Wacky Tokyo

Posted on May 13, 2013 by lisafindley

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a “look at the funny stuff I’m seeing” post, and yes, this one includes a funny anglicization or two. I’ve loved my time in Tokyo. I’ve been fortunate enough to stay with a generous host and her adorable child, and I’ve had great weather that makes every park, shrine, and neon-lit street a pleasure to explore. Also, I keep coming across the funny, wacky sights that every big city offers up. On Wednesday, I leave Tokyo for London–what weird and wonderful things will I see there?

That’s “Dragon Tacos” to you

This guy took all the symbols and letters that mean “internet” and decided that they needed to go on his car.

Rude!

Hipster distilled to a t-shirt

It’s a bakery, but really what they’re selling is the smell

Harajuku fashion shoot

Strolling with a rabbit, like ya do

Tea time with Darth & Leia on the subway

Don’t Worry, Tourists, It’s a Nice Thing

Posted on March 21, 2013 by lisafindley

Sometimes the locals have to spell things out for the tourists so they don’t freak out about something they’ve never seen before. Squat toilets, intestines on a stick, mosquito nets–all presented without comment or explanation, just read your guidebook to figure it out (okay, except the nice vendor did steer me away from intestines toward a pork satay instead). Which works for me! You’re visiting a culture, after all, so learn a little about it. But I’m guessing the Luang Prabang airport received complaints about its bathroom air fresheners, because they’ve affixed quite the descriptive label to them.

It did smell good

Fun in New Cultures: Australia

Posted on October 15, 2012 by lisafindley

One of the benefits of travel is, of course, encountering new people and learning about their cultures. This can be a profound experience, but just as often it’s funny, as different ideas of ‘normal’ meet. Here are a few funny/just different things I’ve seen in Australia:

The Freshmaker of Australia

Orange air spray in the toilet: Almost every toilet I’ve been to in Australia has a little spray can of orange-scented air freshener. Several of the toilets I’ve been to haven’t been ventilated at all, so it makes sense that you’d want to put something other than poop fumes in the air in that enclosed space. But several toilets have open windows and seem to be ventilated fine, so why the can? Does poop have to have an orange flair to it here? Whatever the reason, there’s a can in every can.

Breakfast in aisle 1

Eggs in the aisles: I haven’t seen this in every grocery store I’ve been to here, but in several, the eggs aren’t refrigerated at all. This just about blew my mind, y’all. Eggs in the regular aisles?! You might as well leave meat out of a cooler! I’m pretty sure eggs left out of a fridge hatch overnight and next thing you know, you’ll have baby chicks chirping around the cookies.

He needs a little laser gun in his hand.

Lasers in the streetlights: At busy intersections, there are crosswalk “walk/don’t walk” lights, just like in the States. They have a similar red man standing and green man walking. But Australian crosswalk lights are better fitted out for people with visual impairments. When the crosswalk is red, there’s a steady “blip blip blip” sound, and then, wonderfully, when it changes to green, there’s a shooting lasers sound. It’s like, “pew pew pew” and you’re walking across the street like a sci-fi hero. I love it.

Images mine except for the last one.

An Open Letter to My 1996 Saturn, Which Has Taken on the Role of Life Coach, Despite Never Having Been Hired in This Capacity

Posted on June 21, 2011 by lisafindley

I’ve been reading some of the open letters over at McSweeney’s lately, and decided to try my hand at writing one. You can write to anyone or anything (generally not someone or something you are expecting a response from), but it must be nonfiction; that is, it has to be prompted by an actual event in your life.

An Open Letter to My 1996 Saturn, Which Has Taken on the Role of Life Coach, Despite Never Having Been Hired in This Capacity

Dear Madame Sunroof,

We’ve known each other for a good many years. You’d already completed one career track as my dad’s car for his sales trips by the time my sisters and I got to use you in high school, and you were a healthy 8 years old when I purchased you from my parents after college. You moved with me to a new state and settled in pretty well, becoming casual acquaintances with the Naperville Saturn dealership and its garage, and moving me around the suburbs of Chicago with ease.

But something changed when I moved us to Chicago proper. You were no longer the carefree car of my youth, eager for whatever adventure lay ahead. No, now you were a delicate old machine, approaching each trip farther than the grocery store with trepidation and squeaky brakes. I thought you were just aging, and I tried to ease the transition as best I could, with sporadic trips to the mechanic and a constant stream of verbal encouragement when we were riding around town together. I thought this would help and you’d cheer up.

Instead, I find that you’ve chosen a new career path in your twilight years. You’ve taken it upon yourself to be my life coach, though I never asked you to take on that role and certainly don’t consider myself in need of one. Once I figured out that each new ailment was trying to teach me a life lesson, I saw your plan coming together.

