Friend Stuff

I reconnected with an old friend last week. Neither of us is quite sure why we haven't been in touch.

I do better with scheduled togetherness. Otherwise I'm sure I'm bothering someone or it would be an intrusion. Setting our zoom schedule today.

In other news, on Sunday I went out to lunch with one of our bandmates. I had Chuchitos, in honor of our friend's Uncle Chooch, who I have never met but whose name I adore. Friend had fried chicken.

Then I went to a friend's house and took a walk with her 88 year old dad, who is recovering from a fall. Afterward he told her I was a "force of nature". I was on my best behavior! She said that he meant more like I'm a good egg. Whew. 

Then, back to the house where the man's son-in-law was having a beer with mrguy. I cooked pasta shells with beef marinara while the guys talked, and we ate together. It felt like a weekend.

This week's viewing:

• Renovation Aloha, Home Town, Sweet Magnolias (these are things we can watch while chewing). Then How To Get To Heaven From Belfast. Man, that's a great show.

Summer House!!

I wish I could have those three hours back. Everybody was going crazy over the scandal happening on that show so I put in a little time watching the reunion episodes. I'm not otherwise familiar with the show. 

Boy was that dull. The people who shocked all of their friends by getting together are bad tv. They just stared blankly into space and shrugged a lot. The guy half of this couple just lied a bunch without blinking and justified his cheating on girls as "just what I do", while his beloved sat next to him impassively.

How can you make this story so boring, while spending ten hours filming it?

Sweet Magnolias. Those Bitches!

We're watching whatever season this is of Sweet Magnolias. I have enjoyed this show even though it's a sweetly terrible throwback. We decided to return to it after a long absence. For some reason I care about these characters, but...

Those bitches!! Your best friend puts on a surprise Halloween wedding for herself and her man. You two get so bent out of shape that the day after your best friend's wedding, when she's up in the clouds with happiness and returns to her home, you sit on her porch, laying in wait, and then drag her for two pages of dialogue about how you two didn't get to participate in the planning of the wedding.

Well, characters on a show based on a book that could have been better, you probably participated in and were happy about the first wedding to that guy Bill, who they killed off at the end of this episode so that we can all come together in sadness. I will not be sorry to see Will Wheaton's (correction: Chris Klein's) squinty face struggling through the terrible dialogue he's given.

Mrguy says he smells another death. This show loves a death.

My prediction: Dana Sue's hot husband whatsisface is next. He tripped while helping Coach Cal move into his new wife's house. Bet he has ALS, which is just the kid of lingering disease they give a man on these shows.

Can I still label this "television"? I'm too old to know. "Content"?

Whatever

Easter 2025

It's about the colors.

My plan for today was to dye some eggs. I just like color. Color makes me happy. I had saved some tablets from last year, so I was ready to go.

But first! An old old friend contacted me to ask if I wanted to pick his ume. Heckyeah! I went over to his place with a grabber and a picker and a bag. We talked for an hour, catching up on all kinds of stuff. So good! 

Here's the tree, and the haul.

I went to the Japanese market and bought shochu and rock sugar. "Getting an early start on umeshu?" said the checker. I boasted that I had just finished picking mine.

Then I did a drop off at Goodwill. Ahhhh. Been meaning to do that for a long time.

After a big shop at the supermarket and a very long chat with my sister I got to coloring the eggs. I was hoping that I would make a three-peat of making a glamorous black egg, but I couldn't make it happen. Maybe I needed fresh dye. But what I *did* make was an egg that looked exactly like a pickle. Boy kitten needed to examine it.

The day wraps up with us watching baseball on our new tv that mrguy bought while I was gone. The previous tv was quite elderly, and it seemed to have some sort of allergy to our AppleTV which caused it to periodically make a big cracking sound and go blank. We put our foot down after we watched a show where we couldn't figure out what the characters were saying at all. 

All better now, plus a slightly bigger screen with a slightly more crisp display. Not getting any younger. I'll take it!

