A few years ago, I got an email from a very nice woman named Nobuko.
Nobuko works for a magazine called Precious. In every issue, Precious spotlights 4 or 5 women with interesting careers all over the world. Nobuko, who apparently used to listen to me on the radio, asked me to be one of the interview subjects for the January issue.
It’s hard for me to believe that the Japanese find me amusing, as I bring much shame to my family. But I was so flattered that I said yes immediately. And then I took a look at the questions she’d be asking at the interview.
When this magazine interviews anyone for this article, there are five questions always to be asked. (Just like the last few questionnaire at the Actor’s Studio by James Lipkin).
Oh man. Not the James Lipkin questionnaire! Christ what is this, the Spinach Inquisition?
To give you a head up, these are the five questions we always ask:
Q1. Do you have good luck charm? Do you practice ritual for make your work successful?
Q2. Three things you always carry in your purse?
Q3. Where do you go for relaxing?
Q4. One book you will bring with you for your travel.
Q5. What kind of compliment do you like to hear most about yourself?
Okay, these look easy, but they’re much harder than you think.
For example, the three-things-in-your-purse deal. My first thought was Excedrin, cell phone and gum, but where’s the charm in that? Who doesn’t carry that shit? I might as well have said driver’s license and car keys. Big fucking deal.
No, I wanted something eccentric and quirky and fun, just bursting with idiosyncratic personality. For a brief moment, I actually considered pre-loading my purse with crazy things, so I could just produce them at the interview and look like a kooky little funster.
“Oh this? It’s just a Don Knotts snowglobe. I always carry it. It helps me write!”
Instead, I just pathetically pawed through my backpack at the interview, looking for amusing things. I produced lots of Vons receipts with chewed gum crumpled up in them (I hate putting gum in the ashtray in the car). I thought that might be funny, but…
I started feeling like I was bombing out a little. I wasn’t making her laugh much, which is always troubling. And things really got rough when she asked me this:
“What you attitude for riving in you twenty?”
Wow. That is not an easy question to answer, even if you know what she’s saying.
After a few seconds, I realized what she was after. But before I had a chance to answer, she hit me with a follow up:
What you attitude for riving in you thirty and forty?
Clearly, she had a hana for news, and she wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. I looked down at the table between us, now littered with Vons receipts, and thought for a moment.
I told her that in my twenty, I was stone.
In my thirty, I work and work until I was so tire.
But in my forty, I stop work so hard and enjoy rife. Now I much happy.
And I think she understood where I was coming from.
I never know when people, on the written page, are talking in Japanenglish or Scooby-doo.
If I read the dialogue above in Scooby, it seems totally legit.
Rats right Ralph.
I had a Japanese roommate for a year in college. We had many fun mistranslated exchanges. This one by far remains my favorite:
Her: Do you want to have sex?
Me: WHAT?
Her: I mean with a man. You said it has been a long time for you. It has been a long time for me too.
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She didn’t get the name wrong. The interviewer did.
THAT’S THE JOKE
Japanglish: It’s Rife With Potential
“No, I wanted something eccentric and quirky and fun, just bursting with idiosyncratic personality.”
I was terrified for a moment that the cupcakes had gotten to you.
Nah, that would have been “…something egocentric…” and “…bursting with idiotic personality.”
I wamted to repry to this earrier but was not drunk enoughyet.
I am drunk as shit. And I rike it, a rot.
But the good news is, the whiskey works.
Which reminds me of the night I traveled to the ArcLight to see a special screening of BROKEN FLOWERS, to be followed by a Q&A with Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray. It’s a great little film, but the Q&A was a disaster. Murray was apparently drunk as a skunk; very cheerful but incoherent. Someone asked him the thoughts of his character regarding that character’s son, and he was reaching for some thoughtful response, but all he could get out was something like, “When a callow youth…a callow youth…”, and then he trailed off into nothingness. Someone snapped his picture on a cell phone camera, which Murray then grabbed and turned the camera around, saying to the owner (in cheerful good spirits, but it’s the kind of thing that makes you nervous) “Now I’ll take your picture and you’ll see what it feels like!” A reporter from Variety introduced Jim Jarmusch with words something like — and I am not making this up — “Jim Jarmusch’s films are set down in unorthodox ways. I sometimes fall asleep while watching them, and as a result I find I understand them better.” Jarmusch shot back, “And I fall asleep when I read Variety.” All in all, a disturbing event to attend.
Oh shit, I laughed myself into a sneezing fit!
But in forty, I stop laugh so hard when tears run down my legs.
Hey April- did you know that you are ‘obsessed’ with Etsy according to Time Magazine?
“I told her that in my twenty, I was stone.”
I thought some deep zen shit was gonna come after that. then i got it.
I’ve heard, I do not know if this is true,
in all the other languages,
“Orgasm comes”
but in Japanese
orgasm goes
therefore, if the European-Japanese relations are so difficult
when you never know if coming or going.
The 3 quirky things I always carry in my carry purse are a lipstick-sized kaleidoscope in case I get bored waiting on a line, a passport in case I need to flee the country immediately, and a pen, for writing with.
I carry a squeaker from a dog toy and a tiny bottle of Tabasco. And my passport and a pen.
When I worked retail, I once witnessed a woman nonchalantly pull a shoe out of her purse.
I have been in the bank, _ with my Aunt, my aunt pulled her bag when automatic pistol,
Rive rife to its furrest.
I expect that you looked up and to the right the entire time? Or, if since you were feeling quirky, up and to the left!
OK April, I’m a few days late, but boy am I glad to see this site alive again! Thank you so much for bringing it back.
Since I last commented here four years ago, I’ve gone broke, lost job, car and house and had to flee an abusive situation, leaving much of my belongings behind. But one thing I did keep was my framed photo of you flashing the butcher at Gelson’s, which you so graciously autographed “Pardon my tri-tips!”.
(I keep it displayed right alongside my autographs of Harold Gould, Teresa Ganzel and Lou Cutell on the program from the play Viagra Falls.)
You need to write a country song, “Pardon my tri-tips”.
This story is priceless.
Chris, that photo (and the story behind it) is just priceless. It’s one of my favorite April escapades. Glad you were able to hang on to it.
I need to know where the hell I can get a Don Knotts snowglobe. Barney Fife or Mr. Furley?
Neither. Mr. Chicken.
Dear kooky little funster — would this be funny? Tell her you carry a spare purse in your purse. And so on, ad infinitum…