The Book Cage: Episode 116 - The Hardy Boys Casefiles #85: Winner Takes All
The people have spoken and Winner Take All takes all! Frank and Joe's new friend who I've managed to never hear of before has one 5 million dollars in the state lottery. How does this lead to lasers and fire? Find out this Friday, 5pm Eastern.
Shit yeah! Cant wait!
LASER HYPE!
Coming up on the hour, it's The Hardy Boys Casefiles #85: Winner Take All. YOUR PREVIEW IS FILLED WITH TOO MANY LASERS!
Oh thank god. Save us, Boys Hardy.
As the room fills with lasers, a mirror ball drops from the ceiling and EDM blares from speakers in the walls
I've never been more grateful for the book cage than today
Barely audible rapster bars over the EDM
Randy Rand laying down sick beats
Let's blow up some computer girlfriends!
The Boys are Back in town
Hi, @Brendan!™ !
Hi, @gellaho !
LASERS!
Hi @Fatamatician: The Curator !
Official hi, @P.Boart vs Knockoff Xenomorphs !
Oops
Hi, @Velo !
Oh thank god we made it.
Hi @FancyShark !
Hi, @dr !
Hello all!
Hi, @FrumpyBadger !
Hi Shark!
For those of you who've been following along, this comes between #84 False Alarm (the one with the robot jewelry robbery committed by a rival brother detectives) and #86 Virtual Villainy (which lied about being about VR)
Hi, @👽⭐ Raccoon donut disease Mo !
is 85 being between 84 and 86 also a lie?
it's illegal to lie about being vr
We begin with Joe solving a murder
God, I miss the Gnarly Boyz.
Hi, @Tom Owns Diebel's Grave !
Bring back the evil twins.
Well that was quick.
Short book.
Good job everyone
Case: Failed
Joe would punch Truth to death in the interrogation room if she dared to contradict him.
I've never met them but I love the name
Joe has been throwing that watch at every person he's met since he found it
Excellent riffing
Thanks @gellaho
We did it!
Turns out the watch belongs to Hitler
Which is a dream of course. Joe is incapable of doing anything, including dying
Joe's socks are a source of trauma
I did find it suspicious that Joe was doing a thing but maybe that was his next step on his path to self discovery. Guess not
"Another erotic dream"
Don't lie to me about Joe reading, ghostwriter
Joe is the dumbest character in his own dreams too
This is also a dream
Joeception
Ah, Ben Martin, that friend who has definitely existed before
since the bad guy in the dream wasn't given a name, I'll have to guess what the initials might have stood for. I'm going with Fat Dickhead and Enormous Prick
Ben! I remember Ben! He was present!
Ben! Our dearest and oldest friend!
You all remember Ben, right? Classic Ben
Bennerino
A name that surely isn't had by 10,000's of people!
Ben Ben Benny Ben
"Is he the fat guy who laughs at feet?"
Tha'ts Ben! Classic Ben
"Because I just dreamt about him"
Always being there, named Ben
He's my favorite
Too bad Tony Prito couldn't have won $5 million
Still got these movie assets lying around
Abandoning a steady job because of a sudden windfall. That's so Ben.
$5 million spends awful quick once the IRS catches up to ya, huh.
Classic Ben, quitting his job after winning a lottery
I can't believe I got shark scooped
about Ben!
Shark and I love Ben
He's the best
Time to fight for the newspaper
Do it Joe
Strike him down
The battle that followed would decimate half the Eastern seaboard
Oh no, Ben lived there!
You're sounding like a real Frank
Joe forgot and so did Ben.
In square number, about two million. Metric is weird.
"Unless you file as self-employed"
Hm
"Let me go into the details"
METRIC IS FINE! (rants in Australian)
Ben seems like a real exciting dude
Classic Ben
Paying off loans. Ben, you party animal!
Ben is the best of us
He'll only have half a million in college loans left!
After Chet
I look forward to him never dying
I mean with the trajectory for most lottery winners, investing in a local homeless shelter is actually pretty smart
A thing I say about all my friends
Alright, maybe Ben's a moron
Did Ben publish his tax records?
