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My Best Hot Dog Articles of the Year
Every year, 1-900 Hot Dog picks a few paid articles by each author to make free. This year, they asked members of the community to decide, and they chose some of my disgusting and bizarre pieces. They range from a Canadian made-for-TV movie about a skateboarding alien to a self-published novella by a meat maniac…
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Balloonatiks: Christmas Without a Claus
It’s been nearly three years since I wrote about the Balloonatiks, the dogged attempt of one latex fetishist to make his living balloon superhero team into a transmedia empire. Like Sisyphus, Tony DiIoia pushed a giant balloon up a hill for decades, only to see it tumble back down over and over. The fact that it…
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How the Hampsters Saved Winter
Getting old sneaks up on you. It’s a state of mind that takes hold bit by bit with every contemptuous dismissal of the new, every retreat to the familiar. I saw the middlingest minds of my generation destroyed by Tung Tung Tung Sahur, malding hysterical red-faced, dragging themselves through the timelines at dawn looking for The…
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Robot in the Family
We have fun around here, don’t we? We get silly. Ribald, even. We plumb the depths of the pop cultural landfill and have ourselves a great big chuckle at things that should not exist. But there are limits. Each of us here at 1-900 Hot Dog at some point encounters something so soul-rending, so antithetical…
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ASMR Church
Dennard: Help me out. Is this real, or a strawman I made ten years ago? Merritt: We are wanderers in the desert of the real. You’re asking the wrong question. Dennard: Sorry, that wasn’t clear. Is this an audiophile rendition of Old Testament wisdom, with youth-friendly graphics? You know, noise porn covering brain porn over anime porn? Merritt: Oh,…
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The Beano Book 1987
We need to talk about Dennis. That’s Dennis the Menace. I know what you’re thinking: “Dennis the Menace is a well-meaning blonde child who causes trouble for Mr. Wilson through humorous misunderstandings, you beautiful genius.” Of course, you’re right. But we live in a world where miracles are real. The two Dennises were independently launched…
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You Can’t Go Home Again: The Legacy of the Angry Video Game Nerd
This piece originally appeared in 2018 at ZEAL. Permit me, if you will, to take you back to the past. Way, way back a dozen years ago — before major gaming sites made comedy a key part of their video strategy, before most sites even had a video strategy. Before PewDiePies and Game Grumps and…
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Canadian Handbook for the Recently Embarrassingly Deceased
So: you’ve died in Canada. And as the famous saying goes, when you die in Canada, you die in real life, bud. There are plenty of dignified ways to go in the Great White North: crushed by moose, run down by zamboni, cut in half by Shania Twain. And then there are the deaths so…
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So You Wanna Be a Gambler! Learn how to Win at Slots
It used to be that you couldn’t gamble on your phone while jacking off and smoking weed. You used to have to go places to do things in America: a casino, the adult bookstore, your weird dealer’s house where you don’t know how long you’re supposed to hang out with him to be polite. We’ve become a…
