OK so ever since that last entry, I betcha been wonderin’ how I ran across that Julia Child shit. You prob. think I’m too busy investigatin’ to bone up (huhuhuh) on my cookin’. You’re right. I'll tell ya how I knew about it…
A week ago, I was just coming down from a large meal a friend made. All of the guests knew each other, but none of them knew me. They were sitting around, slurping elegant mixed drinks. (I myself was just silently gulping down a bottle of gin—the good kind, in that real sophisticated blue bottle.) And well anywayz, everyone was making dry witty comments exactly like those made in New Yorker short stories from 50 years ago, (y’know, like the ones John Cheever wrote,) and I got really bored and confused, and, like, groping after something that I could contribute to the convo, I turned to my be-aproned buddy—(how did I end up in this company anyway? Oh yeah: My friend offered me a free meal)—and asked him how he came up w/ the calf's brain consommé he'd served during the soup course, and he said I improvised it offa some Julia Child shit. And I said Who? And he said Julia Child.
And he was starting to look pretty hot in his apron n' all, so I propositioned him, and he said umm why don't you look at Julia Child’s cookbook if you're interested, and before I could palm myself off right then and there, he palmed this book on me, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1, and I was pretty blue n' disappointed till I opened the thing to the passage about screwing fowl and/or foul.
After I read it, I was so amped that I headed straight home—after asking my friend if I could borrow the book, of course. I still haven't finished reading that "How To" section, but after that hot intro bit, there are a bunch of "recipes" which I guess makes this book a veritable duck-fuckin’ Kama Sutra.
As I read, I’ll keep you apprised of my progress, but in the meantime, back to this Hawaii shit…
When last we left me, I was camped out in the inter-island terminal at Honolulu International Airport, waiting for my flight to Hilo on the Big Island. There I hoped to track down this shady missing person named Wendell. Still with me? OK, let’s go…
I had to admire their savvy. I mean, how did they all know they wouldn’t miss their flight or something? Pretty quickly, I formed this impression that, for most Hawaiian residents, the inter-island flights are only a slightly more complicated version of a commuter bus or train. You hop on, no seating assignment. Little fuss. Skip across a bit of the ol’ Pacific, and there you are: in Kona or on Maui or even Molokai.
There was a line at the gate, but none of that "now seating rows 1-15" shit. I waited for maybe 2 minutes, listening to a coupla middle aged Southern belles discussing how wonderful their houses on the Big Isle were, the best restaurants they’d been to, etc. It all seemed a little surreal. The ethnic spectrum of the folks in line surprised me. With the exception of native Hawaiians, there was an almost even mixture of Asian, Latino and European type people. Persons of African or Middle Eastern descent were more scarce, but definitely present. Many of the passengers bore the spoils of a weekend shopping trip. The spirit was very, very casual.
There were two flight attendants, both young Hawaiian men, who did, in fact, wear leis and floral print shirts. Predictably, Don Ho was piped into the cabin. Despite all of this, however, you may be disappointed to find out that no one had been handing out leis when I’d landed at Honolulu, and no one did at Hilo either. Sorry to burst yr. chick-in-a-grass-skirt-smiling-and-leing-you bubble, but if it makes you feel any better, you can call and arrange a lei greeting ahead of time. How lame is that?
The pilot sounded like he was about 13 years old, but he managed to fly the aircraft OK. He was one of those pilots who wants to describe every fucking thing you pass. You couldn’t see anything out there, so I zoned out on him pretty quickly—as though he were one of the flight attendants demonstrating emergency landing procedures.
Soon, all of that Pacific brightness was lost in smoky clouds. They’d come out of nowhere, grabbed and held onto us. Rain started abruptly and quickly grew heavy. There seemed to be something in the air that was both ominous and intoxicating. Inside the clouds, nightfall was premature. There was no sunset, which I’m sure would’ve been spectacular. We just moved away from clean, vivid light and further into the murk. Here and there the clouds thinned a little, but all that afforded you was a glimpse of pale gray nothing. Finally there was just solid blackness.
