South Park Guys Import Canadian Kenny

Thu., Sep. 27, 2007 7:19 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

Kenny and Spenny are gonna have themselves a time.

South Park masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone have signed on to produce 10 new episodes of the rib-tickling reality series Kenny vs. Spenny for Comedy Central.

The award-nominated Amazing Race-Jackass hybrid, currently heading into its fourth season on the Canadian cable network Showcase, features best friends Kenneth Hotz and Spencer Rice as they try to outdo each other in various oddball yet exacting competitions, ranging from who can go the longest without sleep to the more existential, "Who is the sanest?"

(For the record, it's Spenny.)

The fun doesn't stop there, though—the loser is then forced to do something humiliating and/or gross at the winner's request. When Rice proved to be the less insane of the two, for instance, he made Hotz streak down the street.

But Stone said that it was the episode where each tried to go to sleep that really caught his attention.

"It was right after we finished Team America in a six-day marathon," he told the Hollywood Reporter. "It was the worst time of my whole life. The physical torment that they put their bodies through touched us. It was just so funny but also realistic and raw."

Comedy Central has also acquired the rights to 10 episodes from the series' library. Canada's CBC network, the show's original broadcast home, also airs repeats.

Hotz told THR that, although Kenny vs. Spenny has aired in the U.S. on GSN, those episodes were heavily censored and a late-night slot on Comedy Central is much more fitting.

"I'm so proud of this show, and I'm blown away by what those guys did for us," the 34-year-old Toronto native said. "In Canada, it kept getting canceled and renewed and moved from place to place. To be on Comedy Central is major, and Matt and Trey are my favorite comedy duo in the history of Hollywood. This is a real Cinderella story for us."

The fourth season of Kenny vs. Spenny is scheduled to premiere on Comedy Central Nov. 14. Next up for Hotz and Rice: Who can go longer without getting sexually aroused, who can eat more meat in a week and who can "blow the biggest fart."

Thank you, Trey and Matt.

The duo's involvement with the series was "a collaboration we couldn't resist," according to Comedy Central's executive VP of original programming and development, Lauren Corrao.

"Kenny vs. Spenny is a show that everyone can directly relate to," she said. "Who among us hasn't challenged someone to a staring contest or dared a friend to wear a dead octopus on their head longer than you can?"

But Parker and Stone can only stray from their true passion for so long. The two are currently working on the second half of South Park's 11th season. New episodes, including one in which Cartman pretends he has Tourette's syndrome, begin Oct. 3.