Ah, the durian. What other fruit can bridge the cultural gap between Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore … and now the United States of Hollywood?
Yesterday, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s long-running late night talk show, uploaded a YouTube clip featuring guest celebrity Jessica Chastain, who brought the show’s host a rather odious gift: a durian!
Apparently, Chastain had been in Singapore on break from filming a movie in Thailand, when she came upon the King of Fruits … or as she calls it, the “Bleu Cheese of Fruit”. And guess what? She likes it, putting to rest the myth of the Mat Salleh who will die at the first whiff of durian.
She also got Kimmel to put on a pair of heavy duty gloves (to keep the odour of the “onion-garlic-avocado-pineapple custard” off their famous hands) and slice open the fruit in front of the live audience. And then she shoved some of said custard directly into Jimmy’s mouth!
We’re happy to report that this Mat Salleh, also, did not die.
It’s an adorable bit of cross-cultural WTFery, but we do have a few notes for Jessican and Jimmy:
- It’s pronounced du-rian. DOO-ree-yarn. Not, ugh, “Dorian”.
- Jimmy really sliced into that durian. He seemed to have cut through the seeds! Don’t do that. Just cut a bit into the top, and then crack the whole thing open. You doofus.
- We would like to express our heartfelt sympathies to Icelandic indie folk-pop band Of Monsters And Men for having their LP vinyl used by Jimmy as a cutting mat. That was harsh.
Good job, famous Hollywood white people. Now for the next step: tempoyak.
