KIM JONG-UN on HIS FAVORITE VIDEO-GAME

The frantic call came in late at night, sent me lunging out of a nightmare for my phone. “Dude! DUDE! DUUUUDE!” I recognized the voice even through the hysterics: my good friend Mordecai the bluejay, from “The Regular Show.” He was freaking out, the flapping of feathers coming clear over the line: “DUUUUDE! KIM JONG-UN! He’s gonna ruin EVERYTHING! You gotta help us out!”

He spit out the news: The latest, shocking intelligence revealed that North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un had missiles strategically aimed at several major production studios in South Korea (including the ones that animate “The Regular Show.”)

MORDECAI: Hans, I triple-dog-beg of you, you gotta go to North Korea and talk that dude down from his ego trip!

HANS: Oh, geez, I’m sorry, bird-man, but who am I to intervene in international affairs? We’ve got plenty of trouble right here in the States.

MORDECAI: But… but…“The Simpsons”! They’re also animated in South Korea! Don’t you love “The Simpsons”?

HANS: Oh, I DO, but they had a good run. Anyway, I better get back to snoozing. Good luck with all that, though. I mean it.

MORDECAI: (whispers) “My Pretty Coffee-Shop Ghost.”

HANS: What did you just say?

MORDECAI: “My. Pretty. Coffee-Shop. Ghost.”

HANS: (leaping out of bed) I’M ON MY WAY!

Armed solely with a note pad and a sawed-off number 2 pencil, I set out for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It’s quite the trip, and my adventures involve an American plane, a German train, a malfunctioning Russian automobile (freaking Ladas!), a Mongolian yak, and a Chinese sampan.

It’s all worth it. 24 hours later, I am sitting in the lobby of Yanggakdo International Hotel; paging through the propaganda in “The Pyongyang Times”; and waiting for the Supreme Leader, who has agreed to be interviewed on the condition that I procure him a pair of Dennis Rodman’s gym socks.

I have them. They smell remarkably like the Mongolian Yak.

The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea like undisputed divinities for generations. Kim Il-Sung. Kim Jong-Il. Kim Kar-Dashian.  And now here’s Kim Jong-Un, the world’s youngest despot. His Napoleonic frame is marching towards me. Maybe he’s fresh from ordering the assassination of his barber. (To be fair, the barber had it coming.) He’s flanked by a chorus of worshipful, weeping children:

CHORUS:

Oh glorious comrade

You make the sun rise

You feed our tummies

Unless we have had individual thoughts

For which we are sorry

You help us find our bicycles when we forget where we parked them

May your “Angry Birds” score grow higher and higher

Do it Pyongyang-Style!

HANS: What was that last bit?

KIM JONG-UN: It is original dance craze, you Western ghost! (He snatches Dennis Rodman’s socks off my hands and sniffs them amorously.)

HANS: No, I meant about the “Angry Birds.” Were they singing about the little video game?

Instantly, two soldiers materialize; two Makarov pistols are pointed at my head.

KIM JONG-UN: (magnanimously calling off the soldiers) You call “Angry Birds” “little video game”? Would you call sun “little light in sky”? Would you call Kim Jong-Un “little guy mad with power”? Let me show you something.

The soldiers drag me out of the hotel and shove me unceremoniously into a heavily camouflaged jeep as we set out for an undisclosed location. For about two hours I tumble in the back seat while Kim Jong-Un interrogates me:

KIM JONG-UN: It is said Westerners now have access to “Angry Birds Seasons” and “Space”! Can such wonders be true?

HANS: Sure, but that’s not the issue. I’m here to stop you from blowing up “The Regular Show”! “The Simpsons”! “My Pretty Coffee-Shop Ghost”! I’m here to talk about the human rights violations, the rampant malnutrition, the two million ethnic North Koreans now living in China. I mean, they’re escaping from Communist oppression by fleeing to CHINA, doesn’t that tell you something? Don’t even get me started on the prison camps! The horrors of Yodok!

More Makarovs on my face, AK-47s on my ribs.

