I don’t do movie reviews, leaving that particular art form to folks who spend more time in the dark than I do. That said, I recently saw “The Way, Way Back,” a wonderful movie that has it all; a uniquely interesting story, unusually smart writing, a satisfying mix of wonder, drama, pathos and humor all delivered by an excellent cast led by Steve Carell (of TV’s “Office” fame) in a role completely unlike any he’s played before. I’ll just say that he’s surprisingly good at playing a character you love to hate.
The story opens with 14-year-old “Duncan” and his divorced mother heading to the coast with her also-divorced boyfriend (Mr. Carell) for what is supposed to be a long summer vacation at the boyfriend’s beach house.
Besides being great fun to watch the progression of poignant, life-changing events unfold onscreen, this special movie reminded me of the many summers I spent (for one or two weeks at a time, that is) at one of Southern California’s premier family beach destinations of the 60s and 70s – Balboa Island in Newport Beach.
Technically, Balboa is more like a spit of land that was separated from the mainland by a channel dredged around it soon after the turn of the 20th Century. Once not much more than tidal mudflats and marshland, in the early 1900s, Balboa was developed into a tiny island only 0.2 square miles in size with lot sizes only 30 wide by 85 feet deep. (Today those itsy bitsy lots represent some of the most expensive real estate in America, second in cost-per-square-foot only to lower Manhattan.)
In my youthful summers, we’d load up our family land-yacht, aka: station wagon, with its faux-wood vinyl sides and rear-facing third row seat (just like Duncan sits on in the movie as he rides sullenly to the beach) and head south on the 605 freeway, already smelling of Coppertone bronzing lotion, or for the hard-core tanners in our party, Johnson’s Baby Oil (sunscreen was still years away from being mandatory for beach trips).
We’d take the Jamboree Road off ramp and head due west towards the coast. Back then, Jamboree wound its way to the ocean through many miles of undeveloped rolling hills covered with tall grass. Where Jamboree ends, we’d drive over the narrow two-lane bridge that connects the island to the mainland. Balboa Island is crisscrossed by narrow cement streets with names that will forever remind me of walking in bare feet from one side of the island to the other and back; street names like Agate, Pearl, Opal, Coral, Topaz and Ruby. Just writing those names, I can feel tiny grains of beach sand rubbing between my toes and ground into the tar on the heels of my summer-tough feet.
We’d walk everywhere during our summer visits to the island, whether to the ferry landing where my friends and I would sit on the seawall and watch the “Admiral,” “Commodore” and “Captain” ferry boats slowly churning across the channel to the Peninsula and back. Of course, when we weren’t watching the ferryboats, our young male eyes were glued to the coveys of young females barely wearing bikinis and pretending not to notice us noticing them as they giggled and jiggled by.
After walking to the center of the island where shops and restaurants lined Marine Avenue, we’d walk past the cue of tourists waiting for a table at the Jolly Roger restaurant and head straight for the nearby walk-up window to buy chocolate-covered bananas and “Balboa Bars” – a big slab of vanilla ice cream on a stick, dipped in melted chocolate and slapped into waiting toppings like crushed peanuts or rainbow sprinkles. Such good times. And even better memories.
I doubt they’ll ever produce a movie about my summers on Balboa Island, but if they do, I’d like Ben Affleck to play me. Just sayin’.
I’ll see you ‘round town.
For many reasons, both business and pleasure, I’ve had the opportunity to travel far from home at least a half dozen times so far this summer. From Vancouver, BC to Dallas, Texas, Mammoth Lakes, California to Missoula, Montana and destinations in between – my comings and goings have allowed my over-curious mind to wonder in places I don’t usually go; literally. For example:
I wonder … if women aren’t buying pairs of the popular (and super expensive) Lululemon yoga pants for flying across the country more than for sessions on a yoga mat? The ubiquitous black stretchy pants would seem to be a part of every other female flyer’s wardrobe these days. Maybe in addition to the “Downward-Facing Dog” and “Cobra” poses, they are practicing a new pose called the “Flying Sardine.”
