We’re in the midst of quite the cold snap here in The 716, but…let’s get a grip here, shall we? My car’s dashboard thermometer yesterday morning:
No, it was not that cold. We’re in Buffalo, not Minneapolis.
Sheesh!
And now, cats.
For lack of anything else to post today, here are Remy and Rosa fighting over the heat register. This particular heat register is the only one in our house that is set into the floor. All the rest of them are set into the baseboards, so this one has particular cachet for the cats.
That register is also right behind where I sit at our dining room table to do stuff, so on cold winter mornings when I’m just trying to warm up, having a cat absorbing all of the heat from the heat register closest to my position is just great.
Cats, I tell you.
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Rainbows, Moonbows, Sunsets, and the Stars: Adventures beneath the Hawaiian sky
So much of one’s time in Hawaii is spent looking up, or out. Up to the sky, or out to where the sky meets the sea.
And there’s a rainbow almost every day.
In Buffalo, I might get to see a rainbow three or four times a year. In Hawaii, there were rainbows almost every day. I’d get up, make coffee, go to the balcony to greet the morning, look to the right (west) to the rain clouds descending (and breaking up) from the mountains, and…rainbows.
And then there were the sunsets, and the lingering light once the sun was down:
On this trip, the planets got into the act. Here, from top to bottom, are Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus:
One morning I was awake quite early, so I got up at 6:00am…just in time to see Orion setting. Orion is a winter constellation, which I associate with the colder times of year…which of course this is, even in Hawaii, though it doesn’t seem like it.
The most magical skyward sight of all, though, was something I’d never seen before, something I don’t even think I knew was possible until late one night, on a drizzly evening, The Wife and I both saw it at the same time: a moonbow. Though we didn’t see much of the moon on our trip, because we were mostly facing south so its path through the Hawaiian sky was mostly behind us and out of view from our south-facing balcony, there was a full moon while we were there, and on that night its light was bright enough to shine through the water droplets in the air. The result was this:
Hawaii is quite a place for those of us who find magic in the sky….
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“I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right”: A MAGNUM geek visits Paradise
Longtime readers may remember that I was a big fan of the show Magnum PI back in the day. That is, the original show, the one that ran in the 1980s, and not the new reboot show that is running, well, now. (Nothing against the current incarnation, which I’ve watched a couple of times; it seems like a perfectly acceptable procedural show, but it’s never going to replace the original for me.) Being in Hawaii, where Magnum was set, gave me a chance to see some familiar locations from the show up close.
The biggest draw for an old Magnum fan would almost certainly have been the old estate that on the show doubled as “Robin’s Nest”, the Hawaii estate of the famed novelist Robin Masters, for whom Thomas Magnum and the estate’s major domo, Jonathan Quayle Higgins, worked. This estate was on the eastern shore of Oahu, and we did drive past where it was…but note the past tense there. Sadly, the location–in real life, the Anderson Estate–was demolished a couple of years ago after a long period of neglect. However, we did stop at a beach park a mile or so down the road from where the Anderson Estate once stood, and I took this photo of Manana Island, which is now a bird sanctuary:
You could often see that island in the distance when Magnum was swimming in Mr. Masters’s tidal pool.
Along the same shore, to the south (we drove by this first, actually), we stopped at an overlook with a stunning view. (Overlooks with stunning views are rather a thing in Hawaii!) Here’s a bit of that view, isolated:
That little island with the building on it, connected by bridge to Oahu, is the Makai Research Pier, belonging to Makai Ocean Engineering, a company that works on oceanic tech like sea cables and that sort of thing. That pier doubled, on Magnum PI, as the headquarters for Island Hoppers, the helicopter excursion business run by Magnum’s buddy, Theodore Calvin (TC).
