Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Cigar Smoke Bukakke

What were they thinking?????

Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...just not this time.

Hot Latin Bear Bares All For The Love of Snacks: Gay Fantasy Doritos TV Spot Gives Quiznos A Run For The Money

And I thought Quiznos had pushed the envelope on queer fantasy and straight queer fear with the "Scott Put It In Me" spot. Nope. Australian ad agency MAKE has just put out a spot for Mexicana flavored Doritos that follows the thoughts in the head of a young man who starts to eat the snack. He begins to have fantasies of a naked Mexican man rolling in Doritos a la American Beauty. He looks horrified at the contents of his own mind. Little does he know what's about to happen though, when his fantasy is made manifest right on his coffee table. This is positively surreal. And I sure wish I could see the sales figures of this product over the next few weeks.

Caption Contest: Weird Sexual Examinations — Did the ad agency have its head up its ass?

Cancer awareness is serious — and these ads get attention. But. I really don't know what to say about each of these ads. Each one on its own inspires a range of captions. Taken together they tell a story that, well, usually I have a lot to say about this sort of thing, but I am hoping readers will jump in and write some good lines.


Have a field day.

Varmints, Vermin, Vermints

Can you think of a more unfortunate name for an all natural breath mint from the great state of Vermont? Given that the federal government has a limit to the number of insect parts that can be found in candy. Or so I've heard. Given that confectioners glaze can actually be made from insects —since food grade shellac comes from the the lac insect there's no question that insects have been involved in the making of a lot of candy. For that matter, food grade shellac is applied to apples after they've been washed of pesticides, which also removes the natural waxy protection off the apple skin. So shellac is applied to protect the skin and give some shine. Gives new meaning to Gummi worms, eh?

Queer Product Watch: The Door Knob Cover

That's actually what the katakana says in this photo found on <3Yen.com: Doa Nobu Kaba. This goes to my very first experience shopping in Tokyo. I had just moved into my Western style apartment in Mita, and found that the oven was in severe need of cleaning. So I took my trusty Japanese English dictionary down to the local store and trying to put together two words to create the phrase "oven-cleaner" I came up with some very odd locutions that made no sense to the Japanese. So I threw up my hands in frustration and said in English, all I want is some oven cleaner. To which the clerk said, "Ahh, obun-kureena!"

Of course, it's true the Japanese use loan words all the time. In their own inimitable way. But this product, the door knob cover captures for me the Japanese obsession with keeping things clean and germ free. And it also captures my both silly and salacious imagination as a penis cozy.

Put it in me Scott

Okay, just how queer is this Quiznos commercial? Starring a toaster oven that is the bastard child of HAL9000, and a fast food clerk who's sexier than anyone I've seen behind the counter of a Quiznos.

Toaster: Scott, I want you to do something.

Scott: I'm not doing that again, I'm burned.

Toaster: We both enjoyed that. [product copy] Put it in me Scott.
It's over a foot of flavor...Say it Scott, say it sexier....

I hereby nominate "Put it in me Scott" as the best catchphrase of the year. And it's only March.

The Divine Feminine Meets 21st Century British Music Hall Rock & Roll Comedy

Easy now fuzzy little man peach, Old Greg is in the house. This is beyond description. If you've never seen The Might Boosh, or this particular episode, The Legend of Old Greg, you're in for a very wild ride that combines British music hall tradition comedy, rock & roll chaos comedy, the divine feminine and glitter rock plus funk and hallucinogenic insanity meeting the dark comedy of folktales. There, that was suitably incoherent. But I am not about to get into a scholarly deconstruction of something I love so much, it would only be vivisection, and Old Greg wouldn't like that at all. It's all here, and very very funny. I am only including parts 2-4. You can find it all on youtube of course, where you can also see a live version of the "hit single" from this episode, Love Games. Trust me, you want to see all three videos below. It will change your life forever.


Quick, make an assessment.

Recession? What recession? Consumers line up for high priced pseudo-japanese kitsch in Soho.

Okay, I love the Shibuya kawaii aesthetic as much as the next Giant Robot subscriber, but I was shocked, shocked to find a line of eager shoppers a block long yesterday on Spring Street in Soho for the opening of the NYC branch of Tokidoki.

Oddly enough, I was on my way home after spending the afternoon working freelance at a Japanese agency where I sometimes find myself writing English language copy based on copy that's been translated from Japanese but that doesn't quite rise to colloquial English yet.

