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Victoria County History
A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 8: The Poldens and the Levels
Robert Dunning (Editor)
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'Cossington', A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 8: The Poldens and the Levels (2004), pp. 42-50. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=15106 Date accessed: 27 November 2014.
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Cossington is a compact village on the north side of
the Poldens, formerly surrounded by open fields which remained substantially intact until the earlier 19th century. The ancient parish stretched northwards from the western end of the Polden ridge, 7 km. NE. of Bridgwater.
(fn. 3) It is roughly rectangular in shape, nearly 4 km. from north to south and averaging 1.3 km. from east to west, except in the south where it widens to nearly 2 km. A detached irregular area on King's Sedgemoor, south of the Polden ridge and beginning some 2.5 km. due south of the parish church, was added as an allotment under inclosure in 1807.
(fn. 4) The eastern boundary of the ancient parish, shared with Chilton Polden and curving gently northwards from the Polden ridge, follows hedge boundaries, a lane named Landshire Lane, and Manor rhyne to a point just north of the line of the Huntspill River. Just inside Manor rhyne is the parallel Wall ditch, divided from the rhyne by an earth bank, probably that raised in 1752.
(fn. 5) The ditch, which takes the water from Cousney rhyne, probably marked the beginning of the drainage of the moor in the parish in the earlier 13th century.
(fn. 6) The northern boundary with Woolavington was the Withy rhyne or Withy Pill rhyne, a watercourse which disappeared in Cossington when the South Drain and the Cut were dug in the early 19th century, both becoming part of the Glastonbury canal from 1829.
(fn. 7) The course of the canal was obliterated by the construction of the Huntspill River in 1940.
(fn. 8) The western boundary with Woolavington, in the south following hedges, is marked further north by the course of a stream which rises in the village but which has been straightened and named successively Sheepwash rhyne and Newlands rhyne. Meadow in Newland was named in 1247.
(fn. 9) The southern boundary follows the Polden ridge road.
(fn. 10) In 1839 the parish measured 1,375 a. which included the allotment of c. 144 a. on King's Sedgemoor.
(fn. 11) That allotment was transferred to the newly-created civil parish of Stawell in 1933,
(fn. 12) and the area of Cossington in 1991 was 515 ha. (1,286 a.).
(fn. 13)
The Polden ridge which formed the southern boundary of the ancient parish slopes gradually from east to west from 175 m. to 100 m. From the ridge the land falls to the village around the 30 m. contour and beyond it more gently to below the 3 m. contour towards the Huntspill River and Gold Corner. The steeper slope is, however, punctuated by a narrow valley below the 30 m. contour, formed by watercourses which now flow largely underground to a lake in the grounds of a house called the Grove. The ridge is of clay with outcrops of limestone; the valley to the north is alluvium.
(fn. 14) In the 18th century the soil was described as wet and heavy.
(fn. 15)
The main road in the parish follows the southern boundary and is thought to be of Roman origin, linking Ilchester with the ports at Crandon Bridge and Combwich.
(fn. 16) Two or three other possible east-west routes further north, all on land above normal flooding and in parts still in use leading either to Chilton Polden or Woolavington, may have had Roman or earlier origins. The ridge road was turnpiked by the Bridgwater trust in 1759.
(fn. 17)
In 1890 the Bridgwater Railway Co. opened a single line to link the Somerset and Dorset line at Edington with Bridgwater. The line curved to the north of the village and a station was built. The line was closed for passengers in 1952 and for freight in 1954.
(fn. 18)
In the 17th century there were said to be 26 households in the parish and in the 1780s c. 33 houses.
(fn. 19) In 1801 the population was 237. It rose each decade to a total of 280 in 1831, fell to 248 by 1841 and after 1861 fell gradually to 200 in 1921. From that date it rose from 229 in 1931 to 294 in 1951, 411 in 1961, 500 in 1971, and to a peak of 534 in 1981. In 1991 the total was 533.
(fn. 1)
Figure 17:
Cossington parish 1839, with detached portion to south (inset)
The original settlement seems to have been on both sides of the valley which runs northwards to the moors. Church and manor house stand on its west side, and a number of farmhouses on the east and north-east in Walnut Lane, Bell Lane, Farm Lane, and Millmoot Lane date from the later 16th and the earlier 17th century including Old Dairy House and Millmoot Farm. Cossington Park, on the south-eastern edge of the village, originated in the later 16th century. The 19th-century owners of the Grove, essentially a late 17th-century brick house, laid out the valley below the Manor House with extensive ornamental grounds. Hill View by the green, south-east of the church, is of the 17th or the early 18th century. Little was added to the village in the 19th century although Great Tree Farm was given a new front range and new farm buildings and Old Forge in Bell Lane and Launder Cottage in Walnut Lane were rebuilt on old sites. Later in the 19th century building spread northwards, in part influenced by the railway.
(fn. 1) By 1861 there were seven substantial private residences in the village including Cossington Manor, Cossington House, later Cossington Grange, and the Grove.
(fn. 2) Local authority houses were built north-west of the village beside the railway, and in the 1960s and 1970s a company based in the village built dwellings along both sides of the road towards Chilton Polden.
A small decoy pond with four pipes, on the moor in the north-east quarter of the parish, had been constructed by 1831 on the Broderip estate. It was probably still in use in 1885.
(fn. 3)
Two people selling ale illegally were reported in 1311, 1418, and 1535.
(fn. 4) In 1630 there was a tippler in the parish whose successor in 1648 was trading without a licence.
(fn. 5) The Cossington inn, at the east end of the village, was in business by 1861 and in that year there was also a beer retailer.
(fn. 6) By 1935 the licensee was offering teas.
(fn. 7) It was known as the Red Tile in 2001.
In 1803 the Polden Hill regiment of volunteer infantry held its first parade in the parish
(fn. 8) and the officers attended a celebration of the communion in the parish church.
(fn. 9)
Cossington was probably part of the ancient Polden estate of Glastonbury abbey.
(fn. 10) Before 1066 it was held of the abbey by Alwin Pike and in 1086 by Walter of Douai.
(fn. 11) The abbey retained an interest as chief lord until 1508 or later,
(fn. 12) and in 1571 and 1615 the manor was said to be held of the Crown in right of the former monastery.
(fn. 13)
Ansketill of Cossington held a fee in the earlier 12th century which seems to have included Cossington and his unnamed grandson held it in 1166.
(fn. 14) In 1189 Adam of Cossington did homage to the abbot for three hides there as part of his fee,
(fn. 15) and was in possession at least between 1197 and 1212.
(fn. 16) He may have been succeeded by Geoffrey of Cossington, whose ownership was challenged in 1203 by Warin de Morcelles.
(fn. 17) Robert de Morcells took up his father's cause against Geoffrey's successor, Jordan Ridel, in 1224, claiming descent from an ancestor, Roulfus, who had alledgedly received it from Henry I.
(fn. 18) The dispute was settled in Jordan's favour in 1227.
(fn. 19) By 1242-3 Jordan had been succeeded by his son, also Jordan.
(fn. 20) In 1254 Jordan was said to have granted the estate in fee to Robert Brent,
(fn. 21) and Robert, according to the abbey's own record, held it of the abbot of Glastonbury in succession to Geoffrey of Cossington and Robert Ridel.
(fn. 22) In 1284-5 Robert held it of Jordan Ridel.
(fn. 23) Robert was returned as holding the fee directly of the abbot in 1303,
(fn. 24) but in 1311-12 Jordan Ridel's son Sir William created a mesne tenancy by granting Robert's service to Baldwin Malet.
(fn. 25) Baldwin did homage to the abbot of Glastonbury in 1337 and 1342, and his son John similarly in 1343.
(fn. 26) Another Baldwin held the mesne lordship in the 1430s,
(fn. 27) but no further trace has been found.
Robert Brent, to whom the fee was said to have been granted in 1254,
(fn. 28) was said to have descended either from Odo of Brent, claimed as the lord of Cossington at the time of the Conquest
(fn. 29) or from Sauvinus de Turre, hereditary porter of Glastonbury under Abbot Henry of Blois (abbot, 1126-71).
(fn. 30) Robert was the first of five of the same name who held the estate successively.
(fn. 31) The last Robert was succeeded in 1346
(fn. 32) by his son John (d. by 1373)
(fn. 33) and he by his grandson, also John Brent (d. c. 1413).
(fn. 34) The second was followed by his son Robert, who died in 1421 when the manor was settled on John Trethek and his wife Joan, Robert's sister.
(fn. 35) Joan's half brother John Brent established his right to the estate in 1431-2 but in 1434 allowed Trethek to retain his life interest.
(fn. 1) Trethek last presented to the rectory in 1445.
(fn. 2) In 1449 John Brent conveyed the manor and other lands to trustees, who until 1468 presented to the living.
(fn. 3) John Brent's son Robert presented from 1486 and died in 1508.
(fn. 4) He was followed by his son John (d. 1524), by John's son William (d. 1536), and by William's son Richard.
(fn. 5) Richard died in 1570 leaving a daughter Anne, wife of Thomas Paulet.
(fn. 6)
Thomas, second son of William Paulet, marquess of Winchester, died in 1586 leaving by Anne a daughter Elizabeth, wife of Giles Hoby.
(fn. 7) At some date between 1589 and 1597 the manor was bought by Anne's distant cousin John Brent.
(fn. 8) John died in 1614 and his son and namesake in 1692.
(fn. 9) The last was childless and the manor passed to his cousin John Hodges (d. 1696), to John's widow Elizabeth, and in 1703 by sale to Robert West.
(fn. 10) Robert died c. 1739 and was succeeded by his daughter Sarah. She left the manor on her death in 1756 to her cousin Edmund Hoskins.
(fn. 11) Edmund was still in possession in 1764 but had died by 1772 when his widow Martha devised the residue of her estate to her brother Edward Gresham.
(fn. 12) Edward's devisee, Sir John Gresham, Bt. (d. 1801), had acquired it by 1772 and sold it in 1776 to Benjamin Allen.
(fn. 13) Allen died in 1791 heavily in debt to the Crown, and the manor was bought in the following year by George Templer.
(fn. 14) In 1806 George sold half the manor to Edmund Broderip of Wells and the other half to Benjamin Greenhill in trust for the marriage of Greenhill's daughter Grace with Broderip's son Edmund.
(fn. 15)
The elder Edmund died in 1828 and his son in 1847. The younger Edmund was succeeded by his son and heir Edmund Greenhill Broderip. He died in 1895 and was followed by his son Edmund, who died in 1918. Edmund Francis Broderip, elder son of the last, put the manor and 1,085 a. up for sale in 1919,
(fn. 16) but sale was not achieved until 1925-6 when the manor and some of the land passed to James Cox Macro Allen Wilson.
(fn. 17) James Wilson died in 1948.
