Legends of Batman

From Superdickery

A humorous set of stories originally by Mike.

The basic premise of the stories were that during them, regardless of the normal situations going on, Batman would show up. The appearance of Batman usually led to an over the top conclusion that strays far from where the story was originally.

Some of the more memorable moments in Mike's Legends include Batman having a dance-off with The Riddler, who had just been revealed to be gay for Mike, Batman preforming a "dine and dash" in a diner in Seattle, and sitting in a fridge with a Coca-Cola label attached to his face. Of course, all of these pale in the big revealation that Batman was in fact Jesus.

Eventually, Mike stopped writing the LOB's, and allowed one and all to have a go at it. The first person to write was at-the-time newcomer Drink, who immediately referenced one of Mike's stories, thus having Virgil compare the LOB's to the Cthulhu Mythos, but on a somewhat smaller and lamer scale.

Since that time, many stories have been written, the foremost among them is still Drink, who occasionally adds a new story whenever he isn't doing other things. Although he gets praise for his stories by a fair number of people, A number of the long time members, DarkGob and Virgil chief among them, still say that Mike's stories are better, which makes sense, as they are the originals.

The Legends of Batman thread is "stickied" on the Comics section of the Superdickery Forums and therefore near the top of the page at all times.

Contents 1 Story Uno 2 Story Too 3 the third story 4 Story #Fore 5 FIVE FUCKING STORIES! 6 Six is Sex in German 7 Se7en is a good movie 8 Octopuses like this one 9 THe story seven eight 10 TEN! TEN STORIES! AH AH AH! 11 Oh look another tale! 12 How many of these things are there? 13 Dental Plan! 14 Insert an interseting title here 15 MIKE SURE WROTE A WHOLE LOT DIDN'T HE? 16 Apparently the 16th story 17 Remember! Remember! The 17th of November! 18 Why the fuck am I still doing this? 19 Shitcock = Pooprooster 20 HAI GUYZ SUPERNAUT HAS LOST HIS MIND 21 The Legends of Batman Numero Twenty-one... o 22 Twenty-too 23 THe Boy Wonder 24 Jack Bauer is secretly Tarzan 25 APPARENTLY THIS IS THE LAST ONE DONE BY MIKE AND I'M NOT POSTING DRINK'S MALFORMED ABORTIONS

Story Uno

This one time, when I was a kid living in Gotham City, I went out to get an ice cream cone from the ice cream man.

I got triple ripple vanilla road monkey.

Anyway, just as I was about to take a lick of it, the scoop fell right off the friggin' cone. Now being a kid as I was, I was understandably emotionally distraught by this turn of events and immediately starting crying over the loss of my beloved ice cream cone. I was just sitting there bawling my eyes out, when all of a sudden who should come swooping out of the sky but BATMAN!

Smooth as silk, he landed right on top of that ice cream truck, punched a hole through the roof and savagely strangled the driver while trying to wrest control of the steering wheel away from him. The truck swerved out of control, tipped over onto its side, slide into a telephone pole, and immediately burst into flames.

Not skipping a beat, Batman pulled the driver from the flaming wreckage and proceeded to beat the ever living bejesus out of him, the whole time just ranting and raving about how the ice cream cone was some kind of soulless monster, and how no kid should ever have to experience what he experienced as a child with ice cream falling off the cone before he got to have any of that sweet, sweet luscious frozen dairy treat.

Eventually he apparently got tired of brutalizing the sobbing ice cream man, so tied him up and hung him from a street lamp. But before he left he gave me another ice cream cone!

Batman is so cool.

Yet one of many of the

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Story Too

Back during my sophomore year in college, there was this girl in one of my physics classes that I thought was pretty hot. Well not “pretty hot” so much as “completely hot.” She was totally vapid and completely uninteresting in terms of her personality, but basically all I was really concerned about at the time was getting into her pants. Hey, it was college. That’s what you do in college.

Acting under the hypothesis that it's easier to get into someone’s said pants by being what they want you to be rather than who you actually are, I asked her out to go "clubbing," since that’s apparently what she liked to do. She actually agreed, which kind of blew my mind, but whatever. We were gonna go clubbing, and I was that much closer to boinking her.

So we went out to this place on State Street called Club 638. Why is it called Club 638? Because its address is 638 State Street. They don’t even have a sign or anything, just the address on a wall. Wow, that is like, so clever! So we went to this place, and good lord almighty was I bored. Especially since I don't dance or anything. And I mean it, I really don’t dance. The only thing worse than seeing me dance is hearing me sing. But that’s a tale for another time.

So we sat at the bar, and she yammered on and on and on and on, and I had no real choice but to sit there feigning interest and drinking. Of course there comes a point where someone, no matter how hot they may be, are just entirely too annoying to ever consider sleeping with. I don't even know at what point I noticed that she wasn't even sitting next to me any more, she was grinding with some meathead on the dance floor. Hope for nookie, faint as it already was to begin with, was rapidly fading fast. I had no real chance of salvaging this situation, so I sat there drinking beers, and guess who sits down next to me?

The Riddler.

I shit you not, the friggin' Riddler sits down at the bar right next to me.

I mean my god, what are the odds that you're going to meet the Riddler in a bar in Santa Barbara? It’s not like you can do any good riddle-related crimes out there, and it’s way on the other side of the country from Gotham. And get this... He buys me a drink! He buys me a drink and starts going on about how he got ditched by his date too. For a smart guy, he sure seems to whine an awful lot. He keeps buying me drinks though, and he won't shut up, and then something hits me...

My god… is the Riddler HITTING ON ME?

So instead of just politely listening to what he’s saying, I take a good look at him, and his sitting there sucking on a straw like he's trying to be seductive, and I think, "OH MY GOD, HE IS TRYING TO HIT ON ME!" Of course I immediately go back to staring straight into my drink and start franticly planning how the hell I'm going to gracefully extricate myself from this mess, when a sudden hush falls over the crowd. We all turn to the dance floor, and who should be there but BATMAN.

Batman. On the dance floor. And before anyone can know what's happened, he challenges the Riddler to a dance off right then and there.

Now when you go out clubbing, the last thing you expect to see is the Riddler and Batman get into a dance off, least off all with choreographed back up dancers behind them. It was totally unreal to watch, a feverish blur of twirls and pelvic thrusts and poses, but in the end there could only be one winner.

The Riddler.

Sorry Batman, but as athletic as you are, you just weren't gay enough to out-dance the Riddler. Of course that didn't stop Batman from just punching his lights out and doing that little zip line thingy to book it out of there. Apparently he’s a sore loser.

So I stuck around for a while after that, but eventually all the excitement of having seeing the Riddler get served waned, so I ended up leaving. And when I got outside, what do you think I see? My date hopping into the Batmobile. Of all the luck.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

the third story

After I graduated from high school, my parents got this really brilliant idea to go on a trip to Israel. God only knows WHY they would want to do this, since we weren't exactly what you'd call the most devout Jews in the world, but Mom had some crazy notion in her head that we were contractually obligated to go or something.

I mean come on Mom... It's not like you even adhere to Kosher in the slightest, other than not eating pork. Unless we eat out, in which case she'll invariably order baby back ribs or something. And it's not like she has a separate set of utensils for meat and for dairy, plus she eats shellfish and everything else that you're not supposed to do if you're keeping Kosher. I flat out asked my parents not too long ago what the hell was the point of not eating pork if you're not going to adhere to the rest of the rules? "Discipline," my dad tells me. Discipline for WHAT, exactly?

And later that very night we go out to Applebee's for dinner and mom gets riblets.

So anyway, we go to Israel. Thankfully this was all before the current state of unrest, but it's still not a place I'd like to visit. We actually I probably wouldn't have minded visiting if I didn't have to do it with my parents. They are absolutely INTOLERABLE to travel with, as their idea of fun is to hope a plane to a foreign country where the people speak a language they don’t understand for a couple weeks with no hotel reservations, no plans, nothing.

I don't really dig flying by the seat of my pants. That and it forces me to be in close quarters with the people that bug me the most in places where there's nothing remotely interesting for me to see. So yeah, I'm not really keen on the fact that we visited the Middle East...

So one day we're in Jerusalem, and mom is doing her little touristy shtick. "Ooooh, it's the Wailing Wall." "Ooooooh, it's the Temple Mount." "Ooooooh, it's the--" WHO GIVES A SHIT MOM? NOT ME! So we're sitting there bickering, when all of a sudden the sky gets really dark except for this single beam of light coming down from the clouds. And coming down that beam of light was the figure of a man.

That's right, it was the second coming of Jesus.

I just about shit my pants, I kid you not.

So Jesus touches down, and everyone's all awestruck and everything, and in this deep booming voice he says "My Kingdom hath cometh down on the earth" or something like that, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, BATMAN leaps up out of the crowd and full on kicks Jesus in the face!

"DUDE!" I screamed, "You can't do that! He's JESUS!"

So we're all sitting there, just staring slack jawed as Batman commits the most heinous act of blasphemy that one can conceive, when all of a sudden he stands up and he's holding a mask of Jesus’ face! That's when we see that it wasn't Jesus at all, but really just Dr. Hugo Strange wearing a Jesus costume!

That right there was a total shocker, let me tell you.

It didn't end there though. Oh no no no. Right there, in front of the whole world, Dr. Strange stands up and points at Batman, and screams at the top of his lungs, "You can never stop me from revealing your secret identity, Batman! I know that you are in fact... BRUCE WAYNE!"

A stunned hush fell over the crowd at this accusation, as Batman just stood there and stared at him. Then, ever so slowly, he reached up to his cowl and slowly peeled it back from his head to reveal that he, in fact, was NOT Bruce Wayne!

Batman.... was Jesus!

Turns out that Jesus has been among us all this time kicking ass for justice while dressed as a giant bat! Who'd have thought it? So after making Dr. Strange look like an idiot, he led us all in a group sing along of Kumbyah until Santa came in his sleigh to give him a lift to his secret fortress on the dark side of the moon.

Oh yeah, and my mom bought a "one of a kind artifact from the holy land" from a guy in a cart that had dozens of the damned things.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Story #Fore

My friend Justin had been my best friend since like... second grade. He had been in my first grade class, but the elementary school we went to eliminated the second grade for budget reasons or something, so everyone got transferred to this other school that lived in like the worst part of town possible. We were both just so excited to see someone that we both knew at the new school; we started hanging out together all the time.

Now Justin had a friend named Jon who was a year younger than us and lived on the same block Justin did. I knew of him, but didn't really see him or talk to him all that often until we were all in high school, at which point me and Jon became the best of buddies and kind of let Justin fall to the wayside.

That reminds me, I should call up Justin sometime, I haven't seen him since we graduated high school like... seven years ago.

So anyway, I moved out of my parents’ house and went off to UCSB to eventually go on to get a degree in zoology, while Jon stayed at home and went to the city university to major in computer science. So of course my degree is all but worthless without going to graduate school, and he's likely to land some relatively high paying job right off the bat. Figures.

So anyway, like two weeks ago he calls me out of the blue here in Seattle and tells me that he's got a job interview with Microsoft, and wants to know if we can get together for lunch. "Well hell yeah, you idiot," I tell him. I mean Christ, I've only seen him like a dozen times since I moved from Fresno, of course I want to get together for lunch. Gyah.

I tell him to meet me at this little diner I go to. It's one of those little places with the red and white check plastic table cloths and aging, chain smoking waitresses named Barbara, but the food is pretty decent (They have the BEST pie, I tell you.) and the coffee's good.

We're sitting there catching up on old times, when he suddenly gets this stunned look on his face. "You'll never guess who just sat down behind us," he whispers.

"Who?" I say, starting to turn around?

"No no no, don't go LOOKING!" he says as he grabs my shoulder. He shoves the chromed napkin dispenser over to me, and I angle it to look in the reflection to see who's behind us...

It was BATMAN! Sitting at a table behind us like there was nothing out of the ordinary about it!

Of course you know he just does it to get the attention... He's like the second most famous hero in the world, and he goes and picks this little hole in the wall diner in Seattle to drop in and eat some lunch? "Holy attention whore, Batman!"

We were so caught up in watching Batman that we totally forgot to order for ourselves. We were too busy talking about Batman. I mean c'mon, it's Batman. Tell me you wouldn't do the same thing.

