"Spam and pineapple pupus? Brok da mout! Kay den, I'm so there! Pau hana man, to da max."
The glee club has decided to hold a Hawaiian Shirt party next week.
Meaning that everyone is supposed to wear loud tropical shirts while swilling low-alcohol beer. Perhaps to the accompaniment of tinny Hawaiian music from someone's much regretted and lamented ceedee collection. Their secret shame on public display.
I do not wish to know which of my coworkers voluntarily listens to such stuff.
"Princess Pupuli, has plenty papaya, and she likes to give it awaaaaayy......"
[Lyrics here: http://www.huapala.org/Princess_Pupule.html and please imagine the twangy ukulele accompaniment yourself, as I refuse to even check if it is out there.]
Hawaiian Shirt Party? Loud Hawaiian shirts? Surfer images and sun rays and tall palms and huge whomping flower splotches?
Urk!
I'm just a bit uncomfortable dressing as if I am going to Rafi's shul for Saturday service - although I believe he may be the only one with that minhag there, certainly the only one who can carry it off and still look frum. Tropical Pacific Islander frum. Watch out he has a weapon frum. You have the right to remain silent frum.
For the rest of us, there is something very 'single bachelor saying hello ladies!' about Hawaiian shirts. I consequently do not own any Hawaiian shirts.
[I do however own several Indonesian batik shirts, as are sold to tourists - but the best one can say about them is that they make me look like a pregnant Samoan (Savage Kitten has said precisely that, and refuses to be seen in public with me when I wear them). They too are very loud, but cater to a different facet of sleaze than Hawaiian shirts. Something more like buffed Aussie drunkard, less like middle-aged Hugh Heffner clone.]
But shirts aside, what is truly bizarre is the conceptualization of a tropical island beach over a dozen floors up in an office building in San Francisco in mid November.
It is desperate, and it is demented (but not nearly depraved enough).
It is far too cold to pretend. Whenever I step outside to smoke, I put on my overcoat, and it is still too cold (icy wind from Montgomery Street from mid-afternoon onward). Too blasting cold.
A coworker brought in an electric heater for his poor frozen tootsies. Yesterday my fingers ached at the keyboard from the chill.
If y'all willing to start a bonfire with dry coconut fronds in the conference room, sure I'll pretend I'm in the tropics. Otherwise. forget it! And I'm bringing my own rum.
And speaking of island beaches, elsewhere there is an banana glut. Loads of fresh pisang for the taking. How very tropical. See this news blurb:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7085109.stm
"Thousands of bananas have been washed up [CUT] after several containers fell off a cargo ship in a storm [CUT] beaches on Terschelling and Ameland islands were littered with bunches of unripe fruit - to the delight of some local residents."
Sounds wonderful.
Bananariffic even.
Beach. Bananas. Local residents.
Buffed local residents rolling around in bananas on the beach.
Lucky devils. Hope they enjoy skipping around on the banana strewn sands. In their skimpy swimming trunks. Buff bronzed bodies, boards, and sunbleached hair. Smelling like suntan lotion and frangipani.
Note: Climactic and geographic details above are subjective, depending on the individual's own reality and tropical fantasy.
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I have what I feel to be extremely eclectic, downright catholic taste in music, ranging from the invention of polyphony all the way through the weird shit some of my co-workers play at work, which is apparently the dernier cri, but I have to say that there are exactly two forms of musical expression which I find myself utterly incapable of abiding: Ragas, and Hawaiian music. Oh, and the Eagles.
Hmm, I actually like ragas - recently found one of my old CDs of Ali Akhbar Khan, and played it again. Can't say I really know any Hawaiian music.
However, during the warmer months, every Friday here at work is "Hawaiian shirt Friday," unofficially. Maybe it's a West Coast thing, maybe it's a software company thing, maybe it's just that so many of my colleagues actually spend ALL their vacation time on the islands.
I always feel out of place, having no comparable clothing.
Of course, why should Jews in semi-tropical California have adopted Northern European business wear as our minhag for davening? A nice Aloha shirt, perhaps with a tropical floral etz chaim theme is my suggestion for our very own California minhag. Lama lo?
R
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