Happy Easter, everyone.

The Day of the Sat

I am loving the weekend. It's gorgeous outside -- all grey and beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, my beautiful boy is enjoying the change of scenery now that he has the run of the house. He loves to sleep on my dad's chair in the afternoon. And he is now king of the pillow in the window.

And because he has the run of the house we can't leave things out that he might want to bite, like my flannel shirt. I heard a thump and knew BK had jumped off the counter, but I did not realize that he did so with my shirt in his stinky maw.

I refer to this as an opportunity. He has given me an opportunity to applique. So last night and this morning I stitched the hole, which turned out super janky-looking. So I took a piece of Japanese fabric and stitched a character from it on top of the hole.

Adorable, but the underside still looked like garbage, so I stitched on a piece of fabric that I, in the end, realize I could have used for the original hole. No matter. I still love it.

Then I cut some fabric for another applique project, and made roasted vegetables. I would like a nap now.

This morning's accompaniment to sewing was the new Meghan Markle show. I was prepared to not like it. As I said to mrguy, she does not meet my expectations. And he looked back at me and said "She's just a lady". And he's right. I have just wished for her to thrive and cringe when she keeps making mess ups that are public (like her websites, botched corporate names and the like) that seem like things that a professional should handle for you -- once and well.

But the show isn't terrible. The episode with her friend (stylist?) was ok. The one with Mindy Kaling was over the top. When they take all their cute food and then change clothes and eat it in a gorgeously decorated potting shed that is too much. The episodes with her Argentinian polo friend and chef Roy Choi were just about right. If she can just be more authentic, she's watchable.

With one exception. The music for this show is atrocious. It's overly loud, changes tempo and theme every few minutes, and occasionally sounds like old fashioned "needle drop" music. Pick a lane, people.

She's just a lady, indeed, but she's been paid a lot to make this show and I wish, for her, that it was a little less forced. I will watch it while I do other things, but that kinda puts her in the same league as Australian Opal Hunters.

Good luck to ya!

Surgery Time

Mrguy's ladies have hammajang faces. 

Our faces are all buss.

Tuesday was a big day over here. Mrguy took our girl kitty to the eye doctor to have her eye removed. This was after half a year of trying to get that eye to perk up, including several 2-hour round trips to the eye specialist a month (each one of them including a stop by the side of the road to clean up her stress poo). He's been giving her eye drops 4x a day for months -- every option was tried. Then the eye gave up. Tuesday the eye was removed and she seems really happy. Kittenish, even.

Me? Not so much. While those guys were on their enucleation journey, I was on my way to have another basal cell removed. In the middle of my upper lip. My usual Mohs surgeon did the removal, and I really liked the anaesthetic. First they did a topical lidocaine around the area, then they did one shot that was less stingy than the usual lidocaine. Then they followed with lidocaine into the area which was now pretty numb. So that's the deal now? Much less painful than any other time I've had a shot in my lip.

They put a pressure bandage on me, and I came back two days later for the plastic surgeon to sew me up. They laid me down on the table and scrubbed the area and before I knew it the nurse was harpooning me like a whale. OLD SCHOOL. She just shoved that needle into the meat of my lip without so much as a howdy-do and let fly with the lidocaine which, as I mentioned, stings like a bitch. I think she even went through my lip at one point, as the anaesthetic was sprinking all over my face. Do I remember yelling "Fuck Meeeeee!!"? I mean I pride myself on handling injections pretty well, but I was out of control with pain.

It was at this point that I realized that my new phone had not slurped up any of the recordings that I have made myself or gotten from others. Things that I own but have dubbed (or mrguy has, tbr). I went back to my audiobook, but it's the part where Prince Harry is talking about meeting his wife, and not really good for surgery. I settled on Trevor Noah's audiobook. Not great for surgery, either. So I was listening to him describing how he and a friend made bootleg CDs for clientele in the ghetto -- not really restful.

