MXC and Pants-ing

So it's time to discuss one of those things that weren't really '90s built still feel like it! I put them in what I call the "90s gray area". Let's get to it.

MXC was a hell of a show. It stood for "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge" and followed contestants as they performed wacky stunts and off-colour challenges for a shot at the prize. It always featured two teams with very little relation to each other, like the Porn Stars vs. the Cheese Factory or what have you, and there was always one person whose last name was Babaganush on either of the teams. It was the quintessential Japanese game show.




MXC was adapted from a show called Takeshi's Castle which did in fact air in Japan during the late '80s and early '90s. It definitely had the period aesthetic within it, hence why I chose it for the blog. Amongst the characters (created for the English version by dubbing over the original run) were Kenny Blakenship, the drunken womanizer whose dirty comments made the show, Vic Romano, the straight-faced foil to Kenny and smarter of the duo, Guy LaDouche, the perverted field reporter, and Captain Tenneal, the marshal who lead the challenges. Here's a clip of the crazy shit they used to do!:

Back in the day there was a thing kids did called "pantsing". For the uninitiated, it was when you ran up behind an unsuspecting fellow and pulled down his pants. The four seconds of embarrassment before you raced those trousers back up was unparalleled, and you prayed to god you were wearing underpants. I remember this happened to one kid in late grade school while he was strolling along in the dead centre of the paved area. Poor guy had every boy, girl, and staff member turn to see him before he could get the pants back up. The kicker? He never wore underpants.


Anyways how this relates to the first thing I was writing about is that we actually used to imitate the MXC challenges when we got a bit older. My buddies and I were doing some obstacle course shit in a garden-type place that was fenced off and had a big tree in the middle. Adjacent to it was (at the time) a country road, and a busy one at that during high noon. Well I was hanging off the tree as part of a challenge and out of nowhere one of my mates came and pulled my shorts right down to my ankles. Because my hands were clasped to a tree branch (as they usually are when one is hanging from a thing), it took me a bit more time to react and figure out the safest way to get my pants back up. Unfortunately I was wearing Batman boxers at the time so every driver on the road could see my affinity for the Dark Knight plastered all over my rectum whilst they sped by.


At least I wasn't the guy whose shrivelled scrotual shame was exposed for all to see though. That's something that ruins lives.