The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - The Secret Men: Part 4 - Like Father Like Dumb with Tom Reimann

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Tom Reimann gains clearance to join the Secret Men as we find out why Frank Dux will never live up to his horseradish smackin' father. We also discover what makes a pudgy 13 year-old boy cry. The stakes have taken an abrupt downturn!

Secret Zone. The Dog Dukes cast about Frank Dukes. Our website is 1,900 hotdog.com, and we are the last one. Go to our Patreon to support us. We're at patreon.com slash 1,900 Hot Dog. I'm Sean Baby from Deception and Shadows. And my partner wears the ears of many former hunks like a gruesome trophy. He's sex-brush trained, Robert Brockway.

I'm Robert Brockway. Here's a Brockway fact. Ants. No follow-up questions. None needed. Our guest today is a podcast man. You know him from Cracked back in the day and gamefully unemployed. This day, he's sex brush trained.

Tom Reimann. That is me. Hello. Hi, yes. Welcome back. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be on Duke's cast.

I've listened to the first episode, so I do know somewhat of what to expect. Good. Your initial email did not tell me anything. It was just like, I got a question. Yeah. Did you go to like a different sex brush dojo? Like, do our styles conflict? It was, we were rival dojos.

Yeah, we were at the strip mall across the street. You're like crane style. Yeah. I like, I like mink style. There was a lot of adults in my class because I had to go at eight o'clock. Oh, that's the worst. Because my parents had to take me after work. Yeah, you really want to, you really want to practice your sex rush on children.

Can we start again? Yeah. Keep it in, Jamie. People love this type of thing. But this is our fourth episode. If you haven't listened to the first three, no night can continue. You are chosen. for this world of mystery.

But first we should do some plugs. Tom, let's do some plugs. Please check out Gamefully Unemployed, Patreon.com slash Gamefly Unemployed. That's the podcast and streaming network. I co-run with David Bell, also from Cracked. And also check out some more news and One-N-Hoddard Hot Dog, which I also do writing for.

That's a good plug. I love it. Rockway, are you legally allowed to plug? Yeah, I'd like to plug this podcast. It's called The Secret Men. Sean didn't get it right. He also didn't get the dog zone 9,000 right, which is also this podcast, sort of. So go listen to those two things.

You can't contain my mystery. I'm just amending it, just a little, a little like, I'm the asterisk that's like, actually, if you do want to know more, like, if you stumbled across this somehow and you're like, what does this fucking podcast call? You would never get it from the things that we've said so far. One of you have just been mystically karate-cucked. I'm not sure which one, but one of you have. as we trade. Yeah. We both take turns in the chair.

We're both super into it. We have a very narrow kink zone. It's each of us loves to get karate cooked. When we left last time, we were learning about Frank's family history to help round out his history of being a super sex spy sent it to the Marines to get information on boot camp. And if you remember, he figured out that it was not a very nice place. And they bullied him and he left. End of report. spy mission well executed.

And the army's in fucking trouble because now the CIA knows that they're not very nice to their recruits. Exactly. Mission successful. I do want to say that like I haven't had the ability to listen to episodes two through two or three. So this we're really jumping ahead for me in the Frank Duke Saka. Oh yeah.

That's going to be every episode where we're working ahead. Really thrilled to be thrown in. You have seen a lot of. 80s and 90s movies, and so has Frank Dukes, and he also has it done. And so you get it. You get what he'd just imagine what like a really mediocre Anthony Hopkins movie or maybe a Gene Hackman or Sylvester Stallone. No one talks about it anymore. That's what Frank Duke's life was. I'm picturing for what you just described, I'm picturing him going through like a little bit of the torture from Rambo like two seconds. And then he got really sad and called them to come pick him up.

Basically, yeah. Because they're too mean to him. Yeah. Pretty much. No, he did a few good men. He got a blanket party, but in the middle of the blanket party, he started doing karate, and he, like, really, really hurt a few guys. Yeah, they regretted. Oh, I see. In a blanket party on the deadliest man, although he did quit immediately after because they were too mean. Yeah, they were too mean.

He claims because he was Jewish, and none of it, none of the rest of it's true. I don't see why that would be. But let's, I'm going to pick it up. We're talking about his spy granddad and his spy dad. who quit the spy business to be just like a really tough delivery guy. Sure. Anyway, his story goes a bit too far. By the time he turned 14, Alfred had developed an unusual skill.

He could liberate anything with four wheels and an engine and drive recklessly with uncanny precision. His legendary reputation includes hijacking a bus and managing to outdrive British policemen in pursuit. The bus was dad's idea of how to transport groups of illegal, newly arrived Jews at night without suspicion. Later, when the police started shooting at him, he stole police vehicles, mostly jeeps, for the Haganah and Mossad, the secret intelligence of the illegal Jewish defense forces. These stolen official vehicles served numerous purposes.

One, involved a ruse whereby Jews disguised themselves as British policemen responding to ships smuggling refugees into Palestine. These police impersonators then aided the refugees rather than preventing their arrival. So it's just kind of stuff his dad got up to. So his dad's in a different movie. His dad's in the 70s action movie. Yes. Yeah, he's doing like a kind of a great escape thing or like a Michael Kane thing. Yeah, like a Schindler's List porn parody.

I was going to say he's doing like an exploitation 70s reboot of like. Schindler's Fist. He's doing Schindler's Fist. He's doing Michael Jaiway. His lies extend to his dad. Now, that makes me wonder, did his, did this start like intergenerational? Did his dad sit him down and tell him like, like big fish style? Oh, shit.

Does he think all these stories about his dad are true? Oh. And then to live up like, like, like you would, your dad goes into the family business and you're supposed to inherit it. But for lies, like he would inherit, you have, you have to be a huge liar like me, son, to keep the family tradition. It's a deadbed. Does it say how many Jewish refugees his dad ramped to freedom? Using a British, the double-decker style, I have to assume, the British style of goofy, goofy-ass bus. He was that good at driving that they couldn't even catch the bus.

He would frequently do corkscrew jumps because they were bitching. Did you have to put like the more, like the lighter Jews up top on a double-decker bus? Just to keep it from tilting in the turns? Depends on the ramp. It depends on the kind of ramp you're doing. There are 15 or 20 pages of, like, how to distribute the weight of your human smuggling operations. But we don't need to get into all of the details.

He had plays that they'd call out depending, like, for the obstacle course. Now, if it's a sharp turn, he'd call like, OK, Eagle and that everybody would know which, like, position to shuffle to. He'd audibles, like a football quarterback. I love that eventually, like, after just being human cargo for sweet jumps for this video game that his dad starred in. eventually they just started participating. Like, yeah, we'll spec into some spy stuff and do it with you.

Yeah, why not? Hell yeah. I also really like that he stole so many cop cars that he's like, you know, most of them were Jeeps. You know, like about 42 out of every 903 that he stole where jeeps, you know. I feel like he steal two cop cars. You've stolen more cop cars than anyone you'll ever meet, right? Like, you're the, that's a crazy number. It sounds like he has an entire motor pool of cop cars.

Right. Mostly jeeps. Not to nitpick too much since this is a land of outlandish lies already. You don't hear a lot about how somebody's a master car thief before, say, like the 1960s. Because it was not hard to steal a car from like the 1930s and 40s. I don't even know if they invented keys yet. If you know how to drive a car, you could just take any car. Yeah, you tied your horse up to it. You pissed off the horse.

That's how you started a car. I remember. The first poor dude to have his car stolen before they figured out they needed keys, just watching them drive away. Hey. Hey. My bus. That's mine. Who steals a bus?

What are you going to do with it? All right. I'm going to skip ahead a little because it is, it's dumb. It's stupid. This part, though, is very smart. With the end of the war, Alfred Dukes returned to Israel in 1945 and became instrumental in smuggling Jews out of internment camps on Crete and delivering delivering, delivering Tel Aviv.

The British loathed him. Sorry, he returned to Israel when? 1945. I'm sorry, continue. I don't know why I settled on that line. They're just going to, they're just going to hit you. They hit everyone different where you're like, because you can pause any sentence and be like, hold on, which lie am I going to focus on?

I don't think it exists yet, but sure. Go ahead. Which of the seven lies in the sentence? The British loathed him because of his command of the English language, his antagonistic attitude, and his familiarity with their standard operating procedures. And because, damn it, he didn't look like a bloody Jew. That's in quotes. That's what one British officer shouted in frustration after my father had stolen a British truck loaded with guns. So that's what he shouted after the stolen British truck. Somebody has taken his truck full of guns and he says, quote, damn it, he didn't look like a bloody

shoe. That guy's racism goes deep. That shit's like to his bones. I mean, his fellow guards are stunned. Like, we don't even know why you made that connection. Like, they have to, they have to assume like, like, he's, I guess, I guess he's lucky that it turned out to be a Jewish guy that that he yelled that at? Because like

he couldn't have verified he's driving away. You can't now verify. So he must have just assumed by the nature of stealing that bus that he of course had to be a Jewish man and it sucks that he was right. Yeah. He lost a lot of, I think he lost a lot of players to his regular

Friday poker game that day is what I'm saying. Like a lot of guys are like, I don't want to hang out with that dude anymore. I feel like there's something going on there. I like that was his way of checking IDs too. He's like, is he along on this military base?

You look. You could go through. You pass. Buddy, that was a golden retriever. What? Just driving a bus on two wheels. Right and blasted through the gate. Oh, God damn.

It was a Jewish guy again. The heat is on is playing. We got to invent keys. All right. So I'm going to skip ahead a little. Where Frank Duke says often, in wrestling with my own sense of identity, I would inexplicably find myself searching for pieces of my father and grandfather's pasts, as if they could provide me with a sense of who I was.

I remind myself that I am the third known generation involved in espionage and special warfare, and that in my blood stirred my childhood dreams of one day entering that mysterious world. What I did not understand then was that all things are two-sided, and to realize such a dream also opens the floodgate for nightmare. vicious victims, the horrors of the concentration camps, and the long litany of human suffering one must confront an added measure if one commits to making the dream a reality. What is he talking about?

He's talking about his dream coming true of being a spy, but oh my God, what about all the bad things of international espionage? But all the holocausts you have to do? You do a few genocides when you work for the CIA. He found himself unprepared and surprised by like the bad stuff that happens around spies. Like funny, that's the whole job. Yeah. There isn't any other part to the job where you just like, oh, I thought my dad would, I thought I meant bus tour guide.

I thought that was, oh, oh, the spy thing sucks, man. If you're a third generation spy, consider a name change. I don't know. Like maybe they're looking out for the Duke's boys. I don't know. All them Duke's boys. I just made that connection. We've just been doing the impression wrong.

You've got to do the ball song. I didn't know he was Jewish. That actually is something he would say probably. Yeah. I think that is a direct quote from the Duke's of answer. Yeah. The least racist thing on that episode, probably. Bata, bap, bap, hat swamp.

All right, this next, we're going on the next chapter. Chapter 6, Origins. So he's already given us several origin stories. It's time for one more. Yeah, we're six chapters deep. Now it's time for origin. Finally, we can get to his origins. Hold on.

We watched him as, like, we learned how he fucks as a teenager, and that wasn't, that wasn't in the origin story. No, we learned the generational, the generation. liars passed down from father to son. And that was the bus thing wasn't part of the origin story? He's already, he's already tracked fish at this point, right? Or was that a nested flashback? Oh, no, you're right.

I think that might have been a nested flashback. I think he's, I think he's got a little bit of time before fish. But who could know? None of this is like, I don't think he closed any of those flashback. So this is still a flashback. This is all still preface. We're all still in preface. I think technically this is a story he's telling to a bored date.

Yeah, right. If I remember correctly. This is still the date story. Yeah, this is still, he's still telling all this. My dad would drive buses full of Jews. Just like, good God. Just ramped him straight through the air in the general league. He did what?

