There are No Sports Other Than 25 Year Old Videos of Iron Chef

Chairman Kaga, resplendent in an outfit that simultaneously brings to mind a matador, a figure skater, and late-period Michael Jackson, has summoned the Iron Chefs, he has bellowed out the theme ingredient, and contestants are urgently shuffling towards a podium to grab some vegetables or swallow's nest or some thrashing, wriggling sea creature that they will need to bonk to death with the blunt end of a carving knife.

 Iron Chef debuted in Japan in 1993, came into the United States on the Food Network in 1999, and now it exists in a series of grainy Youtube videos that you can watch right now.  The genius of Iron Chef was how it took a cooking show and perfectly translated it into the grammar of sports television and then added in a charming, campy absurdity.  The entire premise is silly and ultimately superfluous, but the idea of framing a cooking competition in the context of a wealthy gourmand who dressed like the unlucky magician that Siegfried and Roy replaced with a tiger who oversees the entire thing like it is culinary Kumite is an incredible stroke of genius-- there are currently a large number of cooking shows available now from all over the world but only one of them has Chairman Kaga and voice actors dubbing over people with practice in voicing literal cartoon villains.
 
Though the cooking action takes almost the entirety of the show, to me it's the aesthetics that make Iron Chef so enjoyable.  There is the overwrought music, the iron chefs rising onto a platform like gladiators, Chairman Kaga delightfully overseeing the whole thing.  There is the best part of the show, the ludicrously self-serious introductions of the challenger that sets up a storyline that will frame the entire competition and occasionally veers into the absurd.  The most memorable of these for me is the Cabbage Battle, a redemption story that contains a genuinely shocking turn of events but the person narrating it (a rare replacement for Kaga's usual voiceover actor who according to IMDb is best known as a voice on the Playstation game Crazy Taxy) delivers every line with an insanely overdramatic reading reminiscent of Stephen Toast.

My life has been forever changed by the way this voice actor says the words "basta pasta"

One of the best storylines from in Iron Chef was the rise of the Ohta Faction, a group of chefs led by Tadamichi Ohta and Toshiro Kandagawa that favored traditional Japanese cooking methods and repeatedly challenged Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto because they found his fusion methods distasteful.  They get their own intros to denounce Morimoto and introduce the chef they have chosen to challenge him (invariably described as "hit men" and often have nicknames like "The King of Noodles" or something).  They and dozens of followers with headbands and banners stream into Kitchen Stadium in a show of force.  I can't immediately locate it (the Youtube account that specifically posts Ohta Faction battles cuts off the intros for some perverse reason) but the person they have voicing Kandagawa has a pleasingly villainous grunt. 

There exists no other cooking show, I believe, that features an Opposition Faction for ideological reasons and I am sitting here stewing over the missed opportunity for Gordon Ramsay to be in the middle of berating someone when the lights turn out and all of a sudden 100 members of the Society of Polite Chefs come in to gently shush him or a disastrous clash between the Frugal Gourmet and his arch-nemeses the Profligate Gourmands who are just tossing truffles and expensive cuts of designer beefs onto the floor to trample them while supporters of either faction watch the battle on wooden cage-bleachers designed and built by Bob Vila.

The best Iron Chef episodes are the ones that manage to fit in contrived drama that came out of the show's own success.  Early Iron Chef episodes invented this entire apparatus of the Kitchen Stadium and the Gourmet Society as a bit until Iron Chef became popular enough to actually become a legitimate platform for culinary celebrity and started to function in an eerie parallel to its own premise.  The most entertaining battles are the ones that take this seriously.  For example, there is an episode where Tokyo-based French chef Joel Bruant challenges Iron Chef French Hiruki Sakai with the stipulation that if he wins, he can replace Sakai as Iron Chef French. "His arrogance infuriates me," the Kaga voiceover says, "but how can I refuse?"

Let's be honest and admit that Iron Chef is fake-- or at least, if not entirely fake, the production involves far more time and many more unseen hands than are visible to the television viewer.  This has no impact on the show because the actual judging remains so silly and arbitrary that it is nearly impossible to determine who has won or lost.  The contestants on Iron Chef are professionals with a full complement of assistants that rarely lead to obvious fuck-ups, and they deal in a fancy haute-cuisine that exists at an enormous distance to anything that I have ever experienced.  The audience surrogates come in the form of a celebrity judging panel-- including the bow tie politician who is constantly either in or out of the legislature, a panel of actors and actresses, a fortune teller, a food critic-- some of whom have relevant experience or vocabulary to articulate their thoughts on the food and many others who are just coming up with some bullshit because they are on television. 

