Welcome to the latest installment of People Who Hate Their Horses and Thus Give Them Terrible Names. I’ve been doing this review for four years now, and I can say with confidence that this year’s class of horse names is the worst I’ve ever covered. Just pure crap. So bad, so uninspired, that — well, I guess I’ll just let you see for yourself.

*Edit: this list was compiled earlier in the week, and there have been some alterations to the final lineup. I’ll cover them soon.
**Edit #2: Or maybe I won’t.

Palace Malice

This sounds like an early Nintendo game that probably wasn’t that good, but that I would be willing to spend a lot of time at because of masochistic pseudo-nostalgia. Or maybe it’s just the embodied malevolence of the ornate residence of a monarch. Either way, fun!

B+

Verrazano

In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazano became the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America – except for the fact that the Vikings had already done that. If you want to name your horse after something that had already been accomplished prior to the 11^th century, why not name it, I dunno, Writing Down Beowulf or Being An Idiot About Astronomy?

D

Java’s War

Five years of fighting between Dutch colonials and rebelling Javanese? Giddy up!

C

Charming Kitten

This isn’t one of those racist kittens that’s always drunk by 2 p.m. and looks for any excuse to rant about how global warming is a conspiracy peddled by godless commie Muslim welfare recipients who want to take his guns away. No, this is one of those rare, charming kittens.

C+

Winning Cause

The leading cause of winning is outperforming your opponents. Other causes include cheating and misunderstanding failure.

C+

Golden Soul

Gold is heavy. This horse is probably slow.

D

Frac Daddy

This horse is the father of both the Food Research and Action Center and the natural-gas-harvesting technique known as fraccing. I don’t want to tell Frac Daddy how to live, but maybe he should consider using condoms. Those kids clearly have different mothers.

C-

Mylute

What the hell is Mylute? I would say “diluted Mylanta,” but that’s actually a great name for a horse. Mylute is the opposite of that.

F

Black Onyx

Assuming we’re talking about the hip-hop group, “Black Onyx” is about as redundant as “White Neil Diamond.” Otherwise, “onyx” comes from the Latin for “fingernail,” and black fingernails tend to mean you slammed your hand in a drawer or something. So that’s a good name for a horse, right?

B

Goldencents

Hopefully this is a reboot of The Golden Girls, but with coins instead of old women. Otherwise, it’s a horse with a stupid name.

C

Orb

“Orb” might not sound impressively fast at first, but consider this: the celestial orb we call “Mercury” revolves around the sun every 88 days, which is four times faster than I do. Nonetheless, if I knew this horse, I would call it “Round Thing,” because Orb is a crappy name.

D+

Revolutionary

This horse is committed to overturning millennia of equine subjugation. It dreams of a world in which humans are trained their entire lives to run around an oblong track for no other reason than to see which one can complete the task the fastest. Er – wait a minute – that already happens. So I guess “Revolutionary” is a pun on “revolution” in the sense that it means going around in a circle.

B

Lines of Battle

When the race starts, all the other horses will sprint around the track in a rather direct path, but Lines of Battle has a different strategy. It’s going to advance a ways, be confronted by enemy combatants, fall back, entrench itself, fortify its position, engage in a lengthy battle of attrition, and lose the race by several months.

D+

Vyjack

Let’s pretend we don’t immediately think of the word “hijack” when we see Vyjack. We’re left with a horse named Jack that… should vie for something, I guess? But I can’t get behind the name Jack – it’s a name people only have on TV or in movies. In the real world, everyone is named Matt, Jeff, or Chris.

VyChris sounds like a black market boner pill. D

Will Take Charge

This horse is a born leader that will eventually take control of things. But for right now, it’s content getting stoned and playing Madden. Taking charge is such a tomorrow thing, you know?

C

Itsmyluckyday

Okimgoingtogettheobviousjokeoutoftheway. There’s something I like about Itsmyluckyday. I think it’s that it brings to mind a down-on-his-luck gambling addict who goes to the track swearing by some new “system” he’s devised, but then he sees Itsmyluckyday and says, “Ah! It’s a sign!” Then he loses a bunch of money, drinks five bottles of wine, and becomes one of the most famous outsider poets ever.

Still, it’s a chintzy name with no spaces. C+

Govenor Charlie

Sentor Augustus and Presdent Mike agree: misspelling the titles of elected officials is tops!

D+

Overanalyze

Well, fuck.

A

Oxbow

Naming your horse after a something that’s used to harness oxen is kinda like naming your child “Gorilla Cage,” except that I don’t like it.

D+

Title Contender

I bet the owner of Title Contender has, like, six other horses named Glue.

C-

Normandy Invasion

In 1106, Henry I captured Normandy. To rub the Normans’ noses in their defeat, he nicknamed them the “Hanks,” after himself. The Normans, understandably, were upset about this; their attitude can be summed up by the sentence, “Aw man, we’re friggin’ Hanks?” Over time, “friggin’ Hanks” evolved into “Franks,” from which the country of France takes its name.

At least, I assume that’s the Normandy invasion this horse is named for. If it were named for the one in 1944, the synonymous name Operation Neptune is clearly a better choice.

