A star is born

Who knew Oklahomans were so funny?
Fumitoshi Fujimoto and Takahiro Haranishi, members of the Japanese comedy group Fujiwara, were in the Stillwater NewsPress office Wednesday. A Japanese film crew shot a bit of our classified ad representative Melissa Wills as she answered their questions about what they obviously consider our number one Oklahoma pastime – noodling.
Melissa didn’t know what they were saying (far as I know) but good-naturedly took her cues from translator Mugi somethingorother, who lives in California – of course – and who did the advance work and translated the director’s, um, directions.
It all went something like, (Japanese, Japanese, Japanese, Japanese) uproarious laughter, ask Melissa a question, get a straight answer, (something, something, something in Japanese.) More uproarious laughter.
It was all quite interesting and a nice respite from the regular workday. But I warned Melissa if she ever hears a translation of the scene she will more than likely find she played the straight man to the Japanese television personalities’ comic wisecracks.
She handled it well. You can see her breathtaking performance at www.stwnewspress.com.
If you called the NewsPress to place a classified ad around noon Wednesday and didn’t get an answer, sorry. Melissa was pursuing her 15 minutes of fame.