Clearly, advocates of ChAoS & PAIN would be enamored of anyone considered to be a "Psycho Blaster", or a psycho anything, for that matter. I'll admit, I was a little late onto the Benny Podda bandwagon, but I guarantee you that I am currently driving that motherfucker, and you guys need to pile on, stat.
For those of you who don't know, Podda was a lunatic bodybuilder in the heyday of outlandish and psychotic bodybuilders, the early 1980s through the early 90s. In a time that boasted nutjobs like Mike Quinn, Jimmy "The Iron Bull" Pellechia, and whomever that fucking retard was who claimed he only did one rep for each bodypart and won the Mr. America as a result (btw if anyone knows his name, email me), and Podda ruled the roost of the nuthouse even with that bunch.
Some tibits about Benny-- He lives in a fucking cave. That's right, a cave.
"To get to Benny's cave, you must first go to a remote waterfall to be purified. This is especially important for first-timers. You don't want the cave to reject you--when this happens, it induces terror. "Your soul is rended from your body in a spiritual tear," Benny explains. So, you suffer the pain and indignities of purification. The water pours down on you with the shocking force of spiritual flagellation.
The cave's climate is reminiscent of Podda's Pittsburgh: hotter than hell in the summer, freezing cold in the winter. The cave has been inhabited for thousands of years, Benny says, and it leads to an outdoor amphitheater with perfect acoustics that can only be reached via the cave. "The opening is a vaginal orifice. In initiation ceremonies, the Cahuilla would pass through it one by one to be 'reborn' as warriors.""
- He takes the idea of ChAoS and PAIN to an entirely different level.
"Philosophically, Benny merges German Sturm und Drang, Eastern asceticism and a lot of other really weird shit. "My physical training is based on the philosophies of Genghis Khan," Benny says. "He taught his troops the importance of exterior and interior training. His warriors learned how to turn themselves inside out so that they could project their inner power out like lightning."
Benny grabs his flagellating rod and whips himself as hard as he can a dozen times, striking the acupuncture meridians of the body. The thick muscles of his flesh thud with each strike. "You know that feeling when you're blowing your load?" he asks. "Instead of letting that go out, you reverse the whole thing. It feels like your body is on fucking fire! I lift weights with that [energy] coursing through my body and my fucking testosterone a thousand times normal--'cause I just fucked myself."
- He got shot while robbing a pharmacy for painkillers, armed not with a gun, like a normal crook, but with a bow and arrow.
- He has a unique method for pumping himself up, which I neglected to list in my "What pumps you the fuck up?" blog- To psych himself up for a heavy lift, he once ran straight through a wall, Wile E. Coyote-style, emerging in the next room in a cloud of plaster and debris. Another time, Steeler lineman Steve Courson was using a pay phone when Benny charged and knocked him and the wall-mounted phone across the room--with his head.
- He had a unique pharmacological and herbological regimen that led to shit like this:
"Fueled by everything from the visualization techniques of Vipasanna Buddhism to anabolic steroids and herbal concoctions that he drank from root-filled mayonnaise jars, Benny trained like a human wrecking ball. Manion recalls walking into his establishment one day and seeing Benny doing reps with his head wrapped in a blood-drenched towel, others scattered nearby. "The cable had snapped on a long cable-row machine and the handle had hit him on the head," recalls Manion. "He had to keep replacing the towels when they got soaked with blood. I made a guy take him to the hospital, and it took 12 stitches to close the open wound in his head."
- He transcends every possible conception of what is cool or "human", and shows just how fucking brutal people can be if they stop being pussies for ten minutes a day.
"I have seen Benny break bricks with magazines, crush coconuts with his bare hands, squirt blood out of his nose, and swing 225 pounds from his testicles. This is NOT Benny being crazy, this is him transferring energy and power to accomplish what he wants accomplished. He puts himself in a state of mind that defies any normal brain patterns you and I may have which gives him the ability to do these abnormal things, like take a 2x4 to the gut and smile while doing it. When Benny was doing his body building contests, he would invite a couple people from the audience to come up and hit him with 2x4's while he did his routine. Nothing is normal with Benny, normal is boring to him."
- He's friends with, and the former trainer of, the likes of Joe Montana, Bill Romanowski, and CHUCK NORRIS!
"I didn't know who the fuck Chuck Norris was and didn't give a fuck," says Benny. "They took me up to his house and we hit it off because I pounded the fucking guy. I yelled at him, 'Kick me in the fucking chest as hard as you can!" He's like, 'No, I shouldn't.' So I berated the fucker until he did it--and I didn't budge when he did." (Benny's lone film credit would be his turn as Norris' trainer in 1988's Hero and the Terror.)
On top of all that shit, he's a philosopher, a spiritual and physical healer, and generally all around insanely cool guy. Read more about him here, here, and here, if you want to read about a man who should be emulated at every possible opportunity.
"The world of tradition is dying," Benny laments. "When the last flame goes out, that's when you have apocalypse--like the great flood, the Black Plague, earthquakes and nuclear war. It'll make World War II and the dropping of the atom bombs look like nothing. But as long as one person keeps the flame alive, a complete cataclysm can be avoided."
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