Life Day Celebration at Gardena Cinema

Last time it was for the Temple of Doom.

That was two years ago, back in November of '23. This year the invite was for an endurance double feature, our boy Mike, the erstwhile comic shop owner, current comic-book writer, comic book writing professor, and drug counselor, having the itch to return to his friend's family movie theater.

In 2023, it was Mike's favorite movie, Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. Last year he had festivities at a different location. This year, the party was a few days after the proper birthday, and the first film of the double feature was "A Disturbance in the Force." This is a very entertaining documentary about the infamous "Star Wars: Holiday Special."

I learned so much. I picked up a bootleg of the Holiday Special at a comic convention back in 2012 as a gift for my brother. I watched as I drank gin, and, if you read the link above about that bootleg, you'll see all the cliches about trashing that program. Had I seen the documentary, I would have said different things.

Not to spoil ALL the conclusions from the documentary, but: back in 1977, when the movie became the biggest things EVER (it seemed), studios had very low opinions about audiences and, therefore, had the characters and costumes and masks in all sorts of shows that are, eh, regrettable by how serious the universe is taken today. Some were laughable (Donnie and Marie), some cringy (all of them, but Lawrence Welk!), and some made sense (Richard Pryor and the costumes of Mos Eisley).

Anyway, two groups---George Lucas and the filmmakers team vs the variety show team---began work on the project. Lucas was there for one day, for a total of 12 hours, and they were, by all accounts, very productive and inspiring. It didn;t take very long before all of the filmmaking side were gone, and the variety show people were the only ones left.

In the end, the length of the special went from an hour (so, about 46-47 minutes of content), to an hour and a half, to two hours. Yikes! Harvey Korman plays 3(!) separate characters! Bea Arthur sings a song! Art Carney saved the production when he was sober!

So, after this funny and engaging documentary, we sat and watched the Holiday Special, having the knowledge of what was happening and who was making the scenes and the feelings of most people who worked on it...and it wasn't terrible!

Okay...it's kinda terrible. But it isn't as incomprehensible as I remember. It follows a structure that makes a level of sense, and isn't so wrong as to wreck the sacred canon. It's not...good, but it's certainly not as bad as my post about the bootleg makes it sound. And seeing it on the big screen was a treat.

The lava lamp intermission count-down screen was pretty dope.

If you have a local independent theater near you, and you like movies, you should go and give them your patronage as often as you can. They will surely appreciate it.

Happy Life Day!

It's almost official now!

Bowling!

Bowling has changed a bit in the ensuing years since I last went. I, um, don't even remember the last time I went bowling...it may have been with an old pal Dylan back in Sac between '99 and heading back to San Luis in '00. Anyway, it got expensive!

Corrie found a Group-On and we made a Saturday afternoon of it.

One of the cooler changes was about the bumper lanes. Maybe this is old hat to all the bowling enthusiasts out there, but you can program the bumper lanes to show up for any individual bowler automatically, and then they'll pop down as needed to return the game to the normal gutter-ball-is-allowed play.

Cass did pretty well for his first time. We played two games as a family, then Camille and Corrie went off to the arcade to play (as per a Corrie promise). Cass was locked in and played most of the game we played together without bumpers (which lead to some gutter-balls):

Corrie and I both had a few strikes and a few more spares, and my second game was the best score of the day, at 145 or so. Camille was awesome, cradling the ball like a spherical baby, running towards the line, and launching it with both arms.

We had so much fun! I could see us making a routine of it somehow...is there a club instead of the drastic and severe pricing? Family fun time!

Low-Fi Halloween Decorations

If you stroll around the big-box hardware stores---Home Droots; Lowe's, etc---or other big-box department stores, the Halloween decorations can get crazy...big animatronic displays, priced in the hundreds of dollars. These things are awesome, but they seem very baroque.

Sometimes the most charming decorations are some of the lowest tech versions...like the ballon tied to the drainage gutter in the neighborhood where we take the kids to trick-or-treat:

There were hundred of kids out in this neighborhood last night, as it's a very popular place for the holiday. You can check this post from last year to get a sense for the Candy Zone 3 for Apartment Families. But, even in our neighborhood, across the street, we've had a presence keeping watch for a month now:

As for us...I finally had a costume I felt interested in wearing for the first time in years...Bob Ferguson, from One Battle After Another. Camille was an axolotl and Cass was a Roman gladiator.

Corrie wore one the softball team shirts from my mom and brought her whistle, and played "softball coach" while we followed around the kids. One person recognized my outfit, and that made it worth it.

Anyway, I've got game 7 on in the background, and it'll probably be over by the time you read this. World Series, Game 7. Somethings are pretty wild.