(fn. 18) No further reference to lordship has been found.
The capital messuage was known in 1634 as Court Place.
(fn. 19) John Hodges (d. 1696) left it and adjacent land to his nephew Sherrington Hodges.
(fn. 20) By 1704 it seems to have reverted to Elizabeth Hodges, widow of John, since it had been part of her jointure, and she held it until 1712. In 1713 it was occupied by a Mr. Smart.
(fn. 21) Mrs. Smart was in occupation in 1767
(fn. 22) and by 1771 the estate comprised c. 89 a. In 1773 it was sold by John Smart to Nathaniel George Petre. Petre sold it in 1775 to John Tucker, an attorney,
(fn. 23) who was in possession until 1789 and was succeeded by Henry Paul. George Templer acquired it in 1803
(fn. 24) with c. 150 a. and on his death in 1819 it passed to his son, the Revd. George Henry Templer. In 1828 Templer sold it to Edmund Broderip.
(fn. 25)
Cossington Manor, the replacement for Court Place, was described as a good house c. 1785.
(fn. 26) It is a twostoreyed house on an irregular plan, with a small 17thcentury core extended to the north-east c. 1750 and to the north-west c. 1810. A large southern stuccoed block was built in the 1830s in the cottage orné style of the architect Richard Carver, who was then working in the neighbourhood.
Burtle priory in Edington owned a small amount of land in the parish which was leased by the Crown to Richard Holbroke in 1540, was sold to James and John Bisse in 1553, and was held by Sir John Portman at his death in 1612.
(fn. 27) The land remained in the Portman family until 1826 when it was sold by Edward Berkeley Portman to Edmund Broderip.
(fn. 28)
The Graham family in the person of Sarah Graham had by 1839 acquired an estate of over 150 a. which included a house, later enlarged and named Cossington Grange, and a smaller house also later enlarged and named Cossington Park. Both lay on the south-eastern side of the village. Cossington Park was originally of three-roomed plan of the 16th century or earlier with cross passage and cruck trusses, to which were added a north wing in the 17th century and a western range in 1901.
(fn. 29) Cossington Grange was originally a plain classical house built by 1822 and probably c. 1806. It is of squared lias with a slate roof, of five bays and two storeys, and faces south. By 1840 a court to the north was bounded on the north by a stable block of brick with stone dressings. In 1863 a double-pile wing in an eclectic 16th-century style was added on the west and included a three-and-a-half storey south tower comprising a nursery suite and a billiard room. A recessed porch in Adam style may have been added to the oldest part of the house in the later 19th century. South-west extensions were made after the Grange became offices for a construction company, and other buildings, including houses, have been erected within the curtilage from the 1950s.
(fn. 1)
In 1086 the estate was assessed at 3 hides; there was land for 6 ploughteams. The demesne farm of 1 hide was worked with 1 team and 4 serfs; 9 villeins and 9 bordars had 5 teams. There were 10 a. of meadow and 2 a. of underwood. The demesne stock comprised a cob, 6 cattle, 26 pigs, and 26 sheep, an indication of unrecorded grassland and woodland. The value of the estate had remained stable since the Conquest.
(fn. 2) By 1247 new meadow land had been created by ditching, probably the Mucheldich later represented by the Cousney rhyne.
(fn. 3) In the early 13th century a fallow field was protected by a dyke, signifying both a bank and a ditch, and was accessible only in spring and summer on foot.
(fn. 4) Arable was normally greater in extent than grassland on tenant holdings in the Middle Ages.
(fn. 5)
Freeholds, often held with neighbouring manors, were a characteristic feature of landholding in the parish. In the later Middle Ages there were fourteen free tenants, including John Gilbert, John Verney, and William Ayshford who held land in Woolavington and elsewhere.
(fn. 6) Some of those tenancies survived until the 19th century.
(fn. 7)
In 1535 the grain and hay tithes of the parish produced £10 11s. 9d. as compared with 10s. for the tithe of wool and lambs.
(fn. 8) Hemp seems to have been grown before the end of the 15th century
(fn. 9) and the goods of William Welles, a local farmer, in 1545 show him to have kept cattle and one or two horses.
(fn. 10)
Thomas Paulet, lord 1570-86, consolidated and inclosed some of the west field, but communal farming continued to be practised, the north field in 1606 being fallow, the east field under wheat, and the south and west fields under Lent corn. Paulet also, with the consent of the freeholders, inclosed Cossington moor, allotting an acre for each beast leaze claimed. Other parts of the moor, described as Cossington Outmoor and Cote moor and measuring some 800 a., remained commonable in the early 17th century, producing grass, hay, and reeds.
(fn. 11) A survey of Cossington meadow in 1638 assessed its size as just over 500 a.
(fn. 12)
In 1641 almost all the land was still in the possession of the lord of the manor: John Brent was assessed for £11 in tax on land and ten others for £1 each; those who paid more were assessed on their goods.
(fn. 13) By 1781 the two principal rate payers were Charles Hobbs, both rector and landowner, and John Tucker, occupier of manor lands including Cossington farm with a total of 107 a.
(fn. 14)
Both owners and tenants benefited from inclosure of moors, in 1782 receiving allotments of c. 86 a. beyond the northern boundary of the parish and in 1795 some 145 a. in King's Sedgemoor.
(fn. 15) The manor estate seems to have been shared between eight tenants whose holdings were beginning to be consolidated. Three were over 100 a.; one was still subject to payment of a heriot of two fat capons.
(fn. 16) By 1831 the estate which had been gradually acquired by the Broderip family from 1806
(fn. 17) amounted to 864 a., but it was still farmed by eight tenants of whom five had over 100 a. Thomas Hobbs, the only other substantial landowner as well as rector, had 232 a.
(fn. 18) From 1835 Edmund Broderip also leased the rectory land,
(fn. 19) and by 1838 through mortgage and direct purchase had absorbed the lands of the duke of Buckingham and of the Portman and Hales families. He had also consolidated his holdings by exchanging land with the rector in 1814.
(fn. 20)
Among the crops in 1806 were vetches and beans.
(fn. 21) One of the tenant farmers on the Broderip estate in the earlier 19th century also grew beans, produced large quantities of cheese, and established a flock of sheep with lambs bought at Yeovil and Sherborne (Dors.).
(fn. 1) Edmund Broderip himself planted at least one orchard in 1809; his son at his death in 1847 left a cider press and much equipment as well as a small flock of sheep and over 100 pigs.
(fn. 2) The estate included 50 a. of plantations, and manorial rights included moduses on cows, heifers, and calves throughout the parish and a modus for tithe hay from 150 a. of meadow.
(fn. 3) Between 1807 and 1839 some of the arable strips in the open fields had been consolidated and a few had been planted as orchards. Arable, however, covered only 255 a. as compared with 1,000 a. of meadow and pasture and 36 a. of orchards.
(fn. 4) There were still a few clear traces of strips in 1885.
(fn. 5)
By 1839 Cossington was divided between nine farmers, one living outside the parish. Seven holdings measured over 100 a.
(fn. 6) By 1851 there were seven farms, two measuring over 200 a., and by 1861 Manor or Court farm was of 300 a.
(fn. 7) By 1881 there were six principal holdings, of which four were of 200 a. or more.
(fn. 8) By 1906 there were five farms and a dairy, the last held by John Stradling who by 1910 had taken Millmoot farm
(fn. 9) and whose family still occupied the farm in 2001. There were seven named farms in 1939, only four of which measured more than 150 a. At the same date the village was home to a smallholder and a cattle dealer.
(fn. 10) In 2001 there were four farms, one concentrating on arable, one on beef cattle, and two on dairying.
(fn. 11)
Attached to at least one farm in 1484 was a small area of reed bed and a turbary.
(fn. 12) By 1634 some reed and withy beds had been converted to meadow,
(fn. 13) but by the end of the 18th century four farms between them had turbary rights in Edington dating from 1602 or earlier,
(fn. 14) and the manor house estate in 1771 had similar rights in the parish itself and in Chilton Polden.
(fn. 15) Digging within the parish is found only in the 1730s when one piece of land was subject to cutting only once during the term of the lease and thereafter was to be levelled and planted with willows; another nearby had no limitation provided that a broad baulk was preserved on the side against Cossington wall.
(fn. 16) Digging turf was the main employment for the poor by c. 1790,
(fn. 17) and a piece of turbary or heath ground in Cossington and Chilton Polden was mentioned in 1804.
(fn. 18)
In 1364-5 and 1418 the miller was accused of taking too much toll.
(fn. 19) A windmill had been built by 1502 but only its mound was mentioned in 1602.
(fn. 20) Fields named Millmoot north-east of the village
(fn. 21) may indicate its site. A windmill stood south-west of the parish church in the later 17th century.
(fn. 22)
Evidence of salt working in the Brue valley in the later Roman period has been found within the northern boundary of the parish.
(fn. 23) Quarries were mentioned in the early 17th century.
(fn. 24) A quarry was filled in 1712; another was apparently still in use in 1839.
(fn. 25) A limekiln was mentioned in 1728.
(fn. 26) 'Great quantities' of 'fine' blue and white lias were quarried in the 1780s both for buildings and for roads.
(fn. 27) In the mid 19th century the laundresses, dressmakers, staymakers, and milliners who found employment in the village were at least in part a reflection of the prominence of gentry there; during the same period there were the usual craftsmen and tradesmen.
(fn. 28) A post office had been opened by 1872, and two shops including a grocer's by 1883.
(fn. 29) A grocery and post office, in business in the 1930s, was still open in 1997.
(fn. 30)
The Cossington Meat Supply had been established by 1939, in premises which had formerly been the village smithy, under the name R. M. Smith Brothers.
(fn. 31) The company became building developers after the Second World War and acquired Cossington Grange as headquarters. The business was later acquired by Beazer Homes of Bath and subsequently by Persimmons of York.
(fn. 32) In 2001 the company left the village. Small business units, the firm of Wyvern Aquatics, and a veterinary centre were trading in Cossington lane in 2001, partly on the former site of a garden centre.
In the 14th century Cossington was a single tithing,
(fn. 1) later linked with Durborough in Stogursey,
(fn. 2) and later still with Holford.
(fn. 3) In 1622 the tithing reported to the hundred court that its butts were in decay.
(fn. 4)
No records of a manor court have been found but suit to it was mentioned in a lease of 1755.
(fn. 5) One of the tenants on the estate of Thomas Hobbs, the rector, in 1802 was to build a pound.
(fn. 6)
A constable was mentioned in 1608.