I finally gave up on distraction when the nurse (call her Ishmael) started talking about her new niece and she and the surgeon were puzzling over the name, Freya. Neither was familiar with the name.

"It's the name of a Norse god," I lisped, from under my drape.

The ride home was long and painful and necessitated a stop at the gas station (but they have good prices out there!). Surgery #1 was only painful for a few hours. Surgery #2 had me weeping and begging for a gin and tonic, because Tylenol was really not cutting into it. I was decidedly less kittenish than the girl cat when I woke up today. I'm getting a good demonstration of how the lymphatic system works, which is interesting, and I guess the lip drains through the cheeks. My one cheek is outrageously fat. And now it's sore, too. However, after I took a bath I swear that my facial swelling diminished by 1/3. This is the after.

This weekend I will rest, and Monday I will go back to work. Sunday is Superb Owl. Maybe I'll watch that episode of What We Do In The Shadows where Nandor and Laszlo go next door and do Superb Owl with Sean, just for fun.

Sex And The City

I loved SATC as much as the next person, but people are losing their minds over the reboot. 

For years, fans wanted more Sex. Knowing this, the Hollywood press asked Kim Cattrall over and over about returning to play Samantha. She all but SHOUTED "no". Nobody seemed to listen to her or believe her, because they wanted a different answer. It became a thing.

Planning for the show moved ahead anyway. It's probably easy to say in retrospect, but SATC was a very 2000s show. Placing those characters (and those actors!) in a post Me Too world would seem like a true challenge. It's a surprise to some that the show doesn't meet expectations...and every episode is greeted by the shrieks of the damned.

The surprise surprises me, and I'm ready to stop hearing about it.

Thank you for listening to my rant.

Shark Tank Impulse Buy

When I'm at the mama's, and it's bedtime, we watch tv. For her, this means listening at a deafening volume and changing the channel every few seconds. It makes us kids bonkers, and we all employ different methodologies to cope. Sometimes I just let her do her thing, and when she gets to the end of the channels or messes up the settings, I borrow the remote, start the channels at 2 and let her rip until it's time to start over again.

Occasionally she stops for favorite things: basketball, tennis, Fox News and Shark Tank. ST is produced by Mark Burnett. I wish it were not, because I think this show is fun.

I can get the mama to watch at least two Shark Tanks in a row, and I often find myself  Googling the products. That's how I came to own an Illumibowl, which the FedEx guy just brought me. It is a light for your toilet bowl, and just might be the right night light for the sweet mama, since most night lights do not work in her bathroom.

Here it is in action in my darkest bathroom, which is dark like the mama's and needs some light for visitors. It works on battery and is activated by a motion sensor. Here it is in white. "Classy!"

But white is not the only option, and once it gets going it cycles through several colors. You can pick one, or let it rotate through them all. I like pink, of course, but found that it's hard to photograph properly.
 

 

Now I have to see whether Mom likes it (on the "classy" white setting, of course). She won't care for green.

Bayorr Update

A few Mondays ago I had settled in for a long winter's nap (really, a night of CNN and Vanderpump Rules). 

The phone rang. It's my "sister from another mister". Our moms were life-long best friends.

"Turn on The Bachelor," she says.

I tune in just in time to see the ladies of this season sitting around the living room in our vacation house. They were sitting on the weird wood burl coffee table where my Cheez-it and Jelly Belly bowls reside for one hallowed week every summer.

Hilarious. 

One of those girls sat in the bear poop chair. I saw it.

How 'bout that?!

Hawaii 2017 Day 6

We turned the corner on the week, but the hits kept coming.

On Monday we caught the bus to one of the hotels. That particular hotel has a ukulele store in the lobby. Mrguy was in the market for a new instrument. Me too.

You see I've been having an ukulele crisis of faith. I have realized that I hate the sound of the Martin tenor uke I've been playing for 30 years. But it's my baby. I have never felt comfortable with a different instrument. I have other ukes, but none of them is one I'd gig with. So I have been considering either getting a Tahitian uke (brighter sound, extra strings) or getting a different pickup for my Martin tenor. 

