According to legend, when Genghis Kahn began his little campaign to conquer all of Asia and Europe, his most trusted sidekicks were his Tibetan mastiff, or gigantic dogs, that would eventually be responsible for the creation of most large breeds of dogs throughout the world. At one point during the 20th century, though, the breed became rare throughout the world and people feared that it would eventually become endangered. But like all cool vintage trends, someone eventually hipstered up and gave the Tibetan mastiff a second chance, and over the past 10 years the breed has seen a powerful resurgence.

For starters, the Westminster Kennel Club recognized the breed for the first time ever during the 2008 dog show, and that was the direct result of – and probably more likely the cause of – a growing number of competitions and exhibitions throughout China, involving just this breed. Over the weekend, the China Tibetan Mastiff Exhibition was held in Shenyang in the Liaoning province (it’s like the Chicago of China) and that massive beast above was the big winner of the event’s beauty contest.

If you’re thinking about getting in on this Tibetan mastiff action, you might want to start saving, though. Mastiff puppies sell for as much as $200,000 in the U.S. and Europe, and most breeders have a waiting list. But if you’re really fired up and ready to pass on that new house you’ve had your eye on, a man in Urumqi, Xinjiang (think: Los Angeles) nearly broke a world record when his mastiff, Black Pearl, produced a litter of 22 pups last month.

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He’s back, in pog Asian variety show form!

There isn’t a lot of available information about this video, courtesy of Outside The Boxscore, but all you really need to know is that it’s a guy dressed like Jeremy Lin on an Asian dance contest/’X Country’s Got Talent’ show.

My theory is that it’s an illustration of how sports writers saw Jeremy Lin all along, a look deep into the recesses of their brains, and that the casual racist tweets have evolved into this video of Lin speaking Chinese, pop-and-locking for the enjoyment of Asians and missing jumpshots. It also may or may not have been created by Next Media Animation.

Worst case scenario, this is the first video on the New York Post’s YouTube channel. I like it, though, and as I always say, “Lin-mitation is the Lin-cerest form of flatt-emy”.

Things are not going very well for the New York Knicks, as last night’s 104-99 loss to the Chicago Bulls extended their losing streak to 6 games and dropped them 6 games below .500 and into a tie with the Milwaukee Bucks for the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference playoff race. At the center of the drama is Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni, who is the target of both the wrath of fans and players alike. Can he and star player Carmelo Anthony continue to live together despite this divide?

Nobody cares. Because Jeremy Lin is still the Big Apple’s brightest star, and now, despite the losing and drama, Lin is being rewarded for his short career as a starter with his biggest endorsement deal yet. He’s going to be slinging Volvos over in China. I would have guessed Lincoln.

Lin, who blogs in both mandarin and English on his Chinese Twitter-style weibo, has 2.47 million followers on his microblog.

Volvo is betting Lin’s popularity may help the company make further inroads in China, the carmaker’s fastest-growing market, as it seeks to double sales to 800,000 vehicles in the 10 years to 2020. (Via Bloomberg)

Bloomberg also points out that the precursor to Linsanity – Yao Ming’s Dynasty – still nets Yao $36 million a year for his endorsements with McDonald’s and Apple, among others. So as long as Lin keeps people tuning into Knicks games and reaching into their pun reservoirs to come up with exciting new nicknames for him, people will surely notice which companies he’s endorsing, too.

And that’s great news for Volvo and eventually Intel, Infinity, Innovative, Intech, Inland Truck, Integrys, In N Out Burger, Linked In, Invisible Children and, toward the end, Digital Sin.

This is the worst reboot of Lolita ever.