(fn. 7) By the earlier 18th century two churchwardens and two overseers administered the parish. Waywardens were named from 1706 and a vestry from 1745. The overseers, whose income was from rents from the route to the moors called Common Drove as well as from rates, were responsible both for paupers and for public works. They paid rents, supplied clothing, food, fuel, and medicines, and sent two patients to Bath and two boys to school. Paupers were badged from 1735 and a surgeon was occasionally employed to care for the poor from 1745. In 1801 potatoes and 'other necessaries' were bought in. The overseers also regularly ditched one piece of meadow, maintained two rhynes and clyces, a flood wall, bridges, and gates, cleaned the horse pool, and accounted on behalf of the waywardens for repair of parish roads.
(fn. 8) The waywardens kept separate accounts from 1769.
(fn. 9) In 1721 the overseers repaired the stocks. A house for paupers was first rented in 1743 and was subsequently known as the poorhouse.
(fn. 10) The building, occupied in 1839 by six families, stood on the north side of Middle Road, on the site occupied by the present village hall.
(fn. 11) Probably the same property, extended for four families, was leased by three men, evidently on behalf of the parish, from 1846.
(fn. 12) By 1831 gardens for the poor had been provided by the lord of the manor in one of the arable fields.
(fn. 13) In 1836 the parish became part of the Bridgwater poor-law union, in 1894 of Bridgwater rural district, and in 1974 of Sedgemoor district.
(fn. 14)
A rector of Cossington was mentioned in 1225
(fn. 15) and the living was a sole benefice until 1976 when it was linked with Woolavington. In 1987 it became part of a single benefice with Woolavington and Bawdrip.
(fn. 16)
The patronage of the living descended with the lordship of the manor until after 1675, although the Crown presented in 1586 after the deprivation of John Durston and the parliamentary commissioners in 1651.
(fn. 17) In 1604 John Portman was given the nomination of the next incumbent after a dispute in which Hugh Portman had intruded a rector.
(fn. 18) Thomas Smith of Cossington was patron in 1700 and his namesake presented in 1758 and 1771. James Selleck and others in 1742 and John and Joan Jeanes in 1756 seem to have presented by grant of Smith.
(fn. 19) Charles Hobbs, rector 1771-1801, succeeded to the patronage on Smith's death in 1772.
(fn. 20) His heir was his only surviving son Thomas, whom the bishop of Bath and Wells presented to the living by lapse in suc cession to his father in 1801.
(fn. 21) Thomas Hobbs was both rector and patron until his death in 1833 and his executors presented in 1834.
(fn. 22) The Broderip family, lords of the manor, presented from 1844
(fn. 23) until 1929 when Edmund Francis Broderip conveyed the patronage to James Cox Macro Allen Wilson (d. 1948). From James's widow Ethel Mary it passed to Mrs. Petronella May Kathleen Church, and in 1954 Mrs. Church conveyed it to John Arthur Church.
(fn. 24) J. A. Church was one of the patrons of the benefice in 1997, presenting on the second turn in three.
(fn. 25)
In 1291 the church was valued at £6 13s. 4d.
(fn. 26) In 1535 the net value was £13 9s. 10d.,
(fn. 27)
c. 1670 it was assessed at £30,
(fn. 28) and c. 1830 at £254 net.
(fn. 29) Tithes in 1535 were worth £11 15s. 9d.
(fn. 30) and in 1839 were commuted for £222.
(fn. 1) Glebe land was worth £2 6s. 8d. in 1535
(fn. 2) and in 1571 comprised 52 a.
(fn. 3) There were 55 a. in 1839.
(fn. 4) Just over 63 a. were sold in 1920.
(fn. 5)
In 1571 the rectory house comprised a hall with two chambers over, a detached kitchen with a chamber over, a barn, and a stall.
(fn. 6) It was regarded as unsuitable for the rector in the earlier 19th century
(fn. 7) and was from 1835 leased with tithes and glebe to the lord of the manor.
(fn. 8) The curate occupied the manor house.
(fn. 9) In 1860 the rectory house was exchanged for the house on its eastern boundary.
(fn. 10) That was sold in 1980
(fn. 11) and became known as the Old Rectory. The rectory house before 1860, now known as Church Farmhouse, has a two-roomed plan with central passage probably of the late 17th century, with a rear wing and outshuts of the 18th century.
(fn. 12) The Old Rectory is a late 16th- or 17th century two-storeyed, three-bayed stone house with attics, extended eastwards by two wide bays probably in the earlier 19th century, the whole concealed by a mid 19th-century rendered facade, related in its cottage orné style to the Manor House. A north-east wing and rear extension under a catslide roof were added after 1840.
Richard Malet, the rector, was declared insane in 1322 but remained in office with coadjutors until 1329.
(fn. 13) His successor, a relative of the patron, held the living for two years but received only subdeacon's orders.
(fn. 14) Bartholomew Blithman was deprived for absence in 1561, and from then until 1575 rectors were often absent.
(fn. 15) A second rector was deprived in 1586, probably because of debt,
(fn. 16) and by 1590 until 1604 there was a dispute involving two men both claiming to be rector.
(fn. 17) Charles Hobbs, rector 1771-1801, was chaplain to Earl Poulett and held Shapwick and Ashcott from 1791 until 1801. His son Thomas, rector 1801-33, was chaplain to the marquess of Headfort, vicar of Shapwick 1801-6, and from 1821 rector of Templeton (Devon).
(fn. 18) Thereafter rectors were resident.
In the early 18th century many strangers were married in the church.
(fn. 19) In the 1780s there were c. 15 communicants.
(fn. 20) In 1815 the resident rector took a single service each Sunday, by 1827 there were two services, and by 1849 a sermon was preached each Sunday, either morning or afternoon. By 1840 communion was celebrated 'at least' three times a year,
(fn. 21) and by 1843 six times a year.
(fn. 22) J. S. Broderip, who served as curate in 1838 and 1839, was appointed rector by his father in 1844 and remained so until his death in 1866.
(fn. 23) He married Frances, a daughter of the poet Thomas Hood, herself with her brother Tom a writer of books for children.
(fn. 24)
By 1545 there was a brotherhood attached to the church.
(fn. 25) Land supporting a light, mentioned in 1548, was sold in 1549.
(fn. 26) There was a parish house by 1758 until 1771 or later.
(fn. 27)
The church of the Blessed Virgin Mary was so dedicated by 1505 and is of blue lias rubble.
(fn. 28) It has all the appearance of being a feature in the manor house garden and is separated from the house only by a gravel path. It has a chancel, an aisleless nave of two bays with south porch, and a west tower. The chancel is of the 13th century and has a foiled tomb recess and original rere-arches to the two two-light south windows. The nave may have had a south-eastern transeptal chapel. The south porch was added in the late 14th century. There was a roodloft and the entrances to the rood stair survive. In the 15th century the east window and some nave windows were replaced and the plain two-stage west tower with diagonal buttresses, tower stair, and west door was added. A prospective chapel mentioned in a will of 1530 was probably never built.
(fn. 29) A canopied pulpit and other furniture were installed in 1718 and a west gallery was added in 1771.
(fn. 30) The interior was refurnished in 1900 at the expense of the lord of the manor,
(fn. 31) but he successfully opposed the proposal for a vestry north of the chancel on the grounds that it would invade his privacy.
(fn. 32)
The recess in the chancel evidently once contained a recumbent female figure, the remains of which were removed to the churchyard in 1900. There is a brass to John Brent (d. 1524) and his wife, and a fragment of heraldic glass in the south-west nave window commemorating their marriage. A pre-Reformation altar slab is used as paving in the chancel.
(fn. 33) The Perpendicular font appears to be of the 17th century.
There are six bells of which the fourth is medieval from the Bristol foundry, and the fifth of 1604, probably by William Purdue.
(fn. 1) The plate includes a cup and cover of 1573 by 'I.P.' and a cup and paten of 1704.
(fn. 2) The registers begin in 1675 but those of marriages are incomplete.
(fn. 3)
In 1605 Elizabeth Brent, wife of the lord of the manor, and two others were said to be popish recusants. She was still accused in 1629 while members of her family and others absented themselves from church.
(fn. 4) Thomas Martin was recorded as a papist there in 1680.
(fn. 5) John Suger, a resident of the parish, attended a Quaker quarterly meeting in 1694,
(fn. 6) and a house was licensed for nonconformist worship in 1699.
(fn. 7) From 1806 a house was used by Baptists, who received a licence to use another house in 1850.
(fn. 8)
The overseers sent pauper children for schooling in 1707 and 1730, presumably in the parish.
(fn. 9) In 1819 there were two small schools.
(fn. 10) By 1825 there was a day school with 22 children and a Sunday school with 29 children, both associated with the church.
(fn. 11) In 1833 two day schools had 32 children between them, 8 of whom were supported by subscriptions, the rest by their parents. A Sunday school in that year had 13 children taught free.
(fn. 12) One day school and the Sunday school continued in 1847 but with lower numbers.
(fn. 13) A schoolroom, evidently part of a cottage, was in use in 1840 and was described as good in 1846.
(fn. 14) Rebuilding, said to have been done in 1870 by the lord of the manor, probably involved alteration of the former cottage to make a two-storeyed teacher's house with a schoolroom and an entrance lobby, all in Perpendicular style with traceried windows.
(fn. 15) In 1903 there were 40 children on the books.
(fn. 16) Numbers continued to fall, and in 1920 the school was taken over by the county council. Seniors were no longer taken from 1926. By the mid 1950s numbers had returned to the level of the beginning of the century and continued to grow as neighbouring village schools closed. In 1992 there were 80 pupils and in 1998 89.
(fn. 17)
Mary Brent by will dated 1701 and proved 1703 and 1705, gave £250 to the poor of the parish.
(fn. 18) From the later 18th century the income of c. £12 was regularly distributed to those not regularly receiving relief and known as second poor, and by 1825 was invested in a local turnpike trust.
(fn. 19) The income of £28 was still distributed in 1995.
(fn. 20)
The interest on a gift of £25 by Joseph Jeanes was between 1733 and 1751 distributed with the rents of Common Drove to poor people.
(fn. 21) By 1786 £5 had been invested by an unknown donor with the overseers which produced 6s. for the poor.
(fn. 22) No further trace of the bequest has been found.
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In the past year, George Harrison's life has been celebrated in the touching four-hour documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World and his wife Olivia Harrison's companion photo book of the same name, both of which marked the 10-year anniversary of the late, great Beatle's passing.
The accomplished musician, producer and philanthropist will soon have his robust collection of guitars on display, as well. A 360-degree photographic iPad app is due out on Feb. 23, featuring Harrison's guitar collection.
Below is a video teaser of the app, due out Feb. 23. In it, Harrison's legendary Rosewood Telecaster and Rocky Stratocaster are featured.
In addition, there will be footage of musicians such as Josh Homme and Ben Harper playing the instruments and commentary from Harrison himself.


text:
Fulfilling a Vow to Myself: How I Overcame My Learning Disability
"Retard girl, retard girl!"
