In a new Akadot segment called the Live Action Anime Experiment, each month we ask a columnist to sally boldly forth into the world to adopt idiosyncratic anime conventions into his/her everyday life. For our first column, we asked Akadot writer and resident provocateur Nathan G. Johnson to record a soundtrack that would enhance the drama of his everyday life. Armed with a portable tape player and a funky strut, Nathan embarked on this maiden mission in Akadot's campaign to explore the pastel boundary that separates reality from anime.

The Assignment:

The last time you played spy vs. spy with the other kids during recess you were probably humming the theme to "Mission Impossible," right? And when you and your compadre had a quick-draw shoot-out on the blacktop at high noon you were both scatting the same riffs from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." I know my sister could never dance without belting out the same four lines from "Fame" over and over and over again. Something about that heroic music powered you up. And doesn't it still? To tell the truth, when you hear that music again, doesn't it charge you with the feeling that you can kick some ass?

Hot damn, wouldn't it be great if everywhere you went you had your own theme music funking up your entrances, lilting to lend sentimentality to your emotional moments and swelling to punch up your triumphs?

This was the hook my hairy editor, Big Gay Lou, cast into my cheek. He had a new idea for a column.

Luis calls me up every time he has an idea for a piece requiring guerrilla weirdness, because I'm his only writer who will actually realize, in daylight, in the real grown world and without flinching, his screwy dreams. I don't mean Tom Green type anti-social behavior; I mean real standing-the-wrong-way-in-the-elevator type nonsense.

This time the fur-meister sent me boogying out into the unsuspecting world packing a hidden, pocket-sized tape recorder, pumping my own theme music everywhere I went, just like in the movies. How would the world react?