B-

Code West

If you ever took this horse to Key West, it would totally crack.

D-

Falling Sky

I must admit, I’ve never understood the whole “the sky is falling” idiom. What’s there to worry about? You’re not going to get crushed; you’re already subjected to the weight of all of the sky above you. Besides, isn’t the sky always kind of falling, due to convection and whatever? Or are we just talking about rain? Where I live, it rains 155 days a year. Know what I do about it? Wear a hoodie.

Admittedly, “Falling Sky” is catchier than “Wear A Hoodie Today.” C+

Tiz A Minister

Tiz also the ztupidest name on thiz list.

F

Power Broker

“Power Broker” is basically just a sexy way to say “lobbyist,” so I’m going to go ahead and intervene, rechristening this horse “Meteor Teeth.” Picture it: a horse moving so fast that the air in front of it gets compressed, ablating its teeth in a manner reminiscent of a shooting star. Its winnings will be more than sufficient to buy horse dentures.

A+

Biology fun-times project #1: Take a horse and a zebra of opposite sexes and give them a bottle of pinot noir and a roomy stable. Wait 357.5 days (the average of the gestation periods of horses and zebras), and out will come a ridiculous-looking creature called a zorse:

Biology fun-times project #2: Take a fish, a tubeworm, an ‘80s punk rocker, and maybe some kind of skink or something, and give them a can of paint thinner, a bottle of Old Crow, and a dumpster behind a chemical processing plant. This is my best guess at the recipe to get the monster on the cover of The Best of Hal Clement:

This work of genius is brought to us by Henry Richard Van Dongen, whom you might recall from The Jupiter Theft. Van Dongen wasn’t pussyfooting around with this one. At first glance, the above creature seems to be mostly ichthyic, but take a look at its head: it’s sporting at least a double mohawk (though I think a triple is implied), a furrowed brow, and surprisingly human-looking ears. The mouth is a little disconcerting in that looks like it probably doubles as an ass, and the eyes look like they were stolen from a giant teddy bear with hepatitis, but the overall expression conveyed by the thing’s face is one of concerned fascination.

Then you notice that it’s siphoning blood from some unconscious kid.

To be fair, this kind of thing is bound to happen when blood hits $4.00 a gallon. In such economic climes, no sensible person would go traipsing around in a stone quarry alone. Nor would they wear pantaloons with tube socks and Chucks.

The more I look at this cover, the more I hate the fact that I’ll never get to see what this thing looks when it swims. Since only the greatest art can evoke such strong emotions, I give the cover of The Best of Hal Clement 1 Van and 4 Dongens.

Now,  I normally try not to dwell on the titles of the books whose covers I review. This is about the artwork, after all. But every now and then, the confluence of title and illustration creates a spectacle far greater than the sum of its parts:

Apparently, a “perfect day” involves giant naked people confined by a series of transparent cubes floating above a lake. Now, don’t get me wrong – depending on the circumstances, I could maybe see this as the makings of a pretty good day. But a perfect one?

To be fair, I don’t know what else they’ve done today. It’s entirely likely that being nude and trapped in a series of transparent cubes floating above a lake is one of the day’s lowlights. Maybe earlier they were drinking mimosas in a translucent green pyramid balancing on the rim of a volcano. Or perhaps this is just the ferry ride to the Translucent Cube Island Resort for Giant Nudists. Hell, they might just be a couple of claustrophiliacs on acid.

Ultimately, I have to put my conjecture aside and say what we’re all thinking: she has no butt crack. Score for the cover of This Perfect Day: 1 transparent hypercube.

Our next book is The Drawing of the Dark. If you’re like me, you instantly thought that the cover illustration should simply be as follows:

But it’s actually this:

Given the blurb above the title, I think it’s safe to assume that the white-haired guy in the fluorescent yellow shirt is the reanimated King Arthur. Zombie Art is combating a gargoyle using his trademark weapons: a flaming sword and a bowie knife.

Wait – what?

I’ll admit I’m not terribly well-versed in Arthurian mythos, but I really thought the dude’s main weapons were Excalibur and a comprehensive knowledge of the airspeed velocities of unladen swallows.

At any rate, Zombie Art is battling a gargoyle. I’m guessing Art is defending the honor of the nondescript fountain behind him, and the gargoyle is just pissed off about the zombie king’s fashion sense. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the gargoyle’s feet. The damn thing went into combat wearing platform shoes.

With all that covered, what I really want to talk about is the other gargoyle. You know, the one who’s watching his buddy fight to the death with a legendary swordsman and decides that his best course of action is – get this – to play the recorder. Because what’s a fight to the death without a live instrumental performance of “Three Blind Mice”?

I suppose we can take this as evidence that gargoyles also have to attend the fourth grade. Or maybe they get a magic berserker boost when they hear “Hot Cross Buns.”

Just look at the malevolence in those eyes! There’s no doubt that this guy is playing the recorder maliciously. I doubt it’s possible to play the recorder at someone to death, but if it is, this guy’s gonna do it.

For such inspirational tooting, I give the cover of The Drawing of the Dark 2 huge tracts of land.