I didn’t realize this at the time, but the lookout where I took that photo, Makapu’u Lookout, is on the same cliffs that become Makapu’u Point, a bit farther to the east. We briefly stopped there but realized that the hiking trail was much longer and more strenuous than we really felt up to that day, so we didn’t go…but it ends at Makapu’u Lighthouse:
Fans of Magnum will remember this lighthouse for one of the series’s most surprising, and unnerving, episode endings. In the episode “Faith and Beggorah”, there’s a subplot where Magnum is supposed to be investigating if a boxer’s wife is cheating on him. In the episode’s final scene, Rick and TC are watching from a distance as the wife and her putative boyfriend-on-the-side are at this lighthouse–but they are arguing constantly. We can’t hear what they’re saying, but Rick is bored because they can’t prove that she’s cheating on the husband if all they ever see her doing is yelling at the boyfriend. Rick is watching through a telescopic camera lens, while TC is lazily dozing off to the side. TC says “Oh, just keep watching, maybe something interesting will happen”…and at that moment, the boyfriend picks the woman up and tosses her off the lighthouse and down the cliffs. Yikes!
Anyway.
Then there’s this place, the War Memorial Natatorium in Waikiki. This was right down the street from our resort, and yet, I never walked down to get a closer look, alas! Next time, I swear! (Unless it gets torn down, which is apparently a possibility as this location has been an ongoing preservation struggle for a while.)
Built to honor the veterans and fallen of World War I, the Natatorium is not unlike all the various “War Memorial Stadiums” built across America, except that this one is a salt-water swimming pool. It has been closed for decades and is, as noted, an ongoing subject of debate between preservation and demolition. On Magnum, it featured prominently during the climax of an episode titled “Death and Taxes”, where a serial killer forms a fixation on Magnum, for some reason that the episode leaves unstated (to creepy effect).
Some places I did not get pictures of include the Iolani Palace, used often on the show as the location for various government agencies (such as when Magnum had dealings with the local PD)–
Also Honolulu’s Chinatown, which we passed through twice, once by car and once on the bus. This area served as location for when Magnum PI did stories set in the “seedier” part of town, such as the show’s fictional Vietnamese neighborhood, “Little Saigon”.
There’s something exciting about seeing places you only know through movies and television, isn’t there? This is not a Magnum location, but it is one of the most famous locations in movie history, thanks to a very steamy scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity:
And I didn’t get into any places where Elvis Presley filmed at all, I’m sorry to say. We did go to Pearl Harbor, though, and Elvis Presley was a major contributor that fundraising for the Arizona Memorial back in 1961.
It’s also always interesting to note how much poetic and cinematic license play into how movie and teevee locations work! There’s a Magnum PI episode from late in the show’s run where everyone is after a literal buried treasure, and after some tromping through the wilderness they all end up jumping off a cliff into a pool with a waterfall in order to grab some of the money that has ended up floating there. (I don’t remember the particulars.) I looked this up, figuring it to be located someplace deep in the island’s mountainous interior, but…not so! It turns out that if you stand on that exact spot, in no direction are you more than a couple hundred feet from a parking lot or a four-lane highway.
Anyway, folks, be careful when arranging your vacations, because if the place you’re going is where filming took place for a movie or show a member of your party is a big fan of, you’re going to hear about it. A lot.
Even if the place that person sees has nothing to do with the movie or show being mentioned, like this revolving restaurant in Waikiki. Doesn’t it look a bit like Piz Gloria, the mountaintop lair of Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service???
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Snowy….
A week ago, we were enjoying sunny skies by the side of the sea. Now, we’re back home and enjoying this:
It was a light snowfall and it all melted before I even got up this morning. And it was pretty.
I loved the place with the mountains and the waters and I have no intention of not returning someday…but this is home.
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Cloudy Days in Paradise
Only two days remain in our Hawaiian adventure. This morning we woke up for the first time to cloudy skies. Since gray skies tend to be the norm for Buffalo in winter–a season that I find beautiful in many ways, in ways that incorporate the gray skies, even though I have to admit that the gray gets to be too much at times–this almost feels like Hawaii is trying to prepare us for our return home.
Nice try, Paradise, but I’m not ready. Nine full days here will turn out to be many things, almost all of them wonderful, but they will not be ‘enough’.
I’m already thinking of how to return….
