Nerding Day: Two Drs Homestead (Patreon)

Every so often, we encounter something that changes us — something so profound, so well-timed to that particular moment, that it permanently alters who we are. For me, such an event most recently occurred when Jason Pargin dropped this video into the 1-900HOTDOG work Slack.

The clip depicts a middle-aged man tactically plodding his way through a shooting course composed of cardboard torsoes sitting on couches and chairs. It's clearly a whimsical little scenario set up for guys who'd gotten bored of putting rounds into pictures of Nancy Pelosi, but as the Twitter user who posted it notes, it's not at all clear what sort of situation this course is meant to emulate. The obvious one is family annihilation, but since when have middle-aged white men needed to train for that? If there was a professional family annihilation league, middle-aged white men would be banned for having an unfair advantage.

Incredibly, this video is not unique. There are hundreds of them, all posted by a single Instagram account. Jason passed on writing about it, fearing that the Oakley Spec Ops might burst in his front door and gun down his furniture over the course of a leisurely half hour or so. But I'm up in Canada. What are they going to do about it, destabilize my country by boosting grift and grievance-driven separatist movements then capitalizing on the turmoil?

Shit. Well, at the very least, if it comes to an invasion I don't think we'll have to worry about any of these guys — they'll be too busy bursting like a gear-filled piñata once the first barrage of Timbits hits them.

The Instagram account that posts all of these videos is "Two Drs Homestead," which according to their YouTube channel, is "two PhD’s that grew up in the city and have fulfilled our dream of homesteading in rural Texas." Quick aside, and a little tip from someone who went to grad school: anyone can get a PhD if they have enough time and money. If someone makes "PhD" a part of their branding online, they either have nothing better to brag about in their lives, they got it at a diploma mill, or they don't actually have one at all. That goes double if they never tell you what their degree is in. Triple if they call themselves "doctors" despite not being MDs.

The Two Drs Homestead YouTube channel is less than nothing. It's a tired, bearded man in a variety of baseball caps telling you what you need to buy to survive when the "SHTF," which is prepper speak for the time when you're allowed to shoot black people without all the hassle of paperwork. Also, I like that Dan's rebus shirt there shits the bed on the last symbol because just drawing an arm would be too unsubtle. Peace Beargun is my favorite Gundam character.

So, yeah, it's the same LARP that makes up most homesteading and prepper content, selling the fantasy of surviving some kind of overnight apocalypse by stocking up on rations and guns so you can laugh as all the big city liberals are killed by space monsters or FEMA. Of course, people like this would be better served learning to grow food or making connections with their neighbors or, I don't know, doing a single push-up and cutting out all the cheap American beer, but those things don't involve buying cool gun gear or training to shoot zombies.

But their Instagram account, that's where the magic happens. Rather than 10 minute flashlight reviews and mysterious allusions to where they used to work and why they don't talk about it anymore, it's just endless videos of PhD Daniel and his pals running deranged courses at a shooting range.

The range is called the Texas Defensive Shooting Academy and it doesn't appear to have anything to do with Two Drs, other than the fact that Daniel apparently spends every day of his life there. Still, every once in a while, he posts a video that has something to do with running a farm, like watering pigs.

Mostly it's the shooting, though. Also a lot of AI videos of elderly white men rapping about shooting. Truly, this technology has been a boon to the melanin-and flow-challenged who nevertheless want to pretend they can spit bars worse than a 1980s Compaq executive. Can you imagine what the Flora, IL guys could do with AI today?

"My Glock's on deck never miss a shot / Lock and load, give it all I've got / Fire, reload, on the block."

But AI isn't just useful for producing fake rapping videos — it's good for all kinds of things. For instance, this!

Or this!

In most cases, I would rather see an individual's scrappy, half-formed but real efforts at creation than the weirdly glossy, unsettling results of a prompt they typed into ChatGPT. This Instagram account is the rare exception. These guys come off better as dead-eyed virtual clones than as themselves. Consider the following:

Our shooter begins in a seated position, as many of TDSA's courses seem to. He lifts his bulk off the chair like a giant of old stirring at the scent of an Englishman's blood. After a difficult walk over terrain the Mountain Monsters boys wouldn't hesitate to call "treacherous," he raises one leg up onto a wall of tires, supports himself by hanging on a rope, and looses several rounds at cardboard targets laid along the ground. They call it the "Swab the Deck" course, and it simulates putting down your crewmates after you've been boarded by Somali pirates and they've taken everything except a single case of Natty Light. You couldn't all survive on that. This is what they would have wanted.

In this challenge, the shooter is seated and must stand up before blowing away several targets while avoiding the no-shoot cutout. Our lone commenter speculates that this is meant to drill wiping out a marriage counselor, but wait— enhance.

I'd know those jazz hands anywhere! This man is training to rescue Bob Fosse from the Three Stooges! Protip: shooting Moe in the foot can cause him to stamp on Larry's foot in return. While the two are distracted, gun down Curly and extract Fosse.

"What could this possibly be for?" You ask. If you don't know, then your essence is likely already being drained by demonic succubi and/or incubi. It's too late for you. For everyone else, a reminder to always be vigilant. If the hottie going to town on your bathing suit area has horns and a supernaturally-skilled tongue, you know what to do. Get up and clear an escape route by bumbling into a stack of barrels.

The man behind these devious scenarios is named Len Baxley. Here he is introducing a new shooter as being from "fine Nordic stock."

Haha that's just normal stuff they say in Texas, though. It's fine. But one thing that comes up when you search for Len on the wheezing remains of Google is a long and confusing Dallas Observer article from 1999. Most of it isn't relevant, but a few excerpts are pretty interesting.

So Len Baxley is an ex-cop who was fired for being too corrupt. Too corrupt for the police. I don't believe that any police officer has ever been let go for corruption, so I have to assume that his sin was the incompetent way in which he went about his criminal activities.

Surely, having such a man run a wild new style of shooting range is a recipe for success. He's got a system, too: the Baxley Shooting System! Don't overexert yourself. Conserve your energy. There's no rush, friend. Waddle over to the tires and shoot off a few rounds from your tricked-out setup at a stationary target six feet away. Sit down. Rest your feet on a tire for a while.

Note the athletic hunch, the Hank Hill-esque posterior, the complete ignorance of the concept of leg day. What do you need legs for? You shoot with your arms, dipshit. The Baxley System doesn't ask that you do leg day. It's all about self-care. Taking some time for yourself with the boys. It definitely isn't about sort of just fucking around in a way that gets people shot.

Like the man says, freedom isn't free. Sometimes a guy getting shot is the price you have to pay for being able to simulate wiping out your family after your son tries to turn off Tucker Carlson.

Shrek, any closing thoughts?

Thanks, Shrek. Very true.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mark, who accidentally completed one squat at the Texas Defensive Shooting Academy and was never invited back.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM