Tag Archives: Sticky Fingaz

Retro Bizarro: Jefferson Starship’s “No Way Out” video

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Summary:

Mickey Thomas, circa nineteen-eighty-something-or-other, complete with porn actor’s mustache, is taken to a large mansion by a gorgeous blonde. In the basement there is a green chair. Take note. This green chair is important. Because it is green, and it is a chair, and the director decided to include a lot of disorienting shots of said green chair in the video void of any context . . .

That seems to be the premise.

But that’s not where the bizarro elements end. Accompanying the chair we have a doctor and a cave man adorned with face-paint, both quite enthralled by the appearance of this strange porn actor’s presence at their doorstep. We cut back to the actor, who opens the door to the mansion. Inside Grace Slick, dressed in some fucked-up cross between a nun and a roman warrior (with a spider painted on her face to boot) appears in synch with the music’s entrance.

Why is that fucking green chair following the roman warrior-nun and the porn actor up the stairs? Where the hell did Father Guido Sarducci come from, and why is he eating a chicken sandwich while watching the band’s drummer pump iron in front of a geisha? Yeah! It’s that fucking weird!

Why is it bizarro?

1. Green chair.

2. Father Guido Sarducci

3. Wiccan Roman Warrior nun with black widow painted on her face.

4. Drummer pumping iron while Geisha dances before an Andy Warhol print of Mao. If I’m not mistaken, Mao is Chinese and Geisha are Japanese, so on what level are we drawing parallels here? Ok, maybe it isn’t bizarro, but it definitely makes you ask, “what the fuck?”

5. That fucking green chair, now displayed in psychedelic colors.  Why is it flashing on what appears to be an Apple II computer screen? Why is there shit exploding under it at the end of the video? What does it MEAN?!

History/Interesting facts:

Alleged nipple slip around 2:44 in the video. I’m not seeing it, but I do see a plethora of middle fingers pointing at lead singer Mickey Thomas around 3:30 in the video I link to below.

The drummer pumping iron in the video was allegedly later kicked out of the band for punching lead singer Mickey Thomas in the face.

Father Guido Sarducci was a character from Saturday Night Live, created by Don Novello. Search his name and you’ll find some wonderful clips from the early SNL shows.

You can watch the video by following my failed attempt to embed the video below:

Introducing Retro Bizarro

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Every week a new blog post will be featured, exploring something from the past that could hypothetically be categorized as bizarro: games, books, movies, toys, everything and anything. I’d like to get some guests to post on here in the near future as well, so if you’ve got something you’d like to share/review drop me a line. I’d be honored to have you contribute.

Zombie Nation (NES)


This week we’ll discuss Zombie Nation, a game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990.

Synopsis: the giant zombified head of of an ancient samurai named Namakubi must go to the United States to coat skyscrapers with nuclear vomit which immediately incinerates anything it touches. While hapless victims Namakubi has been resurrected to save plummet to their demise, he scoops them up into his mouth, chews them up and pukes them back out . . . so as to “save” more humans from a much crueler fate at the hands of other zombified Americans. At least that’s what it looks like.

At the end of the first stage your goal as Namakubi is to regurgitate the liquified remains of hapless Americans onto the statue of liberty, which has come to life and has a crown of serpents like medusa. In stage two you puke upon Paul Bunyan, an axe wielding Zeus, or Hulk Hogan in a loin cloth (they don’t really specify which one, but the character slightly resembles all three). After that the novelty starts to wear off.

What makes it bizarro?

I think the summary pretty much makes it apparent. Just to recap:

1. Protagonist is a zombified floating head that throws up on shit.

2. Said vomit has the ability to set American cities ablaze.

3. One of America’s well-known monuments makes a guest appearance, only to be barfed upon until it meets its fate.

4. The final boss is an alien, which lays down in complacence as your decapitated head vomits upon it, resulting in an orgasmic 8-bit explosion. Vomophiliacs (who also happen to have a thing for zombies and alien porn) can finally rejoice.

History

Zombie Nation was originally released in Japan as Abarenbou Tengu, and featured a giant tengu mask rather than a zombified samurai head like the American version. After the meteor, dark seed, hits America, it turns the citizens into zombies. The only salvation comes in the form of the zombified, decapitated head of an ancient samurai.

You can check out the gameplay here