4/29: Mario's leaping? It's gotta be the shoes!

YouTube has been kind enough to reach back to the antidiluvian days of the mid-80s for the commercial, which features Spike Lee and Michael Jordan, a golf/gambling enthusiast who -- not many people remember this -- was a pretty successful basketball player back in the day. Spike brazenly proclaimed MJ's flight time ability came from his shoes. The blatant untruth of such a statement thus became a selling point for Nike, and if you'd like to pick a particular cultural tipping point when we as a society decided that the sizzle was worth more than the steak and raced headlong down the tubes, here you go.

Another fellow who is known for his jumping prowess is -- well, look at the title of the blog, take a wild guess. And in honor of Mario's 25th Anniversary (which really is the waning months of the year-long 25th-anniversary "celebration" Nintendo has been kind enough to tell us to celebrate -- isn't the slide down these tubes fun?), Converse has made a pair of Charles Taylor shoes -- I don't call him "Chuck" because I don't know him that well -- studded with about 200 Marios. As a bonus, the Converse star is replaced by a Mario Superstar. Mario, Chuck; Chuck, Mario.

Only in Japan, coming this summer. Funny, I thought Mario already has a custom shoe...