Going from 0 to 35 is a bit shaky, but it’s the crucial going from 35 to 55 when entering the highway that really makes you shudder and nearly shut down completely? Easy does it, tortoise and hare, etc.!

When it rains, the water comes in through a mysterious hole that no mechanic has been able to find and soaks the foot space of both the driver and front passenger seats? Bad things happen unexpectedly, and the best you can do is be prepared with some towels to sop up the mess!

The horn starts blowing in the middle of the night for no reason and I have to drive you around for 30 minutes til it shuts itself off? Get ready, because babies are way worse!

The rear suspension rod has lost all lubricant and makes a horrible creaking noise heard two blocks away every time I turn a corner? Loud music still solves most woes!

The rear windows won’t go back up once lowered (sometimes you can only go forward!), closing the door too hard turns the overhead light on or off (you never know when a ray of sunshine will burst through!), the floor of the backseat is literally rusting out (there’s nothing quite like a breath of fresh air!), and so on.

I guess I appreciate all these lessons you’re sharing with me, ol’ Saturn. But in a couple weeks I plan to drive us up to visit some friends in northern Michigan, and I’m counting on you to make that six-hour journey there and back. We’ve been a lot of places and covered a lot of miles, and I’m awfully fond of you. I’m sure that you can go the distance. Whaddya say, how about we make this lesson “if you’re well-loved, you can still go far,” and not “at the end of it all, go out in a blaze of glory”?

Truly yours,
Lisa

The Genius of Falling Down

Posted on March 29, 2011 by lisafindley

Ladies and gentleman, I have uncovered one of the great secrets of that dark and twisted world we know as comedy. Lengthy treatises have been written on just what makes people laugh, and entire tomes are devoted to the debate over whether high-brow or low-brow humor is funnier. The answer to the latter is both, obviously, but for my money, nothing makes me laugh so instinctively and delightedly as a well-executed pratfall.

What makes a pratfall well-executed, you may ask. (As I hope you might, since this is the great secret I promised to share with you. If you did not ask, then you probably already know the secret but shh, don’t ruin it for the rest of the class.) I’m glad you asked! A pratfall can take many forms, but its basic definition is someone taking a fall in a way that makes people laugh. Someone falling down the stairs in a Lifetime movie = not funny. Someone falling down the stairs in a Three Stooges movie = funny. You hear “pratfall,” you think “banana peel.”

And that’s funny, of course it is. People falling down is inherently funny. I don’t know if it appeals to me so much because my natural grace and style manifests in tripping over invisible objects and walking into doorframes, but I love it when a casual conversation or stroll down the street on stage or in film is interrupted by a sudden slip-n-slide. Much of the humor comes from the unexpectedness of the fall (at least unexpected to the person falling), but even when we in the audience know it’s coming, we love watching the norm literally upended.

Chevy Chase takes a fall for the president

Which brings me to Chevy Chase, whose weekly (and therefore very expected) cold open pratfalls on SNL elevated the act to a whole new level. His genius? He never stopped falling down. He didn’t just trip and land on his butt. He tripped, windmilled his arms, fell on his knees, reached wildly for support from whatever was handy, took down an entire bookshelf in the process, and landed on his butt. He could fall from any height and still find something to destroy on his way down, all with the most dignified look on his face, like, “I am not falling, I am momentarily off-balance.” The dignified look is part of it; he was playing straight man to the funny man of the fall, almost making the few moments of falling into a double act starring himself and gravity.

This insight struck me as I was watching Season 1 of “Community,” in which Chevy gets to perform a couple of his patented Neverending Pratfalls(TM). He trips over an instrument in a band room, and sure enough, the entire jazz combo setup comes crashing down in a glorious rain of cymbals and drums. He trips in a dorm room with a giant bowl of popcorn in his hands, and next thing you know, he’s grasping at the door handle, the desk, anything, while popcorn rains down on him and his friends laugh hysterically. He’s still got it!

SNL and NBC in general keep a tight grip on their video content, so I was unable to find either of those “Community” clips online or some of Chevy’s more classic how-are-you-still-falling moments from the ’70s. But this clip below is still excellent, with a festive fall as performed by Gerald Ford. (For the young kids in the audience, President Ford was portrayed in the media as clumsy and kinda dim, and Chase regularly played Ford as a bumbling buffoon on SNL. This clip is no exception; we don’t get the fall til the end of the 2:30 minute video, but all the record playing and tree trimming before it is wonderful to see as set-up.)

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/christmas-eve-at-the-white-house/29163/

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