A different solution presented itself at the hotel ukulele store. They had everything, including this odd Kanile'a 5-string. It's light. It feels just like my Martin tenor. It has two A strings. It was inexpensive (for a Kanile'a). I bought it. I wish it had a satin finish, but you can't have everything. I'm happy.

We took the uke to the Japanese food court, which didn't really wow us. So we cut our losses, had a rice ball to tide us over, and ate lunch at Maui Brewing. With my new uke.

Later on, back at the hotel, we did some genealogy sleuthing and general hanging out and posting to Facebook and such and were getting razzed by a friend because we hadn't had a mai tai while in town. We ordered food delivered, and while we were waiting for it we went downstairs to the little restaurant the hotel has recently opened and drank the bartender's first-ever mai tai. 

It was fine, and satisfied our fb friends. But while we were drinking it at the bar, something else happened. We somehow got sucked into watching The Voice, despite the fact that it was on mute, with subtitles. We felt like anthropologists. "How does this work?" Anyhoo, on vacation you do things differently, so when our food arrived we ate it while watching The Voice in our room. And now we are hooked.

Words to the Housewives

I'm addicted to almost every show in the Real Housewives franchise. 

The shows used to be voyeuristic and banal. Somewhere along the way (I blame you, New Jersey!) each of these shows became about conflict. Crazy conflict.

I need to get the following observations off of my chest.

Atlanta
NeNe: you gotta take responsibility for your actions and deliver a meaningful apology or your friends won't like you. Not that you care.

Kenya: don't manipulate the situation or nobody will listen to you or respect you.
Not that you care.

New York
Carole: I don't like Aviva's behavior, but I lost respect for you when you persisted in calling her names in your blog.

Beverly Hills
I don't know which of you to believe. That's not o.k.

and Vanderpump Rules
Your reunion was one of the most boring moments in Bravo franchises. You guys are so shallow.


And so am I for watching you.

Not that you care.

The Old Place. Whale Edition

Every Labor Day I think of the heroin story, but I've already told you that.

Instead I'll tell you this tale from the Old Place.

The Old Place was extremely hot in the summer. We lived in an old brick building next to the Petroleum and Nuclear Worker's Union Hall. On summer days the house would be cool until evening, when the bricks would expel the heat they'd been collecting all day. Some nights it would be 90 degrees at midnight, and rising. Kinda awful. However I don't think we ever paid more than $500 bucks a month for this place and I was on disability so this was the perfect spot for us during those years.

About a dozen years ago, on a hot Thursday in late August, we were watching ER. The teaser for the 11 o'clock news came on saying that a whale had washed up on the coast of our town. Our little beach was maybe 200 feet across, so we assumed that they meant the oceanside beach of the same name.

We waited for the news, and, sure enough! We recognized our little beach and the burned-out pier. Crazy! We grabbed our flashlight and walked down to the beach. There we found another couple who had obviously watched the news also. Our lights made out the shape of the whale. Not much to see, but I would come down the next day and see him in daylight.

The morning paper said that we were about to have a heat wave on the weekend. It was pretty warm by the time I left the house. I stepped out and it smelled...a little "whale-y". Poor whale. According to the Fish and Game guy I met, the whale was a juvenile female, had been deceased for quite a while and wasn't in his jurisdiction. The joy of living in an unincorporated area. "So what's going to happen with the whale?" I asked him, "I don't know," he said. Uh-oh.

I ran into a neighbor on the way back home and we talked a bit about the whale, the smell, and the upcoming heat wave.

Two days later I saw the same neighbor and commented that it was smelling a lot less whale-y. He said "You know why, right?" "Me and Bob..." (anything that started with those three words could not be good. Bob kept a pit bull chained to his porch behind our house, he didn't have a lick of sense and he owned guns) "went out in my boat, tied a rope to its tail, and towed it into the bay. Then we shot it full of holes." He seemed surprised that it didn't sink. All he knew was that he didn't want the smelly whale on our beach during a heat wave. I could tell that in some weird way he thought it was his civic responsibility to do something with the whale. He lived next door to me and also owned guns, so I wasn't going to disagree.

