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Class of April 2011:
The Green Ranger's Power Shield
The year was 1994-ish and I was 8 years old. These two facts aren't entirely important except for that I was at ground zero for the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" phenomenon. They were goddamn huge. For anyone who doesn't know what the Power Rangers were (I mean the original, not that "Zeo Space Dino Jungle Speed Force" bullshit it became) the show was essentially about a bunch of horrible actors (pretending to be teenagers) who get super powers from a giant floating head and use giant robot dinosaurs to engage in fights with monsters sent to earth by a bitch on the moon for no reason aside from that she was bored.
That was basically it. There were brief messages of tolerance, but each episode normally consisted of a basic formula: Teenagers do shit, nobody cares, Moon Bitch sends in her first wave of foot soldiers, they get their grey asses handed to them, she calls in the big guns, teenagers turn on their superpowers, bad guy grows gigantic, kids call dinosaurs and after insane amounts of property damage (but no civilian casualties) the monster gets beat and the kids all enjoy a nice smoothie at the local juice bar. There. That is every fucking episode of Power Rangers ever. Oh, I should all during all of that, Billy ran away and hid like a bitch.
So that was basically the run of the show, and although awesome, it kinda got stale fast. Until a new kid showed up in Angel Grove and had a penchant for wearing only one color of shirt. He was also a brooding badass who told that slutty Pink Ranger to go fist herself. Tommy had arrived and with him came a tidal wave of tremendous.
So he was evil and putting him next to Billy made him look like Kurt Russell, but there was one thing that put him over the top into awesomeness and would one day land him in the most pointless hall of fame ever (sorry WWF Hall of Fame, I meant this one). The Green Ranger Power Shield!
All the other Rangers looked like crayola shit compared to this emerald badass, and the majority of that had to be the fact that unlike all those other wafers, he got to bomb around town with a special badge of awesomeness on his suit. I should also point out that his weapon of choice was a knife (as in "you have to get right up in ones grill to kill them with it) but it was ALSO a flute!
The producers of the show just seemingly kept heaping awesome upon him. A dude who rocks that kinda extra swag needs to have a pretty badass giant robot for backup right? Absolutely! So instead of having boring old dinosaurs like the other rangers, he gets an animal so awesome it had to be made up because something so dope has never existed. You can't just look at that power shielded green dude up there and saddle him with a fucking triceratops (seriously, Billy was THE WORST) they gave him a goddamn DRAGON!
So unbeatable was this guy (all the guys on the playground wanted to be him, and the girls wanted to be with him) that they needed to bring in another villain just to pose a credible threat. You would think with the amazetitude I have shown you thus far that this villian would have to be comprised ENTIRELY of muscles, right?
Sadly, this is where the Green Ranger peaked. Soon, due to Red Ranger being ironically jealous, the Green Ranger went from being official team badass, to shieldless knob, to powerless mulleted douche and then to make matters worse the Red Ranger flat out STOLE his awesome power shield and the other massive robot started wearing the poor Dragonzord as a fucking hat. I have detailed the transition below in pictures. I'd say enjoy, but if you are like me (god help you) you'll find this as much of a goddamn travesty as I do:
Things eventually got better for ol' Tommy. He ended up getting another color, becoming the White Ranger (shield included) but instead of a dragon and a knife-flute he ended up getting a tiger and a talking sword that would never shut the fuck up.
So because of how awesome a piece of what I'm guessing was foam was, and how it turned what would've been another blaise addition to the team into someone that was an incredible threat to everyone (even within the team) I happily say, to the Green Ranger's Power Shield: Welcome to the hall.
Just remember, haters gonna hate.
McCain Deep n' Delicious Cakes
Alex Edler's hit on Drew Doughty (2010 Playoffs)
See that guy up there? (the one below the Green Ranger and that delicious cake?) That is Alex Edler, young upstart defenceman for the Vancouver Canucks NHL Hockey Team. Now I may be biased in saying this, but they are the greatest hockey team in the universe. As I've pointed out before, many years ago they realized they were above trivial championships and just wanted to play for the fun of it. To Mr. Edler up there, apparently "the fun of it" meant utterly destroying this man:
Los Angeles Kings defenceman (and Team Canada Gold Medalist) Drew Doughty. I like him a lot. The only real downside to him as far as I can tell is that he doesn't play here in Vancouver. But aside from that, I think he is an excellent player and very exciting to watch. Having said that, these two (teams) met in the first round of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs and in all likelihood that meant that these two (players) would meet as well. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one such meeting...
I went home that night and I honestly must have watched that hit over 20 times. Welcome to the hall.
Commander Riker's Beard on Star Trek: TNG
All beards should be measured on the "Riker Scale". It would make things so much easier. I don't honestly know what not having a rating system for beards makes things difficult per se, but I truly believe life would be more liveable if we used that neatly trimmed facial paragon of virtue to qualify beards as "riker-esque". Now, the character didn't always have a beard. He was clean shaven early on in the shows run. He was also a giant fucking pussy who didn't command respect from a goddamn person on that ship. Even visiting aliens would snicker at his lack of manliness behind his back. And who wouldn't?
At some point, probably with some encouragement from Data dropping some beard statistics on him, Riker decided looking like a smug bitch wasn't getting him anywhere. Then he lived up to the combined potential of every man, and this happened.
Commander Riker avec Beard was king of that ship. And that ship has a pasty android that was the only real pale role model I had at that age. Doesn't matter. Riker's beard trumps all.
I found several pictures of the beard on the net and I tried to download them only to be given "virus warnings". See? Hackers even know the power that beard has to draw people in. I typed "Riker clean shaven" into a google image search and it just replied "Why?"
As far as putting the moves on the ladies goes, PBR (You may think this stands for "Pre-Beard Riker" but it actually stands for "Pointless Bitch Riker") had some very forceful, lame and just not cool techniques to get the women onto his holodeck. Check out this weak game he is displaying here:
Bearded Riker used more sophisticated techniques to draw in the chickie pies. Such as...
See, that's just the thing: Bearder Riker had robes! And probably lotions too. The man was an intergalactic slit-slayer the likes of which have never been seen before.
The plots on the show got better and better due to the beard as well. Who can forget the episode where Picard tries to draw attention from his beard by instituting some key new uniform changes? How did that work out?
Or the intensity of the Season 3 cliffhanger finale where this happens:
And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the 2 hour long series finale "Beardmageddon"
Welcome to the hall. (specifically the "Facial Hair Wing" where it joins Sam Elliott's mustache for all eternity)
That late night infomercial guy's "Question Mark Jacket"
All Matthew Lesko ever wanted to do was to help you get free money from the government. That's it. It's an admirable goal, made more admirable by the fact that he's willing to dress up like the fucking Riddler to convince you he is on the level.
I have no idea how many books and how-to DVDs this man sold in his lifetime. But if he wanted to make money off people, he should've been selling his jackets. Because looking at how his sick threads, two things are abundantly clear:
Welcome to the most pointless hall of fame ever, question mark jacket.
Thanks for Reading
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