Don't you know that there's a law against what you're doing?

February 6, 2013 1:13 PM

No Asians [SLembedded video because YT comments give away the ending]
posted by mahershalal (55 comments total)

Hilarious.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:17 PM on February 6

Okay, that was unexpected.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:17 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

I was frustrated because I couldn't understand 80% of what he said.

Which makes the end even funnier.
posted by royalsong at 1:22 PM on February 6 [11 favorites]

D'oh!
posted by Kitteh at 1:23 PM on February 6

They were right. It was worth the 1:40.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:26 PM on February 6

Aaaaaaa hahahaha.

Australians and the way they can't talk.
posted by entropone at 1:26 PM on February 6

I turned the auto-captioning on, and it kept putting "engines" instead of either of the other words.
posted by lily_bart at 1:27 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]

That was AWESOME...
posted by mrgroweler at 1:31 PM on February 6

This reminds me of a previous comment of mine:

During breakfast my Filipina girlfriend is reading from the Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, and she says in her cute accent, "Here's one: How to treat a black guy."

I'm like, "What? OK, I'll bite: How do you treat a black guy?"
She says, "Make a cold compress. Put crushed ice in a plastic bag and wrap the bag in a thin piece of cloth..."
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:32 PM on February 6 [20 favorites]

Ok, yeah that is pretty satisfying.

(This video is safe for people who don't want to be upset by racism or weird gotchas. Watch to the end and you will be pleased.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:32 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

For God sake, it's 2013... somebody mail Australia some new hightech HD cameras. They're still using the ones from the 90's.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 1:38 PM on February 6 [5 favorites]

93 people are agents
posted by ocschwar at 1:40 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

But, does he like dags?
posted by midmarch snowman at 1:45 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

They're still using the ones from the 90's.

That'd be pretty impressive for something that was shot in the 80s. (At a guess...)
posted by kmz at 1:46 PM on February 6 [5 favorites]

Autocorrect strikes again.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:51 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

Just goes to show that even Australians can't understand the Australian accent.
posted by bonehead at 1:52 PM on February 6 [8 favorites]

This is ancient! Wow. Best of the web about 10 years ago. Cool!
posted by marienbad at 1:57 PM on February 6

I do appreciate a random mishap of language and/or juxtaposition.

I remember from one of Gary Larson's Far Side books where he showed a few instances where a certain newspaper had messed up and got the Dennis The Menace and Far Side captions confused. I still laugh at the memory of one of them. Dennis is at the dinner table, looking earnestly at his mom and saying, "Mmmm, hamsters." Meanwhile, the Far Side had a bunch of wild dogs gathered around some nebulous food with one of them talking about Mr. Wilson next door or whatever.
posted by philip-random at 2:00 PM on February 6 [18 favorites]

I'll give this one four candles.
posted by George_Spiggott at 2:06 PM on February 6 [2 favorites]

Uh, jeeze, this is from a show from early 90's British TV called It'll Be Alright On The Night, which was just half an hour of TV news bloopers and random shit like this. It was basically the precursor to the Youtube 'Currently Popular' playlist. If that's not Dennis Norden narrating the intro, I'll eat my hat.

Weird how the interwebs turns stuff like this up sometimes.
posted by Happy Dave at 2:11 PM on February 6 [2 favorites]

This could never happen in this day and age.

Because nobody would notice something like this in the real estate classifieds. That would entail reading the real estate classifieds.
posted by ocschwar at 2:16 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

The real cool thing about this is that it shows how merely being interviewed by an aggressive TV reporter can make you look bad even if you have done absolutely nothing wrong. The guy looked evasive and shifty and was obviously uncomfortable. Clearly a bad man. Then boom the reveal and it is all laughs and chuckles and he opens up once the reporter the isn't all agro.
posted by srboisvert at 2:18 PM on February 6 [23 favorites]

Well, they are all crooks, the lot of 'em.
posted by TedW at 2:26 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]

Yeah OK, said by Australians it does sound awfully similar, but both words are still spelled awfully differently. Do we really all believe that this guy actually typed out an add saying No Asians Thank You when he really meant No Agents Thank You, instead of just being a racist who realized it would not work out so well to be the racist on the Sunday news and figured he'd give 'Agents' a shot?
posted by Blasdelb at 2:45 PM on February 6

Yeah OK, said by Australians it does sound awfully similar, but both words are still spelled awfully differently. Do we really all believe that this guy actually typed out an add saying No Asians Thank You when he really meant No Agents Thank You, instead of just being a racist who realized it would not work out so well to be the racist on the Sunday news and figured he'd give 'Agents' a shot?

Maybe he called the newspaper and they transcribed it over the phone?
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:47 PM on February 6 [20 favorites]

Didn't it used to be comnon practice to dictate classifieds, though?
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:47 PM on February 6 [6 favorites]

Do we really all believe that this guy actually typed out an add saying No Asians Thank You when he really meant No Agents Thank You

Being as he almost certainly phoned the advert in (what with it being the 1980's) I don't believe he typed anything at all. (It's without question the Denis Norden intro from his show on UK Television. I saw this clip probably 20 years ago when it was first transmitted. Possibly even earlier).
posted by Brockles at 2:53 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]

"Maybe he called the newspaper and they transcribed it over the phone?"