One week later, on Thursday, we saw the teaser for the news: "Another whale has washed up in the area." It was clearly the same whale, and I could see the bullet holes this time. It had floated into another county, on the beach fronting a fancy neighborhood, just in time for the heat wave.

I almost had an image to illustrate this post.

That first smelly day on the beach I used the last shot on my camera to take a picture of the whale. When I got my film back, the whale shot wasn't there.

So ends the story of the whale.

The Week In Prettiness

Thank you, visitors from Japan!

Hawaii 2011, Day 7

We're getting into the final stretch, here!

On Tuesday we went to Kailua via Waimanalo. We made our pilgrimage to the Akebono statue. Then we went to the nuts and ukulele store next door. The sweet guy who owned it wasn't there, and it just didn't have the same vibe. I don't need to go back (except to see the statue).

Then we went to Kailua Beach Park, which we'd been hoping to do for years. It was lovely. We found some shade in an area that had a minimum number of screaming children and relaxed for a bit. It was sooo beautiful.

They also use a beautiful font to mark the women's room:

Hunger overtook us, so we went into town to look for Ba-Le, the Vietnamese sandwich shop that we had loved so much last time. Waaaah! Not only closed, but also fenced off.

Reaching into his new/old book on okazuya, mrguy decided we needed to go to an okazuya in Kailua. It was in a strip mall far away from town. It was just empty store fronts, the place where you go to get your vehicle registered, the okazuya and a bakery. We went into the okazuya and they hardly had any food left. Just some oden items bobbing around in broth. Clearly it was going to take us a while to find something to eat, so I suggested we go to the nearby Nene Goose Bakery for a beverage. mrguy noticed this review that said that their specialty was mochi anpan. No idea what that was, so we bought some.

We took a seat outside a salon on some plastic chairs. And then the ladies who were ahead of us at the bakery struck up a conversation.

Roughly 40 minutes later we parted after having had the BEST conversation of our trip. They were very surprised to see us in this out of the way spot eating mochi anpan, and extra surprised when they figured out that we were tourists. One of the women was from Waimanalo, so I mentioned that we had just made our pilgrimage to the Akebono statue. Then we explained that we were big sumo fans. Turns out that this woman is Konishiki's sister-in-law, so that started a long conversation about Hawaiians in sumo (one of my favorite topics), Jesse's (Takamiyama's) entry into sumo, how much this woman thought of Chiyonofuji, and the kindness and smarts of the local guys who went to Japan to enter sumo. I can barely have a conversation about sumo anywhere I go, so it was a real pleasure to hang out with these ladies and talk about sumo and local goodness. We asked them what they like to do when they're on vacation and the woman from Waimanalo went into a hilarious monologue about booking a hotel room in Waikiki for her family, using every amenity and never leaving the hotel.

They were curious about the other kinds of stuff we do when we're on the island, so we talked about music. Turns out that one of the new joints next to the Akebono statue in Waimanalo is owned by the family of one of these ladies. It is a bar with live music and we have their blessing that we'd fit in o.k. This will be on our list for next time.

Our ladies also knew where Ba-Le had gone. It's one of their favorite places to eat also, which further blew their minds. With their help we found it and had a yummy lunch. Coconut taro tapioca? Yum.


Then we went to Hungry Ear Records, always great, and the antique stores. I never need to go to those stores again. Happy to sit in the car while someone else does it. That one guy is still extra grumpy and the lady who owns his place and the other place has TOO MUCH STUFF!

