Orientalism

After spending eleven days in Japan and eight weeks in Hong Kong, I arrived home yesterday with the following things:

- $1.30 HK and 184 yen, which translates to about $2.10 of completely useless money.

- A white and grey striped shirt that’s stained, barely perceptibly, with sauce from a Teriyaki McBurger I ate in Narita Airport.

- Swag from my internship, including a set of regulation stacking cups, two light-up clown noses from Cirque du Soleil, and three aprons.

- A free flash drive, courtesy of the Columbia Alumni Association. In terms of things given away by the administration to appease students, I think that flash drives are the new chocolate fountains.

- Copies of Misery, Jennifer Weiner’s Best Friends Forever, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Great Expectations, and In Defense of Food, which I bought and read instead of half the books I actually packed.

- A sweet tweed jacket custom made for me by this guy.

- Gifts for fronds, including but not limited to a Japanese banana case I’m giving to my brother; two shiny lacquered boxes, wrapped in the finest Chinese newspaper; a pretty paper tray I found at an origami museum that, okay, also happened to be at Narita airport; and a t-shirt inside of what looks like a soda can, notable more for the packaging than for the shirt itself. The blurb on the can, located where you’d expect to find nutrition facts, is amazing enough that I’m going to reproduce it here in full. I like to imagine it as read by Maya Angelou.

“LOVE OF T-SHIRT

Remove collars, shorten sleeves,

and eliminate buttons… …

In an enthusiastic rhythm,

the temperature rises so as to

wear out the whole summer

Put aside the trivialness and bondage of the city…

Sexy, or decadent, or Hiphop, or Punk… …

Therefore, simple and connotative clothing is used to decorate them.

T-shirt expresses our intrinsic desires,

Which mean persistence and individuality

and is also the expression of a life attitude.”

- The above lunch bag from Tokyo, which has become my new favorite possession. Doesn’t the picture look like it might have come from the cover of a Little Golden Book about the first day of kindergarten, if that book were translated from English to Japanese and then back into English by these people?

- So you know how souvenir stores always have racks that display little trinkets inscribed with common names? Like New York license plate key chains that say Madison or Michael or whatever? At the Hong Kong Museum of Art, I found a series of business card-sized gifts printed with English names written in both English letters and Chinese characters. I couldn’t find Hillary, but somehow names like Dagmar and Adolf were readily available. I bought one that says Zoltan.

- Enough new clothing that I probably should have had to pay an import tax.

- Zero bootlegged DVDs, somehow.

In just four short days, I'll be back in New York. In the meantime, I'm going to stare at this pile of stuff, momentarily contemplate how I can possibly transport it all to the city, then give up and see what's on Lifetime.

Listmania!

Alex and I are good at a lot of things—having shiny hair, thinking of nicknames, and complimenting each other, for example. One thing we're not so good at is updating this here blog.

But! All that is about to change RIGHT NOW, because I really like this list I wrote for the Spec last semester and want to find a place on the internet where I can both post it and link to all the videos I'm talking about so that you can see for yourselves why these commercials are awesome and that place is going to be right here on Rusty Stapler.

Who knows? Maybe this will open up the blogging floodgates (those last two words make the most terrifying spoonerism) and we'll start posting on a regular basis. Maybe we'll get a book deal! A book deal would be so great.

Without further ado: The Top Ten Commercials of the Early-Mid Nineties

10. Mall Madness: Four big-haired 'tweens (future Carries, Mirandas, Charlottes, and Samanthas?) giggle as they play a board game about reckless consumerism. Because nothing's more fun than pretending to use your fake credit card at the virtual clothing boutique—am I right, ladies?

9. Play-Doh Meal Makin' Kitchen Play Sets: Raise your hand if you thought this commercial made Play-Doh look delicious.

8. Cool Shavin' Ken: Finally, a male doll who sports a beard that "disappears with warm water!" Because what kid hasn't dreamed of having her very own man to shave? Bonus: As the jingle tells us, Ken smells so good because he "wears Old Spice." That's some questionable cross-promotion right there.

7. Dum-Dums: Dayglo-colored children's heads on lollipop sticks lip-synch to a doo-wop jingle. It's a lot less creepy on film than it sounds on paper.

6. MUZZY: A Carol Brady sound-alike explains how lazy parents can use these BBC video sets to teach their children a second language through osmosis. I never bought the tapes, but I did learn how to say "I am a little girl" in French from the commercial: "Je suis la jeune fille!"

5. Pure Moods: Of all the compilation CDs of the '90s—The Carpenters' Yesterday Once More, Monster Ballads, Now That's What I Call Music!—Pure Moods was the greatest. That's because the CD's commercial was the only one to feature both majestic unicorns and a snippet of the X-Files theme song.

4. Crossfire: The ad shows two kids competing in an epic, fiery battle. In real life, the game involves shooting marbles or something. Clear winner of the "thing that looks much, much cooler on TV than it is in real life" award. Honorable mentions: Mouse Trap (way too much trouble to set up) and Guess Who? ("Game cards do not actually talk").

3. Anti-Drug PSA with Rachel Leigh Cook: Before she was all that, Cook smashed up a kitchen with a frying pan to show the effects of heroin on not only your brain, but also "your family... and your friends! And your money! AND YOUR FUTURE!" This commercial inspired hundreds of kids to seriously consider cutting back on smack.

2. Mr. Bucket: Possibly the most awesome jingle of our time. Sing it with me now: "I'm Mr. Bucket, balls pop  out of my mouth..."

1. Gopher Cakes: For some reason, lists that count down cinema's greatest twist endings rarely include this Hitchcockian gem of an ad. You think you're watching a commercial for a new snack cake, but (spoiler alert!) it's actually a PSA about exercising. Sneaky!