I wonder … who ever thought that switching to electronic hotel room keys was a good idea? At our hotel in Missoula last week, the cards that were supposed to be programed to open our room had to be re-set at least twice a day if not more. The code would be scrambled and useless if you put the card near anything electronic (like a cell phone) or even another credit card (like in your wallet). Gee, now who would ever put a plastic, credit-card-sized card into a wallet for safekeeping? Call me old school, but you never have to reprogram a metal key.
I wonder … what committee of bureaucratic chuckle-heads decided that the best time to repave miles and miles of The Going-To-The-Sun two lane highway in Glacier National Park would be during the month of August, otherwise known as the peak of tourism season when more cars than at any other time of the year are pouring into the park on the only road from Apgar Village to Logan Pass? Sitting and waiting – and waiting – parked on fresh, hot asphalt for up to an hour at a time under the sweltering summer sun, waiting for traffic coming the other direction to clear so you can finally move another mile or so to the where the next flagman is stopping traffic, does not make for fond vacation memories. Just sayin’.
I wonder … how dogs seem to instinctively know when their owners will be going out of town days before the suitcases even come out? Our two young pups (7 & 8 months) started shadowing my every move and watching me like a 32-ounce slab of prime Angus beef about a week before leaving for Montana this month. And when I finally did drag our suitcases out from the attic? Pure puppy pandemonium.
I wonder … why every hotel room planner insists on positioning a massive, wall-to-wall mirror directly opposite the bathtub/shower enclosure. I mean, give a middle-aged guy a break! For my own safety and mental health, I make it a habit to look anywhere but at the mirror whenever I get into the shower. Then, I make sure to turn the water temperature up high enough that the cursed mirror will be good and fogged when I shut the water off, draw back the flimsy curtain to grab a towel. By the time any reflection can once again be seen in the mirror, I’m well on the way to being fully dressed. One morning last week in Missoula, however, when I was bending over the tub to check the water temperature, I thought something had fallen over on the hotel room sink so I looked back and accidentally caught a glimpse of the mirror. I’m pretty sure I let out a yelp of horror. How did a Tolkien-worthy troll/goblin-thing get into the bathroom with me? And why was it getting into my shower? Oh, right. Never mind.
After all of my travels this summer, there’s one thing I definitely do not wonder about at all; why people always say “there’s no place like home.”
I’ll see you ‘round town.
Last week I wrote about selling our family’s beloved 1999 Chevy Suburban, aka: “The Beast.” To recap, the supersized SUV was simply too old, too big and too costly to keep on the road. Too bad.
It’s not like we didn’t get more than our money’s worth from the old girl. And I doubt you’ll ever see a fully restored ’99 Suburban at a classic car show (it wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of Detroit design, after all) so why hang on to it?
The likelihood that our not-so-trusty, vintage kid-hauler would likely wind up being bought for parts is something I suspected, but didn’t want to think too much about. I mean, our kids had practically grown up in it and many a family vacation had begun and ended with a turn of the key in its ignition.
But if I making the decision to sell The Beast was difficult, actually selling it turned out to be even harder.
Now, I’ve always sold any car we’ve owned to a private party. Trading it in to a dealer was something you just didn’t do in our family. My dear departed Dad ingrained in his kids that trading in a car is tantamount to strolling blindfolded through a carnival with a wad of cash in each hand and a sign around your neck that says “I’m stupid, rob me!”
But this time, for whatever reason, I just didn’t have the energy or desire to sell our Suburban on my own. Maybe the thought of once again having to tell complete strangers where we live and then handing them the keys to our car and sweating out the anxious moments while they take it and drive it who knows where and do who knows what was too much.
