Some more wacky TV

Last week saw the "crawling GP", a popular event in which babies try to outcrawl eachother in front of hundreds of screaming parents. Inevitably, the babies started to cry, and this only seemed to make the parents laugh and cheer all the more.

Interestingly, the parents all seemed to be the same - yankee-style, catepillar boot wearing fathers, louis vuitton bag carrying, fashionista mothers. A number of techniques were employed to try to coax the little crawlers towards the finishing tape - perhaps the most interesting was the one pictured below.


Yes, a homie g shaking a piece of broccoli. Two things that should always be found together.

Moving on, yesterday provided me with my first chance to see Pan-kun and James, a chimpanzee and bulldog celebrity duo that travel around and do various activities. Well, actually Pan-chan does, and James just sits around looking like a bulldog. Last night Pan-kun was involved in a double header.

First of all, we were introduced to a "bu-bu cushion", the Japanese name for a whoopee cushion. To the amusement of about 100 colourfully dressed studio guests, the camera moved to a nearby zoo, and various animals were made to sit down on the cushion, to see how they would react. First up was an elephant, who fairly burst the cushion, and gave no reaction. Next came a camel, who did exactly the same thing. And finally it was Pan-kun's turn.

With the bu-bu cushion hidden inside a regular cushion on a chair in the room, Pan-kun toyed around a bit before ambling over to the chair to sit down. It was at this point that the film stopped and things moved back to the studio. The question - how would Pan-kun react?

The guests all gave daft examples, ranging from "he'll do a back-somersault and eat something" to "he'll repeatedly stand up and sit down". After a number of advert breaks (in which the key studio guests all appeared, predictably), we were finally shown what Pan-kun did. Sitting on the cushion and hearing the noise, he glanced down and looked a little surprised.


Then he got up and examined the cushion, opening it and finding the bu-bu. He put it on the chair, got himself into an elevated position above it and dropped onto it, savouring the second sound. But instead of some reference to the humanistic tendencies of chimpanzees , or intelligent opinions on evolution, the guests were contact to shout "bu-bu!" and "sugoiii!".

With the bu-bu having served its purpose, it was time to hit the baseball field. Pan-kun was kitted out like the little kids all around him, and was pretty handy at throwing a ball. Then came a trickier task: batting practice. The kids all demonstrated how it was to be done, whacking the ball off a plastic column. Pan-kun watched with interest, and his eyes visibly widened when he saw the aluminium bat being handed to him. He took a long hard look at the bat.

And then he started going all samurai on everyone, slashing and feinting at everything in sight! In my 25 years, there have been many things that have made me smirk, and a chimpanzee in a baseball uniform going salad with a bat is no exception. Luckily none of the kids fell foul to the swordworthy simian, and he was given another chance to hit the ball.

So what happened? Well, he didn't hit a home run, but the ball did go about 8 meters. There was a little preview of what Pan-kun would be doing next week, but all I could really make from the video was that at some stage he would be colouring in a woman's face with a crayon. Should be interesting...