The week before last I was made aware of the CAAMFest (i.e. Center for Asian-American Media Film Festival) via something posted on Facebook. I thought I knew about most of the film festivals that take place in San Francisco, but had never heard of this one. I checked out the schedule since it started the Thursday before last. I was happy to discover two Hawaii-related films would be showing; “Hula – Merrie Monarch’s Golden Celebration” and “The Haumana.” I immediately bought tickets to both. “Hula” was showing on a Saturday afternoon at the Kabuki Theater in Japantown. The movie was prefaced by a short film called “Lolena’s Legacy,” which was about the preservation of the Hawaiian language in schools today. Lolena herself was born and raised on the island of Niihau, the island which is (still, I believe) banned to tourists. Residents must be full-blooded Hawaiians. I don’t know much else about Niihau other than it’s visible from the western side of Kauai and that their tiny white shells are highly prized (and no, I’m not talking about puka shells!). Lolena eventually moved to Honolulu as an adult, where she was recruited to teach children the native Hawaiian language. Teachers were instructed to speak ONLY in Hawaiian, no matter whether the children understood or not; they would eventually figure it out, as they had no choice. That short film was fascinating to me, as I realized that I don’t know anyone or have never, to my knowledge, heard anyone speak completely in Hawaiian. The school wasn’t only teaching Hawaiian to children of Hawaiian descent, but to everyone, even little haole kids! It was beautiful to see children have complete conversations and joke with their parents only in Hawaiian. I only know certain words in Hawaiian and learn new ones all the time, explained to me by my friends and relatives from the Islands. Anyway, I was really moved by that short film and think that it’s a wonderful project/legacy/undertaking to preserve a language that often seems more “lost” than others. “Hula” was basically a documentary about the humble beginnings, struggles and the progression of the Merrie Monarch Festival, an annual hula festival held in Hilo, Hawaii. There was lots of amazing footage of hula halaus performing at the festival, as to be expected. I caught glimpses of both Patrick Makuakane and Mark Ho’omalu, two amazing hula instructors from here in the Bay area. There was also a brief shot of Keali’i Reichel performing, an incredible hula instructor, as well as a very successful singer. I saw “The Haumana” on Sunday night, also at the Kabuki Theater. It was about a hula instructor who’d passed away and left her men’s class to a former student, who currently performed in a tourist act in Waikiki. It was quite cheesy, but the most beautiful thing about it was reminding me that it’s traditional for students who want to learn hula to stand outside the school and sing/chant to the instructor, basically asking their permission to enter and learn. The instructor sings/chants in answer to them to give his/her permission before they cross the threshold of the school. (If I’m getting any of this wrong, please feel free to correct me, for those of you who are far more well informed than me!) The funniest part of the movie was the casting of Kelly Hu as a local bartender at the Pau Hana Lounge, which actually exists. She was cast as one of those tough-acting bartenders with a heart of gold, but she made me laugh.
On to the crime part, as I know you’re chomping at the bit to know what I’m talking about. On Sunday afternoon I was in the shoe department of Macy’s in Union Square. I know that I gave up shoe shopping for Lent, but I didn’t give up slipper/sandal/boot shopping, which is different to me. It’s just like I gave up macarons and cupcakes, but not ALL sweets/desserts. I was specific about my sacrifices! So I had picked out about 5 pairs of boots to try on, since they were having a great sale, made even better by an additional 25% off if you waited until Wednesday to pick them up. I was sitting in a chair with my purse at my side, my hoodie over it and my cell phone in the pocket of my hoodie. The saleswoman who’d brought me the boots was standing right in front of my chair. I got up out of the chair for a mere 20 or 30 seconds to walk to a mirror a few feet away to see how the boots looked, leaving the saleswoman with my things. When I returned, my purse was gone, my hoodie was on the floor and my cell phone was laying in the chair! I was shocked, to say the least. I kept asking her “Where’s my purse?! Didn’t you see anyone take it? Weren’t you watching at all?!” She seemed nonplussed, hardly concerned. Meanwhile, another woman informed me that she’d seen a “dirty blonde with dreadlocks” pick up the purse. This woman had thought the purse belonged to the blonde. When she picked up my purse and the hoodie fell off, this woman said to her “You dropped something.” According to her, the blonde looked at her, didn’t say anything and walked quickly away. To make a