And so, we decided to first try and sell The Beast for cash – as several people had suggested – to one of the huge, national chains of used car dealerships. We made an appointment online to have our car appraised, then drove it out to their location in Duarte, where we sat and waited while a “trained appraiser” went over our car and a sales associate repeatedly told us how we were choosing the superior way to sell a car and that whatever the appraisal came in at, it would be our easiest, most secure, fastest way to sell a car – particularly one of such “advanced age” as ours was.
The more our fast-talking associate prattled on about how pleased we would be with the entire process, the more I began to worry that I was about to get hosed in a most disappointing way.
Sure enough, he suddenly walked out of his office and came back with an appraisal/offer to purchase our Suburban. When I saw the laughably low offer printed in big, bold numbers at the top of the form, my eyebrows went up and my jaw went down. The sales associate asked, “How much higher were you expecting?”
“Seriously?!? The gas in the tank is worth more than that!” I sputtered, trying not to sound like a scorned high school coed.
“Actually, our offer takes that into account, sir” he said without a trace of sarcasm.
That I was able to drive away without mowing down the smug little motor-mouthed dipstick is testament to my self-control. And maybe I was more than a little worried that I might damage The Beast and lower its value even more.
Anyway, a week or two later, for the first time ever, I traded her in to the dealer from whom we bought another car. On the plus side, we got almost twice the amount that the used car dealership had offered. Nevertheless, I’m sure my Dad, bless his soul, rolled his eyes and elbowed the nearest angel, saying, “Can you believe what that kid of mine just did? He needs a sign around his neck.”
I’ll see you ‘round town.
The last time we bought a new car was back in the Bronze Age. Or maybe it was 2002. Anyway, it was a long time ago when we bought the pickup truck I drive every day. It was even farther back in the annals of history when we bought my wife’s 1999 Chevrolet 4X4 Suburban, the vehicle our family always affectionately called the “Big Blue Bus,” or my favorite, “The Beast.”
The Beast was actually our second Suburban, having bought our first one nearly ten years earlier, soon after our third child was born and not long after the earth cooled. Since this first ‘burban was a bright fire engine red, we quickly christened her the “Red Sled.” We realized we needed to supersize our family car because we needed something to fit not only our growing family, but also our two dogs, bicycles, toys and other paraphernalia – something big enough to shuttle everybody and everything to school activities and all over town. We also needed a rig large enough to transport our burgeoning brood and a cargo hold’s worth of luggage north to Mammoth Lakes and back for our often-as-possible getaways. The cavernous, gas-gulping Suburban was ideal. And so we drove the wheels off first one, then a second of Chevy’s oversized people movers.
And then, all too suddenly, our family grew up and away. Now when my wife and I drive to the Sierras, we’re able to fit our “stuff” including our latest duo of dogs into my smaller truck, which gets ridiculously better mileage and is easier to drive than the Beast ever was. Not being glared at by angry Prius owners when I pick them out from between our Suburban’s tire treads is a plus, too.
Alas, with its advanced age that had seen more than 140,000 miles roll past under its oil-dripping chassis, our Blue Behemoth was getting increasingly expensive to keep on the road. (It cost a whopping $850 recently just to replace a dead fuel pump!)
And did I mention the gas factor? Our Suburban could hold nearly 40-gallons of fuel. Of course, when we bought it in September of 1999, unleaded was a measly $1.47 per gallon. Today, even the cheapest gas is prairie-doggin’ the $4-a-gallon mark. You do the math; it ain’t pretty.
In short, it was time to sell the poor thing and put it out of our misery.
Now, over the years I’ve bought and sold dozens of vehicles; beginning with an ancient Ford Econoline panel van that had been rode hard and put away wet by the phone company and barely got me to La Crescenta and back and from Cal State San Diego. I bought that olive drab deathtrap out of a desperate need for transportation and because it was within my college-afflicted budget of $200. I sold it less than six months later for nearly the same amount; which proved to me that I wasn’t the only sucker in San Diego County.