The chant shot across the playground as a mass of children swarmed around the Special Ed classroom, striking the small girl with the unruly afro she had inherited from her mother. As the mocking voices grew louder, the hateful chant crashed over the little girl's resilient stance.
I was that little girl. I had just been diagnosed with a severe form of dyslexia, rendering it nearly impossible to read or write. Listening to the bully's attacks, I promised myself in that moment that no matter what hardships I might face in my life, I would overcome them; nothing was going to stop me from working towards my goals.


text:
Double Dragon
A Review by Noah Antwiler
Looking back on all the reviews I've written-- my portfolio, if you will-- I noticed an awful lot of movies based on video games. I didn't start out this website to be the guy who rips apart an obscure niche of the bad movie market, but damn it these movies are awful. I mean there has literally never been a good movie based on a video game in the history of ever. You can chalk this up to the fact that most of these movies were produced by Dr. Uwe Boll (Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead), all of which have incurred my wrath and will certainly continue to do so for years to come until one day I finally snap, build a time machine and go back in time to terminate his ass back in Wermerlskirchen. Sadly I need plutonium to generate the 1.21 Jiggawatts of electricity I need.
But they've always been bad long before ol' Uwe got involved. There were serious efforts to make these films in the 90s. They put Jean-Claude van Damme in Street Fighter: The Movie (and remember he was a major action star at the time), they made a really weird and sad interpretation of Super Mario Bros. starring Dennis Hopper as King Koopa, and let's not forget the greatest movie duology of my generation, Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat Annihilation. Johnny Cage split punching Goro in the balls is the most awesome action sequence ever filmed, and I'll scissor-kick anyone who says otherwise in the throat!
I'm not trying to be the video-game-movie-bashing...guy. I guess it's just when I look back on the movies that raped my childhood, I come up with two things: the Star Wars prequels and movies based on Nintendo games. Wait, three things. Forgot about Nurple the Clown at my ninth birthday party.
Thought I'd forgotten about Clown Porn, eh?
I debated for a while on whether or not I should buck the trend for this one and give Double Dragon a pass. Maybe churn out another review of a bad J-horror nobody will ever watch. Why do I bother doing those? Are any of you going to bother looking for evil dead trap? Hell, I doubt any of you will bother with X3: The Last Stand, so what chance do I have with Double Dragon? I reviewed a movie with Bill Goldberg as a murderous Santa who liked to curl, for God's sake. I think I'm in a prison of my own making. But who cares! I run this madhouse, and we're gonna watch the movies I wanna watch!
My memories of the Double Dragon games include some of the coolest MIDI tunes ever cranked out of that 8-bit console, a pretty solid fighting mechanic, and some of the most bullshit jumping puzzles in history. Ever try getting through the cave level in the first game? Or what about the moving conveyor belts in Double Dragon 2? Remember trying to blast through Double Dragon 3 on one life and getting killed by a spiked pit on the last level? I'm serious, that game only gave you one life. No saves, no continues, no codes. The Game Genie was made for crap like this, but man did I play those games to death as a kid.
Anyway, the cover of my Double Dragon DVD is slightly different than the one I pulled off Amazon.com. This one includes a picture of Alyssa Milano and her-- get ready for this-- platinum blonde Caesar cut. She dyed her hair stark white and got a dykey hairstyle to appear in this movie. And then there's Mark Dacascos and-- wait...what is that? What the fuck is that? Bring in the macro-lens...
Aaaaah!! Put away the macro-lens! I've seen too much!
Man, that really throws my sexuality into question. That is one foxy shemale. Ever see Alyssa's titties in that vampire movie? Who am I kidding, of course you have. Everyone has. It's like asking if you ever rented The Gift to gawk at Katie Holmes' rack. But this sort of weirds me out. Boobs, thigh boots, two men in sequined karate gis behind you, a lesbian haircut and a massive erection on your DVD cover? I don't even care if she's packing meat. I'd still hit it.
Anyway, now that we're all rather uncomfortable, I think it's time we started the review! As Mark Dacascos would say...
The movie begins by slowly panning across a golden medallion in extreme close-up while Robert Patrick (The T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day) dispenses with the goofy backstory via voice-over. The background noise is that super-bassy "uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh" noise that Gregorian monks make when they're trying to be ominous or looking at an alien monolith.
Thousands of years ago in ancient China, an evil army of Shadow Warriors terrorized the great city of Cheng Tsu.
That's not to say all Shadow Warriors are evil. This was just one army of them. Many Shadow Warriors are quite nice.
To save his people, the good king sacrificed himself to create a mystical medallion.
Evil Shadow Warriors... the Good King... Only Sith deal in absolutes!
Realizing the ultimate powers of the medallion, the king split it in half.
He did? I thought the king sacrificed himself. Is he dead or not?
To one son, he gave the power over body. To the other, power over the soul.
And that man was James Brown. Aaaoooowwww!
This is the legend of the Double Dragon.The Chinese have a lot of hells.
Whew. At least this movie was in and out with its exposition in thirty seconds. It seemed almost brisk and structured compared to Alone in the Dark's 2-minute crawl.
Now we're "somewhere in China." That narrows it down. We see a village of Shaolin monk-type dudes being sacked by ninjas. Or whatever you call Chinese ninjas. Shadow Warriors, I guess. The Shadow Warrior "army" is literally about 3 guys on horseback who dispense with their enemies using kung-fu. One of them (probably the only guy who knows any martial arts) is a familiar face, that angry-looking Asian fellow you see in a ton of movies like Die Hard (guy who steals a candy bar before the SWAT raid) and Big Trouble in Little China but don't actually know his name. He uses a bullwhip (authentic Chinese weaponry here) to snare a fleeing Shaolin dude and demands to know where the medallion is. The Shaolin dude babbles inarticulately and Angry Guy tells his boss, a guy in full-ninja gear complete with mask, that the monks have cut their tongues out so they don't betray the location of the medallion. Quick! Bring me a pen! Does anyone here know how to play charades?
Ninja Boss spots an older monk fleeing towards a cave and pursues him inside, finding the cavern full of candles and a goofy red-eyed demon statue. Looks sort of like the beginning to UHF here. The ninja approaches the statue and steals one half of the Dragon Medallion, then reports in using a suitcase satellite phone. The ninja takes off its mask, revealing a hawt blonde woman who says "Chuko? It's Lash. We got it!"
Now we fly over a post-apocalyptic city near the ocean. The subtitle tells us that this is "New Angeles 2007, After the big quake." Quick! Ten seconds! Post-apocalyptic films I'd rather watch than this one: Uhhhh, Blade Runner, Demolition Man, Escape From New York, Appleseed, Dead or Alive Final, uhhhh...Highlander 2? Damn it! I blew it. While I was racking my brain for movies, Robert Patrick was finishing his ancient Chinese legend of the magic amulet. Basically after kicking the Shadow Warriors' asses, the king had his sons hide the other halves of the amulet so that they'd never be used for evil. He chose to hide one in China, guarded by a half-dozen mute Shaolin octogenarians who were handily beaten by a blonde chick and a ninja with a whip. It's called a safe, jackhole, buy one. I had to rewind the movie to catch all this, because the first time around I was too busy laughing at Patrick's platinum blonde "Ice, Ice Baby" high tower of hair, devilish Van Dyke goatee and his pimp zoot suit to pay attention. And I'm wondering which role was more humiliating: this or having to play the punching bag to John Cena in The Marine.
A sudden tremor shakes the penthouse, and Patrick's twin Asian cronies look worriedly at each other. Patrick tells them not to sweat aftershocks. "The great quake seven years ago was a trumpet's blow to herald my arrival!" he expounds. My my, someone has a high opinion of himself. I guess you'd have to with hair like that. He says "And now, the Double Dragon...is mine!!" BWUHUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
He opens up a wooden box and notes with great ire that there's only half of the medallion inside. Look dude, you just got finished telling us he split the thing into halves, so logically he'd hide them in different places. Don't come off as surprised. He picks up the medallion and inspects it. Sparkling light starts to glow from his closed fist, and soon a rippling wave of energy covers his body, turning him gray and two-dimensional. Really! He turns into paper. The wobbly villain seems annoyed that he's been transformed into newsprint and orders his flunkies to find the other half of the amulet, pronto!
Bam! We cut to the other half! It's hanging on a chain around the neck of rather comely young lady watching a karate exhibition. Scott Wolf, a.k.a. "The Party of Five Guy" is getting his scrawny ass kicked. He staggers back to his corner where Mark Dacascos, a.k.a. Chairman Kaga enters the fight. I guess this is a tag team match or something. I'm not familiar with this karate competition format. The lady calls out to "Jimmy" to watch the guy's spin-kick, so he does, scoring a roundhouse leg sweep. The fight is interrupted with another aftershock that wobbles the building. A little person hurries over to one of the main support beams of the building and starts cranking on an oversized hydraulic jack to stabilize the roof while the announcer tells everyone not to panic. Huge car-jacks to support the roof in the event of an earthquake, huh? This looks like FEMA's disaster relief, all right.
Jimmy starts opening up with some Walker, Texas Ranger style roundhouse kicks that knock his opponent silly and scores his team 3 points. Party of Five Guy hops up and down like a spazzing meer cat and tags himself in. Hot Medallion Lady rolls her eyes and watches him enter the fight with an expression that says "such a cockfag..." Now that the guy is softened up, Party of Five Guy rains down some serious bombs on the defenseless guy, scoring another knockdown which he celebrates by pumping his fists in the air and doing his "I'm a bad man!" dance. Why the crowd doesn't boo his monkey ass, I'm not certain. Jimmy spins PoF Guy around and tells him not to be such a fucking tool; he'll tag out when he needs to tag out. And he'll probably never need to tag out, because it's evident Party of Five Guy knows about as much karate as Truman Capote.
Party of Five Guy protests whinily, pointing into the ring and squeaking out something annoying like "but I knocked him down, did you see? I'm a good fighter!" Just in time for their opponent to recover and crush him with a pair of kicks to the gut and a sharp elbow to the spine. The referee stands them both back up and awards the guy his points, then restarts the match. Party of Five Guy points up at the scoreboard and says "hey, ten points for us!" which causes the guy to wheel around and stare dumbly in the other direction. Now you might think this would be the perfect time for PoF Guy to murder anyone in a fight stupid enough to fall for a "made ya look" ploy. He leaps onto the guy's back, and I'm fully expecting him to lock in a rear naked choke, UFC-style to finish the fight. Instead, he starts making the Three Stooges "whoooooopwhoopwhoopwhoop!" noise and starts giving the guy noogies.
