Must-Avoid TV

At one time, my friend Ken and I were hooked on a goofy Japanese show usually shown on Spike TV (the only time I would ever watch Spike TV, I hasten to add) called MXC (Most Extreme Challenge or something like that) that subjects inexplicably enthusiastic contestants to a series of horribly painful and humiliating physical activities, such as running as fast as you can into a closed and locked door, jumping off a ramp onto a giant spinning mushroom, leaping onto a rotating surfboard and then being knocked into filthy water by a giant pink dolphin (a metaphor for life, it is our contention), and trying to run across giant rotating cylinders, among many many others that defy easy description. As long as you turn the sound on the TV off, it's very funny, in a twisted sort of way (the Spike people felt the need to add a staggeringly unfunny, extremely lewd play-by-play voiceover). It's actually a Japanese program called Takeshi's Castle, and I would like to someday see it without the stupid voiceovers (the dialog in the original is actually supposed to be fairly witty).

I mention this because I had not been aware of the depths of Japanese television until I was watching Wednesday night's Colbert Report and they showed a brief clip of what looked like a Japanese show featuring a Komodo dragon trapped in a plastic dome. For some reason, Japanese women would poke their heads into the dome--with a piece of raw meat strapped to their foreheads--and have to duck out of the way when the dragon charged at them. Sort of a disturbing version of Whack-a-Mole. I was intensely curious as to what this was, so I Googled "Japanese TV Komodo dragon" and, yes, apparently it is a real program, mentioned here.

I also came across several videos of Japanese programs that are even more upsetting. Check them out here, if you dare.

Jeez, and I thought American TV was bad!