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Links

Kate Upton Gloriously Rejects Darren Rovell’s Valentine’s Day Advances On National TV - If you’re sick of reading about Kate Upton on With Leather, now you can read about her everywhere ELSE on UPROXX! Backlash! Now we’re all Ariel Meredith fans! [UPROXX]

This Man Has Tattoos of Every Major League Baseball Mascot - This Man Is Awesome. [Brobible]

Owen Wilson Balls So Hard In ‘Niggas In Midnight In Paris’ - Someone should rap behind clips of every Woody Allen movie. Do you think Big Bear has seen Stardust Memories? [UPROXX]

Important Dating Advice From The Ladies of ‘Jersey Shore’ - “Ladies, expect your man to not be a normal human being! He should be a weird color and have crazy rage issues. You’ll live happily ever after!” [Warming Glow]

Music’s 5 Newest Illuminati Inductees - Can we induct Chris Brown into the “getting shot out of a cannon into the sun”-inati? [Smoking Section]

The Superhero Movie Guilt Calculator — How Badly Did the Comics Industry Screw the Creators Behind 2012′s Superhero Blockbusters? - Not as badly as they screwed the creators of Daredevil by making that Daredevil movie where he throws dudes in front of subway trains. [Gamma Squad]

The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 2/13/12 Embraces Hate, Melodrama, Wheelchair Violence - Seriously, whether you like wrestling or not, read pages 6 and 7 of this report. Funniest Raw in history. [With Leather]

The Dark Knight Rises Stole Our Food Truck Idea! - If they’re calling Batman’s plane “The Bat”, they should change the name of the Batmobile to “The Man”. [Film Drunk]

30 Surreal Photos Of A Chinese Sex Toy Factory - This is best read pretending some Chinese equivalent of Veruca Salt is up in the foreman’s office yelling I WANT A DIL-DOE ROIT NOW! [Buzzfeed]

What’s Your Sloth Name? - Brandon? I guess? I don’t know. [HuffPost Comedy]

Greg Brady, Danny Partridge, Sherilyn Fenn, Johnny Fever, Alice Cooper, and Bigfoot. Together Finally - I was hoping this was gonna be a reboot of The Stand. Oh well, close enough. [FARK]

Guess How Much Chris Pine Made For ‘This Means War’ - I can’t imagine there’s a single person in the world that says, “oh, Chris Pine is in that movie? I’ll have to go see it!” Five million dollars? You could’ve gotten JGL for like 1/5th of that. [Moviefone]

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Whitney Houston - Thing 11: She has nothing, nothing, nothing. If she don’t have you. [Popcrush]

Normally when a woman gives birth in China, it isn’t big news since it would take 600 networks running around the clock to cover that kind of procreation. But one woman stunned the world last weekend when she gave birth to the biggest baby in the country’s recorded history. Weighing in at a whopping 15.5 pounds, Chun Chun has already broken at least one national record and I assume one cervix.

But mama is resting healthily, happily and proudly this week, as her and her husband are basking in the glory of uterine walls that could stymie the Mongolian army. Via The Daily Mail:

His delighted father told local TV: ‘My wife was not different from other pregnant women. She ate and drank normally as she should. But she’s given birth to such a big, fat son.

‘Today is the first day of spring in the Chinese calendar and he’s a ‘dragon baby’. I feel very happy,” his father Han Jingang told local broadcaster Xinxiang Television.

His 29-year-old mother, Wang Yujuan, said she had sensed something special.

Three babies were born in China between 2008 and 2010 that each weighed roughly 15.4 pounds, but those little tykes have shamed and dishonored their country and families. Today, Chun Chun is the biggest baby ever born in China, and with some hard work and dedication, the country’s top scientists will one day be able to produce a baby big enough to topple the Ohio newborn that popped out at 23 pounds in 1879.

In fact, I think I found a newspaper clipping from that day.

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From Guyism by way of Gizmodo comes one of the weirdest and most unnecessarily creative videos you’ll see on the Internet not involving a cup or a tub: artist Hong Yi painting a more-or-less lifesize painting of With Leather favorite and adorable panda-handler Yao Ming using nothing but a canvas, a basketball, and a bucket of red paint.

It’s pretty incredible, both in result and execution. Imagine how hard it would be to portraitize Miles Davis using nothing but blue and a trumpet, or the impossibility of dipping your junk into a vat of Sherwin Williams and rubbing out an acrylic of Peter North. Painting basketball guys with a basketball is a great skill. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s the greatest kind of skill — the one you have absolutely no reason to use.

I keep restarting the video to see if she’s gonna work a panda into this somewhere.