long story short, she and I couldn’t find any security on the floor. We ran downstairs to a few of the exits to see if we could spot the blonde, to no avail. When we got back to the shoe department, the saleswoman said that there was security somewhere “over there,” as she vaguely pointed in another direction. Then she informed that she’d saved my boots for me. What good did that do, if I had no way of paying for them?! Security and a floor manager came over to talk to us. The other woman described what she saw, admitting that she actually thought it was a man becoming a woman. The thief had walked right by a security camera. However, they informed us that their cameras are live-time only. Since they don’t actually record anything, they couldn’t rewind the tape to see who the person was. I realized that they weren’t going to be any help whatsoever and that precious time was ticking away. I quickly walked home (my Fast Pass had been in my purse), then texted both of my roommates and the maintenance man of the building, since I didn’t have keys to get into the apartment. One of my roommates came home and let me in and the maintenance man went to make more keys for me. In the meantime, I started calling credit card companies. The thief had immediately made his/her way to Apple and charged $545! It’s nice to know that Apple didn’t bother checking ID for a purchase over $500. No other charges were made. I cancelled my credit cards, ATM card and closed down my checking account the next day. Aside from the stress, everything was taken care of, except my ID. I’m using my passport for the moment, but am dreading going to DMV. The next available appointment was in April, so I’ll take my chances and go tomorrow morning. On a side note, the ticket for “The Haumana” was also in the purse, but I really wanted to see the movie, so simply bought another one. When I went back to Macy’s the following day to explain to them that the thief also had a receipt for something I had on hold at Macy’s, the floor manager saw me again. I was actually very curt with her ’cause I was still really pissed off. She felt so bad that she gave me a coupon for $25 off of my entire purchase, PLUS an additional 20% off each item (not including the 25% off for pre-sale) that I was interested in. Now how could I pass that up?! She instructed the shoe salesman to give me extra special attention, which he did. I bought some boots at a SUBSTANTIAL discount, apologized to her for being an incredible beeyotch and thanked the shoe salesman profusely for his patience with me. In this case, my bitch mode paid off!!
Tuesday night as I was sitting home saying “Woe is me” to myself and perusing Facebook yet again, an acquaintance of mine had posted that Prince was having a last-minute concert at The Fillmore on Wednesday night. There was a link to buy tickets. I clicked on it immediately. The 7:30 p.m. show was already sold out, but they’d just added an 11:00 p.ml. show. I nearly had a heart attack trying to log on to Ticketmaster, waiting for them to E-mail my long forgotten password, entering my credit card info to have it rejected and re-entering my NEW credit card info and get everything taken care of before THAT show sold out. When I clicked on the Purchase button and it confirmed that my ticket would be waiting at Will Call, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had a date with Prince!!! He was my favorite musician from about the time I was 19 until I was at least 25. I never saw Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, any of the Beatles, James Brown or so many others, but I was going to see Prince, dammit! When Wednesday night arrived, I spent the first part of it drinking wine at Bouche. I headed down to The Fillmore around 10:00 p.m. and stood in line at Will Call from 10:20 p.m. to 11:50 p.m. Prince went on at 12:10 a.m., put on a hell of a show, did 3 encores, his band did an encore without him singing and it was over at 2:40 a.,m. Prince is going to be 56 in June, but still looks damn good. He can sing, dance, play instruments and get the crowd hyped up. It was great seeing him in a smaller venue where you can get relatively close to him. When he came out, he was very reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix with his hat and bandana. His all-girl band had a drummer who kinda’ looked like Holly Madison, then the 2 guitarists who still reminded me of Wendy and Lisa from back in the day. He did older songs like “I Want To Be Your Lover,” “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” and “Purple Rain,” of course. He did my all-time favorite, “Always in My Hair.” He also did quite a bit of “new” stuff that I wasn’t familiar with, but danced along to, nonetheless. Although there were no T-shirts or such for sale, they did hand out free posters as we were leaving the venue.
So the little “bump in the road” didn’t ruin the rest of my week. I danced, I drank, I shopped and I still made it to the gym 3 out of 7 nights (but I MUST do better than that this week).