But especially Ben, who will always be with us
Oh no! The brain worms stole from Ben!
one time when I was 17 I found a market stall for a psychic named Patrick who was proudly displaying certificates that he was 2 time winner of the Australian Psychic of the Year
He doesn't like it when you call him Swollen George
I've said it before and I'll say it again; You cannot trust men named Anthony Soluri who interupt news conferences to talk about the Organization for Orderly Psychic Study
I was deeply curious how you win such an award so I waited half an hour til he came back from lunch and asked him if it was like a competition or something
"O.O.P.S."? Jesus
You do say that
Patrick, such a Ben
Hi, @Ozzie !
and he said "no it's just a popular vote, niow do you want a reading or not"
and I said "no lol"
Anthony Soluri sounds like an evil chancellor planning on betraying his leige
I guess George isn't doing swell
Hi, @GDC's Quivering Thews !
No one wants George's appliances and I have to question why.
I, YOUR HAIR, DEFY YOU, JOE!
Our friend Ben, the pizza waiter whom we met a few months back, has always been a sucker for telepathic communication.
Hi, @LyraV !
Classic George, Ben's cousin, George.
This is a thing known about our friend, whom we see whenever we get pizza.
You all remember George
HAVE AT YOU!
It was the ghost of the Joe who could have been and has a rad Mohawk.
YA books always have to give aphysical description of the character but they do it in the weirdest ways
Goddammit, ghostwriters, get Callie's hair color straight!
like in animorphs where rachel's thing is she's the pretty one, so whenever her cousin jake is narrating it sounds like he wants to fuck her
Missed this for my hair color montage, I guess
Look, @gellaho , the cloning process has some flaws
Now the whole movie is ruined
That can't be his name. I refuse
Elmo Bernbocker was the most popular cornbelt comedian of the 1980s
Mrs. Bender had grown up in New York, but moved to Bayport when she fell in love with a sailor--an Italian-American named Joe Bender. Mr. Bender, Vanessa's father, had actually been born Giuseppe, but gone by the anglicized version ever since arriving at Ellis Island in the 20s as a child. The anglicization of American society pervades all cultures, though some more than others. America's melting pot status was once unique, but would grow to be shared by an increasingly globalized world.
also imagine going to a press conference and shouting publicly "I'm shit at my job and my cousin has to pay my rent!"
A credit to the Bernbocker name
Elmo Bernbocker is a name I would improvise while DMing to make the players shut the fuck up.
Why do I want to make him in the Sims and just fuck with his world?
Your honor, motion to dismiss, citing Finders vs. Losers
Frank "Um, Actually" Hardy
Nerrrrrrrrd
Hell yes on the new title, @Velo
Classic Frank
Joe punched Frank, who couldn't understand mixed metaphors owing to the fact that he was an android, and thus never dreamed of guilty electric sheep in mismatched socks.
I meant non-aquatic leeches and also fuck you.
"You're gf has been rubbing me... the wrong way, Frank"
Getting to the kidnapping quick
Not Emily!
They kidnapped his cousin George too! He said not to worry about that!
that character we've all grown to love
Ben's sister!
To the Hardymobile!
You all remember Emily
Emily from the younger pizza shop next door?
this is just like when that youngest stark kid got killed by ramsay
what was his name...
Working at GameStop I learned one the finest ways to deal with extreme pedantry is a solid fuck you and then just wave your hands around.
Ms. Pizza
Uh oh I don't did she explode in a car yet or is she doomed to?
Clearly they and Ben are the best of friends
She's Ben's sister!
Always getting up to stuff
Any woman near Joe risks getting exploded
Like being kidnapped
Classic Emily
Women only die by car explosion in this world. You're guaranteed a viking funeral if you have ovaries
It took two female mentions before one was kidnapped
So explosions are still on the table tho, alright 👍
"Kidnap victims have a bad habit of turning up dead." not really, no
Really kicking Ben when he's down
That's kind of the whole deal
"When we investigate"
@Velo Nice surname
Y'know Frank I know I was dogging on people for pedantry but I feel like most kidnap victims just don't turn up at all? Maybe? I could be wrong.
Yep I just spotted that common denominator
do you think the Hardys will make Ben serve them pizza
Joe becomes violent when person who normally gives food does not give food
You know, Frank, I suspect the kidnapping is probably the bigger burden
Classc Ben, waiting on a porch, being three years older than Frank.
