IRON CHEF: the Battle for Fate!! (9/12/2000) If memory serves me, I recently wrote an article about why reality shows suck and how fat and stupid the die hard viewers of said shows are. Well, in all the excitement and traumatizing tasks I had to go through to put that piece together (hell, I had to look up pictures of big gay Rich... nekkid!), I had totally forgotten that the greatest show ever made is in fact a "Reality Show". Yes, it's even better than Gilligan's Jurassic Survivor Park, if you can believe it. The show that I speak of is a culinary classic, a mouth moistening masterpiece and a prime fucking program. It is the story of one freaky rich dude and his Kitchen Stadium. Every week we learn how he turned his love of fine cooking into an hour long battle of blood, sweat and usually seafood. Yes, I speaketh of Chairman Kaga's THE IRON CHEF (Ryouri no Tetsujin, literally translated as "Powerful Metal Cooking Man of Extreme Might and Honor"!)! TIC (for short since I'm lazy) is the ultimate show. The basis of this televised tour de force is so that one multi-billionaire with a flair for the overly dramatic can taste recipes that have never been made before. Chairman Kaga secretly gathered the greatest Japanese chefs in all of his home prefecture and made them Iron Chefs. Then he gave them funny uniforms and made them fight other Oriental world class chefs to the death. Well, not really, but I truly believe that when one of the visiting cooks looses the hour long food preparations battle to one of Kaga's own that they either commit seppuku in shame or are killed by the owner of the restaurant that they represent. Why is TIC so incredible?! Why do billions of people tune in every week to watch the carnage as a secret ingredient is revealed and the poor over-stressed chefs have to somehow work "pickled rooster dick" into each of their rushed courses?!? People watch because they love the excitement of the competition, the frenetic pace of the chopping knives and cleavers, the cool competitors chosen from a world-wide pool of talent and especially for the remarks of the half beautiful and half butt-ugly panel of judges and the commentators Ohta and Fukui-san. Ohta is da MAN! Chairman Kaga. An enigma. Also known as "the weird freak with no taste buds". He's the trillionaire (that's in ¥en, in real American dinero he's only got about 50 grand) that bought the souls of the Iron Chefs and now pimps them for ratings. One thing I never understood was why he gave a shit about "new food combinations" and tastes that he's never had before when it was obvious that he was mutant who could not even appreciate the slight difference in flavors between a sweet apple and the slightly tongue burning spicy bite of a yellow pepper. Not only that, but look at the Chairman's smile as he sinks his teeth into what the natives call "the yellow ball of evil and death". I seriously think that the guy believes that he's eating a peach (or his gay lover's "hidden fruit of pleasure"). Although Chairman Kaga may be a bit of a loon, he was the one responsible for TIC, and therefore he has our gratitude. We forge our fighting spirits in the tradition of his ancestors too.

THE COMPETITION Each episode of TIC is a marvel. Competing chefs from around the neighborhood from which TIC is filmed are lined up outside the studio to do battle with Kaga's Masters of the Hibachi. Sometimes some cooks from outside Tokyo's city limits are allowed to fight (but I'll get to that later). At the beginning of the show we are introduced to the challenger (as Chairman Kaga tries valiantly to have his memory serve him and remind him where he is and that the cue-cards in front of him are for reading). The challenging chef is always of "noble cheffy blood" and has a lot of face to save going in to the war zone known as Kitchen Stadium. After he is paraded around the stadium like a $5 Chinese whore sold into prostitution to some sick fuck in Beijing, he gets to choose which of the Iron Chefs he does combat with. The challenger gets four choices: Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Extra Crispy (French). Each Iron Chef being the Japanese master of their respected techniques and styles (did you really think that the xenophobic Japanese people would allow gaijin to fight for the honor of Chairman Kaga?) Then, the secret ingredient is revealed. That's right, Kaga usually imports an exotic and sometimes erotic food (and I use that word loosely) that the battling chefs must somehow incorporate into each of their courses. This secret theme ingredient can range from eel, back bacon, $30,000 worth of king crab, snails, unisex salmon, polar bear dropping, the ovaries of sea cucumbers force fed strawberry oatmeal for the past 29 days, etc. etc. After the shock of finding out that they only have an hour (no more no less) to cook a 5 star meal around the theme food-element of mermaid ass-meat the knives start slashing and the stoves start sauteeing faster and more furious than the viewer (or Fukui-san) ever thought possible! The coolest Theme Ingredient I ever saw them fight with in kitchen stadium was Gojira flesh. The judges claimed it was still a bit radioactive, but that Iron Chef French matched the texture of the rough meat perfectly with the red wine sauce.

