Learning Day: The Old-Timey Madness Collection

Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and Auto Polo. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. It’s…

From draconian mask mandates suffocating the toughest men in our nation, to Big Kindergarten telling us which preschools allow assault rifles and which are in Communist Russia, today's nanny nation wants to take all the excitement out of our lives. That's not how it used to be, though. Back in the good old days, when all men wore mustaches and all women silently tolerated mustaches, the people knew how to live: dangerously, recklessly, violently free.

You Could Beat a Man to Death With Your Cane and Call It a Martial Art

This is not evidence in an assault trial -- I mean yes, it is definitely that -- but it’s not just that. This is a pictorial how-to guide for Canne de Combat: the gentle and sophisticated art of beating a motherfucker with your walking stick. Canne de Combat was developed in early 19th century France, and was practiced by civilized gentlemen in metropolitan areas, who needed a way to club hobos with decorum and grace. Now you, a savage buffoon, might think “I know how to hit a man with a stick - I hold one end and the inside of his skull holds the other.” You simpleton. You Philistine. There’s a technique to it:

That actually looks badass, like fencing but with Muay Thai knees and classic Van Damme side kicks. That is the exact side kick you would use to thrust the corrupt DEA agent who overdosed your brother onto a spike. It looks like this technology should not exist yet. I’m not sure when they invented kicking ass – I assumed 1972 - but if Mr. Darcy suddenly leapt to his feet and spinning roundhouse kicked Mr. Bingley through a stained glass window, I would not have plagiarized my book report on Pride and Prejudice. But that's exactly what 19th century France was all about. There was even a rival form, a kind of gentlemanly Jeet Kune Do that incorporated elements from every martial art into a perfect fighting system. It was called Bartitsu, and it looked like this:

That angry, angry mustache belongs to Edward William Barton-Wright, inventor of Bartitsu (the name is a combination of Barton and Jujitsu – the two most deadly things your opponent can know). Barton loved the brutal extravagance of Eastern martial arts, but saw absolutely no reason you had to wear pajamas to do it. So he developed a fighting style that was unhindered -- even augmented -- by a jaunty polka-dot ascot.

The Jails Used to do Sexy Glamour Shots

That’s an actual mugshot used by the New South Wales Police Department in 1925. This is how they documented criminals: Like they’re teasing a new Scorcese period piece. That’s William Stanley Moore, who was arrested for dealing drugs. Well, dealing fake drugs. That is a Junior High crime. That is anywhere from a misdemeanor to a PE no-no, but he surely felt like he could take on the Batman after this photoshoot.

Every criminal who passed through the New South Wales Police Department between 1910 and 1930 got the full glam-shot treatment.

This is the official mugshot of William Cahill, taken in 1923. It looks like Russell Crowe shooting a tasteful whiskey ad, but this is the picture that went on his official criminal record. How does it help officers to be able to identify William Cahill wistfully remembering a childhood friend? “Face left, face right, quietly recall the day you and Oliver found that abandoned beehive and spent all afternoon exploring its chambers like you were tiny bees, walking the halls of a grand fortress. Face front. Now stand and fuck me with your eyes.”

Sydney Skukerman looks like he's going to unleash hordes of mind-controlled rats on Metropolis if his demands aren't met. His crime? "Obtaining goods from warehousemen by falsely representing that he is in business." This guy got arrested for pretending that packages were for him. And here I am, remembering his name a century later and mentally photoshopping rat-shaped deathrays next to him.

Edward Dalton and “De Gracy” are complicated bad guys in a Coen Brothers movie.

I mean, some of that’s the mugshot - the artful framing, allowing them to pose with casual menace, the Fuckable Felon Instagram Filter. But Edward Dalton’s got a knife-fighting scar of the exact severity that tells me he won, and De Gracy’s got them necromancer eyes. Like those are the eyes you get when you mess with the dead, and that’s not the mugshot’s doing. The fact that I would wear their cologne? That’s all mugshot.

Your Sports Were Mad Max Action Scenes

Please examine this picture I have brought for you. Just for you, a gift. Look: A man has been freshly ejected from a speeding automobile. There he is, flailing through the air. Now look: Another man, this one with a giant smile on his face. He waits to smack the crash victim with a comically oversized mallet before he hits the ground. This is art. I have brought you art, and you are welcome.

This was Auto Polo: You would head out to a muddy field and mount up on half a car -- a vehicle that had only been invented 30 years earlier, and already you’re dismantling it to kill your friends -- and then everyone would pick up hammers and gun it until the women lamented or the gas ran out.

That's like you and your friends buying a bunch of jet packs and jai alai sticks today and just setting off into the open sky, giving the finger to your weeping families -- it's insane that you all would even own the technology in the first place, much less have the balls to violently misuse it like that.

This isn’t the last moments of a couple brave idiots – I mean yes, it is definitely that – but it’s not just that. Auto Polo was an actual sport!

Demonstration matches were held at county fairs and stadiums all across the country, but it was most prominent in the Midwest during the early 1910s. It was usually played with a basketball, as seen above, and the only mandated gear was a protective cap for the malleteer and an oversize neckerchief for the driver so he could use it to clean malleteer brains out of his eyes.

Please, come in. Sit down. I have brought you more gifts. Look: I have given you a Wild West-style sheriff in a ten-gallon hat, grimly staring off into the sunset as a pair of land-based fanboats automotively hammer-joust. Don’t thank me yet. Look at the sheriff’s hand: He is the malleteer.

Now, you are welcome. You are welcome.

I'm not cherry-picking exciting photos from a boring event. Every single picture of Auto Polo is two cars collapsing while men soar through the air, about to have their heads bashed in by their own hurtling hammers. Every one is a portrait in memoriam of an intact skull.

Auto Polo was so deadly, it was eventually banned nationwide. Banned in 1910! Back when you could drink heroin milkshakes and buy radioactive underwear and if you fed a woman to a lion it was tax deductible under Arts & Entertainment - Human Costs.

Wait, I’m not kidding about that last one.

You Could Watch a Lion Race a Motorcycle Sideways

This was how you took in a show, back in the day. It was like going to the matinee now, only instead of watching Ryan Reynolds do that one face he has but in front of different explosions, the kids stuck their unshielded little heads out over a bowl of automotive trauma and breathed the heady perfume of leaded gasoline and jungle predator.

Lion Dromes were a spinoff of Walls of Death: enclosed arenas where small cars and motorcycles embarrassed gravity. But we gotta compete with Auto Polo here. Lil’ Betsy just watched Sherriff Thwack eat a flaming engine block yesterday. The Wall of Death is tame. You know what’s not tame? Literally lions!

Behold as unamused men in sensible suits bolt great cats to tiny cars and try to outrace a million years of primal, murderous instinct ... sideways.

But yesterday at the penny arcade Lil’ Betsy watched The Cane Kaiser teach Undead De Gacy how to deepthroat a walking stick and he very much did not cooperate. So her bloodlust is high. She’s going to need more vulnerable humans and less vulnerable cats.

That’s earning the ol’ nickel for admission!

Real talk, I know this sucks. Since these “good ol’ days” we have embraced concepts like ‘human rights’ and ‘concern for animals’ and ‘any form of basic safety.’ And that's great. Wonderful. I don’t want to go back.

I just want Auto Polo. Only on weekends. We can wear helmets. I won’t even bring a lion. Okay one lion, but he won’t be the malleteer.

Unless he really wants to.

...

If these images are borked, you can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.