The Adventures Of The Great Willie Young: The China Dolls

You would not believe the amount of depraved shit I had to wade through just to find a picture for this post. Jesus, I think I need a shower.

(As always, if you haven't followed the strange and sordid tales of The Great Willie Young, feel free to catch up by clicking on the tag at the bottom of this post titled, appropriately enough "Willie Young". And may God have mercy on your soul.)

Today’s tale actually comes down to us from the future. You may ask me how this is possible, but it’s all very, very complicated so I’ll just say it involves a DeLorean, an army of Terminators, mescaline, a hobo with a shotgun, Doc Brown crawling naked through the streets late at night moaning “Maaaarty” over and over and over again and a carnival seer with a giant crystal ball and an addiction to menthol cigarettes, bourbon, meth and sex. You don’t want to know what I had to do to get this story. You just don’t. My hands are still shaking even as I write this and I don’t know why it burns when I pee, but fuck it, that’s not important. What is important is that, here, for the first time, I can bring to all of you – and to the year 2011 – the tale of The Great Willie Young and the China Dolls.

It all started when The Great Willie Young was vacationing in Thailand following yet another successful season with the Lions. He had spent several weeks touring the jungles of Southeast Asia in an attempt to come to terms with his role in the Vietnam War, a war which saw him barbarically slaughter whole villages using the might of only his bare hands. He was remorseful, mostly because he now knew that the whole thing had been just one giant misunderstanding. As has been told before, The Great Willie Young has spent much of his life attempting to avenge the heinous deaths of his parents, his Greek Sea Siren mother and his father, the Cheetah God. He avenged his mother at the glorious Battle of Lepanto but he could never quite come to terms with his father’s death at the hands of the vile British redcoats. Sure, sure, the pompous Lord who had actually killed his father had long been disposed of, but The Great Willie Young still felt like he had to do more and so he declared war upon the color red, terrorizing all those who claimed it as their own, whether for political reasons or whether it was because they just liked how it looked on them. This led to some glorious moments, such as The Great Willie Young’s role in the defeat of the British during the American Revolutionary War or the time he disemboweled Carrot Top. But occasionally it was also at the heart of events which later caused The Great Willie Young great heartache and sorrow. There was the time he was arrested for attempting to burn down a California Redwood forest. There was also the time when he drove Lindsay Lohan to drugs by shaving her red hair and then setting it on fire. But nothing hurt his heart like his actions during Vietnam, when he brutally savaged the people of that fair country because his superiors told him that they were all Reds. The Great Willie Young made it his personal mission to wipe them from the face of the earth, but as he did he was struck by a profound sadness. After all, these people were not red at all. In fact, they seemed to be a shade of yellow that reminded him of his long departed beloved wife, the beautiful Yi Xian Shu Guang, the daughter of his old friend Wu Pei. What was he doing in that jungle? The only red he saw in those days came from looking at his own blood stained hands.

After he left Vietnam he wandered aimlessly for a number of years. He spent some time in San Francisco, where he was involved in a bizarre zoo incident that saw multiple hippy deaths, which was recounted here, but that was the closest he came to settling down. Listless, remorseful and confused, The Great Willie Young drifted through time. Occasionally, he would bury himself in some noble goal – the defense of a monastery from an army of crazed heathen Vikings or the freeing of Jewish slaves from a roided up Pharaoh – but he still could not find salvation or peace of mind. It was while watching the hit film First Blood - which was loosely based upon The Great Willie Young’s own experiences following his time in Vietnam – that he was struck by an epiphany. He could either spend his life haunted by the past, by the color red and by all that it had driven him to do or he could embrace it, face it head on and finally come to terms with it. He started by enrolling at North Carolina State University, whose primary color is red. There, he found that he had a talent for playing football. This talent took him in a new direction and allowed him to have the kind of life that he felt he could be proud of.

But still, despite all the gridiron glory and despite the fact that he had become an icon to the people of Detroit, The Great Willie Young could never quite escape the memories of what went on in those terrible jungles of Southeast Asia. And so, following yet another glorious season, filled with championship honor and trophies, The Great Willie Young finally revisited the place which gave birth to his darkest dreams. Also, he was pretty sure he had some bastard kids running around there and he wanted to make sure they were growing up right.

And so The Great Willie Young made peace with the people of Vietnam. He could never truly explain to them why he did what he did, but they were so overwhelmed by the magnificence of his being that it hardly mattered. Wherever he went, throngs of poor rice farmers and black pajama clad stereotypes threw themselves at him. They offered everything they had – their meager homes, their livestock, even their wives and daughters – in a futile attempt to get him to stay and lead them towards a glorious future, for there was a light in his eyes that they could not resist. He was the North Star of the human race, the guiding light that would lead them all to the Promised Land. They knew this deep in their hearts and so they wept whenever he would move on to another village.

After weeks of this missionary work (insert joke about The Great Willie Young, Vietnamese peasant women and the missionary position here) The Great Willie Young’s heart was finally at ease, and so he decided to travel to Bangkok for a little, uh, let’s call it R and R, shall we? And this is where our tale finally truly begins. (Yeah, 1,100 words into the damn thing. Jesus. But still, I am a storyteller and this is what needed to happen. You could argue with me but you’d only be making yourself look like a fool and I don’t want you to look like a fool. After all, I love you and I need someone to carry my litter when I bestride this . . . this Earth, this puny planet you mortals call home, like a Colossus. Wait . . . I have said too much.)