Later that afternoon, the farmer's daughter met us over at the Ilikai Bar & Grill for a few sets of Waipuna. They have been joined by David Kamakahi in this incarnation, and were really great. Much better in person because they're so dialed into each other and you get Kale Hannah's dry wit. He's the bass player from Project Kalo Patch who, at the end of their set at Aku Bone last visit, heckled us from the stage, saying "We played an extra twenty minutes because you was late". This time his between-song banter included trying to auction off young David Kamakahi. Funny.

We felt inspired after seeing Waipuna. Can't wait to see them again, and hope to catch the farmer's daughter the next time as well.

Hawaii 2011, Day 6

We started our day with breakfast at Ihop. Sometimes only an egg breakfast would do. Then we went to see some of our favorites in Kaimuki. Some of my favorite facades are hanging in:

The Goodwill didn't have the good stuff we remembered. But Harry's Music, where Jerry Byrd used to teach steel guitar, is still in business and as idiosyncratic as ever. I hope they stay in business for a billion years.

It was blazing hot and we were somehow hungry so we had lunch at Town. Town continues to be a great restaurant at a more than reasonable price. The Town Lemonade is still as full of parsley goodness as I remember.

 

Then back to the convention center for the exhibit crit session and appraisal. Appraisal? Not for me. I slunk off. Time for more new stuff with mrguy.

I had found Chuck's Cellar in some of my pre-trip research, and it seemed like it had been there forever and could be cool. This is mrguy's new favorite place. It's cool, very dark, and is an old school place to have a steak or lobster dinner. There is also a long bar for those who are not as interested in dinner. I had thought that Betty Loo Taylor would be the musical entertainment for the evening, but it turned out to be Satomi, who mrguy had read about in the New York Times. She was really great.

Everything about this place was great, to tell the truth, except for the food, but that's not why we were there. No crying children. Air conditioning. Happy hour. Slinky jazz. And a shout out to our bartender, Virginia, who genuinely likes people and is good company. We wished that The Big Guy could have been there with us. He would have loved it, and we'll be back.

The night was not over. We had heard that there was a viewing party for Hawaii Five-0 at Apartm3nt. This consolidated many favorite things into one place: Hawaii, Hawaii Five-0 and Century Center, one of my fave buildings.  This interior detail is a quotation of the exterior detail on the lower floors. Above? A large mirrored high-rise.

Apartm3nt is in this building and was causing us to enter. So good! It was Monday, so the place was pretty empty. Our waitress was dressed in satin shorts, like a cigarette girl. Overhead, multiple flatscreens showed the movie Labyrinth. Here's the nightly special:

We supped and hoped that others would arrive to watch Hawaii Five-0 with us. Finally a table of people arrived to join the party, and one of them was an actor who had appeared in this episode (and next week's). He was excited and his family was excited. Local flavor :) This episode also featured the Wailana Coffee House, a local landmark which is right next door to the hotel where we were staying. We could actually tell that from one shot to the next, a person being pursued would not have ended up where the camera went. So fun!

At long last we went home, very satisfied with our day. Here's to new stuff!!

Post-Surgery Update

This year I've been having a little of this and a little of that removed, at the request of my dermatologist. I find things, he biopsies them, and my instincts have been pretty good. Nothing serious, but a tedious number of biopsies and Mohs surgeries.

Today's Mohs surgery has left me looking like an electron microscope view of an insect, with one squinty eye and a fat cheek that's turning green. All the goo seems to have drained into one half of my top lip, and that's large and purpling. Were it not for my blog rules I'd give you a photo. Suffice to say it's not pretty and my anaesthetic was wearing off as the doctor was stitching. Ouch.

Remarkably I kept dozing off during the doctor's quilting bee, despite being under only local anaesthetic.

I only have Tylenol to numb the pain, but happily Bravo played most of Season 2 of Real Housewives of New York, which was quite diverting.

Thank you, Bravo, I needed that.

NY Trip 2010 Travel

Ahhh. Vacation.

After a poopy summer of losing Paws and losing the Hawaiian band and thinking that family vacation would kiss our boo-boos and having it cause them instead, we were ready to vacate. As if to kick us out the door, work was completely gnarly on my last day, as well.