The referee is, frankly, stunned. Eventually he puts a stop to this idiocy and pulls him to the ground, calling for the bell. He disqualifies the Lees on the spot. I was thinking this was no big deal, until the announcer declares that the Lees were just disqualified out of the city championships due to PoF Guy's utter dumbassery. Dacascos and Hot Medallion Lady look like they want to fucking kill him, and I'm wondering why they don't. Jimmy tries the soft touch instead, trying to make his partner feel a little shame through sarcasm. "Nice going, man, you just cost us the prize money!" Nah, dude, this guy is too dumb for sarcasm to work.
"Hey, you were playing it safe out there, and they were catching up!" is the little pipsqueak's reply. Um, okay first of all, Jimmy was kicking the dude's tail all over that ring, and they only started catching up when you tagged yourself in and started getting slapped around like a bitch.
"I'm just having a little fun!" he whines. Fine! Cool! I like fun! You know what's REALLY fun? WINNING!!! Yeah, that would have been shits and giggles for weeks! God damn this guy is an idiot. I'm supposed to root for this dillweed?
"What a buzzkill!" Please Mark, I'm begging you, slap this shit-painter so hard his nuts ache.
The other tag team lift their trophies and tell the Lees "better luck next time, LOSERS!"
This grievous insult is the last straw for Party of Five Guy, who throws his gloves down and shrieks "Eat piss, buttheads!" before jumping them both on his own.
Eat piss, buttheads? This is the kind of non-sequitir insult that Biff from Back to the Future would sling. I don't think I've even heard the term "butthead" since that movie. Let's not even get into the mechanics of how one would eat piss. Anyway, the brawl causes the bleachers to clear while the midget continues to jack off furiously to support the roof. I can't believe I just typed that.
The scene cuts to a fake Paul Verhoeven-style commercial of two guys in jumpsuits peddling house-jacks from a store they call "Jack City." Be sure to check out their new location in the Metro area, "New Jack City!"
Next up is a phony newscast from Channel 102, hosted by George Hamilton and Vanna White. Not characters, mind you, they're going by their real names in this movie. This is rapidly getting surreal. "Hi, I'm Chuck Woolery. George Hamilton has the night off." Who does the morning show, Paula Abdul and Adam Curry? George reminds us to set our clocks one hour ahead because of Daylight Savings Time because they might accidentally get caught outside after curfew. Vanna engages in some goofy obviously-scripted teleprompter humor, reading dryly "Gee, I can never keep those straight!" so they both can give a beyond-phony scripted "Ha Ha Ha Ha!" laugh together.
"Andy, how's it looking out there?" George pitches over to the weather.
And it's Andy Dick doing the weather. ANDY FUCKING DICK. I really can't take much more of this. I hate no man on this planet more than I hate Andy Dick. For some reason, the very sight of that man makes me want to kill the firstborn child of every family on the planet. There's just something about his weaselly, gangly scarecrow-looking, nasal-voiced, stupid-haired presence that makes me want to scoop his eyes out with a melon-baller and skullfuck him to death on national TV while screaming "I DO THIS FOR YOU, PHIL HARTMAN! FOR YOU!" He's the very reason I've never seen a single episode of NewsRadio. I'd rather chew aluminum foil for a half hour while watching Celebrity Poker Showdown.
Anyway, Andy looks over at the news desk and says "You so crazy!!"
Guys, I would seriously drive down to the studio and firebomb that place to the ground if I had to put up with Andy Dick as the weatherman. Someone has to take a stand against people this irritating. This guy is more annoying than that moron who does the informercials in a day-glo suit covered in question marks. He like the Riddler if he went legit and started selling books on how to start small businesses.
We fade through a television into a diner. The customers are wearing near-future fashions, which include breathing masks and transparent plastic porkpie hats. Yeah, I'm sure 2007 will be the year when people start dressing like Clark Kent again, only with plastic hats. Andy Dick warns people that tomorrow will be most assuredly full of "black rain," gesturing with a shredded umbrella. Also he warns people not to forget their oxygen masks and to stay near their smog fans. I refuse to do anything Andy Dick says. If I survive the apocalypse and the voice of the fascist government is Andy Dick, I'm just going to wander into the radioactive waste and never look back.
Andy goes on to show us that as curfew approaches, the police are pulling everyone back into their fenced-off zones. Um, shouldn't the cops be deploying into the city to maintain the curfew? He also says that the tide level tomorrow should reach Hollywood & Vine.
Back on the streets, the Lees are driving through the city in their rocket-powered station wagon. I'll say that again: they have a station wagon with a jet turbine spewing flames strapped to the roof. Like a poor man's Batmobile. Hot Medallion Lady groans that they're out past curfew and it's all Party of Five Guy's fault for being such a jackoff. Apparently the Lees are brothers-from-another-mother, because there's no way Mark Dacascos and the Party of Five Guy are the same ethnicity. The Dudley Boys were more believable brothers than these two. Jimmy looks out the window and sees that the gangs are coming out onto the streets. He points out a group of "Clowns" who stand on the sidewalk and scream "Bleeuugggh!" at them. If this is an attempt to rip off Akira, it's really sad.
"Those dudes are gnarly..." Party of Five Guy says. Gnarly?? Scott, your dialogue privileges for this movie are revoked. Go sit in timeout. They pass the clowns until he sees a woman on the side of the road fussing with her car. He tells Jimmy to pull over because there's a woman "over at two o'clock and she's my type!" Your type? Breathing? For some reason Jimmy actually does pull over. I guess he just wants to see Party of Five Guy's hilariously bad pick-up technique. The "woman" tears off her wig to reveal a swarthy gang member (yup, she really is his type). The Leemobile is surrounded by your typical leather-and-mohawk action movie gang. Hot Medallion Lady shouts "It's a trap!" Yeah, thanks Admiral Ackbar, I think we got that.
Party of Five Guy says that it's the Mohawks, probably because they all have mohawks. A hulking dude steps out of a van and barks a challenge at them. PoFG whips down the car's sun-visor, revealing a computer (?) which he uses to look up who this guy is on Wikipedia or something. The computer returns a brief profile of the guy, complete with a looping video of him going "rauuhaah--rauuhah--rauuuhah!" and his name: Bo Abobo. The computer also tells them that he's a steroid freak and he can bench eight hundred pounds. What, does this guy have a profile on MySpace or something? How would a computer possibly know what some goofy-named gang member's max is?
For those of you who don't know, "Abobo" is a recurring villain in the Double Dragon games, a 10-foot deformed slab of muscle who looks like Danny Trejo after being bombarded with Gamma rays. That really doesn't factor into the movie at all, except to explain how someone this weirdly-named ended up in the movie.
Abobo asks to see their identification. Jimmy actually checks his pockets and explains honestly that he thinks he left them in his other pants. A spastic goofball mohawk demands fifty bucks while jerking his head randomly to the side and cackling like a jackass. He has no hope of being more annoying than Andy Dick, but damn it, he's giving it a shot. Abobo sees Hot Medallion Lady's enormous gold amulet and makes a grab for it, so she stabs him in the wrist and tells Jimmy to floor it. Jimmy jams the gas pedal, brings the atomic batteries to power, gets the turbines to speed, and races the Leemobile away from the Mohawks. They open up some kind of glowing device between the seats where the center console would be and start pitching old clothes and rags into it. Are they actually ripping off Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future 2 now? You're telling me they have a jet-powered station wagon that can run entirely on their dirty underwear. Guh.
Abobo and Goofball give chase in their armored car (don't ask). Goofball runs their license plate and gets their personal information . "It's the Lee brothers: Ug and Home!" Abobo gets the joke way before I do. Ug-Lee, Home-Lee? Get it? Abobo rams the numbskull's head into the dashboard for making a pun that bad. Thank you, Abobo. Already he's my favorite character.
PoFG digs some stuff out of the glove compartment, looking for more stuff to burn in Mr. Fusion when he comes across a street map covered in ancient cheese. He pitches it out the window and gets lucky when the map covers Abobo's windshield. No problem, Abobo says, deploying a periscope and driving the van by joystick. For three minutes we watch the Leemobile try to outmaneuver Abobo's van while some really bad early 90s white-boy rap music plays. PoFG finds a can of aerosol cheese in the glove compartment that has a giant warning on the back that says DO NOT COMBUST in huge red letters. I don't even want to know how a can of spray-cheese made its way into their glove compartment unless PoFG was under the delusion that you could hit whippets from it. He tosses the EZ Cheez into Mr. Fusion and the jet engine roars to life, propelling the Leemobile into Ludicrous Speed. They outrun Abobo and nearly wreck themselves in an alley.
Abobo chases them into the alley, seeing on his GPS that they have no way of escaping. He floors it, hoping to smash them but soon discovers that the alley is too narrow for the van do fit. He and Goofball share a prolonged "Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!" moment for about a full minute while they barrel towards certain catastrophe, including several absurdly tight close-ups of their tonsils as they howl "Noooooooooooooo!" Asshole, hit the brake. Abobo has a reaction time of about forty seconds.
The Lees watch Abobo crash and get out of their car. PoFG looks awed and says "I just saw my life flash before my eyes. Man, I sleep a lot." I guess if you hang out with this guy long enough sometimes he says something remotely funny. He's still about 40-1 on that score though.
"I hope he has car insurance," he says. Ouch. Swing and a miss, Billy. Should have quit while you were ahead.
Abobo boots open the door and roars angrily like a gorilla. "He looks really mad!" PoFG tries again. Dude, just shut up. You're really overcompensating and you're just not that funny. "Hey broom-head! We're gonna sweep the floor with your face!" I hope Abobo twists his head off like a Snapple cap right now. The Lees assume a ridiculous fighting posture, which actually gives Abobo some pause. This is all building up to one of those moments where the villain retreats from the heroes because of something even more fearsome appearing behind them, but the heroes cockily think they managed to scare him away. Only the Lees are complete idiots because Abobo makes a show of scanning the rooftops as gang members rappel down the roof and making a frustrated face without even looking in their direction. Anyone with pair of functioning brain cells would realize immediately from Abobo's behavior that something is happening behind them. But of course, they don't.
"See ya, last of the Mohicans!" PoFG taunts. Ha ha! Because Mark Dacascos was in Last of the Mohicans? Get it? And he was...an indian...and...kill me. This was downright subtle compared to the lack of effort shown to cast the news anchors. I'm just waiting for a group of five ninjas to attack so Dacascos can say "Ass-kicking, party of five, your table is ready!"
They spin around to find the oddly-attired Alyssa Milano and her Technicolor dreamcoat. "Oh great," PoFG moans, "The Power Corps." The Power Tools, more like. What a dorky name. The Power Corps sounds like a group of washed-up weightlifters who go to elementary school tearing up phone books and bending horseshoes before giving lame motivational speeches about how cool it is to live without drugs. And every kid would think to themselves "wow, if I say no to cigarettes, one day I could bend iron bars with my anus too!" But I digress.