"Holy crap, he ordered soup and a sandwich!"

"So?"

"It was a HAM sandwich!"

"What's so big about that?"

"Well he's Jesus you know. Doesn't he keep Kosher?"

"Yeah, but didn't Jesus abolish stuff like that?"

"But he's still Jewish, right?"

We got caught up in the whole "Would Jesus eat ham?" debate, which gradually segued into whether or not he could eat more hotdogs in eight minutes than Godzilla, when eventually we noticed that Batman had finished eating and was waiting for his check.

Once the waitress brought his check, he started patting down his utility belt, for like... five minutes, I swear. He's all muttering to himself, alternating between pretending to analyze the check (C'mon, it was for soup and a sandwich. You didn't even order a soda) and going through his little pouches. Ever so gradually he's inching forward out of his seat. That's when it hit me...

Oh my god, Batman forgot his wallet.

We were about to witness not just any ordinary dine and dash, but a SUPERHERO DINE AND DASH!

Batman sat their fidgeting for another five minutes, casting wayward glances out the window, mentioning something about needing to put more money in the parking meter, when finally the manager (This big burly guy that looks like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force) comes over to the table and says "Sir, is there a problem here?"

Batman jumps up bolt upright and stares the manager right in the eye, and all I can think is "Holy crap, he's going to beat the hell out of the manager because he can't pay the bill!" But instead, he reaches back behind his back and fumbles with his utility belt for a little bit.

Then all of a sudden he throws something on the ground, and it explodes into this huge cloud of smoke! Everyone is coughing and screaming, and can't see anything, it's just total mass hysteria. When the smoke finally clears though, Batman is gone. Everyone sits completely still as we all stare at the spot where he was standing, the only movement occurring is his empty soup bowl slowly wobbling like a coin that's been spun and is about to land on one side.

The manager looks right at the waitress for the table and says, "That's coming out of your paycheck."

No one can skip out on a check like Batman!

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

FIVE FUCKING STORIES!

My friend Justin had been my best friend since like... second grade. He had been in my first grade class, but the elementary school we went to eliminated the second grade for budget reasons or something, so everyone got transferred to this other school that lived in like the worst part of town possible. We were both just so excited to see someone that we both knew at the new school; we started hanging out together all the time.

Now Justin had a friend named Jon who was a year younger than us and lived on the same block Justin did. I knew of him, but didn't really see him or talk to him all that often until we were all in high school, at which point me and Jon became the best of buddies and kind of let Justin fall to the wayside.

That reminds me, I should call up Justin sometime, I haven't seen him since we graduated high school like... seven years ago.

So anyway, I moved out of my parents’ house and went off to UCSB to eventually go on to get a degree in zoology, while Jon stayed at home and went to the city university to major in computer science. So of course my degree is all but worthless without going to graduate school, and he's likely to land some relatively high paying job right off the bat. Figures.

So anyway, like two weeks ago he calls me out of the blue here in Seattle and tells me that he's got a job interview with Microsoft, and wants to know if we can get together for lunch. "Well hell yeah, you idiot," I tell him. I mean Christ, I've only seen him like a dozen times since I moved from Fresno, of course I want to get together for lunch. Gyah.

I tell him to meet me at this little diner I go to. It's one of those little places with the red and white check plastic table cloths and aging, chain smoking waitresses named Barbara, but the food is pretty decent (They have the BEST pie, I tell you.) and the coffee's good.

We're sitting there catching up on old times, when he suddenly gets this stunned look on his face. "You'll never guess who just sat down behind us," he whispers.

"Who?" I say, starting to turn around?

"No no no, don't go LOOKING!" he says as he grabs my shoulder. He shoves the chromed napkin dispenser over to me, and I angle it to look in the reflection to see who's behind us...

It was BATMAN! Sitting at a table behind us like there was nothing out of the ordinary about it!

Of course you know he just does it to get the attention... He's like the second most famous hero in the world, and he goes and picks this little hole in the wall diner in Seattle to drop in and eat some lunch? "Holy attention whore, Batman!"

We were so caught up in watching Batman that we totally forgot to order for ourselves. We were too busy talking about Batman. I mean c'mon, it's Batman. Tell me you wouldn't do the same thing.

"Holy crap, he ordered soup and a sandwich!"

"So?"

"It was a HAM sandwich!"

"What's so big about that?"

"Well he's Jesus you know. Doesn't he keep Kosher?"

"Yeah, but didn't Jesus abolish stuff like that?"

"But he's still Jewish, right?"

We got caught up in the whole "Would Jesus eat ham?" debate, which gradually segued into whether or not he could eat more hotdogs in eight minutes than Godzilla, when eventually we noticed that Batman had finished eating and was waiting for his check.

Once the waitress brought his check, he started patting down his utility belt, for like... five minutes, I swear. He's all muttering to himself, alternating between pretending to analyze the check (C'mon, it was for soup and a sandwich. You didn't even order a soda) and going through his little pouches. Ever so gradually he's inching forward out of his seat. That's when it hit me...

Oh my god, Batman forgot his wallet.

We were about to witness not just any ordinary dine and dash, but a SUPERHERO DINE AND DASH!

Batman sat their fidgeting for another five minutes, casting wayward glances out the window, mentioning something about needing to put more money in the parking meter, when finally the manager (This big burly guy that looks like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force) comes over to the table and says "Sir, is there a problem here?"

Batman jumps up bolt upright and stares the manager right in the eye, and all I can think is "Holy crap, he's going to beat the hell out of the manager because he can't pay the bill!" But instead, he reaches back behind his back and fumbles with his utility belt for a little bit.

Then all of a sudden he throws something on the ground, and it explodes into this huge cloud of smoke! Everyone is coughing and screaming, and can't see anything, it's just total mass hysteria. When the smoke finally clears though, Batman is gone. Everyone sits completely still as we all stare at the spot where he was standing, the only movement occurring is his empty soup bowl slowly wobbling like a coin that's been spun and is about to land on one side.

The manager looks right at the waitress for the table and says, "That's coming out of your paycheck."

No one can skip out on a check like Batman!

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Six is Sex in German

This afternoon, I was surfing on the internet, when I started to get the munchies. So I went into the kitchen to get something to eat, only we didn't really have that much to eat. I did manage to find half a bag of seasoned fries in the freezer though, so I threw those in the oven for about twenty minutes.

God, I love seasoned fries. They're so tasty and yummy.

So anyway, I go back into the living room with my plate full of fries, and who should I see at the keyboard? BATMAN!

"Holy hell, what are you doing here, Batman?" I asked him.

"Nothing much. Just writing something on the internet. Hey, what's that over there?" I turned around to see what he was pointing at (Nothing), and when I looked back...

He was gone.

I mean holy shit, how creepy is that?! I was standing between him and the only exit from the apartment, and he somehow got by me. So I go to look at the computer to see what he wrote, and he wrote:

QUOTE Usually I'd agree with you, but in this case the joint is owned by this guy from Columbia, so he's got the hook up when it comes to coffee..

He also smuggles cocaine.

Spooky.

Incidentally, it turns out he didn't leave, he was just hiding behind the couch waiting for me to leave the room so he could get out of there. Wonder how many times he's pulled that on Commissoner Gordon.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Se7en is a good movie

When I was growing up, my parents were always the really understanding kind of people, which frankly kind of drove me nuts. It seemed like nothing I did would faze them, they took just took it all in stride as "part of growing up" or were interested in "encouraging my uniqueness" or whatever.

I grew my hair out long, which was quite the rebellious act considering the strict dress code my school district had at the time. "Oh, you look just like your father did in the sixties," my mom tells me.

I grow a goatee, and all that happens is that my parents get me a beard and mustache trimmer for my birthday.

I get a tattoo, and all they can do is comment on what a lovely shade of purple that Decepticon insignia is.

GYAH! DAMN IT, YOU'RE SMOTHERING MY REBELLIOUSNESS!

So I decided to do the one thing that I was certain they could never spin into something positive, the one thing that I was absolutely sure that they could never view as a good thing... That's right, I decided to be a super villain's henchman.

Now this is not as easy as it sounds. You can't just walk right into a villain's hideout and say "Hey, where can I sign up?" That's why they're secret hideouts, their location is a secret. And even if you happen to know where their hideout is, you really can't get into the gang unless you know someone who's already in there, and I'm not really one that runs around in the criminal mastermind circuit.

And even if you know where the hideout is, and even if you know someone who can put in a word for you, there's still other criteria you have to meet to get in. It's like joining a Las Vegas dance show, you have to have a certain body type, etc. etc. Like Two-Face... Only hires identical twins. Poison Ivy? Only hires chicks. Joker? Well he pretty much hires anyone, but he has a tendency to kill 'em. Anyway, you get the idea.

So the best I could come up with was joining the gang of some wannabe villain who was calling himself The Jaywalker. He had blinking crosswalk signals on each shoulder, and we all had gray T-Shirts that said "DONT WALK" (sic) in all caps red letters. OK yeah, in retrospect that's an incredibly stupid super villian theme, but I was too awestruck by the sheer fact that I had managed to get myself into a super villian gang to really care.

So we were meeting in his "secret hideout" (Honestly I think it was just his mother's basement or something) one day, where he was outlying his "master plan." His master plan was to tie up traffic in downtown during rush hour by staging a massive coordinated jaywalking spree that would bring everything to a standstill and make countless people late getting home.

Once again, in retrospect this seems rather silly since we weren't going to steal any loot or anything...

But just as he gets done explaining his scheme, this Danny Elfman music starts up out of nowhere. We're just looking around wondering where its coming from like a bunch of doofuses, when all of a sudden there's this "PSHEW! *Chock!*" sound, and there's a zip line embedded in the table!

Then BATMAN comes zooming down the zip line through the window, and full on smashes his feet into The Jaywalker's face at full speed, just spinning him 'round in place like he were a top or something.

So he gets his bearings back just in time for Batman to grab him by the collar and just start whaling on him. "Wait!" he's screaming, "I give up! Oh god, why are you doing this to me! OW! Mah knews! Joo brooc mah knews!" But Batman just keeps hitting him, and hitting him, and hitting him... And then he finally looks over at the chalkboard that has the master plan on it, and figures out that we're just a jaywalking syndicate with delusions of grandeur.

So he drops our fearless leader (Who's crying like a baby at this point) in a bloody heap on the floor, and then turns towards us, and.... gave us a very stern talking-too about how every law is worth heeding, and by breaking the little ones it only leads on to the path to breaking the bigger ones, and how every sin is equal in the eyes of god (Which, in light of the fact that I found out he was Jesus, makes a lot more sense), and all that.

So as he's pulling out his little grappling hook gun thingy to take off, I just had to ask a question that had been bugging me.

"Hey Batman, wait... If all crimes are equally bad, aren't you just as bad as the villains then? I mean, you just commit ed assault at the very least just now, and I'm sure most places have laws against vigilante justice, to say nothing of the fact that I doubt your car is street legal, and certainly isn't licensed and registered, and--"

I don't really know what happened next, but I came out of my coma three weeks later with bandages on my face.

And THAT'S what happened to my nose. So stop asking.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Octopuses like this one

At UCSB -- like any other college campus -- they had a daily college paper. And inside this paper was a daily crossword puzzle. And every day, I'd try and do the crossword puzzle, but I was never very good at them.

It seems that crossword puzzles have two levels: "Absurdly easy" ("3 letter word for Man's Best Friend.") and "So incredibly vague that you can't possibly get it in a million years" ("Died in 1978."). The crossword puzzles in this paper were definitely the latter category. I had visions of some geeky nerd with a stack of almanacs in the paper's office underneath the bell tower, cackling away all night long as he concocted the most arcane crossword puzzles possible with the most useless clues imaginable.

And yet I still tried to do these damned things every day. I'm such a masochist.

So one time I'm walking to my job downtown after school, trying to work on this crossword puzzle along the way. And I'm like SO CLOSE to completing it, there were only three words I hadn't figured out yet, and it was driving me nuts. And just as I get to the corner of De La Vina and Carrillo, the BATMOBILE comes roaring around the corner and pulls up right in front of me!

The canopy opens up, and lo and behold, it's BATMAN!

