Ever since this whole War on Terror thing started, America has been slowly and steadily falling behind the rest of the world. Our money is worthless, our economy is in the shitter, and our standing as the leading global economic superpower is waning. Meanwhile Western Europe is sighing and shaking its collective head, China is too busy toiling around the clock like some crazy 1.3 billion-member ant colony to even notice, and the Dutch are sitting around laughing at pedophilia… and self-righteously defending their national identity on the internet.

Saving the world from evil-doers is all well and good, but it makes your country’s TV shows suck. Think about it: American Idol debuted in 2002, just nine months after 9/11. Coincidence? I think not. How did waging an unwinnable war against an invisible enemy turn a glorified karaoke competition into a #1 hit? I have no idea, but Ryan Seacrest doesn’t make me feel like everything is OK. If I had my choice, I’d much rather see some guy with an awesome Hitler moustache bouncing around inside a giant balloon when I turn on my TV during primetime.

Oddly enough, the Japanese haven’t even heard about the War on Terror. That might sound outlandish, but think about it: If you had shit like this on TV in your country, would you really be that concerned with global geopolitics? Nope - you’d just sit there on your couch, mouth agape, watching some guy with an awesome Hitler moustache bounce around inside a giant balloon. Then you’d get bored, change the channel, and watch something else equally awesome. Then you’d go to work for 18 hours and fall asleep on the train, but hey - at least you’d have some awesome shit to watch on TV when you got home.

Real Sumo Fighting: Hakuho vs. Asashoryu

I spent some time in Japan a few years back. The idea was to immerse myself in a foreign culture, and I learned a lot about both myself and the world I live in while I was there. For example, I learned that there are places in the world that are crawling with teenagers in schoolgirl outfits, and that I enjoy being in those places, watching them giggle while playing with their crazy futuristic cell phones. I played pachinko and ate sashimi, and then I watched the schoolgirls some more and momentarily considered purchasing their used panties out of a vending machine. Then I remembered that I’d already spent all my money in the pachinko parlor, playing a game that I didn’t understand, so I went back to my hotel room and watched a TV show about a magical talking dog that was elected mayor of a small town. Confused, horny, and drunk as I’d ever been, I dozed off during a commercial for some sort of carbonated shrimp-flavored beverage.

Even after all that, nothing could prepare me for the sumo match I went to the next day. The ancient history of the sumo was palpable in that arena, and watching those guys grappling with one another, shooting lightning out of their hands and lasers out of their eyes and bending the spacetime continuum, well, it was almost as good as getting into a time machine and going back to feudal Japan. Sure, it was all pretty weird at first, just like I’m sure it looks weird to you now. But let me tell you something, viewer who is unfamiliar with the grand sumo tradition: This video hasn’t been digitally manipulated in any way, shape or form.

This is what sumo wrestling actually looks like.

For the rest of the trip, I couldn’t help but notice it everywhere I went: look up at any given moment and you’re all but guaranteed to see giant robots battling above Tokyo’s skyscrapers. Walk down the street in search of a vending machine full of used schoolgirl panties and BAM - a monster will fly through a brick wall and explode, and then some guy with really pointy hair will flash you a V sign and ride off into the sunset on a red jet-powered motorcycle. It’s a little known fact, and it was probably my greatest revelation on my trip to Japan: There are no special effects or animation studios in Japan. All those movies and TV shows you’ve seen? Those were all documentaries.

Also, there is a small town in southern Japan where a magical talking dog is the mayor.

Monkey & Dog Doing Situps

I stumbled across this clip on YouTube after halfheartedly watching The Moment of Truth on FOX. Have you guys seen that one? It’s that lie detector show where people answer increasingly horrible questions and ruin their lives for the chance to win FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Why can’t we take a hint from Japan and start airing good old-fashioned entertainment again? You know - like a show where a dog helps a monkey do sit-ups. If they put that on FOX I would watch it dutifully every single week. They could call it Animal Magnetism… only that kind of makes it sound like they would be having sex with each other, which is a totally different kind of TV show. How about Spot Me!? If they named the dog Spot that one would be a double whammy.

