Alrightykins… (Does anyone else but me say that??) I needed a break after the intense Ace Attorney week. Now I’m back with more things that I’ve discovered after going down various wonderful rabbit holes on the internet: Princess Bride references, another awesome Random Encounters music vid, a strangely unique anime find, and fall shoelace styles abound.

By the way, later this month, I’ll be talking about Japanese-themed trends and trendsetters thanks to some particularly fascinating experiences I’ve had recently and some excellent articles I’ve come across: my take on Uniqlo; a beginner’s guide to Harajuku; a look at Yoshiji Yamamoto… but before all that, I’ll fill you in on a really popular computer game set up like a Japanese high school dating sim gone horribly wrong. No, I’m not going to tell you the name of it so you can Google it and spoil the surprise. 🙂 So tune in again in the coming weeks…

Anyway, on with the show! Here’s something old school, rad, borrowed and bad for you to enjoy rite nao.

Old School: My name is Inigo Montoya… prepare to… line??

If you’re a big Princess Bride fan, then you know how this ends, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” But the other day I was reminded that some years ago, one of my favorite YouTube celebs, Liam Kyle Sullivan, and his friends, they took it all to a whole new level. You know, what if during film shoot, Mandy Pantinkin didn’t quite get the iconic line that’s been everywhere, even on t-shirts, since.

Rad: Boy Meets Boy?

Picture this. Sicily, 1927. You’re sitting there, you’re minding your own business and then suddenly YouTube decides that you need to watch something called ‘The High School Life of a Fudanshi.’* You have no idea what a fudanshi is. But it sounds Japanese, and you’re a geek and you like anime so you’re like, “Hey, why not?” The subtitle ‘Boy Meets Boy’ even sounds progressive. Perhaps it’ll be enlightening… in the end, I laughed. My. Arse off.

I promise you, I did not know what a fudanshi was before. But now, I can’t unknow it. 🙂 It’s fun when you find these fascinating little subcultures that pry open your world a little bit more, and a little bit more… until finally, it seems normal. Normal enough for you to want to sheepishly explain to someone else so they can get on the same cooky rollercoaster and squeal frightened delight for half an hour like you did. Hope you like 12 episodes Fudanshi Koukou Seikatsu!

And reading the video comments was fun, too. The viewers pretty much confirmed that secretly cheering for real life love pairings of male friends, yeah… it isn’t something they just made up for the show. People really love these boy-meets-boy stories. My verdict? Yes, it’s cute but, then again, also unusual—at least to me. I don’t see something like this every day, so of course I adored learning about it in the end!

For even more background information about this incredibly seriously silly series and fudanshi/fujoshi… Yeah, I don’t think they makers of the series were really taking it seriously, that’s the best part… check out the Fudanshi Koukou Seikatsu Wikipedia article. (Not that… you haven’t already wiki’d it by now. I would’ve.)

Borrowed: Senpai Notice Me

And then something that I –thought- seemed similarly entertaining, a song called ‘Senpai Notice Me’ led me to a funny video that I assumed was a joke, making fun of some schoolgirl protagonist of a cheesy girl-meets-boy anime…

Special thanks to Random Encounters for yet another really fun geeky musical. I can’t wait to re-watch and re-watch this one… It fits in the borrowed category in that it’s a concept borrowed from the actual computer game, Yandere Simulator.

Bad: This Fall, Get Your Shoelaces Poppin

Now that fall is here, more folks are ditching sandals and slip-ons for sneakers, I think, because they happen to be warmer. And I have excellent news for the regular sneaker-heads and the people happily getting re-acquainted with the sneakers waiting in the closet: there are two trillion different ways of feeding laces into shoe eyelets and fifty-two different ways to tie your shoes.

At Ian’s Shoelacing Site, this unusually detailed site about shoelaces has instructions for tying your shoes very creatively. The instructions are easy to follow and very well laid out, making it easy to decide which one you want to try before getting your fingers all tangled up in the laces… I personally love the corset lacing and the sawtooth lacing techniques. You may need extra long shoelaces for these, and those are easy to get on Amazon. And I could have sworn when I walked into Michael’s recently, I saw some, but none appeared on the website when I searched. So, maybe you can save yourself the shipping fee and find longer shoelaces at a craft store near you? Thanks again to my colleague who shared this awesome website with me.

Do you have a cool website to share that I can review? Contact me and let me know.

References (the geeky ones)

*Golden Girls. The character Sophia is always telling stories about her weird life in Siciliy…