BONUS BOOK COVER!

If you ever wondered what R. Kelly meant by the expression “crazier than a fish with titties,” well, he meant this:

The book is called Ta and there’s a flower with ta-tas. Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen!

After arousing the world with my first foray in romance writing, I thought I’d give it another (sexy) go. This time, however, I wanted to use a format I’m a little more familiar with. I hope you enjoy it.

As a respected cartoonist out of Yale Art School* who boasts an audience of several, I frequently design monsters and space aliens, so I know the usual tricks. Three is a nice, weird number for things: arms, legs, eyes, uvulas, etc. Claws create a threatening appearance, and random tufts of hair can add that untamed ruggedness that the ladies like so much. But the first book cover up today introduced me to an entirely new concept in monster design:

A HEAD RESEMBLING A CROSS PEEN HAMMER.

This cross peen monster, whom I’ll call Barton (after Clara Barton, the most famous cross-related person I can think of), really sets the cover of Rule Golden and Other Stories apart from the rest. Sure enough, Barton has three arms – though it’s hard to tell whether the third one is protruding from his back or stowing away in his right armpit. He also has three legs that terminate in clawed feet; where he keeps his genitals is anybody’s guess, but I can see where he doesn’t keep them. The mystery only adds to the allure, not that Barton needs the help – his scrub-brush back hair leaves all the ladies mesmerized. Plus, the dude has at least three eyes. Probably six.

Having escaped from an ICBM stockpile, Barton and his friend Turtleneck McBland are jogging back to the ‘70s. I vaguely get the impression that this is the scene right after you beat the old computer game Impossible Mission, but since I never made it anywhere in that game and you might never have even heard of it, there’s no way to verify this.

Now, I’m no expert on intercontinental nuclear warfare, but this seems like a silly way to store your ICBMs to me. Whatever protection they expect to get from an observatory and a few small gun turrets seems inadequate, to say nothing of the fearsome guards and their… billy clubs?

Anyway, I don’t know why Barton and McBland are running that way – the royal rainbow is clearly coming to their aid. Dummies. Anyway, I give the cover of Rule Golden and Other Stories a solid 12 billy clubs and 1 nuclear warhead.

*In the sense that I am not IN Yale Art School.

Speaking of the royal rainbow, if you thought Katamari Damacy was the kraziest thing to feature rainbows shooting out of places they shouldn’t be, I ask you to consider today’s next book cover, belonging to The Time Hoppers:

Here we have a stupendously muscular guy about to do some naked diving (skinnydiving?), only instead of being on a diving board, his head has disappeared and his shoulders are barfing a rainbow. Just when you think the Olympics couldn’t get any better, along comes the Amazing Surly Old Bureaucrat.

The Amazing S.O.B. lives up to his moniker, capturing our nude, headless diver’s regurgitated rainbow in his Hat of Dickish Wonders without even looking, all while he walks over the intro to a Bugs Bunny cartoon. And his shadow? Totally projecting an inexplicable arrow.

Presumably the other arrows we see are shadows as well. I’m guessing one of them belongs to Porky Pig. But why the arrows terminate in arrows of the opposite alignment are anybody’s guess.

Oh yeah, and there’s the watch. It took me a minute to notice that the numbers on the watch run from 11 to 22. I think back to a time when I got bored in my freshman English class and wrote up a petition calling for more hours in a day. It wasn’t about shortening already existing hours so as to squeeze more in. No, it was about lengthening the amount of time it took the Earth to rotate on its axis. To my dismay, several people I approached expressed genuine concern that my petition might cause them to have to do more work every day. I guess the point here is that I don’t understand a lot of people, and I also don’t understand a lot of this watch.

Ultimately, I give the cover of The Time Hoppers 7 extra hours per day, and 4 ducks amuck.

So far, this has been a really interesting review for me; I really did like Barton from Rule Golden and Other Stories, and The Time Hoppers almost made it off my cheesy-covers-to-review shelf and onto my covers-I-genuinely-like shelf. However, our next one is, well, Day By Night:

Let’s just come right out and say it: we’ve got a ‘70s porn star coming through some kind of transdimensional portal. He’s making a hand signal that probably means something like, “I come in peace, but be ready for my pornstache, too.” And you’d better believe his expectant hostess is ready; she’s put on her best leggings that mostly aren’t even there.

This lovely maid-in-waiting, whom I’ll call Princess Smallhead, is sitting by her cosmic-fish pond in some kind of desert basin, forlorn. Call me classist, but don’t you just hate how space princesses take their cosmic-fish ponds for granted?

Anyway, the portal through which sci-fi John Holmes is about to pass is anchored by a pair of jet-propelled, goose-necked android heads, who are probably just as confused as we are about their purpose. In the Disney version of the cover of Day By Night, the heads would be voiced by Robin Williams and Wanda Sykes, and they’d totally steal the show, making G-rated jokes about cosmic fish and, more surprisingly, about John Holmes. They’d pretty much have to add a rooster character to justify things. I still wouldn’t watch it.