"Excuse me," he says, "Can you tell me how to get back to the freeway?"

"Sure," I say, "you just have to head up Carrillo here for a couple blocks -- Hey wait a minute, don't you have OnStar?"

"Not anymore," he grumbled.

"Wow, what happened?"

"Well they only gave it to me for free while I was their spokesperson. But then I pulled a Shatner and they yanked the endorsement money."

"You did a what now?"

"Pulled a Shatner."

"What does 'pull a Shatner' mean?"

"William Shatner admitted in an interview that he never used Priceline, and it caused their stock price to tumble."

"Bummer. Hey, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"What's a four letter word for Jedi master?"

"Yoda."

"22 letter word for bird?"

"Yellow-bellied sap sucker."

"15 letter word in the dictionary?"

"Chemoautotrophy."

And he was RIGHT! :blink"

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

THe story seven eight

Fun fact: Last week the space time continuum was in danger of collapsing. Of course none of you actually remember this happening, that's something only myself and a select cadre of super-powered heroes who were present at the center of the nexus of the disturbance retained the ability to recall. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but lets just say it was a climatic three-issue crossover event where the total destruction of the universe was prevented and space/time set back on its proper course with a gasket and a length of rubber hose.

But ironically enough Batman wasn't there for that, so that's really not a story for this thread.

However, during the run up to the impending collapse of the space time continuum, there was this little problem with alternate dimension and time lines crossing over into our reality. Let me tell you, it got to be quite a hassle. Every time you opened a door and stepped through without looking to make sure that your own universe was in fact on the other side, you'd find yourself in some alternate version of reality.

And of course it's never a GOOD alternate version of reality where you're like king of the universe and surrounded by a harem of a hundred super sexy redheads or super rich or it rains donuts or something. No, you always end up in a world where humans are persecuted by super-intelligent dinosaurs, or where cows raise humans for food, or something like that.

One time I ended up in a world which seemed to have been populated by pudding, I swear to god.

So one night I wake up in the middle of the night and have to take a leak in the worst possible way. So I stumble out of the bedroom towards the bathroom, completely forgetting to check the other side of the door to make sure it's actually the bathroom.

Suddenly I'm very cold, and there's all this shouting and clanging and booming, the floor is heaving left and right, and there's this deafening roar of cannon fire, and all I can think is "Where did I leave that toilet?"

Eventually I woke up a little more and realized that, once again, I'd fallen through another rift in space and time. It was really annoying because it'd happened like six times that day alone, and I really had to take a piss like you wouldn't believe. Turned out I was on a pirate ship, which was just wonderful because I wasn't even sure if they even HAD toilets on those things.

So as I'm doing the potty dance, I decide to take in the sights around me. Not so much because I was interested in what was happening, but I figured that you know, in these life threatening situations it's best to try and survive until you can be sent back to your own time. Not that it really mattered that much, because this scurvy lot wasn't interested in me at all.

No, they were all rushing headlong towards the front of the ship, where a giant battle was taking place. Well it wasn't really a gigantic battle, it was just a bunch of pirates surrounding one lone figure, who was fighting them all off by his lonesome self. Eventually the crowd parted, and lo and behold, who should it be?

ALTERNATE REALITY BUCCANEER BATMAN!

And you thought he kicked ass in our time line? You ain't seen nothing 'till you see Alternate Reality Buccaneer Batman go and skewer some pirates with his sword and pistol skills. He's all jumping off the rigging, and doing flips and stuff, and just totally laying waste to these guys.

It was so cool. A little gay, honestly, but cool. I mean he had this big giant hat with this huge purple feather in it...

So anyway, Batman finishes off all the pirates, and that's when he spots me just standing there in a t-shirt and boxers, looking completely stoned because for me, this is happening in the middle of the night (Well for me, anyway. It was daylight in Pirate World.) and all I want to do is go back to my own time and crawl into bed.

"Ahoy there, scalawag!" he shouts at me.

"Whazah now?" I mumbled back.

"Dost ye yield?"

"What, like at intersections?"

"Dost thou surrender before my blade?"

"Huh? Your blade surrenders second or something?"

At this point he started rubbing the temples of his mask like I was giving him a headache or something. C'mon... I'm giving YOU a headache? You're not time-skipping in your jammies and winding up on a pirate ship when all you want to do is take a leak.

I would have told him as much, but the rocking of the waves finally go to me and I puked on the spot. And of course at that very moment I was warped back to my own time, so I finally got to use the damned toilet.

As I crawled back into bed, Crystal says "Why do you smell like salt and vomit?"

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

TEN! TEN STORIES! AH AH AH!

You know what I hate? Musicals. Honestly, I just can't stand them. Well I liked Little Shop of Horrors and Moulin Rouge, but that was it. Everything else just bores the everliving snot out of me... I mean c'mon, we're supposed to believe that a song and dance number can spontaneously break out where everyone knows the words and choreography? Puh-leeze. I hate musicals with every fiber of my being.

You know what Crystal likes? Musicals. Honestly, she just loves them. So when we have to decide between "Do we see a musical because Crystal wants to see it" and "Do we not see a musical because Mike would rather take a pencil, jab it in his eyes, and spend the next six weeks in a hospital trying not to move and wondering what he'd look like in a jaunty eye patch than see a musical," which choice do we pick?

We see the musical. Because otherwise I wouldn't get to have sex for six weeks.

So of course some theater in town is putting on a live performance of Chicago. Because you know, it wasn't bad enough that we had to see the putrid pile of vomit when it was a movie (How did this win the Oscar for best picture? HOW?), now we have to go see the live stage performance.

Oh god, kill me now.

So we go to the theater to see this damned play. There's some musical number on stage... I don't recall which one, because they all sucked. Besides, I was to busy sharpening my pencil to jam it in my eye so I could get the heck out of Dodge. That's when I heard this ominous creaking sound coming from above the stage. "Oh thank god," I'm thinking. They're going to have a problem with the performance and we'll have to go home early.

Let's just say "having a problem with the performance" was an understatement.

All of a sudden, the lighting rigging gives way, and comes swooping down onto the stage, a juggernaut of sharp, pointy metal and burning lights. Needless to say it impaled and crushed the performers on the spot, leaving their limp and bleeding bodies clinging to the last spark of life, doomed to a gruesome death unless by some miracle someone in the audience had sufficient medical knowledge and happened to have an ER's worth of equipment in their belt.

Wink wink nudge nudge.

And sure enough, who should come running down the aisle to leap up on the stage but BATMAN!

He checked the pulse of the actors, then stood up slowly, head bent low. He moved towards the center of the stage as the crowd looked on expectantly, hoping beyond hope that he had some good news to share. Suddenly, his head shoots up from his chest...

And he begins to SING!

It was amazing! What were the odds that you'd go to see Chicago performed live on stage, only to wind up watching a one man show of Batman performing the entire play! THE ENTIRE PLAY! You would not BELIEVE the range of this guy's voice! He hit every high note and every low note with perfection, and had every last step of the dances committed to memory.

And the way he tap danced around the twitching corpses of the actors and the twisted wreckage of the lighting rigging, it was like it wasn't even there! After a while you didn't even notice it, it was like part of the scenery. It was absolutely brilliant. You'd never guess that Batman had this sort of performance brilliance underneath that cowl.

Of course at the end of the play, he got a standing ovation. And not just because it's become a meaningless gesture that is expected at the end of every performance of any sort, but because the audience felt he REALLY deserved it. It was just indescribably fantastic, the English language lacks the capacity to encapsulate the sheer awesomeness of the spectacle.

It was SUCH a huge hit, that during the next performance they even intentionally killed the understudies in the hopes that Batman might make an encore performance, but no such luck. I was truly blessed to witness this event.

I still hate musicals, but now I can chalk up "Batman performing Chicago" along with Little Shop of Horrors and Moulin Rouge as the very few musicals that I actually enjoyed.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Oh look another tale!

When I was a kid, my favorite place to go was Sea World. I was wild about marine biology right up through most of college, but then there was this one biochemistry class that I couldn't pass to save my life (and I'd barely hung on to the curve for the previous chemistry classes leading up to it), so I had to change my major to zoology.

Which is just as well, because going to UCSB with a zoology major places a heavy emphasis on marine animals since the campus is right on the coast. We even have an "aquarium" of sorts, although really it's more like a shed with tanks of water in it for holding specimens for lab classes. I used to love to hang out in there between periods, they had these lobsters that were like 80 years old and nearly the length of my arm.

Wouldn't want to get into a fight with one of those, I tell you what... Fortunately we've got slipper lobsters here on the west coast, so they don't have those giant pincers like the ones you find in Maine. They do have really spiny shells though, so if they flick you with their tail they can cause a nasty gash...

But enough about lobster fighting. To celebrate my graduation from college, we went to Sea World, which I haven't been to in like 10 years. I couldn't tell you how much had changed since my memory was so foggy, but I just figure all the stuff I forgot means that it's like new when I see it again.

As you know, at Sea World they have a penguin exhibit, where the penguins just kind of hang around on a fake iceberg and go for dips in the water. I wonder if they keep that water real cold for them or something, because I doubt that birds that live in Antarctica are well equipped for living in San Diego... Anyway, I'm watching the little guys do their thing, when I notice some guy making his way to the center of the exhibit. I figure it's just some maintenance guy or a trainer or something, but then I look closer.

Wait a minute, Sea World employees don't wear capes and cowls! That's BATMAN!

While I'm sitting there pondering what possible reason Batman could have for wandering around in the penguin exhibit at Sea World, he reaches down and grabs one of the penguins and hoists it up so he's looking it in the eye.

"Alright, no more games," he growled. "Tell me who's moving the drugs on the street!" he yelled as he proceeded to shake the penguin like a rag doll.

"Awk! Awk! Awk!" was all the poor penguin could strangle out...

"Talk! TALK DAMN YOU!" Batman screamed, as he proceeded to beat the hell out of this tiny little penguin. He was kicking it, and throwing it against the walls, and screaming like a madman.

"Holy hell," I thought, "Batman's gone and completely lost it." "Hey, Batman!" I yelled out, "What the hell are you DOING?!"

"Don't bother me! Can't you see I'm trying to shake down The Penguin for information?" he yelled over his shoulder.

"Um... I don't think that's the Penguin, I think it's just a penguin."

Batman looked real close at the half-dead bird in his hands. "Are you sure? He's short, got a big nose, is wearing a black and white outfit, and goes 'Awk awk awk.'"

"Yeah, I think that's why the Penguin calls himself 'The Penguin.'"

"You know, I never stopped to think of it that way. I guess it makes sense. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go beat the crap out of my source who told me the Penguin was in this enclosure."

"Who's your source?"

"A puffin, two enclosures over."

And with a shot from his grappling hook launcher, he was out of there, leaving the penguins in a tizzy. That man has issues.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

How many of these things are there?

I got my first apartment the summer before my junior year at UCSB. I dilly-dallied, delayed, and just generally put off finding a place to live for quite a while, until it got to the point that my only hope was to answer some ads in the newspaper looking for roommates. I'm a pretty easy to get along with kind of guy, so I took my chances and ended up signing a lease for a place to be shared with three other people, although only two of us were going to be living there that summer, and one of them I'd never met.

So yeah, it's two guys and two girls in one two bedroom apartment. Hilarity ensues.

Anyway, the second girl moves in like two weeks before school starts. Her name was Becky, and good lord was she hot. I went through the entire school year being totally in love with this girl, but of course nothing was ever going to come of it. Let me tell you, you think unrequited love is bad? Try living with the object of your affection and knowing that she would never go for a guy like you. The closest I would ever get to sleeping with her was catching a wayward glance of her breast down the collar of her T-shirt when she was bending over to look inside the fridge one night. And its not like I even saw nipple, so that shouldn't even count.

And of course she was a redhead. And redheads drive me absolutely crazy...

So anyway, one of the jobs she got while in college was working as a henchman (We in the biz call it "henching") working for Poison Ivy. Apparently the money was good, and she had to wear all these skimpy plant-themed outfits, so it's not like I didn't benefit in some regard. I also got ALL the dirty details about her operation ("So is Poison Ivy a lesbian?" "Oh yeah. I have to fend her off with a stick.").

