The Avalon

I bought a box set of Hitchcock movies a while ago and we’ve been making our way through them. We watched The 39 Steps recently and it reminded me that the first time I saw this movie was with my grandmother, who I called Mammy, that having been the way I pronounced grandma as a 2 year old. I was the oldest grandchild and as such I got grandparent-naming privilege that is often bestowed on the first grandchild. I’ve known quite a few people whose grandparents nick names are the result of the same poor pronunciation process. Anyway, she was a real character. Born around 1919 in a tiny town called Grantsville, about 60 miles west of Salt Lake City on the edge of the desert that stretches between Salt Lake and Reno. At that time Grantsville couldn’t have had many more than 1000 people and she said that growing up she knew everyone and their dog.

She was enamored with Hollywood and movie stars, going once or twice a week to Grantsville’s little movie theater as a girl. It was an incredible escape for a poor girl in a Depression-era hardscrabble little town whose economy was at that time largely based on the Western Pacific railroad, salt extraction from the lake, and cattle and sheep ranching on land perhaps best left to sagebrush. She was a fantastic and very funny person who loved to laugh and was as positive and supportive as anyone I’ve known. Her mother probably spoke more Swedish than English though Mammy claimed she only knew “tack sa mikket” (phonetic), which was all I ever learned and apparently means thank you. Anyway, once I was a little older, maybe 8 or so, my sister and I would go and spend 3 weeks or so with them each summer. It was fantastic and we always looked forward to it.

One of the great memories I have was going with Mammy and grandpa to the Avalon Theater on State Street in Salt Lake City. The theater wasn’t anything particularly special, but it was an old style theater with one big screen. It showed only old movies, most often in double features and it cost 25 cents. We, not having lots of money, would buy snacks and drinks at a normal grocery store and sneak them in Mammy’s purse. It was Mammy that taught me that a woman’s purse was a sort of sanctum sanctorum, never to be violated with out specific permission and even then very cautiously. This rule and the attitude that lay beneath it served us well in our snack smuggling trade. The drinks we took in were usually in glass bottles, which were pretty common back then.

One night during a movie, Mammy finished her bottle of Pepsi (Pepsi and absolutely not Coke was the undisputed drink of choice for Mammy) and set it on the ground under her seat. A few minutes later, perhaps in a swoon at the entrance of Clark Gable, Gene Kelly or Errol Flynn, she accidentally kicked the bottle over and it proceeded to noisily bump and roll its way all the way down the floor of the theater. We all played dumb as people huffed at the racket. We still laugh about this, years after her death.

Anyway, I remember seeing The 39 Steps with her as a kid at The Avalon, being totally spooked and loving Hitchcock movies ever since.

No Psychopaths

I saw this sign last week at the bumpercars in Century Park, Shanghai’s version of Central Park. The first line is the best.


You get a pyschopath on the bumper cars and there's no telling what will happen, but I think that their instincts are right -- better not leave it to chance.

IT clean out

Last night I cleaned out a box of old 1.44M floppy disks, now technological relics. I’m trying to move files onto my hard drive so I don’t lose them to new technologies, as I have tried to do with my college writings that weren’t printed out. In doing so I threw out a whole bunch of old software disks. Programs used to come on so many disks before the advent of CD ROMs. Here are some samples.

Wordperfect for Windows (10+ disks)

Wordperfect 6.0 for DOS

Westmate

Lexus 2000

Windows 3.1

LotusWorks

Virex for the PC

Font packs for WordPerfect

Quicken 7 for DOS

Clean Boot disk

The demise of WordPerfect is still sort of amazing to me when I think about how dominant it once was.

The Monkeyshed

This is another example of some funny translation. You may have to click on the picture to try to zoom in. This is from a hiking place a few hours from Shanghai were I was this summer. This is the kind of place that, while not that uncommon in China, would put any PETA person over the edge. If you double click the picture you can read it better.


The first sentence is the best - they were caught "by accident" with "something bow-shaped". Hmm. I also thought that I couldn't blame the other monkeys for moving on given the uneviable combination of severe deforestation and "the great bomb sound". You might be able to handle one, but both - no way!

I've heard that the government in Beijing is making a huge effort to improve the translations on signs in all the tourist areas there prior to the Olympics. A small gain for linguistic precision; a huge loss for comic relief.

The Chris Quiz

My only responsibility in the 40th party was to make up some sort of game. I’ve never been a good Pictionarian or much for charades so I made up my own test. Here it is. See how many you can get right. Many of the answers are highly negotiable.

Super Easy Multiple Choice

1. What is Chris’ usual breakfast?
a. Cheerios
b. Bangers and mash
c. Congee
d. Whatever is left on the kids’ plates (nasty!)

