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Let’s talk about Germans, why don’t we? We haven’t in a while. It’s time.

Fun fact about Germans: They have an uncanny ability to find dead bodies in hotel room mattresses!

Check out the provided Snopes link. It’s a fascinating, if macabre, discussion of an urban legend. As the story goes, a couple checks into a hotel room, settles in for the night, only to find the room has a funky smell to it. They pay it no mind, and hit the hay. The next morning, the smell is worse. A call to the front desk, and up comes an amply nostrilled bellhop. He sniffs around for a bit and decides the bed is the culprit. Flips the mattress. Viola! Corpse.

Thing is, this isn’t an urban legend. It’s happened a number of times in the U.S. of A. What’s curious, however, is that in three of the incidents, it was German tourists who discovered the bodies. Marathon Man fans are bound to raise an inquisitive finger and clench their molars, but I don’t think there’s a conspiracy afoot here. I just think Germans have a natural ability for sniffing this stuff out. I mean these are the people who brought us Scorpions, after all. They can always find something that stinks. Zing!

All kidding aside, I beleive we need to test the theory out. I’ll send the idea to Mythbusters post-haste. It should be simple enough. The mustachioed Mythbuster can murder the red-headed one, stuff his body under a Serta Perfect Sleeper, then send someone as American-as-Isalmaphobia into the room. Ron Howard should do. Start the stopwatch and see how long it takes Howard to find the body. Then repeat the experiment, swapping in Werner Herzog for Howard. If Howard finds it quicker, then the myth is officially busted. If Herzog wins, well, then I’m dispatching someone pasty and lederhosened into every Comfort Inn before I let them swipe my MasterCard. Compare me to the Princess and the Pea if you like, but a fellow expects certain things from a hotel mattress:

1. Cleanliness
2. Firmness
3. Clearly marked headstones

I try to keep up with the Bieber-stream media. You see what I did there? Rather than writing “mainstream” or even “lamestream,” I went with “Bieber-stream.” It’s something I do here. Keep folks on their toes. Comment on culture in clever ways. Thank me by buying a book.

In any case, the Justin Bieber-slanting CBS News has asked the kids of New Zealand (The Kiwiettes, if you will) to chill the hell out. Bieber Fever has reached George Romero-like levels, resulting in a frightening mob scene at the Auckland Airport, and Justin’s “mama” has suffered as a result. I want to think the best of our very distant neighbors to the southwest (or southeast should you decide to fly Air Emirates), so I’m a skeptic. I smell a PR person behind this. And if not that, then I smell Germans. Because as anyone who has set their watch to NZST will tell you, if you want meet someone from Munich, go to the Auckland Airport. I swear, it’s like Paris in 1942.

Of course, this is from a tourist’s perspective. I spent 3 months in New Zealand a couple years back. My wife and I bought a cheap car, and filled the trunk with camping equipment and drove down every road and hiked in as many corners of that lovely little country as we could and slept in huts and yards and hostels and on beaches. We met plenty of locals, very few Americans, and a shocking number of Klauses and Ilsas. We ran into one intrepid young Bavarian on two separate occasions: once while doing a jigsaw puzzle in a headlamp-lit hut along the Milford Track; once along the steaming, sulfurous moonscape of the Tongariro Circuit. He (and every other German we met) spoke flawless English and was a perfectly lovely fellow, so I don’t mean to disparage an entire people. I’m just intrigued by the disproportion. The French and Spanish and English and Italian combined didn’t even have half the representation.

I’m sure if I actually lived and worked in New Zealand, I’d shrug this German infiltration off as some backpacker urban legend. But I assure you it’s true, and I think it has resulted in a Bieber bumrush. Germans get a bad rap for their taste in music. So perhaps a band of backpackers were trying to regain some cred. Perhaps they weren’t fans at all, but musical freedom fighters trying to rid the world of a devastating future filled with soulless bubble-gum pop. Perhaps Bieber is lucky to have gotten out with his reputation intact. Have you ever read The Dead Zone?

It seems far-fetched until you watch the following clip. It’s taken from an interview in New Zealand shortly after the airport fiasco. Cunning as ever, Bieber strikes back by denying that the German language even exists. “I don’t know that means. We don’t say that in America,” he quips. It’s a brassy move, and will spark numerous conspiracy theories. I expect Glenn Beck to break it d