Smackdown!
It's been a long time coming, ladies and gentlemen, but the time for judgment has come at long last. Today scores will be settled, reputations made or destroyed, all grievances satisfied by the most basic means we know: in the ring.

The bad blood between these two warriors has been well chronicled: both arrived in my house on the same fateful day, Christmas 2005. In the short time they've spent here together it has become abundantly clear that there just isn't room in any one house for the both of them. Their distaste for one another is personal, it is real, it is brutal, all of which can be expected when you put two beings together and force them to compete for the attentions of three fickle children and for the limited, precious resource of life-giving double-A batteries.

No more hype. No more waiting. The winner stays, the loser is banished to the back of a closet with the "educational" toys. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you: The Contestants.

Name: E-L-M-O Dancing Elmo
Height: 14.5"
Weight: 3.5 lbs.
Vitals: Mimes along to modified Village People song "YMCA" to spell "ELMO" instead. Waves arms and does a bunch of poncey hand gestures. Also does "Give me an E! Give me an L!" (etc.) cheer. Just to sum up, that's Village People and cheerleading. All things considered, possibly the gayest toy ever (after He-Man, naturally). But he is, after all, still a monster and not to be trifled with.

Name: Tumble Time Tigger
Height: 12.5"
Weight: 2.75 lbs.
Vitals: Does cartwheels while singing along to a modified version of either Rick James' "Superfreak" or MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This", depending on when you were born. Slurred and idiosyncratic speech, possibly some version of Creole. Boundless energy as a result of rampant ADHD, which may hurt or help. Too soon to say. May be some kind of tiger, which can only help.

The oldest cliché in the fight game is "Styles make fights". That couldn't be more true here. From Elmo, we can expect a close-in, hands-oriented, forms-based style. His footwork consists of a fair bit of rocking from one side to the other, but little else. Watch out for the devastating downward arm of his "M" in the "E-L-M-O" sequence. Get caught with that and the "M" will only stand for "motherfucker, that hurt!" Or at least it would if you could still speak after being knocked the fuck out.

As for Tigger, he is just the opposite. He is all kinetic energy and movement. If his whirling tempest of fists, feet, fur and tail doesn't get you, his incessant stream of adorable malapropisms will. And if that fails, the repetitive, endless loop of his song is sure to wear you down until, in the end, you take your own life if only to be free of its twisted siren call. Don't let his plush outside fool you. Inside he's both feral beast and hard, hard plastic.

Can you feel it? I can feel it. It's Go-Time.

Round 1:

The combatants are sizing each other up. I must say, if either one of them are nervous, they're not showing it. One of the benefits of having an inanimate stitched-on face, I suppose. Anyway, kudos to the kids of Indonesia who sewed those facial features on. Eighteen hours a day working in a windowless room with no bathroom facilities has never seemed more worth it.

Let's see if our fighters try to feel each other out at first and... oh! Tigger is wasting no time! His total lack of impulse control is coming into play almost immediately as he dives right into a furious spinning Cartwheel Of Doom attack!


Elmo seems to have no response at all! Is it the paralysis of terror or perhaps some kind of battery issue? All I know is he'd better sort it out before... oh my! Tigger is down! Tigger is down!

He was able to knock Elmo askew, but was not able to complete his Cartwheel Of Doom. Stability has always been a problem for Tigger; it is somewhat ironic that the difference here was stability in the physical sense rather than the mental. Perhaps he should have paced himself.

Elmo seems to have won this one with a total Zen passivity, absorbing the kinetic Tiggerian attack with stoic indifference and letting the poor, gyroscope-free Tumble-Time Tigger spin himself right out of the match. Reminiscent of Ali in Kinshasa vs. Foreman, only shorter, redder and so much gayer.

Let this be a lesson to you homophobes out there, however. Just because a monster looks gay doesn't mean he can't kick your ass. Try explaining that ass-kicking to your friends. It's the one time it's OK to tell people your girlfriend beat you up.

As Elmo wanders off the field of battle in the warm embrace of his companion Chicken Dancer Ernie, I leave you with a final thought: this is the least deserved throwdown victory since that pussy Daniel LaRusso beat up Blonde Johnny with that fruity bird kick thing in The Karate Kid. Before Elmo gets a big head about this victory, remember what happened to Ralph Macchio after that. Yeah, My Cousin Vinny was funny, but that was totally Joe Pesci's movie and don't none of youse forget it.

On a more philosophical note, I was hoping to break one of these toys by putting them through their paces today, but alas. I am doomed to keep hearing their songs and watching their inane and inept antics for some unspecified period of time longer; at least until their batteries die.

But on the positive side, now you can all say you've seen the crappy linoleum in my kitchen. Yay me.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.7


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:38 AM