On Friday night of Otakon 2011, I and over 200 others watched as a giant chicken and frog promoted a device that automatically opens and closes your toilet lid.
What, how did you spend YOUR Friday night?!
The above commercial was one of numerous Japanese television clips collected by panel host Deuce Loosely, of Deuce Loosely Productions. Accurately communicating the phrase “WTF” using methods other than three keys on the left side of QWERTY keyboards, Loosely had his audience in equal parts amusement and shock throughout the duration of the presentation. The 18+ offering was held shortly after midnight, conveniently adjacent to most folks’ periods of REM sleep. Oh joy.
Among the offerings:
–Images of a happy family are displayed. The mother and father coo joyously over their new baby, who is still breastfeeding. Things take a sharp turn into the dark side when the couple’s older child has jealousy get the better of him. Grabbing a bottle of poison, he paints drops of it on his mother’s exposed breasts while she and her husband sleep. The next morning, she awakens with a bloodcurdling scream…
…at the sight of her husband deceased in bed, foam on his mouth.
Dear random Japanese insurance company: Flo the Progressive Lady and the Geico cavemen have NOTHING on you. NOTHING.
–A DJ Ozma music video featuring naked men dancing (and playing baseball) atop a roof…holding fans that strategically cover each other’s genital areas.
–Several clips of Japanese wrestling matches that display common wrestling moves like the pile-driver and bodyslam being performed…from atop platforms 20+ feet in the sky.
–A game show seriously punishing laughter. Several men are gathered in a classroom, where a video of a Japanese man poorly attempting to read simple English plays. The man’s attempts are truly pathetic, a consistent rhythm of stutters and false starts interspersed with periods of reading the numeral “20” as “ten ten” (and, naturally, the numeral “100” as “ten ten ten ten…”).
Those who laugh at the video are marked “out” and have that status certified with—what else?—a caning.
This makes the “Price is Right” losing trumpet riff sound like heavenly music.
–A game show that went on to be the crowd favorite. Taking place in a library, several young men are playing a rather simple game: each one is issued a card and whoever receives the card with a skull must face a brutal physical punishment, which changes from round to round. During each punishment, the recipient cannot make a sound louder than a whisper, thanks to the library location. To ice the cake, joining them is Japanese kickboxing champion Ernesto Hoost, who possesses the same look and build of Michael Clarke Duncan.
Think of it as “Jackass: The Party Game.”
The punishments range from having one’s nose hair pulled to suffering a bat strike to the ass. Spoons that spent the past hour in boiling water were applied to the stomach. At one point, an elderly man removes his dentures and nibbles ferociously on the skull card recipient’s ear.
Afterwards, Hoost treats everyone to an evening out at a karaoke bar.
“WTF” was truly redefined, perhaps even intensified, at Loosely’s panel. The audience, one to two hours away from life-changing nightmares, were amused throughout, their satisfaction level at a full ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten percent.
Inochiblog 