Best Assassination?

Lowbrow Answer: Archduke Franz Ferdinand (killed in 1914)
Okay, sure, "The Black Hand" is a cool name for a gang of Serbian militants. But come on. Could these guys be any more inept? First, they try to blow him up, but they miss and blow another car up instead. Then they try to shoot him at a cafe, but he leaves before they can act. Then two of them get scared, eat their cyanide pills, and jump into a river. Except the pills don't really work and the river is only 5 inches deep. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. This is like Farrelly Brothers dumb.

Gavrilo Princep finally shoots Ferdinand in his car, accidentally killing his wife in the process. A month later, World War I breaks out. Nice job, Black Hand. Thanks a lot. Just to recap, you nearly botch the only assassination attempt you ever undertake, you send the whole of Europe into a horrible war, and you needlessly kill Ferdinand's hot Austrian wife. Are you trying to make me hate you? Because it's working.


Middlebrow Answer: Robert F. Kennedy (killed in 1968)
JFK's little brother was shot four times at point blank range outside a hotel by a man named Sirhan Sirhan. Now here's the best part: even with two holes in his chest and one in his head, RFK didn't die until 26 hours later. What a fucking badass. I start crying when I skin my knee; this dude's brain is leaking out on the floor and he manages to survive an entire day. Move over, Jesus. I have a new God.

I will say, however, that you could go bigger than RFK. Let's use a hunting analogy. Let's say guys like Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. are majestic twelve-point bucks. That makes Robert Kennedy, like, a really big swordfish. Making your name in the assassin community by shooting him is like being in the NBA and playing for the Golden State Warriors. Sure, you're a pro basketball player. But not really.


Highbrow Answer: Alexander Litvinenko (killed in 2006)
Litvinenko was a Russian KGB thug who secretly switched sides to join the "good guys" at MI6 in England. Although, in hindsight, he probably could have been a bit more secretive about the switch. While staying in a hotel in London, he drank a cup of tea that had been laced with Polonium-210, a radioactive metalloid element. He died three weeks later from radiation poisoning. Let me just make sure you heard that right: he drank a cup of tea that had been poisoned with Polonium. H-I-G-H-B-R-O-W, and that's how you spell highbrow.

The big rumor was that Litvinenko was offed by a bunch of his former KGB buddies, although it was also reported that the Russian government was behind it. Awesome. I feel like I'm in the middle of a Hollywood spy movie, like "The Bourne Identity" or "The Bourne Supremacy" or "The Bourne Ultimatum" or "The Bourne Legacy" or "Spy Kids 3D."

Best Super Mario Kart Track?

Lowbrow Answer: Rainbow Road
This is what happens when you let a 7-year-old on methamphetamine design a race track. It's like somebody stabbed a disco floor then ran it over with a steam roller. I'm sure I'd be getting faster times on it, if only I weren't so busy having a seizure during Lap 3.

Where the hell was OSHA when they were building this abomination? Aren't there regulations for this shit? There are no walls, electrical stone faces are falling all over the place, and the whole thing is free-floating in space. Talk about a lawsuit waiting to happen. Can't we put in some safety fences or something? The last thing we need is Bowser careening out of control and smashing into a family of nuns or a litter of baby kittens.


Middlebrow Answer: Vanilla Lake 2
Nothing gets my nipples hard like ice racing. Yee-haw. The best part of this course is saving time by jumping onto the floating icebergs. Nothing gets the ladies going like the old jump-onto-the-icebergs-to-save-time routine. Yeah, girl. You know how I do. Cut right across that frozen lake. You like that? You want some more? Come here, I'ma rub my Donkey Kong all up in yo Princess Toadstool.

And yet, does anybody else think maybe we shouldn't be driving race cars through the arctic tundra? Aren't there, like, endagered baby seals and narwhals and dudes named Nanook wandering around up there? I mean, I know I'd be pissed if a family of Eskimos and a polar bear drove a bunch of race cars through MY backyard. Shouldn't we at grant them the same respect?


Highbrow Answer: Donut Plains 3
Good lord, this shit is impossible. I've been playing Mario Kart since back before I even knew how to masturbate, and I still can't win on this track. The turns are ridiculous, there's a gap in one of the bridges, and the whole thing is happening on some kind of rain-soaked flood plain. You turn too far one way - you're twelve feet under water. Too far the other - you're stranded on a patch of dirt with no hope. It's like 16-bit Hurricane Katrina.

And where are we getting these gophers that pop out of the ground and attack my kart? Is there Mercury leaking into a nearby water supply or something? They're terrifying. Here I am doing my best "Fast and Furious" impression around a corner, when a crazed, 5-foot ball of fuzz with dilated pupils and a tattoo on his arm that reads "Born to Fuck" jumps up onto my face. I surrender. Sweet Jesus, I surrender.