While in Bangkok, The Great Willie Young would spend his days training and meditating in a Buddhist monastery and his nights, uh, training and let’s call it meditating because this is a family site (I’ll say it again, I know you all sit there as a family and read this, probably while a giant fire roars in the fire place and Dad tries to imitate what he imagines is my voice, perhaps Frank Booth on helium, and all the kids laugh and beg for more stories about coked up werewolves and escaped vampire apes and Mom bites her lip to keep from crying out in passionate ecstasy and [redacted for gross indecency] and then her and Dad share a cigarette and then he starts talking in his regular voice and she sighs and rolls out of bed, gets dressed and tries to forget that her life is a living hell and she should have just driven the minivan into the ravine the other day because at least that would have shut the damn kids up and . . . wait, what is going on? Where am I?) at various brothels. It was during one of these nights, while he was with two prostitutes named Mei Lin (not her real name) and Julia Juggs (oddly enough, her real name) who took turns “meditating” with him, that The Great Willie Young heard a commotion in the hall. He could hear muffled voices, panicked and desperate and he knew, immediately, that he was needed.

Breaking the chains that bound him (not a metaphor, he was actually chained to the bed), The Great Willie Young brushed aside his whores and bounded into the hall, naked, with a monstrous erection. Several prostitutes scattered in fear, as if they were running from Godzilla himself (Perhaps I am mixing up my Asian stereotypes but to hell with all that, it’s about time that our stereotypes were all mixed together so that we could all move forward as one, in peace and harmony, joking about slant eyed white people and chicken loving Eskimos and little dicked Nigerians and . . . let us all join hands and sing of togetherness.) But after they had scattered, The Great Willie Young found himself alone. In the deep distance, existing as only an echo, he could hear the muffled screams and desperate voices of the tormented. He took a deep breath and tried to tell himself that he had imagined it but it was no good. The honor in his own noble heart would not allow him to rest until he had rescued the damsel in distress who called out to him from the narrow halls of that whorehouse.

The Great Willie Young scanned the hall for clues and it was then that he saw it: a hot pink flier on the ground. He picked it up and saw a crudely drawn picture of an Asian prostitute with cartoon breasts and [redacted for gross indecency.] Underneath the picture was written, in English, the words HEY BIG AMERICAN MAN YOU WANT CHINA DOLL? BIG LOVE PRETTY GIRL OKAY? (Don’t ask me, I am just a translator here.) Underneath those words was a phone number. The Great Willie Young shook his head, sighed and stuffed the flier into his back pocket (Hey, wait, I thought he was naked? Me too, but what the hell are you gonna do? Like I said, I am just a translator here.) both so that he could follow up on this new lead and for, uh, other purposes.

The next morning, The Great Willie Young showed the flier around the monastery he was staying in. One by one, the old monks would just shake their heads and refuse to say anything. He wasn’t sure but he thought he detected a hint of great fear in their otherwise placid faces. He would have just called the number but he had lost his cell phone during a freak “meditating” accident with a Thai prostitute who specialized in shooting golf balls out of her [redacted for gross indecency]. The less said about this episode the better, but you can use your imagination, you sick bastard. Needless to say, even if the phone had survived, he probably wouldn’t have wanted it back.

Anyway, The Great Willie Young continued to show the flier around but the monks continued to avert their eyes. Finally, The Great Willie Young decided to take the flier to the leader of the monastery, a mysterious man cloaked in mystery and intrigue. No one ever saw him, not even The Great Willie Young, and no one knew what went on behind the giant green double doors which separated him from the rest of the monastery. There were whispers that he was a great mystic who knew and saw all, and there were others who claimed that he was just a disembodied head who had discovered the key to immortal life and spent his days being fed grapes by specially bred eunuchs. Still others claimed that behind the doors lay the gates of hell itself and that the man who lived within was the devil and he and the monks were forced to coexist at the monastery because that is the way of life, two opposites creating harmony. The Great Willie Young figured this was all probably so much bullshit and he expected to find a decrepit old man in a diaper but he was desperate and he figured that if he didn’t at least see if there was some hidden repository of wisdom behind those doors, he would hate himself forever.

And so, late that night, while all the other monks were sleeping, The Great Willie Young passed up his nightly vigil with the whores of Bangkok to pay a little visit to the monastery’s hidden patron. He crept towards the doors and then with a mighty shove, he pushed the doors inward. They opened with a great creaking yawn and The Great Willie Young stepped through. Immediately, he was met by armed guards, giant Mongols with huge pikes who poked and prodded him, but The Great Willie Young managed to conquer them with little effort, tearing the pikes from their hands and then sodomizing their captain with his own weapon. The rest quivered and then dropped to their knees, begging mercy, speaking in their Mongoloid tongue. The Great Willie Young ignored them and pressed on.

It was dark, the great chamber only lit by small, nearly burned to the nub candles on the walls high above his head, but The Great Willie Young knew he was in the right place. The room stank of sex and he could hear a wizened old cackle coming from just ahead. The Mongoloid guards moaned in misery and pain behind him, but the The Great Willie Young tuned them out and tried to focus on the laughter. There was something familiar about it, something . . . suddenly, a great light flipped on overhead and The Great Willie Young was astounded as a speaker system began to blare techno music and an army of scantily clad dancers, both male and female emerged from the darkness, carrying glow sticks, kissing and rubbing on one another, a veritable orgy of the flesh. The Great Willie Young, though, had seen some shit in his time and so he kept his head about him. He made out with a raver who appeared to be a college student on vacation from England and then he discarded her and punched out a jackass in a Dr. Seuss hat who tried to grind on him. He then pushed his way forward, towards another doors, this one smaller than the ones before.

He reached the door and was immediately confronted by a black pajama clad bodyguard who looked like, hell, I don’t know, Bruce Lee. He immediately bowed up, ready for battle, but The Great Willie Young thought about all the black pajama led Vietcong he had butchered so many years before (although, to him, it felt like it had only happened yesterday) and he bowed his head and said “My battle is not with you, my friend. I seek to speak with your master.” The bodyguard sneered and then flicked a punch at The Great Willie Young’s head, but our hero was too quick for that weak assed shit and just sighed and ripped the bodyguard’s throat out. Hey, The Great Willie Young tried to be diplomatic, what more do you want from him?