There’s also what appears to be a reel-to-reel device attached to the portal thing, because, as we all assumed, transdimensional travel is analogue business. There’s some kind of thermostat on the other side, and a bottle of seltzer water below that. I’m really not sure what all this portal is supposed to do, but I’m guessing it has something to do with recording a comedy album performed by lava clowns. Or something. Leave me alone; it’s hot.

Score for the cover of Day By Night: 2 lava clowns and an 8x10 of Wanda Sykes.

According to lyricist Hal David, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love / It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” Mr. David, obviously, was completely crazy bread, because there are plenty of other things there’s just too little of, such as, I dunno, FOOD, POTABLE WATER, CENTAURS, and DINOSAURS THAT SMOKE.

But don’t give up hope yet, because:

BAM. Not only does the cover of The Return of Nathan Brazil offer us a centaur, but it’s a sexy lady centaur with Godiva hair and a bikini line that always confuses the hell out of the people at the body waxing place. Oh, and the dinosaur that smokes? He TOTALLY WEARS A VEST.

That dinosaur, whose friends probably call him Highball Eddie, ranks extremely high on the list of dinosaurs I’d like to hang out with. You guys, that isn’t a short list (I have two other dinosaurs on my desk right now). But look at Highball Eddie! That guy’s going to invite you to some party in the 1960s in a penthouse with a grand piano, and he’s going to lean on the piano and share anecdotes with the pianist, and then he’s going to tell somewhat off-color jokes about broads.

I guess have to talk about the rest of the cover, so, yeah: there’s a guy (presumably Nathan Brazil) in a glowing, possibly ethereal chair. He’s wearing the kind of jacket you always find in vintage shops that’d be totally kickass if not for the fact that the sleeves are always four inches too short. (What was up with dudes’ arms in the ‘70s? Are short arms an unreported side effect of oil crises?) Then there’s whatever’s happening down where his pants meet his boots. Maybe his boots are designed to collect as much rainwater as possible? Maybe wet feet are his fetish?

Anyway, ol’ Nate looks like he was busy planning his next chess move in some other dimension when, suddenly, a giant dentist’s lamp sucked him into this one. You can practically see the words coming out of Highball Eddie’s mouth: “Brazil, you transdimensional son of a bitch! How do you want your martini?” In Eddie’s social circle, there are over 200 words for gin.

The lady centaur is actually the least interesting aspect of the cover of The Return of Nathan Brazil, which should tell you it’s a serious gem. I give it 59 olives.

Highly observant types might have noticed that the previous book was “Volume 4 of the Saga of the Well World.” Interestingly, but not all that interestingly, the next (and completely unrelated) book is entitled The Well of the Worlds.

Judging by the size of our pale blue dot in the background, we’re looking at the surface of a world that’s closer to the Earth than the moon is. WHY HAVEN’T I SEEN THIS PLANET? I’ve looked up at least 25 times!

Ok, so there’s this planet that’s right next to Earth, but we can’t see it because MAGIC. And on this planet, there are these giant blue-green guys with bullet-shaped heads who want to be ribbon dancers but kinda suck at it. In fact, they suck at it enough that it appears to cause severe distress among the local throngs of predominately bald Slothites.

(Slothites are a nation of people who banded together after auditioning to be in The Goonies, but narrowly lost out to this guy:

)

The thing about the Slothites is that, while it seems like they’re supposed to be really worried, some of them look like they’re hopping in the water and shouting “SPRING BREAK! WOO!” Meanwhile, others look like they’re plummeting into an abyss, and one of them kinda looks like he wants to use one of those “I’m Marilyn Monroe and this air is blowing my [toga] up” routines as an excuse to flash everyone. Oh, and one is definitely trying to pull off that iconic “punk rock stage diver” pose.

So the message about the Slothites is mixed. But we can be sure the less-than-jolly green giants are evil commie pig-dogs, because one of their ribbons looks suspiciously like a yellow sickle against a red background. Is there anything better than Cold War sci-fi imagery?

Maybe the castle in the background. It’s the kind of building that even Disney princesses would describe as “flamboyant,” but in a silly, geometrical way. Perhaps this is the stronghold of the Euclidean Pixies.

The Well of the Worlds’ cover is pretty middle-of-the-road; it’s not the best, it’s not the worst, and it’s not the cheesiest. But if you look more closely than anyone should, you’ll see that it has bare breasts.

Score for The Well of the Worlds: 2 boobs.

If you’ve had enough of breasts and lady centaurs and femininity in general, you’re in luck! Today’s review finishes with Retief to the Rescue by Keith Laumer (who also gave us A Plague of Demons, as well as something like 8,000 other Retief books). But Laumer, and indeed Retief, are completely irrelevant, overshadowed by the uber-masculine figure representing Retief: Muscular Judd Nelson.

Muscular Judd is running around on a planet full of red smoke and some splashy-looking stuff, which I guess we’ll call lava, in his khakis. Secure in his masculinity, his weapon of choice is a rather dainty pistol with decorative features apparently inspired by the flora of a Dr. Seuss landscape.

Always trying to improve his game, Muscular Judd is dribbling an imaginary basketball. Unfortunately for him, he’s about to be killed by a spear-wielding monster whose head looks like some kind of aquarium plant I can’t think of but instead will say is the pink plant from the water levels in Super Mario Bros.

