game Archivi - Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

LET’S PRETEND THAT

Aug 12, 2023 | ISN'T IT IRONIC?

Summer: time for travel, craving for levity.

I propose a surreal quiz to laugh with each other. Are you ready to imagine?

Let’s pretend that …

you are traveling with people who make you feel good, whether family or friends.

First question: where are you going?

You are chatting about the last movie you saw while you are driving, but you feel a little tired. You see a motorway café, you stop and say: “I need a coffee, I’ll be right back.”

Twenty minutes later you aren’t back yet, so whoever was with you comes in looking for you and what do they see?

You singing standing on the counter like the girls from Coyote Ugly

but this is Italy, there are no microphones in the motorway cafés and you are holding a Rustic sandwich with ham, tomato, mozzarella salad and mayonnaise.

Second question: what are you singing?

Since you have been discovered, you invite them to join you.

Assumption 1:
They catch up with you and start singing with you in the Top Gun style.

Assumption 2:
someone decides to bite the Rustic sandwich

Assumption 3:
they look at you dumbfounded and after the first moment when they are like salt statues they react by asking what the heck you are doing

Let’s pretend that …

you have to give an explanation: what happened after the coffee?

PACHINKO

Jun 10, 2023 | WORLD

Pachinko パチンコ is the name of something that is perhaps less understandable to Westerners, but only because we have other manifestations of alienation and ludopathy.

Pachinko パチンコcould be synonymous with mockery.

Verbal Kint taught us that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that… he is gone.

Even gambling in Japan “does not exist” because it is banned. And it disappears under the name “entertainment” definition by which Pachinko is classified.

Many of us have been through a Pachinko parlor running: along with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in the movie Lost in Translation.

Pachinko is a hybrid game, we could say it is the representation of contamination: halfway between a pinball machine and a slot machine.

The trick is precisely the balls that from the game become the very object of winning but cannot be exchanged for money.

By playing Pachinko you can only get prizes of various kinds: chocoloate bars, pens, lighters, candy, T-shirts, cosmetics, bicycles, shopping vouchers, up to so-called “special” prizes i.e. silver or gold objects enclosed in plastic bags.

These special prizes can be exchanged at points outside but nearby Pachinko Parlours: the TUC Shops = Tokyo Union Circulation.

I found precise regulations regarding the installation of these phantom vertical pinball machines, but the risk of addiction?

These Pachinko Parlors are places where people are subjected to extremely high noise levels and bright lights.

The players appear to be sitting helpless, completely estranged, as if without identity in the flow of these slow, mechanical movements that cancel out time.

I am very struck by the slogan of a company that runs Pachinko Parlors:

Joy in life

We resolve to bring joy to the lives of our staff, our customers, and society as a whole through our business.

I do not see joy.