"We don't need your help, Marian," Jimmy tells her.
"Yeah Marian!" echoes PoFG.
Marian shrugs and bends over conspicuously to pick something up, so the Lee brothers immediately jockey for position for the best viewing angle of her ass. I smell a recurring joke here. PoFG gets a good look in before smacking Jimmy and giving him a "grow up" look. Yeah right.
Marian tells them she was only interested in the Mohawks' "GangNet linkup," something that gives them information on all the gangs that are destroying the city. Damn, the gangs got organized after the apocalypse. They set up their own IT infrastructure and everything. The Power Corps is one of those crime-fighting gangs who's trying to take back the streets one block at a time by wearing really hideous tie-dye and being about as menacing as the Jets in West Side Story. Marian asks if they want to join, and Jimmy scoffs at the very notion, saying they're no better than the gangs they claim to fight.
"Heck no! I think Marian is providing a tremendous service for our city!" PoFG chimes in, showing brains for the first time in his life. I don't care if we're talking about Marian leading a group of Communists. If Alyssa Milano commands, I follow! I think Jimmy is just trying to buy some time until he figures out the significance of her tomboyish haircut and possible man-package. Jimmy wanders off, muttering "butt-kisser" under his breath.
They all go home to an abandoned theatre they've taken over. Hot Medallion Lady explains the nature of the Dragon Medallion, that her father gave it to her so she hid one of the halves where nobody would ever find it. PoFG throws out the token "like Jimmy's underwear drawer" joke out of sheer reflex. It's like he has no control over his own bad dialogue. You know how you clear this up? I could solve this problem for you right now, because I know this kind of guy.
"Okay everybody, it's clear that Billy wants some attention. No no, let's hold everything, because Billy clearly wants to be the focus of the conversation. We're only talking about a magical artifact that could hold the very fate of the world, but Billy wants to entertain us. Hold the phone, guys. Okay Billy, we're all looking at you now. You have the rapt attention of everybody in the room. Make us laugh, fucktard. MAKE ME FUCKING LAUGH. You wanted the attention so bad, now you got it. Come on, man! What you got?"
"Oh, were you done? You're out of jokes? Because you were perfectly happy to spend twenty years of your wasted fucking life dishing out sarcasm from the shadows, I thought you'd appreciate this chance in the spotlight to get it all out of your system. What, where are you going? Don't leave! We were all ready to hear your fucking stand-up routine. Are you CRYING? You PUSSY. You're real smart when you're cracking one-liners like some fucking chimp flinging his shit at people, ain't ya?"
He's a garden-variety attention whore with the maturity of a six-year-old who discovered that the word "penis" is in the dictionary and giggles every time he looks it up. Anyway, Hot Medallion Lady explains that her half is the "mastery over body" half that can allow its bearer to turn insubstantial or give you the strength of steel. Then for some insane reason she gives it to Party of Five Guy. Are you nuts, lady? You're giving the most powerful magical artifact in the world to a guy whose best fighting maneuver is the noogie? What's he going to do with his newfound "strength of steel," twist someone's nipples off?
Meanwhile, Abobo reports his failure to Robert Patrick. "It's not my fault," he whines, "A marine showed up!" Just kidding. But he says that he didn't have any idea that Vanilla Ice wanted the medallion. If he did, he really should have e-mailed everyone in the organization using GangNet.
"Your incompetence sticks needles in the flesh of my honor," Ice says. This dialogue sticks needles in the scrotum of my good taste. Ice has to wear sunglasses all the time now because now that he has the Soul Medallion and he's evil, he's all shadowy and mysterious, and he can't stand bright light.
He takes Abobo down to the basement and says he's going to give him "molecular steroids" that'll give him the strength of ten men. Abobo protests that he already has that, and steroids might kill him. "You've always been like a son to me, Abobo. And like sons, I can always have another." Heh, I wish they'd opted to give Robert Patrick a handlebar moustache for this movie so he could twirl it around his finger as he utters this stock villain dialogue. He lowers a dentist's chair and commands Abobo to have a seat. This makes Abobo scream "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"
Back to Vanna White with the entertainment news. She says that Madonna has split with her husband Tom Arnold (?!) and is moving to Paris. Marian puts on a wig to cover her punk hair and has breakfast with her dad, who also happens to be the chief of police. George Hamilton goes over a news story about how the Power Corp (their spelling, not mine) blew up a plane full of medical supplies, blah blah blah, obvious frame-up, blah blah blah, terrorists, yadda yadda Guy Fawkes masks...Marian's dad puts on his uniform and goes to work, swearing up and down that he hates the Power Corp (sic) and that they're all terrorists trying to upset the truce the cops have made with the gang members. "You should have seen how it was before!" he says.
So let me get this straight. After the apocalypse, law and order broke down in New Angeles. So the cops made a deal with the gangs to institute a curfew where they'd behave themselves until nightfall when they'd resume their wanton crime sprees. They'd protect and serve until 9 PM, and if you were caught outside of your house after that, it's your ass! What kind of pussy-whipped cops do we have after the bombs drop? Awfully regimented and honorable of the gang members too, agreeing to come out only at night to rape and pillage. This isn't The Warriors here, not exactly a bleak future like in Robocop. The cops essentially do nothing all day but jerk off and eat donuts, then go home. You're out past curfew and they say "fuck it! Not our problem!" 9-1-1 is a joke, man! I like how the gang members are keeping track of Daylight Savings Time, too.
Billy and Jimmy are busy playing grab-ass back at home when there's a knock at the door. Hot Lady answers it and finds Vanilla Ice standing there with his entourage. "I've missed you, Lotus Flower," he says.
"Geissman!" she says. Or something like that.
"No one has called me Geissman in many years," he says. "But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I have ascended!" Sweet fucking christ, this guy is a windbag. "I've taken a new name, that of an ancient Japanese warlord. I...am Koga Shuko!" Yeah? Well I'm Chaka Khan. This is almost as stupid when Puff Daddy started insisting everyone call him P. Diddy, when nobody really cared who he was to begin with.
All his henchmen remove their shades in unison. "You see, nobody wants to party with Victor Geissman." And Koga Shuko is an improvement? Let me try it on for size. Hey dudes, we're going to Koga Shuko's for this huge party! Gonna be chicks there, man!
I don't know. This'll take some getting used to.
Mocca Chocolata Ya Ya demands to know where the other half of the medallion is. She tries to bluff her way through it by saying "somewhere you'll never find it" just as that moron Billy walks up with the thing dangling from his neck and says "Hey guys! What's up! Hey, cool hair!"
Snap! Lotus Flower plants a knee in Papa Shango's gut, backfists Lash and tells the Lees to run. They waste no time in abandoning their female mentor and letting her get murdered by the villain and his not-at-all-frightening flunkies. Koga sends his two Oddjob clones after them while he brawls it out with LF. Dacascos manages to carry on a very good fight scene with his Oddjob, since he actually knows martial arts. It's painfully obvious that the Party of Five Guy doesn't know Kung Fu from Kung Pao, because his entire fight is comprised of him running away and doing "funny" things like pelting his opponent with basketballs and spilling gumballs all over the floor.
Loco Roco doesn't seem to have any idea he's in a fight sequence. He picks himself up and starts talking like he was never interrupted (he likes to talk, this one...) saying he thought she was dead when the cavern collapsed and-- she cuts him off by delivering a flying kick to his kidneys. He gets up and says "Ha-haah! Ha ha ha! Hah...Nyaaaah!" Sort of like if you got hit in the face with a soccer ball and tried to play it off like it didn't hurt, but it really did. He decides to uncork the power of the medallion and turns into paper to chase her around as a shadow.
The Lees try to escape but are cut off when the door explodes inward and in barges the new and improved Abobo! Only this time he's way bigger, way uglier, and he's been mutated into a freak! The guy has deltoids the size of watermelons looming over his shoulders. Either that or they're grotesquely huge goiters. Huge fake muscles, no maneuverability, the inability to raise his arms over his own shoulders? He'd fit in perfectly at the WWE. I still think he looks more realistic than Ang Lee's Incredible Hulk.
The Lees scream like they were in Home Alone and start chucking bricks at the guy, which bounce off his rubber pecs uselessly until Lotus Flower saves the day and knocks him stupid with a punching bag. It's really Funky Monkey using the Dragon Medallion to possess her body, and he tries to trick them into handing over the other half. It almost works too, until his real voice starts coming out of her mouth. The Lees lock her up, but Sno Cone just phases through the gate and tells his henchmen to burn down the theatre. The villains retreat outside while the Lees break her back out. She locks the door behind them so she can hold off Baba Yaga and they'll both perish in the fire. She's clearly not getting that he has the power to turn two-dimensional and simply slips through the door while she roasts. You'd think being the caretaker of the Dragon Medallion, she'd know what this thing is supposed to do.
Count Dooku calls a grand conclave of the gangs, saying "though them, the medallion will be mine! BWUHUAHAHAHAHAHA!!" He introduces himself as Koga Shuko, which strangely does not draw raucous laughter from the assembled punks. The leader of the Maniacs gang, a weird mutated gnome-looking dude voices some reservations about being led by a guy who looks like a Swiss fashion model named Vidal. Riki Tiki Tavi turns into shadow paper and strangles the guy with his miiiiind! This impresses the hell out of the gangers and they swear immediate allegiance to him. This scene is so ripped straight from The Warriors I keep expecting Robert Patrick to throw his hands in the air and howl "Caaaan yooouuuu dig iiiiiiiiiiit?"
Elsewhere, the Power Corp (sic) digs Abobo out of the ruins of the theatre. Billy and Jimmy bicker like little bitches about whose fault this is for about three minutes and finally agree that it's all Lotus Flower's fault for not telling them about the Dragon Medallion in the first place. Blame the dead chick. Whatever gets you through it, guys. The worst part about all this is we have to try and watch the Party of Five Guy try to emote for a change, and when Mark Dacascos is blowing you away in the acting department, it's time to seriously look into the food service industry.
They run straight into a gang who break the holy curfew by attacking them in the name of Pika Pikachu. Once again the Party of Five Guy spends most of his time running away and getting out of fights by pointing in the sky and shouting "what's that??" while Dacascos does all the stunts. In all honesty, it'd be pretty good if he wasn't beating up a mixture of clowns, pirates, ninjas, people wearing cardigans and propeller beanie hats, and puzzlingly, a postman who attacks them by jumping off a six-story silo and blowing his own suicidal sneak attack by screaming "AIR MAIL!" a full eight seconds before hitting the ground.