So anyway, one night I'm feeling thirsty, so I go to the kitchen to get myself something to drink. I'm kind of groggy and all, so while I'm rustling through the fridge it takes me a minute to realize what's off. The first thing I notice is that the bottle of Coca Cola seems to have pointy ears and eyes. The second thing I notice is that it's not really a bottle of Coke at all, but rather a head with a mask that had a Coca Cola label taped onto the forehead. The third thing I notice is that this head is staring right at me. That's when it hits me: Holy hell, that's not a bottle of Coke!

That's BATMAN in my fridge!

"Uh... Batman, what are you doing in my fridge?"

"I am not Batman. I am a bottle of Coca Cola Classic, as clearly indicated by my product labeling," he said as he pointed to the logo on his head.

"Looks like you just stuck a label onto your forehead..."

"Alright, you caught me. I am Batman."

"That still doesn't explain what you're doing in my fridge."

"I'm waiting for your roommate Becky."

"Ah, so you know she's a henchman for Poison Ivy and want to give her the shakedown to find out what her plan is?"

"Um... Yeah. Sure."

"..........."

"What?"

"You just want to see her breasts down the front of her shirt when she bends over to reach inside the fridge, don't you?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"Best of luck to you. Can I have a glass of juice?"

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Dental Plan!

I have a friend on my AIM buddy list that I end up chatting to most every night. We usually only talk about two things: The Simpsons, and... Um... OK, guess it's just that one thing. I guess it's just lucky that the Simpsons have such a prolific body of work, because otherwise we'd run out of things to talk about in an awful hurry.

Anyway, so last month we were having a discussion on who we each thought the most underused bit character in the Simpsons was. For him, he thought it was Nelson's dad. You may remember his only legitimate appearance in the episode where Homer becomes a boxer. After that, his appearance changed and he only showed up when Nelson was hallucinating or something.

WTF kind of choice is that? He wasn't even that funny, it was just supposed to be an analogy of Homer getting beaten up by the fathers of the bullies that beat up Bart. I mean the overall joke was fairly good, but the character was ultimately forgettable.

For my money, the best character to never get the chance to shine was Dr. Shapiro from the episode where Homer became the leader of his union and Lisa needed braces. Just the way they animated the scenes with him, lurking in the darkness while his hapless patients stared into the glaring light over their face, only to have him spring forward and yell at them about their dental habits.

Plus he had that whole Hannibal Lector voice going on...

"How often do you brush, Ralph?"

"Twice a day, sir."

"Must you turn my office into a house of LIES?"

And of course he only got the one episode to appear in... I mean c'mon, they brought back Dr. Monroe, and they outright said he was DEAD both in the show and in the official website. The least they could do is an episode where Lisa gets her braces removed and pull Dr. Shapiro out of the mothballs.

So anyway, the moment I finish the conversation, that episode's most memorable moment pops into my head, where Homer is staring off into space hearing Lenny and Marge's voice repeating the same two sentences over and over and over again.

And of all the luck, the damned thing gets stuck in my head like a song that you can't get rid of.

"Goodbye dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

"Dental plan!"

"Lisa needs braces."

Annoying as all hell, isn't it? Now imagine it was stuck in your head for about 48 hours, give or take.

As you can imagine, I lasted about six hours before I went quite mad.

Yes, I went stark raving crazy. I mixed green and clear glass in the recycling bin. I drank red wine with fish instead of white. I signed up for the Columbia Music Club. I removed the tags off mattresses that you aren't supposed to remove. I wore black socks with shorts. I ate my entree with the salad fork. I didn't separate my lights and darks in the laundry. I went over my past tax returns to make sure I didn't shortchange the government.

I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries.

And apparently at one point I ran around downtown naked wearing some poor sap's bloody skull on top of my head screaming, "I am a fairy princess!" But I don't remember that happening.

So anyway, I'm scrounging around in an alley somewhere, covered in filth and arguing with the rats (But the damned buggers just wouldn't see my point.). "Don't you GET IT?" I'd scream, "Lisa needs braces! SHE NEEDS BRACES! But if they lose the dental plan, then they'll have to pay for the braces themselves! Where are you going?! COME BACK HERE YOU FILTHY VERMIN, I'M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU!"

So I'm crawling after the scurrying rats in my haze of insanity down the alley, when I run into a pair of legs. Looking up and who should I see?

BATMAN! In all his glory, his massive frame framed by the silver orb of the full moon hanging in a sky lit blood red by the lighting of the diseased city below. And, just for the moment, I regained enough of my senses to plead for help.

"Batman," I said, "please, you've got to give me some knockout gas or something... Anything, ANYTHING to make the voices stop!"

Moving so fast that I don't even know what's happened, he backhands my face and my temple explodes in pain and I witness the birth of the universe as a billion tiny stars appear in my line of sight.

"OW! You sadistic ass, what the-- Hey, the voices stopped! Oh wait, there they go again..."

BAM! Another crack, this time to the other side of the head.

"It's working! Quick, hit me again!"

SMACK!

"Don't be a pussy!" I gurgle through a mouth filled with blood. "HIT ME!"

WHAM!

And so the savage beating continued, each blow knocking another word of the torturous meme out of my mind (And taking several teeth with it). Finally, when I could barely hold a coherent thought in my head, let alone a repetitious bit of dialog, I grinned a gaping smile and squinted through swollen eyes and said "There. It's finally gone. Thanks Batman!"

"Not a problem," he said as he turned away and left me hunched over a pool of my blood in the alley.

And yet as he walked away, something started to worm its way into my head ad naseum...

"Nunna nunna nunna nunna, nunna nunna nunna nunna, BATMAN!"

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Insert an interseting title here

Ever since I was twelve, all I really wanted was a trench coat. I don't think it was that unreasonable a request, but my parents seemed to be opposed to it for no other reason than because they could be. I mean it's not like back in '92 there was any sort of Columbine stigma attached to a trench coat, no, it had nothing worse than... you know flashers and Colombo and stuff.

Maybe they just didn't like Colombo.

Anyway, in college I finally managed to acquire a trench coat. What I didn't realize though was that the waterproofing on them wears off after a while. How was I supposed to know? I'd never owned a coat, and no one had ever said "Gee, don't you hate it when the waterproofing on your trench coat wears off?" to me or anything. And honestly it didn't really rain especially frequently in Santa Barbara, so this was something that could go on for quite some time without you ever realizing that it doesn't repel water anymore.

And since this is my life, guess how I end up finding out? Yeah, when a friggin' hurricane comes ashore and starts blowing rain horizontally while I'm walking from the campus to my apartment in Isla Vista. By the time I got home, one side of my trench coat was 50 pounds heavier, because apparently when it's not repelling water, it's absorbing it like a sponge.

So while it's drying out over the period of god only knows how long, I do some checking and find that you have to take it to the dry cleaners when you want to get the waterproofing reapplied.

So I take it to the dry cleaning place nearest to my house, and as I'm waiting there at the counter waiting for some service, this big moving van starts backing up into the parking lot. I don't think anything of it until the driver walks into the shop and plunks down a shoebox jam packed with claim tickets.

I look, and then do a double take. That's BATMAN standing next to me!

"Wow, what are you doing here, Batman?" I ask.

"Picking up my dry cleaning. I have to get my suits cleaned periodically."

"Holy hell man, how many suits do you have?"

"278."

"What on earth do you need so many suits for?"

"I have one for every situation."

"Every--"

"EVERY situation."

"Arctic expedition suit?" He rummages through his box, and thrusts a claim ticket in my direction.

"Low orbital flight suit?" Another second of looking through the box, another claim ticket.

"Aquatic exploration?" He produced yet another ticket.

"Space combat?" Claim ticket.

"Stealth cloaking?" Claim ticket.

"Jungle ambush?" Claim ticket.

"Sewer diving?" Claim ticket.

"Formal wear?" Claim ticket.

"Semi-Formal wear?" Claim ticket.

"Casual wear?" Claim ticket.

"Lion taming?" Claim ticket.

"Alligator wrestling?" Claim ticket.

"Water cooler chat?" Claim ticket.

"Anti-leg humping dog suit?" Claim ticket.

"Accosted by a homeless guy named Steve on a Wednesday in July?"

"I've got one for a guy named Bob..."

"Close enough. Wow, guess you really do have a suit for every situation. And to think all this time we all just thought Hasbro and Mattel were being stupid for making endless swarms of you in different suits."

"Nope. All licensed products."

"Huh. Go figure."

As I was leaving the store, I could hear Batman arguing with the clerk at the counter.

"What do you mean 'describe it?' Oh all right... It's got a big bat symbol on the chest, it's covered in neon green stripes-- What? Yes, I KNOW its supposed to be urban camouflage, but you're not in charge of naming these things, are you? Don't you give me lip!"

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

MIKE SURE WROTE A WHOLE LOT DIDN'T HE?

I haven't done a toy review of any sort in forever. Since I always liked doing them, and I'm really liking Alternator Smokescreen, so I decided to make him the topic of my glorious return to reviewing.

Yes, I know he's already been reviewed by numerous people for many months, but to them I say: Screw you! It's Mike's time to shine, damn it!

Vehicle mode

First let me start off by saying how surprised I was to find that there was not one twisty tie to be found on the packaging of this guy. Instead, he was encased in a molded plastic bubble. I don't remember the last time that's happened.

Hell, I don't remember it happening ever at all. Go figure.

Now obviously the emphasis of this toy is on the realistic vehicle mode. This is clearly indicated by the packaging, which seems to declare,

SUBARU IMPREZA WRC (Oh, by the way his name is Smokescreen)

I'm sure I don't have to tell you how amazing his vehicle mode is, but guess what? I'm going to anyway. The amount of detail on this thing is phenomenal... all four doors open, the hood opens, the trunk opens (Although granted they don't open very far, but still that's way more than they had to do), there's an actual engine under the hood... It's all just so... god damn.

And that's not even getting into the little tiny details that they probably could have left out like the gear shift and parking brake in the interior, to say nothing of the AC vents, turn signals, and COIN TRAY on the dashboard. And they even made it have quasi-functional steering, implemented in a pretty ingenious way of coordinating the front two wheels with magnets. Seriously, would anyone have noticed it if it were missing? There was no reason for anyone to do this other than for boasting rights about how much they kick ass.

And kick ass they do.

I only have one complaint about the vehicle mode, and I'm not even sure it's a valid one. That being that the front doors don't have windows of any sort. I don't know if the actual Subaru rally racer doesn't have them (In which case it makes perfect sense), but it seems odd to not include them, yet have the back door windows and both windshields present.

Ah well, I can always pretend they're just rolled down or something.

Transformation to robot[/b[

Smokescreen here definitely hails from the RiD Autobot Brothers school of design, only carried out to the Nth degree.

I know people have been railing on Hasbro for their lackluster instructions for the Alternators, but honestly I didn't find him to be THAT complicated. Sure, he gave me a few head scratching moments to figure out what to do, but just a few glances at the pictures on the box was more than enough for me to figure out the vast majority of it. The only things I missed were flipping the roof of the car over (Which seems to be little more than an extra step added for the sake of adding an extra step), and the heels in his feet that the instructions seem to indicate are actually to keep his toes from collapsing (Not that they were doing that in the first place.).

So yeah, he's complex, but nothing that can't be figured out.

I would have gladly sacrificed the steering alignment in the front wheels if it had meant that I could transform the arms without so many contortions to work the little bit with the magnet on it around the edges of the hood and all.

[b]Robot Mode

For a line that's basically seemingly built around the old school G1 character given new and modern upgrades, to me it seems that Smokescreen has retained the most of the characteristics from his G1 form. It seems that with each unveiling of a new Alternator, they seem to be drifting further and further away from their G1 counterparts, whereas Smokescreen is firmly anchored in all kinds of nostalgia.

Granted, he no longer turns into the same kind of car, but his robot mode maintains the same shape and much of the details such as his head and forearms. Yeah, he no longer has the red-orange color present anywhere on him, and he doesn't have shoulder mounted missile launchers (Even though there's two holes that would be perfect for holding them right behind his head on the gray bar his windshield is attached to), but practically everything else is spot on. Hell, even his gun is a reasonable interpretation of the original's, given the limitations of the fact it had to turn into the engine.

His articulation is fairly impressive too, featuring articulation in the hip, knee, ankle, waist, head, wrist, fingers, elbow, and the shoulder. However once again the curse of the steering gimmick strikes again in SEVERELY hampering his lateral shoulder movement since the little bit with the magnet butts up against the chest. Once again, I'd have gladly sacrificed the steering gimmick for an easier time transforming the arms and more movement. He also lacks any ability to swivel his arm at the elbows, but that's a lot easier for me to overlook compared to the shoulder thing.

Still, otherwise an utterly fantastic robot mode.

Transformation back to vehicle

I really really REALLY hope you paid close attention to what the hell you were doing when you were turning him into robot mode, because now you've got to reverse it all.

Doesn't sound that hard, but getting each and every little individual bit to line up juuuuuuuuuuuust right is kind of a pain in the ass. It takes much fiddling and fiddling and fiddling to get everything perfectly aligned.

And I don't know if this happened with anyone else's Alternator Smokescreen, but as it turns out, mine was apparently actually a puzzle box that opened a portal to Hell.

I know this because after trying to get everything in perfect place for 20 minutes, I finally succeeded. And immediately the room was cloaked in darkness, and a bunch of chains came flying out the shadows to hoist me off the ground, and who should appear but Pinhead and his Cenobite friends.

"What the hell!" I yelled, "I didn't open the box!"

"True," said Pinhead, "but we've been branching out into absurdly complex transforming toys. Many little Japanese children have had their sooooooooooooooooooouls torn asunder."

"That would explain the goblins that would show up every time I try and transformed Dinobot Slapper," I mused.

"No, that's just because you do to much LSD," he retorted. "Now we shall tear your soooooooooooooooooooul apart."

"Do you always have to say it like that?"

"Say what? 'Apart?'"

"No, 'soul.' It's only one syllable, not like... eight."

"Oh do shut up. We have such wonderful torments to inflict upon you--"

At that point, without warning something came flying out of the dark and embedded itself firmly in the forehead of one of the Cenobites. "Ow..." he mumbled as he collapsed into a leather-clad heap.

Wait, what is that in his head? Is it? Could it be? Yes!

A BATARANG!

Suddenly, BATMAN leaps from the shadows and starts laying the smack down on the remaining Cenobites! Fortunately for him, their BDSM outfits aren't designed for quick movements. Unfortunately for them, Batman is the master of martial arts.

The friggin' MASTER I tell you.

So pretty soon it's just Pinhead and Batman, and Pinhead does that thing where he just stares all evil like, and then the chains come to life to try and hook themselves in Batman's flesh. But Batman just can't be caught man, he just can't be caught! He dodges left, he dodges right, he does a triple reverse back flip through the air, and before you know it... He's holding all the chains in his iron fist.

"Oh bloody hell..." muttered Pinhead.

"You got that right," growled Batman, who then proceeded to beat the snot out of Pinhead and string him up from the wall like a duck in the window of a shop in Chinatown.

"Wow," I said, "I never knew that collecting Transformers could be so dangerous."

And just like that, the Cenobites were gone, and Batman took off into the night. Of course I went and exchanged my Smokescreen for a non-soul damning version, since obviously I can't always count on Batman to save my ass.

It's still a pain in the ass to get back in to vehicle mode though.

Overall

Awesome vehicle mode, awesome robot mode, and pretty darn reasonably priced at 20 bucks given his size. Go buy 'im.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Apparently the 16th story

Here's the thing about seeing movies in Santa Barbara... All of the theaters are owned by only one company, and the majority of them are within 5 blocks of one another downtown.

You had the Arlington, which was this one gigantic theater that doubled as the local stage house. The only movies they showed were the really huge blockbusters (Well, expected blockbusters. They also had crap like Gods and Generals, which flopped abysmally), like Star Wars and The Matrix. Actually it was pretty cool inside, with faux Spanish mission architecture on the walls and stars twinkling on the ceiling.

You had the Fiesta 5, which was your general run of the mill movie theater. It had the usual fare of romantic comedies and family movies and whatnot. The inside was a dump though. The insides of all of them were dumps. Why bother to spend money to spruce up the interior when you've got no competition?

Further down the street you had the Metro 4, which seemed to specialize in action/sci-fi/horror movies. As dumpy as all of them were, this one was probably the dumpiest. It's a good thing the lights are out in the theater, 'cause you don't want to be looking at anything around here.

Finally you had the Paseo Nuevo, (Means "new place." DUR HUR! We use Spanish words in southern California to sound classy!), which actually was a fairly modern theater and not quite so trashed on the inside, however the entrance was at ground level, while the actual theaters were up two flights of stairs. This particular theater specialized in artsy fartsy and independent films.

Anyway, no matter which theater you're going to in Santa Barbara, you're going to have the same problem on Friday and Saturday nights: Drunken college students. I don't know if they just were present in every showing of every movie playing, or I just happened to be unlucky enough to pick the ones that the drunken idiots went to, but it seemed to happen all the time.

All. The. Time.

So anyway, I'm going to the movies one night, and while I'm walking buy the concessions stand where they were bilking some poor sap out of 9.50 for a popcorn and a soda, I see these two staggering morons giggling incoherently to themselves.

"Oh great," I think, "Just my luck these guys are going to see the same movie I'm seeing."

And of course since the universe is governed by Murphy's Law, that's precisely what movie they were going to see.

So they sat there in the back of the theater yelling advice to the characters on the screen, throwing crap around the theater, and just generally being a nuisance. Now I'll usually go out of my way to avoid confrontation with people, but these guys were ragging on my very last nerve.

So while they're up there making a commotion, I'm down near the front row counting to myself before I go back there and start to kick their ass. 10... 9... 8...

"HA! That totally rocked!"

7... 6... 5...

"Dude, you totally beaned her in the head. Do it again!"

4... 3... 2...

"Holy crap, I think I just pissed my pants, man..."

1...

And that's when the aliens attacked.

Why does everything happen to this damned planet? You hardly ever hear about aliens invading some other planet, they always pick on us. Then there's the fact that all the collapses of the universes or space time continuum and what have you are invariably centered on our planet, and seemingly every god that ever existed in any mythological pantheon is out there running amok in some form or another. Does earth just have great real estate value or something? Is that why everyone wants to kick us to the curb, because we have some little spots of green left that you can still see from space? Who knows.

And where were all the world's heroes? Oh, they lasted about five minutes before the onslaught of the extraterrestrial invaders, and were all killed or captured before humanity was enslaved to rape the planet of its natural resources to build a new fleet to attack the next planet. The only one that evaded capture was, of course...

BATMAN.

Although a fat lot of good he could do when the whole world is under the dominion of space-bound reptilian horrors. Nope, it was up to the few of us who remained free in the ruins of civilization to fight a guerrilla battle against the aliens. I was part of the Phantom Gauchos myself, running around through the smoldering wreckage of California's central coast with pulse rifles, performing hit and run raids and living on a dwindling supply of canned chili.

And it was VEGETARIAN CHILI. You cannot fathom the horror.

So anyway, once in a while when we were scrounging for food and fighting the radioactive chipmunks for turf, I'd catch a glimpse of Batman perched way up on some spire of wreckage. Cape billowing out behind him, he'd appraise the situation for a few moments, and then vanish into the night.

Gee, thanks for the assist, Batman.

In the end though, it just went to show how shortsighted I was. While I was sitting there pumping round after round into the chest of a giant toad monster, silently cursing Batman for not helping us out, I really should have known better. Because when it came down to it, who do you think it was that discovered the absurdly simple weakness of the aliens that no life form could ever achieve space flight without encountering?

Batman of course. I mean c'mon, the man's a genius. And Superman was shacking up with the Lizard Queen, so you know he wasn't going to come through for us. And it's a widely known fact that no alien can successfully invade earth, because they always get foiled by something stupid, be it the common cold in War of the Worlds, fire if they were Martians, water if they were those poorly filmed aliens from Signs, or Macintoshes if it were ID4. I imagine that if we were ever invaded by xenomorphs, we'd just be right proper fucked, but I digress

So within a month, the aliens were completely defeated, and life returned to normal as we waited for the next super catastrophe to befall our planet. And let me tell you, things worked out for us just in time.

We were out of chili.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Remember! Remember! The 17th of November!

I don't own a car.

I used to own a car. Sorta. Actually, I just had my dad's old '90 VW Passat after he bought a new car, but I pretty much only had that for my senior year in high school. After that it was off to college, and the cost of bringing the car along was just too cost prohibitive. The insurance would go up, you had to pay an obscene amount of money to have a parking space on campus, and gas prices in Southern California lean towards the steep side. So it was decided that the car would stay home.

Or, to use my dad's exact phrasing, "Learn to get where you're going by walking, kiddo."

Actually this wasn't really as big an imposition as it might seem. My entire time in SB, I either lived on campus, a block away from campus, two blocks from the bus stop that took me to campus, and if I wanted to go downtown there was always the express shuttle. And it's not like downtown is all that big in the first place. So yeah, you can get around quite handily with a free bus pass and a pair of legs.

At any rate, walking became my chief form of transportation. More importantly, when there was nothing on TV and nothing on the Internet and I started to get antsy, it'd give me something to do. That and it was a decent way to relieve stress. I'd go out for a walk whenever I got pissed, and come home feeling OK.

Of course then I'd realize that I'd gotten no satisfaction from just getting over being angry instead of doing something about whatever had made me angry in the first place. So I'd just angry all over again. But that's neither here nor there.

So one day I come home, and my answering machine is full. "The hell...?" I'm thinking, so I go ahead and play the messages...

"Hey Mike, it's the Riddler. Sorry if I came on to stron--"

Skipped to the next message.

"This message is for Mike, it's from Edward Nygma. If you could just call me-- "

Skipped to the next message.

"Yeah, it's Ed again. Listen, if you're not doing anything this Fri--"

Skipped to the next message.

"Mike, can't we at least be friends? Call me at--"

Skipped to the next message.

"Don't be afraid of your feelings! I--"

Skipped to the next message.

"Mike, why haven't you called me yet? I--"

Skipped to the next message.

"Damnit man, don't you know I love you? I LOVE YOU! I--"

Hurled the answering machine out the window.

As you can imagine I was a little bit annoyed. To say nothing of being really really creeped out. I mean god, the guy buys me a drink and then he thinks we're dating or something.

I decided to go for a walk downtown. It was a Tuesday, which meant that there was a farmers' market thing going on in the middle of State Street. Not that I'd ever buy their flowers and crap, but they usually have taquitos, and SB is brimming over with hot girls.

So I'm wandering amongst the stands in the farmers markets, covertly eyeing the cuties who are buying the overpriced crap that they could get for cheaper (And cleaner) at the grocery store just a few blocks up the street. Suddenly I hear all this screaming, and the screeching of tires.

As I look up the street to see what's causing all the commotion, everyone dives for the sidewalks, and what do I see? The BATMOBILE! Rocketing down the street at break-neck speed and fishtailing everywhere! Let me tell you, crummy little flower stands have no way of surviving a high speed impact with the titanium-composite armored and turbine powered Batmobile, so while the car barely skipped a beat, the stands were exploding into showers of tarps, petals, and body parts of the unfortunate individuals who weren't able to get out of the way in time.

Surely, I was about to die, about to be sent to that glorious Batcave in the sky. But the universe obviously had other plans for me, because right then a truck filled with watermelons pulled out into the middle of the street between me and the jet black, four-wheeled juggernaut of death. and stalled. The Batmobile swerved to avoid it, ended up hitting another stand and launched off it like it were a ramp.

Man, it was like the whole thing in slow motion. The explosion of crimson and green as the Batmobile tore through the watermelons, spiraling in a barrel roll as it it passed directly overhead, only to have it land on some poor saps behind me who were promptly ground to hamburger as the car finally came to a halt.

"Batman!" I cried, as I ran over to the Batmobile, "Are you alright?"

As I reached the car, the canopy opened, and who should be inside?

That's right.

You guessed it.

NOT BATMAN!

No, it was some guy in a Batman costume. All concern I had for his well being evaporated, and I was left with only one thought on my mind...

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Batman's stunt driver," the guy said. Turns out his name was Steve.