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The sea and the sky above it
“It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.” –Haruki Murakami
I wrote the other day about the somewhat overwhelming nature of the sea here in Hawaii. Over the days since, I have come to realize that the sky is every bit as overwhelming here.
And like the sea, the sky is astonishing here no matter what time of day. This city gleams with brilliant light, but as you stand on the street in front of our hotel at night, you see the brilliant light on one side…and the ink-black dome of the sky on the other. Occasionally in the dark will be broken by the flashing lights of an airplane or helicopter. The moon’s path does not bring it into view from our balcony–a shame that, as there is a full moon very soon–and I haven’t been able to make out many stars.
But the other morning I was up at 5am–sleep comes easier, but my body still thought it was mid-morning–and I went out on the balcony to read and to write and to think and listen to the waves and the birds in the banyan tree and the occasional cars. I looked eastward–southeast, actually–and spotted a couple of stars, and then a few more. And then I knew.
The Hunter.
Orion the Hunter was setting, and the bright star off to the left was Sirius, brightest star in our sky, at home in its own constellation, Canus Major.
Orion has always been my favorite constellation, for many reasons. It’s a big part of why I love the winter sky more than the summer one, and to see it for the first time this winter, while here on this journey, was an unexpected gift.
You’re looking good, Orion! Soon I’ll see you in your normal setting soon…but not too soon. I’m not quite done here.
As for the sky at other times, well…oh, this place.
For a bigger resolution of that last one, go here. I’m slowly getting a lot of my photos from here organized on Flickr, but bear with me as content management isn’t exactly high on my priority list on this vacation!
More later!
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“I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams”
It is, Red. It is.
I didn’t want to blog about this until we were at the very least on the plane (I felt like I was jinxing it by even pre-scheduling a Daily Dose of Christmas post obliquely referring to it!) but…we are in Hawaii.
Specifically, Oahu. More specifically, Waikiki.
Strange thing about Hawaii…it’s never been a place I’ve really even dreamed about visiting, because for many years it just didn’t even feel like a possibility. And even this trip owes everything to someone else’s good graces (Thanks, Mom!). But…well, it’s just a place, isn’t it? It’s a place where people live and work and do stuff. They just do it in the shadows of lushly green mountains and by the side of a wide blue sea.
Just a place.
But what a place!
I mean…come on now.
And then there’s the sea.
Have you ever wondered why the word sea is so much more packed with poetry and romance than the word ocean? Maybe it’s because the sea is a much more primal concept, a more basic one. I know that mariners think of the Great Lakes as seas in their own right. Oceans are specific things. But on this particular morning, I find myself remembering one of my favorite quotes (which I should probably track down at some point in its actual context):
The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea. (Isak Dinesen)
Well, like many others, I’ve had sweat and tears in damned good measure. Let’s give the sea a try, shall we?
For someone who loves water, who can’t fathom the idea of living in a place where water is a scarcity (Phoenix? Vegas? Never!), there’s still something about the sea that overwhelms my brain on a primal level. My whole life has been spent near water, but I think of streams in a wood, waterfalls, bubbling small pools, swimming holes, rivers, lakes, ponds, whitewater rapids. The sea, though, is something else. You come to the sea and you realize that eventually, on this world of ours, eventually all the water comes back to the sea.
Anyway, those are my somewhat jet-lagged and under-caffeinated thoughts on this, the first morning I’ve awoken to pink clouds over a darkened sea where people are already surfing. Now, we’re gonna try to find some coffee and get our rental car and see what a Hawaiian grocery store is like. As one does.
Further dispatches as events warrant!
(And the Daily Dose of Christmas is prescheduled for every day until the 25th, so we have that going for us, at least!)
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And now, an airplane.
Just because, here’s a cool-looking plane. It’s meant for really big cargo, and it’s called–get this–the “Super Guppy”.
You can see the full size version of this here.
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Speaking of made-up “holidays”….
…today is, according to someone, Pie In The Face Day!