I could see a monkey doing sit-ups with a bulldog holding his legs down on American TV, but to flip it around and have the BULLDOG (not) doing the sit-ups? That’s so insane it could only come from the brilliant mind of a Japanese television writer. I’d make some sort of bold statement like “Japanese television writers must all smoke crack!” but I have a feeling that most of them probably come from respectable families and come up with their ideas in drug-free workplaces, so scratch that one.

Which just got me thinking… I know this clip is from Japan, but do you think when Chinese people have a really late business meeting and their bosses say “I need you all to stick around,” do you think they say “Can we order American?” Food for thought.

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Calbee Dog Knows A Thing Or Two About Love

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, you may have heard about the economic downturn that’s been going on in the United States. It’s been getting a lot of play in the media lately, but even though it’s a big, important story - what with the bursting housing bubble and the subprime lending and all that other crap I can barely understand - I’m a lot more concerned about how my country is falling behind in another, less widely reported way.

I’m worried about the state of our snack chip mascots.

The last of the truly great American snack chip mascots was surely Chester Cheetah, whose jazz-inspired, “cool daddio” attitude made him a favorite among children, mental defectives and promotional t-shirt manufacturers alike. But that was a long time ago, and though he may have been a pop culture phenomenon a decade or two ago (starring in not one, but TWO video games), those days are clearly in the past. If that’s the best we can offer the global snack chip mascot pantheon as a nation, we might be in bigger trouble than originally thought.

Even in his prime, though, all Chester really did was wear sunglasses and feign hipster indifference. He was never really the type to try to cheer up a young, heartbroken schoolboy, and that, I think, is our problem right there: American snack chip mascots are interested in hawking their wares, not solving our problems. Don’t they realize that a happy consumer is a spending consumer? I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure this is why we’re falling behind as a nation.

We need to take a note from the Japanese playbook here: helpful snack chip mascots lead to a strong economy. That means it’s time to lose the shades, Chester, but don’t worry; maybe you and the Pringles guy can open a free clinic together or something.

Awesome Video Of The Day

Dancing Man Wearing A Horse Mask Cooks Wild Mushrooms (Probably NSFW)

This is the greatest video that I have ever seen in my entire life.

Hang on a second. I have to go get a mop - my head just exploded.

Yes - it’s a video of a mostly-naked Japanese man picking and cooking wild mushrooms. Yes - he’s wearing a horse mask and dancing. Why? That I couldn’t tell you. People do all kinds of weird stuff, I guess. When I cook wild mushrooms that I’ve hand-picked from the forests of Japan, I like to hum along to popular radio hits and make little farty noises with my mouth. Does that make ME a freak?! So I like to hum and make little farty noises. Big deal. We’ve all got our quirks - this guy’s just so happens to be that he likes to dance around naked in a horse mask while cooking potentially deadly wild mushrooms. Judge not lest ye be judged.

Okay, I’ll admit it - this video is completely fucking bizarre and makes me more than a little uncomfortable, but you know what? This guy is PUMPED to be cooking those mushrooms. He looks like he’s having the time of his life! Maybe it’s the expression on the horse mask faking me out… or maybe this guy is on to something. Maybe dancing around naked in a horse mask and cooking wild mushrooms is AWESOME.

Only one way to find out, I guess. Anyone got a horse mask I can borrow?

In the wake of The Daily Show and Colbert Report leaving the air, I understand many of you have turned to the CRACKED Blog as your primary source of current, gripping, relevant news. In order to punish that impulse, I present the following reports on what’s been going on with whales lately.

And what have those mammoth maritime mammals been up to? Not getting killed by the Japanese, for one. Defecating in our oceans for two. But let’s go back to the other story for now (For more on the whale poo issue, see my article in December’s National Geographic Magazine entitled “Destination Defecation, Population: Poop”).