"So uh, why does Batman need a stunt driver?" I inquired.

"He doesn't like to show it, but Batman is a total wuss. He can't handle all the hardcore driving sequences, so he leaves it up to me."

"Wow. I never imagined."

"Yep, it's all true. Hey, do you think we could not tell anyone about this? One more strike on my DMV record and my insurance premiums are going to skyrocket through the roof."

"Sure. Not a problem."

"Thanks." And then he zoomed off into the sunset as the the wailing of approaching ambulances drew near.

LEGENDS OF NOT BATMAN!

Why the fuck am I still doing this?

Let's talk about Europe.

I've actually been to Europe on several occasions. "Oh, you lucky dog!" people say. "Why on earth are you complaining about going to Europe? I'd love to go to Europe!" Well I'll tell you why... Because in each and every case, I was traveling with my family, and. as previously reported, that presents a truly intolerable set of conditions.

Here's an example; While we were in Germany in some random town, we got off the train (Since it was the end of the line and didn't go any further) and set out to find a hotel. There was a hotel next to the train station, but it was fairly classy and cost a fortune. So my dad figured that cheaper hotels would be within about a block of the train station.

So with a metric ton of luggage between the four of us, we started wandering away from the train station, and each hotel we passed was too expensive-looking for us, so my dad just kept saying, "one more block."

"One more block."

"One more block."

"One more block."

"One more block."

Eventually we ended up hopping onto a bus that we hoped would take us the many many many blocks away from the train station that we needed to find an affordable hotel, but instead we ended up on some hill in a residential district with nary a hotel in sight.

So what'd we do?

We hopped on the next bus back to town and ended up staying at the hotel that was next door to the train station.

LEGENDS OF DAD!

So anyway, on one of these family "vacations" to Europe, mom had the brilliant idea to go visit Eastern Europe, to "see the ancestral home of the Miksches." And we ended up somewhere in the Barvarias in this little village that looked like it hadn't moved forward since 1800.

"Mom, this place is a crap hole."

"But don't you want to see the ancestral home of the Miksches?"

"Firstly, you married into the family, what do you care where the name came from? Secondly, they came from what was then part of Poland in the days when America was still a bunch of British colonies, it's not like we have any relatives waiting for us. Thirdly, it's now part of the Czech Republic. Fourthly, WE NEVER CAME FROM HUNGARY!"

So yeah, we had another fight on the spot. So I went and stormed off (It's a little village, not like I was going to get lost to cool down, and yadda yadda yadda, I got bit by a werewolf.

Now let me tell you, being a werewolf is HIGHLY inconvenient. And of course my mom was totally in denial about it...

"Oh, he's just going through puberty."

The hell?! I was EIGHTEEN! I'd already BEEN through puberty! And since when does puberty only strike once a month on the full moon and then go away?

"He just loves those little kids!"

Yes mom, I loved the little kids. I WAS EATING THEM!

As you can imagine, I was a very irritable werewolf living with a woman like that for a mother, so I spent most full moons out of the house running amok. I mean hell, I was a werewolf! Who was going to stop me?

So one night I'm out lurking behind some buildings downtown, wolfing down (Pardon the pun) some little kid, when the alley way darkens and the a tall, cloaked figure cast his shadow down its length.

Grrrrrr... Who is this silly human that dares intrude upon the Terrah' from Bavaria ('Cause that's what I called myself. Yeah, I know Bavaria had one to many syllables to make it work, but it was the best I could think of)? So I lunge at him, and who should it be?

BATMAN!

Oh thank god! Batman! You've got to help me, I've been turned into a werewolf, and all I want to eat are small children, but they give me such terrible heartburn! Please please please, you've got to change me back!

Of course all that came out was, "Grrrrrr! Snarl! *Gnashing of teeth* Groooooooooooooooowl'll swallow your heart!"

So Batman did the only reasonable thing. and put a silver Batarang through my heart and left me for dead before stalking away into the night.

Of course it obviously didn't kill me. No, I was just left for dead, and when I came too I had amnesia. I had many misadventures as a result, before ending up in Bavaria again through happenstance where I managed to kill the original werewolf by running him over in a silver car.

Yeah, I know it seems kind of silly, but it makes sense if you hear the whole story. Unfortunately, that's not one of the...

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Shitcock = Pooprooster

Crystal's a photography student.

She's also more artistically talented than I am in practically every way imaginable, which annoys me to no end, because while my brain is chock full of kick-ass comics and robot designs, my own personal artistic ability sucks donkey scrotum.

Yes. That's right. I said donkey scrotum.

If I could draw, I'd have jotted down all my cool toy line ideas. If I could sculpt, I'd have made mock-ups. I could be rolling in the dough if only I had the ability to get the ideas out of my head and into some physical form so I could pitch it to someone. But instead I clean up after dogs who crap in their kennels at an animal hospital.

But I digress. The thing about photography students is that whenever they buy something for any occasion, they base their decision on how photogenic it is. Sometimes this isn't so bad, sometimes it drives me nuts.

This past Halloween was an example of the latter. We went to the local pumpkin patch -- actually more of a pumpkin parking lot at the local grocery store, since we live in Seattle and it's not exactly brimming over with agricultural sectors -- to pick out a pumpkin. They even had a tired-looking horse hitched up to a wagon for hay rides down to the K-Mart and back, and those bundles of dried stalks of corn that gets crud everywhere since they're so fragile.

So yeah, we want to get a pumpkin to carve up for Halloween. Not that any trick or treaters are going to be coming by our place, but just because it'd be fun to unleash some hostility and aggression on a squash.

For me, pumpkin-picking is quick and easy. I go in, find a pumpkin that doesn't completely suck, pay for it, and I'm out of there. Takes me like 15 minutes tops, and that's if I'm being really picky.

For Crystal, it's a whole different ball game. The thing has to be just the right shade of orange, it can't be lopsided, it must have a certain circumference and diameter, the stem has to curl, but not to much, etc. etc. etc.

We were there for nearly 2 hours.

TWO. BLOODY. HOURS.

Looking at PUMPKINS!

Why on earth did I not just leave? Why did I put up with it?

Because it's her car. And she promised to take me looking for toys afterward. And for that, I would put up with just about anything she does.

So yeah, she's sorting through pumpkins, and I'm just kind of staring off into space nodding complacently with every little comment she makes ("This one is nice..." "Uh huh." "Don't you think this one has a nice color?" "Yes honey."). That's when this sudden commotion to my left snaped me out of my daze.

I pivot on my foot and whirl around in a sweeping arch of trench coat to stare across the vast see of orange gourds, and what do I see?

Some guy with a pumpkin.

But wait, to his right, who's that? That's BATMAN! Hassling some other guy with a pumpkin!

I start to make my way through the sea of pumpkins to find out what's going on. By the time I get there, Batman's already grabbed the guy by the collar and was shaking him intermittently. The guy was just sweating like crazy, clutching to his pumpkin so hard that his knuckles were turning white.

I heard Batman growl in his customary "I'm so spooky!" voice, "You'd better give me that pumpkin if you know what's good for you..."

The guy, obviously not knowing what's good for him, responded with "No! It's my pumpkin! I saw it first!" And actually I tended to agree with him. We were standing in a parking lot chock full of pumpkins, I think Batman might have been overstepping his bounds when he had so many other pumpkins to choose from.

Batman hauled him even closer to his face until their noses were practically touching. "Last chance. Give me the pumpkin, or suffer the consequences..."

"No! Lemme alone!"

What happened next was so spectacular, that the English language lacks the ability to describe it adequately. First, I saw the pumpkin go up into the air, spiraling around in slow motion.

Then, Batman killed the guy seven times before he even hit the ground.

Lastly the pumpkin fell perfectly into Batman's outstretched hand.

Holy hell! That was the coolest thing I had EVER SEEN! Have you ever seen something that cool? Hell no! Because that was the coolest thing EVER!

BATMAN IS AWESOME! AWESOME IS BATMAN!

And then, after killing a man to obtain his pumpkin of perfection, Batman tosses it into the air, and hurls an exploding Batarang at it, reducing it to pulp. I was thinking "Gee, that seems like kind of a waste of a pumpkin to kill a guy over," when at that point Batman went absolutely NUKING FUTS!

Standing in the middle of the pumpkin lot, he just starts spinning around, throwing Batarangs like little ballistic missiles, pulping each and every pumpkin that anyone picks up. I half expected him to start screaming "If I can't have a perfect pumpkin, no one can!" but he just retained his icy demeanor and squashed many squash.

Eventually he ran out of Batarangs and stood there panting, so I decided it was safe enough to approach him and find out what exactly was going on.

"Hey Batman," I said, "what exactly is going on?"

"I got a tip off that the Scarecrow had rigged the pumpkins at the parking lot of northeast 130th street to explode with his fear gas," he replied.

"North EAST 130th? Dude, this is NORTH 130th, it doesn't turn into northeast 130th until it gets to the other side of the interstate."

"Oh really? Oh my goodness, this is so embarrassing. Guess I'd better get over there before Scarecrow strikes. Thanks for the tip!" And just like that, he leaped into the Batmobile and tore off down the street.

That Batman. What a wacky guy.

Of course right after he left all the pumpkins started exploding into this purple haze that made me hallucinate that my flesh was melting off my bones while monkeys were eating my brains, so I guess in retrospect he probably had the right address after all.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

HAI GUYZ SUPERNAUT HAS LOST HIS MIND

Seattle has a grand total of one Blockbuster Video.

No really, it's true. Just the one location.

OK, so it's NOT true, but the one by my house sure seems like it's the only one servicing the entire city. To get something to watch on Friday night, you have to be there Monday morning, because otherwise everything will be rented out. They literally never have ANYTHING in stock. Well nothing worth watching, at any rate. And even some of those are out of stock.

Last time we went there for a movie, they had rented out all their copies of GIGLI.

No, seriously. I'm really not joking about that. If I'd had a camera, I'd have taken pictures because it was just that unbelievable. This is not part of the story, this is something that actually happened: Blockbuster rented out all 12 copies of Gigli.

Yeah, it scared me too.

I'm pretty sure that means the seventh seal has been opened and some vials of God's wrath have been unstopped and poured upon the earth or something like that.

Seriously, can you even fathom that? A video rental joint that gets SO much business that it can't keep anything in stock so people end up having to rent what is considered one of the worst movies of all time? I swear on my mother's grave I'm not making this up.

Speaking of Blockbuster, does anyone hate their new policies about due dates? "Oh, seven day rentals are due back on the ninth day!" Well then it's not really a seven day rental now, is it dumbass? It's a nine day rental. "Oh, but it's still a seven day rental, we just give you a two day grace period." Well then what were they before? Five day rentals with two day grace periods? No? Well then they're still just nine day rentals now then, and you flunked grade school.

Anyway...

So yeah, I'm there bright and early Monday morning to try and score a movie for Friday evening along with the rest of the people who actually want to try and rent something at any point during the week. Ironically I live in Seattle, which I'm pretty sure is at least in partly owned by Starbucks, and I totally do not drink coffee at all. Well at the very least exceedingly rarely, I think I had maybe half a dozen cups of coffee all last year. I don't mind their chocolate brownie frapaccinos though, but there's hardly any coffee in those things in the first place.

So yeah, I don't drink coffee, and I'm not a morning person. I don't wake up totally until about 11 o'clock, in which case I usually wonder where the hell I am, how I got there, and what am I doing in a ditch with a dead hooker. As you might imagine, I'm a little slow to respond to things when I'm in that state.

Keeping that in mind, it should come as no surprise that while waiting in line to finally pay for my rental, it took me a good 10 minutes to realize that the person standing in line in front of me was wearing a cape and a cowl with pointy ears.

That's BATMAN standing in line to rent a movie!

"Hey Batman," I yawned, "how's it going."

"Just renting something for the weekend," he replied.

I took a closer look at the video he was holding. "Dude... 'Bridges of Madison County?'"

"What?"

"It's 'Bridges of Madison County'..."

"What's wrong with that?"

"That is like the definitive chick flick. It is the chick flick that all chick flicks aspire to be. When the would-be makers of chick flicks lay their sacrifices down at the alter, they do so at the alter of 'Bridges of Madison County.' To rent that movie is to admit that you have no testicles."

