3 Movies, 3 Days

Last Saturday I took Rev to see the new forklift movie. Then I got to show her the forklift archives, and I posed her for photos with forklifts so that she could show her mom.

On Sunday mrguy and I went to see the new Paul McCartney and Wings movie in a theater. Everybody in the theater was really old, and I felt younger than 50% of the audience and mrguy informed me that I was wrong about that. The pre-show music featured some of the worst Wings music ever made. You know how a Paul McCartney song starts out strong and then has a B part that is super squizzy? Those songs.

The movie itself was great. No repellent songs, because Morgan Neville has good taste. The film was more about the people than the music, I'd say. I didn't realize that Denny Laine was a stalwart of the Wings band while others came and went. There were cute animals. Mrguy is really moved by cute animals.

Then we grabbed felafel at the place across the street and went home. It was a perfect day.

On Monday, clamdip2020 and I went to see "Homecoming: the Tokyo Series" about Japan and baseball. What's not to like? We got there early, which allowed us time to go to the new huge Japanese supermarket. And then the movie. It was so good! It centered around specific games held in Tokyo, but told the stories of various people who follow baseball. Americans who came to Japan for the games, athletes who were born in Japan but playing for MLB teams, a mom and son who run a baseball program for little kids, a place where you can rehab your vintage mitt, a guy who is a hair stylist and also keeps a museum for one of the players. It was great. Highly recommended.

Holidays 2023

The holidays felt brief, but good. It was the first time that I had a Christmas without my mom ever. And after last year I was going to keep it that way! Mom had caregivers that day, but unfortunately mrguy got a migraine, and then another one. And one yesterday. So it was kinda solitary. But I'll take it.

During December I went on a walk with a friend:

And I saw X for the first time, with a different friend (and did not get Covid). Upside: seeing a friend from the forklift factory who I haven't seen IRL in years. Downside: the rest of the show was a recreation of the Talking Heads' Remain In Light, and it was apparently a singalong. This may be payback for that time in the 1980s when I saw Donovan at a small club. I'm sure everybody hated me. I remember thinking that it was ok because my voice was so pretty and everybody would enjoy it. For real.

Fact? We do these things because we are selfish assholes. Now we know.

Anyhoo, X was great. RIL was well done, but not Talking Heads as I saw them perform it at the Greek.

Also great? Nice talk with my brother, who is going through some problems with his extremities. Or as he put it "If my body lets me live any longer, I don't think my toes will be along for the ride". And he sent me this beautiful mid-70s Kamaka 8-string. Wow.

Somewhere along there we had a white elephant exchange with the 'ohana. All of us together! I had a great gift stashed away -- a horrible plastic rock with cute plastic bluejays and cardinals on it. Touch the rock and piercing electronic bird calls issue forth. The friend who received it gave it to his mom, who really loved it and took it back home with her on the plane. Another friend, who I'd given a history of the Coco Palms hotel to, gave that to *his* mom. I'd bought it from one of the aunties when we were in the big ukulele band and I never read it and our friend is from Kauai. Well his mom LOVED it, and that made me so happy. And she went on Amazon to buy a copy for a friend and it sells for $450!! Wowza. I found it for her in some local libraries on Kauai, but I can't do better than that.

I also saw Cack and Blick, who were in town visiting family. Mrguy was down with one of the migraines, so we went out to dinner and froze to death indoors. But it was great to see them, as always.

And before the migraines, mrguy and I went to a party. We don't think we've done that since 2019. It consisted of a bunch of retired punk rockers comparing notes about their parents with dementia. One of my friends and I were talking about how awful my mom is, and she told me a story about her grandmother. She was visiting her gran, who started saying disparaging things about a local newscaster on tv (Asian). She turned to her and said "Hey, Grandma. I didn't know that you were Hitler's girlfriend." Grandma started to sputter and then just got quiet and said "Well shit."

Love it. Will use it. Probably won't work.

Finally, on New Year's or such, we opened our Christmas presents. Mrguy bought me divorce cheese. I was extremely impressed that it had been in the fridge so long that it was beyond its "best by" date. Mrguy's comment? "Well that's why they call it 'divorce cheese' and not 'trial separation cheese'"

Attaboy. So delish.

And then I went to see Godzilla with Hitler's girlfriend's granddaughter and grandson-in-law.

That's probably more than I did in all of 2022, in terms of socializing.

What was I thinking?

Hawaii 2019, Day 1

Last year we went on vacation to Hawaii. It might have been the most relaxing vacation ever. Like I kept saying to mrguy "I am so FUCKING relaxed". But I haven't felt the ability to write it up. Today that ends.

It had been several years since we'd gone to Hawaii, and it felt like it was time. It also happened to be my birthday, so we went.

As all vacations begin, we put the Ka'au Krater Boys on and took a drive.

 

a drive from the airport to La Mariana Sailing Club for lunch.

Things were a little more spruced up than usual. We asked our waiter how things were going, and she said that business is great and that they were featuring La Mariana as a set in the current Magnum P.I. reboot (season 2). They came to do a bunch of exterior shots and then for interiors built a restaurant with a fake marina with half sailboats stuck onto the floor for shots looking out from the inside of the restaurant. We will have to check this out. We heard that this all starts in season 2, episode 2.

That evening I found a film at the Hawaii International Film Festival about The Band, which is a favorite subject of mrguy (he played briefly with Garth Hudson). Cause as readers of mrsguy are aware, that's what we do in Paradise. We watch movies indoors!

So ends day 1.

My Burrito

Two weeks ago I went to see three hours of films about the Japanese internment. It's an event put on by a local newspaper, and a subject I think is important, so I go. It's really interesting to see different kinds of films, narrative, documentary, animated, all about the same subject.

