Nerding Day: American Romance

American Romance is a breakthrough in dork studies.

A genuine game-changer. It’s delicate information, but the public  deserves to know. And this time, we can use fresh knowledge for good. It  can be pure joy. Let’s skip a round of turning dreams into art-killing  robots.

Sometimes, Japan makes funny ads.

Slightly strange ads.

Audiovisual mescaline.

One or two comedy sites have touched on it. No one’s pinned why Japanese ads go to the astral realm. In theory, a reformed brand slave and unreformed weeaboo might know.1 The last one died in the Great Gunpla Fire of 2022.

*Their agencies care more about brand tone than high concepts. The results aren’t better, but I wouldn’t call them worse.

But America has its own ads, and Japan has its own nerds. Yasutoshi Ikuta published bibles for reverse-weebs for decades. American Romance portrays mid-century America through ads. Much like The 60’s: America Portrayed Through Advertisements.

Alongside a dozen other Ikuta collections lost to time.

Print lacks the permanence of web publishing, where Imgur can wake up,  burn decades of culture, and go back to losing money. Shame, that.  Ikuta missed out on shrinking ideas into forty second videos. Or  stretching them into one hour rants. Or torturing them in untrained  debates.

Either way, American Romance flips the script. We can observe  the American-Japanese ad exchange in reverse. It’s the closest we’re  ever getting to understanding Morning Rescue. This is the Large Hadron Collider of web comedy, and I really hope my work’s not string theory.

Ikuta’s main idea? The unique pleasure of nostalgia. Particularly found media. Vintage is his eight-ball.

Okay, that and our best burgers being behind us. But it’s a  compliment: Ikuta paints 1950’s America as a utopia worth nearly half  its ego. Including lists of his favorite media, daring rivals to call  him a casual. Audrey Hepburn dominates, save that one romcom. Maybe  vintage romance isn’t his thing.

Find someone that loves you the way Ikuta loves America. He doesn’t even skip or whitewash the communist hunt, lynching habit, or randomly-generated wars. He’s just that into James Dean flicks. Rebel Without a Cause is a fun watch, but I can’t get past the death penalty for whistling.  For me, all pre-speed metal civilization is apes huddled in their filth.

That said, I’m right with Ikuta on ads as a lens. There’s no better  way to understand the United States, in any decade. Really, pick a year.  Say, 1770:

Or 2023:

Or 2500:

It works.

What are Ikuta’s picks like? A Fallout vision board. You can hear your homeless sniper’s radio throughout American Romance. Take this Life ad, from when copy ran longer than the news it interrupted. Pull that  now, and a Creative Director will march you off the roof at swordpoint.

Here’s the text, since zooming in Gmail’s borked. That’s Google’s  antitrust defense strategy. “How can we own the world if none of our  shit works? Last night, Google Docs suggested I replace ‘lawyer’ with  ‘rule wizard’ and ‘your honor’ with ‘gavel king.’ This humble rule  wizard hopes the gavel king will make the right choice.”

This royal bang-tour has a few creative touches. There actually was a  Georgian prince named Matchabelli, and he did move to New York to sell  fumes to the desperate. But he was a chemist, which is the opposite of  transcontinental pussymancer. And “prince” carried all the weight in the  fifties that “fitness influencer” wields now. You needed a nice smile,  mob debt, and firm amoral fiber to make it work.

That’s nice for real fake royalty. But smelling like not-bourbon is  suspect. How can commoners get sticky? We’re decades away from automated  Match Group romance. What’s vain hope look like before integration?

Cigarettes.

Cigarettes.

Smoke.

There’s more than doe-eyed emphysema afoot. American Romance is about hazy air/idealism, not just boning. Ikuta loves this strain of nostalgia, and includes a brief overview of how your parents’ parents complicated fucking:

I came ready to mock an elite nerd’s take on overseas dating, and I’m  stuck on our own slang. With the measles and immigration panic in vogue,  I think “pin” is overdue for a comeback. Love’s missing that feeling of  “I’ve tagged you like an elephant.”

It’s flawless. Ask a first date if you’re pin, and they’ll ask if  you’re a cop. Ask a regular hookup if you’re pin, and they’ll ask if  you’re a cop. Ask a spouse if you’re pin, and they’ll say “not anymore,  cop.”

Nice. Without competition’s familiar shadow, love would feel  unnatural. Like being a pinless mutant. That’s why we need Madison  Avenue. Ikuta can, with or without intent, effortlessly channel George  Carlin.

The race for affection leaves plenty of room for scams. I thought healthwashing was new, because I’m a rube. But there’s a lot of malt liquor in here, and it sounds better for you than exercise.

Minerals and dextrins! Colt 45 should be next to protein  bars, or those green things happy people eat. Why’s my modern image of  malt liquor still a Bumfights champion? Maybe it’s the  performance-enhancing effects of B-complex vitamins. Or self-medicating  nerve damage with rotgut? It’s unclear. Here, its main “healthful”  benefit is dodging spinsterdom.

In fact, every brand seems to think you’ll die alone.

Take Coca-Cola:

Or Pepsi.

Or Raisin Bran. Goddamn Raisin Bran thinks you’re lonely.

Is every product in this decade trying to get me to fuck? Did the Bene  Gesserit have an agency? There has to be a second angle. We’re seventy  years off from population projections getting tense.