KIM JONG-UN: Easy, easy. (He smiles beatifically.)  There are no prison camps here. You are referring to famous “Enclosed Entertainment Areas for Politically-Divergent Individuals.” But that’s whole ‘nother ball of rice! This is worker’s paradise, free from oppression, hunger, and green pigs. (He pauses.) Although maybe if we CAPTURED green pigs instead of making them EXPLODE, we would be even FREER from hunger!

I’m a little thrown off by his train of thought, but then the jeep skids to a halt and I’m led out to what’s unmistakably a launching pad for long range weapons.

I see the giant slingshot glistening in the sun. Then there they are, ranged in rows, waiting. The fat red missile.  The blue one, intended to section off in three parts. The yellow one, built for acceleration. The black one, meant to detonate mid-air. The white one, ready to deliver an egg-like payload.

I shiver. I now understand it all.

The angry birds.

KIM JONG-UN: (cackles) I told you it was no “little video game”! First Seoul will squeal like green capitalist pig! Then Japan! U.S.! All world’s eggs will be mine!

I grab him by the lapel of his uniform.

HANS: NO! You are mad! You do not understand! If you attack South Korea… (I am on the verge of tears) They will stop production of “My Pretty Coffee-Shop Ghost”! You can’t do that! Now now! They’re in the middle of a cliff-hanger!

KIM JONG-UN: What is this you speak of?

HANS: Oh, it’s AWESOME! It’s this K-Drama, see, about this guy, Choi Pak-Jin, who’s kind of a scatterbrain but then he inherits a coffee shop from his Aunt Yoo. The coffee shop is haunted by the ghost of Pak-Jin’s ex-girlfriend, Min, who was mysteriously murdered. Anyway, Min’s ghost is still in love with Pak-Jin, but she doesn’t want to freak him out, so she just helps around the coffee-shop in her ghost form when he’s not looking. But then Pak-Jin hires an assistant, Jung-An, who’s super cute. What Pak-Jin doesn’t know is that Jung-An was the assassin who KILLED Min, and she’s there to silence Pak-Jin and kill him too because the coffee-shop is standing in the way of an evil coffee-shop conglomerate… But, of course, Jung-An falls in love with Pak-Jin and they start dating! Poor Min gets jealous and breaks all the coffee-pots in the coffee-shop, so Pak-Jin hires an exorcist, and the exorcist is planning to banish Min on the same day that Pak-Jin and Jung-An are getting married, but wait: the coffee conglomerate made Jung-An promise she would kill Pak-Jin right after the wedding! Because they’ve kidnapped her little sister, Yeon! See, that’s how they blackmail her into doing all the assassinations. Luckily, Min found out what the coffee conglomerate was up to, so she decided to rescue Yeon. Here’s the dilemma: if Min rescues Yeon, Jung-An will have no reason to end Pak-Jin’s life, but on the other hand, Pak-Jin and Jung-An will be happy together and Min will be devastated. And that’s episode ONE. But THEN things get really complicated because-”

KIM JONG-UN: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!!!!

HANS: I’ll shut up if you promise not to blow up the cast of “My Pretty Coffee-Shop Ghost.”

KIM JONG-UN: Deal! I promise! Anything you want!

HANS: Can I trust you?

KIM JONG-UN: If you can’t trust righteous leader, who can you possibly trust?

I concede, relieved and triumphant. My mission impossible has been possibilitated.

But as I walk back to the West, I hear an ominous sound, something like: “Woohoohahahoohahooha!” I look up to see a colored streak cross the sky.

Heaven help us all.

MORDECAI and RIGBY from THE REGULAR SHOW on INTERSPECIES FRIENDSHIP

I’m approaching the colorful park grounds where the subjects of my next interview are supposed to labor on a part-time basis. The air has a cartoonishly blue hue in this place. Pleasant bushes seem to have been touched with green tempera. But this painterly peace does not last long. 80s synth-pop music (Loverboy, to be precise) suddenly blares out of nowhere, and a gray golf cart comes crashing into the scene. The cart is driven by what seems to be a sentient, irascible gumball machine; it is also occupied by the two individuals I intend to interview (the bird and the raccoon) as well as by an elderly gentleman who would seem almost dapper if he wasn’t suffering from an advanced case of macro-encephalitis.

