February 08, 2015
Secret Files and Origins BRICKMUPPET
The new blog-game that all the cool kids are playing right now is this homage to the inventor of the blog* Brian Williams.
Around 1989 Streamline Pictures released a dubbed version of Laputa:Castle in the Sky theatrically. It did not get a wide distribution. However, in my capacity as president of the Tidewater Anime Group, and a representative of the International Student's Association at ODU, I had successfully lobbied the local art house to carry it.
Sound Like a Badass Without Committing Yourself to a Lie
My Walter Mitty lifestyle is somewhat non-conducive to this challenge but sacred honor says I have to give it a go.
So, what to write about?
The barracudas? No. anyone who dives regularly knows that barracudas aren't that big a deal.
Changing the bilge punp hanging upside down in the bilge of a fishing boat taking on water during the storm off Hatteras while seasick? No. No one wants to read about me aspirating my own vomit.
Stepping on the Alligator? No That's not badassery, that's clumsiness.
The bear under the trailer? No. Does not qualify. The bear and I achieved a nonviolent resolution to the situation.
The other bear, when the bear cub was behind me? No. See above.
That time in junior high when we built the raft and left the paddles on the island and the cops got called and the missing persons report was filed but we had come ashore in a completely different city? Nope not badassery...but might qualify as a failed Darwin award.
That time, at the babysitters with the bees, the baby and the wild pigs?Nope. No one would believe that.
How I became Tidewaters only LIVING comic book supervillain? That's not badass...that's just pathetic.
So I'll go with the origin of my nom de plume....
Everything in this story is true, though some descriptive phrase choices might be debatable.
It was a dark and stormy night. We get those in Virginia sometimes.
Several weeks or months after the storm, this happened.....
Around 1989 Streamline Pictures released a dubbed version of Laputa:Castle in the Sky theatrically. It did not get a wide distribution. However, in my capacity as president of the Tidewater Anime Group, and a representative of the International Student's Association at ODU, I had successfully lobbied the local art house to carry it.
It should be noted at this point that the Streamline Pictures dub of Laputa was actually quite decent aside from one quirk that comes moments after this scene....
Now in the original script, Pazu, (the fellow you see falling) had mentioned something about being tough because his employer beat him. However, it appears that such an ode to child abuse and child labor was seen as incompatible with a "G" rating by someone in legal, so they replaced the line with an utter nonsequiter. He says "It's OK! I'm not hurt...I'm built like a brick muppet...if muppets were made of brick!"
Anyhoo...the day after the premiere I was taking some exchange students as well as a few club members and a young lady who was assisting some of the exchange students off to the mountains to see Luray Caverns and the fall foliage. Along the way, the topic of that bizarre line kept coming up because one of the exchange students had seen the film and was mightily trying to make sense of it. We saw deer, we saw stalactites, fried eggs and a waterfall. A bit later, at a scenic overlook, the young lady, who was a horticulture aficionado, spied a wild rose.
The wild rose was a modest 8 feet beneath us on an outcropping. There was a ledge that seemed to make it reasonably attainable though the rose was hanging out over a sheer 300 foot drop to the canopy of the forest below.
Because I was 19 and stupid badass, when the young lady asked if I could get her the rose, sacred honor did not permit me to decline. Thus, I inched down the ledge toward the rose, and got almost to it when the rock I was standing on became overwhelmed by the sheer force of my fatassery badassery and fled down the sheer rock face to get away from me. For a time I clung and pondered my situation. After a bit, when it became clear that I was not imeddiately plummeting to my death, the gasps and expressions of terror from above gave way to snark and someone saying that they were going to find out if I was in fact built like a brickmuppet. Now the sane thing to do at this point would be to begin making my way up the cliff, but that would involve the shame of failure and I was 19 utterly badass and there was a female present. Therefore, because I am a complete idiot badass, I kept shimmying across the outcropping until I got to the rose. I plucked the rose and a bit of its vine. At that point I slipped a bit and soon was in a most precarious position. The young lady, (who, I should mention, I actually carried no torch for) chose this point to inquire as to whether I might be able to throw them the keys to the truck so that If I fell to my death they would not be stranded. Because I was a complete and utter fool utterly secure in my badassery I managed to do so...without dropping the damned rose. There were several short, sharp vocalizations from above because the young lady's powers of persuasion were much better than her powers of....catching.
After some time shimmying along the cliff-face in stark mortal terror defiantly, I finally got to a point where I could get a better handhold and finally one where I could sort of crawl timidly stride like a true badass up to the overlook and hand the young lady the rose cutting.
Happily, it turned out that while she had not caught the keys, they had not in fact fallen all the way into the valley, so, with dusk settling we all hopped into the truck , drove into the valley and after eating fried chicken dinosaur meat at a Stuckey's, we began the 4 hour trip home, and along the way the other native English speakers explained to the exchange student's that "That's what a brickmuppet is".
Anyway, that's why the blog has its name.
*(Full disclosure: It is possible that Brian Williams did not actually invent blogs, have a helicopter blown out from under him, save puppies from burning eucalyptus trees or write the Magna Carta for that matter)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
05:08 AM
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