If you Google it, several dates come up (July 1 is one), but the most common is November 27. I’ve no idea why November 27 is the date for this, unless the idea is that November 27 is usually after Thanksgiving, so there’s likely to be leftover pie left about (though pumpkin pie would never be my choice for this application). Seems to me the birthdate of one of the fine comedy film stars of a century ago: perhaps Ben Turpin’s on September 19, as Turpin is thought to be the first recipient on film of a pie in the face, or maybe Mabel Normand’s on November 9, as she is sometimes credited with throwing the first pie in a face. This era of film history is pretty hazy, since most of the films don’t even exist anymore, and surely the notion of dispatching messy food into someone’s face didn’t just come out of nowhere, never done before, sometime in the 1910s.
Of course, I grew up seeing people getting pied all the time on shows in the 70s, both on variety shows and sitcoms. Three’s Company had a memorable episode in which every cast member was on the receiving end:
And variety shows! Remember the Mike Douglas Show? They had Moe of the Three Stooges on once to declaim on pieing, and since HEE HAW was commonly on in my household during my formative years, it’s not hard to look back at that show and see more bits of my personality locking into place:
I mean, really: Between the ages of 4 and, say, 9, I was exposed to: Star Wars, Star Trek, Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, John Williams, bib overalls, and pies in the face. That’s a lot of influence to pack into a few years!
The pie in the face continues trucking right along, though it maybe isn’t quite the comedic staple it once was. You still see it showing up these days in fundraisers (“If we raise $1000 for St. Bob’s Hospital, Dr. Weisenheimer will get a pie in the face!”) and still once in a while in political protest (a scenario of which I am not a fan, to be honest). A pie in the face is the payoff in a lot of pranks nowadays (example), and again I’m not a big fan of this: the whole “unwitting victim” thing might work in a fictional comedy, but less so in real life, I think. A new odd subset of the pie in the face is sports mascots that have made pies a part of their schtick; these are kind of a middle-ground because the recipients aren’t entirely unwitting. If you see these mascots coming in your direction, you probably know a pie is ending up in someone’s face, so you can take measures to ensure it’s not yours, maybe! (And if it happens to someone you’re with, be prepared for their natural reaction to you laughing at them.)
There was a pie fad in baseball several years ago, when pies would be dispatched post-victory into the faces of players who had performed on-field heroics, but sadly, baseball’s Fun Police, fearing pie-related injury, apparently put the kibosh on that:
And in pandemic times such as ours, the pie in the face doesn’t have to be forgotten! It just takes good aim, like Blake Edwards demonstrates in this production photo from The Great Race:
In comedy situations, obviously the usual reaction is going to be stunned indignation:
But a pie in the face can also be an occasion for happiness and cheer, as these two friends apparently demonstrate:
More recently, just the other day friend of this blog Roger Green pointed out a recent dearth of pie-related content around here. This has certainly not been for lack of trying, though it’s not a frequent thing. Last fall a friend and former coworker of mine, who is also an amateur actress and has played a part in previous pie-related shenanigans, and I attempted collaborating on a “How to Give and Receive a Pie in the Face” video. It was fun to shoot, but alas, the footage really isn’t usable, because it was a really windy day. Not only did the camera mike pick up the wind howling (it actually makes the day sound worse than it was), but the wind actually made the camera vibrate slightly! We hope to film the concept again at some point, using a better camera-and-mike set-up, but I am able to cull stills from the footage:
More recently, this same friend and I got together to film a short gift exchange when she got a new lucrative job. We celebrated with an exchange of gifts: I gave her a bottle of rum that she and her husband like, and she gave me a pie in the face.
That was no store-bought pie, either–I actually made that thing for the express purpose being smashed in my face. The thing had to weigh a good two pounds! I felt that pie when it landed. Didn’t hurt, though! It should never hurt!
So, Happy Pie in the Face Day, y’all! If you celebrate, pie responsibly: Don’t surprise your recipient, don’t hit them so hard it hurts, and don’t use shaving cream! And if you’re on the receiving end, well–just laugh and enjoy it. And then go get a towel.