They barricade themselves in an oceanside shack and find a conveniently-located speedboat with the keys inside. They blast their way out to the water where a pair of jetski ninjas is ready and waiting to chase them. For years they've been in this gang training to be elite jetski ninjas and now they finally have their chance! They even have Stinger missiles mounted on the front of their jetskis; that's how badass they are. The Lees zoom around going "aaaaauuuugh!" at every minor hazard they come across. One of the jetski ninjas fires a missile into the water and makes the river explode. Yeah, the river explodes because after the apocalypse the world's oceans are toxic and highly flammable. The Lees crash into a fallen highway sign which also explodes, because after the apocalypse the world's road signs are toxic and highly flammable too. The lone surviving jetski ninja radios in that they need to send in divers to recover the medallion.
The Lees are fine, of course. Before the crash they dove into the river of "liquid death" full of chemicals they say will cause uncontrollable diahhroea and all their hair to fall out. Basically like it is today, only with lots more ninjas. They vow to take the fight to Shuko...somehow. Soon as they get their stomachs pumped and hopefully haven't absorbed a horrifying cocktail of toxins through their skin.
Waka Laka is back in his Penthouse of Evil raging about how they've lost the medallion in the river. "All I want to do is have complete domination of one major American city! Is that so much to ask?!" Not really, I mean he's just approaching it the wrong way. He should look into politics. Arnold Schwarzenegger runs all of California via a democratically-elected public office! And he's an immortal superbeing with fabulous hair! I'm thinking mayor of Beverly Hills here.
His two Oddjob clone henchmen enter the room, eating some gum (which I can only assume is Doublemint). Koga asks "Huey! Lewis! Any news?" I'm starting to think Andy Dick doubled as line producer for this movie. It sounds like it.
Back at Power Corp (sic) HQ, the Corp is hard at work fighting crime. Did I say "fighting crime?" I meant sitting on their asses and fucking around with hula hoops. Marian has captured Abobo and has him tied to a chair with nylon rope. She's stuffed a beef-eater's bib in his collar and is torturing him for information by jamming a funnel in his mouth and force-feeding him her "special spinach dip" by the ladle. I can't believe I don't remember this from the first time I saw this movie. I think I would have remembered something as surreal and disturbing as watching Alyssa Milano funneling spinach into a bound creature with giant neck goiters and singing "open wiiiide, here comes another airplane!" She asks what Koga Shuko is planning, and Abobo pleads that he doesn't know anything. Then he says "I'm gonna barf!!" and cuts loose with a series of foul veggie farts.
The hell is going on here?! Spinach torture? This could be the most horrifying thing I've ever seen, bar none. Alyssa is wearing an apron, threatening a grown man with spinach and demanding to know the location of infrared sensors between questions like "Abobo...is that French?" between farting sessions. I can't even look away. There was no dignity for anybody who worked on this movie! None! Eraserhead was more lucid than this.
Billy and Jimmy decide to enlist the help of the Power Corp (sic) and spend the next few painfully unfunny minutes bumbling around looking for their secret hideout. "It's right here!" "But the sign says 'use other door'!" "That's just what they want you to think!" Then they stumble into a pitch black room, light a match (and you just know the room is going to be filled with dynamite or something) and spend ten seconds phonetically reading a warning sign that says "Watch...Your...Step..." before realizing they've been standing in mid-air for twenty seconds like Wile E. Coyote not realizing he's just walked off the edge of a cliff. The only thing missing is them holding up a sign that says "Yikes!" before falling. They drop down a huge slide and fall straight to the center of Power Corp (sic) HQ, where they find themselves surrounded by Santa's elves. I'm not joking. They're orphaned kids driven here by the roving gangs who feel compelled to dress like the Lollipop Guild.
The entire place looks like Austin Powers' swingin' bachelor pad. Marian takes them aside and explains what we already know about Hunka Chunka, that he can turn into paper and telepathically control other people's bodies. She learned this from hours of grueling fart-torture with Abobo. "We're starting to look like the Double Dorks," Dacascos moans. I don't think he knew the camera was on.
Outside of ShukoCorp we can see two guys arguing over a pay-machine that dispenses oxygen. Now you're ripping off Spaceballs? Guys, if you're going to steal from a movie, don't make it a Mel Brooks flick that even non-cinephiles are going to recognize. The Power Corp (sic) stages a raid to distract security while Marian has them sneak into the building via its conveniently large ventilation system. Clearly Mamba Wamba has never read that Internet meme about what to do if you're a warlord bent on world domination. I think #1 on the list is reducing the size of your vents. Anyway, Marian leads the way into the vent, allowing the brothers ample time to set up a tripod and photograph her ass, then they get into a shoving match competing for who will have the honor of sniffing her butt for the next five minutes in the vent.
I could drive my car through these fucking vents. They're able to walk through them just hunched over slightly at the knees! Somehow these vents lead to the penthouse where they overhear Shama Lama Ding Dong trying to bribe the police chief into ruling the city with him. The Party of Five Guy spots the other half of the Medallion in a box on his desk and tries to sneak it out of there with a bit of fishing line. Why isn't he just wearing the magical medallion instead of leaving it out in the open where anybody could swipe it? Fortunately for Shuko, Billy is a fucking idiot and gets spotted by Lash almost immediately. She smashes the grate and they fall into the room in a heap. Marian looks sheepishly at her police chief daddy in a Steve Urkel "did I do thaaaat" moment and says "Does this mean I'm grounded?"
Vidal Sasoon dangles the amulet in front of himself and draws the Lees attention. Like dorks they both charge him with hands outstretched and fall down the elevator shaft when Shuko does an "Olé!" move. No really, he jumps aside and says "Olé!" I can't believe they fell for that! They manage to grab onto a rope and slide down about seventy floors until they crash into the Basement of Steroids. Koga turns into shadow paper and leaps down after them, leaving Marian's dad to battle Lash alone. It's more than a little embarrassing to see a blonde bimbo with a whip battle a fake cop in his late fifties wielding a naginata. Being a cop, I figure he might...oh, I don't know...use his gun? I guess in a martial arts movie that's considered cheating.
Anyway, Marian and the Lees dust themselves off and find themselves in Koga's Secret Underground Steroid Lab (a.k.a. the Balco testing grounds) and promptly start snooping around and cracking jokes, as if they'd forgotten that the frigging T-1000 was right behind them with the world's most powerful magical death trinket. The Party of Five Guy starts pulling the aluminum foil off the gurneys and poking the unconscious test subjects in the face, something you should never do when you're in any kind of laboratory full of people wrapped for freshness like coffee cakes. Marian checks one out and sees that one of the subjects has been augmented with cybernetics into Edward Scissorhands, which causes her to scream like a 1940s creature feature actress. PoFG shushes her annoyingly with a spittle-drenched "SSHHHHPPPTPTPTPTPHHHHH!" and chides her, saying "You'll wake the dead!" This strikes him as terribly fucking funny and he goes in at length asking everyone if they get it, then explaining the joke by pointing at all the semi-dead people and going "See? Get it? Because...they're all...dead..."
I really hope one of the cyber-zombies rips his face off.
Suddenly (I'd use the word 'ironically' but that would be giving this movie far too much credit) one of the unconscious people wakes up and starts making zombie "unnngh" noises. The first is a bald dude in a basketball jersey and shorts. I think it's just Charles Barkley taking a nap. Billy's the only one who sees this and goes into a goofy "hommina hommina hommina" moment of nonsense that never really happens to anyone in real life. I honestly think that given the same situation I would be able to rather clearly articulate "Jimmy, look out behind you! The zombie of Charles Barkley is about to eat you!" But no, Zombie Charles Barkley groans and draws their attention so they all can share another Macaulay Culkin group scream and run away from the undead basketball star.
"Hi there, did you miss me?" the zombie asks. Doesn't he usually do the pre-game show for the NFL with Terry Bradshaw and Jillian Barberie? Not really, dude...
Back in the penthouse, the epic duel between Lash and The Old Blue Line is still raging. Okay, not really raging. He pushes a bronze bust down on her and walks away. Sort of like Road House when Dalton pushed over a polar bear on a fat guy and hid behind a stuffed yak. Only without the polar bear and the yak. And no Swayze. Or a fat guy. Actually it wasn't like Road House at all. Don't know why I brought it up other than I like to make obscure references to Swayze movies.
Zombie Charles Barkley attacks, but the three of them rather easily overcome him and drop a massive steel platform on him. The shadowy incorporeal form of Tonga Bonga pokes cartoonishly up from the flattened zombie and demands they hand over the medallion...or else.
The Party of Five guy rather stupidly asks "Or else what?" I think it's rather clear that he intends to kill you, but Billy is so mentally-challenged in this movie I'm beginning to think he legitimately has no idea what anyone is talking about. Jimmy smacks the controls to a huge turbine fan behind Rama Lama Ding Dong, sucking him into oblivion. They only barely manage to turn it off before the suction pulls Billy into its welcoming blades and chops him into quivering strips of soggy pork. Damn it. You couldn't have waited five, maybe ten seconds?
Rula Bula isn't so easily killed, however, and uses his powers to possess another one of his techno-zombies. This one is a leather fetishist with a big metal head. This zombie rather handily kicks the Lees' butts all over the place, so Marian pulls the Party of Five Guy aside and they run away while poor Jimmy absorbs an inhuman amount of punishment. Great friends you got, Jimmy, they're leaving you to get beat up by a rejected Judge Dredd villain. Marian is screaming the whole time "we had no choice! There's no way we could possibly have beaten the 700 lbs. dork with bad hydraulic knees! Sorry Jimmy! Bye!" Gitchi Gitchi Ya Ya Da Da throws Jimmy into a bear hug and chokes him out.
Cut to more Verhoeven news footage from Channel 69. Okay really, have we stooped so low as to just throw the number 69 out on the screen? Was the spinach farting not low enough? Honestly, even most college students would find this immature. The news reports that the gangs under Bahama Mama have broken their truce and are looting any damn time they feel like it now, like that's a major disaster. Does it really matter when the gangs are raping, pillaging, burning, and robbing people? It's still being done. The curfew hasn't made the problem go away, it's just given it a regularly-scheduled prime time slot every night. The Democrats must be in office or something. New Angeles could use a few indiscriminate executions right about now. But that's the N.A.P.D. for you: Protect and Serve 'til 9 PM.
Marian's Dad looks at the rioting gangs just outside the police station fence and turns back to a locker room full of worried-looking cops. "We're going back out there!" he says, all gung-ho to kick some ass. How in the name of Iron Chef French Hiroyuki Sakai did Marian's Dad make it back to the police station? He was just at EvilCo TWO MINUTES AGO surrounded by Shaka Zulu's evil minions. These are the same guys who have ninjas with rocket-equipped jetskis, and an aging police chief with no weapon managed to brawl his way down seventy floors of bad guys, clobbered his way through the gang blockade of the police station, and made it all the way inside without a mark on him? Hardcore!!
