C&C's Italian Restaurant

8/10. This is a great place for Italian food located on Waialae avenue - same block as Coffee Talk.

The place has a nice cosy feel to it with wicker chairs and white tablecloths. For some reason they have about 20 bread baskets suspended from the ceiling, which is a bit weird. Very twilight zone. Since the place is small, it is useful to make reservations. The waiter-in-chief is this effeminate french guy who like other Honolulu waiters focuses exclusively on the women in the party. He even dropped some french words like "merci", "voila" etc. But wait...isn't this an Italian restaurant?? Yep. That's the other weird thing about the place.

However the food is excellent. I've been here on two separate occasions and everything was just superb. The italian bread for starters is somewhat unusual, but quite tasty. I have had several dishes here such as the veal pasta, pork chops, shrimp fettucine, linguine with clams, bruschetta, seafood risotto (with great fluffy prawns and scallops) and the parmigiana gelato. The pork chops and the clam linguine are my favorites. Among appetizers, both bruschetta (three types) and the gelato were good, but the gelato was really good!

Good wine is essential with this food and the place is BYOB. But be prepared for the $5 glass charge. Overall this is an expensive place with dishes varying between $15 and $25 or so. Expect to pay between $20-25 for a full meal. No possibility of regrets though...!

Cosmic Girl

- Jamiroquai, Cosmic girl

(Farewell. Even I can't bridge those light years.)

I must've died and gone to heaven
Cos it was a quarter past eleven
On a Saturday in 1999
Right across from where I'm standing
On the dance floor she was landing
It was clear that she was from another time
Like some baby Barbarella
With the stars as her umbrella
She asked me if I'd like to magnetise
Do I have to go star-trekking
Cos it's you I should be checking
So she lazer beamed me with her cosmic eyes

She's just a cosmic girl
From another galaxy
My heart's at zero gravity
She's from a cosmic world
Putting me in ecstasy
Transmitting on my frequency
She's cosmic

I'm scanning all my radars
Well she said she's from a quasar
Forty thousand million light years away
It's a distant solar system
I tried to phone but they don't list 'em
So I asked her for a number all the same
She said, step in my transporter
So I can teleport ya
All around my heavenly body
This could be a close encounter
I should take care not to flounder
Sends me into hyperspace, when I see her pretty face

She's just a cosmic girl
From another galaxy
My heart's at zero gravity
She's from a cosmic world
Putting me in ecstasy
Transmitting on my frequency
She's cosmic
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face

She's just a cosmic girl
From another galaxy
Transmitting on my frequency yeah cosmic, oh
Can't you be my cosmic woman?
I need you, I want you to be my cosmic girl
For the rest of time (Fade)

Little Miss Sunshine

8/10. O.K. I'm happy to say that I have finally seen something worthwhile at the theater. A welcome relief from all the third-rate stuff that we were plagued with for the whole summer.

The story is about a cute little kid ("Olive" / Abigail Breslin) who is being prepped for a child beauty contest known as "Little Miss Sunshine". Her family is a quirky bunch, with a dirty old man for a grandfather, an "achievement counselor" father and a brother who is immersed in dark German classics (Nietzsche...!) due to which he hasn't talked for a year. Finally there is an uncle who recently tried to commit suicide after being spurned by his male graduate student in favor of a rival colleague in academia. Quite a mouthful eh? The mother (Toni Collette) appears to be the most sane member of the family. Yay, mothers.

The family finds that it must set off together on a road-trip across state lines to deliver Olive to the beauty contest. And so they depart in their rickety old van with their journey resulting in more crazy situations than can be imagined. For the sake of secrecy I will not disclose them...but a corpse is involved at one point. The movie somehow manages to tackle some social issues too, but in a very non-threatening way. For example, the brother represents all those teenage dudes that are cutoff from peers and descend into nihilistic weirdness (columbine??). However he worships Nietzsche and not Manson. The other issue is child beauty contests. The movie doesn't say so explicitly but as the show goes on, it becomes pretty clear that they should be banned. I'm not quite sure what the homosexual professor-jilted lover-uncle signifies - perhaps he is just there for fun. But the achievement counselor father is definitely a caricature of the various "ten-point" or "fifteen-point" programs for success that are peddled by some low-lifes in this country. The drone armies of Amway and Quikstar automatically come to mind. Interestingly, since I left Texas I haven't been assaulted by them...perhaps Hawaii is an oasis of peace in this war. Well, one more reason to go the aloha way!

The movie is really funny and has a great finale, which I shouldn't reveal either. It's not terribly deep...just lighthearted entertainment with trademark quirky americanisms. Worth $8 at the theater.