You pre-internet people were weird.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:55 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]

I am still weird.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:27 PM on February 6 [7 favorites]

Agree he would have phoned it in.
posted by Catch at 3:35 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

Because Australians just don't care that much.
posted by Naberius at 3:39 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]

The OP primed me for some sort of really crazy twist ending. Like the interviewer rips off his mask and is, himself, Asian. Or the man's Asian wife ambles out of the building to ask what's going on. Or one hundred Asian children brought by the TV station run up to the man and spray him with silly string.
posted by threeants at 3:58 PM on February 6 [4 favorites]

He clearly needs a knife.
posted by Fizz at 4:22 PM on February 6

Oh god. This is on the Internet?
Hometown represent!

The segment was originally on A State Affair, last segment on a Friday about 1985/86. I remember watching it at the time.
I remember very well.

Things sure have changed.
posted by Mezentian at 4:44 PM on February 6

It's also hard to tell in the video, but from memory the homeowner had quite a thick Italian(?) accent.
posted by Mezentian at 4:48 PM on February 6

Hometown represent!

You're from Adelaide? Oh my god. I'm so sorry.

I... I didn't know...
posted by Talez at 5:08 PM on February 6 [2 favorites]

Opus the penguin had a similar problem in 1983 while working at the Bloom County "Classified Personals" desk at the Bloom Beacon.

In case the link goes away, it's the one with the punch line "________".
posted by autopilot at 5:58 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

This sort of happened to me once. I was working as a transcriber in the Hansard, which transcribes the debates in the BC Legislature.

We'd receive 5 minute segments on cassette (i know!) and just start transcribing from the middle of the hatever debate... and the debates were ongoing we were about 3 minutes behind the actual debate.

So on my tape it was all this MLA blaming public drunkenness on the Hebrews.

I was completely freaking out as I typed! Why was there no yelling or heckling at this bigetted MLA? Plus, since when is this a particular stereotype? I had never heard nasty remarks about Jewish people causing public drunkenness... what was going on??!! This was the elected MLAs talking... has BC really got this bad? I was about to start a one woman protest interrupting the debates when I realised...

it was "you brews"

Yeah, I was a little embarrassed.

Also I had to retype the whole thing.

Good thing I didn't hit send!
posted by chapps at 6:58 PM on February 6 [7 favorites]

Talez, that's not Adelaide.
posted by Mezentian at 8:41 PM on February 6

Talez, that's not Adelaide.

The first sentence of the video: "is a suburb of Adelaide"? The only other Highgates I know are Perth or the UK.
posted by Talez at 8:51 PM on February 6

LobsterMitten: (This video is safe for people who don't want to be upset by racism or weird gotchas. Watch to the end and you will be pleased.)

Warning: TV reporter triggers, for people who are sensitive to 60 Minutes-style interviews.

Can we get a NSFReporterphobes warning in the title?
posted by IAmBroom at 8:53 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

Heh. I'm still laughing.

I mean, seriously... does that guy look like someone who's ever typed anything in his life?
posted by Blue_Villain at 9:03 PM on February 6

The first sentence of the video: "is a suburb of Adelaide" is incorrect.
Stupid Brits.

That's a WA numberplate in the background, and the nearby housing ads appear to mention Northbridge.
posted by Mezentian at 9:13 PM on February 6

Yeah to be honest I wasn't paying that much attention. Now I see High Wy in the right hand column it's quite obvious that it's Perth since that would be High Wycombe.

You had me worried there for a while, Mezentian.
posted by Talez at 9:20 PM on February 6

I'm just glad my memory wasn't faulty.
posted by Mezentian at 10:10 PM on February 6

It just struck me that the reason this story might have made news back in the day was that is was during the Great Japanese Buy-Out era, when everyone was afraid of the Japanese buying everything (it's now China), and it was about the time Jack van Tongeren and his bunch of Merry Men were out there plastering every flat surface around with 'Asians Out' and other posters of a similar sentiment.

They were planning their own version of Crystal Night, a "'national night of Asian-restaurant arson", but managed to blow up only one Chinese restaurant from memory.
posted by Mezentian at 10:50 PM on February 6

Did it occur to anyone that this was a setup? I thought I caught the homeowner (actor?) trying to suppress a smile at 1:07. But maybe Youtube has made me a cynic.
posted by Pararrayos at 3:28 AM on February 7

Cynic!
It's not a set-up.
This was from a simpler time.
posted by Mezentian at 3:41 AM on February 7 [1 favorite]

The reporter should have followed up with an interview of the transcriber at the paper.
posted by vidur at 4:03 PM on February 7

"via reddit" where reddit just links to reddit.com. Nice citation, Cory.
posted by smackfu at 4:11 PM on February 7

Everyone likes to pick on the transcriber.
posted by chapps at 6:02 PM on February 7

I can't tell which paper it's from. In those heady days we had four (four!) local papers, including two daily papers. In any case, the Classies pool was probably an oblique beast and there was probably no paper trail.

And it's clear, even on a read-back, they guy hears Asians as Agents.
posted by Mezentian at 7:22 PM on February 7

I love this so much. It does seem like an Italian-Aussie accent to me. Does anyone know who the reporter might be? The voice seems familiar but I'm useless with faces.

Also I love how the reporter obviously agrees that agents are arseholes.
posted by harriet vane at 9:31 PM on February 7

I'm 99.9% sure that's a young Geoff Parry from Seeveen Niiiiighlty News.
posted by Mezentian at 11:13 PM on February 7 [1 favorite]

Yep. Geoff Parry. Sadly, this was the best pic I could find.
posted by Mezentian at 11:16 PM on February 7