When the Japanese aren’t busy stacking food on their pets, they’re usually doing some other combination of insane and adorable, and this pet penguin is no exception. Lala the king penguin lives with a family in Japan, and he wears a little penguin backpack on his trips to the fish market. Awwwww, that’s adorable! Did you see the way the Antarctic bird is living in an air-conditioned room under the stairs in a hot and humid city?

Of course, there haven’t been any new episodes of “Real TV” since 2001, so even though this video is new to the Internet, Lala may very well be dead. Settle down, settle down — king penguins live 30 years, so I’m sure he’s fine. But you never know with Japan. Japanese men get erections from killing dolphins, so I don’t see what makes a penguin so valuable. The only thing Japan loves more than cute things is killing cute things for sexual release. I hear they slaughter entire litters of Golden Retriever puppies in Tokyo. It’s the hottest orgy in town.

[BuzzFeed]

Midget Wrestling, AKA "The Beautiful Game"

Back in February, I wrote about “Half Pint Brawlers,” a new show about midget wrestling that Spike was developing (they consider the term “little person wrestling” to be too respectful). Well, the day has finally come: “Half Pint Brawlers” premieres tonight, and the promo for it (below) is exactly what you’d expect: all the midget-exploitation you love about TLC, but with the extra dumbing-down you get from Spike in  order to cater to unemployed paint-huffing males.

Of course, that’s not to say it won’t be entertaining. I’m sure it’s the perfect show to watch while your rectal burns heal from that fart-lighting accident.

Read the rest of this entry »

Skepti-kitty is gonna hold off on that thumbs-up.

With Tiger Woods in the news today, let’s address this: Spike TV has ordered a new pilot about golf that — simply put — sounds crappy. Reader Mo Charlo summed it up best: “It looks like Tin Cup meets ‘Eastbound and Down’ meets TMZ’s Tiger Woods coverage.” The description:

The single-camera “Back Nine” stars “The Dukes of Hazzard” alum John Schneider as Ronnie Barnes, a hard-drinking, larger-than-life, washed-up former U.S. Open champion. He travels the country competing in small-time tournaments with Tiger, his sex-addicted longtime caddy, in order to qualify again for the PGA Tour…

Spike put the “Back Nine” script on the fast track almost a year ago. The sex-addict Tiger-named character was part of that early script and preceded by more than a year [Tiger] Woods’ November car crash that opened the floodgates to allegations about his extramarital affairs. [THR]

So, yeah… kinda weird that the Tiger thing proved to be so prescient, but I’m having a hard time thinking about that. Right now I’m completely transfixed by the collection of John Schneider photos at the LIFE image database. It’s like opening up a time capsule and finding nothing but 200 pictures of feathered hair.

Spike TV has always sucked, but usually in an endearing way: the channel may shamelessly cater to retarded young males, but stuff like “World’s Most Dangerous Stunts Gone Wrong” is surprisingly watchable. However, as Spike delves into more original programming, the content gets bleaker for people with intact frontal cortices. (Yeah, that’s the plural for “cortex.” I know, it looks weird.)

Now, with the execrable “Blue Mountain State” paired with “Entourage,” the network has plans to make a copycat of “The Man Show” and is also going to make a docu-series about a band of traveling midget wrestlers. Midgets who wrestle, that is. Not big people who wrestle midgets. Although that could be another show.

“Half Pint Brawlers” is a six-episode series following a chaotic traveling troupe of little person wrestlers that journey around the United States and is led by their gregarious owner, Puppet “The Psycho Dwarf” [pictured]. The series is billed as a cross between “Jackass” and “Little People, Big World.” [THR]

Let that sink in for a moment. A cross between “Jackass” and “Little People, Big World.” How does something so insultingly dumb come to life? ”You know, I like TLC’s block of little-person-related programming, but I wish the little people did more stupid things that got them hurt. I also have a vast collection of interspecies porn.”

You may recall the Weather Channel’s move to show weather-related movies on Friday nights, starting with The Perfect Storm last week. And as you can see from this clip where the network interrupts the film’s climactic scene with a poorly-timed commercial break, the people at the Weather Channel are not yet experts at showing movies. In case you’re unfamiliar with the movie [SPOILER ALERT], this is the part where the brave fishermen go up against the giagntic wave and they all die. And someone thought, “Hey, why not insert some commercials in the middle of the movie’s most important and dramatic scene?” C’mon guys. This isn’t today’s high temperatures in the Midwest.

Side note: you know what channel’s a real dick about showing movies? Spike. They’ll show something awesome like Kill Bill and put almost no commercials in the first hour to suck you in. And they gradually cut to commercial more and more frequently throughout the movie, so the final three scenes take like 45 minutes. Die in a fire, Spike. I’ve got HBO.

[kottke]