Pop Culture

And the Monopoly Winner Is…

By Delphine Hirasuna | February 8, 2013September 4, 2014

The votes are in: The iron is out; the cat is in. Facebook followers have spoken. Let it be so.

Anyone who has played Monopoly over the past 78 years knows of what I speak. Invented by Charles Darrow in 1935, Monopoly is a board game where players roll the dice for the chance to move his/her token across the squares on the board. The square their token lands in gives them the chance to wheel-and-deal, buy properties, collect rent, pay taxes, build, earn dividends. Fake paper money changes hands. Fortunes are won and lost. Banks repossess and auction off assets. Bankruptcies are filed. Players land in jail. Only the dapper banker, Uncle Pennybags, stays rich. You know, kind of like real life.

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A Shoe That Floats on Air

By Delphine Hirasuna | April 29, 2011September 4, 2014

This looks like a high-school science project, but it is really a commercial for Asics new Gel-Blur 33 athletic shoes, which Asics claims offers lightweight, cushioned comfort to all 33 joints in the foot. To illustrate the tagline “Gravity, Meet Your Archenemy,” Southern California-based creative agency, Vitro USA, strung multi-colored ping pong balls on fishing lines and pumped compressed air into a glass chamber, causing the balls to rise into the shape of an Asics 33 shoe and float in space. As with some of the amazing 3-D projection mapping videos now coming out, the behind-the-scenes making of this commercial needs to be seen to appreciate the feat achieved.