2. What is Chris's favorite book?
a. Chicken Soup for the Middle-Aged Soul
b. Charly
c. Anna Karenina
d. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

3. Which movie would Chris prefer?
a. Fried Green Tomatoes
b. Ghost
c. Beaches
d. Anything with Godzilla in it

4. Why did Chris major in Botany?
a. Easy – he’s sort of crazy
b. He liked plants
c. He always wanted to open a lawn mowing company
d. Everybody knows all the hottest girls major in Botany

5. Why did Chris go to law school?
a. Easy – he’s sort of crazy
b. He liked John Grisham books
c. He always had a passion for justice
d. What else are you supposed to do after graduating in Botany?

6. How would you describe Chris's current state of hair loss?
a. Pretty thin on top
b. An awkward stage of male pattern baldness
c. Starting to look to comb over-ish
d. All of the above

7. How many times has Chris told you the story about army ants coming through his house in the jungle?
a. five or more
b. two or more
c. zero (if you pick zero, you're asking for it)

8. What best suits Chris’ musical tastes?
a. Seriously boring classical
b. Ella Fitzgerald and friends
c. Zydeco/klezmer fusion stuff
d. A mix of today's hits and yesterday's favorites

9. Where did the scar on Chris’ forehead come from?
a. Attack by a knife-wielding madman
b. Surfing accident
c. Bad paper cut
d. I’d rather not go into it

10. What is Vitello’s, the restaurant where Chris worked in high school, famous for?
a. Veal parmesano
b. It was once owned by Dean Martin
c. It was the place Robert Blake (supposedly) shot his wife
d. It was often frequented by Erik Estrada

11. What is Chris most proud of?
a. His cute kids
b. His highly efficient dishwasher loading skills
c. The fact that he’s never done the Macarena
d. Having eaten one pot of lentil soup for twelve days straight as a missionary

Word Problems

12. Chris, a monkey and a lion are stuck on an island with a coconut and a little rowboat. The island is one km from the safety of shore and only two people can go in the boat at once (the animals and the coconut all count as people, don’t ask me why). The lion will eat the monkey, the monkey will really bother Chris with his non-stop yapping and the monkey and the coconut sometimes play chess together, but always end up arguing. What is the fewest number of trips they can make to all get to shore safely?
a. One
b. Two
c. Three
d. I think this question got on here by accident

13. Chris has an important appointment 5 kilometers from his house. His driver has a “flat tire”, i.e., he’s eating lunch with his girlfriend. A taxi costs $5 and takes 5 minutes. The metro costs $1 and takes 10 minutes. When do you think Chris will leave the house?
a. Five minutes early
b. Ten minutes early
c. How long does it take to walk?

14. When they turn 40, many people are filled with a profound existential angst due to the fact that there’s not much to look forward to except a long slow descent towards decrepitude and the grave. Plus you gradually start to get that old man smell. What will Chris most likely do to combat this?
a. Become obsessed with golf equipment
b. Run a marathon to demonstrate his youthful vigor to himself (and to anyone he could casually mention it to)
c. Buy a cheesy sportscar
d. Make a stupid Photoshopped T-shirt of Jenny

15. Chris, the monkey, the lion and the coconut are still stuck on the island with a little rowboat. Apparently, you didn’t do a very good job of answering the earlier question. Suddenly, a rat appears and gives them a flare gun. Man, where’d he come from? The monkey high-fives the rat and the coconut looks disturbed. What should Chris do next?
a. Yes, definitely
b. Wait until they see a bigger boat and shoot off the flare
c. Shoot the lion
d. I’m totally confused by this whole thing

One More Super Easy Multiple Choice

16. What do you wish Chris on this momentous occasion?
a. I wish him a long and healthy life
b. I wish him a year supply of fresh and juicy eels
c. I wish he’d mind his own beeswax
d. I just don’t want to hear anything else about that stupid coconut

Matching

This section is really only here to make those of you who have done terribly so far can feel better. If you don’t get 100% on this you should probably just go home.

17. Where was I born?
18. What’s my birthday?
19. What’s my sign?
20. What was my favorite TV show as a kid

a. Virgo
b. Inglewood, California (ex-home of the Lakers)
c. Gumby
d. September 1st

Tally up your answers. If you got more than 10 right, send your score to Chris for your free gift. Please include US$5.00 cash for shipping and handling.

40th Birthday

Jenny threw me a great 40th birthday party a couple of weeks ago. I’m officially middle aged now. It was really beautifully done, in true Jenny style, and a lot of fun. I’ll post a couple of pictures in a few days when I’m back in Shanghai (I’m in Hong Kong for the next couple of days). It was a mix of expat friends (who are all foreigners) and work friends (who are all Chinese). Everyone had a good time. We had it at a friend’s house who is a partner at Deloitte. Their house is huge and I think some of my Chinese colleagues were a bit wide eyed. I figured it must have been a bit like getting an invite to a big bash in a Beverly Hills mansion. Despite my attempts to dissuade them, some brought some gifts. One was a set of Peking Opera masks hand painted by one of my employees on egg shells. I found it quite touching.