The birthplace of kung fu kicking off online store

by Iva Skoch on

If you are planning a trip to China, cancel it.

You can do it all on-line now. Yes, that’s right, the birthplace of kung fu, the famous Shaolin Temple, is going on-line.

And, karate (oops, kung fu) fans, they’ll have it all: performances, video, and a reality-TV-style search for the next “Grasshopper.”

Named “Shaolin, The Stage of Joy,” a Web page has been set up by a unit of the temple on the popular Chinese e-commerce site www.taobao.com, and the gift shop is open, including shoes, tea, T-shirts, and slippers.

Ancient secrets revealed…in the kung fu instruction manual for 9,999 yuan ($1,456). Or just buy your “environmentally friendly” chopsticks for 29 yuan.

The temple came under fire in 2006 after a monk got a luxury car for helping out the local tourism industry, which forms a bulk of the city’s revenues…Oops.

(For those of you who are easily offended, I am just kidding. You should still go and see China. Especially since you know how savvy those monks are nowadays!)

Crocodile makes a drinking buddy

by Jamie Rhein on

Wildlife one comes across in ones travels is one way to know you’ve arrived somewhere new. In Singapore, it was the geckos that climbed on our walls to take refuge behind the artwork.

In The Gambia, it was the pouch rats that jumped over the corrugate fence in my back yard or the enormous snake that I can still see in the circle of my flashlight as I was walking to my latrine one night–or that monkey that makes for a terrific tale. Later for that one.

If you’re driving across West Virginia, you might see a black bear dash across the road like I did last summer when I was heading to Washington, D.C.

If you had been in Noonamah Tavern in Noonamah, Australia last Sunday, you’d have been drinking a beer with a crocodile acquaintance. Noonamah is near Litchfield National Park not far from Darwin.

The crocodile might have been underage though since it was only two feet long. According to the AP article on Salon.com, a grown-up can be 16 feet, much harder to get into a bar.

Three guys who saw the crocodile outside the tavern thought it would be neat to bring it inside and have a few. The crocodile didn’t drink, though. They taped its mouth shut. Not a particularly hospitable way to treat a guest, but it was a crocodile with sharp teeth after all.

Happily, the story ends well. There is not a drinking and driving accident to report or anything like that. The salt water crocodile, a protected species, is now at a crocodile farm where it may have come from in the first place.

I wonder if it has come up with any jokes yet? “There were these three guys in a bar. . .”

Going to Sesame Street: Manhattan moments

by Jamie Rhein on

“Did you know that Kermit Love died?” I asked my brother two days ago. I called him when I read the news in The New York Times.

My brother was Kermit Love’s apprentice years ago, not long after my brother moved to Manhattan to attend the School of Visual Arts. Kermit Love, the creator of Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, was also an artist in other venues.

Those were the days my brother and I sat out on the fire escape of the building where he sublet a room in someone’s apartment one summer. One night when I was visiting him, we climbed out the window with our dinner to watch a ballet class in session in a dance studio across the street. The studio’s windows were open so we could hear the music.

During that same visit, we dressed up in halfway decent clothes to head to Broadway about the time of intermission. In the summer back then, people spilled out onto the sidewalks for a smoke or something to drink. If the show wasn’t sold out, it was possible to mingle with the crowd and head back in for the second half. All one needed to do was wait at the back of the orchestra seating to find the empty spots. Such were the tricks of broke college students.

At first, while working for Kermit, my brother earned a small sum for ironing Big Bird’s feathers. Those feathers don’t look fluffy all by themselves. Because Big Bird travels in various shows, there’s more than one costume that needs refluffing.

Eventually, my brother graduated to larger, more complicated jobs. He and two other fellows reconstructed costumes based on Love’s design for a Picasso exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. As what happens with apprentices, they work behind the scenes without getting credit up front. It was cool to go to the exhibit, though, and see my brother’s handiwork. Not long after, my brother moved on. But, not before I got my trip to Sesame Street.

My brother needed to deliver something–not feathers, something else, but I can’t remember what. No matter. We went to the studio where the show was filmed. It has since changed locations to Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens.

Sesame Street looked like Sesame Street. Happy.

Carroll Spinney, the guy who has played Big Bird for years was standing around in his Big Bird legs. The top of the costume comes off in between takes, you see. It’s too hot to keep on.

