It occurs to me that Christmas passed and I once again managed to avoid really giving it much thought. No snow here in Hawaii, and I haven’t been watching enough TV to catch any Christmas specials, even in spite of the lack of TiVo. It is so odd to be back to channel surfing. I sit on the TV Guide channel to figure out what is on but its so slow moving it drives me crazy. Jessica and Shaina watch enough TV in a day for my week, so I have to keep trying to ignore bad Disney Channel movies and reality TV shows and such. Because I do so badly at avoiding constant annoying TV distractions, I find myself completely drawn in by the colorful picture box whenever it is on, and in a hotel room it is hard to get away from it. The same thing happens when I’m trying to talk to people and there is a TV on, I just can’t concentrate. Or when I’m at a gym with lots of TVs everywhere, I go nuts… So there’s something that Brandeis gym has going for it — no television.

So here is what I’ve seen that is memorable, meaning that I enjoyed it, at least slightly.

• The West Wing
  I stopped watching it a little while back but this episode about Hoynes’ memoir thing got me sort of intrigued. Add that to the promos a few weeks ago (“and did we mention the ASTERIOD?”) and I might just have to catch up on that show, due to the sheer silliness of it.
• Gilmore Girls
  I pictured it as something like the sisters from Charmed doing their own little Sex and the City, but it is nothing like that. I have no idea what, exactly, it is, but its enjoyable and cute, even if I am lacking all backstory. And the younger Gilmore is the kind of girl I wish I could have dated in high school… Wait, what was I saying? Oh, right. So a show that is certainly tolerable, although I doubt I’ll find myself going out trying to find back episodes. But you never know.
• Men in Black
  Yeah, it’s a movie, but it was funny to watch again, and it got me to thinking — whatever happened to Dennis Rodman? Did he up and return to his home planet or something? And remember when Will Smith was “up and coming?”

And that’s the extent of my TV for the trip.

Yesterday we took a car trip past some mile marker you aren’t supposed to pass, voided our car insurance or something, and walked a short but rocky ways down to something called the Blow Hole. It is a formation of lave such that waves pass underneath and water is funneled up through a rock opening to form a big ole geyser. I wanted to go find a waterfall, but this was a good substitute. We stood by it, took pictures, and I made sure to get thuroughly soaked before heading back. Much fun was had by all, although I did scrape my knee on some rocks and get blood on my shorts. Bye bye, shorts. Also got to walk on some lava and such.

Today we went in search of surfing equipment and spent the day on a beach attempting to surf on our own after our lesson of two days ago. The three beaches I’ve been to so far on this trip have been pretty shallow and rocky. This beach was still only about three feet deep even after we had gone a ways out, and there were lots of pointy rocks about. It was even more important to remember to fall flat on one’s back rather then attempting to step off or (worse) falling face first. If you were lucky, you’d fall smoothly in a normal patch, and get up before hitting anything, if you were unlucky you would smack into a rock or two. Best was to not fall at all.

The waves weren’t great but we all managed to score some, um, board time, if that’s the word. There were so many people, though, that it was difficult to get up without smashing in to someone which, I probably don’t have to say, is pretty bad form. Once or twice I rode a wave, stood up, and then the wave petered out to nothing, leaving me standing motionless on my board, trying to keep my balance (difficult!) and eventually falling over. By the end I had gotten some sun (cause we all know how much I love that), gotten some waves, and gotten all manner of bumps, bruises, rashes, cuts, and scrapes. For a non-sportsman like myself, it was pretty brutal. Reminded me why I like to stay away from contact sports. Also suggested to me that I need a lot more arm strength if I want to be good at this. All that paddling back out is very, very tiring, and my arms were quite sore by the end. Which is not to say that I am complaining, because I enjoyed it. I’m just pointing out some of the less appealing aspects of the whole thing and potential downsides. Buyer beware, and all that.