Chili's! Take me away!

Yep. Got to the airport, and found margaritas and tabloids within feet of our gate.

I had never been to Chili's, but it was a welcome refuge from the lack of relaxation that preceded it. So was Virgin Atlantic's fine choice of late night programming: infomercials.

I had forgotten how much I like infomercials. When I worked nights at the restaurant, I would stay up late and try to find some fine programming. When that failed me, I'd watch infomercials. My favorites were the ones selling contraptions that converted your hair into fancy sculptures and the ones for Rio hair straightener. So mild that you can eat it! But it made people's hair fall out. On the plane I watched a very cheesy Ron Popiel knife infomercial, and an excellent infomercial about scalp and eyebrow paint.

The trip would have been unremarkable if we hadn't been flying in on the tail end of Hurricane Natalie. We started our descent and the captain came on to let us know 1) that the guy who descended right before us had some trouble, 2) that we were going to circle for a while but 3) we only had a half hour's worth of gas. I went back to sleep. You figure it out, Captain.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, looks pleasant from what I saw of it. Some people got off the plane and took other transportation. I don't really know what happened, but eventually we got to JFK.

Whew.

Sports Blather

What is it about the murmurings of sports announcers that can make a person so relaxed?

One of my favorite memories of last year involves cruising in my car down a main drag on a Saturday, with the sun warming my car and JM doing the baseball play-by-play on the radio. Yum.

I was thinking about this this morning because I detest football but love hearing John Madden talk. Love it!

Then there's sumo. We watch with the Japanese audio commentary because a) it seems weird to listen to people talking about sumo in English and b) we don't know how to make our television pick up the second audio channel. About half of the time we watch, mrguy starts to drift off. Why? The soothing sound of sports.

In several weeks, we'll be hearing both in Japanese in person.

Can't wait.

Virtual Hawaiian Vacation, Days 3 and 4

Our VHV crossed paths with awards season yesterday. We had a Hawaiian-themed menu and outfits. Two of the ladies of Three Letters and one willing husband came over to watch. One of the ladies came in full-on Hawaiian wear, bearing bacon-wrapped pineapple. Yum.

We watched the red carpet (amazing how they broadcast all of the forklift industry awards!) and squealed appreciatively when our forklifts were recognized for their sturdiness and safety record.

After the awards after parties we drank mai tais, ate ice cream (I made chocolate ice cream with candied yuzu peel) and watched the sumo basho. Going into that day's matches there were nine guys in first, so it was pretty exciting. I think one of my ladies really liked the sumo :)

Today we bought a new bed frame, went to look at mattresses that don't need to be stuffed with money because they're *that* expensive and ate at a groovy Pakistani restaurant.

Sounds pretty un-Hawaiian, but we did just finish playing uke together, mrguy and I.

Sumo Mascots

It's week two of the autumn sumo basho. In order for me to be able to view it, we splurged and ordered TV Japan.

First, TV Japan is awesome. We've watched a soap opera about mochi and a show that seemed to be all in pantomime and about manga, starring the Japanese "Mac Guy" in the Apple commercials. One night we watched an in-depth interview with a dj from WFMU. And a talk show that had a catsup tasting.

All this and sumo. Two hours of it, every day, broadcast in the wee hours. We record it. I'm a few days behind in my viewing.

What I watched last night was terrific (I think it was day five of the basho). We got to see an in-depth interview with one of the Mongolian wrestlers and watch him ride his Mongolian horse that looks like Cousin It. Chiyonofuji did color commentary that evening, and this was also the night that they debuted the new sumo mascot.

Ouch. I could have done without that part.

I am of the opinion that sumo does not need a mascot. The little friend, above, is the best looking of the bunch, but they've created a stuffed version of him that looks like the angriest, naked-est Muppet. It's not even cute. Mascots are supposed to be cute.

If this is the best idea you have for revitalizing the sport, people, what's next? 

Dot racing?