It’s the time of year when my mind should focus on things political, what with the finale of the Legislature, the upcoming elections for Honolulu mayor and U.S. Senate and the presidential drama in Washington.
Instead, I find my attention riveted on something else with all of that and more: "The Three Stooges."
I hadn’t so eagerly anticipated a movie since Uma Thurman lived out Hillary’s fantasy in "Kill Bill," but gratification had to wait until I found a day when I could round up all four of my grandkids.
Revisiting the Stooges had to include them; I wanted the kids to see what I thought was funny at their age — and to know whether they thought it was as funny as I did.
I wanted them with me as I remembered my childhood friends with whom I’d religiously followed the adventures of Larry, Moe and Curly and re-enacted their pranks. Remarkably, we all survived with our arms and eyeballs still in their sockets.
There was fear that modern sensitivities about child safety would force the remake to wimp out on the extreme physical comedy for which the Stooges were famous.
But the Farrelly brothers were true to the original, with church bells falling on nuns, chain saws handled carelessly, ladders toppling and all the face-slapping, nose-twisting, head-bopping, belly-whomping, hair-pulling, eye-gouging and sledgehammer-bashing that "Stooges" fans would expect.
In the only concession to correctness, producers at the end showed kids that the stunts were done with fake sledgehammers and sleight of hand and shouldn’t be tried at home. Mine figured that out without any lectures from me.
I laughed myself to tears during the film, proving only that my sense of humor hasn’t evolved much, and was glad to hear a lot of chuckling from my two boys, 15 and 12.
The girls, 8 and 7, were sitting off by themselves doing who knows what, but they rode home quoting lines from the movie.
It wasn’t a cheap adventure; between the movie tickets, the quarters for the video games in the lobby, the popcorn and drinks, and the late lunch afterward, I was out more than $100.
But getting a chance to knock around with all the grandkids and share a part of my own childhood with them is one of those days that falls in the "priceless" category.
When you follow politics for a living for more than 40 years, as I have, you see a lot of boneheads doing boneheaded things.
But few are as pure of heart as Larry, Moe and Curly, who always come through and save the orphanage in the end.
If only things turned out that well in our public life for real, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