Stepping over the bleeding corpse of the bodyguard, The Great Willie Young opened the door, unsure what to expect. It was dimly lit and for a moment he just stared, letting his eyes adjust to the scene in front of him. When he saw what was going on, he just sighed and then shook his head.

“Willie!” Wu Pei’s voice reached The Great Willie Young just as he realized the identity of the monastery’s patron. He ignored Wu Pei for the moment and looked around the room. It was a small, but luxurious office built deep in the bowels of the monastery, and its luxurious leather furniture was crawling with naked flesh and the tables were covered in mountains of cocaine. He should have known.

The two old friends greeted each other warmly with a hug. Wu Pei just shrugged as The Great Willie Young raised a quizzical eyebrow and then said “I know, I know, a monastery? But shit, Willie, you would not believe what a great tax write off it is. Besides it keeps the army from fucking with my club here.”

The Great Willie Young just nodded. He knew Wu Pei. He understood him and who was he to judge? But he had sought out this mystery man for a reason, and it wasn’t to indulge in coke and whores. Not this time anyway. And he knew that if anyone would have the answers he was looking for, it would be his old friend and father-in-law, Wu Pei.

He flashed the flier at Wu Pei and immediately, Wu Pei trembled with what was either fear or anger. The Great Willie Young couldn’t tell which. Perhaps both? Wu Pei then motioned The Great Willie Young towards another smaller back room, which turned out to be Wu Pei’s private bathroom. The Great Willie Young began asking Wu Pei about the flier in a whisper, but Wu Pei just laughed and shook his head.

“Why are you whispering?” he asked.

“Because, man, I thought we needed privacy. That’s why you brought me back here, right?” Willie replied.

Wu Pei just laughed again and clapped The Great Willie Young on the shoulder. “Nah, man,” he said. “I just needed to take a coke shit.” He laughed again, undid his pants and sat down on the toilet while The Great Willie Young just groaned and shook his head.

There, on the shitter, Wu Pei explained that the flier was printed up by a new player in town, a ruthless American who was intent on cornering the market on the Thai whore trade, which I don’t have to tell you is lucrative as hell. He then explained to The Great Willie Young that with the whore trade came the opium trade and with the opium trade came the gun trade and with all of that came a ridiculous amount of money, money which, Wu Pei said, it was rumored that the American was planning to funnel back into his enterprise back home, an enterprise which was near and dear to The Great Willie Young’s own heart.

The Great Willie Young urged Wu Pei to say more but Wu Pei just shook his head. It was clear he was at least a little afraid of this American pimp and that alone was enough to tell The Great Willie Young that he must be the real deal. Wu Pei then shuddered. He was covered with sweat and a trickle of blood spilled from his nose. The Great Willie Young told him he should go easy on the coke, but Wu Pei just laughed, told him to mind his fucking business and then let loose with a stream of shit which nearly destroyed the toilet and which sent The Great Willie Young running from the room. He had faced some hellish demons in his time, but not even The Great Willie Young could stand up to the power and the stink of one of Wu Pei’s monstrous coke shits.

Leaving Wu Pei to wallow in his own rancid feces, The Great Willie Young pondered his next move. A coked up hooker that he was pretty sure was a transvestite came onto him, but he just brushed him aside and made a mental note to make fun of Wu Pei for boning a tranny later and then noticed a phone laying on one of the tables. The Great Willie Young picked up the phone and placed it to his ear. Even the damn phone smelled like sex. He just shook his head and dialed the number on the flier. After no less than seven rings, a reptilian voice answered. “Yesssss?” it hissed

The Great Willie Young then explained that he was in the market for some China Dolls. The reptile on the other end of the line just laughed, a sinister laugh, and there was something ugly and awful and familiar about the voice but before The Great Willie Young could place it, the voice told him to come to an out of the way whorehouse and to come alone and to bring lots of cash. The Great Willie Young knew the place – he knew them all – and said that he would be there. The lizard on the other end of the line then hung up and without another word or thought, The Great Willie Young stalked out of the club, through a backdoor and into the teeming Bangkok streets.

Come alone? No problem. The Great Willie Young had never needed anyone’s help. This American pimp didn’t know what he was in for. The only stop The Great Willie Young made was at an ATM. He figured it might help if he could at least flash some cash and besides, after he had finished taking care of the American, he figured he might stick around and maybe get to know some of the American’s ladies a little bit. He grinned. It never hurt to be prepared.

When he reached the whorehouse, The Great Willie Young tried to once again place that voice on the other end of the phone. He knew he had heard it before somewhere, but he just couldn’t remember. It was on the verge of driving him insane when the door to the whorehouse opened and a hunchbacked little creature in a black hooded cloak appeared. The Great Willie Young had been to this particular establishment – all in the name of meditation of course – many times and he had never seen this creature before. It seemed to hiss at him from behind the hooded cloak and try as he might, The Great Willie Young just couldn’t see through to the lizard’s face.

It laughed, a sinister laugh, just like the one on the phone and it extended a bony finger, a finger which almost resembled a lizard’s talon, beckoning The Great Willie Young to follow him down a narrow, dimly lit hall. The Great Willie Young considered just reaching out and throttling the lizard man right then and there but something told him that he needed to follow this beast if he wanted to get to the true heart of the matter. After all, this lizard didn’t seem like the enterprising type. At best, he seemed like a henchman.

And so The Great Willie Young followed the lizard man, who hissed and limped down the hall. Occasionally, he would wheeze or cackle and again, there was something so familiar . . . but before he could place it, the lizard man stopped and swung open a door at the end of the hall. He took one lurching step forward before stopping, doing a half turn and hissing “You bring the cash?”