There’s a lot to like about Mario Plant Monster (MPM). Look at those translucent ghost-tentacle-legs! How great is that? This monster is alive and well, except for its legs, which are ghosts. Sheer brilliance! Think of the convenience ghost legs offer: if you’re not sure what the weather’s like outside, just stick your leg through the wall and find out. In the dystopian future where opening your front door is consider a subversive act, ghost legs are lifesavers—insofar as you need to know what it’s like outside, which I guess you don’t.

Anyway, MPM also has spiky wrists to help it learn not to wipe its face on its sleeve, which is sorta practical, I guess. None can deny that MPM has its priorities in order, given the fact that its groin armor looks to be roughly five times stronger than anything else it’s wearing. And it has a spear. Spears are cool.

The combination of Muscular Judd Nelson and Mario Plant Monster is a powerful one, earning the cover of Retief to the Rescue 10 pairs of lava-proof khakis.

(I hope you read the first installment in the Economics of Hyrule series. I also hope that you won’t interpret the word “series” too broadly, because I doubt I’ll get on to A Link to the Past after this, even though it’s probably the best game ever.)

Anyway, the events of The Legend of Zelda have passed, and we’ve moved on to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Kind of a strange title, given that The Legend of Zelda was also an adventure of Link, as are the, I dunno, 90 games that followed. It’s odd to single this one out as THE adventure of Link, is what I’m getting at.

But we’re not here to talk about game titles. We’re here to discuss VIDEO GAME ECONOMICS.

So, Zelda II. This game is ENORMOUS in scale compared to the original. In fact, here’s a map showing just how enormous the Hyrule of Zelda II is compared to the Hyrule we discussed last time:

Yeah. So the entire last game happened in what is basically the parsley garnishing a 4-course meal. And while that feels like a dumb thing to say, I’m confident that it’s the best parsley analogy you’ve heard today. Now, if you’ll recall, that little bit of parsley was home to 9 dungeons, none of which even appear on this map. Just think of how many other dungeons this map is hiding! A little bit of extrapolation reveals Hyrule to be an out-and-out dungeon world, which raises all the same “who financed all these dungeons” questions we faced in The Legend of Zelda. That’s bad enough, but now we’re faced with a slew of new questions, too.

You see, in addition to what may very well be 90 ignored dungeons, Hyrule is peppered with 8 friggin’ palaces. From the looks of things, Hyrulean royalty really hates changing wallpaper, opting to just build a new palace when they get tired of the décor. I say this because Zelda II offers us 8 towns (admittedly an improvement on the original’s whopping ZERO), and I really can’t fathom an economy that permits a masterfully (and sadistically) engineered palace for each tiny burg. Most small towns I’m familiar with can’t even put bleachers on both sides of their high school football fields.

Perhaps Hyrule is simply a land of extreme surplus. Perhaps it is so rich, and its people so appreciative of the whimsical monarchy, that a palace for every village is a reasonable expense. And perhaps the people have genetically altered themselves to be photosynthetic, because there ain’t no farms in Hyrule! (There IS a GIANT graveyard, however, because Hyrule is a land of death.) Photosynthesis aside, we must presume that Hyruleans subsist mostly on a.) fishing and b.) walking back and forth through towns they obviously don’t live in, since there aren’t nearly enough buildings, which is perhaps the most novel food source ever imagined.

Hell, I just made up the bit about fishing.

In The Legend of Zelda, we learned that Link makes his living by killing wild animals and hoping they’ll drop some coins. Sucks for him that the monsters in Zelda II never drop money! Instead, they give experience points (which are notoriously difficult to exchange) and the occasional bottle of magical essence (which, despite being bottled, is impossible to carry around, the people of Hyrule having yet to uncover the secrets of bag technology). But it turns out not to matter, because there are no shops, shoppes, or even sshhopppess to spend money in anyway!

There are no stores or workshops, and no farms, fishing boats, herders, Frederik Pohl-inspired protein miners, or even hunters – not that there could be hunters, since the animals of Hyrule don’t leave corpses, and experience points are a very low-calorie food. Ergo, these people do not eat, nor do they make or trade things. Ergo, their clothing is imaginary, and their buildings are relics of a bygone civilization.

Given that there’s no agriculture, industry, or commerce to be found, there seems to be no Hyrulean economy whatsoever. When you consider the extreme lengths Link has to go to in order to obtain a simple goddamn hammer, it becomes evident that Hyrule is an incredibly stunted, backward land that is probably better off being conquered by villains who, by default, must be more forward-thinking.

It all seems so clear, except that it makes no sense whatsoever. There’s another wrinkle to the story, and it makes for a massively successful movie in 1999.

You can test this yourself: go play Zelda II. Go into the first town, and try to stab somebody. Doesn’t work, does it? Know why? Because they’re all ghosts. Every human (or elf or whatever) in Hyrule not named Link is dead. This explains the cemetery that’s far bigger than all the towns in the world combined. It also explains why nobody needs food. It doesn’t explain the palaces, but, my friends, nothing is ever going to explain the palaces.

