Mah Nah Poo Ah, And Jay's Wedding

What's the best thing about going to Hawai'i? EVERYTHING! What's the worst thing about going to Hawai'i? Only staying 3 1/2 days and it being a "business" trip for the most part.

A couple of weekends ago, I went home to Hawai'i (minus Nicole and Sean Patrick) to attend/light my cousin Jay "Sebenteen"'s wedding. If you've ever been too a Filipino wedding, you know it's more or less a three day affair. But that didn't stop me from trying to squeeze in every bit of local food I could.

The moment I landed, my brother and uncle took me to my favorite lunch plate joint, L&R Barbecue. Not to be confused with the worldwide phenomenon known as L&L Hawai'ian Barbecue, L&R is a little joint near my dad's house that serves the best chicken cutlet. My opinion anyway.

From there it was more or less straight into the wedding. But here's some photo's...



As I said in the title, Mah Nah Poo Ah, or for you local kine readers. Manapua. If you don't know what it is, you may have had it as an appetizer in a Chinese restaurant, better known as a "bau" or "bow". Basically, a steamed bun stuffed with meat. It's called Manapua in Hawai'i because in plantation days, the Chinese workers would trade lunch with other immigrants and locals who called these buns, "mea ono pua'a", which in Hawai'ian translates to, "Delicious pig bread". In the picture above is the kitchen area for a manapua factory that my brother Matt took me too so I could get my "fix". Each of those round tins are stuffed with the white buns and then steamed to perfection. You can see the lady in the back with the mound of meat filler. Usually char sui pork.

How do you make a wedding reception unique and successful from a lighting stand point? Custom gobos. In this case, I had gobos cut of the bride and groom's initials, which was a running theme for the wedding, from the invitations to the party favors. I put one at the entry door to greet the guests...
And one was focused down onto the dance floor. I had a third gobo that I was going to put on the white curtain behind the head table, but alas, I didn't have a leko with a small enough lens to throw the distance.
How else do you make a wedding reception unique and successful from a lighting stand point? Gobo patterns on the walls of the ballroom. It seems simple enough, three gobos overlapping to fill the wall, in a breakup pattern, plus a couple of up lights to highlight the sconces and to break up the pattern a little bit more. Let me tell you, this was no easy feat.
Turns out, none of the technical people who ran this ballroom had any idea as to how the power was run and how the wall outlets were ganged. I was told, "Every wall outlet has it's own breaker." And I was told this by multiple people. WRONG. Wall outlets are ganged to single 20 amp breakers. Which outlets were ganged? Your guess is as good as mine. So through a little bit of trial and error, my brother Ray and I ran cable everywhere until we got all the lights on and weren't tripping breakers off. Just in time for the reception, but not in time for the ceremony. I missed the "I do's", as did Ray, although he made a valiant effort to get to the ceremony.

Admittedly, I still had a great time. Jay and Chantel are built for each other, and everyone had a great time (as evidenced in the last picture above). The food was amazing, and the bar was open, so what can I complain about?

Never getting my fried rice, I can complain about that....

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Like Going Backstage...

I remember back in Hawai'i, one of my favorite musicians, Morrissey, came to Honolulu for a concert. By this point I had been working a bit around the theater scene, namely at the Neil Blaisedell concert hall. There I met a number of the IATSE stagehands. At the concert, I saw one of the stagehands sitting outside the backdoor smoking and struck up a conversation. Halfway through the conversation, I blurted out like a groupie, "Can you get me backstage?" To which he replied, "I could, but there's nothing to see back there."

I look back on that now, after being in the business for so long, and he was right, there is nothing to see backstage. Which also makes it a little hard to impress me with "getting backstage" or "behind the scenes". My initial thought always goes back to, "I could, but there's nothing to see back there."

We did however find one "behind the scenes" place that did impress me, the kitchen at Roy's Restaurant in Pasadena.

Nicole and I signed up for a cooking class there, "Roy's Classics". After everyone showed up, the sous chef led us all "backstage" into the actual kitchen where the cooking takes place. Here's the evidence.

When we got "backstage", the chef handed us each the recipes for the different dishes we were going to make. At first, I couldn't figure out how all of us were going to make all the dishes in the small cramped kitchen. But that got figured out in later photos...

Much to my chagrin, but I should have known, all but one of the recipes were for fish. Roy's is, for the most part, a seafood restaurant, that's what Hawai'i has a lot of. Behind me is a large piece of cod. It didn't really stink, but let's just say I'm not a fan of fish. The chef masterfully carved up the cod as well as prepared most of the sauces and broths that would take some time to complete while he talked about the different dishes. He then broke us up into groups, each of us taking one of the recipes to complete.

Here we see the lovely Nicole Boland flipping the teriyaki salmon on the grill. Nicole and I partnered up with our friends, Ernessa and her Mother-in-Law. The chef prepared the fish, and we all got together and made parts of the teriyaki sauce. Ernessa and I cut up the green onions, her Mother-in-law stirred the ingredients together, Nicole dropped in the salmon and the put them on the grill.

Here is the finished product. The chef gave Nicole a few pointers on how to move the fish around to give it the "grill" pattern, as well as how to flip the fish without destroying it.

NOW THIS, I could eat. It's the mustard covered spare ribs. A lot went into make them before hand. Again, a team of people got together, and made the sauce and cooked it, the chef had the meat prepared before we got there. YUM.

Another fish recipe. Yuck.

Cooking of another fish recipe. Yuck.

Prepping another fish. Yech.

The chef cooking the beef. The only thing I could eat.

After all the food was cooked, we sat in the bar area while the chef prepared some vegetables and rice. He brought out all the food we prepared and then proceeded to pig out.

Can't wait to see what next months recipes are...

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The Stage Is Where?

Back in Seattle again. I was just here a little over two weeks ago. Last time it was for the Microsoft Start! conference.

This time, it's for the Microsoft Tech Ready 10.

Next month I'll be here again, although only for three days for a Janeane Garofalo comedy special. That's a lot of trips to the great northwest in the first quarter of 2010. Good for business.

Here's a photo taken from the lighting console. Again, I have to be careful of what I take pictures of and what I talk about since the material being presented at these meetings are classified. So I won't tell you about all the things they talk about while I sit here and write this blog. But let me tell you this, it's pretty boring. Although the Q&A part of the day has been pretty entertaining so far, with the employees airing their grievances to the VP's and then being applauded by 3500 of their compatriots. It's funny to watch VP's squirm and then talk like a congressman.

Aside from the Q&A The only real technical highlight of this show, is the distance from the console to the stage. Basically, the stage is at one end of two exhibit halls (halls E and F) and Front of House is at the other end. I'm thinking easily 450 feet. One and a half football fields. If it wasn't for the big screens you see hung throughout the halls left and right, I'd never know there was someone onstage speaking, and if they were lit properly. That big bright blur in the middle of the picture, that's the stage.

Easy show. I like when the production company builds in enough time to get the job done. We did have a few days of overtime at the start, but we've been in and out on show days. Not to mention I have a day off on Thursday. REI, here I come.

Perhaps more pictures from this lovely city on Thursday. Until then, I have to get back to napping on the console.

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