"Um... I'm renting it for Catwoman."

"Now if that were true, wouldn't you have said something right away instead of stalling to think up an excuse?"

Batman just stared at me, while I wore my little smirk of smug satisfaction of having emasculated the baddest badass to ever badass stuff. Further evidence that I don't think to clearly in the morning, because at that very moment he decked me so hard that my head spun around on my neck like I were Linda Blair in the Exorcist or something.

So yeah, never mouth off to Batman.

When he finally got to the front of the line to pay for his movie, there was this huge fuss about how he had returned the movie when he rented it last week at 12:02 instead of 12:00 and how he wasn't going to pay the late fee for that, with the clerk saying quite loudly how he didn't care if he had been renting the same movie from that location every week for going on three years, he still had to pay the late fees.

About three weeks later they found his head and part of his arm. I think they're still looking for the rest of him.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

The Legends of Batman Numero Twenty-one... o

You know what I hate? Old people.

Well OK, not all old people. Some old people are still quite capable people. Sean Connery for instance. He's pretty old, but he still kicks ass. No, what I'm talking about are the old people who are basically the living dead. They don't serve any useful purpose, and just kind of meander around, using up my precious oxygen and being a burden on the pharmaceutical supply that I could be putting to better use to get real messed up.

Those are the kind of old people I hate.

Now of course there's some sort of stipulation in the Constitution or something that every neighborhood in this country has to have some doddering old fool that everyone knows, and yet everyone kind of wishes would just quietly go away. The sort of person who has long since outlived any kind of productivity in life, and yet still try and cling to whatever dim memories they still possess in some vain attempt to make life seem like it doesn't suck as much as it actually does.

For me, that old person in my neighborhood was Mr. McGovern.

Mr. McGovern, way back before I was born, used to be a clown on some kids' TV show or something that was apparently popular enough to make him Fresno's biggest celebrity (We try and downplay the "HOME TO DAHMER'S MOTHER!" angle). Of course by the time I came to know him, he had long since retired, yet for some reason still held the belief that he made kids happy.

So of course every parent in the neighborhood indulged him in this farce and had him do birthday parties for the kids. I guess it just made good financial sense since he didn't do it for money, he did it for the love of entertaining the kids.

Personally, I think he just got a kick out of terrifying youngsters. This guy was a walking corpse when he did my party, and the only thing worse than a sagging, wrinkly face invading your personal space to wish you a "Happy Birthday big boy!" is one covered in grease paint with blood red makeup liberally applied around the mouth.

Christ, I had nightmares for months.

Now in high school I had this friend name Micha. She was pretty hot in the smouldering gothy sort of way, so I finagled my way into her cliche of friends just to feel out the prospects of going out with her. Par for the course it never happened, but as it turns out she ruined the lives of every guy who ever got involved with her. That and it seemed that half the guys that I hung out with were only hanging out to try and get in her pants, so there was more competition than I like to deal with.

So I did the natural thing in light of all the competition for the lovin' and switched up from unbridled lust to hip disinterest. Because there's nothing cooler than going against the flow, man.

But that's neither here nor there. The point is that she got herself knocked up in high school, and one day not to long ago I was visiting my friends in Fresno, and she was talking about her kid's fifth birthday party with a distinct note of dread in her voice.

"What could be so bad?" I asked. "It's just a birthday party. Give them some cake and punch and you're golden."

"I'm having it at my mom's house," she replied, "and she hired Mr. McGovern."

"SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS! He's still ALIVE?!"

This guy was ancient when I was FIVE. I couldn't even comprehend what he must look like nowadays. I imagined he'd be a pile of dust in baggy pants or something by this point.

So as you can imagine, we were invited along to try and keep her company with the rampaging children, and perhaps offer counseling to those who hadn't been exposed to the horror of Methuselah the Clown. But god, even nearly 20 years later, I didn't want to see this man again.

At the appointed hour, the children were herded around the back patio, an adult planted at every possible escape route to make sure Mr. McGovern had a captive audience. Then, through the sliding glass door, you could see into the darkened house and just barely make out a ghostly white image starting to make its way outside.

Slowly, ever so slowly he walked, his comically over sized shoes dragging across the ground, his red and white striped baggy pants held up with rainbow suspenders over a polka dotted shirt that hung loose on his emaciated frame. Then he finally reached the door and came outside, his horrible wizened face pulled into some sort of blasphemous mockery of a smile, teeth missing from his gaping maw.

Oh god, it was terrible. I swore I thought this guy had become fossil fuel by now.

Oblivious to the fact that the children were literally recoiling in fear, he proceeded to do his little act with the balloon animals and squirting flower and everything. The children stared in mute horror at this... this... this THING performing before them, each and every last one of them wondering what they'd done that was so bad that they'd been sent to witness it as punishment.

I, too, was captivated by the sheer grotesqueness of it all. It was too horrible to watch, but too horrible to turn away. That's when the banging of the garage door leading into the backyard tore my attention away, and what did I see?

BATMAN! Kicking down the door and running into the backyard.... um... I guess there's really not a lot of places to do a dramatic swooping action in suburbia.

Batman leaped over the heads of the surrounding adults and deftly picked his way among the little kiddies, working his way towards the clown.

"Alright Joker, the gig is up!" he shouted as he grabbed McGovern by the throat.

The children cheered.

"Huh? What's that you say?" McGovern shouted (He's quite deaf, actually)

"You think you can get away with terrorizing little kids? You monster! See these balloons? FULL OF SMILEX GAS!" Batman snagged all the balloon animals and incinerated them with napalm.

The children cheered.

"And this squirting flower? FILLED WITH ACID!" He hurled a Batarang from point blank range, plunging it deep into the squirting flower (And presumably McGovern's chest.)

The children cheered.

"This time you've gone too far, Joker! I'll fix it so you never hurt anyone again!" At which point Batman started to batter poor Mr. McGovern's brains right out of his skull and break every bone in his body.

And the children cheered.

I'd have stepped in to tell Batman that he was making a terrible mistake, but really it was probably the best performance McGovern's ever done, actually.

So after a while, Batman stopped pounding on this decrepit old sack of bones that was dressed as a clown and turned around to face the kids. Oh man, if you could see the smiles on those children's faces... They were the most grateful expressions I've ever seen.

Batman stuck around for a while to entertain the kids... He made balloon bats (He didn't know any other animals), took them for rides in the Batmobile, gave them all free Batarangs as party favors, and taught them all 18 different ways to kill a man with your bare hands.

It was the best birthday party ever. Where was he when I was five?

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Twenty-too

There was one point in my life where for a long time I thought my mom was having an affair.

My mom.

Having an affair.

With... Batman.

You see, before I moved up to Seattle, I used to spend about a month up here every year at my parents' house during the holidays. I slept in the basement where there's very little light coming in from outdoors, so I tended to oversleep an awful lot. So I wouldn't wake up until about 11 or noon, long after my dad had gone to work.

Mom works from home for some Internet start up company (A little behind the times, aren't we?), so she spends most of the day sequestered in her office doing her thing. What was weird though was one Thursday I saw a check hanging by a magnet on the fridge made out to Batman and Robin.

What the hell is THIS about, I wondered? I didn't want to bug mom while she was screaming at some underling in San Diego, so I just figured that maybe the Dynamic Duo had gotten one of her foofy cats out of a tree or something and she wanted to repay them. I went out for the day, came back, and the check was gone.

The next Thursday though, there was that check made out to Batman and Robin. My curiosity was once again piqued, but I didn't get around to asking Mom about it. I went out for the day, came back, and the check was gone.

When the check appeared on the fridge for the third week, something finally clicked in my head.

Oh dear lord. Batman is mom's gigolo. And oh god, with Robin at the same time?!

I had to be taken to the ER for a scratched cornea after I tried to claw my eyes out to get the mental image out of my my mind.

So yes, my mom was having an affair. With Batman. I tried not to think about the whole Robin thing, Batman alone was more than I can take. And I knew about it.

I knew I should confront her, that I should tell her to call the thing off before Dad found out about it or I would tell him. But I also knew at the same time that I couldn't do such a thing, I'm just to much of a wuss. So I was feeling guilty like you wouldn't believe.

And if there's one thing I don't do well, it's handle guilt. This one time, I backed my car up into my friend's mailbox and knocked it over. It was one of those fancy ones where it was encased in bricks and masonry work, so when it fell over it took a chunk of the sidewalk with it and smashed it. I left a pool of molten rubber where my tires had been, I peeled out of there so fast. And oh god, I couldn't even look at him for like a month because I felt certain that he knew what I had done somehow. I was jittery and nervous the whole time, thinking that any minute the police were going to kick down my door and cart me away for wanton mailbox destruction. I was a wreck.

So yeah, imagine what swallowing the secret of mom having an affair did to me...

I was smoking like a carton a week, only stopping to take swigs of run from a bottle of Bacardi. I didn't even sleep anymore, just sat in bed and stared at the ceiling with mental images running through my mind of Batman shouting "Let's go, Robin! To Mike's mom's house!" before hopping into the Batmobile and heading off to their nefarious destination. I didn't even shave anymore, I was too afraid I would subconsciously slash my throat or something. Fortunately I don't have that thick of a beard, so I just got really scraggly looking.

This went on for about a year before I moved up here. After I did that, one day I decided I just couldn't take it anymore; I was going to go down to mom's house that Thursday morning and confront Batman. I was going to confront Batman, and though he would undoubtedly beat the snot out of me for standing in his way, I was going to say to him, "Hey, Batman!"

"Stop banging my mom!"

So I drove down to my mom's street and parked the car to lie in wait for Batman to come by in the Batmobile, partaking of my bottle of liquid courage to build my resolve. Actually it was less a bottle of liquid courage and more a jar of moonshine, and I was getting really drunk.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Eventually instead of the Batmobile driving down the street, this little red economy car putters down the street with a magnetic sign slapped to the door that said "Batman and Robin Cleaning Service."

Now THIS was an interesting turn of events.

I staggered out of the car and stumbled down the street to my parents' house to see what was going on. Sure enough, it pulled up in the driveway, and this Hispanic man and woman got out and started unloading cleaning stuff.

The hell?

THIS is what ruined my life?! Mom's not having an affair at all, it's just some dopey cleaning service that calls themselves Batman and Robin?! I didn't know whether to feel pissed off that this had caused me so much distress or incredibly relieved that this had all been for nothing.

I went inside the house to tell my mom about what had turned out to be a ridiculous story, when who should come trotting down the stairs pulling up his pants?

BATMAN.

"Oh, god! Mike... Um.... Wow, this is really awkward... Look, this isn't the way we meant for you to find out about this..."

And that's why I do heroin.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

THe Boy Wonder

I have anger issues.

And thanks to the classes I took while I was toying around with the idea of majoring in psychology (before realizing that if I were to become a practicing psychologist I'd probably just fuck up my patients more than they already were), I have some insight into the source of why I'm such an angry, angry guy.

My entire life, I was way bigger than any other kids my age. We had these plaster hand prints in the living room of my family's house, one of me, and one of my brother. Both were made when we were three years old. My brother's hand didn't fit inside my three year old hand print until he was like ten or so. These days I'm just slightly taller than most people I meet (Although my dad's got a good couple of inches on me), but for a while there I absolutely towered above every other kid my age.

My parents were very much the non-violent types. Dad had been a Vietnam protester (Ironically he had voluntarily enlisted too. Weird guy, my dad.), and mom is just rabidly anti-violence.

She made me return Paper Boy for the NES because she felt throwing papers was too violent.

So with this constant indoctrination of never getting in a fight no matter what the cost, I grew to just suppress my every reaction to any provocation, even though it would piss me off to no end because I knew I could pretty much take just about anyone. Of course as the years went by, the knowledge that I didn't really fight back spread amongst the kids in school and I became a target for much bullying and teasing for most of my academic career until I moved out of town after high school.

All I did was just swallow it down and not do anything about it. As you can imagine, after years and years of this, I got to be a bit of a powder keg. I'd explode and get pissed off at the slightest irritation, but I'd never physically fight anyone. That's probably why I was voted "Most Likely to Climb a Clock Tower With a Rifle" my senior year in an internal poll of my English class.