Due to international pressures, the Japanese have agreed to forestall the planned killing of fifty endangered Humpback whales, but are going through with the slaughter of over a thousand other, more plentiful whales.

And believe it or not, the whales are NOT for scarfing; no, they have giant squid brains for that. The Japanese research institute backing the voyage claims the whales are “vital to [their] research [on making a whale-human hybrid capable of wading ashore U.S. beaches and devouring surfers and sunners by the maw-ful].”

So who’s the hero here? The International Whale Council, which finally convinced Japan to leave the Humpbacks to their humpbacking. For the sake of our collective joy, I encourage all of you to imagine that the IWC is a governmental body whose members are whales. Other little-known government bodies dedicated to preserving our sea life?

In other whale-related news, recent fossil evidence suggests that the modern whale is not descended from the Hippo, as has been assumed, but rather from Indohyus, an extinct deer-like creature the size of a raccoon:

In other words, whales got faaaaaaat.

Awesome Video Of The Day

I Have A Bad Case Of Diarrhea

I always thought Japanese people were total badasses, what with the Shogun warriors and the Seppuku and all that, but apparently I was all turned around on the subject. It turns out that Japanese people are actually huge sissies who call an ambulance every time they get diarrhea.

Shouldn’t the whole death-before-surrender thing come into play here? If you’re Japanese, doesn’t checking yourself into a hospital for your explosive diarrhea bring shame upon your family or something? Maybe I’m misinterpreting this whole thing. Maybe they’re trying to learn the English for “I have a bad case of diarrhea” because they assume that traveling to an English-speaking country means they’re almost certainly going to have to say it at some point. In that case, though, I’d assume that a Japanese person would pretend they DIDN’T have diarrhea to avoid imposing on anyone. You know - because it’s rude. On the other hand, so is blasting diarrhea all over a bench at a bus stop. I’m pretty sure that’s a rule of thumb no matter what country you’re in.

Then again, what do I know? This video was the first time I’ve ever seen a Japanese person in my entire life.

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Hayden Panettiere, the bite-sized star of the TV show “Heroes” (as lovingly chronicled on this blog), has developed a wide following among teenage girls and the pasty middle-aged men who love them. But what her fans may not know is that she’s also a daring eco-warrior who travels the globe protecting adorable species from harm, although not always successfully, as demonstrated in this video (presented here in German, for comedic effect):

For those of you slackers who don’t spreken zie Deutsch, here’s the scoop:

“It was really frightening,” Panettiere said. “Some of us were hit by the [fisherman’s] boat hook. But in the end, all we really worried about was the dolphins.” Growing emotional, the actress said they were close enough to the dolphins to see them “sky-hopping, jumping out of the water to see us… One little baby dolphin stuck his head out and kind of looked at me, and the thought that it’s no longer with us is really difficult to take,” she said, tears streaking down her face.

Yes, that’s very sad. Next time please wear a bikini.

However, since Ms. Panettiere in a wetsuit saving dolphins went over so well, I’d like to offer my suggestions for further sexy celebrity activism, such as:

• A lingerie-clad Jessica Alba chains herself to an endangered tree, like the one in my backyard
• Scarlett Johansson boycotts clothes for 2008 to protest sweatshops or whatever
• Kim Kardashian refuses to sleep with any more rappers until Paris Hilton is released from jail
• Michelle Obama challenges Obama Girl to a Jello-wrestling match to raise money for her husband’s campaign
• Britney Spears goes on a hunger strike to protest her own horrible Halloween costume
• Ben Affleck lays down in front of a bulldozer in a rainforest, preferably one driven by a deaf and blind person

Awesome Video Of The Day

Snapping Turtle Climbs A Fence

I know it’s Monday and you’re tired and bummed out and missing the weekend and all that, but I think I may have found something that can make you feel better: A video of a turtle falling off a fence.

Why will that help? I don’t know. There’s definitely something satisfying about it, though. Maybe it’s like an inspirational message about giving your all. Maybe we could learn a lesson from this little persistent guy.

Or maybe it’s just funny to watch animals fall off of stuff.

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