What? And here's the 11 reasons. The newspaper says I'm lying. And here's 12 that counteract those lies. Okay, okay. So here's the story he's telling. his childhood. I pass my mother the matzo with horseradish that when eaten becomes the ritualistic symbol reminding us of the bitterness of slavery. Personally, it has come to represent the pain that comes

from not being able to fulfill one's potential or to pursue one's dreams. I watch my father sucking spoonfuls of horseradish between his plump lips. The sight is enough to make my eyes water. According to his oft-given explanation, his tolerance for its cutting flavor originated and 1943 when in the unforgiving heat of the Sahara, he and his company had to survive on horseradish and limited amounts of water over a period of weeks. To me, his tolerance is merely another embodiment of his defiant resistance to life's hardship.

I love that his idea of the toughest thing a dude could eat is spoonfuls of horseradish. That's the toughest thing a dude can eat. That's your uphill both ways story is I was lost in the desert and had nothing to eat but horse radish. Horse radish. And all the water I needed, don't worry. I had plenty of water, but just nothing but horse radish. You need for the horseradish. You need for the horse radish. Let me tell you. You do not want to eat nothing but horse radish. His tolerance for horseradish, you know, the condiment that people put on sandwiches.

Now, the thing about Frank Dukes is he finds his own metaphors and symbolism, very fascinating. So he continues. This is a man who has consumed enough bitterness to make one weep in despair, yet I have never seen him shed a tear. Indeed, he appears to thrive on the hardships, transforming them into pleasures just as he now scrapes the jar of horseradish and licks the spoon clean to make sure he has gotten every last bit. His dad's coming. His dad's coming in that jar. That empty jars is filled once more. Oh, Fred, my mother shrieks, why do you do this to me year after year? Mom complains. As per tradition, my father has put too much horseradish on her matzah with a chuckle. He scoops up the excess horseradish. and gleefully plunges it into his mouth. Stop.

He's really having fun in this world of writing. Chapter 6. Horse radish. They're just splashing around in horse radish. Yeah. A little horseplay, if you will. Oh, that's cute. That's going in the book.

Oh, man. He just consumes a jar of horseradish every day. He's powered on it like fucking. Popeye. Just guzzling down horse radish. See, this is what you need. You need the good, clean energy of horse radish to start stealing buses. This is how I found in Israel in 1945.

He can't even get through a fucking dinner without saying something so insane. Just the most deranged thing. It's like he gets, he gets like an idea in his head. And instead of even just gut checking that once, it's time to like just. just absolutely wrench every drop out of that idea. He's like, and the idea was just like, what is something unpleasant to eat that my dad was like, he likes spicy food, I bet.

He like, it's the same impulse as like, oh, my dad can eat a lot of hot sauce. He loved his hot sauce, my tough dad. Although he decided that, like, we all just played in hot sauce all day. He lived. My dad lived in the desert off of nothing but hot sauce. You got to stop at some point.

You just need somebody to, you need a handler. Yes. He's a fascinating writer. He really is. So here's a story about when he was a kid and a dog tried to take his jacket and his mom hit the dog with a rolling pin. I'm going to skip ahead. Oh, is this the beginning of his like dog murdering fetish?

Ah, dude, he gasped that dog. He gasped that dog. Oh, the mother says, I can't honestly say which one was foaming more at the mouth? The dog or Frank? Okay. Yeah, he hates those dogs. Frank was furious at the dog. He was, she had to hit it with a rolling pin because what Frank was going to

do, baby Frank? Yep, far worse. She has obtained an eccentric reputation. Neighbors did not know what to make of the hot-tempered and pregnant Hungarian Jew, who, with her three-year-old in tow, took lengthy afternoon strolls with a highly visible vodka bottle in her purse. Passers by were outraged to see her paws and take a long drink, or even worse, pass the bottle to me in my stroller.

Your stroller didn't have the fine manual dexterity to hold the bottle yet. but she's just little tiny baby hand coming out. Yeah, palming in like a basketball. Hold on. So she's pregnant. There's a three-year-old in tow and Frank is in the baby stroller. So there's a pregnant woman taking a swig. Okay, but oh, okay.

So he's a three-year-old in a stroller. Frank. I guess he's been drinking all morning so that maybe I should be taking this one. He's not in any kind of shape to walk. He's a day drunk, three-year-old. There's one more line I wanted to read here. It says, Once a wino stopped her for a swig of the vodka bottle.

His face wrinkled in surprise and then disgust as he spat out a mouth full of water. We needed to get that twist in there. No, hold on. What does that do? So everybody was a liar? It was liars breeding with liars to produce like the world's greatest liar and some sort of lying eugenics? It was a real low stakes trick to get the neighborhood to think she was drinking during pregnancy and feeding her toddler liquor. Four?

What end? She could steal a bus. She's too drunk to steal this bus. I'm going to take my eyes off her. What? She didn't look Jewish. Oh, damn it. She didn't look Jewish.

So now he tells the story about when he was 13 and he's hanging out with his father's friend, no name, just some guy who worked in the next shop, you know, like a real person. What that toughest son of a bitch you've ever seen. How much horseradish did this guy eat, man? He had survived Auschwitz, where the furnaces incinerated so many bodies that the ashes blanketed the surrounding miles of country like snowfall. Trainloads of soap were melted from human bones. Lampshades peeled from human skin. Although many of my relatives had been murdered at Auschwitz, and my mother's mother had

survived the camps in body, but not in spirit. My father's friend made the stories real for the first time. He told me that his brother had escaped the Nazis, only to be imprisoned in Siberia. After the war, they were reunited. But again, they nearly died from forced labor and starvation, despite his past suffering. Or perhaps because of it, he always proclaimed that life was precious and not to be treated frivolously. One day, he heard the clatter of the train on the railroad tracks that ran directly behind the warehouse. I liked its reassuring sound.

But that day, the din of the train was punctured by a man screams. We rushed out to join the small crowd that had already gathered around a broken body on the ground. He threw himself in front of the engine, somebody said. My father's friend stared at the mangled body and unconsciously rubbed his own arm as if trying to erase the tattoo. Coward, he said, finally.

Then turned and walk away. Back in the day before television, we'd just like to go around and heckle suicides. We would just talk shit. The suicides. Like the fresh body. What up? Look at this pussy.