Kermit Love smiled when I shook his hand. I’m sure we said, “Pleased to meet you”–or maybe not. It was a brief visit, but an awesome one that has stayed with me all these years. I connect Kermit Love to a time when my brother and I were younger and nervy enough to sneak into a Broadway show as if we belonged there.

Now, when I go to Broadway show, it’s with a ticket that I’ve bought at TKTS, the discount ticket booth near Times Square.

My brother didn’t know that Kermit Love had died and there was a wistful tone in his voice when he told me he may look to see if there is a memorial service. He is still in touch with a person who also knew Love back then.

As for visiting Sesame Street again, the studio doesn’t do tours. The Studio Cafe is open to the public, though. If you head there for lunch, look for a guy with stripped legs and bird feet. You’ll know who he is. Ask him who irons his feathers.

Dutch say no to tobacco, yes to cannabis

by Aaron Hotfelder on

The Netherlands has long been known as one of the most tolerant countries in the world. But as of July 1, that famous live-and-let-live attitude will no longer extend to tobacco. That’s the day a ban on smoking in public places of employment takes effect in the Netherlands. Well, not all smoking.

Yes, while smoking tobacco in public is soon to be verboten, smoking a joint (that’s a “marijuana cigarette” for you squares) will remain legal in the Netherlands. But, as this article notes, Dutch potheads don’t feel too lucky that their drug of choice is still legal. That’s because many of them cut their joints with tobacco.

The Dutch government is not prohibiting marijuana smokers from rolling “pure” joints, and it’s likely that many smokers who had previously mixed marijuana and tobacco will switch to smoking “pure.” Interestingly, there’s not yet a way for government inspectors to determine whether a joint is “pure” or cut with tobacco (other than testing it themselves, I suppose.)

Smoking tobacco will still be permitted inside the famous Dutch coffee shops, but only in separate rooms without employees, which many shop owners say they can’t afford to provide.

More here.

THE WORLD’S DIRTIEST CITIES:

I Survived a Japanese Game Show: Thumbs up

by Jamie Rhein on

Yesterday, I wondered if ABC’s I Survived a Japanese Game Show would be really awful or very funny. I had some concern that there would be cultural insensitivity that would make for very bad TV. My teenage daughter, who I corralled to watch with me, and I laughed and laughed.

Hollywood got it right.

Whoever thought of this show likes people and knows something about what it feels like to be thrust into an unfamiliar environment, but wanting to stay open to the experience. This was like Lost In Translation meets The Amazing Race, Average Joe and the game show, Beat the Clock.

Because the cast had no idea what kind of show they had signed up for when they arrived from their various homes across the U.S., even the quick trip from the domestic to the international terminal at LAX in Los Angeles was funny.

“Huh? Say what?” they wondered after the short hop from one building to the other.

“You’re going to Japan,” said host/interpreter Tony Sano.

“Great!” ” Wonderful! ” was shouted out in a flurry of excitement. Most had never been out of the U.S.

After arriving in Tokyo, Ben Hughes, age 44, and the official handler of Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania summed up the feeling, “I was sitting on a couch in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and now, I’m in Japan.”

After briefly establishing Tokyo as a bustling, bright lights, big city kind of place, contestants were taken from the busiest intersection in the world across Rainbow Bridge to their home away from home –Kansai House run by Mamasan.

Mamasan, a stout Japanese woman has the role in the show of keeping these folks in line and teaching them a bit about Japanese culture. ” No shoes in the house,” she barked. “Now, you go to bed.”

The sake, the traditional style Japanese beds and the remote control toilet were points of interest before shut eye.

Here are a few of the reactions:

  • Of the sake, “It’s lighter than a wine cooler.”
  • Of the beds, “I don’t know if I want to sleep on the floor,”
  • And of the toilet, “Tokyo is way far advanced than the United States of America.”

The next morning, still without a clue about the purpose of this Japan jaunt, the contestants were taken to Toho Studio where Sano told them, “Many classic Japanese films are made here.”

All nodded and murmured in their what I imagined was a jet-lagged, “I don’t know why this is important really since I’ve never seen a Japanese classic film, but I’m happy to be here anyway” sound.

Then the fun really began. The intro to the game show was perfect.

As they trotted through a door while Sano told them that this was where one of the most popular game shows was filmed, one of them said, “It’s completely pitch black.”

