Learning Day: Miami Spice

Media empires begin with simple ideas: A happy cartoon mouse, an orphan child who discovers his fursona is a bat, a magical boy who believes in bathroom genital inspections. Small ideas that bloom big. So it was with Curt Hiss, the Drug Free Beatboxing Snake. At first, that’s all he was - a snake sock puppet who got so addicted to drugs he thought he could rap. You all had that friend. His name was Darren, he got into crypto. You don’t talk anymore.

Curt Hiss’ first video was a simple affair: a few backdrops, a suicidal brother, the grim reaper. That was the extent of writer/director Wayne Owens’ dream. It wasn’t enough for producer Randy Schmidt. He looked at this green sock hooked on coke and he said “a universe shall be borne from thee.” Curt Hiss’ second showing was a full blown action movie, complete with sinister drug kingpins, explosions, and the most powerful drug of all: love. Wait, sorry, it was still cocaine.

Then came Lenny the Crack-Smoking Lion, the first Curt Hiss spinoff.

Lenny’s story upped the ante with a crack epidemic, a pair of lovable rapping drug dealers, and an actual puppet overdose. One of those dealers, a black-coded puppet named Cool Cat (no relation), fucking died from a crack overdose. Actual sock death! We learned it from his screaming mother, who blamed the police for failing her family. It was way too hard a moment for a video you watch in 2nd grade gym class because the teacher is hungover.

After Cool Cat’s death, our heroes, Lenny and Ruff, swore revenge. Not for Cool Cat, but for Mr. Crack almost tricking them into sharing the same fate as a black puppet. That leads us directly into the second Lenny the Lion adventure: Miami Spice.

I used to joke that Randy Schmidt started doing anti-drug sock puppet shows and became convinced he was the next Michael Mann. Now here he is, actually doing Michael Mann. Fuck everything that happened before: Lenny and Ruff are now Drug Officers with the Central City Drug Program, and both clearly using the cocaine they confiscate.

It turns out Lenny the Lion’s last name was Sprocket, and Ruff the Dog’s last name was Bubbs this whole time. We thought he was just biting his own tongue off at the time, but it turns out Cool Cat’s last words were “beware nominative determinism.”

The Captain has just received information that Mr. Crack is opening a drug smuggling business in Miami. An adorable way to put that. Like he applied for a Drug Business Permit. Like he has a little CLOSED sign he flips to OPEN every morning to start his drug smuggling day.

Let us now pause to appreciate that the Captain Puppet is a fucking nightmare.

Specifically, the recurring nightmare you have about your step-dad and his prehensile penis. Best case scenario that’s a bubble-gum faced Ron Jeremy. Worst case scenario it’s in your house right now. This is how I’d depict Edward James Olmos in a whimsical children’s show called Edward James Olmos Fucked My Wife.

When they say “show me on the doll where he touched you,” this is the doll. They had to throw it away because it kept giggling. This is how I know crabs can live on felt. This puppet traded me a bloodstained van for a degaussing wand. This puppet fucks like a biblical plague, he-

Sorry, sorry. I got so hung up describing the only puppet violating parole to be here that I didn’t even think to mention “Drug Officer” isn’t a real job and “Central City Drug Program” isn’t a police agency. Sprocket and Bubbs are honorary deputees of a local drug outreach center and they’re heading to Miami in pursuit of a drug kingpin. Their next adventure is called An Unexpected Present and it’s their mothers opening boxes with Lenny and Ruff’s heads in them.

It seems like a pretty sharp turn from the last Lenny the Lion video, where they were both children singing the praises of crack. But there is some continuity. We are specifically told that Cool Cat remains canonically dead, and that Ruff the dog used to suck dick for rock. I mean, he doesn’t say those exact words, but what he does say is:

And he says that wearing an open collared suit and a gold hoop earring. Ruff might think an “inference” is $20 extra, but I know one when I see it.

Once in Miami, Sprocket and Bubbs meet up with another classic Lenny-verse character: Sneaky Snake, the Drug-dealing Hip-Hop snake. Some puppets can’t be redeemed, but they can all be reused. Sprocket and Bubbs need to bust him for possession with intent so they can press him for information on his boss, Mr. Crack. The perfect cue for a rap breakdown!

