Things You Probably Won't See in the U.S. Archives

An ad for Fructal (Frook-TAHL) fruit juice in a Mercator store. Photo: Dietmar.

Like everyone else, I love Fructal. They make some seriously bitchin’ juice. But I wonder about this ad. I understand that they want to be edgy and convince teenies to fight the power by drinking pineapple/mango/lemon juice… but do these things work? I mean, seriously… “Fruc you”? What’s next? “Fruc off, thirst”? “Let us fruc your mouth”?

One thing to note, though: it doesn’t have as much punch if you read it the way a Slovene would — “frootz” instead of “fruck.” There’s also that phenomenon in which foreign-language curses don’t seem to carry as much weight as those in your native tongue do, even if you understand them. This seems to explain why I would laugh if someone told me jebi se but would think “What the fruc?!” if someone told me the same thing in English.

(Thanks Dietmar!)

Here they don’t come, America!

It’s a curious fact that you can hear uncensored American songs on Slovenian radio. They play Prince’s original Sexy M.F. here, not the “clean version.” There are also no qualms about playing anything sexually suggestive, like The Bloodhound Gang’s Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo.

Needless to say, Slovenia has its own batch of popular and sexually suggestive songs. How would they fare on American radio? On this fourth of July holiday, let’s take a look and find out!

1) The Song: Banana
The Artist: Domen Kumer
Listen:

The lyrics: Daj usedi se na banano,
da nam bo še bolj tesno
vroče punce skačejo z mano,
vse je že mokro

Translation: (Go sit on the banana
so that it’s more tight
hot girls, jump with me
everything is wet)

The verdict: Borderline. Double entendres are usually fair game as long as they aren’t too graphic. Even with the “sit on the banana” line, I think this one would make it past the censors.

2) The Song: Brizgalna Brizga
The Artist: Atomik Harmonik
Listen:

The lyrics: Izbrala si bom fanta “tizga ta velizga”
Saj brizgalna ta njegova res najlepše brizga
Izbrala si bom fanta “tizga ta velizga”
Tudi meni je lepo, ko tako zavriska

Translation: (I will choose the “biggest” guy
When it comes to spraying, he sprays the best
I will choose the “biggest” guy
I also love it when he shouts for joy)

The verdict: This one I’m not so sure about. Slovenia’s top hit of 2004 is pretty hardcore. I think a lot would depend on how they translated that line about “spraying.” Even if it was allowed to air uncensored, it would certainly make a lot of people angry and get a lot of complaints.

3) The Song: Srčna Napaka
The Artist: Frajkinclari
Listen:

The lyrics: Ne boš ti meni zizike majal
Ne boš ti meni hlačice dol dal
Ne boš ti meni not pa ven ga dal
Ne boš pr meni spal

Translation: (You won’t make my boobies bounce,
You won’t pull my panties down,
You won’t put it in and out,
You won’t sleep with me)

The verdict: Are you kidding? Never. Hell would freeze over, melt, and then freeze again before this popular song would appear on American radio.

4) The Song: Ne grem na kolena
The Artist: Saša Lendero
Listen:

The lyrics: Ne grem na kolena
Preveč sem sebe dala,
Pljuvala sem si v obraz
Ponos teptala!

Translation: (I’m not getting on my knees,
I gave too much of myself,
I spit in my own face,
My pride has been stomped)

The verdict: Fine. A friend of mine is convinced that this song is one gigantic evocation of oral sex. If it is, it’s certainly not clear enough.

5) The Song: Delam kot zamorc
The Artist: Jani Kovačič
Listen:

The lyrics: Delam, delam, delam, delam, delam,
Delam kot zamorc

Translation: (I’m working, working, working, working, working
Working like a negro)

The verdict: The only subject that is more sensitive than sex in the United States is race, and putting this song on-air would almost certainly result in the joblessness of whoever did. Especially if the DJ was as pasty white as Jani Kovačič is. Slovenes seem to see nothing wrong with it and it’s very much considered a classic.

Happy Fourth of July!

(And thanks to Mitja and Nik for their help!)

Carnival time is fun for the whole family!