It was an amazing day. After all, it hit 70°F only 4 days after it had been a horrific 15° with a wind-chill that made me seriously consider snow bird status. So the streets were filled with New Yorkers throwing off the cabin fever of the winter, checking out the street art on West Broadway, and the shoes on sale at 90% off at a shop that, like so many, was going out of business.
I had never heard of Tokidoki. But the crowd felt insinctively familiar. And the line, well, what New Yorker can resist a line. So I went over to check it out. In the window were Hello Kitty handbags. Soccer balls with Tokidoki designs. And inside was the founder and head designer of Tokidoki herself, the very Italian Simone Legno. Hence the crowds of admirers hungry for expensive totems of faux-asian coolness.

I have to admit though, I loved the stuff. Just like I love all the tchatckes you can find on Takeshita Doori. Of course, the stuff on Takeshita Doori doesn't command the prices Tokidoki does. Still, I had $150 to throw away, I'd love one of the soccer balls. However, given today's economic news, it's just not an investment I am willing to make. I'm just in shock there are still so many who can and will buy one.

Queer Jubu Hero: Pieter-Dirk Uys — See Him In Darling! At The Jewish Film Festival

You have only two opportunities to see a film about the most politically subversive and influential drag queen in living history (if not all history). Don't miss it — "Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story" will be part of the 18th Annual Jewish Film Festival, at the Walter Reade Theater on January 29th. 

Uys is best known in the guise of his alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, the Most Famous White Woman in South Africa.  During the later apartheid years, as Evita, Uys appeared regularly on television and in clubs satirizing the evil of the apartheid government. When people who spoke out and challenged the government directly were imprisoned or worse, Uys managed to speak truth to power without finding himself disappeared. Nelson Mandela himself has said that Uys is one if his heroes.

Allow me a tangential discussion of the Mattachine Society here, which Harry Hay named in honor of medieval buskers who appeared in masks and whose performances were often satirical jabs at the ruling classes. Jesters if you will, who have always had the ability to couch the truth humorously, for the most part without penalty. Clearly Uys is a living example of this tradition. And while the horrors of apartheid are over, as Evita Bezuidenhout, Uys continues to perform in schools throughout South Africa, teaching children about how to protect themselves from AIDS, something the ANC government, with an HIV denialist health minister, has most strenuously not done.

This documentary film follows Uys as he goes from school to school. It gives something of his life story (we learn half way through, just as Uys only learned as an adult, that his mother was a Jewish refugee from Berlin).

In some ways, the making of this documentary is also an amazing story. The director, Julian Shaw, a native New Zealander, saw Uys perform on a trip to South Africa when he was 15 years old.  He went up to Uys after the performance and said he was coming back to make a documentary film about him. Uys was nice to him, but didn’t think he’d ever see the boy again. Except that two years later, Shaw showed up, camera in hand. For the next two years he shadowed him, capturing footage in schools, performances and at home. Another couple of years of editing later, and the finished film has won honors at documentary film festivals in Australia. 

Truth be told (though I am not in drag and you wouldn't want to see it) the film is far from perfect. But the story of Uys is compelling, as is the story of Shaw deciding to film him. I wish there had been more about Uys in the apartheid days, and more about Shaw’s life and his need to make this movie.

Quibbles. This film is a must see — and a mirror to what the gender clowns (this is meant very respectfully) in New York should aspire to.  The closest we have is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose true charity work is masked by the drag clowning and whose serious challenge to organized religion is made more acceptable by the fact that men have feminized themselves.

There are all kinds of questions I have: does drag take away a man’s power and thus make it safe for him to speak the truth. Or is it the taking on the the feminine power that enables them to speak the truth? What do you think?

What’s even more interesting to me as an advertising copywriter is Uys appearance in a recent commercial for Nando’s, a fast food chain in South Africa. In this clever spot, Uys as Evita delivers a sell for a special meal deal, while setting up a very pointed political barb that comes as a stinger at the end of the spot. While such a jab at the current government (Uys is an equal opportunity satirist) is no surprise coming from Evita, I am amazed that the advertiser was willing to chance government disapproval. Certainly no advertiser in the U.S. would make such an obviously negative statement about either the Democrats or Republicans in a commercial. The spot runs below:

How to tell if it's Larry Craig...

...in the next stall. Okay, this ad is really for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and their Dinosaur exhibit. But I can't imagine what the creative team was thinking when they came up with this image to go with the campaign theme: "They're just waiting to be discovered." Well, maybe I can imagine, I just don't want to think about it anymore. Except that Joe reported today that Senator Craig (R-Tearoom) dropped his appeal of his own guilty plea. So there's no escaping the possibility that you might see feet like these in a wide stance inching into a stall near you soon.