I’m not a music critic because all my analogies are too obscure. But these beats are so limp they’d never sexually rescue their whole race from invading conquistadors. This flow is so weak it loses the respect of its wife during an Avengers screening.

Anyway, in order to bust Sneaky Snake, Officer Bubbs first must go undercover as an addict to win his trust. He’s a little too good at it. This is the actual interaction:

Hold on! I know what you’re thinking, but that’s ridiculous. This is a child-friendly educational Miami Vice parody sock puppet show, you degen filth. This is perfectly innocent! The snake is simply handing the dog some crack to deal. Get your head out of the gutter and stop seeing this puppet get head in a gutter.

Since Sneaky has now been caught red-mouthed, Sprocket and Bubbs say they’re going to read him his rights. And then they do their complete anti-drug rap again. The same one. Word for word, from beginning to end, while Sneaky looks on in fearful confusion.

Sneaky Snake’s lawyer won’t even charge for this one. You can’t substitute an anti-drug rap for the Miranda Rights in any state except for maybe - oh right. Florida. Still, I don’t care how hard it is to sew little puppet handcuffs, you can’t just chain up a perp like a werewolf in any state but- you know what? This was, if anything, prophetic.

I know Randy Schmidt checked out of puppet morality plays long ago and is now abusing state drug-awareness grants to build a Puppywood sizzle reel, but this is getting awfully dark. I know you want to be the sock puppet Michael Mann, Randy, but this is a clear violation of rights. It’s like having an out of control cop brutalize a restrained criminal, you can’t-

Sprocket pulls Bubbs back, but only because this was the 1980s and you used to have to walk all the way across the room to turn off the cameras. Sneaky freaks out and immediately confesses, then begs not to be put in gen-pop because he won’t survive it. That sounds like I’m kidding!

No, that’s pedophiles and cops. Most convicts are in for drug charges, Sneaky would probably be fine if he wasn’t literally a sock with a lucious mouth. But he is, and he doesn’t want to go through the wash on cold again. Sneaky cuts a deal in exchange for solitary confinement, which is an insane sentence to type about a sock puppet play, only beaten by this one: He tells them Mr. Crack and his gang of drug rats are smuggling crack down by the docks.

Meet your new favorite characters, the drug rats!

Look how full of joy they are. If I were a little kid these would immediately be the stars of the show. I would rewind the tape over and over again to listen to their little song. Their little song that goes like this:

If the Lenny-verse had blown up, this would’ve been 1989’s “Baby Shark.” You’d call me a motherfucker just for typing the title, because that’s all it took to get it stuck in your head. If you heard an adult humming this at the grocery store, you’d know two things about them:

• They’re an attentive parent who spends a lot of time with their kids.

• They’re one loud noise away from going on a shooting spree.

This song bangs. I mean, it fucking bangs.

It’s still good today. Drop the remix. Put Peggy on the beat and 2025 will be “Drug Rat Summer.”

It goes so hard that one of the rats drops dead at the end of the song. The others gleefully dispose of his corpse with a comical zip sound. Drug rats rule!

It’s Mr. Crack time! You’ve been waiting for him, your favorite character! The only one to span both the Curt Hiss and Lenny the Lion franchises. Mr. Crack is the Lenny-verse’s Iron Man. Maybe he’s not your favorite, but it all falls apart without him. In his trademark skull hockey mask and Crack hoodie, he’s an NFT Jamie Kennedy bought for $800,000.

For some reason Mr. Crack lost his sinister grim reaper voice and now talks like an elderly Jewish man. He berates the drug rats for their incompetence and it just sounds like George Costanza disappointed his father again. It only makes me like him more. It’s too bad he believes in crack eugenics:

Smart kids need drugs the most, Mr. Crack! Only the bourgeoisie are happy under modern capitalism.

Mr. Crack orders the rats to distribute his new drug to the playgrounds. It’s ten times deadlier than cocaine, meth, and crack combined. It’s called… Ecstasy. Haha, hindsight is 20/20. I guess it’s still evil to get a bunch of kids rollin’ to the SpongeBob theme. We can’t have these first graders feeling the secret beat of the pencil sharpener and spending all recess petting grass.