I’m not sure who exactly these guys are supposed to be. At first I thought they were all imitating me, but I then don’t have blonde hair. Maybe they’re trying to be “Michael, if he were blonde and with slightly smaller genitalia”?

Seriously, though. I grew up in notoriously rowdy New Orleans and saw many, many Mardi Gras parades but I don’t think I ever saw a penis parade before.

Hope everyone had a great karnival yesterday!

(Thanks Primož!)

Click play to listen. (Audio is potentially NSFW)

This 20-second audio clip is:

a) From the soundtrack of a hardcore pornographic movie made sometime in the late 1970s.
b) From Slovenia’s most popular album of children’s songs, Ma�?ek Muri.

If you guessed “a” you should be right but aren’t. If you guessed “b” you shouldn’t be right but are. The name of the song is Muca Maca (Pussy Cat) and it’s by the beloved singer of kids’ songs, Neca Falk.

I can’t imagine what the reaction to this song would be in the land of milk and honey, where people see hidden schlongs on DVD covers and think Tinky Winky is an undercover homosexual recruiter.

I doubt it’d be good.

And the fact that the song is about a “pussy cat” (yes, it’s also a double entendre in Slovene) surely wouldn’t help much in her defense.

“Breasts like bombs!” deserves the title of headline of the year. (Nova’s original photo here < -- NSFW!)

For its August issue, the American parenting magazine Babytalk published a picture of a child nursing on its cover. The picture, which you can see here, shows a breast in profile and, according to this AP story, “sparked an outrage.” One angry Texan woman told a reporter that she “shredded it” when she saw it. Her reasoning?

“A breast is a breast — it’s a sexual thing.”

I won’t dignify that masterful tautology with a response, but before you laugh it off as just another crazy lady in Texas let me point out that, according to a 2004 survey by the American Dietetic Association, a majority of Americans do not support breastfeeding in public places. And if you look at this page of U.S. breastfeeding laws, you’ll see that not all 50 states have legislation allowing mothers to breastfeed in any private or public location. (As of April, just 32 of them do)

As for the Babytalk cover itself: in a poll of 4,000 of the magazine’s readers (overwhelmingly women with both children and breasts) 25% thought the picture was “inappropriate.”

One can only imagine what they’d think of, say, this (nsfw) recent Stern Magazine cover. Or, here in Slovenia, the recent Nova magazine cover featuring Špela from Atomik Harmonik, topless. (Here are the pictures in question: 1, 2)

Of course, the Špela pictures did also cause a bit of a stir here. But not about whether Nova should have published them on the front page, or at all, but whether Špela has had “enhancement surgery” and if the candid-seeming photos were, in fact, candid.

But even there, there wasn’t much controversy.

"The boss wants sex": An ad for a phone sex hotline.

Something very special happened in March: For the first time in history, someone in Slovenia got convicted of sexual harassment at work. This historic badge of shame went to Marko Vudrag, head of the Institute for Public Health in Ljubljana, (see his picture here) who was convicted of being a total scumbag with at least four female employees. According to their testimony, he kissed, embraced, stroked, groped, and chased them around his office — all of it unwanted and unreciprocated. He also regaled them with stories of his erotic dreams; in short, he showed a lot of class.

He got a 14-month sentence and four years of probation, but held onto his job after the sentencing. (Is he still there?)

Still, compare this to a recent case in the United States, where an American woman who was spanked at work took home $1.7 million.

The working cultures are vastly different when it comes to gender issues. When I worked at Bloomberg in New York, all employees were required to attend one seminar and one seminar only: sexual harassment awa

GEO magazine really wants to penetrate the Slovenian market.

Just when you thought Slovenian billboards couldn’t go any further, the German science & nature magazine GEO arrived and upped the ante with their full-blast penetration advertisements. These things really put the nice in science.

Do they work, though? Beyond getting attention, I mean. Do people tell their friends: "Dude, I just subscribed to that new magazine, GEO! I normally don’t like nature and stuff, but when I saw people doing the tripod on those billboards I just knew it was right for me!"

The other important question is: Where does this slippery slope end? How far is too far? These guys, for example, could probably work some tentacle porn into their ads — would people care? Will the next generation?

