Philadelphia Weekly

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

Imagine every British literary character--from Shakespeare's Bottom to Fleming's James Bond--was real. And that England's Queen Elizabeth I was half-fairy. And the gateway to other dimensions was ruled by a giant black-face rag doll. That's just for starters. Now imagine the aforementioned fictional characters organized and kicking ass for king and country. It's 1948, and 1984 has come early. World War II has ended (with the defeat of the Charlie Chaplin look-alike fuhrer Adanoid Hinkel), and the disbanded League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the severely flawed antiheroes of Alan Moore's last venture into fusty meta-fiction) have traded their elephant guns and knickerbockers for Walther PPK .38s and trench coats. Now on the run in a brave new Britain, they come into possession of the Black Dossier: a detailed record of every League that preceded them. This isn't your typical graphic novel. Styles, formats and sensibilities change drastically from page to page--from Shakespearean iambic pentameter and crudely sexual political caricatures to beatnik prose and mind-melting 3-D. An encyclopedic knowledge of British literature and postwar pop culture and/or access to Google are recommended. 3-D glasses and a hilarious set-to between P.G. Wodehouse's upper-class twerp Bertie Wooster and H.P. Lovecraft's slime-dripping nightmare horror gods are included. (Jake Beckerman)

Urban Golf

Urban golf is just like its grass-cut cousin, but designed for fans of the gentlemen's game with no access to snooty clubs or expensive gear. Urban golfers just grab a thrift-store 5-iron, beers and some desolate cityscapes (Philly has a surplus of all three), and presto--the entire city is your fairway. No fees, no dress codes, no bans on Jews or blacks or Mexicans or women, no dressing like a total dick--just good, clean dirty urban fun. Anything can serve as a hole: trash cans, lamp posts, even storm drains (for that satisfying "sunk putt" feeling). Some golfers use a plastic Almost Golf ball that travels about a third the distance of a regular ball and won't break windows. Others prefer a leather orb filled with goose feathers, which won't roll into street gutters and just sits up to be hit. Now a common sight in London, Seattle and San Francisco, urban golf has yet to catch on in Philadelphia despite our 900 acres of vacant, blighted land. A formal urban golf course proposal was even entered into 2005's Philadelphia Land Visions design competition, but went nowhere. So I guess it's up to us. Grab your sickest sweater and join Pop Rocks in a no-grass roots revolution. (Tom Cowell)

Cardboard Tube Fighting

When the annals of human stupidity are written, the Cardboard Tube Fighting League will probably have a whole section to itself. The league is easy to describe. People fight each other with cardboard tubes, and the owner of the last intact tube wins. Remember zombie flash-mobbing? And mass pillow-fighting? Cardboard tube-fighting is the new whatever those things were. Less easy to explain is, why? Is this typical Gen-Y infantilism? Post-'war on terror' stress disorder? Closer inspection of the League's website reveals that tubers fight for the ultimate prize: an Excalibur-like weapon called Suffusca Mors ('the brownish death')--a cardboard tube forged with "one tooth of St. Peter, blood of St. Basil and a remnant of the lesser known Virgin Larry." So there's your explanation. They're insane. Have at you. Pok. (T.C.)

Pink Seal Taser

Most of us struggle to accessorize antirape devices into a cute outfit. Mace sprays come in drab colors, panic buttons are unflattering, and so on. But Japan's new Pink Seal Taser solves the problem. To the untrained eye, it looks like an adorable bit of flair on your lapel. But if a gentleman gets "fresh," it delivers a 195-volt charge at the touch of a button. In the eminently quotable words of the strapya-world.com website: "Ouch! Lovely pink seal taser. The most kawaii stun gun ever! Caution! It's an electric seal! Who imagines this lovely seal is a stun gun? It gives an electric shock to a naughty guy trying to touch you." The Seal is $15 plus shipping. But can you really put a price on pink neon manga peace of mind? (T.C.)

Steampunk Daleks

Daleks are the legless robot villains from the cult BBC show Doctor Who (in the '60s, America got Star Trek, and the Brits got a show that looked like it cost $500 an episode in which the bad guys couldn't climb stairs). Daleks resemble a cross between giant upside-down metal buckets turned into homemade S&M dildos. They're terrifying and they've scared the shit out of several generations of Brits. Steampunk reimagines the near-future sci-fi cyberpunk meme as a stream-powered Victorian phenomenon. Ingenious graphic artist Promus-Kaa put these two great tastes together to create steampunk Daleks. They're the new unicorns, the new knitting and possibly even the new clown porn. Pop Rocks advises you to act now. Stencil steampunk Daleks everywhere. Casually blog about them. Get one tattooed on your neck. Meanwhile Promus-Kaa's website reveals he's working on steampunk Power Rangers, and steampunk Cylons from Battlestar Galactica. The future's dark. The future's steamy. (T.C.)