'Millions Watching Robots Battle to Death' Actually Boring

ulp magazines of the '50s as well as sci-fi literature and movies by the dozens accurately predicted the future of entertainment when they envisioned a day when millions of Americans would watch battles to the death between robot opponents. Few, though, imagined it would be so boring and lame.

Television shows like Comedy Central's Battle Bots and similar specials and series from around the world are proving to be the unlikely source for futuristic robot death battles. Though many differ on some points, all prove to be astoundingly dull in the destruction of technologically-advanced killing machines.

"As a boy, I anticipated with fear and wonder the day robots would be used to entertain the masses," said M.I.T. Professor of Robotics Larry Karmen, "but yeah, I didn't really see it like this. I don't even know where to start."

The robots on Battle Bots are typically remote-controlled, less than two feet tall, and are equipped with standard woodshop equipment like saws, drills, and occasionally a blowtorch of some sort. Robot operators range from dateless thirteen-year-old child prodigies to 50-year-old dateless unemployed construction workers.

"I guess the names are cool," said robot enthusiast and publisher of Future Age magazine Don Hogarth. "You have names like 'The Revolver' and 'Fireblast,' real awesome Transformer-like names. And then the robot comes out and it's like a little George Foreman grill on wheels. And you get real annoyed as it just spins around while another robot named 'Mass Destruction' hits it with a hammer on the end of a miniature crane."

"The problem is obviously related to budget," stated Professor Karmen. "Comedy Central and the British TV program its Battle Bots was based on had the right idea, but a lousy budget. Basic cable is not capable of building the 20-foot-tall fire-breathing self-running destruction machines we originally envisioned for this kind of mayhem. Most kids operating out of their garage are not going to have the kind of funding to build a competitive robot on that level, and neither are their mothers. Unless all these millionaires who are spending money to fly around the world in balloons get their stuff together and start building city-crushing robots, I don't see much improvement on the battling robot front for many years to come."

When told of the dissenting opinion of robot battle sports, Comedy Central Battle Bots star Slaughterhouse became infuriated and began to smash up its dressing room with a hammer on a tiny crane arm.

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It's a question that I get asked on a nearly daily basis, and understandably: just what in the hell was wrong with American music in the 1950's? History has it that the 1960's were the decade of recreational and experimental drug use, citing such examples of delusionary flakery as Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, The Beatles' I Am the Walrus and Gregg Allman's hair. And while I wouldn't argue against these as prime examples of pharmaceutical excess, they pale mightily in comparison to the near-psychotic mutant trend of late-50's doo-wop music. John Lennon may have envisioned Mean Mr. Mustard dripping from a dead dog's eye, but even this game of Clue gone horribly wrong looks downright pedestrian next to a jabbering psychopath questioning who exactly put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong.

Like a drugged-up visitor from deep space, doo-wop appeared seemingly out of nowhere, holing up in the chests of America's great pop stars in the late 50's and early 60's. From this parasitic enclave it communicated with the world through a bewitching combination of di-dits, bompa-bomps, ding-dangs, shooby-doos and doh-dohs. Why did it come, and what was it hoping to communicate to us? Nobody knows, though our best guess is that it had to do with seeking therapy for a stuttering problem.

The earliest known recording of the mutant doo-wop style was the Orioles' 1948 tune It's Too Soon To Know. During the recording of what was, by all reports, a fairly normal song, lead singer Sonny Til suffered the massive variety of nervous breakdown and began singing rhyming gibberish vaguely related to his ex-wife winning custody of their home and the recent transmission failure of his Oldsmobile. Fearing for their own lives, the band continued to play and discovered to their dismay that when they had finished the take they were at the end of their studio time. As was a common practice at the time, the record company had only secured them ten minutes of recording time to record and mix the song, and they'd had to sell bass player Johnny Reed's virginity in the process as they were obligated to pay for the studio time themselves.

Low on options and wary of bat-wielding record company thugs, the band played it cool, acting as if the recording session had gone fine. The record was released as-is by record company execs who were so outside of the loop that they once released a recorded armpit fart as a single, snookered by an engineer with a sense of humor. Back in that day all of the record companies were so desperate for a hit they would release anything, sometimes even recordings of other records held up to a microphone, as the execs in charge all listened to marching bands and had no clue what the record-buying teens of the day were into. They seldom listened to the records they put out, which led to the infamous "My Ding-a-Ling" scandal of 1972.

It's Too Soon To Know wasn't a huge hit, but it sold surprisingly well considering the totally bugshit nature of the vocals. It also proved to be heavily influential for a young aspiring songwriter named Richard Lewis, who crashed his car into a grocery store the first time he heard it on the radio. Many say Lewis never recovered psychologically from the incident, but he did go on to form The Silhouettes, and pen the 1957 mega-hit Get a Job. That song introduced the stuttering, nonsensical vocal stylings that came to be known as doo-wop to the world.

