So I’m talking to this kid the other day — I say “kid” because even though he’s an adult, I’m old enough to be his mother, which doesn’t seem right, psychologically, but if you do the math, it’s all there. I mean, at our ages, he could be my 8th kid, only I don’t have any kids and I think that’s what’s throwing me, because I have no gauge from raising children to slowly watch something that came out of me learn to walk and talk and play soccer and graduate from high school and get me used to the idea that I’m as old as I am.
Anyway, I’m talking to this young adult, and it comes out at some point that he’s a “host” at the SoHo Host Club in New York.
What the bleep is a host club, I ask him. And he explains that they host parties and entertain people, or women, or girls or something and I can’t get my head wrapped around it because the only “host clubs” I’ve heard of (and they were vague hearings) are in Japan and they have girls “entertaining” men, and the words “Geisha” and “behind closed doors” come to mind.
“It’s not like that”, the kid tells me, “Have you ever seen Ouran High School Host Club“? he asks.
Now, I’ve seen some anime in my day because of my niece who started in Pokemon and Digimon and introduced me to such shows as Bleach and Death Note, but she had not heard of Ouran High School Host Club, so like Spongebob Squarepants, it is I who gets to tell her about something.
Image Source: fanpop
This Ouran High School show turns out to be on Netflix Instant Watch so I jump on there and watch a few episodes. It’s about a poor girl who disguises herself as a boy to be part of a fancy high school host club that entertains teenage girls with themed tea parties and romantic conversation.
It’s mostly innocent, except for the part about the almost homosexual twin brothers, which, as you know, are what girls fantasize about. I would like to say, though, that Ouran High School Host Club is absurdly funny, quite quirky, and possibly a statement about rich little American girls, and if it is, then it gets extra credit for satire and unless you have a serious problem with the notion of ridiculous gay twins, I highly recommend it. (This just in: According to Wikipedia, this show is a satire of cliches and stereotypes about young Japanese girls, which goes to show that young girls the world over aren’t so different from each other, the silly things.)
Okay, so this kid I met, his name is Jake Traugott and he’s 19, which is the only reason I call him a kid because he talks like a sophisticated forty-year-old, I think he knows ten times more than I do, but I’m currently kicking his ass on Words with Friends, so we’re even. He’s been here in Sacramento on school break, but attends St. John’s in New York City.
Anyway, I learn from Jake that this SoHo Host Club that he belongs to was started by Alexandra Honigsberg, who is an over-achieving genius in her own right. Jake and I Skype her one day so I can find out just what the heck is going on with this whole host club thing and what, exactly, do they do?
I asked her what motivated her to start a host club and she told us that while she was covering an Anime Festival, she observed that there was no “butler cafe” and there were services that catered to male guests to make them feel welcome, but there was nothing for the women, whose population equals or exceeds that of males these days.
Alexandra runs local arts events and thought incorporating a host club into these events would give the events a good shot in the arm, get people socializing with each other and improve the overall experience.But how would she start such a concept and who would be a part of it?
Soon she put an ad on Craigslist that began… “Dare to Be a Gentleman” and the next thing you know she was off and running with the SoHo Host Club, an organization that is the first of its kind in the country.
This weekend they host the Animinicon Soho ’12 at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art which will feature activities such as the now-famous Victorian-Gothic-Lolita Tea Party, and the hosts showing off their various talents (Jake’s is magic and origami).
Alexandra teaches at St. John’s in New York, is a musician (viola and French horn) and artist, and writes operas. Actual operas. Operas that get performed, even. In New York! I’m sorry, that just impresses the crap out of me.
She is also a visionary because this Host Club is the first of its kind in North America. And she’s got this philosophy of creating a culture of “gentlemen making life better for the people they come into contact with”, which I found to be a beautiful concept. We should all be doing stuff that makes life better for other people, in my humble opinion.
So I’m still not exactly sure what the SoHo Host Club does, at least specifically, but maybe it’s something you have to experience yourself to completely understand. One of those “you have to be there” kind of things. Speaking of which, did I mention that they are hosting the Animinicon Soho ’12 this weekend?
Image source: ToysnJoys
