It's Always Fun When Peter Payne's Blog Updates Overlap My Own Experiences...

Peter Payne has a fun entry on his J-List Side Blog about Brad Pitt's recent appearance on Bistro SMAP, the talk show where members of SMAP cook for their guests. Read his entry, because it has a screen cap from the show featuring Pitt and his partner-in-crime, Quentin Tarantino. You will also learn the meaning of SMAP, which came as a surprise to me.

It's an acronym! Who knew? Probably lots of people. But not me.

Anyway, Pitt's appearance on Bistro SMAP must have been a big hit, because it was mentioned to me on three separate occasions this week. Usually I have to interrogate people viciously to get even the slightest mention of something they did recently or watched on TV. It's almost as if these things are state secrets. But Brad Pitt on Bistro SMAP?

That's something to talk about freely!

One of our movie buff girls discussed it and actually mentioned Tarantino. That's what she called him-- simply Tarantino. She smiled and added, "He talks... A LOT." That was my cue to launch into my world famous Quentin Tarantino impression (although I didn't do the weird lip thing he does because I didn't want to frighten away the students). I talked in a Tarantino-esque voice about how great and cool Japanese movies are, spewing it out rapid-fire with no pauses even to breathe for close to thirty seconds.



She's right, by the way.

I didn't do the Norm MacDonald version. MacDonald's is brilliant, but I believe in making a character your own and not doing some other person's take. So yes, I do a Quentin Tarantino impression which I think is quite good, aided by my slight resemblance to him. The giggles greeting my little performance made it worth the effort. I find that ESL students, especially here in Japan, tend to worry about speaking speed and find demonstrations of lightning fast American-style English to be hilarious and frightening simultaneously.

It's like a magic trick involving fire. How did he do that? Do I still have my eyebrows?

This is probably one reason the students are usually afraid to tell me these things.