The Great Willie Young sighed and produced a fat wad of bills. The lizard man cackled once more and again with a wave of his bony hand he beckoned The Great Willie Young forward. They entered a dimly lit room that looked more like a cellar than anything else. As The Great Willie Young’s eyes adjusted, he could make out row after row of impeccably groomed Asian prostitutes, each looking like an inanimate China Doll. It was creepy as hell, but shit, who was he to judge? But even while his eyes adjusted, The Great Willie Young was distracted by a low moaning coming from somewhere in the room. It was the same voice that he heard coming from the hallway of the whorehouse the night before. The Great Willie Young strained his eyes in the dim light and then he saw it – a poor, beaten and broken creature hanging in chains from the far wall. The Great Willie Young almost began weeping immediately when he saw it, for nothing he had experienced could prepare him for what hung before him.

“M . . . Matty?” Willie managed to stammer and the creature hanging from the wall looked up, miserable and beaten. Sure enough, hanging before him was the body of his quarterback, Matthew Stafford. The China Doll. Suddenly, the whole thing made a sick and twisted sort of sense, and in between his tears, The Great Willie Young managed to remember the long forgotten words of his friend and teammate, the noble Zack Follett, who had suffered much and endured the slings and arrows of the Satan infested press in the wake of his comments comparing Stafford to a China Doll. They had managed to put the ordeal behind them but it seemed as though someone, somewhere, had not, and now The Great Willie Young understood all too well what was happening. An All-Pro, Super Bowl winning quarterback like Matthew Stafford would fetch millions – perhaps hundreds of millions – from some rich hedonist eager to make such a thoroughbred his own personal sex slave. Such a deal would provide the American pimp with all the money he needed to dominate whatever fucked up enterprise he was mixed up in.

But The Great Willie Young would never let that happen. He quickly moved to free his friend, his quarterback, The Great Matthew Stafford. For the moment, he forgot all about the lizard man as he yanked on the titanium chains which held Stafford to the wall. Matthew cried out in pain as The Great Willie Young realized that he could not break the chains without breaking his quarterback’s fragile shoulder. And so The Great Willie Young pounded the wall in anger and misery and the two old friends wept together in the dank cellar while the rows upon rows of China Doll porcelain doll whores just stood obediently, quietly, like little robots awaiting their orders to seduce and destroy.

“Just . . . just let me go,” Stafford managed in between great sobs. “Save yourself, Willie.”

The Great Willie Young shook his head and willed away his own tears. “Fuck that,” he said. “You my quarterback, baby, and I ain’t about to let some lizard motherfucker sell your ass to some Russian oil billionaire with a Rasputin dick and a predilection for sweet, white quarterback ass.”

At this, Stafford began to weep anew and The Great Willie Young realized it was probably better if he didn’t talk about his friend getting buttfucked by a well-hung Slavic billionaire. Instead, he began to methodically pound at the titanium chains, pounding and pounding until his hands bled. He pounded for so long that he failed to notice that Stafford had gone deathly quiet and that a sinister laugh had begun to fill the room. When the evil cackle finally reached his brain, The Great Willie Young stopped and snarled. He realized that it was different than the lizard man’s voice. This one was haughtier, more refined, but if anything it was even crueler.

The Great Willie Young slowly turned, his hands dripping with his own blood and he peered through the darkness at a face half shrouded in a cloud of mystery and black hatred. The laughter continued and then the man stepped forward, and suddenly everything fell into place.

“You!” cried The Great Willie Young.

“Yes, me,” came the taunting reply of the man who he and all of his football playing brethren had learned to hate, the man who called himself the sheriff, the man who lorded over the NFL like some evil tyrant from some half-forgotten dark age, his tin badge on his vest and his evil little lizard henchman at his side, the man known the world over as Commissioner Roger Goodell.

The Great Willie Young sprang forward, using all of his mighty athleticism to close the gap between he and his nemesis just like he had done to countless quarterbacks over the years, but he was stopped by the site of the Commissioner brandishing a gun like some sort of vile Bond villain. But the gun was not pointed at him. Oh no. That would never be enough to stop a being of pure light like The Great Willie Young. Instead, it was leveled at the head of Matthew Stafford, who, great as he was, was still a mortal.

The Commissioner laughed as The Great Willie Young backed down. “Mr. Young,” he clucked. “You may be an All-Pro, a Super Bowl champion, a sure fire Hall of Famer, a Nobel Prize winner for both peace and physics, and a legendary lover, but I’m The Commissioner! You work for me! Did you really think I was going to just sit back and allow you to save your precious China Doll? That boy is going to make me richer than God and that will let me buy out my partners, that hick Jerry Jones and that bastard Snyder and then I can finally – FINALLY – get what I want. You see, all they care about is lining their own pockets, so they can build new stadiums or buy the love they never got from their mothers. But I don’t care about any of that! I sold my mother for $500 and a used Camaro when I was only 17. I just want to watch men like you, Mr. Young, beg and grovel for my favor. I want to see you beat each other, like the gladiators of old, year round and I want to reach into your pockets and remind you that I can take everything you have on a mere whim. You see, Mr. Young, you and your brethren are all my China Dolls. You are all my whores and I am your master!”

The Commissioner cackled maniacally while The Great Willie Young snarled with rage. “Pereira!” The Commissioner shouted. “Chain Mr. Young!” The lizard man henchman stepped forward, titanium chains in his gnarled, evil hands and The Great Willie Young knew him immediately as the man once known as Mike Pereira, cowardly snake and toady to The Commissioner. In recent years, however, he had become less of a man and more of a reptilian creature. It was rumored that he spoke with forked tongue and that he had recently sprouted a tail which he kept hidden. He was said to dine on insects and to fornicate with salamanders late at night before sucking the life out of the eggs of his own unborn children before the sun came up and he slithered back to his master. These were all just wild rumors but The Great Willie Young didn’t doubt that they were all true.

