A language learners’ forum

Today I remembered about a famous American painter that I realized could post about here because of cultural significance. His name is Bob Ross, and he had a TV show, The Joy of Painting, a little before my own era, where he would paint a new painting from scratch in 30 minutes. He is known for his ability to make painting look completely effortless, for his very cheerful and positive attitude and way of talking, "happy clouds," "happy trees," "happy mountains." He inspired many Americans to try painting due to his show and always gave lots of technique tips to aspiring artists when painting his pictures. Even many Americans of my age and younger still know of him and some even inspired to learn to paint due to reruns of his shows running throughout the 80's and 90's.

He is very entertaining to watch.

Here are some episodes I like. Many others can be found on youtube also.

I haven't watched any of Bob Ross, but I remember that I first learned about his existence from this comic strip (the image also has alt-text).

sctroyenne wrote:To start off, the Pee Wee Herman anti-drug PSA I found tonight on YouTube that started my idea for this thread:



In the 80s and 90s there were huge anti-drug campaigns aimed especially at kids. D.A.R.E. was a popular in-school anti-drug program (in my school and in others an actual police officer came in to talk to classes to scare us straight). Here, someone thought that Pee Wee Herman was the appropriate spokesperson to deliver this message urging kids (? - I assume, though it doesn't seem to be aimed at kids) to not use crack. There were a lot of anti-drug PSAs on TV, especially during Saturday morning cartoons and after school.

(Bonus D.A.R.E. ephemera)

Here's an awesome song they made to urge people to not smoke marijuana.

kimchizzle wrote:Today I remembered about a famous American painter that I realized could post about here because of cultural significance. His name is Bob Ross, and he had a TV show, The Joy of Painting, a little before my own era, where he would paint a new painting from scratch in 30 minutes. He is known for his ability to make painting look completely effortless, for his very cheerful and positive attitude and way of talking, "happy clouds," "happy trees," "happy mountains."

Bob Ross videos are also known for producing the ASMR effect.

I found this French YouTube channel that analyzes commercials: MisterJDay. He's no where near as good as Target Women but you'll see some French ads.

Who can pass up a song about peanut butter?

Before D.A.R.E. and anti-drug commercials, the Flintstones were promoting Winston cigarettes.

Well I was just doing a routine google search to check on the colloquial use of "necesitas" in Spanish and google told me I should search for "necesitas ver mas bax", "what the hell is a bax" I says to myself and google says "look at this youtube video hombre" so I do, and I find Sylvester Stallone telling Mexicans to harden up and watch more boxing.

One funny fact is that in Russia Kleenex is best known as a toilet paper brand. (There was an ad saying it's soft as velvet - мягкий, словно бархат, can't find a video unfortunately) While elsewhere it's often used to refer to tissues, as a generic name. It's especially hilarious to me when someone says "I need a kleenex", implying they're being emotional and might need a tissue/handkerchief to wipe the tears

Lol, reminds me of this Trevor Noah skit:



He's a polyglot btw .

Does anyone recognize the drink here? (in the cans)