The Brown Ranger

***THE BROWN RANGER***

When I was a kid growing up in the early 90’s, I watched a lot of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. There was something about martial arts-loving high school students in colorful spandex suits and motorcycle helmets that made me believe in delicious violence. My favorite Power Ranger was always Tommy Oliver a.k.a. the Green/White Ranger. I don’t know what it was about him that I liked so much, but he was my favorite as well as my brother’s favorite. Maybe I kept having sympathy for him when Rita Repulsa kept trying to take his powers away. Maybe I wanted him to shack up with Kimberly a.k.a. the Pink Ranger. No matter what appealed to me about the show in general, I never forget my creative roots. Hip-hop music helped shape my poetry and Power Rangers helped shape my love for violent stories.

I’ve tried on two different occasions to bring the Power Rangers back into my life through the power of writing. I had to tread carefully both times because I could potentially be sued if I published these stories as my own (despite acknowledging that the Power Rangers are someone else’s property). The first attempt was a black comedy short story called “Kill the Power Rangers”, where a little fan girl named Wendi Kael was doing badly in school and would only do her homework at her stepfather’s threat of “killing the Power Rangers”. When Wendi tried to call his bluff, she found corpses all over the house dressed up in Power Rangers outfits, most notably the Blue Ranger with a garden hoe up his ass (get it? Because the actor is gay? Hee-hee-ho-ho…ugh). While the synopsis of this story made a lot of people laugh, I eventually had to abandon it due to too many plot holes and a painfully obvious Deus Ex Machina ending.

And then we have the second attempt at a Power Rangers homage with a novel idea called “The Brown Ranger”. Mind you, this never actually became a novel and the synopsis is no longer in my archives, so I’m flying blind here. The premise was that Rita Repulsa’s new monsters were too powerful for the original rainbow-colored rangers, so Zordon has to recruit a Bad Santa-esque loser named Shawn Hamlet to be his Brown Ranger. Shawn, who is an avid beer drinker and pot smoker, believes that Zordon is high on drugs himself if he thinks Shawn would make a good Power Ranger, let alone one whose uniform is the same color as shit. It takes a while for Shawn to accept his responsibility as earth’s guardian, but he eventually makes the most of his brown uniform by yelling, “Eat shit, motherfuckers!” as he charges into battle. I guess this too could be considered black comedy considering the main character’s penchant for swearing and drugs, both behaviors completely opposite of what normal Power Rangers preach.

So the question now is, what should I do with these two ideas? One was scrapped, the other never happened. If I had a chance to do them over again, I would. If I knew of a legal loophole that allowed me to use the Power Rangers name, I would exploit it. You could say that I could just publish these stories as fan fiction, but that’s not enough for me. I want them to be official works of mine and not just stories that are at the mercy of the legal system. I suppose I could use parody names, but where’s the authenticity in that? Author problems, ladies and gentlemen. Author problems.

But wait a minute…does the Brown Ranger actually have to be a Power Ranger? Can he instead be a D&D-style ranger who wears all brown and uses shit-themed insults on his opponents? Imagine littering in the forest and having to deal with Shawn Hamlet sticking a knife in your throat. If Carl Hiaasen wrote fantasy novels, this is how it would play out for sure. Maybe it’ll have more creative methods of violence than a knife threat, but you get the idea.

And now that I think about it, parodies aren’t so bad when applied correctly. If I wanted to keep the theme of Hiaasen-esque environmental terrorism, I could call them The Flower Rangers. They could dress up in hippie-themed spandex and save the world from oil tycoons who want to build pipelines in the most inappropriate places. Maybe the Flower Rangers (or the Brown Ranger in particular) could have been perfect foils to the jerk-offs who tried to build a pipeline through Native American burial grounds in North Dakota. So many ideas. So many goddamn ideas. I can actually feel my brain wake up after such a long time in exhaustive mode. Hehe!

But why should I have all of the fun? The question of the day, to you the audience, is how would you book The Brown Ranger? Yes, I know I just used a wrestling term (book), but you know what I mean…hopefully. How would The Brown Ranger play a pivotal role in whatever novel you were writing? Is he an environmental terrorist? Is he an army ranger? Is he a role model for small children? Is he sewer dwelling warrior? If you’ve got an idea you’d like to throw in the mix, feel free to let us hear it. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

The new contest started yesterday and the theme this week will be “Round Table”. Any medieval literature fans out there will know where a lot of authors at the WSS will take this prompt. For me personally? I’m doing something a little more autobiographical. In the style of the Awkward Behavior posts in my Garrison’s Library blog, this story will be called “Weirdo Alert” and it goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1.      Denny Smith, Bodily Functions Gimmick

2.      Louise Bradbury, Barista

PROMPT CONFORMITY: The tables at the coffee bar are round.

SYNOPSIS: Louise is working at a coffee bar at the mall when Denny sits down at one of her tables with a gigantic bucket of ice cream. As Denny eats the ice cream and slops it on himself, he also draws attention by blowing his nose loudly, gagging on his snot, and farting horrible stenches. Louise has to do something before all of her customers walk out on her.

OOC: I sure have a lot of American Darkness 2 characters with “Brad” in their last names. Actually, the only other two characters like that are Beth Bradshaw (D&D cleric from Emoticon Artist) and Eric Bradley (schizophrenic millennial from Cold and Scared).

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

In the wake of Marie Krepps creating a new book cover for and advertising the hell out of Occupy Wrestling (to which I give my never-ending thanks), my next Dark Fantasy Warrior will be one of Keegan’s monsters. He’s a scythe-wielding, psychopathic skeleton named Riley Warpthroat. Marie used to jokingly call him “Really Deepthroat”, but make no mistake about it, this monster is one of Mitch McLeod’s toughest opponents, especially during a time in the story where the World Champ is being worn down from all of these battles.