Pereira lurched forward, hissing as he went and he slithered with the great chains in his hands towards The Great Willie Young, who stood, seething, afraid to make a move because The Commissioner still had his gun trained on the head of his friend, Matthew Stafford. “You dirty motherfucker,” The Great Willie Young shouted. “You’ll never get away with this. You hear me?”

But The Commissioner just laughed, long and hard, evil and mean, while Pereira attached the chains to The Great Willie Young and then to the wall. Willie recoiled at Pereira’s touch, which was cold and slimy. There was evil in that creature’s hands and The Great Willie Young told himself that he would need to bathe in acid if he escaped this peril.

“Now,” The Commissioner said, “my plans are finally ready to ripen. With the money I make from the China Doll there, and with the cash I make selling you to the highest bidder – and believe me, Mr. Young, there are many, many, out there who are very interested in getting their hands on you, the world will finally be mine. All mine!” The Commissioner cackled once again and his lizard, Pereira, hissed along with him.

The Great Willie Young bit his lip so hard that he drew his own blood. He then spat it at The Commissioner who just laughed again while Pereira dropped to the ground and began to lap it up. The Great Willie Young recoiled in disgust and wondered, with a desperation that he had seldom felt over the course of his long and glorious life, what to do. He looked all around him and seeing no way out he began to lose hope when suddenly, a mysterious figure, bathed in a heavenly glow, burst through the door.

“You vile motherfucker!” the figure shouted. He kicked the gun out of The Commissioner’s hands and then with his own giant hands he began to throttle the lizard Pereira. “Believe me, motherfucker,” the mysterious figure shouted “I’m gonna complete the process of whoopin’ your ass!”

“St. Calvin!” The Great Willie Young was overjoyed to see his old friend, St. Calvin, All-Pro wide receiver who had recently surpassed Jerry Rice in all the record books, better known to most of the world as Calvin Johnson.

Seeing the gun lying on floor, The Great Willie Young immediately broke his chains and then blitzed The Commissioner, who fell to his knees in fear and immediately began begging for his life.

“You ain’t even worth it, motherfucker,” The Great Willie Young spat. The Commissioner curled up into a ball, but not before pissing himself with fear. The Great Willie Young then put his own broken chains on The Commissioner while St. Calvin busied himself with throttling Pereira, who hissed and then shit himself. “Hold up, dog, we’ll sell this asshole to the zoo,” The Great Willie Young said and then he and St. Calvin laughed.

Hours later, the duo had managed to free their friend, The Great Matthew Stafford, and then The Great Willie Young laid his hands on him like Miyagi did with the Karate Kid or some weird, vaguely creepy and homoerotic shit like that and healed him of his injuries. The Great Willie Young then asked how St. Calvin found them.

St. Calvin just shook his head and said “It was weird, man. Got a call from somebody, sounded like some old coked up Chinaman. Buncha whores were gigglin’ in the background. He said, yo, you need to get over here and help our boy. I was all ‘Our boy?’ and that motherfucker was all ‘Fuck yeah, son. The Great Willie Young.’ I got my shit together and, well, here I am.”

Wu Pei, The Great Willie Young thought with a smile. Good ol’ Wu Pei.

The Great Willie Young then decided to give Wu Pei a call, and Wu Pei soon arrived with an army of lawyers and accountants. They scooped up the simpering Commissioner, stripped him of his tin badge and dragged him away. The Great Willie Young asked Wu Pei where they were taking him, but Wu Pei just laughed and told him that he had gotten a call from the Rozelle family, who said they were in need of a good houseboy. Wu Pei said he figured that The Commissioner fit the bill well enough. As for Pereira, he was taken by animal control. Afterwards, rumors flew that he had been put down like some common street dog. Still others said that he had been sold to Michael Vick, who, uh, knows how to deal with such things. Still others said that he escaped and later slithered into the Mekong River where he haunts the villagers and mutilates their cattle late at night. But, like I said, these are all rumors and cannot be confirmed, especially since, you know, they happen in the future. These things are complicated.

After all that nasty business was sorted out, the trio of Lions, all famous heroes throughout the world, along with Wu Pei, “meditated” late into the night with the liberated China Doll whores, who were said to be very – very – grateful.

And with that, yet another chapter in the saga of The Great Willie Young has come to an end. Good night and Vaya con dios, my friends. Vaya con dios.

Searching For Answers With A Big Baby, Nazi References And A Whole Lot Of Swearing

Shaun was later accused of assaulting the one on the left and eating the one on the right. Oh, and there are some women in this picture too. Hiyooooooooooo!

I meant to write something yesterday, but then I got caught up in a project that Raven Mack and I are doing for the site and, well, shit got out of hand – which you might expect given that it involves the two of us - and I decided fuck it, I’d just wait until today, so . . . here I am. Of course, I am faced with the same dilemma that everyone else is faced with this time of year – what the fuck am I supposed to write about? Indeed. There is not one damn thing that is remotely interesting going on in Lions land right now. In retrospect, maybe I should have just done an installment in the Adventures of Willie Young, and hell, I’m sure that’s what I’ll have to do in the coming weeks. So . . . yeah. But I didn’t really feel like doing one this week. I don’t know why. It’s been a while, but I suppose I feel like I’m somehow cheating you if that’s all I start doing and since I’m only really writing anything here one day a week, that’s what it would quickly degenerate into. I want to use these weekly posts to check in with what’s going on so that we can all stay tethered to the world of the Lions. That will be tougher to do if all I’m doing is flying off on ridiculous flights of fancy involving a backup rookie defensive end fighting Chinamen and berserk Nazis. Sure, that shit is fun and some would say necessary to the advancement of the human spirit in these dark and terrible times, but I fear I would quickly lose the narrative thread that so tenuously holds everything that I do here together. I don’t want to look up 2 or 3 months from now and realize I have no fucking idea what I’m even talking about anymore. (Too late?)

