Lost In Translation

Picking my father up from SFO is a biannual Olympic event. For some reason, he likes to fly in on Fridays, and I still can't figure out why. It’s certainly not any cheaper, and the airport is always an absolute madhouse on Friday evenings. Considering that he only shows up twice a year, he might consider doing the rest of us a solid by not picking days when my mother and I have to operate a truly Olympic-gold-medal-worthy act of coordination. The event, aptly named RunSnatchCallGo, looks like this: somebody (usually ME) runs out of the car and snatches my father while my mother circles around the loop at just the right speed so that she’ll pull up to the terminal door at exactly the right moment so I can call her and frantically scream, “HE’S HERE HE’S HERE HE’S HERE WHERE ARE YOU OH MY GOD.” We then all hop in while implementing a number of group triple axels and backflips. I think we averaged 9.2/10.0 in the past. (Thanks to our many years of forced practice, I can proudly claim that the last time my mother was on the receiving end of senseless screaming from one of those people they hired from the mental asylum to run airport traffic, I was 12. Maybe.)

My mom likes to make sure that this ceremony of dealing with idiotic drivers and insane people waving their arms becomes a family affair (unless my sister is working late on Fridays, something all-too-common nowadays).

That brings us to the evening of February 12th. Since my poor sister was once again working late into the night (we’re talking 9:00pm on a Friday, a time which typically marks the 8th beer of the night for me), my mother and I picked up my father from the airport first, then headed south to pick her up from work.

Sorry about this, folks, but I need to go on yet another tangent here for background purposes.

My father is a huge film buff. The size of his VHS, LaserDisc (think big-ass DVD), and DVD collection at home is mind-boggling, made all the more impressive considering most of it is hidden in various nooks and crannies so that it just looks like we don’t have ANY movies in the house. That is one of the qualities I inadvertently picked up from my father, the whole film-lover thing. Our standards for what ought to be considered a “good film” are surprisingly close. In fact, I’ve come to notice that, for a man I’ve seen about twice a year for most of my life, I have grown up to have his personality almost exactly, including the penchant to be a physician and our senses of humor. The best part about it? I’m allowed to make dirty jokes in the house, because he has no right to disparage something I do when he does it five times more often. Apologies: the point is that my father actually knows what’s going on in the film world.

Back to the story.

We picked up my sister and instantly the whole family engaged in a gigantic bitchfest about the state of the American economy. The statements “America is no longer tops” and “immigrating to this country was a mistake” were my father’s new catchphrases. (Used to be “OH GOD why is Taiwanese baseball so crappy now?”)

After all of us got our ya-yas out, there came the inevitable awkward silence. To break that silence, my sister asked me an absolutely bizarre question:

“Have you seen Evita?”

I flashed back to my childhood. Evita. “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina.” 1996. Madonna. Antonio Banderrrrrrras. FOURTH GRADE. My introduction to the shaky genre of musical-to-movie adaptations.

Why the hell would she ask me this now?

“Evita? Did you just ask me if I’ve ever seen Evita?”

“Um, I THINK it’s called Evita. Or maybe ‘Evinta.’ I’m not sure.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re asking me if I’ve ever seen the 1996 film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber classic musical, Evita, starring Madonna. The movie that won the Academy Award for Best Original Song that year. A movie that I know WAY too much detail about for being nine years old at the time. EVITA.” (And if you’re wondering, yes, I knew all those facts off the top of my head.)

“No! I’m talking about that new movie that everyone is talking about with all the big blue people. The one my friend invited me to watch in 3-D.”

Wait. But that sounds like she’s talking about Avatar. Last I recall, Madonna was definitely not in Avatar.

Because my father is a huge film buff, he frequently watches the big blockbusters right when they come out in theatres in Taiwan. Avatar was no exception. Good thing he was there to save the day, because Lord knows I had no idea what anybody was talking about:

“In Chinese, the transliteration for Avatar is ‘Ah-Fan-Dah.’”

So that’s where she got “Evita” or “Evinta” from.

I cracked a Coors Light as soon as we got home with the hope that the alcohol might revive the neurons I lost while trying to figure out that conversation in the car.