***FACE BOOK POST OF THE DAY***

(I think I just found the perfect intro for a song in Necrograph called “Why Are You Laughing at Me?”)

SMALL BOY: That Lacey Sturm is so pretty! When I grow up, I’m going to marry her!

CROWD: Hahahahahahaha!

SMALL BOY: W…why are you laughing at me?

CROWD: Hahahahahahahaha!

SMALL BOY: (sniff)…(sniff)…Why?

ACTUAL SONG CHORUS: Tell me why! Why are you laughing at me?! / Tell me who! Who should I try to be?! / Tell me what! What the fuck is your deal?! / Tell me how! How should I fucking feel?!

Wendi Kael

NAME: Wendi Kael
AGE: 10
OCCUPATION: Elementary School Student
CANON: Kill the Power Rangers


When my niece Reina was little and still living with me and my family, she watched a lot of corny cartoons on my TV, among them Spongebob Squarepants. Whenever she did something wrong, I would threaten her by saying, “If you do that one more time, I’m going to kill Spongebob!” She saw right through me. It’s not like I could leap into the TV and strangle the shit out of Spongebob and his friends right in front of Reina. Well, I could leap into the TV, but not only would I have nothing to watch my shows with, but I’d have glass cuts to show for it. Killing Reina’s favorite cartoon characters was a benign threat, but it was one that amused me to where I wanted to write a short story about it.

In the case of 10-year-old Wendi Kael, her favorite TV show was the early 90’s version of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. The flamboyant martial arts, the giant dinosaur robots that could form into one badass (reminds me of Voltron), and of course, there was everybody’s favorite Power Ranger who would one day become a legitimate mixed-martial artist: Tommy Oliver aka The Green Ranger, played by Jason David Frank. Was Wendi old enough to have crushes on older gentlemen such as Mr. Frank? Maybe an innocent schoolgirl one, but nothing more.

In the end, it didn’t matter how emotionally invested Wendi Kael was in her show, because her mother’s boyfriend Chad was determined to screw it all up for her. All that fatherly anger over poor grades in school and Chad knew physical punishment would land him in jail. So what was the next way to break Wendi into becoming a serious student? Kill the Power Rangers, of course. But how was Chad going to do it? He can’t leap into the TV unless he wants to be slashed to pieces by the screen glass. Beating up a stuffed toy of the Green Ranger is even less convincing. In order to make the death of The Power Rangers convincing, Chad had to get disturbingly creative.

Wendi came home from school one day and went back to her room to find The Green Ranger’s rotten corpse lying in her bed gathering flies and bloodying the sheets. Then Wendi went into the garage and found the Yellow and Pink Rangers lynched from the ceiling. Then she went to the backyard and found the Black Ranger lynched from the oak tree (that’s not racist at all). And then she found the Blue Ranger in the tool shed bent over a saw horse with a rake handle shoved up his ass (that’s not homophobic at all). Okay, so these weren’t the real Power Rangers; they were just already dead bodies dressed in their uniforms, which begs the disgusting question of where Chad got the dead bodies.

I tried to pass this story off as black comedy and it would have succeeded in getting those due chuckles. But then the story had to be terminated due to its Deus Ex Machina ending. Chad gets into a standoff with the police and the Red Ranger’s sword miraculously flies through the overbearing step-dad’s throat. Did I also mention that next week the world will end? But don’t worry, because we’ll be saved at the zero hour by a mutant fish koala bird. Clerks came out in 1994 and the original Power Rangers show came out a little earlier, so I didn’t set my time machine too far back.

The black comedy of killing a child’s favorite TV characters could still work in some capacity and Wendi Kael would definitely be the one who took the burden of such heavy jokes. If anybody needs discipline in her life, it’s an obnoxious 10-year-old who doesn’t give a shit about school and watches more TV shows than she reads books. This is the kind of traumatizing tough love she needs to get back on track. But it has to be more convincing and more legal than what Chad did. Otherwise, the joke will fall on deaf ears.

I think I’ve found the perfect solution to “kill” Wendi Kael’s fictional characters: with drawings. So she has a crush on The Green Ranger? Fine. Let’s tie him down to a torture table and have Rita Repulsa put a spring-loaded clamp on the base of his penis. Okay, that might have been influenced by Tales From the Hood, another movie from the 90’s time machine. So let’s be original with our Rangers. Let’s have the Blue Ranger get sodomized by Zed and Maynard from Pulp Fiction, another movie from the 90’s. Let’s have The Black Ranger’s mouth get taken away by Agent Smith from The Matrix, here we go again with the fucking 90’s movies. Anachronisms aside, the point of these drawings is to put the Rangers in violent or sexual situations that would disgust a normal human being. I’ve drawn many pictures like that of Bugs Bunny and Inspector Gadget and showed them to my best friend Susan. She was horrified.

Okay, so we’ve sent poor Wendi Kael to therapy at least once during this rehabilitation process. Now what? Does she spiral into madness or does she become a respectable citizen in the making? A small part of me is leaning towards spiraling into madness. Children as young as 10 don’t have the mental toughness to question the bullshit they’re being fed. They’ll believe anything adults tell them whether it’s detrimental or beneficial. That’s why a lot of teachers get away with insulting their students into becoming soul-dead conformists: when the kids are that young, they’re vulnerable. Come to think of it, this might sound more like psychological horror than black comedy. The only way it could ever be black comedy is if Wendi Kael was on an episode of either Robot Chicken or Family Guy.

　

***MOVIE DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

BARTENDER: How far are you willing to take this?

MARCELLUS WALLACE: I’m ready to scour the earth for that motherfucker. If he’s hiding out in Indo-China, I want a nigga hiding in a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his ass.

-Pulp Fiction, a movie from the 90’s time machine-