ADVENTURES IN SCAM BAITING, PT. III:

ROWSDOWER. ZAP ROWSDOWER.

This scam bait is an eclectic hodge podge of themes: Mystery Science Theater 3000, Led Zeppelin, Brett Kavanaugh, Lorenzo Lamas, Pauly Shore, and The Red Green Show, to name a few. I don't plan these out in advance, I just go with the shit that pops into my head when I'm messaging with these morons. Spontaneity is the spice of life. (So is variety, I guess.) 

This guy puzzled me, because he seemed to be a native English speaker and his grammar didn't make my brain all hurty. That's faint praise, but still, he was something of a rarity. 

Zap Rowsdower is a character from The Final Sacrifice, a Canadian film that was riffed by the guys on Mystery Science Theater back in the '90s. The movie is a big steaming pile of poo until about 25 minutes in, when Zap Rowsdower shows up. Then, it becomes awesome. (Plot in a nutshell: nerdy kid finds out his dead father was in a cult, cult comes after nerdy kid, nerdy kid meets Zap Rowsdower, a mustachioed, beer swilling, bemulleted drifter and he and nerdy kid battle the cult and discover shit, blah blah blah.) But ladies and gentlemen, Zap Rowsdower is the true reason for the season.

OMG, some awesome MST3K fan made a Rowsdower action figure. 

Is it too late to add this to my Christmas list?  

The guy compliments me on my beautiful name. I should've just said my full first name was Zap, but I feminized it to Zapressa (which is a name that actually exists, according to the internet).

Below: Zeppelin song lyrics: "I come from the land of the ice and snow....." If I'd quoted lyrics from some Ariana Grande Latte song (do her songs even have lyrics?) he'd probably catch on, but he's too dumb to recognize Zeppelin. My youngest nephew is well-versed in Led Zeppelin, and he was born in 2002. I thought Zeppelin was just part of the collective consciousness by now?

Yes, "Over the Hills and Far Away," another Zeppelin song dumbass! I guess he's too busy pretending to be taken with my name to notice. 

I had to throw in some references to Rowsdower's love of beer. It's a running joke in the MST3K episode. 

Above: a mashup. "I wonder if there's beer on the sun," (a Rowsdowerism from the show), and "Yes, we drank beer. My friends and I, the boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer." I'm quoting that bitchy old boozebag Brett Kavanaugh, of course.

Below: yes, The Festival of Trout, that sacred Canadian holiday. I almost wrote The Festival of Flannel, but I thought that would sound too ridiculous. He probably wouldn't have noticed.  

Above: somewhere in Hollywood, Lorenzo Lamas is beaming with pride at being called the greatest actor alive today, because that sentence has never been written until now. 

Below: I hope the guy just consulted imdb.com and didn't really know all those Lorenzo Lamas movie titles by heart. My Grease joke sailed right over his head, anyway; Lorenzo Lamas played a big dumb football player who didn't have any lines. 

Below: The cultural impact of Pauly Shore movies in the late 20th century. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty proud of that one. 

Above: UGH, Liberty University? If you're not familiar, it's a Christian college founded by Jerry fucking Falwell, which tells you all you need to know about it. I don't understand, the guy's an internet scammer, he could've claimed to be an alumnus of any college. Why not some Ivy League establishment, if he's trying to sound impressive? 

Above: thanks for the sermon, freak. Just my luck, I get a scammer who's also a God-botherer?

Below: More Zeppelin lyrics in response to his "are you married?" question. Again, it's a question that could be answered with a minimal amount of digging on my Instagram, but the guy's too lazy. Ah well, Zap Rowsdower likes to be mysterious anyhoo.

Below: I'm starting to get tired of the guy, so I try to provoke him. I was actually impressed by his English skills, though, so that comment was genuine. His spelling sucks ass, but I guess you can't have it all. (Again, faint praise, but English as a first language is uncommon among these dickheads.)

Below: has he not been paying attention? Zap Rowsdower is as Canadian as it gets!

Above and Below: asking me about kids. Dude, I'm 45 years old. If I wanted kids, I'd have procreated a long, long time ago. It's not like I never had any chances. And for the record I DO like kids, I have stepchildren and stepgrandchildren and nieces and nephews and I adore them all. And it's not limited to kids I'm related to through blood or marriage, either. I've babysat many times for friends who have kids, and I happened to love it. In fact, I was just talking to a friend from Minneapolis about babysitting her daughters (aged 4 and 6 at the time), and all the fun we had singing songs and making up dances and running outside to meet the ice cream truck. (Those kids are in high school now, unbelievably. Where does the time go?)

Oh yeah, I got him to chat about music. One Direction and Maroon 5? No wonder he didn't know any Zeppelin. He listens to musical diarrhea.

I listed all Canadian bands as my favorites, because why not, eh? Fun fact: I actually saw two of those artists in concert back in the '80s. Can you guess which ones? Bet you can't! ;-)  

A few days passed between the messages above and below. I'd all but forgotten about the guy, and then he messages me with some more bullshit.

Obviously, I was no longer in the mood to entertain his ridiculousness with fake answers. So I cut the crap and started asking him some questions. 

Below: oopsie, did I hit a nerve? I think maybe I did. So this is where it ends. The dream of Lorenzo and Zap is no more. I decided to close it out with some Rowsdower humor and, lastly, a quote from the Canadian national treasure that is Red Green. 

via GIPHY