One of the funniest things that happens on Iron Chef is seeing a world-renowned chef who has just been bustling in a kitchen, handling red hot woks and chopping vegetables and occasionally feeding an octopus into an ice cream maker in order to plate an insanely fancy meal made sometimes with hundreds of dollars of ingredients into an intricate and perfectly laid-out dish is that a leathered baseball manager who looks like he has probably ingested at least part of a catcher's mitt  on purpose will look at him or her and tell the chef it needs a little more salt.

There are currently almost no sports happening in the world right now, and one of the things I have been doing is trying to imagine the entire bloated apparatus of sports talk media reconfigured to cover old Iron Chef episodes.  There's Stephen A. Smith going on television to chastise the Ohta Faction for bringing on another CLOWN who CANNOT WIN. He can't even BLANCH that ABALONE, Skip.  It's people calling into local sports radio with resplendently honking Chicago accents talking about how they're not sure of this Sakai and they need to see something out of Nakamura.  It is Mike Francesa hammering "Chairman Kogger" for his "awful choice in ingredients. Awful. Who's gonna want an octopus? (35 second pause). Octopus. Not for me. Not my ingredient. Octopus. (12 second sigh) Not for me. Too many appendages.
Let's go to Danny from Staten Island. Oh, you thought it was funny how I was trying to 
make the roast duck that Sakai served to the entire Finnish Cabinet on a state visit and 
I didn't understand how the pressure cooker worked and it took off like a rocket and 
exploded through my roof at the exact moment an entire gaggle of migrating geese came 
by and just unloaded through the hole and I ran out of the house covered in goose 
excrement and my glasses were broken and I was wearing one of those rapping tasmanian
 devil cartoon shirts that I've already explained a thousand times I only had because it was 
a personal gift from John Daly and that's when the news vans came out and caught me yelling 
"who do I gotta call for a goose incident?" at firefighters? Yeah, that's funny. Real sickos. Real sickos 
calling this show. Two and a half hours waiting for that. Real sickos. Can we please get some calls in 
about how Chen Kenichi is good but not great?

Iron Chef lives on in the myriad food competition reality television shows that all borrow various successful parts of the show: innovating dishes on limited time with limited ingredients, breezy celebrity cameos, a panel of stern judges.  But because it is a relic of the 1990s, it remains untouched by the irritating grammar of contemporary reality TV competition shows, and the show is free to be much weirder than any show like that has a right to be.  Iron Chef's cooking is hardly the point.  It is the goofiness of the premise and the dramatics and the silliness-- even Chairman Kaga, ferociously biting into that bell pepper in the beginning of the episode before it pans out to show him standing next to what appears to be a small army of theatrically motionless chefs and he is clearly chuckling through the whole thing.

Tremble Big Ten, Unironically

These were the facts heading into Saturday's contest in Happy Valley: Northwestern would be playing at Penn State's homecoming (Northwestern is a perennial Homecoming Opponent, forever treated by the Big Ten as the first or second guy Van Damme fights in a Van Damme is kicking everyone's ass montage in one of those infinite Van Damme movies where Van Damme is in an underground fighting tournament for money, for love, for United States foreign policy objectives).  Northwestern had played poorly in its first three games.  Penn State was undefeated, and now allowed to appear in post-season games.  And the Big Ten is a festering cauldron of nonsense football.

What I don't think anyone expected was for Northwestern to flatten Penn State for a decisive 29-6 win on the road.  This was Penn State's worst loss at home since getting clobbered by the legendary 2001 Miami Hurricanes team.  The Wildcats' defense held Penn State's highly-touted quarterback Christian Hackenberg to 22 completions on 45 attempts for 216 yards.  The Lions managed only 50 yards on the ground.  By the end of the game, discombobulated Penn State offensive linemen were out of answers and attempted to slam into each other while yelling "WHY ARE YOU BLOCKING YOURSELF."  This did not help.
 
An alternative explanation involves deep-seated subterfuge and hypnosis in what's known as the 
Manchurian Blocker theory

Trevor Siemian looked crisper, repeatedly finding a wide-open Dan Vitale moving through the middle of the field, a desolate area abandoned by Penn State defenders.  Justin Jackson and Warren Long led the rushing attack, although it was Siemian who cashed in three rushing touchdowns from the one yard-line and should now be referred to as "Touchdown Sneakian."  On defense, the story was freshman Anthony Walker who started his first game at linebacker and appeared everywhere on the field at once.  He essentially ended the game by scoring on an interception in a tribute to his injured comrade Colin Ellis.  Northwestern's defense looked like it could keep the 'Cats in games while the offense rounds into shape.

CANCEL THIS

Myths and legends are much more of a daily part of our lives than we like to imagine.  We swim in a sea of apocryphal common knowledge.  Our understanding of the world around us is shaped by half-remembered lectures shrouded by daydreams, discredited theories, misinformed relatives, television, and That Great Deceiver Wikipedia.  The things we don't just think we know but we know we know are riven with cracks and papered over by over-simplifications, false anecdotes, even outright lies.