During the ensuing decades, I have bought and sold countless other vehicles –from abused Accords to cop-baiting Z-cars. No matter what make or model, domestic or foreign, sports car or four-wheel-drive – I’ve always sold every vehicle myself. Mind you, it’s not that I enjoy the process of selling cars. In fact, I loathe it; with all those awkward moments involving test drives and price negotiations and trying to figure out if the person you just handed your keys to is an escaped serial killer or merely seriously creepy.
Heck, just trying to explain to classified ad callers how to get to La Crescenta (much less how to spell it!) is a part of the car-selling process that has always been a big pain in the Pontiac.
But when it came time to sell our Suburban, my selling streak came to a screeching halt. Why? We’ll look under that hood next week.
Until then, I’ll see you ‘round town.
Continuing on the subject of out-of-control grade school paranoia about gun-related toys, actions and speech in our grade schools, I’ve been asked if I made up any of the news items in my last column. Sadly, no. In fact, I didn’t have room last week for even more examples of ridiculous acts of overzealous administrators and fear mongers. Like these additional recent news items:
Two seven-year old boys were recently suspended from school in Suffolk County, VA for pointing pencils at each other while making shooting sounds. According to news reports, one of the boys was pretending to be a U.S. Marine – like his father – and the other a “bad guy” (which is no doubt is media speak for a white, Christian conservative male).
Elsewhere in the land of the not-so-free (Mount Carmel, PA, to be exact), a five-year old girl was suspended after she made what school officials called a “terrorist threat” with ... wait for it ... a small, Hello Kitty automatic bubble blower. Well, duh. We should rise up and demand that politicians enact an immediate ban on automatic bubble blowers, for crying out loud. I mean, a single-action bubble blower should be more than enough firepower.
Moving on with this parade of paranoia; even a teacher’s permission doesn’t seem to matter to the enlightened chuckleheads running far too many of our schools today. Just this month, several grade-school students in Edmonds, WA were kicked out of school for shooting Nerf gun darts before class. Just imagine the carnage. To add insult to injury, their teacher had specifically requested that bring Nerf guns to class to use in a probability study. But in our elite education system, the god of zero tolerance must be worshiped at the cost of common sense.
Finally, I can’t finish this skewering of child-minded adults without mentioning one of the most idiotic and useless exercises yet. Last month in Hayward, CA, the Strobridge Elementary School hosted a toy gun buyback program for kids. You read that right; a toy gun buyback.
Does anyone wonder why charter and home school movements are thriving all across this once great country?
What’s next? All of this foolishness makes me wonder if school kids will soon be expelled for playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors” with each other. Wouldn’t want the others traumatized by such dangerously lethal play now, would we? Boys with the nickname of “Boomer” will no doubt be asked to stay home until they are given a less explosive handle. And woe unto anyone who calls a rambunctious kid a “pistol,” or says a teacher has a “hair trigger” temper. Yep, those poor innocent people will surely find themselves “under the gun” to use more politically correct language sanitized for everyone’s protection.
Remember the boy named “Hunter” I wrote about last week – whose parents were told by his school for the deaf administrators that he had to change his given name because the sign for that name went against their school “no weapons” policy? What about the poor kid whose parents were evil enough to name him Gunnar? And can school districts even set a “target” for test results or fundraising without recklessly creating an atmosphere of violence? Wait, what about all the ink “cartridges” they order for photocopiers? Should high school quarterbacks no longer be allowed to “rifle” a football downfield? I mean, if we’re gonna have zero tolerance, let’s go all the way.
As a kid I played pretend shoot ‘em up around my neighborhood on a regular basis. One of my all-time-favorite Christmas gifts ever was a “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” gun with a pretend scope, pretend removable magazine, pretend bipod, pretend silencer – the whole horrible, loathsome lot. Back then, the barrels of toy guns didn’t even have neon orange safety bands on them.
And yet somehow I didn’t become a soulless mass murderer. Today, I would have been suspended before the first recess at kindergarten.
I’ll see you ‘round town.
