Their cover of "There She Goes" was pretty big. I think of them as a two-hit wonder.

My big issue with "Avatar" was that it was so simple as well. Like, you spend all this time creating this world, whatever you think of it, and then by the end, it looks like an action sequence from "True Lies". And "Avatar 2" was the same but worst but it ended with an action scene from "Ttanic"

It was interesting, better than most horror series that insist on having a narrative. It's one of those handful of shows that only lasted one season but got a Drama Series Emmy nomination anyway, but I haven't thought about it since. Horror doesn't work as a long-form narrative, period.

Anyway, yeah, every time I watch "Iron Chef", I end up trying to figure out the Japanese political scene, until I eventually get lost somewhere trying to fully decipher it. It's fascinating though.

The structure I think helps creates this, with the parallel voting systems in the diet for instance, there's more counselors and representatives, having proportional voting helps in this, so there are members, the elections are staggered so your not just voting for everything every couple years.

It's fascinating, the Japanese governing structure itself, like, on the surface it's similar to ours, but the more you dive in, the more complex it gets. Like parties there, are very much just predominantly political and not, so much, a personal defying feature of the politicians.

I'd still be more of a CDP or CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY member, Japan's top center-left party, and the LDP's biggest competitor ATM, and the LDP despite would still be more of a Moderate party if it were here. And factions for both parties split off often, recently, it's just different there.

They're not doing particularly well now, but from an American point-of-view, where it's fascinating to see a conservative catch-all party, that's remained in power, and you know, from a relatively outside perspective, seems like they've moved their country pretty far during their reign.

The LDP's history is pretty elaborate, and it's not doing great now, but it's a party that includes, people from the center-left, all the way to the far right-wing. This had led to conflicts, corruptions, scandals and many attempts by former members to form new parties, some, Kurimoto was part of.

(Then you look up how their lawbooks and see how the simplest petty theft can be years in prison and then you realize okay, they may not be completely ahead of us, but I digress.)

For the most part, the political scene in Japan, for good and bad, runs through this party. And if you see those TikToks, or YT videos about how things in Japan are different and usually better than here, you'd realize that they're probably much more ahead of us than we actually realize they are.

He was also apart of the LDP, or LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, which is a misnomer because that's actually the CONSERVATIVE party in Japan, which is also a bit of a misnomer because this is a BIG TENT CONSERVATIVE Party, and it's been the leading and controlling party in Japan for about 70 years now.

Let me explain, one of the most common judges/tasters on the original "Iron Chef", is a guy named SHINICHIRO KURIMOTO, who's usually described as a Current/Former Lower House Member, depending on when the show aired, and if you ever look him up, he is a really fascinating guy.