Not much more to report from Hawaii. Amazingly, every single meal we’ve had here has been good, probably a first for my family on a trip. I don’t remember all of the restaurants, but Cheeseburger in Paradise offered good cheeseburgers, even if they lacked barbacue sauce, Hula Grill had some yummy dinner, Aloha Mixed Plate was a filling (and cheap!) local haunt, Gazebo had some mean macadamian nut white chocolate chip banana pancakes (not on the menu, ask for them), Leilaini’s (owned by the same company as Hula Grill) had good nachos, and this place by the big tree was also tasty, plus they had blue rolls that have somthing called Poi in them. There was a general obsession with macadamian nuts and mahi mahi, but no spam to be found, which leads me to believe we never did find a truly local establishment…or we’re just on the wrong island. Everyone did seem to have Loco Moco on the menu, but I never tried it. And many places you would expect to find potatoes (like with your morning eggs) they would substitute rice instead.

Tomorrow we check out and hop a plane to Honolulu and then back to California. It’ll day pretty much a full day of travel. So I guess I’m signing off from Hawaii. See you on the other side of the Pacific!

I have been doing a lot of flying recently. I left Boston a little before 7:00am EST (GMT -5) on Wednesday and traveled about six and a half hours to Orange County, getting in at 11am Pacific (GMT -8), starving because the JetBlue snacks were not much substitute for, well, lunch. On Thursday the girls and I went to Yamashiro for dinner and Les Miserables for entertainment with Linda and Ercil, then spent the night in an LA hotel so that we could be up nice and early for our flight to Hawaii. Well, early is relative, and while we had time for a leisurely breakfast, a slow airport shuttle put us about twenty minutes behind where we wanted to be one one of the busier travel days of the year, and several long lines later we were the last ones on the flight. Another five hours of flying aboard a big old 767, this time with a (pretty terrible) lunch, and tada, we were in Maui (GMT -10) and my circadians were so far off track that recovery would take days.

Some may (well, have) joked that I don’t deal with time change well, but I beg to differ. The problem is two changes in the same number of days, and lots of waking up very early, pre-sunrise, to sit in big metal tubes for hours at a time with no physical activity, very little entertainment, and not much that passes for food. Add in the post-finals cooldown and you’ve got a recipe for lots and lots of sleeping. So that happened.

Friday morning in Maui and the weather was beautiful, in the high 70s and sunny and clear. Weather.com said it would be that way, but I didn’t believe it, so I checked the NOAA, which suggested scattered showers, more in line with what I had been hearing, but so far no showers have come along.

When we showed up at the Sheraton I had a strange feeling of deja vu, and insisted we had been here before. A little exploration later and everyone agreed, by sheer dumb luck we ended up back at the same hotel Discovery Toys went to for their (1998?) incentive trip. That time I sat in the room being bored, but this time I’m trying to enjoy myself a bit more. Still, there is only so much beach I can take. The problem I have is that I like water, but I don’t like salt water, and I don’t like chlorinated water. I also don’t have much love for lying in the hot sun for hours at a time, and while I find sand fun, getting it all over everything is slightly less so. And since Maui is, at this point in its existance, pretty much a tourist island, most of what there is to do consists of sand and salt water, and any remnants of real culture and uniqueness have been sandblasted away by McDonalds and the Gap, or are at least hidden enough that tourists (oh wait, I guess that’s me) won’t find and disturb them.

In my journalism class this (last?) semester one of the things we talked about was the part of Daniel Boorstin’s The Image that talked about tourism and the loss of place associated with it. As tourism becomes more obtaininable for more people, a few things happen. First, the sheer increase in population and money at a given location means that the natural beauty and wonder is going to be replaced by things that cater to tourists. Second, what tourists want, Boorstin claims, is what they see on TV — a sterile, fantasy world rather then the harsh realities they may encounter. Thus the paradox of Disney’s California Adventure theme park, a version of California, located in California, that can give you all of the “wonders” of California in one clean, shiny, happy place, in just a few hours of your time.

Savvy travelers who are looking for authenticity will pick up guide books that tell them about secret gems, but there are the same guide books that every other “savvy” traveler will pick up, and so the gems also end up being silly tourist traps. The best part of our cruise to Mexico is when we took a Jeep tour and our tour guide took us to an out of the way family restauran above their house, which overlooked a stream and a waterfall. It was the most authentic Mexican experience we had, and almost everything else about the trip was meant to cater to tourists. I don’t know how to duplicate that kind of experience here in Hawaii.

