesitation-toward-violence switch that normal people have. Okay. Let's find a couple more examples of why you should never ever ever ever engage in a melee with a Brazilian under any circumstances. These next two guys perhaps aren't as aggressive as Shogun Rua or The Axe Murder Silva. No, these next two aren't like that. They're like this: the best fighters in the world.

Jose Aldo is the UFC Featherweight champ. He's a kid! Only twenty-four, and I know what you're thinking: look at that aw-shucks smile! He's a little guy! You weigh like 215, and you can definitely take this kid! You've never been so wrong. It could be that no one has ever been so wrong. You cannot take this kid, unless you're talking about giving him a ride wherever he wants to go before he kicks your ass in front of your girl. Jose Aldo's bones are made out of a rubber tree, they are dangerous weapons, and any beef you had with him would be beef you regret more than the time that Gordita Supreme gave you food poisoning. Aldo does this to professional, future Hall-of-Fame fighters. Now, what would he do to you?

Rua, Wandy Silva, Aldo...who is left? How many badass Brazilians are out there?

How about the best fighter on planet Earth? His name is Anderson "The Spider" Silva, and the good thing about any hypothetical fisticuffs an Average Joe like yourself might find yourself engaged with Silva, the UFC Middleweight Champ, is how small the chances are that you would even know what had happened to you. The blows would come too fast for your nerves to properly acknowledge them, and you'd be out on the side of the road attempting to unscramble your brain, body and bow tie before your cognition skills were able to process anything more than the fact you survived. Mostly survived. 

We're clear on this, right? Never, ever EVER EVER? And which dangerous Brazilian fighters did I leave out? Who are your favorites?

best iPhone app ever

TO:  iPHONE CUSTOMER SERVICE, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT, APPLICATION SERVICES...REALLY ANYBODY AT iPHONE OR AFFILIATE WHOSE CHECKS ARE SIGNED BY STEVE JOBS.  THIS LETTER REALLY NEEDS TO GET TO HIM.

FROM:  A. PETTICOAT

The new iPhones can do SO much awesome shit.  So that makes me think...what can they not do yet?

Take revenge on my enemies is what!

I'm talking about fucking them up!

I want a downloadable app that will turn all the stoplights green as my enemy nears the intersection.

I want an easily affordable app where I can type in what my enemy is having for dinner as we meet at a neutral site for a truce and it will then tell me which poison is best to blend into the food.  Arsenic is no good with Italian, everybody knows that, but what other advice goes beyond that?  I DO NOT have time to google it, my enemy only takes like thirty seconds to pee.  If he's a he.  If it's a girl, maybe I just google it then.

How about involving throwing stars in this app?  Throwing stars is something that seems like it'd be easy for an iPhone to do. 

I want a sleek, customizable app that will frame my enemy for a murder.  This revenge scenario will likely require the phone itself to also be capable of murder, in case the owner is not.

The app should also have the ability to falsify documents, forms of identification, and possibly launder money.

Steve, when this finds you, let me know what you think of my ideas.  Just to keep the playing field level--or perhaps with just a slight edge in your favor--I also sent this idea to Bill Gates.  But legend has it he takes FOREVER to check his email.  Don't take it personal...I'm ready to get paid, bitches!

A.P. 

time-traveling chevy chase

Today we have a letter whose sights are zeroed-in on perennial soft target, Chevy Chase.  With time-traveling abilities.

TO:  CHEVY CHASE OF PRESENT DAY

FROM:  CHEVY CHASE CIRCA 1987

Present-day Chevy,

Two words:  Bill Murray.  It didn't have to be like this.  In fact, you should be the one writing this letter to me, like Marty McFuckin McFly, warning me cleverly about where I will initially head down the wrong track.  Where's the clairvoyance, you fatass hamhog unfunny piece of shit?  I guarantee you the future Bill Murray wrote this letter.  But you, I bet you're too busy waving around that little vienna sausage dick of yours, aren't you?  I don't have to guess what you were up to for the last two decades.  I know what kind of stuff I'm into, and it sickens me to look in the mirror.

Oh, Chevy.  If only they could all see inside our disgusting black heart.