Am I right, guys? What about this nameless father's friend who couldn't even remember his name to impart it to us? Like, affected him more than the family members he allegedly had murdered and his mother's own experience. Like his own family's personal experience. It's like, no, no, no, this guy. This guy really, this is what unlocked. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but this dude's experience is what really made it real for me. Oh, Magneto.

Magneto was his name. It's just come back to me. We're going to, I think that's enough of that chapter. For obvious reasons, we're going to go to chapter seven, which is called training. My God, we're blowing through the book. We're blowing through the book. If I, I swear to God, if I find out every single chapter you skipped, every single, like, paragraph is just chock full of something we should have been talking about for two hours. We're going to do more of this podcast.

Well, that's definitely what happened. Like, every paragraph is like that. Every paragraph is like, so many people died that they had to take the finger bones to the moon because that's the only place they had in a fingerbone storage space. That's why to this day, you can't take fingers to the moon. It's just, I mean, I know it goes without saying, and it's very obvious for somebody like Frank Dukes, but, like, it's very telling the kinds of things he fantasizes about and, like, what he goes into descriptions of. It was like all the peeled skin for the lamp sheds.

And then this dude's story of heckling suicide and vengeance is what made the Holocaust real. But you're such a fucking asshole. It's like these tall tales that I feel like most people know and have heard of, but he's telling him like, no, no, I heard it from my dad's friend who worked in the next shop. A shit's real. Every inch of every memory of his is like, you can't do this even in an action movie because people get sick of it. Like it becomes funny where you're like, it can't be this gritty. Because if you, there have to be like normal moments in between.

But it's just you can't even have dinner without the horse radish being a symbol of masculinity. There's some sort of lost desert platoon. And every man died of horse radish poisoning except for my father. Like, you could just have a dinner. Like we actually need to see that as a break. Just without your dad rapidest, plump lips around fucking fat spoonfuls of

horsetrilege shoveling everyone's horse radish into his plump mouth yeah he's gone for dirty hairy and like hitting sledgehammer I guess if you're 55 years old yeah but that's also the difference is that timing and pacing of like

there are ordinary moments dirty hairy dirty hair isn't just nonstop plugging punks every single second of that movie right where you're like there is a normal world that exists this is not a normal world Every single person in it is an action hero. It's just, I mean, again, I know it's obvious, but I feel like it was worth just plainly stating that this is just so, he's so obviously a clown that worships violence and torturing people.

That's, that's Frank Dukes. This is it. I mean, you can't blame him. He was raised heckling suicides like that. That's true. That's true. Drunk off his ass since he was three years old. Okay, so this is, he's 13 years old now.

Never again. Again, this is all being told to his date. I swore to myself as I left the competition. Never again would I subject myself to such humiliation. I was giving up martial arts forever. It did not matter that I was only 13 years old, competing against high school seniors because of my advanced size. I had come in dead last in the judo tournament, and I wasn't going to allow that to happen again. With tears in my eyes, I pushed past my jiu-jitsu instructor. Good fight kid, he attempted to encourage me, but I was beyond encouragement. I was going away where no one would witness my shame.

Thank goodness the locker room was empty. I planned to get my things and flee. But when I sat down, a feeling of defeat overwhelmed me, and I could only bury my head in my arms and retreat into darkness. All my effort and training had been for nothing. Although in the beginning, I'd become involved in martial arts in an inexpensive form of recreation, my developing skills had provided me with a new sense of purpose and self-worth.

Now that confidence had turned on me and been proven false. I would never succeed. I was a chubby loser who'd never accomplish anything. Everything I did was done. doomed to failure. I did not hear anyone enter the locker room. So I was startled when a voice asked. When your opponent is swifter, stronger, and more experienced than you, what must you do? I raised my tear-stained face to look up at the speaker. Before me stood an old oriental man. If I stood up, I tower over him. Run like hell, I snarled sarcastically. He smiled and took a few steps forward.

he made no sound when he moved and his movements contained a youthfulness he did not slouch or drag his feet the way old people I knew did his onyx black eyes mirrored his smile Hold on hold on he's got all right spiders like shark's eyes

Yeah this stopped being an Asian man When he had when he had supernatural demon eyes And he didn't make sound when he hit the floor He's that clone from the crawl He's the evil clone crawl Yeah. He's a paper-thin shell of a human being. Like, no, that's, this stops being Asian when you're this racist. Even if you mean it positively.

Like, this stops being recognizable. You know, he's oriental, like you call an Asian person. And he levitates like their people do. And he's got black doll's eyes like a shark. Yeah. Yes. I love, we snuck in perhaps the first moment of, of believable Frank Dukes where I wrote that down to. I was a chubby child.

Oh, hold on. Hold on. That starts to make sense. I think that might be the only bit of truth in the book. And that I like, but I do like that he yet. And I also, I do believe he came in dead last in his martial arts competition because he took strip mall judo and thought he could take everybody in the competition. I'd even believe he got molested in his locker room. Wait, no, no, Jamie got that.

It's okay because it wasn't an Asian man. This is clearly a demon. Right. Yes. That's true. This is more of it. He got incubused. Yeah, this is a horror book.

He did say he pushed past his jujitsu instructor, and I just wanted to point out that that means his jujitsu instructor isn't very good. Yeah, he allowed him to push past. That's the exact thing. That's the moment I knew. Yeah. Yeah, if he was any good, he instinctively wrist-locked me and threw me onto my back. Exactly.

cursing is trading for killing another child. I do love that he had to couch his one truth where I was a chubby child who thought he was tougher than he was. And I came in dead last in my judo competition, which should be in the origin. That should be the only thing in the Frank Duke's Origins chapter. That is the origin story. That's the reason for all of this. Yes. But he also had to couch that in.

But, well, you see, I was fighting exclusively high schoolers. Yeah. Because of my size. But then to follow that with chubby means like I was so fat they had to put me against high school. It advanced horizontally, mostly. I don't think that's how that works. Yeah, you're a chubby 13-year-old. You have to fight that jacked 17-year-old.

If you get fat enough as a child, you've got a box an adult. That's just how it used to be. Fight Ronald, the floor manager from Comp USA. You want me to beat up that fat kid? All right. All right, all right. This fucking Christmas for old Ronald. Never say no.

So this old guy tells him that he has the ability to die well. Because again, just... Are you summarizing? Because don't. Read me exactly what he says. Perhaps, he replied, but the outcome would nonetheless be inevitable. I would say one should learn to die well. What do you want?

I demanded. I was not usually so rude. But disappointment overwhelmed my better nature to the point where I no longer cared. That's a very, very funny thing to say. It wasn't sure to learn to die well. What do you fucking want? Oh my God.

Yeah. He's trying to get this script moving. Merely to say that I think you have the potential to die very well. Try as I could to fight the urge. I found myself becoming more and more intrigued. My God, if there's anything that would get you arrested, it's sneaking into the 13-year-old's locker room to tell them they have the potential to die well. shuffling in to the locker room without a soundlessly.

And your fucking demon's eyes. Sir, we have reports of you floating around telling children they're about to die. That's Ron's job. You're some kind of vampire. You're taking Ron's job. He picked a chubby 13-year-old that came in last in a judo competition to be the chosen one. Yes, 100%.

My reddened eyes took in the deep, heavy scar on his cheek, as if the flesh had not been cut but gouged out. His left pinky finger was missing. His appearance demanded attention, and something in his manner was intensely compelling. Sure, I replied. My protective anger died as quickly as it interrupted, and once again I felt overwhelmed but failure.

Die. That's about all I can do. Jeez, dying. Yes. Yes, it is. It came in last, buddy. It's going to be okay. Dying well as our ultimate accomplishment,

the man answered. I meant what I said as a compliment. You did not give up. Okay, I want to stop you. He's been giving up for like fucking five straight ages. You walked in on him giving up. Yes. He specifically said, I am in the process of giving up.

Oh, I did not. I'm sorry, I didn't realize. It's like trying to save a kid who's aggressively drowning himself. I thought you were like stealing yourself after the competition. I didn't hear your internal monologue. I didn't realize you were quitting. So I was totally wrong, totally wrong. you're going to die like a pussy little boy.

I'm just going to hit the next locker room over. You did not give up. You made your opponents breathe very hard for victory. You want to take that one again? Don't. Don't. Don't let this guy. Surely we had some sort of system.

I know, I know they didn't have ID badges, but like, some sort of system to keep guys like visibly deformed shark-eyed sex predators out of our youth's locker rooms. He can't stop him. He's that good at karate. He's moving without a sound, man. What are you supposed to do? Yeah, what he's supposed to do? He bowed as short. Kurt bowed to me. He lowered the top of his head with its few remaining gray hairs before me. For a moment, I wondered if he was mocking me. He completed the bow and once again looked into my eyes. For some reason, I then knew that he had just shown me. a gesture of respect. I didn't know why. I was a loser. Why would this guy show any interest in me? All I could think of was that he was either some kind of weirdo or else about to present some sort of sales pitch. His next statement appeared to confirm my latter suspicion. Imagine as a master

of the Asian arts, booze become so powerful through karate that you no longer have a human appearance. Finding the last place in a 13-year-old judo competition and giving him a deep bow of respect, like you would, you would never be able to take yourself seriously again. Even if, even if it was just to lure that boy out to devour his soul. Yeah, I think they ban you from Yoda school if you do that. Like, does he ever answer any of those questions? Like, why would he choose me a loser who just got in last place like a big dumb loser? Does he answer that question? Or is he just like, not really. That's a good point because like that's the, especially in like the, he's pulling from, you know, old, old, like, martial arts movies, very early martial arts movies.

We're like, yeah, and it was always like, the master is so brutal on his opponents. And he will often pick the losers. But like, he's got the relationship inverse because, like, that was the Yoda thing. We're like, Yoda wasn't showing deep respect to Luke Skywalker. He was goofing on him. He's gliding on the whole time trying to get him to quit. And only once he had proven, like, his tenacity was he like, okay, let's teach you this serious shit. That's the old kung fu movie thing.

It's not the other way around. It's not like you show up, giving up, and then he shows you a deep bow out of respect for your last place in the childhood judo competition. That's not how this relationship works. Yeah, it's a good point. He skipped ahead. He didn't want to write that part of the story. Yeah, you didn't want to write the part where the master clowns on him the whole time and he has to like, no, I was just worthy. I think he and the other kung fu masters got to get in.

They're doing like, I can't buy me love or a she's all that where they're like, I bet you. I bet you one million kung fu dollars. You can't take the fattest loser and turn him into a spy master. And then he realized once he takes that gie off, he's beautiful. No, cut that. Exactly. Sorry, cut that one too. You're right.

We should definitely cut that. The mysterious man in the boys' locker room, he wants him to garden for him in exchange for karate lessons because he trains his nephews and he needs. Because Frank Dukes saw the karate kid. Yes. I'm going to read you a passage where you might see. some similarities. But he has been training him with his nephews. This part was in the movie Bloodsport

where he's like, if you expect me to be his punching bag, you can't forget it. That part is from the book. The San Francisco New York Giants hat. Yes, the San Francisco New York Giants hat. So he makes him breathe and meditate. He smacks him with a stick when his mind waters. He's kind of got telepathy. But now I'm going to read you this part.

He taught me how to... Right, he's a demon. He taught me how to climb in the narrow spaces between two buildings using only outstretched hands and legs, although at first I was barely able to climb ten feet before being overcome by exhaustion and my fear of heights. Within six months, I was able to do 60 feet without even breathing hard. Even our gardening work doubled as training. Do nothing which is of no use, the old man quoted, and his adherence to this precept was demonstrated his attitude toward the most menial of chores. He taught me to consider raking as circle blocks or

quick strikes, I would spin a rake or hoe between strokes to develop agility and increase dexterity, unknowingly repeating the traditional training methods of the Japanese peasants who made up the majority of ninja super ranks. Wallpaper on, he said, wallpaper off. Yes, very, very thinly disguised. No, because see, it's gardening here instead of waxing his car. Exactly. I love thinking of that scene in the karate kid where he teaches Ralph Machio to shoot up between building six stories like Batman. Just a montage of him getting his legs fixed in the hospital? This is part of your gardening training.