That’s as much sense as Zelda II is ever going to make. I could get into the fact that Link seems to have given himself the goal of slaughtering all living things, but I think we already know that he’s probably a pretty evil dude.

Care to read more reviews, or perhaps go back to Mountain Time?

Goodness! It’s already time again for the granddaddy of all Mountain Time reviews: the Kentucky Derby horse names! Now, I’m not claiming to have a system or anything, but for two years in a row, the winning horse has been on my list. Coincidence?

On to the ponies of 2012:

Union Rags

A civil war soldier has just had his arm amputated with a handsaw, with no more anesthetic than some whiskey and a bullet to bite on. This horse is named for the strips of cloth used to clean up the mess. Ok, that’s pretty nasty, so I guess “Union Rags” refers to cheap periodicals produced by labor unions.  D

Bodemeister

I GUESS we’re supposed to imagine a soothsaying oracle-type… hanging out with Rob Schneider’s “makin’ copies” SNL character? “The Bodemeister! Tell me how things bode for me! Boderino!” Guys, I hate this. F——- (That’s a giant minus.)

Creative Cause

Ok, I know you’d like to donate to help starving children in Africa, but what if I told you you could donate to help fill piggy banks with sour cream and toss them off the CN Tower on National Receptionist Day? Is that cause creative enough? A-

Gemologist

Regardless of your opinion of the gem trade, you have admire a horse that knows its way around a touchstone. C+

Hansen

In the time of chimpanzees, I was a horse. This horse is a loser baby, so why don’t you kill it? (That’s the best Hansen available, but it doesn’t bode well for the horse.)  C-

I’ll Have Another

Everyone loves a drunk horse! If he keeps drinking like this, he’s gonna have to piss like a – oh.  B

Alpha

Presumably, this horse was named so people could say, “I’m gonna place an Alpha bet!” Alternatively, its namer hoped it would be a dominant dog.  D

Take Charge Indy

Yeah, Indianapolis! You take charge of the state of Indiana, as befits a state capital! Alternatively: yeah, Indiana Jones! You take charge of that standoff with the weird Hindu cult and cut that rope bridge!

Man, the second one WAS a pretty cool scene.  B-

El Padrino

Apparently, “El Padrino” means “The Godfather.” Because, you know, a movie famous for a severed horse head makes a great name for a horse. It’s the same reasoning that leads to so many Jewish people naming their sons Jesus.  F

Daddy Long Legs

They say daddy-longlegs spiders’ venom is deadly to humans, but their fangs can’t break human skin. Presumably they determined this by giving someone a paper cut and squeezing a daddy-longlegs’ guts into it. (Hey, even executioners get bored.)
Anyway, naming your racehorse after the worst athlete in the entire spider order is kinda like a porn star calling himself Tiny McSmall.  D+

Daddy Nose Best

This sounds like a shady rhinoplasty place you’d find in a run-down strip mall between a liquor store and a boarded-up Fashion Bug. That’s great, but I hate the pun.  C-

Went The Day Well

It just the confusion more.  C

Dullahan

Before we get to the really obvious joke, let me drop some research on you: a dullahan is a faerie that rides a horse and carries its own decapitated head under its arm. It uses a human spine for a whip, and it kills people or something. The point is, naming your horse after something dangerous that rides a horse is like naming your dog Deer Tick.

And now, the really obvious joke: I wish we could meet the interesting ahan.  D-

Mark Valeski

Why NOT give your horse a name that sounds like it belongs to an NFL kicker? Maybe it’ll get cast in a Budweiser commercial.  C-

Rousing Sermon

This horse makes you more enthusiastic about religion, I guess. As far as inspirational names go, Rousing Sermon is a duffel bag of crap. Much better is Coach Fridge, a horse that won’t be running in the derby but whose name deserves every accolade available. Come on, a refrigerator that’s also a coach? What next, a stove that’s a personal trainer? A blender that’s a sports therapist?
Score for Rousing Sermon: F
Score for Coach Fridge: A+

Trinniberg

I have to assume a trinniberg is a set of three icebergs, making it a bad date for a transatlantic cruise liner – or, more accurately, a bad four-way for one. I’d like to say transatlantic cruise liners should consider more meaningful, monogamous relationships, but I wouldn’t mean it for a second.  D+

Done Talking

Finally, a horse that isn’t going to gab your ear off! By the same token, I’m done ovulating, my sister is done being my brother, and my showerhead is done writing sonnets. Thank goodness; sonnets bore me to tears.  C-

Liaison

This is just a bland name. Rather than guess at what this horse is supposed to be a liaison between, I’m going to point out another horse who isn’t running in this race: Mr. Bowling. That’s an awesome, A+ name that, in my book, is also the name of the bipedal bowling ball from Strolling Bowling. Mr. Bowling could’ve been the horse of a generation. Instead, we get Liaison. Might as well name it Opportunity Cost.  F

Prospective

This horse is likely – but it’s not certain. I’d love it if, come race time, it turns out it actually isn’t, and the jockey suddenly just falls to the ground. However, that’s a pretty cerebral metaphysical concept, and we’re here to talk about horses running around an oval in the state that gave us fried chicken in a bucket.  C+

Sabercat

I don’t know why people like to name their horses after extinct cats, but as Sabercat and 2010’s American Lion prove, they do. I have to give Sabercat a better grade than American Lion’s D because it reminds me of the Saber Race event in Caveman Games, but since Caveman Games totally blows, the grade’s just barely better.  D+

Back to Mountain Time? On to more reviews?

