WDW Magazine April 2016 - Disney's Hollywood Studios | Page 117

Joe - Let’s see what’s in there. Oh, some really cool ones. This little beaded earring is
from Rajasthan. This is really common actually. You go to a little shop or some place, and
they’re always trying to sell you the fancy earrings. But the fancy earrings aren’t usually
tribal earrings; they’re from some design studio. So you are like: no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no. So almost every shop has a little box or a little ball–this is true all over the
world–or a little package or a little thing full of junk. It’s like the junk bowl. And you go,
“Can I see the junk bowl?” And you go through the junk ball, and that’s where the earring
is. It’s in the junk bowl, almost always. Like this happened in Mongolia, Rajasthan,
Zambia, all over the world. I find the earring in the junk ball. So this one came from the
junk ball in Rajasthan. It’s just a simple little earrings; nothing much to it.
Let’s see what else is that interesting earring. The ones that’s been in there, the longest
is probably this gold earring. This is a Nepalese earring that I’ve had for a really long time.
I got on my first trip to Nepal. In Nepal, it would be worn by a married person. And when
I first went to Nepal, I was in a really remote area. Everybody had this earring in their ear.
I thought that is a cool earring. I got to find it somewhere. So I‘ve had that one for a
really longtime.
The Maasai earring, where is that? It’s a beaded Maasai earring. I know it’s in there. I
have to do this by touch. Sorry. There it is. So the Maasai earring, that one. That
beaded Maasai earrings. That’s one of those things where not many people have an ear
like this. So when you go someplace where people do have an ear like this, like the
Maasai–they have these giant holes in there–then everybody’s like, “Oh you got to have
this earring, you know. You got to stick this through your ear, you know.” So I get this
kind of, “Oh you got to have this; you got to have that.” So that one’s kind of like a gift
earring from some Maasai person who I’m sure is hoping that I’ll buy like more earrings.
That happens a lot too. People would just hand me earrings. I’ve had Thai hill tribe
people hand me earrings. Tibetans hand me earrings. I was on a doorstep of some
hunting lodge in South Africa and some giant hunter lady hands me a leopard knuckleon
a leather string. “This is for your ear” you know. So I get a lot of that too.
Gavin - What a great concept– I wish I had a souvenir, something that I could collect like
that would be a great way to connect with people…
Joe - Yeah, you know, it has become as whole identity of its own. I mean, you know, I really do
think more people recognize the earring than recognize me. It’s that thing of like –
Gavin - The Imagineer with the Earring