You got to get the vines way up high. How to suck jam off toes in a booth. No, hold on. That's unfair. That was the CIA. That's true. That was the CIA training. I'm sorry.

Still as a teenager, though. Consumed as I was in my struggles. Not only did I suffer emotionally, but the hot smoggy summer had triggered a series of intense asthma attacks that left me physically drained. Sensing my pain, Tanakasama introduced me to a new series of breathing exercises designed to alleviate my suffering. Although the attacks continued, the exercises provided me with some relief and reinstituted my belief that I possessed some measure of control over my situation. He encouraged me, inspiring me with the stories of asthmatics who had overcome their ailments. Che Guevara!

The doctor-in-turned-revolutionary had suffered profoundly from asthma, he proclaimed. Most importantly, perhaps he told me the story of how the art and science of Akito came to be developed. Ushiba Morhai had suffered from asthma and had devised Akito specifically as a means by which he could defend himself with minimal effort to avoid a debilitating asthma attack. That's why Stephen Segal moves like that. Exactly. That's why he hasn't lost weight in 70 years. He's trying to prevent asthma attacks. It's the only fighting method for asthmatics.

I understand that. I guess does it work with cholesterol too? Yeah. If your arteries are clogged, you do taekwondo if you get asthma. Literally talking about how he has to do the special martial arts for people with asthma. When you put it like that, it sounds silly. For the chosen one, worthy of all of this knowledge, The last place in a jukeyeo contest, 13-year-old jumping child with asthma.

Yep. He shall be our mystic champion. There's got to be an easier way to steal a white child than this. Like, even back in the day, right? No, I think candy and karate are the easiest ways, right? Right. You get to kidnap the hell out of me with either of those things. Get a fan, dude.

From that moment, I began to formulate my own personal guidelines for developing techniques that possessed efficiency and velocity, each strike to a lot. either to immobilize or to kill an opponent quickly. I always assumed my hypothetical opponents to be armed. Thus, I was prepared for the challenge and not subject to surprise. It's amazing. No other martial art has thought, what if all of my strikes were as deadly as possible?

Like, nobody thought of that before him. They were like, let's throw a few goofy ones in for fun. No, no, no, no. What if you punched hard the first time like Batman? It is a good idea. And nobody thought of it. of it until him. Not even his master taught him this. He realized this while he was doing, hold on, rake tricks. Spinning rake tricks. Yeah, he was out there spinning a rake around instead

of raking. Literally the Star Wars kid. What if I killed with every blow as he spins the rake around and it gets away from him and it's wax him in the side of the head and he cries a little bit. At the time, however, my experimentation and new approaches often created conflicts between my classmates in me. As my own individual style began to emerge, others became jealous in addition. My immaturity caused me. What other? Sorry.

Oh, others of the, I guess, the nephews. Oh, sure. Of the gardening school? Yeah, the gardens, the other landscapers are like, God, this guy's so fucking cool. The rest of the outdoor overweight asthmatic gardening class that I'm taking. Right? The garden flagged core spinning rakes

in addition my immaturity caused me to think of fancy tricks calculated to impress my peers as the ultimate goal of my endeavors so we've we've gone quite a distance from I was kidding I was kidding about the flag court and he literally says fancy tricks

yeah literally I believe same same sentence as like every every blow was designed to kill whoops I started goofing Yep, I'm mostly focused on Goofan. Same sentence. By my 21st birthday in public demonstrations, I'd split a lit candle wick the size of a fly. The candle held tightly in my assistant's hand. I was not the first to perfect the technique, but I was the first to turn my back on the candle

and then lunge from 10 feet away to extinguish the flame before a dropped coin could hit the floor. Dude, you do not put your back to a candle. That is bold. Too many things. That's too, that's classic like, classic. magician's mistake. It's just too many things. I know with the trick. I agree. Audience can't follow. Oh, he's dropping a coin. He's putting out a candle. I'm, I was watching the coin. I didn't see the cool thing he did with the candle. I thought he was

going to do something with the coin. What did he split the wick with? His hand? The right? I guess so. Yeah. I'm not quite sure what. Also, he's 20, 21. So this is after the CIA training then. Yes. So this is after Vietnam when he, well, I think it was 14 Vietnam. Yeah. After after the Marine boot camp after the CIA well CIA was pre marine boot camp he split a lit wick the size of a fly right that's what he said yeah what could it have because that's really small that's very thin so it couldn't have been his hand it couldn't have been the rake I would like like shiricans maybe that could be maybe he did it with like it's like a finger poke oh maybe yeah like a hair whip have avatar style air bending they just like

stopped just shyness. Yeah. And it was such with laser precision. Because you got to, you got to remember at this point, like in his development, he's already been taught to lick jam off of toes and a bistro by the CIA. Like,

this is a man who has lived a full life. It would be kind of surprising if you didn't have air powers. Fair. Yeah. No, I accept that. I agree. He does some more dumb training stuff. He's kind of not getting the praise that he wants to spite.

being so good at ninjitsu. Despite himself being the author of these lies. Yeah. I'm not telling any lie you want, man. You could be the greatest. You could have been a praise I want. I just, I'm a, I've been a spy. I've been the youngest to Marine.

I was raised on horse radish and vodka. Man, you can kick Godzilla in the nuts. Anything goes, man. I entered his house that morning, weary and defiant. If the old man is going to tear me down, I give him a real reason. For today's lesson, each pupil was required to bring a weapon of his choosing, one that would best represent his talent and reflect his personality. Tysen brought his father's katana sword and proclaimed that he was ninja, sharp as a blade.

I on the other hand... Hold on, hold on. Tom, do you have a guess? Oh, what his weapon is? Oh, he brings the sword, right, from Bloodsport. Well, somebody already brought a sword. I think he gets the sword from this. I think he brought the horseradish spoon.

Oh, fuck, you're right. He probably did. Yeah. Yeah. I brought his father's katana. What does he have of his father? A bus? He could have a bus.