You can’t all be Love Potion no. 10. Someone has to sell turpentine.  No one gets laid with turpentine without meeting or being The Turpentine  Slasher. You’re ruining generations of prude jokes.

Spoons. “Hey there, dry-dick. I’m sure your old rustware’s great for  stale beans in the dark. But it’s February. Do you want to spend another  Valentine’s Day holding takeout chopsticks to your neck? Or do you want  to scoop up some strange? Order now, before someone coins ‘involuntary celibacy.’”

This book is challenging me. There has to be a noun it can’t turn into loneliness. Spark plugs.

Hobo juice.

Close. Pajamas.

I concede.

Going back to Pepsi, they’re hyped on becoming the soda of bulimia. The copy here has a special touch:

Wait, that’s the nice one. Here’s Pepsi’s appeal to dysmorphia:

Merry Christmas. Pepsi-Cola’s gift is a reminder to drink  your calories. All two hundred of them. Otherwise, you might as well eat  straight from a single’s trough.

Why needle insecurities like this? Anyone on a cut is going for malt  liquor first. It has all the dextrins you need to make someone finally  care.

I’m being too cynical. The next time I play Edward Fortyhands, I’ll  look for that healthful sparkle in their eye. That’s how you find a pin.  When our exactly two children ask how we met, I’ll say “she asked for  malt liquor, without asking for change.”

Well, anyone can twist a collection called American Romance  into sexual dysfunction. Ikuta left us an out. Let’s get into the  confident 60’s, when everyone could get a date in a flower cult. If The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel taught me one thing, stand-up fixed sex in 1959.

There we go. Strapping, rugged, sexless cowboys. We can end here,  Ikuta’s notes are probably just copyright babble. Tobacco lawyers are  trained in a bunker from birth.

That seems off. It implies Marlboro thrived off seething sexual  inadequacy. We just like a little competition. Everywhere. We haven’t  all, to a citizen, gone mad chasing pins and cowboy hats.

That also implies Marlboro thrived off seething sexual inadequacy. That the pro strat for all cigarettes  was being the straight man’s heterosexual mouth tube. Ikuta’s  collections would be the greatest diss tracks of all time.

Oh.

Since one or two of you have niche interests, I hope you find Ikuta  inspiring. He turned gentle dinnertime requests to “Shut the fuck up  about Ford ads” into a career. And helped reveal the American soul:  sexually mutated insanity. An insecure asylum with ICBMs. A nation  physically impossible to overmedicate. We’ve been laughing at Dragon Quest ads from padded cells.

You see, sometimes Americans make funny ads.

Slightly strange ads.

Multimedia methamphetamines.

And that’s great. Never change, except for everything.

I probably needed this. The human soul can only eat so much medical  waste. Exploring a reverse weeaboo’s passion for ‘50s kitsch is a deload  for my sanity. Nerd love’s the one force in this world unpolluted by  the rest of it.

Article over.

We can stop now.

Please?

Alright, Ikuta’s been nice to us so far, let’s riff on vintage microwave spots. Who knew 1100 watts could be so sensual?

Hmm. This book didn’t make it stateside. It’s hard to pinpoint why. I  can tell, with an hour or four of effort, that the title’s Stop the Japanese. But I don’t know enough verbs or history to be concerned. And my comedy glaucoma hides the bottom left of books.

Of course. You punt one black cat into a witch’s mirror on Friday the 13th while calling Poseidon a bitch, and life never lets it go.

Granted, that’s wartime. The wartime, according to 56 million  estimated ghosts. It’s bound to get extreme. Is what I’d say, if it  weren’t stamped “1989.” Something dumber’s afoot.

In the afterlife, they weigh every political cartoon you’ve drawn. If  they’re heavier than a feather, you have to draw them forever.

As for the book, Stop The Japanese collects letters to the editor about Japan. Long story short: your Dad thought Arasaka was real, and Japan would own everything above water. Have we forgiven Cyberpunk: 2077 enough yet for that joke? The Apology Update got me through midterms.

We look a little insecure.

Even here, Ikuta sneaks in his art collection. This exhibit’s just  about our fear of Japan winning a game we rigged. An economic  bull-fantasy we channeled through political cartoons. The un-medium.The  opposite of blue jeans and Bloodsport. Every political cartoon  is the worst until the next political cartoon. Ben Garrison isn’t even  in the bottom five, he just has a good agent.

What else made the cut?

Charming. Per tradition, the caricature sprints right past monolids  into “eyes stolen by the Boogeyman.” The letters to the editor (printed  in Japanese, so you’ve been spared) capture this vibe in prose. This  book taught me all the words I need to lose my teeth in Osaka.

Anyway, those are Ikuta’s saddest picks. Odd, considering I punted two black cats into mirrors, and called Poseidon “Zeus’s Janetty.”

That’s not clever, but it is advanced. The artist combined  two open mic bombs in one panel, with just one label. Today’s hacks  would need extra setup to weld colonial myths and Breakfast at Tiffany’s together. Maybe our glory days really are over.

People can’t let me down anymore. But in 1989, some hope still beat in a Life collector’s chest. After extended exposure to 1950’s sexuality. Then  he found our letters to the editor, a medium dedicated to wordy  dogwhistles. He geeked on. Until he ran into our political cartoons, a  planet where Reagan wasn’t nationalist enough.

That’s Game of Thrones tattoo-level disappointment. I hope that Ikuta only went moderately insane.

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