Tuesday, September 05, 2006

A Typical Day Out With the Family

On the last summer weekend of the year, before my brother has to fly back to Chicago for round 2 of business school, my dad decided to splurge and get us box seats at the Hollywood Bowl for the Best American Movie Musicals night.

An outing with my family is always a treat and a chance to embarrass my parents when my brother and I revert to our true juvenile ages of 5 and 9. On the shuttle, we poked at each other, yanked the Ipod earbuds out of each other's ears when the other nodded off, bribed each other with candy... at one point he called me Hezbollah for always instigating something and he was Israel - fed up and retaliating with a rain of bombs or in his case punches on the shoulder. I guess his metaphor bestows some maturity to our childish bickering. Or maybe not.

At the Bowl, there was us and then there were the rest of the WASPy looking, grey-haired, music loving afficionados. "There are no Asians down here," my brother whispered. We looked around and the closest thing we saw that was Asian, was a backwards tattoo on some lady's shoulder that was supposed to say "fair lady" in Chinese. Except that she had reversed the characters which really didn't mean anything except that she was illiterate in Chinese.

We kept making bets on which movies would make the list, which one would be considered the number one movie musical of all time by the AFI. I bet Sound of Music (#4) and he bet Wizard of Oz (#3). Turned out to be Singing In the Rain. Moulin Rouge just made the cut at #25. Beauty and the Beast, the animated film from Disney ranked #22. For some reason, that film clip choked me up with nostalgia and I started to feel oncoming tears. My brother turned to me again. "I think Belle suffered from Stockholm Syndrome." Then I tried to stifle my laughter.

1 comment:

me said...

i envy you that you can joke about stockholm syndrome with your brother. i am doomed to a life without stimulating & intelligent conversation (with both sides of the family).