Upon seeing me, the gentleman leaps off the moving cart and draws near, sucking on a lollipop with a childish abandon I find almost as alarming as his deformed head and his fey accent. He squeals: “You must be here to interview Mordecai and Rigby! Good show, good show!”

I concur that “The Regular Show” is indeed better than regular. It is GOOD. Delighted, he thrusts his licked lollipop toward me. I demur.

“But it is butterscotch!” He seems confused.

I demur again and walk toward the cart, toward Mordecai and Rigby, the putative stars of the popular show created by J. G. Quintel. Mordecai is a bluejay: bluer and lankier than I had expected, his top feathers in careful disarray. Conversely, Rigby the raccoon is shorter and frailer than I had imagined. His unkept fur is missing in patches, where the mange has taken its toll; the dark circles around his wide eyes give him the look of the irredeemable, trash-rummaging drug addict. He’s gnawing at his own tail, while the gumball machine parks the cart and begins to scold the duo.

GUMBALL MACHINE: “Have you guys been eating my balls again?!?”

I chuckle at this. The machine looks up at me angrily before stalking away. The bluejay, far friendlier, waves a beckoning wing.

MORDECAI: Hey, dude. Never mind Benson. He’s always blaming us for doing everything. We never DO anything!

RIGBY: We never do anything except ROCK! YEAH-YUH! And get INTERVIEWED! Ask me questions! I wanna be interviewed first! FIRST FIRST FIRST!

MORDECAI: Hans does interviews in order of tallness. I’ve got the tallness. I go first.

RIGYBY: No fair! I’ll play you punchies for it!

Without hesitating, the bird punches the raccoon in the snout. It is brutal. The raccoon’s pupils expand even wider, and after a second of sheer shock, he starts bawling tragically.

MORDECAI: See what you made me do? I didn’t want to play punchies! I wanted to do it in order of tallness!

RIGBY: (wiping tears away) I’ll murder you, Mordecai! You won’t see it coming, but then it will be POW POW POW and I’m going to stuff your feathers into a pillow and I’m going to sleep on the pillow and have sweet dreams of killing you all over again.

HANS: I think it’s almost natural for close friendships to have a foundation on petty conflicts and constant arguments. I imagine it’s even more so when the friends come from different ethnic backgrounds like you and Rigby, or Tom and Jerry. Ren and Stimpy, Spongebob and Patrick. Phineas and Ferb. That sort of thing. “The Regular Show” tends to revel on those friendly fights, but there’s genuine camaraderie behind them. Not just between you and Rigby, the other co-workers as well. I understand there are Yetis and ghosts also employed in this park? The cliché goes that we should all look PAST our differences, but I think true friendship is more about looking AT the differences and being fine with them. Love can grow from contrasts. For instance, Mordecai, I hear there’s a lot of sexual tension between you, a BLUEJAY, and a RED-BREASTED ROBIN named Margaret. Blue vs. Red! It’s a perfect chromatic representation of how basic differences can actually lead to deep connections.

MORDECAI: Dude, you’re waaay over-thinking EVERYTHING. Besides, Margaret is actually dating Muscle Man these days.

As if on cue, we’re unpleasantly interrupted by the mocking appearance of a dwarf with a sickly green tint to his skin and incipient man-boobs.

MUSCLE MAN: Hey ladies! Whatcha doing? Playing with the golf cart like ladies who like to play with golf carts? Getting interviewed? Getting a microphone shoved on your faces? You know who else likes things shoved in her face? MY MOM! HAHAHA!

MORDECAI: (shrugs) Haters gonna hate.

HANS: Talking about hate, I just interviewed Tyler, The Creator. I understand he has stopped by “The Regular Show.” How did he fit in with the regular crew?

Clearly a faux-pas. At the mere mention of the controversial rapper, Rigby’s pupils expand further, he shivers, clutches his tail and wraps it around himself protectively. Then he shrieks:

RIGBY: TYLER IS MEAN! HE DOES BAD TOUCHING! NO, TYLER, STOP! STOP! THAT’S BAD TOUCHING!

His friend angrily slams a blue wing down on the cart’s dashboard.

MORDECAI: DUUUUDE! We do NOT talk about that around here! This interview is over!