Hummer Cologne DisplayAnother discovery at the mall on Saturday: “The Essence of Adventure.” I honestly cannot figure out what the target audience is for this. I mean, a Hummer fragrance? Does it make you smell like you’ve been driving in mud all day? Is it a bottle of engine oil? Is it supposed to give you that new car smell? Is it supposed to increase your chances of getting—uh, never mind.

Seriously, who came up with this idea? And are we likely to see Jeep cologne next? Maybe BMW or Mercedes fragrances for the more sophisticated market?

We had some free time before seeing Serenity again on Saturday, so we wandered into Hot Topic. (Katie finds T-shirts there from time to time, and it’s always interesting to just look at the slogans you wouldn’t think of actually wearing.) Well, they’ve had a line of Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise for a while, so of course they’ve added a line of Corpse Bride tie-ins. Including this:

Corpse Bride Comforter

OK, I understand the movie-tie-in-on-a-blanket concept. I had Empire Strikes Back sheets when I was a kid. And I understand that they’re targeting the goth audience. But somehow, as much as I liked the movie, the words “corpse” and “comfort” don’t fit together in my mind!

Here’s our first view of the island of Hawai‘i, as our plane approached on Sunday morning, April 3. Snow-capped Mauna Kea is rising out of the clouds, with Mauna Loa behind it.

View of Mauna Kea from the plane

A week later, we spent Sunday evening waiting for our flight out of Kona Airport. (After a disastrous experience at LAX in which we arrived 2 hours ahead and got to the gate with maybe 15 minutes to spare, we showed up early for the flight home. But Kona’s much smaller and better organized, so it took us maybe 15 minutes to check in. There wasn’t even a line to go through security!)

Kona airport at night

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series on our Hawaiian vacation. I’m sorry it took so long to finish it, but hey, I managed (just barely) to beat the 6-month marker!

Flashback to April and Hawaii. On the day we drove to Kilauea we stopped at various places along the way. And since it’s a nearly-100-mile drive from Kailua, there was a lot to see.

We never made it down to South Point (the southernmost tip of the island), partly because of time and partly because—believe it or not—our car rental contract forbid us to drive on the 12-mile road out to the point! Supposedly it’s poorly maintained—or it used to be, and the policy hasn’t kept up—and they don’t want the wear and tear on cars that aren’t designed for it. As I recall, rental trucks and SUVs don’t have the restriction. This was the closest we ever came to it, and you can only barely see it way off in the distance.

Coastline with coves and points

If you look at the end of the spray near the visible point, then go straight up toward the horizon, you’ll notice that the sky-sea line dips downward slightly and there’s a faint darker patch of sky. As far as we could tell, that’s the promontory heading out toward South Point. Even then, we weren’t quite sure. Update: It’s not. I checked the map when I finally uploaded these images to Flickr, and the highway doesn’t get close to the ocean on the west side. It’s a viewpoint near Haleokane, east of Naalehu and east of the turnoff to South Point Road. We’d already passed it!

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It’s refreshing when a movie you’ve anticipated for years actually lives up to your expectations. It’s unprecedented when it happens twice in one weekend. MirrorMask and Serenity were both amazing.

The MirrorMask theater listing looks like a tour schedule, with the film opening in a few more cities each week. Unfortunately, at least some theaters that have it now won’t have it by next weekend, so we’re going to have to catch it again one night this week. Then we’ll seek Serenity again on the weekend. Somewhere in there we’ll find time for the other movies we wanted to see.

We’ve got a more thorough review of Serenity planned…