Always a step ahead, Sprocket and Bubbs have already staked out Mr. Crack’s schoolyard drug dealer. Now, and this is probably just me reading into things here, but it seems like every time a Randy Schmidt production needs total street trash – not a high-end dealer, or a confused kid about to change their ways, we’re talking total unrepentant junkie dipshit – they happen to look like this:

And sound like this:

That’s Kit Kat. Like Cool Cat before him, he’s a problem and a confession all in one. He’s upset because the rats showed up with this new drug, but he didn’t check the Ecstasy box on his mail-in drug order catalog. That’s how drug deals work, as far as midwestern puppet producers know. The drug rats promise Kit Kat this new stuff will definitely kill some kids, which seems bad for business, but he’s all the way in. That’s all Sprocket and Bubbs need - they rush in to arrest everyone. Puppet cuffs still look like cockrings out of context, so Bubbs just chains them all up together. The optics are uh, not great.

Now it’s time to go after Mr. Crack himself. He’s all alone at the docks, ranting about what pussies the drug rats are for fearing the police. But one of the rats escapes and explains:

The way the rat describes it, singing and dancing in this universe are like beating the absolute shit out of somebody with a baton. So suddenly the part where Sneaky Snake asks about his rights and Sprocket and Bubbs just aggressively rap at him makes perfect sense.

That’s all Mr. Crack needs to hear, he’s not sticking around to get gang-sang by a corrupt volunteer police force. He turns to flee, leaving his last drug rat behind.

Haha, a boss ‘til the end. That’s the last we see of Mr. Crack. He gets away! What an inspirational American tale. A man sees a need going unfulfilled in the market, he supplies the product, he murders a bunch of children, then escapes all consequence while those who believed in him burn. In the next installment, he gets to sit on stage for President Sneaky Snake’s inauguration.

Then all audio cuts out and we watch the abandoned drug rat have a total mental breakdown in absolute silence.

It’s likely just an awkward scene change, but it’s the most harrowing moment in the entire Curt Hiss Extended Drug Universe. Without a single line of dialogue, this rat puppet portrays the unabashed fear, loneliness, and betrayal of realizing you were never a person but only an object whose usefulness has suddenly ended. If they gave out Academy Awards to weird lifeless rapping puppets on cocaine, Lin-Manuel Miranda still wouldn’t have one. This rat would’ve taken it from him.

Sprocket and Bubbs move in to arrest the rat, actually reading him his rights this time but pausing between each one to explain how they don’t really apply to junkies. None of these arrests will hold up in puppet court. This rat is walking free tomorrow and Sprocket and Bubbs are going to be punished with paid vacations and secret high fives.

Sprocket swivels to face the screen for his big speech, only it’s the same awkward scene change so he does it in a sudden, unexpected audio void.

I’ve never been more certain a puppet can see me, and I have fought a lot of puppets. It winds up being appropriate though, because the inspirational speech he’s supposed to be delivering to the children devolves into an unhinged rant about how drug dealers cannot escape Lenny the Lion, he will pursue them to the ends of the Earth and beyond the farthest corners of time.

One thing all Randy Schmidt productions have in common: At some point they forget that their audience is made up of children who might one day be tempted by drugs, and instead begin directly addressing the junkies and peddlers who are presumably watching this sock puppet educational video through the gymnasium windows. If you’re the kind of soft-ass drug dealer who can be scared away from crime by a rapping puppet, this just saved your life. Those mollied-up grade schoolers were going to pet the flesh right off your body.

Officer Ruff Bubbs, former dick-sucking crack dog, joins Officer Lenny Sprocket, one-time lion crack dealer, to deliver the final vow together. Addressed to an unseen enemy who has long since gotten away with it.

It is a very fitting moment in a Michael Mann movie about two traumatized undercover detectives who’ve lost all perspective and whose sense of justice has devolved into a vengeful god complex.

The sock puppets could have probably gotten away with “just say no.”

Thanks to ProseAndKahn for the Hot Dog tip!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: ND, a sock puppet with a god complex stuffed into the skin of a human.

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