Anyway, this is all so much rambling horseshit and I don’t blame you if you’re tempted to just shake your head and then hit the back button on your browser. I’m tempted too and I’m writing this damn thing. But this is what happens in February. I mean, really, what is there to talk about? Let’s see here . . . oh right, the Lions had a “major” announcement, the rumor of which had the Lions universe buzzing for about 1.8 seconds until everyone realized that it was just the announcement that the Lions were moving their preseason games to another local television network. As announcements go, sure that’s probably fractionally bigger than Roosevelt’s address explaining that we were at war with Germany and Japan but major? What’s next? Are they going to hold a press conference to announce that they installed new urinal cakes in the men’s room? I can see Tom Lewand with charts and graphs and mockups of fake plastic computer people pissing into new state of the art troughs. Jesus. I guess, in a way, it’s the perfect “major” announcement for this time of year. It just sums the whole damn thing up. Speaking of Tom Lewand, maybe he could do me a favor and get busted for shitfaced driving again. I need material, Tom! Damn it, just wander into the local bar and let nature take its course.

So . . . uh, what else? Shaun Rogers just got cut by the Browns which means he’s back on the market and predictably this has led people to wonder whether the Lions should bring him back into the fold. I say no for a couple of different reasons. Number one, the Lions are already stocked at defensive tackle and while, yeah, you want depth, you need to have the right kind of players with the right kind of personality to provide that depth. It’s the same problem I had with the idea of going after Albert Haynesworth. Yeah, on paper, that shit might work out, but in reality Albert or Big Baby would just be a pain in the ass. Those are dudes who are legendary for being lazy shitheads. They constantly take plays off – hell, sometimes whole games off – and that’s not the sort of shit we need right now. I mean, do you honestly think that either one of those dudes would just gladly accept a role as a backup defensive tackle who rotates in and out of games like some blue collar cog? Fuck that. Those guys would behave like 3 year olds. They are horrible assholes when they are the number one guy. How in the fuck do you think they are going to handle being number three or four? Shit. Jim Schwartz would call for Albert Haynesworth to get into the game only to find that he’d wandered off to get a hotdog or pooped his pants or emptied out his toybox and then sat down in the middle of all the mess with his arms folded and a petulant scowl on his face. Sure, there’s this fantasy that Jim Schwartz is somehow “The Albert Whisperer” and would soothe the savage beast, but that is not really a chance I want to take, you know?

It’s the same with Shaun Rogers. This is a man who can’t focus when he standing on the field, ready to hit or be hit by an opposing guard or center. Do your really think he’ll be able to bring any sort of intensity when he’s standing on the sideline scanning the crowd for the next stripper he’s going to assault? Hell, Jim Schwartz would call for Shaun to go into the game, and it’d probably look a little something like this:

Schwartz: Shaun? SHAUN! I’ve been calling your name for the last 15 seconds. What the hell is wrong with you? Get in the game, you lazy shit!

Shaun Rogers: Titties. Ham. Baby Got Back. Back bacon.

Schwartz: What the . . .?

Gunther Cunningham: Oh God, he’s trying to make me give him a lapdance! What do I do Jim? Jiiiiimmmmmmmmmmm!!!

[Gunther’s withered old balls dance on Big Baby’s massive chest while Gun cries out in horror and confusion. End scene.]

That Oscar worthy dialogue is not even a ridiculous fantasy. That shit would happen. Don’t even try to tell me otherwise.

Even if you assume that Schwartz and Gun would get Big Baby to behave himself – and man, if you believe that shit, it’s probably time for your friends and loved ones to start the ol’ intervention – it still doesn’t erase the fact that Shaun Rogers is covered with the terrible stink of Lions Disease. He is tainted by it and he always will be. I don’t want him back simply because I don’t want anyone back from the terrible, terrible past. Sure, it really wasn’t his fault, but it’s the same reason why two parents almost always split up after their kid dies. You just don’t want anything around that reminds you of that horrible shit. (And by “horrible shit”, I mean the situation, not the dead child himself. I may be an asshole, but I want you to know that I’m not trying to call your dead child a horrible little shit. I’m glad I could clear this up.)

The stink is on him and it smells like shit. No thanks. And do you want Shaun fucking Rogers hanging around with Ndamukong Suh? I just shuddered a little bit just thinking of that. And even if you believe that Suh is impervious to Shaun’s wicked ways, what about someone like Corey Williams? Can’t you just see him being found passed out in the dumpster behind the nearest strip joint, covered in what could either be smeared lipstick or smeared blood, stripper smell and bruises from the fists of angry bouncers, only weeks after being “mentored” by Big Baby? Horrible, just horrible.

Other than that, nothing is going on that I can even stretch into being semi-interesting without being ashamed of myself. I mean, yeah, I could talk about Eric King being released, but I don’t even want to think about the weird and wild shit I would have to concoct in order to make that story interesting. I would end up horrifying myself and no one wants that, do they? It would probably start off with Nazis and then end with me gibbering to myself in an all-white padded room, tied down with a straightjacket so I wouldn’t hurt myself. I mean, I’m willing to explore the darker regions of my mind and my soul for you, but have some goddamn compassion. There’s no way I could make a story about Eric King interesting without hurting myself.

