My Favorite TV Show: COPSby
Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers
Bad
boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? All criminals in COPS are innocent until bludgeoned to death in a court of law. I love watching TV Sunday nights in Japan. Sunday night TV in Japan offers the best TV anywhere; not only do I get to watch TV from all over the world, I get to watch the ultimate in maniacal reality TV from the United States of America: COPS. I love to sit there and drink several beers or Happoshu and watch the antics of the berserk American public and eccentric men and women in uniform. Not only do I get to watch it and marvel at the insanity, I get to watch it and laugh from the safety of 6000 miles of very cold and rough Pacific Ocean. American police used to frighten me. They don’t frighten me anymore; not only am I’m out of reach; I’ve come to the conclusion that these people are out of what little minds they ever had in the first place. I wonder what the average Japanese thinks when they watch this madness on TV? I’m sure they must think that COPS is completely fiction. No place on earth, no people on earth, could be as off their rocker as the stuff they show on that TV program. But I know better. I’ve lived in the USA. I know that COPS, while being sensational TV, is merely a good reflection of the madness that is held within the world’s foremost nutty society. That’s why, after living in Japan for all these years, I can watch COPS and laugh and chuckle away. Thank God I don’t live in that madhouse anymore. I’ll bet you a donut that the producers of the show never would have imagined in a million years that someone would watch COPS and think it was one of the most hilarious shows on TV. No one in Japan believes that this stuff is for real. In COPS, you name it; the police are insane, the criminals are stupid, the entire thing looks like a police overkill, and it all adds up to a real-life comedy show for the twisted – or realistic – at heart. COPS is a complete mirror of aberrant, queer American society of today – and you know it’s getting worse. You folks have to live with it. I can watch it from a distance and laugh. What a madhouse. Ha! Pop me open another beer. EPISODE #35A Man dressed like a woman is urinating on the side of the road. A cop sees him and tells him to stop. He takes off running. I’m confused. Why are the cops bothering this guy? Why don’t they just say, "Hey, don’t do that here." And be done with it? Nope, can’t do that. This man was urinating. Urinating on the weeds on the side of the road. My God! What’s the world coming to? They yell, "Freeze!" Does that mean to stop in the middle of relieving himself – kind of like one of those freeze frames you see on sports TV (I guess he’d have a lemonade icicle hanging from his Johnson)? Or does that mean to stop and not move? Oh well, it doesn’t matter as our urinator takes off running like a horse at the races. Next thing you know is that we have 12 cops chasing this guy through some apartment complex. It becomes a big bust for our boys in blue. When we finally tackle the peeing desperado at the 34-yard line, we have 6 police cars, 2 police dogs, 15 cops, and our criminal urinator on the ground with a cop and his knee on his head. They handcuff him. The criminal urinator whispers something to the cop. He says, "Get your knee off my head." Well this guy is really suspicious. He’s wearing women’s clothing and women’s high-heeled shoes (makes you wonder why it took half the Houston police department and 45 minutes to chase & wrestle the varmint down to the ground). We won’t mention that his taste in color matching and combination is atrocious and worthy of the death penalty right there – that would be in poor taste. The COPS rifle through this guy’s purse and try to find drugs. Hell, he ain’t got no drugs. The cop says, "Why didn’t you stop when we told you to stop?" Well, duh! The guy is a transvestite and he’s urinating on the side of the road. Of course he can’t stop. He’s either afraid that you’ll notice that he is a transvestite and be embarrassed about that. Or he’s embarrassed that his socks do not match his metallic blue skirt. Mt. Brainiac, the cop that’s talking to the camera, can’t figure out why a 55-year old man dressed like a flaming poofter would run from some cops and TV cameras. Doh! Do you think it could be because he’s dressed like Peter Pan outta Michael Jackson’s wet dreams? Or because his underwear is not color-coded? It’s good that we are hiring our best and brightest to be our boys in blue. Either way, they let this scourge and scum of the earth go with some sort of violation and warn him, "Don’t let me see you wearing women’s clothes that are not fashionably color coordinated in this neighborhood again." I’m mad, after all that work and tax dollars spent, I thought that they should have strung him up and shot him like a dog. You Americans are all wimped out. "Don’t Squeeze The Charmin" Commercial Time – 60 seconds. EPISODE #76A Fade in: Eight cops are standing around doing something. One of the fatter cops says, "Okay, Glen and Glenda will be out on the street corner minding their own business in their miniskirts and hitch-hiking for rides all the while shouting out dollar amounts to drivers asking them is the ‘Wanna get busy with me?’ Our mission, if you decide to accept it, is to arrest anyone who solicits them for prostitution. If you do not accept this assignment, you’re fired." So the two ugly police ladies go standing around on some street corner. The boys in blue have them covered all the way. No worries there. Not only are there 6 undercover police cars with 34 cops inside all within 50 yards of the bait, we’ve got the girls wired with radios, GPS, two helicopters overhead, Gameboys, and the battleship USS Missouri 2 miles offshore ready to lob a blistering field of fire with 16 inch shells anywhere in the immediate vicinity within 8 minutes orders from Barney Fife. A blue SUV drives up to Bait Cop #1. He looks innocent enough, but he suspiciously decides to take a left hand turn. This gets the police radios chattering. Bait Cop #1 says, "Hi! You wanna get busy with me? How much money do you have?" The guy driving the car who looks a lot like Woody Allen from about 1969 is trying to drive, fold a road map, and keep a Slurpee from spilling on his lap, all the while three kids are screaming and fighting in the back of the car. The cop walks up to the window and says, "Well?" Woody ask, "Do you know how to get on the freeway?" Well, we all know freeway is a code word for free sex, so our boys in blue swing into action. Just then, the head cop-dude radios into the rest of his team, "He talked to her. Let’s go get him boys!" The cops all surround the hapless SUV and drag Woody out onto the lawn and start beating him as they handcuff him. "What did I do? What did I do?" "Talking to an undercover policewoman!" the head cop-dude answers (I’m not making this part up either. This really did happen). "What?" Woody cries. "Resisting arrest, eh?" And they start to truncheon him and beat him silly. "Got any crack cocaine in there boy?" and they proceed to perform a complete body cavity search (Okay, I’m making this part up… maybe). EPISODE #82B I get my first big Hollywood break. It’s not a great job, but I get $125 to play an innocent bystander driving a car out of a Walmart Parking lot. I’m driving an old 1976 AMC Gremlin as I have to buy a Barbi doll for my 5-year old daughter. I buy the doll (it was on sale) and head out to the car. As I approach the car, this weird-looking lady says to me, "Hi! I’ll bet you’d like to be Ken so I can be your Barbi. How much?" "Oh the Barbi was $18 dollars with accessories. I figured it was a good deal since the dune buggy came with." "$18 dollars," she answered, "How’s about I do Barbi for $15?" "Well, that’s sounds like a good deal, but I’m sort of in a rush." I answer. Next thing I know is that these cops have me wrestled to the ground and they are bending my arm back real bad. "Talking to an undercover officer about doing Barbi!" They scream. "Got any drugs in there boy?" I black out.
October 31, 2005 Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers [send him mail] was born and raised in the USA and moved to Japan in 1984. He has the distinction of being fired from every FM radio station in Tokyo – one of them three times. His first book, Schizophrenic in Japan, is now on sale. Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com |
Next
thing I know I’m in a courtroom and being sentenced to 6 months
in prison for soliciting a prostitute. I tell the judge that I appreciate
all that everyone’s done for me, but fun is fun, and it’s time for
the games to end. I’ve got a job and a family to attend to; I’ve
got to get back to Tokyo and the real-world. I figure the Hollywood
showbiz life is not for me; I hate these American reality and courtroom
TV shows. I explain that it was fun, but I gotta get back to Japan
as I have a real job, and I don’t have time to deal with this "Mr.
Hatter’s Wild Ride Business." I ask for my $125 guarantee for
the COPS TV show which – to my chagrin – I find out that they already
paid to my TV lawyer for a show that I didn’t even audition for
in the first place.