Just like my cats!
YOU ARE NOT THE BRINGER OF FOODS
Awww that's good conditioning
A regular Bigfeets eyewitness, this guy
the kidnappers CAME TO HIS HOUSE TO DELIVER THE NOTE BY HAND
What a fanciful ransom note
Did this ghostwriters grandpa win the lottery and it destroyed him or something?
Huh
Ben
This ransom note will self destruct in five seconds
Ben this is a safe space but are you doing this for attention and or as a sex thing?
"And for the love of God don;t call the Hardy Boys" got burned up before he could read it
Could we do 148000 in 50 hours?
That just feels nicer.
what was the plan if nobody got up from the couch for an hour?
"wtf a weird fire on my front step. Ok anyway time for the morning newspaper" Ben thought in a slightly alternate reality. His sister was found dead 2 days later.
The kidnappers were planning on Ben having a photographic memory
I'm pretty sure it said "Have 48 dollars ready in 150,000 hours"
There are scorch marks all over the porch from previous ransom attempts
Got answering machine money, well la-ti-da
Now THATS a dope kidnapping
Ben's getting fancy now that he's come into money
This isn't the classic down to earth Ben we'd all grown to love
hey Ben why'd you do a press conference
Such great friends
"Now I know how MC Hammer feels"
Does the Australian lottery not have mandatory press conferences?
"I said ony my friends know this"
HAHAHA "I have a new phone number that only my friends know about"
"That's nice, Ben"
Because the American one does and it is both real and dumb
oh actually I don't know, I don't follow that stuff
Yeah you have to do a whole thing where they give you the check on TV
lame
If we can't paint a target on the new money, we have to give them a TV show. Them's the rules
Does it?
Classic Ben
oh the psychic association is called oops
Always giving money to places that sound like accidents
good wordplay
He just wants to go hunting bigfeets
With his beloved little sister Emily
The Oops club sounds like a group that meets to help with premature ejaculation and I'm not sorry I said it.
Don't worry Ben I'm sure we'll get to see that dream come true for you
Now OOPS is AIMS in my head
@Rachel, Mayor of Bitch Island back me up on this
Ben was sick of all the disorder that usually accompanies psychic study
Work allergies are a serious thing
I look forward to the spinoff series The Continued Adventures of Ben
George is Slippin' Jimmy
Haha Ben is taking over the series
Ben's so great
haha I knew george would be a scumbag
In the Hardyverse 40% of all income comes from insurance scams
You know how people leave lottery tickets as tips
ALWAYS
So named by his three illegitimate children
they call this the Group Lottery Confundication
"Good thing it paid off. I was going to slash that cheap bastard's tires"
Just some grade-A acronyms in here
Old weary edgy Ben
"haha those wacky enviornmentalists. Boy it's warm for November isn't it?"
The ILL has a point though.
I feel like that's too good of an acronym to not already be something medically related. International Lung Liaisons.
Unlike George Swell.
Don't get Ben started on Cicadas
2024 is going to see the 13 and 17-year cicadas BOTH return
That's not how checks work
No. Never again, I lived in Baltimore the last time and it was kind of intense.
That's not how banks work
aren't the Hardys kinda rich too?
... I that how banks used to work?
They keep cashing in Callie's life insurance
That would explain a lot actually
So much free protein
Wait....Ben are you sure that was a bank and not just some guy? You seem incredibly gullible.
I don't think Ben went to a real bank
it was the BANK: Brothers Against Nieces Knitting
So we're all in agreement Ben went to a fake bank
Banks will sometimes put holds on big deposits
they were so happy to receiev the donation
Classic Ben
Oldest trick in the book
Mystery atop mystery what a thrilling laser adventure this will be
So as a young punker kid yes, we did try to sear and eat them but I would derail this whole thing with that story so just know it's gross.
"Ummmm Ben Accounts National Kank - BANK"
I forgot about the lasers!
You do know that private investigators can't get you money, right?
He went to a cardboard square that said "BANK" in marker and gave his money to two five year olds
If anything the private eye will take the money and run.
🎶 Laser time with our best friend Ben
Cause he's never gonna die
and it's never gonna end🎵
Such great friends
Thick with the anguish of Winning the Lottery.