Several jeeps. Filled with jeeps. This is my weapon. I, on the other hand, appeared the fool. Partly out of anger and frustration, I showed up with a long metal grill, an electric cord, a thin green blanket and a pale of water. Everyone laughed at my joke except for Tanaka Sama. He remained silent, running his hand over the few remaining hairs on his head as I defiantly stared back at him. Tysen made some comment that related the objects to a deviant lifestyle.

In response, I invited Tysen to defeat me with his sword. I placed the blanket on the floor between us and then positioned the long grill on top. I attached the electric cord to the grill. He patiently waited for me to do all of this. Holding the bale of water ready, I asked Tyson if he cared to rethink his decision to fight me. The other boys laughed as Tyson quickly, backed away from the grill. My God. What the fuck?

He made a fucking like torture Perea? I don't know what the fuck is. He made like a Wiley Coyote electricity trap. Yeah, he made a cartoonish electricity trap. And the boy stood there and watched all of this. It's like, hold on. All of it. Between like him saying.

no, uh, watch this, then like five minutes of blanket set. The boy was just like, yes, yes, I shall wait. It's like wait for this bit to pay off. This orcs must die trap you're setting up. Right, yeah, it's like you're telling him to wait while you position a boulder above his head. He has a sword the whole time. Just kill him. What are you doing?

What is the meaning of this, Tanaka Sama demanded angrily. It means he's getting a real charge out of this fight, remarked his nephew, Ushiba. Always the Joker. I looked only at the old man. The greatest warrior is he who wins without battle, I quoted. Tanaka Sama stared at me until I dissolved beneath his gaze. Go. You know that's not what he meant.

You know what electric blanket trap is not what he meant by wins without battle. I would put that in somewhere within battle, I guess. Within the parentheses of battle. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly not a de-escalation to, electric torture your opponent. Yeah, it's way down there as like, as like little modifiers you can add to battle for fun. Like, right. Yeah. Electric blanket if things are getting a little stale. Yeah, like, Home Alone booby trap is not turning the other cheek. Right. I agree. That's what it is.

It's a home alone booby trap, which is a form of battle, certainly. Yeah, it's a form of battle. Yeah. Home Alone's not a romantic comedy. It's a, it's a burglar murder movie. So, Tanaka Saman and sends his nephews away. And when they had left, he commanded me to bow. By now my cockiness had deserted me and I steeled myself in expectation of a tongue lashing. You are not Japanese, was all he said before turning and leaving me there on my knees in the middle of the room. Hold on. Where'd that one come from? I don't know. But that did make it to the movie. That was in Bloodsport. Yeah, but it's weird how the electric blanket part didn't. Like, it's weird. Correct. It's weird. It's weird how that part didn't make it into Bloodscourt.

We didn't see Young Man Jam setting up a wet blanket and trying to lure his opponent onto an electric grill. Something a Michael Madsen character would do. I didn't realize that was the secret impetus to the You Are Not Japanese. Like in the movie, they made it like, I can never teach you the full depth of my style because it's a Japanese thing. I think we would have been less on his side if he was doing that in front of a wet, sparking, I agree. A Japanese would never mistreat the blanket, so. It's more of a villain moment, yeah, than a hero moment.

I brought this homemade muskrat trap to a street fight. He's like, what weapons did you bring, students? He's like, I brought a box filled with rats and enough room to put a human head in it. You are not Hungarian. Angar. Despite your rat box, you are not Hungarian. Okay. Okay. So he's really pissed off about this. You're not Japanese thing. He never explains in the book what it means why he said it. But he's very grouchy about it. He's like, how the fuck I was supposed to help that? It's amazing how the movie, the movie gave that moment meaning.

Yeah. Where you're like in a way that's felt very natural. It's like, oh, that's like sort of a reserved but proud racism. It's amazing that the movie thought to do that with this as the source material. I would never have gotten there. Like if I had read this and you have to adapt this, like, I got to work this blanket in somehow is what I would have been thinking. Yeah, that's the part you would have put in the movie. Yeah, I agree. You would have really seized on the blanket. Master's disappointment, not so much. It's really the electric blanket that got me. This real scumbagged booby trap that you brought that you thought was going to delight your master.

It's such a pivotal moment that I would have been like that I have to use this in the final battle. Like this has to be how Van Damme defeats Chong late. Right? Yeah. Yeah, he has to lure them onto the blanket trap. And then tell him he's not Chinese. God, that's a good idea. I guess.

What difference did it make that I was not born Japanese? Could I help it? Sunday came and I appeared and my teachers as usual. We worked out in silence, perspiring heavily in the hot summer sun. Immediately afterward, Tanakasama took me into the yard and paraded me in front of two men. I recognized one of them, an Israeli who had visited my father a number of times through the years. They would always disappear in another room and converse for hours behind the closed door. Don't like this.

My father never formally introduced us, but I recognize the man from the old photographs my father kept in the thick black album with a water-stained cover. Do you recognize him from photographs or did he come over all the time? That's a good question. He wrote both.

Come on, Frank. And I guess we just pick the lie we like that. Right, yeah. You can do both. You can recognize somebody from photographs and from the times they've been to your house. That's true. Maybe he's just like really proud of his object recognition.

That's the same guy. Yeah, maybe that's him, like, he's doing good journalism. He got a second source. You got to check up on it. Yeah, picture checks out, holding it up next to the guy. Yeah, yep. Although the man was short and rather odd looking, his eyes cut right through me. And I had spent as little time around him as possible.

Something warned me that he was not trustworthy. Can we just skip this whole section? I don't like where this is going. Okay. I can skip ahead a little because what this is is two men. who are from the spy agency. Okay, okay, go ahead. You don't have to skip it.

I was going to a different place. Bringing your secret children that you stole from a locker room out to parade in front of men, strange men who give the children a bad feeling. The word choice is bad, for sure. I thought it was going to a different direction. No, I want to hear the spy shit. Nonetheless, the man had been one of his comrades during the Second World War and in Israel during the late 40s, as evidenced by the photos in my father's album,

He had my father often walked arm in arm, excitedly swapping stories in incomprehensible Hebrew. Although I never suggested it aloud, his mysteriousness and my active imagination led me to suspect that he was a member of the Mossad. The other man was a stranger to me. Okay. So these guys, they're there to recruit him. This is general force. The other man is general forceman, United States Air Force. he's the head of European intelligence operations in the mid to late 70s.

