I happen to be a personal fan of the 1980s, and if you happen to know that Billy Joel song, you probably are too. The other day, Japan presented me with a can of carbonated awesomeness that I haven't laid eyes on since the heady days of "New Coke". I don't know about you, but while Coke and Pepsi have always been tasty ways to simultaneously feed my caffeine and sugar urges, they have always lacked a certain indescribable quality. Despite dominating the beverage market and the vending machines of my life, I always maintained a can shaped hole in my heart for the lost bit player that stood for the small town cola machines of summer holidays. A cola product, if you will, of my lost youth.
And I found it in the strangest of places. In the local foreign food supermarket in the basement of a Shinyurigaoka departmetn store, there it was. Amid a clutter of American Tabasco sauce flavours and British Twinnings tea variants, stuck in between some strange lemon drink and a case of Kool aid, I saw it...
My sweet blue canned youth!
Royal Crown Cola! It seems like it's been since 1905 that I last tasted your yummy, sugary bubbles.
I know we all have things that remind us of our childhoods, and RC Cola is one for me. Oh...to be a little kid again... back when we had seriously stressful things to deal with, like who we should play with at recess, or what was wrong with jogging pants...or why the hell everyone would start declaring that you liked some girl when you didn't really even know who she was. (Oh, if I could go back and slap some sense into my eighth grade self, man, there would have been some hot PG rated over-the-clothes light petting.)
Of course, one has to remember that the trusty bureaucrats at the Fucked Up Shit Department have been keeping track of various cultural imports. And, after we saw how they dealt with the culinary challenge presented by Korea, we can assume a similarly heavy handed response. Finally, given the amount of nostalgia that is pressed into each and every can of RC Cola, the F.U.S.D. would be well aware that they would have to lay some serious smack down to best RC in the contest to become "Sweet Carbonated Nectar Of My Dreams."
Well, they did just that.
They laid the Smack down, that is.
Literally.
We can always count on the F.U.S.D. to make wonderfully horrific sentences a cultural necessity.
This, ladies and gentlemen, was the actual line I used to acquire a bottle of this fun for my home collection:
Oh waitress, Can I have some more Smack please? To Go?
English Help:
I always maintained a can shaped hole in my heart ; I always kept a special place for (eg, "remembered") for RC Cola.
the lost bit player: a small company/person that tried to compete against a larger company, but lost.
the heady days of "New Coke": "heady" means exciting, as in "things are going to your head". "New Coke" was a brief experiment by Coca Cola to change the taste of their drink. It was a total failure, and Coke brought out "Coca Cola Classic" soon after.
hot PG rated over-the-clothes light petting: elementary school romantic contact. Probably kissing and not much else.
to Smack (verb) - to hit someone/something, often across the face. It has a connection to gangsta/pimp culture. So, to "lay the smack down" is to hit someone, or more commonly, to assert your authority in an aggressive manner.
a Smack: related to the above, a slap or blow. eg: She gave him a smack for looking at other girls.
some Smack: (uncountable noun) (slang): Heroin, a powerful drug.
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