I'm sure there are nuanced reasons why the Vanderbilt Athletic Department canceled its series with Northwestern.  I'm sure the addition of two new conference teams wreaked havoc with their scheduling.  But it's way better to imagine a furious James Franklin angrily clearing his desk of Commodore memorabilia with one sweep of his forearm and shouting CANCEL THEM into a red hotline phone that handles football scheduling emergencies.  I've been regularly taunting Vanderbilt for abandoning the series as The Assassination of the Northwestern-Vanderbilt Rivalry by the Coward James Franklin because I strongly believe that any time you get a chance to make fun of someone for ducking Northwestern and you have a high-powered and influential blog like this one you take it.

I've recently learned that certain corners of the 
internet refer to Franklin as "CJF," which stands 
for Coach James Franklin.  I really like how "Coach" 
is an honorific title like Lord Palmerston or 
Captain Cook or Chairman Kaga

In any event, Northwestern traveled to Happy Valley and unexpectedly ruined their Homecoming festivities, which is close to the platonic ideal of a Northwestern road victory.  The win also jolted the Big Ten, which has been usurped by chaos and uncertainty as these flailing programs start to play each other.  The conference in the midst of a Carnival season, where boring agents of stability and order have fallen apart and no one knows if any of these teams is actually decent.  Only Nebraska remains unbeaten.  Ohio State lost a Heisman-caliber quarterback.  Michigan is so bad that its students are staging literal demonstrations against the athletic director. 
 
Legend has it that a campus screening of a football-related opera ignited a fervor 
amongst Michigan students who took to the quad demanding independence from 
their athletic director Dave Brandon.  Brandon, the former CEO of Domino's Pizza, 
remained defiant, and as of press time was constructing a balcony that could be 
used to taunt protesting students while preparing to advance on the crowd with his 
personal elite noid guard

Northwestern might be ok enough to win games in the Big Ten West.  Four more wins might be possible.  Everything is up for grabs.

BADGER-BAITED

What is certain is that Wisconsin is among the best teams in the Big Ten.  The Badgers' sole loss was to Les Miles's LSU team from the Invincible SEC West filled with teams that can only be defeated by other SEC West teams much like how Highlanders can only chop off each others' heads.

Nick Saban celebrates a 2013 win over Texas A&M on the roof of 
A&M's Department of 1980s Production Values

This year's Wisconsin team wins games by doing the same Wisconsin shit they have been doing since time immemorial.  They have a stable of a stable of excellent running backs led by Heisman hopeful Melvin Gordon running behind giants.  With Joel Stave out, Wisconsin has gone Full Wisconsin and started converted safety Tanner McEvoy at quarterback.  There are few certainties in this world, and it is a comfort to know that Wisconsin is still Wisconsinning at people nearly 20 years after the reign of terror perpetuated by Ron Dayne. 

Northwestern put up a stellar defensive effort against Penn State, but Wisconsin will be a far tougher challenge.  The Penn State offensive line had been a concern all year while the Wisconsin line is an anthropomorphic ozone layer.  If two Wisconsin linemen accidentally block each other, the result would be a seismic calamity orders of magnitude beyond a catastrophic Jump Around  mishap.  Gordon himself will give the Wildcat defenders fits if he gets any space.  Certainly, Wisconsin is one of the most difficult matchups left on Northwestern's schedule.  Even at home, Ryan Field will be at least half full of Wisconsin fans braying at Siemian. 

At least Wisconsin will not be bringing this abominable Terror Badger to horrify 
petrified spectators and unsuspecting Evanston residents on the second floor of 
their homes

As excited as we were by last week's romp at Penn State, the Badgers will be heavy favorites.  The Badgers have designs on a Big Ten Championship.  As we all know, though, the true Big Ten Champion this season is Chaos.

LET US BECOME UNREASONABLY CONFIDENT

Which Northwestern team is the real Northwestern team?  Is it the team that looked lost during the first half against Cal and in disarray against Northern Illinois?  Is it the team that failed to pulverize Western Illinois to a satisfactory pulp?  Or it the team that shut down Penn State's offense and sent thousands of disappointed Nittany Lion fans home to their Unhappy Mountains in the fourth quarter and frustrated the James Franklin, the Apocryphal Dodger?  There is no doubt that the Wildcats can match up in the post-Big Ten Big Ten.  There is no doubt that the Badgers have a very good team that views Northwestern as a stepping stone to the conference championship game.  And there is no doubt that, if the game is close, we'll only be able to see if this is a new Northwestern team by how completely and utterly insane things will get in the fourth quarter starting at a baseline Northwestern Football Fourth Quarter Chaos Scale that starts at major natural disaster, reaches a middle of expected Godzilla attack, crescendos into unexpected Godzilla attack, and tops out at 2013 Northwestern vs. Nebraska.