It’s quite fascinating to watch how far agencies are pushing the envelope here. And it’s amazing (to me) that they clearly haven’t hit any boundaries yet. You can only wonder what’s coming next.

A billboard showing a Playboy centerfold.

It’s no secret that Slovenian advertisements, including billboards, are racy (<– potentially NSFW) especially by American standards. The new Playboy Slovenia billboard, though, seems to have kicked things up a notch. Basically, it’s a centerfold picture that’s been plastered onto large billboards and put up all around the country. The one above, for example, is located fairly close to a kindergarten. I can’t even imagine what the American reaction to this would be, nor can I imagine something that would cause an equal level of outrage among Slovenes. Maybe if someone put up a billboard saying "Give the Bay of Piran to Croatia"? I don’t know. I still haven’t figured out where the Slovenian public’s threshold is.

The business-daily Finance recently conducted an online poll, asking readers "Do you think the nudity shown on the Playboy billboard is acceptable?" Not surprisingly, the majority (62%) said "Hell, yeah." Finance also published a larger, clearer picture of the billboard here, if you want to see it.

(Thanks Vlasta!) 

A cereal sold in Slovenia in the year 2005. No, really.

This cereal box was the original inspiration for the Things you Probably Won’t See in the U.S. category. I think it’s been stored on my computer for more than a year now, but I somehow never got around to posting it.

That
said, I don’t quite know where to begin with it. These kind of racial
caricatures were fairly common in the U.S. up until about the 1960s.
(You can see a collection of authentic pre-civil rights images here.)  There were also plenty of offensive foodstuffs
mocking various ethnic groups in the U.S., but almost all of them have
since vanished. Nowadays, products are carefully and vigorously
scrutinized to make sure there isn’t a hint of insult or possible
misinterpretation, and quickly repaired if there accidentally is. For
example, racial caricatures aside, I highly doubt an American company
would let the cook happily pour his milk into the cereal from his
pevlic area. They just wouldn’t.

Slovenia still seems to be wholly indifferent to these types of
concerns. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that the country is 99%
white. (Speaking of which, I’m regularly surprised by how comfortably
Slovenes use the word nigga, or its variants, among themselves.) But I know that Slovenia isn’t unique in this regard. For example, here’s what a package of rice currently being sold in Estonia looks like, courtesy of Scott.

That
said, it’s pretty clear that the cereal box isn’t ill-intended.
Slovenia just still lacks the aseptic caution of western commercial
enterprises. But I’m pretty sure those days will be over soon.

A patchwork of recent Polet magazine covers.

When I was a boy, my mother would occasionally buy copies of German magazines like Stern or Spiegel,
which were available at some newsstands in the United States. Sometimes
these magazines would have nudity on the cover, usually to illustrate a
health-related story.

One
day, a religious couple came over
to our house for a visit and saw one of these magazines lying casually
on the living-room table. In the uproar that followed, they chastised
my mother for keeping
"pornography" in the house — stressing that it was even worse of her
to leave it out in the open where a young and impressionable boy could
see it. It took my Mom
a few moments to figure out what was going on; when she tried to
explain that even serious political magazines in Germany sometimes put
naked ladies on their covers, they didn’t believe it.

If that couple got upset about a harmless issue of Spiegel, I can’t imagine what the Slovenian magazine Polet would do to them. Simultaneous pulmonary embolisms, most likely.

Polet
(the name literally means "flight") is a weekly supplement that is
bundled together with Thursday editions of the leading Slovenian
newspaper, Delo.
It generally deals with light-hearted topics like sports and
recreation. One thing that sets it apart from other supplements is its
stubborn insistence on featuring naked people (usually women) on the
cover. Unlike Spiegel, though, the nudity is
in no way connected to the content inside. It’s just there. No explanations, no rationale: Just naked people.

Sometimes, though, the content and pictures collide in funny
ways. For example, you might have noticed that the cover in the top-right corner has the
words "Surf’s Up!" written over a woman’s arse. I also like the
bottom-left cover, which has "Juan Carlos Ferrero" written beneath a topless woman who is definitely not a Juan, a Carlos, or a Ferrero. But the absolute king of all Polet covers is this. (NFSW, obviously)

The unintended result is sublime.