Reflecting Day: Traxx Attaxx!

I thought I’d take this Reflecting Day to look at a milestone moment in the 1-900-🌭 community: The first time we all met Traxx.

(If you haven’t seen Traxx yet, you can dramatically change the course of your whole day here.)

We non-Seanbaby’s had no idea what we were getting into with Traxx. There’s no way to explain the movie that does it any justice. Is it a satire of action movies that mistakes hate crimes for jokes? Is it an action movie that thinks jokes are supposed to feel like hate crimes? It was marketed as a parody along the lines of Airplane! But nobody told that to anybody involved with the making of the movie. There’s a sick sense of unease throughout the whole film. It’s funny in the way that a bear with his head stuck in a log is funny -- it’s also sad, and might get loose and kill you at any moment. It is truly a 🌭 film. We watched it for one of our first Meat Parties -- our community movie nights -- and it’s been with us ever since.

The Discord has a special Traxx emoji. New members are assaulted with demands to livewatch Traxx, which is insane -- that’s asking an hour and half of somebody’s life, with no notice! But they do it! And just as they finish having their brains blown straight out of their assholes, another new member will come in, say “holy shit, is that brain hanging out of your pants? What happened?” And the cycle begins anew. There was one whole day there that was just a rolling Traxx storm, where only Traxx happened.

Traxx has become such a huge part of hot dog history, and we’re honoring that with our very first tier reward T-shirt. In the film Traxx, our main character, Traxx, wears a T-shirt of himself wearing a T-shirt of himself in a fractal meta-joke of infinite narcissism.

That Traxx shirt is on sale nowhere, why on Earth would it be? It’s a single throwaway joke in a thirty year old movie that nobody saw when it was actually out.

But if you’re signed up for the Hot Dog Appreciator or Supreme tiers, you’re getting it!

I didn’t lie, it’s not on sale anywhere. This is not an advertisement. I guess it’s a taunt? It’s too late to sign up for this shirt. The orders are in, and this will never go on sale in the store. If you’re not already getting it, you’re never getting it. Try going back in time and making worse financial decisions, idiot.

How is this legal? Fuck you, that’s how. Don’t tell anybody.

Does that guy look like he’s got time for narcs? He looks like he’s trying to sell you a kidney but won’t let you open the cooler. That dude is way too busy trying to hustle gorilla livers to worry about copyright, so let’s not bother him with all this, okay?

And now it’s time for a diversion. Listen, Seanbaby used the announcement of Lydia’s weekly column to write several hundred words about a mustard goblin. Reflecting Days aren’t just for you - they’re for us to make jokes about shit we can’t make jokes about.

In this case, it’s Ghanaian movie posters. The whole phenomenon is too played out to actually write an article about -- the whole-ass internet already did that ten years ago. It is way too late to write a column about Ghanaian movie posters. But it’s not too late to write a Reflecting Day complaining about how it’s too late to write a column about them!

If you’re unfamiliar: in the 1980s VHS boom, Ghana and other West African markets fell in love with American movies. But their showings were mostly pirated, so they got none of the actual promotional material to advertise them. They had to make the posters themselves, almost always without actually seeing the movie first. Now, back when the internet was all about Ghanian movie posters, every single take was about how hilariously shitty the art was. I would like to disagree violently, via deadly broom or surprise handgun.

Look at this poster for Mrs. Doubtfire:

If you don’t remember the scene where a crossdressing Robin Williams murders the kid from Party of Five with a broom while teleporter-accident Kevin Spacey dies on his foot, that’s because it didn’t happen. But it really should have. I know Mrs. Doubtfire has a cult following because of Robin Williams’ endearing performance, but I think we can all agree that, in retrospect, it should have ended with Scott Wolf eating a broomstick with his eyeball.

Here’s Alien:

Sure, Sigourney Weaver looks a bit Danzig and sure, the xenomorph is tiptoeing like a Scooby Doo villain, but it’s still relatively faithful to the movie. Except for the fact that the cat has laser vision. See that? One little change and we’ve got a masterpiece.

Here’s the poster for Predator:

Now the movie stars Brian Thompson and he’s fighting a spider-bigfoot for porn stars. Listen, when I take the Myers-Briggs test the only result I get is PRDTR. It’s a huge part of my brain, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about Predator except for everything in that poster.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai was a long, slow meditation on honor and violence when I wanted a short, fast meditation on just violence. What’s the immediate way to fix every problem I had with that movie?

Actual ghost dogs. Forest Whitaker battles an army of literal ghost dogs armed with assault rifles, samurai swords, serpent tails and yes, once again laser eyes. I don’t know if pets work real different in Ghana or if the whole country just knows how to party, but I love it. This isn’t a bad idea, it’s a great idea had too early. Nicolas Cage would star in this movie right now. You wouldn’t even have to finish the sentence.

“It’s this movie about samurais fighting ghost dogs and-”

“Well all right, one’s got an assault rifle. I get it. Yeah, haha, I get it! They all got laser eyes. I got kind of a weird Elvis accent and at one point I lick a woman in a way she doesn’t like, let’s do it!”

This is the Ghana movie poster philosophy: Do your very best with what you have, and also add at least one thing you just fuckin’ wish was in the movie. Like Space Jam:

How much better would that movie have been if Michael Jordan just brought a handgun to the court and started shooting Monstars point blank? Like something between Who Framed Roger Rabbit? And The Last Boyscout except Bob Hoskins is a badger with tits and… wait was Bob Hoskins actually a badger with tits?! It would explain so much.

Instead of doing whatever this is, I would be watching Ghost right this second if Patrick Swayze was three feet tall and in love with giantess Demi Moore who was born with a Whoopi Goldberg Kuato.

Yeah, maybe the artists didn’t always get the likenesses quite right, and maybe they thought proportion was what makes things go and perspective was something you gained with age, but there’s so much more emotion in something like this than there is in your standard Hollywood floating head poster:

I remember nothing about Mission Impossible but I will never forget Matrix Kim Jong-Un and his tiny-wheeled motorcycle.

In the world of Ghana movie posters, Joy and enthusiasm was always more important than skill and accuracy.

And that got me thinking... isn’t this what we do? 1900🌭 doesn’t do references for the sake of reminiscing. We’re not Ernest Cline, here to milk your nostalgia glands for cash. We don’t just show you the way things are and ask you to remember them. We’re here to mess things up for you in a manner that brings joy as much as it does destruction.

We’re here to motherfucking Ghanaize.