Over the years, my best friend and I have come up with a lot of random, idiotic games — games that we use to pass the time while waiting for more exciting things to happen, until the games themselves become the most fun event of the evening. Our games include Metal-Off, where we go back and forth naming as many hair metal bands as possible until someone pauses for more than 5 seconds, Obscure Diseases, which has the same premise as Metal-Off except with naming diseases that have really odd names, and my personal favorite, Everyone Has Their Price. My best friend used to play this game all the time, smugly challenging people to come up with awful, disgusting scenarios, and seeing how much they would have to be paid to carry them out. I “broke” the game a few years ago on a hiking trip when I came up with a scenario so repulsive to him that he had to concede defeat … but unfortunately, I can’t repeat it here.
Somehow, the two of us glossed over the Imaginary Fight game. I’m not sure how, though; we’re both into playing these ridiculous games that only seem to appeal to guys. In the case of the Everyone Has Their Price game, we enjoy getting as detailed as possible, making enough specific points to prove, indeed, that everyone has their price (until I ruined the whole thing). Thinking it over now, we were only a couple of steps away from wondering whether Rocky could beat the crap out of Rambo. We’ll never need to think about it again, though, after reading Jake Kalish’s Santa Vs. Satan: The Official Compendium of Imaginary Fights (Three Rivers Press, 2008).
If you have to ask whether a book with such a title is right for you, then it’s probably not. However, if you’re a guy, there’s a very good chance this one is right up your alley. As Kalish explains in the introduction, “The imaginary fight taps into the most primal part of the male psyche and imagination: the need to know who’s the best, the strongest, the caveman with the biggest club.” However, whereas many men would simply come up with a quick reason or two why Rambo would totally demolish Rocky, Kalish goes much, much further.
Take, for example, the contestants of the fights themselves. Surely you’ve thought of Batman v. Superman, right? I guarantee you that 90% of the fights in this book have never crossed your mind. Here are some of my favorites:
- Barney vs. Grimace
- Samurai vs. Gladiator
- Donald Duck vs. Daffy Duck
Okay, so some of these still seem relatively typical, right? Try these on for size: (more…)
Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder titled his memoir 
History-altering events produce consequences that are sometimes unintended. In our post-9/11 age, the political landscape has quickly altered, from the relative peace and prosperity of the Clinton years to perpetual war in the Bush years. Laws have changed to promote greater “security,” and liberties that were once taken for granted have been eroded all in the name of protecting “us” from terrorists. The swiftness with which the PATRIOT act was passed, the illegal wiretapping that has gone on, the way in which electronic voting can be manipulated to change the outcome of an election, lying about the threats the county of Iraq posed to the United States, and on and on is quite prevalent in the newspapers. So it’s of little surprise to see that in the popular culture, the post-9/11 culture of war, paranoia, threats from “The Other,” and the like have been a source for fiction. Fans of 24 know the world of appearance, and the “real” world underneath the gloss, are polar opposites. Fans of Battlestar Galactica can see our own cultural and political issues being played out in a drama where the protagonists and antagonists struggle with not only their identity, but also life in a state of war where the battles are frequent, lives are lost, and enemy and friend have a shared history.