Anyway, Marian's Dad tries to muster them up for some serious law enforcement and the cops are all "fuck THAT noise, pops." He tells them that they're all a bunch of whiny pussies and his daughter is out there doing their job!
"I'm okay with that!" I imagine a little mousy voice from the back of the crowd saying.
And it seems that most of the cops really are okay with that, because not one of them moves from their seat. He tries to pull rank by shouting "That's an order!" No dice. He storms off and commandeers a Humvee.
Whomp Bompa Loo Bop takes Jimmy up to the penthouse and ties him up with electrical tape (?) saying if he helps cooperate to bring him the medallion, he'll let him live. Jimmy refuses, so Koga decides to pass the time by explaining how he killed Jimmy's father, and explaining his evil plan, complete with a half-hearted Krankor-worthy "Haa ha ha ha ha!"
Marian and the Party of Five Guy retreat back to the Power Corp (sic) hideout, where he stares confounded at his half of the Double Dragon amulet. He keeps trying to get it to work...but...too...STUPID...Even Marian tries to cheer him up but Alyssa can barely keep a straight face when she looks at this complete loser-- supposedly humanity's last hope-- and breaks down laughing in the middle of the line "you'll get it to work." Honest to god, I think this is a blown line that they kept in the movie. Dejected, Billy finally admits that he can't fight the T-1000 by himself. But Marian-- get ready to clamp down a sudden rise of vomit-- leans in to kiss him and tries to assure him that he's good enough to defeat Chumbawumba. Oh that's just gross. How could Marian, a hardened resistance fighter, ever find anything remotely charming about the Party of Five Guy?! It's just...just...EEEEW. He's the fucking comic relief! You don't have a thing for Dacascos, or the hot chick with a whip..or Abobo? I'd take a steamy Abobo sex scene over watching the Party of Five Guy mash his fishy lips all over Alyssa Milano's face. Uugggggghhhhh it makes my butt pucker to even think about something that nasty. The only thing that keeps me sane is the knowledge that the Party of Five Guy has never and will never get laid. EVER.
Gang members attack from all directions, rappelling in from the windows and invading from the sewers, led by Apollo Creed and the Beanie Boys! Billy fights off a raucous gang of mailmen (whaaat?) and disposes of them by knocking them into an oddly-located swimming pool full of anti-freeze. Lash squares off with Marian, but is defeated when Marian learns the one way to defeat a woman with a whip. It's uh...get out of the way of the whip.
Then we see Abobo on the toilet!! AAAUUUUUGGGHHH!!!! Nooooo! Take it away! I don't want to see Abobo rocking the thunderbucket! Why would you interrupt a fight scene for this?!
Oh, it's okay...he's got his pants on. Thank CHRIST. He seems pretty hunky dorey until he catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and realizes for the first time how extraordinarily lumpy he's become. This sends Abobo into a Hulk Smash rage! Awright! Time for Abobo-a-go-go! Back at the fight, Billy is squaring off with a mime, Mathew McConaughey, and Apollo Creed. Jimmy appears in front of him, double-kicks the mime and McConaughey (yay!) and then superkicks Billy through a plate glass window! Yayyyyyyy! Do it again!
Jimmy proceeds to backfist the Party of Five guy in the teeth and leg lariats him off a catwalk. I like watching him get beat up. If you made the whole movie about this it would have been great. Jimmy is obviously possessed by the Terminator because he starts blabbing on at length about Romulus and Remus and how it doesn't really apply to this situation, but he's a long-winded villain with a good education so he's entitled to bore movie protagonists with loose metaphors. Billy backs into a Double Dragon arcade machine (oh god...) and starts trying to fire up his Dragon Medallion again in desperation. It doesn't work. We have to listen to more Greek mythology. Billy finally gets fed up with the amulet and hurls it away, but it stops in mid-air and flies back into his hand. I guess it's magnetically drawn to complete assholes.
Jimmy pump-kicks him through the concrete wall (yay!) but Billy finds that he's completely unhurt (booo!). Billy deduces that the amulet's power allows him to take insanely brutal ass-kickings without getting hurt, which is good because Billy sucks at martial arts. Tonka Wonka threatens to kill Jimmy's body if he doesn't hand over the medallion, and unfastens a rope suspending a heavy sandbag form the ceiling for no readily apparent reason. Billy leaps in front of the sandbag to absorb the blow and starts wailing away on Jimmy with Star Trek-style double-fist sledges to the face, but this gets him close enough for Koga to just yank the medallion off his neck. Retard. Too late, Shadow Koga withdraws from Jimmy's body and puts together the amulet.
Wow! Okay guys, this is the moment of truth! I mean, both halves of the Double Dragon medallion are so damn powerful they give almost complete immortality to the bearers, right? The Soul Medallion lets you become incorporeal and possess the bodies of the living and the dead, and the Body Medallion makes you completely indestructible. So united, the Double Dragon must be...must be...well it has to be absolutely earth-shatteringly AWESOME, right? It was used to single-handedly destroy an army of Shadow Warriors and safeguard the safety of China for thousands of years! We're talking extinction-level events or something. I bet it summons Great Cthulhu or turns you into Chuck Norris. Ooh! Maybe it summons a Megazord and lets you smash shit in a huge robot dinosaur. I'm so excited! Let's see what happens!
Drum roll!
Wait for it!
It turns him into a pair of sword-wielding trolls in black robes.
WHAT?? That's it?! That's what we were trying to track down these ancient medallions for thousands of years to do? Man, what a ripoff! If I were Koga Shuko I'd be feeling profoundly ripped-off right now. No Megazord or anything? Hell these things would be laughed off the set of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. They look like the mirror monster in Conan the Destroyer. And they're really pansy sword-wielding trolls, too. They're slow and boring, and even though Marian helps them out by turning on the generator to reactivate the lights, the Lees didn't even need the assistance. As it happens, turning on simple overhead lights is their ultimate crippling weakness. That's right, a normally-lit room will utterly defeat the bearer of the Double Dragon amulet. Anyway, the Lees kick the trolls around and take back the amulet.
It'd be funny if the combined amulet just turned the Lees into sword trolls too, but it doesn't. Instead it gives them a complete wardrobe change into really gay karate outfits complete with sissy boots, ankle-warmers, and arm stockings. Absolutely covered in silver threads and what must be sequins. Oh man, they are never going to live down the gay jokes now. Even Billy looks ashamed to be a part of this movie now and asks if they're going to be the Double Dragons if they really have to wear the stupid costumes. Jimmy says they're not too bad; at least he doesn't have to wear the blue one. Yeah dude, the red one makes you a pillar of manliness.
Lotus Flower appears as a spectral Jedi spirit and spouts off some crap about destiny and the unity of the Double Dragons, blah blah. They kick Funk & Wagnall around a bit, like it really takes the power of the Dragon Medallion to stomp Robert Patrick. Jimmy uses the Soul Amulet and jumps into Koga's body, making him slap the shit out of himself for a while before writing a $129 million check out to the police department and demands to be arrested. Oh those kooky Lees! Koga has surprisingly good humor about the whole situation considering the downfall of his financial empire was brought about by a pair of idiots in matching sequined tights. "If you think I'm bad, wait'll you meet my lawyers! BWUHUAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
Marian presents the Lees with their fixed-up Dragon Wagon, complete with a custom dragon paint job and a brand-new afterburner. Abobo wanders over and asks if they wouldn't mind terribly if he hung out with them for a while, maybe drive the Wagon while they fight crime or something. Dude, that would be awesome. Think of the heavy metal band they could start with Abobo! Although that does mean having to put up with his flatulence...


text:
After showing you the worst wiring jobs on the planet, we've tracked down photos of what those same jobs looked like after a custom electronics professional (CE pro) cleaned up each mess.
Now, don't be fooled, some of these jobs belong to and were done by CE pros themselves.
That's why you need to map out exactly how you want your system to look, and dictate your vision to whoever (you or a CE pro) and wiring your system.
You certainly don't want to be left with a rat's nest or bird's nest of wires that could negatively affect the performance of your system.
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Guest post written by Lorna Weightman from Styleisle
Over the last two years I have attended fourteen weddings, which 100% qualifies me as a "professional" wedding guest. But as weddings begin to deviate from tradition, the etiquette becomes more difficult to dissect. Here, blogger Lorna Weightman weighs in with her rules…
1. Wear white, or various hues/shades thereof
Blame Pippa Middleton. Ever since she started the Bridesmaids-in-white trend, it's become a legitimate "thing" to wear a shade of white/cream etc as a guest. See: Lindsay Lohan wearing white as a guest at Kim Kardashians' wedding. But I'm saying it's time to stop this madness. And avoid any shade of white. After all, remember what happened to Pippa's bum.
2. Pass on your invitation
I once heard a story of a couple who could not attend a wedding and passed the invitation to their next door neighbours as if they were cinema tickets. If the invitation says your name, it's for you, and not your mates.
3. Be late
The only person allowed to be less than punctual at a wedding is the bride. The. End.
4. Overdo it on the Prosecco
Yes, yes… I know it's tempting to guzzle Prosecco as if it were lemonade when you finally get through the service and into the reception. But hold back. At least 'til the dinner. You'll thank me the following morning.
5. Pretend that this is your opportunity to audition for X Factor
Entertainment doesn't come cheap at weddings – bands are the most costly part. Try to remember the bride and groom have paid a lot for this 1980's tribute band so perhaps this is not the time to storm the stage singing "Rock the Boat".
1. Recycle your outfits a la Kate
Kate Middleton is the superstar of re-wearing past wedding outfits and I love her for it. Borrowing a hat to smarten-up a dress, adding ribbons or a bit of embellishment here or there, or mixing up your shoes… There are lots of ways to make that special dress you bought for Wedding A work for Wedding B too.
2. RSVP promptly…
One recurring wedding story is where guests appear on the day, having been reticent with the RSVP. Most couples now include an email address with their invitation which is a quick and easy way to say, "Yes I want to come to the party".
3. Dress up
Take cue from Lady Mary Charteris whose dress code for her wedding was clearly "fashion". It worked. The guests who included Jamie Winstone and Florence Welch glammed it up – making great photos and an even better vibe.
4. Eat before the ceremony
Wedding ceremonies tend to be around lunch time or shortly after; it can be a long wait from the reception, mandatory photo-taking right through to the sit down dinner. So carb-load to keep you going and stop your tummy rumbling during the ceremony. I once sat beside a guest who told me she always brought a packet of peanuts with her to weddings in case she got the munchies.
5. And finally, don't forget a pair of flat shoes!
A wedding can be a long day. So try and get your hands on a pair of fold up shoes which will fit nicely in an evening bag and you can do a quick shoe-swap after the speeches. By then, no one will notice. And it's better than being barefoot on a dancefloor that quickly becomes covered in booze and broken glass. Or is that just the weddings I've been to?