Hilo Characters

Ok, ok..... I can see how, due to my most recent lack of posting here, some of you might think I was the lone casualty of the "2010 Hilo Tsu-not-i" (as I've taken to calling it). Well, that's not the case. In reality, I'm alive and wellish (I've gone and caught a sniffle). No, my lack of posting is simply due to the fact that I've been pretty busy. Mostly with farm stuff. So busy in fact that not only have I not posted, I've also not spent any time in the studio.

I know. Craziness.

At any rate, I find myself with a free evening and a few things to write about. No kooky adventures, per se, but some interesting people I've seen lately around Hilotown.

Moses (no, not that one, and no, he had nothing to do with stopping the tsunami, so please don't ask):
So one of my current jobs to do (as the Correas are on vacation) is to collect buckets full of scraps from various restaurants and health food stores around town. We use the scraps to create compost. It's a lot of fun. I pull up the other night, and there's this guy out front with a harp. Yep. Not a guitar, as is common, or a ukelele, which is just as common, but a harp. Granted, it wasn't a full-scale concert harp, but it was half as big, I'd guess. Given that this is in front of the most upscale health food store in Hilo, and as they've got a patio for patrons to use, I initially thought that it was not only reasonable, but probably would be quite entertaining. As I went in, he appeared to be warming up or tuning or something, so I just went in. On my way out, I said hello, and started up a conversation. His name, as I said above, is Moses, and it turns out that the harp was made by a member of his family. Now that's pretty cool. He doesn't have the knack for it, he says, but his family makes all sorts of instruments, not just harps. Now I'm really interested, because hand-made instruments are some of my favorite things (in a sound of the music kind of way, not a The Sound of Music kind of way).

But here's where it gets weird.

I ask him to play something for me, and he looks at me funny, and says "I have been." And the it was my turn to look at him funny.

"Huh. Sorry, I guess I wasn't paying attention," I said.

"Nah, nah," he says, "You see, people are used to hearing music a certain way. I'm trying to free them by giving them something in an entirely new way. You know, make them stop and become aware of the new way."

For a brief moment, the thought flickered across my mind: "Whoah.......jazz harpist."

Now I've got a couple of bucks out to suppot this guy's harp busking style, and I'm starting to think things aren't going to turn out as I'd originally expected (much like this other time I was in a shop in the red-light district in Maastricht, but that's another tale for another time).

So I ask where the family land is, and he tells me I should come up and visit. He told me the directions to the place, and said "If you're at mile marker seven, and you still can't find us, just ask someone. We're such a big family that everyone in the area knows us."

"Oh yeah? How big a family?" I proceeded to stupidly ask.

"Right now, there are 56 of us."

"Ohhh.". *it all clicks into place*

Now as intriged as I am by a giant local hippie cult full of harpists, given that this guy here not only does not know how to play the harp, but would rather make up a story about freeing people's minds than learn how to play said harp, I decided that I would continue from this point on to stay well clear of Moses, and just wave at him knowingly from a distance while muttering under my breath, "Crazy hippies and their harps."

Afterword: The health food store has since asked Moses to not busk upon their premisis, so he's moved onto an island in the parking lot in front of Borders bookstore just next door.

Lady in Line at the Grocery Store:
Some of you may know that grocery store people love me. As do gas station people, most liquor store people, and the occasional pet store clerk. But I digress.
So I'm at the store buying my required items for St. Patrick's Day (in my mind, if you don't have corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and Guinness on the 17th, you're just not properly pretending to remember your pretend Irish heritage). So there I am, in the check-out line, and there's this lady and her kid in line ahead of me. Now, she may have been acting this way because she loved me (in case I didn't mention before, moms also love me, so being in a grocery store, this was a potential double-whammy), but I really think this lady was just like this all the time. And it was bizarre.

I've had a lot of time to think about this, and I believe I've finally got it figured out.

This lady was a three-way cross between a stereotypical Jewish mother, Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas, and Napoleon Dynamite.

I'm seriously not kidding.

Somehow, to her son, she was laying on the familial guilt, passive-agressively threatening bodily harm in a jokey kind of way, and standing there as if awkward not only in the store and in the situation, but also in her own skin.

I was mesmerized.

One second she was telling her son that even though tomorrow was her birthday, and all she wanted to do was go to the beach with her family, that he was old enough to decide if he would go or not. And (not kidding) in the very same breath started going off on how when she makes dinner for everyone, she always takes the last and smallest portion for herself because that's what moms do.

All I wanted to do was to lean over to the kid and say, "Just offer to take your mom to the beach right now and see if that shuts her up."  But I didn't. Because I've seen Goodfellas.

When she finally got to the checker, I was fully expecting this exchange:

Checker: "Sorry ma'am, I accidentally rang that chapstik up twice."

Lady: "What's that?..... What did you say?"

Checker: " I was just saying I'm sorry but that I may have rung that up twice and if..."

Lady: "You're sorry? You? Sorry? How are you sorry?"

Checker: "Ma'am?"

Lady: "I'm just saying, if someone tells me he's sorry, I wanna know what kind of sorry he is. Are you saying you're sorry, as in pathetic? Are you saying you're sorry because it's the polite thing to do? Are you saying you're sorry because you thing we're playing the classic game brought to us by Milton Bradley? How are you sorry? That's all I wanna know. In what way are you sorry?"

Checker: "Milton Bradley? Sorry to correct you but it was Parker Broth-"

Lady: "All I know is that when I go out and catch a tasty bass for my family or I whip up a great big bunch of danged quesadillas for them, I always take the leftovers after everyone else has had theirs, because that's what a mother should do, and even though all I want to do tomorrow for my birthday is go to the beach and my own family won't come with me, well, that's my problem too, as a mother, but what is really important, what really matters now, is for you to tell me what it is you mean when you tell me that you're sorry."

Checker: "I'm sorry, but I don't..."

BAM!!!!!!

*lady pulled out a huge gun and shot the checker in the hand*

Lady: "Who's sorry now, huh? Are you sorry now? Sheesh.... All I wanted was some chapstik, dang......."

Aaaaaand.....scene.

Fortunately for me, envisioning this situation in my head distracted me from any further attention towards her, and there must not have been any real drama at the register, because I don't even remember them actually checking out.


So....... Whoah I've written a lot. I get so carried away sometimes. I guess I'll stop here and try and do a part two in a day or two.