Anyway, so far we have spent some time at the aforementioned beach and pool, and visited the nearby Westin with its (fun but not highly impressive) waterslides. Today we went snorkeling for an hour, but when I try to snorkel I inevitably end up almost asphyxiating, so my snorkel tube stayed pretty much unused and I just stuck with trusty mouth breathing. Tomorrow morning, I get to (supposedly) learn how to surf, so we’ll see how that goes. We start at the ungodly hour of 9:00am, which to me sounds perfectly reasonable since I’m consistantly waking up around four. Which, I might add, is a perfectly good time to wake up — in EST!

Anyway, there is no internet access here so I’ll put this and whatever other blog entries I write up in a batch when I get back. In the unlikely event that anyone gets this far in reading them all, hi!

When little Gavroche sneaks out of the barricade to steal ammunition from fallen French troops, his action is heroic and not foolhearty only if the pouch he fills makes its way back to the rebels. Throwing it in a hook shot to stage right is not incredibly helpful when the barricade is directly upstage. Poor kid tried, but he was just way, way off.

Best cover of the evening — a rebel accidentally knocks over some cups from a table, and they have to get off the floor before the scene change otherwise someone is going to trip and get killed, so one rebel grabs two of the glasses and continues on, and another rebel comes from the other side of the stage during the song, picks up the remaining glass, and toasts with it. He may have even taken a drink. From an empty glass that fell on the ground. Just like real life.

Little Cosette was tiny and adorable.

When big Cosette sang “can people really fall in love so fast?” I turned to Shaina and (a little too loudly) whispered, “no!”. Jessica, on the other side of me, started laughing, and I think I might have upset the people behind us.

Why does every single Javert have to sing in that silly monotone? It is really annoying, and its got to be hard for people who don’t know the words to understand him.

Jean val Jean lifting the ox cart is supposed to be a major and pivotal point in the story. It sets up his next conversation with Javert and leads to him exposing himself as the escaped convict that he is, messing up his entire life. And yet, this val Jean just went over, lifted the cart with the tiniest effort, and then handed it off to some other guy to hold up while he went and cared for the man trapped underneath. It was pathetic, and I just had to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. Someone, possibly the director, should be shot.

I’ve now seen Les Mis three times professionally (Ahmanson, Broadway, Pantageus) and the high school version (at Fullerton College) once. I feel pretty well versed in it. I think the only other show I have seen more than once is Ragtime, which I saw on Broadway and at the Performing Arts Center. Oh, and also Avenue Q twice on Broadway. I really want to see Wicked again. Oh, yeah, and I saw Rent both on Broadway and at The Grove in Orange. Wow, I’ve seen a lot of shows a lot of times! With both Les Mis and Rent, the Broadway version was pretty inferior to the touring version. Not sure why that is. Maybe being on the road keeps it from being routine.

Oh, one final note. This time, the slow motion battle scenes and Javert’s suicide and such just looked really, really funny. Not to mention all of the extraneous turntable use. I guess I just hadn’t realized before how funny that all is.

Finding that I’ll probably have some free time on my hands with nothing I “need” to do for the first time in a while now, I’ve decided to catch up on some reading. I brought home Bowling Alone, a non-fiction study of American social and group dynamics and how they relate to the foundations of democracy and citizenship, along with The Confusion, a 1,000 page second book in a three book historial/science fiction series by one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenon, that I really have to return to Adam Batkin one of these days, if I can ever get through it. But I probably need some fiction that is a bit lighter, and I know at various times people have recommended things to me and I’ve said I might read them. If you have a suggestion for a piece of lighter fiction that you think I might enjoy, please post it here. Is the new Michael Crichton book worth pursuing? I don’t think I’m ready to tackle The Lord of the Rings yet, or anything else massive. An Ender’s Game or Snow Crash is more what I’m in the mood for.

Ideally as soon as possible, because who knows if I’ll be able to find a Barnes & Noble in Maui.

I was going through my photos, trying to figure out what happened to some of them, and discovered these images of a trip Kelli, Aaron Gaynor, Beth and I took to go apple picking back on September 30th. There were bunnies. And a pumpkin tree! Enjoy!