Some purists and historians have argued that Get a Job was only a hit because Lewis' uncle owned the Junior Records label and made sure the song was played on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, which guaranteed it would be a hit among the easily-led youth of the day. Others might disagree, but the success of the 1959 hit Dog Barking in the Back Alley seems to lead credence to the theory, since the rare sound-effects single likely would not have reached #1 if it had not been featured on American Bandstand earlier that year.

Whatever the reason, Get a Job was a smash single, and Americans were quick to concede that if it's what everyone else was listening to, then they were into lyrics like "Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma" and colossally embarrassing bass singers, too.

Other bands smelled the money train and were quick to follow, solidifying doo-wop as a legitimate musical movement and a bad name for a hair salon. Not long after, The Marcels released the doo-wop manifesto Blue Moon in 1961, daring America to make sense of their statement of purpose: "Bom bom ba-bom ba-bom ba-bom bom ba-dang a lang lang a ding a dang ding Blue Moon…"

But by late 1961 doo-wop was beginning to lose it's luster, beginning with Barry Mann's hit Who Put the Bomp?, at which point fans began to suspect that the magic was gone and that doo-wop artists were just bullshitting them now. What began as a street movement had been exploited to the limits of credibility, and all of the bomps and sha-na-na's had begun to ring hollow.

By 1964 doo-wop was a mere ghost on the American musical landscape, as record-buyers turned away from the bubblegum of their youth and embraced the British Invasion of more vital artists, replacing their embarrassing Shep and The Limelites platters with the more mature pleasures of Manfred Mann's Do Wah Diddy Diddy. The rest, as they say, is history.

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After a voyage that took me to nearly every state in the union, and some I'm still not convinced are legally in, I found my Elvis medicine.

First a long trip to New Hampshire, only to realize the Elvis Graceland is in Memphis, so I headed down that way. I'm sure there was plenty of pharmaceuticals on hand in that huge facility, but the tour guides give you the most morbid look when you ask if you can go through the medicine cabinet. I'm sure the King looks down disapprovingly from his cloud, but he's powerless to help me now.

And that's when I thought of it—Elvis helpers! I've seen them everywhere. Like Santa Claus, they are plentiful and pose as the man himself while going around, doing his bidding, like non-denominational disciples. And like Elvis, of course, Santa Claus also died in a mansion in the 1970s, but his work continues through those noble men. All I had to do was meet up with a faithful Elvis impersonator and I would receive the medicine I so needed! Though actually, the flu that inspired this long trek disappeared somewhere between Ohio and Kentucky, but I was already in motion, no fun to stop the journey.

All I can guess is it must be the off-season, since the Elvis helpers were nowhere in sight. I tried the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the original Sun Studios, and every Hard Rock Café in the nation. I camped out for days in front of Nicolas Cage's house, knowing well his fetish for everything Elvis, but none ever showed up. The police officer who escorted me away had a pretty good sneer, but he was sneering for a different reason. That's when it occurred to me—Las Vegas! The Windy Apple! The City of Broken Lights! The Gamblingest Place on Earth!

I had a contact in Vegas, too, through a friend named MC Vic Daniels, whom I met through the commune. He once wrote a Rent for us, so I knew he was poor and had a poor interpretation of reality, and hopefully those factors would help me find a reliable Elvis who could help. I saw his show, and even though I'm not much on rap, I certainly enjoyed a lot of it, and indeed his shoes were worth remarking on. We shared a dinner afterwards, and it turns out he knows the best of the best Elvis impersonators. Which is good, since I wanted a sincere Elvis imitator, and not some loser just pretending to be Elvis.

I found the best indeed—Loretta "Elvis" Costello, a female Elvis impersonator who couldn't look more like Elvis if her mother had been the King. Not a female impersonator, but a female who impersonates—she has trouble with those adjectives all the time. She was kind, informative, and could belt out "In the Ghetto" so well as to bring a tear to your eye. Quick to help, too, as she carried her own duffel bag loaded from top to bottom with the finest prescription drugs you could ever find—Elvis' own, no doubt. She set me up for everything I need, and took no money in return. Why, you may ask? You cynical shit. Some people just carry the spirit of the good King with them, and exhibit it in everything they do. In fact, I want to live the same way from now on. I thanked Girl Elvis and invited her to drop in any time she was in the neighborhood, and I would be glad to repay the favor.

She said she was going to be coming to Atlantic City next week and needed a place to stay, so she would be happy to take me up on the offer. Didn't know what time she would arrive, whenever her friend Merle dropped her off, and didn't know how long she would be staying, since the show may get extended. Yes, I truly am a stupid man.

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