Anyway, periodically I'd reach a breaking point and get sent to the school psychiatrist or something. One time, I got sent to bring home my brother from elementary school down the street, and on the way back some kids from school started circling us on their bikes and taunting us. I think I was about 14 at the time.

It's amazing what a difference being removed from a situation where you're constantly under the watch of the authorities can bring on, because I went absolutely ape shit on these guys now that there was no one around to watch. Grabbed a stick, jammed it into the spokes of the front wheel of one of the bikes, which made it pitch him right over the curb.

My backpack was full of books, so I slipped out of the straps, swung it like a hammer throw, full-on clocked the second guy in the face, and knocked him off his bike and on to his ass

The third guy didn't look like he knew what to do in the face of a guy who usually doesn't react to bullying going wild like this, so to drive the point home I kicked the second guy in the gut while he was still on the ground, and turned around just in time to deck the first guy in the face who had come running up behind me, having just gotten to his feet.

Apparently they weren't prepared for me fighting back, so they scattered like leaves in the wind. Had they kept their wits about them though, they'd have probably realized that I couldn't take them all on at once. Oops, their loss.

So anyway, I was standing there panting and trembling as I was coming down from my adrenaline high, when this slow, deliberate applause started coming from the alley to my left. And who should emerge from said alley?

BATMAN!

"Well done," he said to me. "You handled them quite well."

"Thanks," I said. I didn't really know what else to say to him.

"I'm going to make you an offer... How would you... like to be the next Robin?"

"Really? You want me to be your next sidekick?" I could barely contain my enthusiasm.

"Yes, you'd make a perfect Robin."

"Do I have to be Robin?"

"Yes, you have to be Robin."

"Can't I be Nightwing?"

"No. It has to be Robin."

"Azrael?"

"No. It has to be Robin."

"Batlad?"

"No. It has to be Robin."

"Batboy?"

"No. It has to be Robin."

"Batmite?"

"No. It has to be Robin."

"...Anarky?"

"No. It has to be Robin."

"But the name and outfit are just so darned... well, gay..."

"Is that a... problem for you?" he said, clasping his hand on my shoulder.

I ran screaming all the way home.

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Jack Bauer is secretly Tarzan

My teacher in fourth grade was this ex-cop named Mr. McNair. He was a pretty cool teacher, actually, he had this whole zoo's worth of animals in the classroom. We had an aquarium full of fish, a big giant cage with a couple of parakeets, a pair of rats in a cage, and some frogs in a terrarium.

Of course one by one tragedy befell just about every last one of these animals. The parakeets? One chewed through a power cord that ran next to the cage and electrocuted himself. Smelled like Thanksgiving turkey when we came into class the next day. The other one escaped and battered his brains out on the window trying to escape.

The frogs? I think they just never got fed and died of starvation. He never removed them from the terrarium either, so we got to watch them decompose.

The fish? They all died. I'm not sure what happened there, maybe he mixed aggressive species with passive species or something, Idunno.

The rats? Don't get me started about the rats. They escaped into the walls, and the female only came back to have some babies, which she promptly abandoned. Then she returned and ate some of them.

Yes, my fourth grade classroom was a veritable house of horrors, complete with the teacher passing around little baby rat cadavers so we can all see what a dead baby rat looked like (In retrospect, it's a wonder the guy managed to hang onto his job...). Needless to say it was the perfect learning environment for me.

Yes, I loved that class. Yeah, he wasn't that great of a teacher, but he was at least pretty fun. There was only one thing that I really didn't like about the class...

Fractions.

I don't know why, but it just seems to me that every kid hates to learn fractions. In retrospect, it seems like a pretty silly thing to hate, but I guess at that age you figure that just plain 'ol addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division is all you'll ever need to know in life, when all of a sudden they say "Hey! You get to learn about fractions too!" It's not like fractions are even that hard, kids just oppose them out of principle or something.

You know who else hates fractions?

Lemurs.

I know this because one day we were going over a fraction problem in class, when all of a sudden the windows in the classroom exploded into a thousand glittering shards of flying death. The children all screamed and ducked under their desks like we learned we were supposed to in case of earthquake, hurricane, nuclear war, or dinosaur rampage.

Or in this case... DEADLY NINJA LEMURS!

Yeah, I know what you're thinking... Ninja lemurs? It's a widely known fact that lemurs only practice akido in the wild, the idea that they would somehow learn the deadly art of ninjitsu is just laughable.

Yet here they were, bushy tails twitching this way and that, their bright, gleaming eyes filled with deadly cold malice, katanas brandished above their heads, issuing a silent challenge to anyone in the room to test their mighty ninja might.

Richard Gromis was the first to die.

He was the closest to the doorway, I guess he figured he could escape from the clutches of the lemurs and alert the authorities to our plight, but he figured wrong. Dead wrong.

With a flash of fur and steel, the lemurs stuck him with so many shurikens that he looked like a pin cushion before he had even taken his third step towards the door. He stumbled, fell face down into a growing pool of his own blood and moved no more.

As bad as that was, the worst was yet to come, for the smell of human blood in the air seemed to drive the lemurs into some sort of simian bloodletting frenzy. There were screams and severed limbs and the flash of Japanese steel, and the room just came to be drenched in the dark crimson of the life blood of fourth grade students.

I myself managed to escape. I'm not really sure how it happened, it's all such a blur, but I think I may have thrown Brett Cosner at them to butcher as I made my get away. It's OK though, he always was a bit of an ass.

Anyway, I got outside the classroom hoping to make my way to safety, only to find that the whole school was under siege by rampaging lemurs. There was no haven to be had anywhere, the hallways ran red with rivers of blood, as screaming kids ran this way and that amongst the mutilated corpses.

The horror... the horror...

But just as I was backed into a corner by a trio of bloodthirsty lemurs, the man you'd expect to show up if you have a problem with unruly lemurs finally made his debut.

That's right, TARZAN!

With his trademark Tarzan yell, he swooped down on a vine and kicked the advancing lemurs right square in the chest. He then went on to prove that he is in fact the undisputed master of the jungle and all its creatures by proceeding to beat the crap out of the ninja lemurs in a blazing fast blur of loin cloth.

Within the hour, the tide of lemurs had been turned back by Tarzan's heroics, and the surviving kids gathered 'round for the obligatory photo-op just as the media arrived. While Tarzan was receiving his accolades, guess who finally arrived on the scene?

That's right, BATMAN! In his Ninja Lemur Fighting suit! He looked most perplexed to see that the problem had already been taken care of, and sidled up next to Tarzan.

"Dude..." he said in hushed tones, "What are you doing?"

"Me Tarzan fight great battle with ninja lemur army!"

"Yeah, that much I know. What I mean is... what are you doing here?"

"Me Tarzan fight evil wherever it is found."

"Not according to the terms of your contract you don't."

"Me Tarzan not understand..."

"You're the designated super hero of the jungle, I'm supposed to take the city. You can't just waltz into my territory without proper authorization. Do you have proper authorization?"

"Me... Tarzan... Left it in my other loin cloth."

"Sure you did. Why don't you catch the next vine back to Africa and let me handle this."

"Oh no you don't! You no steal me Tarzan's kudos!"

"I'm not stealing them, they weren't supposed to be yours in the FIRST place. Now get, before I kick your ass back to Madagascar."

"Make your mind up! Is me supposed to go to Africa or Madagascar!"

"Oh shut up."

"No."

"I'm warning you..."

"No!"

"Look, either you get your dread lock-wearing ass out of here, or I'm going to grind you into the pavement."

"Tarzan like to see you try..."

"..."

Now there's no fightin' as grand as hero fightin'. Unless one of those heroes is Batman, because as we all know Batman cannot be beat by anyone or anything, least of all some guy who's only real ability is that he was raised in the jungle.

So while Tarzan's going all monkey style around Batman, he just stands there appraisingly and waits for Tarzan to make his move. Finally Tarzan decided to throw a punch, and that's when Batman went to town, ripping his arm out of its socket and beating him about the head with it before tearing out his heart and shoving it down his throat.

So yeah, Tarzan got owned, and Batman got to take credit for repelling the Lemur Invasion.

Of course with Tarzan out of the picture, the balance of power in the jungle has since shifted. I think the Republic of Ninja Lemurs is trying to develop some sort of ninja nuclear weapon at this point...

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

APPARENTLY THIS IS THE LAST ONE DONE BY MIKE AND I'M NOT POSTING DRINK'S MALFORMED ABORTIONS

I think there's some sort of unwritten rule somewhere that in any office, he that does not drink coffee is thereby declared to be the designated "coffee bitch."

I don't know why this is. I don't drink coffee, why should I have to take the time to go down to Starbucks to get coffee for everyone else? I think the only reason I do it is that when it happens I'm still on the clock and I get to skip out on work for a while.

Ever visit Seattle? There's literally a Starbucks on every block downtown. It's insane. There's some parts where Starbucks is across the street from another Starbucks. University Village shopping center has THREE in it alone. And even more bizarre, they all seem to do enough business to justify having so many locations.

So one morning, I'm making the daily coffee run for my coworkers, and I go down the street to Starbucks. There was this new guy working there behind the counter, couldn't have been more than sixteen years old. He had the HUGEST zit you had ever seen, right on the side of his nose. It was obviously pretty badly infected, because it literally covered one entire side of his nose.

It was horrifying, yet somehow fascinating. What was really gross was that he kept fingering the zit, and then he'd go and get people food. Thank goodness I wasn't there to get anything, I'm pretty sure I'd blow chunks on the spot..

So anyway, the guy is obviously new. Starbucks uses this touch screen system that's designed to be idiot proof (I know this because I worked at Jamba Juice for a while and we had a similar set up.). All you have to do is press the buttons that correspond to people's orders. Not that hard.

Yet somehow this guy was having difficulties...

I had four drinks to order, and it took him like 10 minutes to ring it all up. Good god... So I'm sitting there waiting for the coffee, when who should step up to the counter?

BATMAN!

"Welcome to Starbucks, may I take your order?" squeaked the cashier, clearly caught firmly within the grasps of onsetting puberty.

"Yes. I'll have a venti vanilla chai latte," Batman stated, matter-of-factly.

The cashier looked perplexed. "Uh..." he kept muttering, as he poked the screen intermittently, "I don't think we can do that."

"What? What do you mean you can't do that? I have it all the time."

"It's not in the system."

"Kid, you just hit chai latte, then hit the 'add syrup' button."

"Nope... don't think we can do that."

"Are you even going to try hitting the 'add syrup' button?"

"There isn't any vanilla chai latte button."

"I know, that's why you hit the chai latte button, then hit the add syrup button."

"Uh... I don't think we can do that."

"Look... kid... Do you know who I am?"

"Uh.... Die Fledermaus?"

"DIE FLEDER-- *Sigh* Lemme speak to your manager."

At this point, someone behind him (obviously unaware of the dangers of provoking a grumpy Batman) piped up and said "Oh for god's sake, just change your order so the rest of us can get on with our lives."

What happened next, I'm not really sure... Batman sort of... twitched, or something. And the next thing you know, the guy's head was turned around completely backward on his neck. He made a weird gasping noise, stumbled around a bit, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he toppled like a tree falling in a forest and landed with a dull thud on the condiment counter.

God DAMN Batman's got quick reflexes.

He turned around and faced the cashier. From my vantage point, I could see around the side of the counter and witness the growing wet spot in the crotch of his pants as he started to tremble uncontrollably.

"Now," said Batman in very hushed tones, "may I please have my vanilla chai latte."

"I... I... I... I..." stammered the cashier.

"You... WHAT?" snarled Batman.

"I... I DON'T THINK WE CAN DO THAT!" he screamed in an unbelievably high pitched voice, at which point he promptly passed out and fell down behind the counter.

"God damn it. I didn't want to pay 4 bucks for a cup of coffee anyway," grumbled Batman as he fished around in his utility belt. A half second later the lobby was enveloped in an impenetrable cloud of smoke as he made his grand exit.

As the smoke started to clear, I decided I'd better get back to work before they started to wonder what the hell was taking me so long.

That's when I noticed that one of the coffees in the tray was missing.

Son of a bitch, Batman stole my coffee!

LEGENDS OF BATMAN!