Playa Please!
When reading, it takes a whole lot of awkward to make me uncomfortable. It doesn’t happen very often. But it happened this morning as I read an article in today’s Washington Post with the headline Fashion Guidance for Aging Japanese Lads.
The article begins
For 12 straight years, sales have fallen in Japanese department stores, with clothing sales — the most important category for revenue and profits — driving the slide.
Behind the sagging rag trade is demography. Young spenders are increasingly rare. And there are swelling herds of older savers.
This seems perfectly natural because, as the article states later on
With 22 percent of the population already older than 65 (compared with about 12 percent in the United States), and with the old predicted to outnumber the young 4 to 1 by 2040, Japanese retailers, marketers and publishers are all trying to tease more purchases out of the elderly.
But before the article got to this point, it gave me a full-blown case of the heebie jeebies
Enter OilyBoy — a slick new magazine designed to excite consumption among “elder boys.”
Weathered, wrinkled and bald though they may be, the aging Japanese lads who read OilyBoy are still out on the town, drinking. Or up in the mountains, backpacking. Or down at the beach, surfing.
If you have read that far, you are rewarded with this infelicitous quote
“We don’t think we have become elderly people,” said Masami Kanno, 52, editor of OilyBoy, which appeared on newsstands this fall and is selling briskly. “We think we are players, even if we are 50 or 60 or 70.”
50 or 60 or 70? Players? What the krunk is Masami thinking? Listen, if you ask me, hip hop means The Sugarhill Gang and rap music means Kurtis Blow. So, no, I’m not exactly a “player”. But I have enough playacation to say: Playa please, you be trippin’ Masami.
Thanks, But No Thanks
OilyBoy, Tease, Elder Boys, Excite, Aging Lads, Drinking, Old Boy!
Yeech!! Here’s what comes to my mind. Sorry fellas.
OilyBoys?
As it turns out, OilyBoy is the nickname of “the late Jiro Shirasu, once the coolest guy in Japan”. Well, I feel all better now. Now someone get me a beer outa dat Playa Pack.