Wild But Formal: The Middle

Sunday 28th June 1998

20th Anniversary | Wild But Formal II | More Leonardo DiCaprio | Weather | Football | URLs | Japlish

Special 20th Anniversary Edition!

That's right! Tokyo Tales has now been going for 20 issues, or... um... well, quite a long time, anyway. More than a couple of months. So what better way to celebrate than by not putting *anything* in this 20th episode, giving you guys a well-earned holiday from this largely self-indulgent tripe?

Well, precisely because this *is* largely self-indulgent tripe, I decided that it would be better to put lots and lots of rubbish in - more or less as usual, in fact.

Ready? Didn't think so...

Wild but Formal - No.2

Cedric (for it is he) is standing in a corridor of power with a businessman. The businessman has an okapi for a head. No, no, just kidding. Sorry, got carried away there. He's just some guy. Cedric's still got a lion's head, though - we need some sense of continuity, y'see? The businessman says something like "Good job. Shall we go?" Cedric, true to form as the strong, silent (and not a little lion-like) type, just nods. They go. It's all very formal.

They drive a little in their 4 by 4.

Suddenly! Cut to the pair of them, in a massive speedboat, going flat out across the water. They are both, somewhat inexplicably, wearing matching white suits and black T-shirts. The businessman goes "Whoo!" emphatically and punches the sky. Wildly, if you will. Cedric just drives the boat. He says nothing.

So, we learn a couple of things:

1) Cedric is a great businessman/lionlikething. He did a "good job", and survived a meeting where his dim PA forgot the files. He's formal when it counts.
2) He knows how to show a gal (and in this case, a guy) a good time. A wild time, even.
3) This ad's producers have watched too many episodes of Miami Vice.

The message is obvious! Buy one of these 4 by 4s and be like Cedric! Successful! Suave! Wild! But formal! With a lion's head!

Maybe that last bit is optional. Or possibly they're actually selling the lion's head, rather than the car. Now *there's* a thought...

Leonardo DiCaprio

Aha. So that's what it was. As he drives past the two girls and their skirts fly up in the air in the slipstream, he is low enough to the ground (in his mini-car) to observe the girls' knickers in his rear-view mirror, enabling him to reverse up to them and say, "Shiro" ("castle", yes, to be sure, but also apparently "white" - my dictionary neglected to mention that much) and "Ichigo" (still as in "strawberry"). They're the colours of the knickers, see? So there you have it. Nice to know it's not actually all that weird after all, eh?

Weather

What's the great thing about summer in Tokyo? The fact that it's 28 degrees C with a cooling breeze when you pop out to the 7-11 at two in the morning.

What's the not-so great thing about summer in Tokyo? The fact that during the daytime it gets so humid that doing anything even remotely physical without aircon (like sitting still) brings you out in an all-body sweat. Nice.

Football

The World Cup is on at the moment, apparently, and I just wanted to express my deepest sympathy to the American team (sorry, "Team USA"). They managed to finish last out of the 32 teams after Jamaica won, Tunisia tied and Japan also finished with no points - but with a better goal difference.

The biggest lump of sympathy goes to one of the team members, I forget which one, who expressed his bewilderment after losing to Iran. He was confused because the comeback tactic he had adopted after the Germany match, which so often works for his country's rounders players (baseball, I think they call it) failed to stop his team getting hammered by a superior side. The tactic? Playing more aggressively? More defensively? Timely substitutions? Nope - wearing his shorts back to front. How can they possibly have lost?

You lost, mate, because your team were crap. You lost because it's not your game. It's football. "World" Cup means just that, as opposed, say, to "World" Series, which is actually 28 American teams and 2 Canadian teams with American players. There are no statistics to hide behind, no goals-batted-in or other such nonsense. There's just 22 people trying to win, continuously, without neatly packaged periods of offense and defense and powerplays to facilitate commercials and shot clocks and dying seconds in which to sink the final three-pointer to win the championship and prove something about American family values and kids with perfect teeth.

This brief timeline should clear things up:
1) Football is invented.
2) Advertising is invented.
3) American Football is invented.

So, deep regrets to the USA - come back when you've worked it out.

Cripes, that was a bit spirited all of a sudden, wasn't it? Anybody would think that I actually *liked* football. I promise not to continue to bash the Yanks any further. In this edition, anyway. Even if they are crap at important things like foreign policy, too.

URLs

A few more hand-selected gems for the discerning surfers amongst you:

The Cabbage Alliance is a rather surreal look into what can best be described as the fantasy world of some seriously deranged individuals. Check it out and rest assured that you are not as weird as these guys. It's all worth it for the link to The Tale of the Bratwurst Five In fact, just go there instead. It's much funnier.

The Bureau of Missing Socks - it's what it sounds like, okay?

Spellweb - if you want to know how to spell something (is it necessary, or neccessary? Sucessful or successful? Pillock or pilchard?) then just enter both options and this site will trawl the web for you, and give you your answer according to the number of times each appears. A worthwhile idea, I'm sure you'll agree. Funnier, however, is entering things like "Revise" and "Drink" and then seeing what it tells you to do. Wicked fun to be had.

Japlish du Jour

(on a paper bag from a bakery in Koga - that's right, a *bakery*, not a sedative manufacturer or existentialist manifesto)

As you, who lives everyday vividfy like a new air of a new epock. On your everytime of rest,
Let us stay by you. We MONTE YAMAZAKI would like to help to make atmos-phere,
But you enjoy yourself ,And we hope to be properly a calmest and gratified time for you.

("vividfy"? Sounds like a scene from The Life of Brian [welease woderwick, etc.]. I'm all for a bit of "atmos-phere", though. Rock on, Monte Yamazaki.)

So farewell to those of you who are casting off into the unknown of jobland; stay in touch whatever you're up to. Those who aren't going anywhere fast - don't you wish you were?

Chris

[tales / previous / next / top / index]