I'd Like to Thank...

Thank you Ipod and your cleverly linked music purchasing venue Itunes for allowing me to experience immediate gratification and a slice of financial ambivalence at the same time. You deserve an award for all the money you've made me spend on the sole betterment of me.

Additionally, thank you Mr. Wagner (pronounced Vog-ner) for composing the Ride of the Valkyries. With your music and the Ipod & Itunes combination I mentioned above, I have been able to pedal my Wal-Mart bicycle even faster than was previously understood as dangerous. And thank you, Wal-Mart, for manufacturing a bicycle that changes gears when the wheel is turned and has, from what I can tell, no stopping capabilities.

Thank you driver of the red mini-van for not hitting me on my way to the dry cleaners today. I appreciate your reflexes and kind words and gestures as I sped past you and into oncoming traffic. Your soul, I'm certain, will be your guide.

Thank you dry cleaners for shrinking and fading another one of my workshirts. Your dedication to inefficience is something to be admired and recognized. It is because of you that my now-gray button down work shirt comes untucked and showcases my underwear every time I reach above my head at work. While I showcase my winning smile to the restaurant guests, allowing them to view my cotton briefs is above and beyond hospitable service.

Thank you H&R Block. You know what you did.

Thank you water delivery people for supplying me with yet another calculated delivery of nothing. It is your complete misunderstanding of customer service that warrants you my thanks and my continued business as tap water illicits mild dysentery and somehow the small-town monopoly of water delivery has fallen into your incapable, but very strong, hands.

Thank you McDonald's for featuring Spam as a meal deal menu item. It is your honesty that will warrant you entrance to the gates of heaven.

Thank you gracious and ever-understanding landlords for changing the locks on the gates once again. Your dedication to privacy and security are unmatched. To think that your hopes for a safe environment include locking your tenants out of their house - that is looking out. We can be destructive to our ownselves, it is true, and knowing that you're there waiting for us, gate locked, keys changed, is enough to warm the coldest of hearts.

And finally, thank you air conditioning unit. Thank you for smelling like dead cats and mildew, for humming incessantly through even the warmest of nights. It is the smell of comfort that clings to the clothes in our closet, the smell of stagnant metallic water you deliver to the curtains hanging over our windows - it is that perfume that will remind me of you later in life when I've been fallen face down in a murky lake somewhere near a local bear's lavatory.

Haleakala, The Adventure

One of the many things that people do when they arrive (or live) on Maui is to become utterly enthralled with the sun. It sets, they love it. It rises, they love it. It stays over head blasting through the water and showing the iridescent little fishys - they love it. It will burn them and they will blame themselves because their allegiance to it is suddenly so strong. . .

In this vein, we decided to see the sunrise over the dormant volcano Haleakala. Like seeing the Sun on Broadway, it would be.

We rented Jeeps for the occasion. Bought ingredients for gallon sized Tequila Sunrises and Maui Mega-Mimosas. . . we were three cars barreling through the 3am hours with cans of beer and extra batteries for our cameras. Ready. Willing. Loyally disregarding any and all open container laws.

I think it started going downhill when we pulled into the parking lot at the summit, having just wound our way straight up 10,000 feet in rental jeeps. The body tends to react to such changes and such amounts of time in a tiny car - we needed to stretch, to mix drinks, to take pictures, to be a little bit too loud for 4:30 on any morning, much less at the summit of an enormous tourist attraction filled with sun-worshippers on vacation.

Someone didn't like it and they told the park rangers, who also didn't like it. Imagine standing on the top of the world (quite literally for this specific geographic region) the sun rising through the clouds behind you and lighting the coastlines you're familiar with, seeing the whole coastline as if flying above it in an airplane, and then behind you are two police cruisers parking directly behind your rented jeeps shining flashlights through the interior.

"Are you folks driving a jeep?"

"Not at the moment, no."

"Today?"

"Yes, we are driving a jeep."

"I need you to follow me, please, and gather the rest of your party."

Plastic cups of perfectly awful and warm mimosa were spilled on the ground, beer after beer after beer was emptied on the pavement to prove two things: that "we" the park rangers aren't taking your beer AND TWO that "we" the park rangers have to make sure you understand this is against the law.

"Okay."

"You can't have alcohol in the state park, it says that on the sign on the way in."

"Okay."

"It's just not safe, you know?"

"Okay."

"I was young once, I like to have a couple beers now and then, but you have to respect the other guests in the park."

"Okay."

"I'll leave you with the champagne though, you just put it away as fast as you can and don't even think of opening it until you're back home again, understood?"

"Okay."

"All right, have a nice day."

"Okay."

In all, the volcano claimed forty-three cans of bud light and Krissy's innocence as she took and passed her very first breathalizer test. The sunrise, or what we saw of it, was pretty foggy - to be honest - and happened very early in the morning. I'll be fine seeing the sunsets instead as all I have to do is stop talking to the guests at the table and look up. Plus no one yells at me for drinking at work, right?

This Morning's Yellow Label

I told my good friend this morning that I was doing just fine despite missing 95% of the Oscar nominated movies because the new town I live in, Lahaina, doesn't feel it necessary to "rock the boat" culturally speaking. There is culture here, to be sure, but it is of the varying brands of historic island culture mixed with popular culture - one to keep the tourists happy and the other to keep the locals happy (but I suspect that the definitive "island charm" ie, historic culture is often pushed a little farther to keep the tourists happy also.)

My commentary on the sociological makeup of this place will not appear here.

Suffice it to say, Pink Panther has been running for over a month and films like Brokeback and Capote and Munich and Syriana and others have enjoyed zero playing time (or in Munich's case, very little).

This leaves me out of touch with one of my favorite past times and art forms - - no, Domino Harvey wasn't ART, but it did play here for all of November.

The point of this, I think, is that I'm looking for a movie to go and watch this evening and have no choice but to skip it on grounds that I don't want to see another movie about Sled Dogs or a man dressed up as a large black woman - - or even a large black woman playing a large black woman who has only a short time to live.

But I have the night off and I'm standing in my kitchen drinking yellow label champagne from an Oreo coffee mug and wearing only boxer shorts - - so I guess, in the grand scheme, everything is going to be all right.