The Dane

Paulo quickly gets into the SPIRIT (pun points are sure to be awarded) of things right away by crunching together elements of the recent Mars landing for his opening serve. One might wonder if he's trying to curry favor with the commentator by making a nod to her astrological sign's ruling planet. One might need to find better things to wonder about. Like, how on Earth is Seth gonna respond to this dark-and-brooding, image-packed start?

Let's explore that in haiku:

"Paulo starts heavy
Exploring space in pixels
Will Seth recover?"

Seth's first return finds him plumbing the depths, literally. With a happy, unabashed use of blue and squishy little toddler cheeks (cheap play on setimentality!!), he lightens the mood and the load of Paulo's initial serve. Cheesy but effective, and leaves us wondering where the lobsters and the glowfish (or even the little baking soda-powered Navy frogmen) are.

Quite frankly, the squished-up little astronaut perplexes me, but I don't regularly play in Seth's brain, so who knows? In closing, we've nowhere to go but up!

Ahhhh, in a deft display of... something, Paulo returns, crafting the sweet, squishy-cheeked wee one into a four-armed squinty menace! The sly threat issued by none other than Disney's Ariel ("part of your world") is chilling to say the least, and will have us all doing double takes at both astronaut suits and squishy-cheeked toddlers from here on out. Bravo for this mastery of subtle horror!

I knew the farging lobster would show up; I should have taken bets on when. Frankly, I'm amazed that Seth held out this long.

Interesting use of scotch tape and slimy green stuff in the background.

This one cries out to be summarized in limerick! Ever a slave to my muse, I acquiesce:

Seth incorporated a lobster, by golly;
What to do with such crustacean-laced folly?
Paulo puts it on a plate,
Says "All you can eat, mate!"
And completely pulls off this volley.

Oh my. Seth takes Paulo's happy, bouncy all-you-can-eat motif and turns it on its ear by offering up a buffet of men who were all guilty of bad aesthetics. Does anyone notice how, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head just so, Seth somewhat resembles McVeigh?

The color play in this volley is wonderful, as are the stars co-mingling with skulls, but I don't get the spigot. WhAT'S UP WITH THE SPIGOT?? And, because we're nosy, we all want to know what that column of text hovering over it says. Well?

This is far too rad for words. Your commentator is moved beyond expression.

Pardon me while I retrieve something --not a pencil, for once-- from mine eye and break into impassioned song.

Sometimes, no matter how much you'd rather not or how much it detracts from your inherent coolness, you must hearken back to a more innocent time when George Thorogood was a reigning bad boy and proclaim loudly, "Now THAT is BAD TO THE BONE."

With a tongue-in-cheek inside joke and sweeping mafioso posturing, Seth romps gleefully all over the tasty goodness of Paulo's Magick Numbah Seven Volley, rendering it a mere shadow of its former self and deftly taking it down a notch or two on the ole Rad-O-Meter. I can hardly contain myself! God bless America and all that jazz.

Okay, did anybody ever see that movie about the big-ass ants that took over the tourist resort? See, the deal was, Joan Collins played a shyster real-estate huckster that takes potential clients way out in the middle of Tropical Nowhere in order to sell them luxury timeshares on a Suitably Lush Island For Middle-Income Folks.

Only thing is, some toxic waste was dumped off an ethics-challenged seagoing vessel and it washed up to this island, where --of course-- some sweet iddy ants crawled around in the dayglo mucky-muck and suddenly grew to be about forty feet long.

WELL THEN, after Joan Collins and Clientele were dropped off for the showboat tour of the island, the ants are like, 'We was here first, kay?' and start to kind of chaw on Joan's clients one by one. In the meantime, the clients with still-working appendages are finding out that pipes and structures and such are sorta fakey, temporary things erected to fool them into making an investment commitment. THE HORROR! "We are not only ant-bait, we's been swindled!"

I was (barely) six when I saw this movie at the lone theater in the smallish town where I was bornded. My Uncle Roger took me and my cousin Elaine, who was also six-ish. There was a goofy opening cartoon (YAY!) and then there was all this ant-carnage for me to wrap my six-year-old brain around. Way to go, Rog!

Anyway, that's what this volley reminds me of: The Big Ole Ant Movie. There's money plinked down on freshly-turned dirt (fixed there tentatively with scotch tape) and there's a dayglo ant watching it all unfold sneaky-like from the shadows. Even the quote ties in eerily:

"i saw it."
"no you didn't."
"it was right there."
"you're crazy."

Yeah, pally, but the crazy one never gets ant-bit.

Seth's return volley begs the question, "What the heck does he really mean?"

"No, I mean what is he REALLY saying?"

Seth demands that Paulo should take his medicine. However, one must wonder at the legalities of taking meds with someone else's name on the scrip label. What is Seth advocating here?

And why is he taking Iocaine caps in the first place? Because gelcaps are more convenient and easier on the digestive system? Because he anticipates meeting a wily Sicilian with a tolerance to the poison and wants to prep himself for the possibly deadly game of chance the Sicilian will present?

(Please tell me you people have seen 'The Princess Bride'.)

I bet the dayglo ant is trapped inside that bottle, lyihg in wait for Paulo. I bet that's what Seth REALLY means.