This letter, if you're interested, is just to inform you that I made an appointment with an assassin in a Colombian cartel to break into my house while I sleep and chop my fuckin dick off with a machete.  This is the only way I know of to stop you from the diabolical, mediocre path you have set before me.

Feel free to unzip your pants and observe that you have no penis--maybe no balls either, my Spanish is quite poor.  That withered little abomination of a reproductive organ is history.  He is set to perform this merciful act (or, at your place on the timeline, performed this merciful act) in 2005.  Your (and my) failure is essentially in the books by then, from what I can tell.

This doesn't have to happen.  I can cancel the order anytime.  You think I want to ransom my own dick and possibly balls, Chevy?  You of all people know how hard this is for me.

If you want your precious dick and balls back, YOU WILL find a way to keep me from ruining my career and YOU WILL work out a scheme to get that letter to me before it's too late.  I will not suck mightily for the second half of my life.  I refuse to gaze back at Clark W Griswold and a fuckin golf movie character as the apex of my career.

Set up a trusted courier (do you ever trust anyone in your misty, drug-fueled life?) to deliver the letter to my mansion once I'm exceptionally rich and losing basic awareness of reality.  Ziplock it and slip it into the dampest vagina you can find in my favorite Tokyo whorehouse and tell her to birth it to me after we have an established customer/client relationship.  I don't care how you get it to me, but get it to me.
The sooner the better, obviously.

80's Chevy Chase 

makin me look bad

 

TO: AIDS

FROM: HIV

Quit makin me look bad, MUTHA-FUCKA!

--HIV

pencil-thin chinstrap

I had a problem and yo Vanilla Ice solved it!

Today's letter was almost going to be TO THE HIPSTER MUSTACHE, WHOSE INTENDED IRONY IS BECOMING IRONIC ITSELF, but chinstraps are more fun, I think.

TO:  THE WEARERS OF THE PENCIL-THIN CHINSTRAP BEARD

FROM:  ALEJANDRO "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW YOU KEEP THAT CHINSTRAP BEARD SO AMAZINGLY THIN" PETTICOAT

Yo, the all the womens is flockin to your junk based on your choice of facial hair design!

Every single one of you, down to the very last dude, looks like a watered-down version of that guy from Color Me Badd.

WHICH IS FUCKIN SWEET, BY THE WAY!  It is no coincidence that Color Me Badd was easily one of the top five greatest gifts ever bestowed unto the female gender.  Hands down.  HANDS DOWN!

That being said, I'd like for you to consider this an ode, though without any of the formal constraints of verse.  The pencil-thin chinstrap beard is the ultimate weapon for the male against female selection.  This is known.  Darwin wrote about this.  No woman within the normal ages of sexual reproduction can resist it.  Boys learn this as early as middle school.  If you have an ultra-thin line of facial hair meticulously groomed along the contours of your jawline, a female will copulate with you under almost any circumstances.  If all men had the discipline and debonair style of the thinly-chinstrapped man, the world would overpopulate until it toppled out of orbit from the weight of all the newborn babies. 

The chinstrap can be gangster, indicating toughness and a rugged nonchalance.  If I'm wearing it I'm saying, Hey, I'm reckless.  I'm potentially kinda gangster-ish.  If you need me to show up on the scene in a tilted hat, I can be there.

But also--also!!--the pencil-thin chinstrap can denote a refined level of sophistication.  It can serve as a dapper accessory to a tie and a collared shirt.  It can say, if you need me to show up for my court date in reading glasses as if I wear them every day, I can.  And will.

Some people want to hate on the pencil-thin chinstrap and all of you fine fellows who sport it.  Penguins included.  They want to say that you are all posers.  For the record, I totally disagree, and I hope you that you never, ever shave that fine line of facial hair circumnavigating your chin.  I realize that, by endorsing you, I am greatly reducing my chances to ever get any of that sweet poon that flocks to your strap, but I don't want you to worry about me.  You just keep being you.  Nothing says sexy and debonair like that well-kempt shit you've decided to grow on your face.  This is bigger than any of us.  This goes back to brave men like that guy from Color Me Badd, like Vanilla Ice.  Such is the company you keep, my friends.