So . . . anything else? I suppose I could talk about the looming labor issues that seem to be dominating the NFL news and I’ll be honest, I considered throwing my voice into the mournful howl of a billion voices crying out in pain and confusion over the issue, but really, what’s the point? Losing football would suck and we would all be depressed, and shit, someone should prevent that from happening. If I tried to say any more than that, I would probably just end up calling Roger Goodell a cocksucker and then ranting and raving about Mike Pereira slithering around like a Nazi lizard man for ten paragraphs and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, now would it? Shit, I think I’m getting an idea for a new Willie Young installment.

Well, hell. On that note, let’s just get the hell out of here. Hopefully next week Tom Lewand will get caught pissing in the closet of a 90 year old lady or something and I will have something I can really dig my teeth into. But probably not. Instead, I’ll probably end up writing about Jason Hanson’s goiter or why Nate Burleson’s piss smells like asparagus or about Dominic Raiola’s collection of antique dildos. Oh, the horror, the horror . . .

What Does This Have To Do With The Lions? Everything.

Reflections On Fandom, Friendship And The Revelations Of Perspective

The Old King And The Prince

Being a fan can drive a dude or lady dude crazy. I submit my entire body of gibberish on this here website as evidence. I have ranted and raved like a deranged lunatic for so long that there are times when I feel like I have lost all sense of perspective, and sometimes it takes something brutal and hard to make me look at what I have as a fan and then pat myself down to make sure that all my vitals and, uh, special parts are still intact. These don’t happen often, but when they do, they are kind of a spiritual fan cleanser. I know that doesn’t make any damn sense, but fuck it, since when have I specialized in making sense?

I, like every other Lions fan, have bemoaned the fact that the Lions are run by incompetent boobs, and that our owner is a 268 year old man who has never won anything and who seems chronically incapable of providing any sort of lightning bolt like spark to revive his team, his beloved company or his city even though devotees and citizens of all of the above have been practically begging for it for years. Indeed, the Fords eat a lot of shit, mostly for being ineffectual. But there is no sense of malevolence behind this general futility, just a general malaise that even they don’t know how to break free from. It permeates everything about them – and about us – from our team to our city and to the company that defined that city for so long. That all sounds vaguely sad, and it is, but dudes and lady dudes, it could be so much worse.

You see, the Fords are just like old, withered kings, slumped on their thrones, tired, their time passed, but they are still worthy of being called kings and they still command a certain level of affection and respect. They are not tyrants, incompetent and blood soaked, meddlesome and terrible, getting in their own way because their own colossal egos constantly whisper in their ears that they have to rule the world. And because of this we are lucky.

I was recently reminded of this fact when our own Raven Mack, who is a king amongst kings, took it upon himself to post Daniel Snyder’s office number in a desperate attempt to get his voice heard. At first, I kind of felt like it wasn’t that cool. I mean, that shit just isn’t my style. And I told him so as I devolved into a paranoid beast, afraid that at any moment Daniel Snyder’s storm troopers would come repelling out of internet black helicopters and have us e-killed. After all, my e-mail address (or at least one of them) was the contact info over to the right of the page there. I just didn’t need the hassle in case things went stupid. I mean, let’s face it, Daniel Snyder is a dude who has sued his own fans and who is currently involved in a huge lawsuit against a newspaper because one of their writers said mean things about him. Fuck that, you know?

But then I realized that I behaved shamefully, because Raven Mack is my bro and I should have understood better what he was going through as a fan. His own despair over his realization that Daniel Snyder makes success for his favorite football team impossible drove him to such lengths. His posting of that phone number is a condemnation of the brutal soul sucking reign of Daniel Snyder more than anything else. Raven Mack knows that his Redskins can’t win in the long run because Daniel Snyder can’t get out of his own damn way. That will drive a man to desperate measures and who am I to condemn him for it? I understand sports pain and I understand the panic that comes with feeling like your team will always be a giant shit heap, rotting under a hell sun. Raven Mack deserves my empathy and he has it. Fuck everything else.

The more I thought about it, the more I put myself in Raven Mack’s shoes and the more I put myself in his shoes, the more I realized that shit, I don’t have it so bad as a fan right now. The Fords offer nothing in the way of excitement or positive energy. They aren’t going to make a difference for the betterment of my favorite football team. They just aren’t. They just don’t have it in them. But they aren’t actively going to make shit worse either. They are just sort of there, and when I look at what my dude, the poor put upon Raven Mack has to go through, that’s not that bad, you know?

The worst thing you can say about the Fords is that they are too loyal and that they are stubborn. They stick to their guns and they don’t fly off the handle and freak the fuck out if things aren’t going well. This can result in grim, torturous death if they make the mistake of putting their faith in the wrong people. Say hello to the last decade and The Devil Millen. This has happened far too often and has resulted in much gnashing of teeth and beating of the breasts and hey, that’s a fair criticism, you know? At the end of the day, the decision to keep a guy or to set him on fire and dump him in the Detroit River lies with them. But at least there is a sliver of hope in all that. I know, I know, what the fuck am I talking about? That’s a ridiculous thing to say. But it’s true. There was always the chance that the Fords would one day get lucky, that they would hire the right guy, the right people, to run this team. And somehow, someway, it looks like that finally happened.

Martin Mayhew and Jim Schwartz have shown me enough the last two years to make me believe in the future, which is really kind of an amazing thing to say given the last decade – hell, a whole lifetime – of sports misery and pain. I believe in them and I believe in the future, and with dudes like them in charge, I can look at the Fords and say hey, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all. I mean, when it comes to everything else – to community activism, to their relationship with their players, to their honest and genuine desire to be noble stewards of something larger than themselves – they are good owners. They’ve just been fucked by their own misplaced sense of loyalty and their inability to accurately judge the capabilities of the people they hire.