Kitchen Stadium is a fully equipped cooking environment that has every sort of utensil and food product known to man in order to make the food fight fair'n square. It is totally amazing how anything a competitor or Iron Chef can ask for appears on their cutting board within seconds! If they wanted to garnish their roast duck feet with pygmy toenail clippings aged 10 years they can. If they want to top their special won-ton soup with sprinkles of penguin lice with syphilis they are asked "any more STDs on those lice too?". Sometimes the spices and requested foods are even less appetizing than the actual theme (which when using whale puke is a pretty tall order). THE ANNOUNCERS Anyway, the battle in the famous Kitchen Stadium is always heated and frenzied. And that's what we have Ohta, Fukui and Hattori for. Ohta-san is the floorman. He's the guy who always gets the cameraman to shove the big-ass lens into the face of the chefs and get their reaction to the food challenge, or into the pot of stewing puppy paws to guess what spice might be dumped in next. The chatter boxes of the bout are up in the booth with the judges though (more on the judges below). Fukui-san and Hattori-san are the announcers of TIC and they love their jobs. All they do is comment on how they haven't had fried tuna in pig grease in years and how the Iron Chef seems to enjoy the chance to use such a fun ingredient. They'll almost always get caught up in stupid talk on how they got to use the grill the past weekend and made some mean soy burgers, or about how they can't seem to please their wives in the sack anymore, but that's what Ohta is there fore. He knows how to keep things interesting! As soon as Fukui starts to ramble about certain Kama Sutra techniques Ohta is there to focus him on the job at hand. He'll burst in with an enthusiastic "FUKUI-SAN!!!!!! Did you know that the competitor has cooked with trout eyes before? He said that their crunchiness is perfect to counter the soft kitten-brain stew he has going in the crock pot on the side." Then Fukui will nod and retort, "That's what I thought he was going to do. Fish eyes are the best when served with kitten brains," like he knew all along. Sometimes Fukui can become a little self absorbed and keep Ohta's feed turned down too low to hear, but that's what we have the Judges for. THE JUDGES For each battle on TIC Chairman Kaga allows 4 commoners to join him in his unsubstantiated taste of self-indulgent power. The judges' booth is usually filled with an actor/actress, some sort of political figure who needs to kiss Kaga's ass for an upcoming election, a food critic and a goddamn fortune teller... Must be a Japanese tradition. They're there to keep the chit-chat lively and to put Fukui-san in his place whenever he starts having delusions of grandeur. Shutting Fukui up is easy (even the bitchy food critic and the retarded tarot card reading hags can do it), but keeping him quiet or on subject is quite daunting. This is why I'm guessing we have Ohta, Hattori and the judges all on open mics. Unfortunately this causes some problems too. Especially in the form of food critic Kishi Asako. She is one mean bitch. She never has anything good to say about any of the true one of a kind gourmet foods that she has the privilege to sample. It's either "too spicy", "not spicy enough", "too dry" or "too wrinkled and withered... wait, my left tit flopped out again and landed on my plate." It is a wonder that anybody at the "judging table of honor" doesn't pimp-slap the puta every time she tries to open her cake hole. This is the food whore herself, Kishi Asako. Whenever she's on TIC as one of the judges you know a low score is gunna be given to both contestants. Why would such a dried up old monkey keep getting an invite? It is my guess that she knows how Chairman Kaga likes his tamale wrapped if you know what I mean. Wink wink nudge nudge. Please follow our honorable lead and continue to Part II of Iron Chef Article