Barbie was advertised all over Europe, you couldn’t escape the hype. However, star Ryan Gosling wouldn’t let his daughters see it. He’s not alone among celebrities who don’t let their children watch their work. Steven Speilburg thought his children were too young to watch Schindler’s List when it came out, and that is a feeling common among actors and directors. Julia Roberts, Helen Hunt, and even Jack Black are said to not allow children to watch some of their work.
In fact, when we look at the list of actors who won’t let their children see their work, we discover a strange trend. A lot of actors have children, more have families than many people think.
Steve Jobs wouldn’t even let his children use his devices. Again, this trend goes around silicon valley. The big names in tech have children, but their children are given hard books to read and physical toys to play with instead of portable devices.
But it’s not just movies that are unsuitable for children. A lot of fast and prepared “foods” are considered unsuitable to eat, for anyone. This includes McDonalds, whose CEO could barely taste his burger onscreen.
When you admit that your products are “crap” they call that, “Doing a Ratner.” You know potato crisps? The scientists and executives who make it, market it, and make money off it, won’t touch it.
Those behind the big soda brands (fizzy drinks like Pepsi), whether they be scientists or board members, refuse to drink the garbage.
But more relevant to Romania, the very founder of KFC called his food “slop” and the gravy, “wallpaper paste.” (Colonel Sanders is a funny name as well. He might have served in the military, but maybe didn’t achieve that rank. “Colonel” was a ranking, in paramilitary groups, like the KKK. It is kind of like “Capitanul” in Romanian history.)
The irony we have in Cluj is the opposite. We have people who sell fruit, but smoke all over it, not caring about the imparement in flavor.
Everywhere else in the world, people know that food is meant to smell nice. You can see it in the films they make. See the old man smelling the fruit he is about to give as a present?
Cluj is probably the only place I’ve seen people actually smoke in a kitchen, or the owner of a fruit shop smoke in a fruit shop. Yes, it is a small minority of people in Cluj, but in other countries it is nobody.
If they have a character smoke in a kitchen in fiction, it is usually a piece of comedy, often set in a prison where the food is terrible. And in case you were wondering, smoked salmon and other “smoked” food has nothing to do with tobacco.
Besides making food taste and smell bad, nicotine can literally be a pain in the back. Not only does tobacco smoke cause lung cancer, it also causes and worses multiple forms of back pain, including those caused by spinal decay and by blood vessel restriction.
When we bought fruit that smelled of tobacco so strongly, we couldn’t wash the smell off, we asked ourselves, “Why sell fruit if you don’t like the taste of it?” Perhaps that shop is a front for something else, like drug smuggling.
However, most greengrocers do not get the smell of smoke on their fruits or vegetables. We’ve seen that even those that do smoke are wise enough to smoke away from the merchandise, so that the smell doesn’t linger on the products.
In any case, when you ask someone in the tobacco industry, who knows the addictive and destructive powers of the products they sell, “they’d prefer their own children didn’t smoke.”
“The only way to win in a casino is to own one,” according to Steven Win, or Steve Wynne, of the gambling industry. That is also the only way to win with tobacco, owning the company that sells it.