**Upon closer study, this isn't exactly a pencil-thin chinstrap on my man Vanilla here.  Actually, it's just a shadow.  But the fact is that the good ones, the astoundingly razor-thin chinstraps, are too elusive for even the internet to record in history.  They are the snow leopards of beardly design.  And you KNOW that V.I. has at least once (and probably multiple times) in his life been among the tribe of thinly-chinstrapped men.
  
Word to ya motha!  
Petticoat

camera slut

TO:    EMPEROR HIROHITO
FROM:  ADOLF HITLER

They finally did the math on whose armies killed the most--I think you won, holmes!

The more I read about you, the more I'm like, oh, snap, son!  Your people were definitely more evil than mine.  No contest.  This is not unadulterated flattery, as all who know me know I have a tendency for.  I was trying to read this Wikipedia entry on Japanese War Crimes...couldn't even get through it, bro!  No shit.  Turned my stomach.  Once I get to the shit about Unit 731, I'm done.  I actually become pretty appalled, between me and you.  And I'm freakin' Hitler!  I just hate the idea of flesh.  Can't touch it.  But you motherfuckers, your soldiers, they ate their enemies!  Well, civilians too.  Tied dudes up to tent poles and sliced flesh from their bones and left them to die.  Ooh, you nasty!

And you had the comfort women, and your soldiers held contests to see who could be the first to kill one hundred people with a sword, and a ton of other super-ill shit.  I mean, why is it that you don't get the recognition you so truly deserve?  I can't help but think your people are kind of bummed because you don't get credit for being the most brutal, terrible, murderous fighting army of the modern era.  There's a lot of fear and respect coming with that reputation.  Instead of showing love to your people's list of great atrocities, everybody fixates on me, a vegetarian who loves to paint.

For me, I basically think of us as the reverse of the Steve McQeen/Clint Eastwood dialectic.  Would you have guessed those cats were the same age?  But McQueen died relatively young, and since they filled roughly the same niche, the world moved on and Eastwood became the bigger figure in the long run.  I am definitely the Steve McQueen of genocide.  So, how you did NOT become the Clint Eastwood of genocide and barbaric atrocities in general, Hirohito, I'll never understand.

Obviously, though, I was killing Europeans.  That helps.  But also, something you should have talked to me about was brand recognition.  You see that swastika, you know atrocity is waiting in the next room.  Indiana Jones is not freaking saving you, know what I mean?  The symbol alone cranks up the heartbeat of the world.

Plus, the camera loves me.  You were going for that rarely-seen-villain-mastermind vibe, which is cool, but I was such a huge slut for the camera.  No denying it--and it paid off, in my opinion.

And personally, I'm one of those people who thinks that history is more obsessed with me because the Jews own all the media.  I know it sounds a bit racist, but I'll say it anyway.  I mean, shit, I'm Hitler.


Zigheil!  Holla at ya boy, HITO! 

Adolf

summer blockbusters

2nd post!  Today, for reasons I can't necessarily explain or don't want to investigate for fear of shattering my fragile psyche, I bring to your soft, dark eyes a pair of terrible letters addressed to children/fetuses.

AND--don't miss Ebert's review of Transformers 2.  It's charming.

TO: ALL BASTARDS
FROM: ALEJANDRO 

Dear Bastards, 
What's it like? Not knowing your parents? I really want to know, only without having to go through it in any way whatsoever. 

Yours,
Alejandro P

TO: THE ABORTED FETUSES OF 2009
FROM: HOLLYWOOD 

You missed a killer summer blockbuster season!  If the abortion doctors hadn’t Kanye West’d you, you could have cried miserably through the month of May, with films like Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and Year One, as everyone else did, and had a hell of an enjoyable time being alive.  Also, had you ever taken a breath beyond the placental sack, you would’ve certainly found it all worthwhile after sleeping and spitting up on yourselves come June via modern classics such as Land of the Lost, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  Then comes August, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  Shit!

--it's Hollywood talking, fetuses

p.s. The use of colons often denotes a sequel, and ALWAYS summarizes the plot in but a phrase.  Useful info for you if you had been born and developed an interest in film while growing up.