Sano said, “The game show starts right now,” and the lights came on.

Surprise! There they were in the middle of the studio floor. “Hello, America! Welcome to Japan!” shouts out game show host, Rome Kanda. The Japanese audience on both sides goes wild.

The Americans are up for anything, even though they have an inkling that they are in the middle of a cross-cultural joke.

The look on their faces reminded me of how my Peace Corps group and I must have looked the day we were whisked from our Western-style training site to live in an African village only three days after arriving in the country. Totally unprepared, but willing to give it a go.

“This is Majide,” Kanda, explains. “It means you got to be crazy.” For the chance to win $250,000 the contestants are willing to be crazy.

“Wave to the crowd,” says Kanda.

The contestants wave.

“Wow, they do whatever I tell them,” says Kanda in Japanese to the Japanese audience, who laughs and continues to stomp, beat on drums, generally make excited audience sounds, and shout out “Majide” whenever Kanda gives the cue. This is a non-menacing audience, though, and the impression is they are rooting for the Americans to do well.

Gamely, and good-natured, the contestants divide up into two teams: the yellow penguins and the green monkeys.

The first game is called, “Conveyor Restaurant.”

In a nutshell: One person from the team is the eater. The other members have a helmet like contraption on their heads that holds a mochi, a sticky rice ball cake. Running on a treadmill, they make it to the spot where the eater is. The eater, without using his hands, has to lean over, grab the mochi with his mouth and eat it all up while the treadmill runner drops to the treadmill and is briskly dumped into a vat of flour.

The team that downs the most sticky rice balls in four minutes wins. As the game continues the treadmill goes faster. It was a hoot.

“There’s no cheating and no hanky panky,” warns Kanda.

“Good fall,” says a member of the yellow penguins who are watching from the green room. Zip goes a green monkey into the flour.

Later, covered from head to toe in flour, Ben says, “I hate treadmills,” but runs his heart out anyway.

“The mochi ball was so gooey I couldn’t chew it and swallow it,” said Donnell Pitman, age 32, and a real estate developer from Illinois who was the green team’s eater.

Sticky or not, he downed 10 of those babies. Which was enough to win the game. The yellow team only managed nine, even though 28 year-old, Andrew Kelly-Hayes, a radio sales consultant from Massachusetts ate like a champ.

“I don’t even know what that was. It was like putty,” he said later.

Once, while Andrew was chewing away, Kanda said in Japanese, “Look at that chubby face go to work, ” making the audience chortle with delight.

Fellow teammate, Darcy Sletager, a single mom and photo editor from Sandpoint, Idaho couldn’t stay on her feet long enough to deliver one mochi ball which caused the yellow team to lose.

“Darcy looked like a crash test dummy,” lamented Justin Wood, a financial representative from Alabama, and another yellow penguin.

For losing, the yellow penguins got to dress up like rickshaw drivers the next day to haul amenable Japanese people around.

For their win, the green monkeys scored a helicopter tour of Tokyo.

Each of these segments helped fill out the hour time slot of “How I Survived a Japanese game show,” but also established the personalities of the players. Cathy Nardone, age 21, for example, was described as a “Staten Island Diva.”

After the rickshaw experience, one of them said what is a mantra that ensures pleasant travel, “We took a bad situation and made it pretty cool.”

Still one of them was to be eliminated. The team chose Darcy because of her lack of “Conveyor Restaurant’ performance and Bilenda Madison, to compete in the game “Big Bugs Splat on Windshield.”

Dressed like bugs, the two took turns running towards a trampoline that they jumped on which hurled them at a mock-up of a car windshield with targets. The one who deposited green goo on the windshield closer to the targets got the most points.

“Are you exciting? ” Kanda asked Darcy. “Yes, I’m exciting, ” she said before running towards her last jump. She was exciting, but came one point short of winning.

At this point, guys in black suits ran into the studio, and after dancing around winner Bilenda, picked up Darcy carrying her out of the building.

The show ended with Darcy walking out the studio gate still dressed in her costume, her bug wings bouncing and her antennas swaying ever so slightly.

Yep, I was impressed. This is a good-natured show, at least so far. It teaches a bit about Japan, generates fun–perfect for the summer, and shows just how willing Americans are to put on a game face when they have to, and liking it.

I’m tuning in next week.

*Photos are from the “I Survived a Japanese Game Show” Web site.