I sat there and watched the rain bead on the window glass. It was quiet and peaceful. I hadn’t noticed, but the music had disappeared at some point. There wasn’t even a whole lot of conversation—at least, not that I could hear. I listened to one of the flight attendants, as he chatted up a young woman. He seemed to think they had mutual friends, though nothing of the sort could be nailed down. The woman seemed to know it was a come on and she didn't appear to be interested—only amused in a friendly sorta way.
I could’ve been a little more so. He was the one pushing the beverage cart, and I was fucking thirsty, but I figured, hey whatever. I like a relaxed atmosphere, and besides it was somehow good to know that they were there talking.
Before long, we began our descent, and the clouds dispersed. Part of this experience was familiar: the emergence of a grid of light. It was less expansive than the cityscapes I was used to seeing from above—having only ever flown to and from major metropolitan airports. (Well, OK, I have flown into and out of Bishop Airport in Flint, Michigan, but from above, the city is pretty much lost in the sprawl of Detroit.) More or less though, I’d had this experience before.
Here’s the part that was not familiar: The appearance of the enormous pitch silhouettes of mountains—two of them. They seemed to be quite close—maybe right next to the airfield. (They aren’t really, but it definitely feels like they are.) The first mountain, Mauna Loa, seemed to stretch completely across one horizon. The other, Mauna Kea, was taller, darker and more jagged. It also seemed angrier.
(I put some pictures I took of ‘em here. That’s Mauna Loa first, the most massive mountain in the world— in terms of the amount of stone it contains— due to its very gradual slope. And then there’s Mauna Kea —the tallest mountain in the world, when measured from its base on the ocean floor.
Unfortunately, these were taken during the day, so the silhouetting effect I saw from the plane is lost. I’m nowhere near enough of a photographer to’ve shot ‘em at night and gotten a decent image, but they still look pretty damn striking by sunlight.)
As we taxied across the grounds of this very small airport, my eagerness to get off this fucking plane was inspired less by the endless hours of travel I'd logged (though there was that too, you better believe) than it is by an eagerness to see if this shit was actually there. I mean, OK, there’s this rain-slick blackness—clouds that are not just dark, but black, and a sooty mist rolling around the terminal tower like an overzealous special effect. And all of that’s nothing compared to those two gigantic mountains—backlit jet, and leaning over all of this. Again, it’s hard not to think of constructed fantasy. These things are Tolkeinesque, to say the least—but the thing is, you’re there, and those mountains are real, which sorta makes CGI effects and novels about hobbits feel, well, a bit lacking.
They were fucking titanic—overwhelming in their size and solidity—like something carved out of an ancient, heavier meaning than anything I’ve encountered. They were larger ciphers, like the monolith in 2001 or Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters or like George Clooney’s ass in the remake of Solaris.
If I sound grandiloquent, if you think it’s too much, then I’m just not doing them justice…
(Me: (in a crappy approximation of a Vaudevillian accent) Those mountains were big.
Audience: (in a bored and annoyed tone of voice) How big were they?
Me: They were so big that Liz Phair could not use them for a dildo!
The audience groans. Several tomatoes splatter across my ugly red and white striped jacket.
Kindly Old Guy with a Lousy Sense of Humor: Wow, that is big!
Me: Well, OK, nothing’s that big… But they sure were profound!
Audience: (even more bored and annoyed than before) How profound were they?
Me: They were so profound that they make that wicked profound [puzzled mumbling at the distinctly non-Vaudevillian use of the word “wicked,” not to mention its possible referentiality to the contemporary musical of that name—and aren’t you kinda wondering why no one was put off by the word “profound?] speech that Cornelius reads outta the ape bible at the end of Planet of the Apes seem stupid!
The Audience hisses and boos, pelts me with more tomatoes.
Kindly Old Guy: (who at this point, is as pissed as the rest of the crowd) Nothing’s more profound than that speech, you rat!!!
The hook end of a shepherd’s staff comes out and yanks me off the stage… And so ends my Vaudevillian career…)
I’ll leave it at this: the whole time I was on the island of Hawaii, they were always there—frequently in view, and if not, they were on my mind. I saw them from 100 angles and relative distances, and whatever my vantage point, they always seemed to determine their surroundings, in atmosphere and, I suspect, in topography.
More soon…
