Aunty Alicia takes us to the movies

I apologize for the typos..I barely have enough time to form a cohesive sentence, yet alone write one, yet alone edit one, which is why when I write things like "pineapple TB" you'd have no idea I meant toilet paper,  pineapple TP. 

 I doubt if there's a fruit flavored strain of tuberculosis.  

The difficulty I have typing on a MAC is the least of my worries. 

 Well, I'm not WORRIED....I'm on VACATION..the typing is the  least of my gripes, I should say.

Today a woman named Aunty Alicia took us on a movie tour. It was a fun day, and there were only fourteen of us, but it was also a long and hot day.  

And we didn't visit movie sets(I have no idea why I thought we'd be doing that) Instead, a video was  shown on an overhead  screen, one that was hard to watch on a bumpy road if one has motion sickness.

Alicia  would show clips from actual  movies filmed in Hawaii, or movies that filmed here but were actually taking place on other exotic locales.

The thing is, we were given a long list of the movies we'd be shown clips of(and the grammar police in me was going insane with ll the misspelled names) and then we'd see a clip, and then we'd stop at the exact spot where the frame of the movie was shot to recreate it..

I probably know more about movies than Alicia does.   There's only one theater on the whole island and it only has four screens--but I couldn't drive a tour bus like she can.  

If I asked a passenger to disembark to help me back out of a tight space, that passenger's widow wouod be very wealthy. 

We'd see George Clooney's house from "The Descendants", or a stretch of the beach where the actresses who played his young daughters would run, and then we could pose for photos the exact same way.

But everything was out of sequence.  There was no continuity.  For example, Aunty Alicia would show us the place where George Clooney phoned his lawyer and forty five minutes, we'd see the same spot.  It was as confusing as being in the audience for "Broke" was, and it kind of ruined my favorite Clooney movie.  We'd see the same clip played so many times that it was no longer making any sense.

I am obsessed with all things Woodloch, regular readers know that, but when they show film clips for their "Woodloch Goes to the Movies" game, you know you're in for fifty minutes of fun and camaraderie and challenging your memory.

Here, it was just "didn't we see this scene from "Blue Hawaii" thirty minutes ago?  Why are we seeing it again?

We saw clips from "Jurassic Park" and "Honeymoon in Vegas" and "Donovan's Reef" and dozens more, and Hawaii has done for movies what LA did for TV--ruined it by exposing all the fakery.

We stopped for a photo op and Aunty Alicia superimposed us being eaten by a T-Rex. 

The photo shows only Jim, so I'd rather you assume I was the T-Rex's lunch then tell you the REAL reason I'm not in the shot.  Profiles are not my friend in the first place, but I was instructed to raise my right leg for three--five seconds, and  let' just say the sciatica had other plans.

I  think twelve of the thirty-nine people on our tour the took this excursion are convinced that I am bat shit crazy. 

 I yell, as the bus is pulling away(my view was obstructed but still, I should have known better) "what is that scary orange animal?" and twelve voices plus the driver's answer "cat!"

So if I don't recognize a common house cat, I'm sure as hell not going to make out the "gorilla" that one is supposed to see in the mountains.  I might have seen monkey lips but that's about it.

 We were baited and switched if we like "King Kong."

We see a goofy Hawaiian set clip of a B-movie that was so bad that it should have been an F movie called "Dinocroc Vs. Supergator." 

 It was about a group of naive tourists, just like us, only when they'd ask questions like "We like this "Blue Hawaii" stop, but when will we actually see Elvis's room?" they got eaten by a T-Rex. 

 My question would have been, "on what kind of toilet did the King take his last breath?  Did it have a bidet?"

(Even a T-Rex would have sampled a tastier tourist after that)

We see a clip from "Six Days, Seven Nights" and Anne Heche's character tells Harrison Ford's that something is stuck in her panties that he has to get out, and it was a fish, and I kept thinking that was a little bit misogynistic to have Ford's character do that.  He should stick with Indiana Jones, who never retrieved anything from a scared woman's underpants.

We got to see beautiful exterior shots. and got to hear Jim complaining that he couldn't see the gorilla in the mountainside. 

Aunty Alicia told us once again about how sugar is out but chickens are in.  I've been in Hawaii for three days now, yes, I know.  And words have very few consonants, tell me something new.

Which she did. 

 In Hawaii, bananas are considered an herb, not a fruit.

OK then..

olives are not a vegetable, they are an aphrodisiac.

Oh..it was really cool to visit the land of Hanaalei,  I always wanted to know what Peter Paul and Mary were puffing when they wrote their most beloved song, and now I do.

Justin Bieber likes this island..so does Bethany Hamilton, who lives in Hanaalei,  (The star of "Soul Surfer" who lost her arm to a shark and then became a champion surfer and..I can't believe I'm typing this odd phrase in yet another blog.. became a contestant on "The Amazing Race.")

Everyone on the bus started singing songs from "South Pacific" and that somehow made me very happy. 

Hey..do these travel blogs make you want to travel?  Be my friend?  Stop being my friend?

I was just wondering...

The husbands from NC were a lot of fun today, and they regaled us with their tale of woe of having to switch rooms upon arrival yesterday--their's faced an ugly green bush.  

I don't know about you, but I would have loved to see a weary traveler confront the person at the reception desk with "I didn't come all the way to Hawaii to stare at a bush"

They switched rooms where they got the same view of the pool and ocean we have, but talk about deception!!

which I'm now GONNA!!

The pool was big and beautiful and the dolphins spit on you and it was great.

And then we take the short walk to the shimmering blue ocean with the gently lapping waves that we saw from the balcony.

We walked on lush green lawns and tan sand only to see the ocean was..

..basically..

a lake.

Now don't get me wrong, this would have been a GORGEOUS lake, with the inlet , the primitive cove, and the mountains in the background, but it was... a LAKE!

It's color was pickle-brine green or perhaps tea brown.

We meet some honeymooners from Chicago, and the bride is laughing, because her husband had JUST TOLD HER to stop complaining about the color of the water, to just sit back and enjoy it.

I said to her(Her name was Kathleen) "this is your honeymoon..Wait'll you have thirty years of being told your complaints are not valid"

Kathleen laughed. Her groom laughed.  Jim laughed.

But guess what??  

They had just flown in from Maui, and stayed at the same resort we leave for on Wednesday. 

 And they said the resort is much more upscale than this one, and that the ocean is actually an ocean. 

 Elvis didn't make a movie called "Grayish Hawaii"..we WILL get that blue water, perfect for swimming and snorkeling and relaxing.

But you know me..I'll find SOMETHING to nit pick about.

Off to a very fancy dinner..