The banner above is no exaggeration. In fact, today’s book covers are so friggin’ intense that black lightning bolts kind of seem like an understatement. Also, the banner shouldn’t be so symmetrical, because these covers could only be the result of severe mental imbalance.

I present to you items 13-15 in the Mountain Time Cheesy Book Cover Review series:

Here we’ve got a book called The Changing Land. You read that title and you think, Yeah, ok, wind erosion, soil depletion, desertification, maybe a river where there didn’t used to be a river, etcetera. You’re pretty much expecting this to be a geology textbook, but then you see the cover:

This is going to be an awesome geology class! The syllabus includes such kickass topics as:

1. Rip Taylor dressed like an Irish matador but with thigh-high boots inspired by Tron;
2. Rip Taylor’s incredible cape that used to be your grandma’s drapes (or perhaps bedspread);
3. Rip Taylor’s golden sword: a feminist perspective (this IS a college class, after all);
4. Rip Taylor’s belt buckle, which is a little bigger than a TI-82 calculator.

And that’s just the first three weeks of class! By midterms, you’ll have discussed Rip Taylor’s mechanical stallion at length. Are its inner thighs meant to suggest butterfly wings? If so, what makes up the butterfly’s body? Is it the phallus? Does the steed represent gender inequality? Do robot horses even have horse junk?

How come the metal horse’s mane and tail are made of hair? How come the metal horse snorts fire? Do electric horses dream of androids?

For your term paper, consider writing about why the cover of a book called The Changing Land is set in the clouds. Has the land changed so much that it’s now water vapor? Shit! Things were a lot easier back when we were just talking about soil depletion.

The semester ends with a study of the giant lavender hands grasping at Rip Taylor and his fire-snorting horse. They’re six feet long, sinewy, and have the kind of fingernails that ensure they’ll never need a knife to open anything shrink-wrapped. One of them bears a tattoo on the wrist reading “HERRING.” I think we all know which fish is this disembodied arm’s favorite!

The cover of The Changing Land is one of the greats. I give it 7 fiery horse-snorts.

NEXT! WE HAVE ANOTHER BOOK COVER! IT CAN DO WHAT IT WANTS!

You know how it is: the old neighbors, who were pretty good people, move out, and the people who move in – The New Neighbors – are the anthropomorphic personification of death. However, these new neighbors are the BEST KIND of anthropomorphic personification of death: the pink kind.

Yes, the cover of The New Neighbors offers us Pink Death. I love that phrase SO MUCH, and so should you. If you’re starting a band or having a kid or buying a horse, you should name it Pink Death. Some automotive company should release a car called Pink Death. (What are you doing that’s any better, Nissan?) Kids would care more about American history if the founding fathers were collectively referred to as Pink Death, and more people would read Joyce if his seminal work were called Finnegan’s Wake: OMG You Guys, He Died of Pink Death!

Even better, what we have here is Pink Death in pantaloons. He’s a dandy, that Pink Death. It’s enough to make me not care about the wonky arrow with the off-center text, or the indistinct buildings that might be a giant farm or a tiny city. Really, the shouting blurb is right: this guy is indeed SUPERIOR AND NECESSARY.

When it comes down to it, death is like lemonade: you can’t escape it, so you might as well opt for the pink kind. Score for The New Neighbors: 1 Pink Death.

Our third book cover today is The Trouble Twisters, which combines the celebrity-riding-a-crazy-creature aspect of The Changing Land with the pinkness of whatever that Pink Death book was called. (I think it was Pink Death Rides a Fuchsia Horse.)

This time, we have Brendan Fraser dressed as Steve Irwin with a futuristic lampshade on his hand. He’s riding some kind of crocodile-centaur-gargoyle (let’s call him Hank) that spends a lot of time at the gym and never shuts up about it. If you’re wondering why Brendan looks so distraught, check out the spikes on Hank’s back, and remember what they taught you in kindergarten about never sitting on a stegosaurus.

While Hank is showin’ off for all the hot crocotaurgoyle ladies and Brendan is getting some amateur proctology work done, there’s – a cat? I guess it’s a cat, although it’s got some vaguely human traits about it, too, like the way it clings to Hank’s tail, the way it uses its mouth to emote, and the fact that I find it ineffably annoying. It’s basically Snarf. At least it’s smart enough not to sit on the spikes.

See that strange object in the background? That is, undeniably, a prototype of the Technodrome. The original plans for this mobile fortress from Dimension X called for it to resemble the framework of a turkey float in a Thanksgiving parade, probably to camouflage it for a Trojan-horse-style attack on the Thanksgiving dimension. When that idea was found to be incredibly stupid, Krang decided to go with the more badass giant-tridents-and-eyeballs motif.