I think this might be a real guy. And he really did recruit children from gardening school, asthmatics, almost exclusively, as I recall. Only the ones who are really good at twirling rakes. His graduate thesis was torture. How many dogs did he kill? I love the longstanding implication he's building throughout this whole book, is that all of the CIA and the government secret agencies in the United States government recruit exclusively from child trafficking sources

just just wandering around to different child traffickers and being like, can I take this one? Like, yeah, I've made sure I did my groundwork. Nobody wants it. Nobody likes this one. You know, not going to be missed. He's good at climbing and sadism. Kids who lose karate tournaments.

Kids in leather jackets hitchhiking. Can't fight for shit. Can't really breathe. Only have to feed them horseradish, so pretty low cost. low upkeep on this one. He's got his father's plump lips. Keep that in, Jamie.

Keep that shit in, Tammy. All right. That's the end of the podcast, everybody. Thanks for joining us. This was a mistake. We're sorry. Welcome World Warriors to the second annual hot dog Kumete Supreme Division. You are all here because you are the best fighters, your country,

school or local strip mall can produce. Let's get this roll call started. Adrian H. Looks like you're fighting frog style. I don't know that one. A lot of jumps, I presume. Alex Nolenberg. Un-Andi.

Armando Nava, you're fighting crane style. That's a classic, notorious warriors, the cranes. Brandon Garlock, Rockway famously loves the meat millie. Christopher Worthing. See you're fighting crab style. Nice. Dan B.

Dusty's Red title, Elevator, Fate Elevator of the name. Can you define for me what magical morality elevator style is? Uh-huh, uh-huh. That's fucked up. God have mercy on your opponents. Elizabeth Shoke, Eric Christian Bird, says here you're also fighting crab style. Don't worry, no rule against pinch it. Jello, Greg Cunningham. Alpha scientist, Javo, uh, you appear to be some sort of shaved beast entered as a joke?

Uh, looking around here, actually, let's do this all at once. Please roar or shriek if you're actually a shaved beast entered as a joke. Got it. Toasty God. Matt Riley, Devin, the Rogue Supreme, Timmy Leahy, Mr. Bob Gray, I'm going to need you all to step out of line. But good news, we will be holding an all-naked novelty beast division next month. Get your shock. Grumpy Phoenix, Harvey Pengweenie, you will be fighting using Uninvited Uncle style?

Gross, man. I'll be a law against you, people. Up to, but there's not, welcome to the Kumatee. Honk. James Boyd. Jared Mountain Man. Jeff Araskey, are you? Are you also using crab style?

No, no, it's not a problem. We just try to mix it up a little more here in the Kumetei. John Dean, John McCammon, John Minkoff, All good? Joshua Graves, you... Did you not hear me when I asked all-shaved novelty beasts to vacate the line? Oh, you're not shaved. Oh, you have alopecia.

But you are a beast. Let me... No, no, you're right. Nothing in the rule book. You air-budded me. That's a fair play. Justin B. Katzat Studios.

Ken Paisley. Says here you'll be using gun style. Now, does that mean you just brought a gun? No. No rule against it. I'm just I'm honestly amazed nobody tried it before. Uh, K&M, Lisa. Leopard Queen, you're fighting leopard style. Love to see the classics again. I am curious to see how that will counter gun, though.

M. Jahi Chappelle. Mark. Max Broy. Michael Lair, you'll be using, uh, insane, I don't know this one, insane vehicle style? Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Michael Lair is an insane vehicle and will be using American Fender Kenpo Karate. Gotcha. Mort. N.D. Neil Bailey. Neil Schaefer. Again, using crab style. What's going on? Folks, is there a new dojo in town or what? Must be good. Nick Levino, obsolete. Says here you don't have a style and you're just going to fucking flip out when you get in there. That's a solid play. Orner Weevil, Ozzie Olin, Patrick Hertz is going to try negotiating.

All right. Pee-Wee's uncle, practical ZFS, re-brandroo, red wine time, you're using drunken kung fu, okay, oh, what was that? One more time? I can't, I can't understand... Oh, no kung fu, you're just drunk. Got it. Rianit, Russell Fowman, Sam Cotnick, Sean Logan Chase uses human tornado style.

Hell yeah, man, can you do the noises? That's great, it cracks me up every time. time seed tater's tails Thomas Cavatzos you're using clone Jutsu I didn't know that was real it's not it's from a cartoon then what are you gonna all right never mind your business Tommy G Velo Ivan Clapham Zach and Eva oh I'm sorry Zach and Eva no tag teams in the Supreme Division you're conjoined can I see where oh excuse me that makes me the pervert I'm the pervert for trying to do my job. All right, all right, you know, you have it your way. Super knot.

Your crab style. Hold on, hold on, there's something wrong with the rest of my list. Uh, Jaber, Al Aden, Spotty reception, Dean Costello. All crabs? You are. Booster, Brian Sailor, Sarah, Crab, Crab, Crab, Crab, Crab, all the way down, all right. Whalen Russell, Crab, Elylew, Neku 104, Crab, Crab, David Schult. What's that? Mudflat fiddler style. Good, I was worried these were all gonna be cra- Oh, that's a type of crab style. Okay.

Space Jam fan, you crab? You crabbing? Okay. Victor Malavankan, no need to answer. I can see you're scuttling right now. Craig Lemoy. Also crab? Also crab.

Oh, fancy shark. That's more like it. I got you down as shark style in the fancy subdivision. Good on you, pal. What's that? No, you cannot change crab style. this late in the game. I don't care how much fun it looks like they're having. All right, all right folks, settle down, settle down. Let's get this kumato started.

If you'll all head in through these doors single file and hey, hey craps, craps, craps, craps, craps, craps, craps, hey, stop it. Crabs, stop pulling each other back. One of you has to go first.