Santo Gold Infomercial

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Big shoutout to The Virtual Santo Gold Museum for gathering all the great information that I’ve liberally paraphrased below.

Back in the 1980s, a successful businessman named Santo Rigatuso decided to create a film. Through his “Santo Gold” mail-order fake jewelry business, Santo had racked up a considerable amount of cash - more than enough to fund his first feature film. The result? Blood Circus, a “science-fiction wrestling movie” featuring cannibals, washed-up professional wrestlers, aliens from the planet Zoran and, naturally, lots of Santo Gold mail-order jewelry.

Strangely enough, Santo had a hard time finding distribution for his creative masterpiece. His solution? Promote it through his Santo Gold infomercials and rent out a few theaters in Baltimore to show it in. Sadly, only three people showed up for the premiere - not quite enough to make up for the film’s $2 million budget. Perhaps out of desperation, Santo moved on to crazier money-making schemes: selling credit cards to people with bad credit for $49.95 (redeemable only for Santo Gold merchandise), and offering $2000 blocks of an unnamed millionaire’s fortune for the low, low price of $52 a pop. The law eventually caught up with Santo and he ended up indicted on twelve counts of mail fraud, and sadly, his film lives on today only in the memories of those (un)fortunate enough to have seen it: there are allegedly no copies remaining in circulation.

You can read more about Santo Rigatuso (that’s him screaming in the white suit and sunglasses FYI), his films, and his legal troubles here. There is also a longer clip from his infomercial available here, and a completely baffling, typo-riddled, barely-functional website promising sundry goods at SantoGold.com. It has pictures of office buildings on it, so I’m pretty sure it’s legit.

Awesome Video Of The Day

SUPER DRAGON!!! (clap clap clap clap clap)

Before I was a Cracked blogger, I did a short stint as an amateur wrestler named Snapneck McDanger. It was a decent gig: the money was good, I met a lot of interesting people and got to do a little bit of travelling to boot (once I even got to go to Tampa!). I built quite a name for myself, taking down some notoriously tough opponents¹, but all good things must come to an end, and after only a few short months of working the circuit, a rare medical condition² forced me into early retirement.

I met Super Dragon out on the circuit a few times. He always seemed like a nice guy, but I have to say that I probably would’ve chosen to handle this situation a little differently. It always seemed to me that if there were thirty people watching my match, and if only ONE of those people was a total Snapneck McDanger superfan, well, then that would probably be the one person that I WOULDN’T threaten with a folding chair. And if I was going to threaten them with a folding chair, it probably wouldn’t be for CHEERING ME ON. I’m not Super Dragon (I’m Snapneck McDanger), and he’s obviously free to handle his business any way he sees fit, but if you’re reading this, SD, take a little advice from me, Snapneck McDanger: If you’re an amateur wrestler, your most important signature move should be APPRECIATING YOUR FANS.

And I should know, too. You know - because I used to be an amateur wrestler named Snapneck McDanger. One who was forced to leave the business because of very mild eczema who then went on to become a humor blogger.

¹ Ever heard of Elbows McFierce? What about Tommy McFacekick? Elroy “The Kid” McPunchy³? Anything?

³ His favorite move was punching.

Awesome Video Of The Day

“OH MY GOD! CASNADIAN DESTROYER!”

On a first viewing without any context, today’s video is pretty so-so: Some kids attempt a “Canadian Destroyer” in their backyard and look stupid. Go ahead and hit play. It’s only 10 seconds long - I’ll wait.

Finished? Ok, good. Now you might be wondering to yourself, “Why did the kid scream “PARANOIAAAAA!” at the end there?” Don’t worry - the uploader was kind enough to explain it in the “About This Video” section:

“ok this is our second destroyer but i have to talk about the announcer,camera guy.ok thats our frend carney and he wanted to rhyme something with canadian destroyer and he sounded like an idiot,i know he sounds gay too but try to pay attention to the move”

I don’t know why, but watching it again armed with that knowledge makes it about a thousand times better. It helps that his name is Carney, I guess, but mostly I just like the fact that he screamed “PARANOIAAAA!” because it was the first thing that popped into his head that rhymes with “Destroyer.”

Two problems there: First of all, “paranoia” DOESN’T rhyme with “destroyer.” Secondly, even if it did rhyme it still wouldn’t make any sense. Carney, if you somehow end up reading this, here’s a list of post-Casnadian Destroyer taglines that work a little better:

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Awesome Video Of The Day

Lex Luger Loses His Shit

Interviewing wrestlers must be hard. They probably give you a long list of things NOT to do when you first get the job, like keeping food in your pockets or looking them square in the eyes. Still, I’ve gotta hand it to this guy: He managed to keep his cool in the face of utter catastrophe.

I’ve also gotta hand it to Lex Luger: He did his best, all things considered. But unless this clip was being aired live, why in the name of God did it get out?! Did this meet the producers’ and directors’ general standard of excellence? It’s usually pretty high in the world of professional wrestling. The only explanation I can come up with is that the cameraman was slated to film an anti-steroids PSA the next day and decided to kill two birds with one stone.

(edit: A friend of mine - one who actually follows wrestling - says this video is “Tron Guy old.” Hopefully there are still a handful of people who haven’t seen it.)

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