The really weird thing about the Technodrome is that I’ve never really had a good idea of how big it is. At times it seems like it’s bigger than a large shopping mall, but other times it can fit in the (traffic-free!) streets of New York. In the first TMNT video game and in playset form, it’s barely bigger than the turtles themselves, but those are clearly non-canonical instances.

I forgot what I was talking about, but whatever it was, I give it a rating of 7 bees.

Read more reviews here.

Perceptive types might have noticed that this is not the ordinary location of Mountain Time Reviews. This much tumblier home should make the reviews tidier, more visually appealing, and maybe able to jump higher or something, I dunno.

(Those unfamiliar with Mountain Time are advised to check it out; it’s a comic site that enhances your sex appeal and helps you jump higher.)

On to business:

A new word has entered my vocabulary: Van-Dongenesque. It’s derived from the name of the man responsible for today’s first book cover, Henry Richard Van Dongen, and it basically means “more awesome than being invited to a stegosaurus’ birthday party, even if there’s ice cream cake,” because, seriously, look:

The cover of The Jupiter Theft showcases a couple of seven-foot-tall sea monkeys with giraffe skin. Though camouflaged splendidly for the African savannah, these smiling aliens are perfectly comfortable in the vacuum of space, where they use their rocket-powered walking sticks to perform garbage collection tasks. But wait—that’s not garbage! That’s an astronaut! Haha, silly space-shrimp!

I kid, of course. Judging by the shapes of their heads, I think what we have on our hands here is a race of Space Berts looking for their Space Ernie. They’re going to be disappointed when they find out that the astronaut’s round “head” is actually a helmet. And when they notice he doesn’t have an extra eye on his chin. (Things to consider about chin-eyes: sneezing, being clumsy with a fork.)

In the background we see some kind of space station full of space shrimp just partying their space asses off. Over to the right we see a hull breach, with space shrimp flying out, rocket sticks burning in the opposite orientation of those of our two focal Berts. I tried for a minute to figure out what was going on over there, but then I was like, “Who cares? Giraffe-print sea monkeys that can dunk!”

My friends, I put it to you that a slam-dunk contest featuring contestants with four arms might actually be a slam-dunk contest worth watching.

Score for The Jupiter Theft cover: 25 rubber duckies.

Our next cover belongs to Wheels Within Wheels. It is not Van-Dongenesque.

I’ll go ahead and say what we’re all thinking: GOD DAMN does that rock formation in the lower right look unlikely. When you get down to it, it’s gotta be either A.) a petrified, 20-foot-long mosquito, or B.) a sure sign that this world is a false reality, an unconvincing computer simulation, and that we are not real. The cityscape in the background reinforces the latter hypothesis.

Our heroes, who could very well be the parents from Family Ties but in sleazier clothes, look to have reached conclusion B and, in their terror, have decided to stand on their tiptoes and look away from the telltale rock. But in doing so, they happen to glance upon the creator of this ersatz world, whom I think I recognize from an early version of the game Guess Who?

Guess Who? Guy is a marvelous god: his hair coalesces from the clouds, his earlobes are undeniably butts, and his eyebrows are made up of a total of about 32 hairs. The glare in his peanut-shell-shaped eyes warns our heroes that they’d better damned well win this game of Guess Who?; he is sick of being stuck on the losing team because of his easy-to-deduce white hair/blue eyes combo.

Perhaps this is why his expression is so bitchy. Or maybe it’s because his chin, like his ears, also forms a butt. I mean, the guy’s head has three butts. That’s gotta mess with you, when your face is like an old South Park joke.

Wheels Within Wheels’ cover suffers not only from being incredibly cheesy, but also from coming after that of The Jupiter Theft. Rating: 1.7 Steven Keatons.

Finally, we have the cover of West of Honor, which also falls short of being Van-Dongenesque. It’s nearly the opposite, in fact.

Here we see a poor man’s Judge Dredd, teeth clenched, holding a paper-airplane laser pistol. It’s a dull image, but our knockoff Judge makes up for it by standing on the sun. Or a very, very, very, extremely small version of the sun, anyway. No wonder his teeth are clenched—you know how much fun it is to walk barefoot across a parking lot on a hot day? Imagine doing that, but while wearing riot gear that makes you look like an asshole (albeit an asshole who’s ready to deal with sun riots).

You’d think a guy standing on the sun would take off his vest, at least. I mean, that’s kinda the main advantage of dressing in layers.

Of course, if that were all there was to it, this cover would be weapons-grade stupid. Instead, West of Honor assaults us with SHAPES! Look out—is that a womb, or a pregnant snare drum? Neither! It’s an octagon with a fetus in it, like always. Octagon fetuses (feti?) always have the longest legs, am I right? Friggin’ frogs, those octagon feti. And here comes the zooming square with a tree in it! Yikes! Is that a triangle with a peace dove inside? Of course it is. Generic Dredd’s shoulder blades are always shedding peace-dove triangles. The guy should see a dermatologist.

The cover of West of Honor, despite its Fisher-Price appeal, lacks a certain something, and that something is Van-Dongenicity. I give it a mere 3 octagon fetus legs.

Read more Mountain Time reviews here.