I’ll admit that’s a pretty big stain and it is one that will forever tarnish whatever legacy they have as owners. But, like I said, there was always the chance that they could get lucky and if they did, and if they found the right people in whom to place their trust, then there was no reason why we couldn’t be a kick ass franchise. I mean, everything else is in place. The Fords run a classy and downright decent organization. All you have to do is look at how efficiently they managed to pull off that game between the Vikings and Giants after the Metrodome roof caved in a couple months ago for evidence of that. Compare that to the fiasco the Vikings faced in trying to put on their next home game after that and you can see, pretty damn clearly, that when it comes to the off the field stuff, the Fords are pretty damn good owners.

And now the on the field stuff – which let’s face it, is all we really care about – is starting to look like it has a real future, glittery and bright, a world full of diamonds and candy and blowjobs. The Fords don’t pose any real threat to that. They have shown that they are incredibly loyal and patient people – mostly to their and our detriment – but with Mayhew and Schwartz running things, those black marks are actually now assets. It’s crazy to admit, but the Lions management situation is actually really, really good right now from the top on down.

Just think of poor Raven Mack and what he has to go through. Or my boy, Harpo Garza and the madness of the terrible, never-ending reign of that leprous vampire, Al Davis. (Seriously, goddamn, just find a recent picture of Uncle Al. That motherfucker’s skin is falling off. It’s horrifying.) Or, hell, even Cowboys fans. Jerry Jones and his ego will not let them get back to the holy land. Everyone knows this. These are dudes who all believe that they should be the ones making the final decisions about their football teams, about the dudes who actually play the damn games. They have been convinced by their own monstrous egos that they are brilliant misunderstood geniuses who know better than anyone else. Sometimes this is rooted in past glory, like in the case of Al Davis. Sometimes this is rooted in hubris and a fundamental misunderstanding of why you were once successful, like in the case of Jerry Jones.

Davis was once a football visionary, a man who turned the Oakland Raiders to gold, and who was the driving force behind the ascension of the former AFL. At least he’s earned the right to believe that he’s the king, even if he is just perpetually chasing a ghost. And besides, at least he’s liable to shuffle off to Valhalla sometime before my boy Harpo, which means my boy Harpo has at least a chance of getting his football team back.

Jones is a rich old redneck who was a half-decent college football player at Arkansas a million years ago and he got lucky because one of his old teammates was a dude named Jimmy Johnson. That connection is what created the success of the Dallas Cowboys in the early ‘90s. Jimmy Johnson shaped that team through sheer force of will and a keen understanding of what makes a team successful. Jerry Jones just happened to be there. Once Johnson was gone, the Cowboys began their decline. Sure, they won another Super Bowl with Barry Switzer – another contact from Jones’ days at Arkansas – but they were still huffing the fumes left over from the Jimmy Johnson days. Once those fumes dissipated and drifted off into the great unknown, the Cowboys were fucked. Of course, Jerry Jones’ ego tells him every day that he played college football so he understands the game well enough to be the Man Who Gets Things Done. And it tells him that he was the owner when the Cowboys won three Super Bowls, so fuck it, he believes. It is a delusional belief, completely absurd and obviously dumb to anyone paying attention, but at least it is rooted in something.

Daniel Snyder’s belief in himself however is rooted in . . . well, shit, you tell me. He combines the worst traits of Davis and Jones – that arrogant and unshakeable self-confidence of a tyrant – with a complete lack of anything to point to as a reason for that self-confidence. At least Davis and Jones have reasons for believing they are capable of being dictators of their teams, no matter how shaky those reasons may be. Daniel Snyder’s reasons seem to be that he’s rich, he’s the owner and fuck everyone else. How is a team supposed to ever succeed with that at its heart?

The Fords were always capable of getting lucky, of finding the right people to salvage our sunken ship. Daniel Snyder doesn’t have that. It doesn’t matter who he hires because at the end of the day, it will always come back to him. He wields absolute power and the Redskins fortunes are inescapably tied to him. Think about that and then think about the desperate sadness of my friend, Raven Mack. Think about it. He has no hope. None. The only thing left to him is to post a dude’s phone number in savage desperation, a mournful howl in a thunderstorm, one last terrible wail as his universe explodes all around him. I love that dude. He is a true fan and he deserves so much better. Hell, he started this blog. It’s his world and I’m just allowed to live in it. And it’s a great world, and it’s a world in which I hope he is somehow able to smile again one day and believe in the future that he deserves as a fan.

It’s sad that it takes something like this to realize how good I have it right now as a fan. I’m sure some of you are laughing or scoffing or shaking your heads in disgust and calling me a stupid ass right now, but fuck it, it’s true. I have hope. I have faith. I believe in the future. Some fans – some friends of mine – aren’t so lucky. One of the beautiful things about this blog is that we can share our pain as fans, and even as my fortunes rise, I will be here to bear the sadness and the desperation of my fellow fans, dudes like Harpo Garza and Raven Mack. Because I have known their pain, I have known their sadness, their hopelessness, their desperation and that makes us brothers, fighting together for a better world as fans, a world where we can all believe in the future and where that future is one without limit or end.

(Also, a quick, tacky note: If you want, you can check out an article I wrote for Guyism, about the 10 Most Degenerate Super Bowl Winning Quarterbacks. Doing so – and maybe posting it on your facebook or twitter or digging it on digg,com or whatever – would help me tremendously by providing me with what the ancients referred to as Dollah, Dollah Bills. Also, just so you know, there was originally a fucked up tangent in that piece about Goofy whipping his dick out at Disneyland, but it was cut out, which let’s face it, was for the best. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, other than I feel like I should. It was in the Ben Roethlisberger section, naturally. Anyway, check it out and look for more stuff for me at Guyism in the future. I’ve got a couple of more things brewing too, so hopefully, every corner of the internet will be crawling with my distinct brand of wild gibberish. Thank you, and as always, Vaya con dios, friendos.)