Bruce Springsteen is the RoBeast's Shidoshi

The Karate Kid was one of my favorite movies back in '84. Since my mom wouldn't let me take karate lessons and Mr. Miyagi refused to train me, I was forced to learn how to fight by watching the flood of Post-Karate Kid martial arts movies shown on HBO instead. Ninja 3: The Domination, The Last Dragon, Best of the Best, No Retreat, No Surrender, Road House. I watched all that shit until I realized just how corny it was (and then when I got beat up, I realized that I hadn't actually learned how to fight at all). One movie that stood out from the pack was Bloodsport.

Totally corny, yes, but still fucking awesome. Plus, it's sort of a true story! It's replete with ridiculous Jean-Claude faces in slow-motion, hard rockin' Stan Bush musical montages, and Forrest Whitaker getting outsmarted at every turn (as usual). The Kumite was the March Madness of full contact fighting, and I ate it up.

Bloodsport meant a lot of things to a lot of people. To Frank Dux, it was a way to honor his fallen Shidoshi. To Chong Li, it was a lesson that cheaters never win. To Jean-Claude Van Damme, it meant a chance to wear tank tops, blush ,and do splits in front of an 80's-hot blonde. To Donald Gibb, it meant a chance to take his Nerd-beating skills to an international arena.

Bloodsport meant a lot to me too. I never had a Super Nintendo, so I could constantly watch it and pretend I was playing Street Fighter 2. And I just discovered this week that around the world, Bloodsport meant a lot of semi-Engrish translations and silly alternate titles. Nine of the following titles are versions of Bloodsport released internationally. See if you guess which ones are real (without cheating, Chong Li!).

1. Bloody Sport
2. Ensanguined Games
3. Tournament of Plasma
4. Friendship Unbroken
   
5. Bloodsport: All Strikes Are Allowed
6. Bloodsport: Tanaka's Honor
   
7. Bloodsport: A True Story
8. Forbidden Battle
   
9. Destructive Force
10. Without Exclusion of Blows
11. Bloodsport: To The Last Man
12. Heroic Red Hemorrhage
    
13. The Challenge
14. OK! USA!
15. American Ass: The Frank Dux Story
    
16. Fighting Spirit: The Frank Dux Legacy
17. Bloody Contact
18. You Are Nex

69th Post

You clearly can't read this because Blogger sucks and refuses to honor my jpeg's original size and resolution and The Blue Lioness will mortally wound me with her metallic claws if I upload it to an image hosting site and link to it. Sure, you could click on it to view it in its nearly original form, but we know that I know that you know that no one likes a two-step process.

Anyway, here's what the letters say:

MATTRES SPICALE
ASSORTED BRAND
SMART CHOIEC

They even bought the right letters (and even left off the last "S" for Savings) and could really just peel them off the window and put them in the right place if they wanted to. It's sad that I drive by this place every day and don't help them out, but will make the effort to take my cell phone out while stuck at the red light, upload it to Verizon's convoluted Pix Place bullshit, save it to my computer, then upload it to stupid Blogger.

At the same though, there's no reason to feel bad. I may have been a champion speller in another decade, but I'm no elitist. I'm sure English is not the owner's first language, and the intended communication is still there (though it took me a few red lights to figure out that Spicale meant Special), so I don't wanna bust balls. I'm just extremely obsessed with signage and its influence. In fact, I think the world is more interesting with mistakes. If I drove past this place and everything was spelled correctly, I wouldn't look twice. But with a view transposed vowels, they've managed to infiltrate my brain and got some free air time on the most important blog in history.

OK, maybe their mattresses are as half-assed as their spelling. Who cares? I'm going to bash my head on the keyboard now and hit enter afterwards:

hy uyhubujiuuu76uyhj8huj9kkl67 g5f4 f5g4r

IJHORSUPOIAT "o;'P/;'P[/0:"?)p{;'P/[IFDSIUB JHIOB IJPOQYG53JP[HBRJBwY3WY H3WUQ53 yZJTEAZE TEAUT U4IJ4W YR M IUIJJUJHH HYYY66