I'm just a curious outsider at the festival. I talk to fellow movie-goers and they're all connected in one way or another. The minister who confides that she's actually Filipino but serves a Japanese-American congregation. The man who was the subject of one of the films. The students in the local university Ethnic Studies department. Their professors, who told them they'd get credit if they showed up. The filmmakers, professors, the volunteers, and me, it seems.

The festival falls over lunchtime and there isn't really time to eat, so I bought a burrito the day before at my favorite taco truck to bring with me. The owner told me that the woman who worked for him all those years just moved away, so I have a new lady to get to know.

The plum trees were in bloom. We used to have a plum tree in our back yard growing up. Now waiting in line for my burrito in the industrial neighborhood next to the power station is the one place I can guarantee a view of one of my favorite flowers up close.

Back at work, the ceanothus has been blooming.

Before the film festival began I had time to buy a new pair of tabi boots. I broke a daruma (a good luck doll) while reaching for my credit card.

Robert Wildhack

While thumbing through all of the Bs in Kabletown's on-demand menu to see if they have the movie Butter, I found a cluster of Broadway Melody movies. Ahhhh.

Today's feature was Broadway Melody of 1936. Somehow in my mind I have the Broadway Melody movies, the Golddiggers movies and Footlight Parade all jumbled up into one sweet sticky mess. After a little research I can now tell them apart.

One fun element of BM36 is that it includes several long segments featuring Robert Wildhack, who appears as an expert on snores. He goes on to numb a wary Jack Benny with all of the various types of snores he's cataloged, and performs examples of each. I fell in love with this guy because he was obviously a former vaudevillian like my Uncle Joe. Great Uncle Joe was reputed to have a vaudeville act. It consisted of emitting a seemingly endless stream of water from his mouth onto the stage.

According to Pop, Uncle Joe would go on the stage with a partner, and he would slowly drink an ungodly amount of water. Wordlessly. When he was finished, his partner would pump Joe's arm like an old-fashioned water pump handle. Water would slowly stream out of Joe's mouth. People would laugh. Then they'd stop laughing. As the partner continued to pump, and this steady stream of water would dribble out of Joe, the audience would start laughing again. As it slowly continued for what seemed like *ever*, they'd lose it. 

There you have it. The sum total of Uncle Joe's alleged vaudeville act. Lately I've been trying to find mention of him in old digitized issues of the Dramatic Mirror. I think I might have found someone who sounds like him. Anyhoo...

Because of Uncle Joe, I immediately had a soft spot for this old vaudevillian who appears in the waiting room of the producer in Broadway Melody of 1936. After the credits rolled and I found his name, I did a little searching.

It turns out that Robert Wildhack's bit in the movie about the snores was verbatim from his vaudeville act. You can hear it in its entirety, as well as some other wacky stuff, on the Library of Congress Jukebox site.

In addition, he was an illustrator for various magazines in the 1920s and 30s. For more on Robert Wildhack, visit this lovely biography.

Corn Festival

We went to the Corn Festival yesterday. I've wanted to do this since we lived in the Old Place.

We drove and drove and drove out to the Corn Festival. They had tons of parking. First impressions? Mrguy said "It's like the Aloha Festival, without the Aloha".

The vintage car show was very cool. We fixated on this Streamline-shaped van until we realized that it was a fantasy car. The fellow next to it seemed sad that his car was getting less attention, and rightly so. His impala had sweet flame detailing and the interior upholstery also had flame accents in *alligator*.

Festive!

We had both kinds of corn (boiled and grilled), and avoided corn in a cup, which was the third offering. The corn was yummy and we ate it in the beer tent, while sipping a "microbrew" (Sierra Nevada!!!) and listening to a band do a lot of modern country rock songs.

Altogether pleasant, but it was almost 100 degrees out there. I got whomped bad. Spent the evening recovering from the headache and heat exhaustion while watching Tokyo Drifter.

I see much potential for enhancement, here. If you're going to have a corn festival:

1) More corn signage and a mascot on site at all times. I really look forward to corn photo opportunities. Perhaps a giant corn with a cut-out to put your face in so you can see what you'd look like as an ear of corn with legs
2) Ask every vendor booth to have at least one corn item. How sweet would it have been to have a henna tattoo of an ear of corn?
3) Ask all of the food booths feature a corn specialty. I would have loved it if the bbq guys had roasted corn with sauce, and the Thai booth could have added some corn to its Pad Thai.

That said, we had a great time. I'll need to add something to my bucket list again, because now I've been to the Corn Festival.

Jim

According to my recent blood work, cheese and I also have to break up. Oh well. It was bound to happen. And now it's time to get serious about exercising a little. The twice a week Pilates doesn't really count.

Hearing about this, Tiny But Mighty decided that I needed to use the gym. She showed me how to use Netflix and my iPod to watch movies (a bonus), and how to get on the elliptical machine. I really don't care for it, but whatever.

I lasted 11 minutes. My legs burned at the beginning and I sweated profusely. I know that you're pitying me at this point but I made it 6 minutes more than I intended to or thought I could :) The 1965 film Hawaii was a poor choice for viewing, however. It's slow, it's brown (haven't these people been there?) and it's in Scope, so it's even harder to see on an iPod. But I was willing to try it again today.

I made my goal of 15 minutes today, but it was a stretch. Seems mrguy has taken control of the Netflix queue and was in the middle of watching Metropolis. It's visually stunning, but there's no dialogue.

NEED DIALOGUE

Thursday I will try for 20 minutes and I will find something better to watch. I really want to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but they're not streaming at the moment.

AN UPDATE: X of X's Motors has agreed to send me no more weird promotions. Ahhh.