San Jose, California, United States
Second day at Pinnacles; off to the western side. The park was pretty much more of the same, but the scenery is still beautiful, and there are some terrific views of the Pinnacles and over the valley. The temperature was a dramatic change from yesterday: 65° when we started out. High today predicted to be 86°--27 degrees cooler than yesterday's high of 113°. No one was happier about that than the volunteers at the visitor center; one can only imagine having to sit up there day after day in 100° plus weather. The western entry into the park is along a narrow road, which narrows to about 1.5 lanes for the last 7 or 8 miles. Park information tells owners of RVs, anyone towing trailers, and anyone driving other large vehicles to stay out. We did not encounter anyone on the way in, but we did on the way out, and that's a fun negotiation!
Given the nice cool weather, we took a short hike up a trail that is roughly a mile out and back with a little loop at the top. It takes you up to some great views of the Pinnacles, as well as around to the "cooler, shady side" of the hill, where the vegetation changes dramatically.
This was a pleasant walk, and we saw a lot of interesting plants. I got great pictures of the scenery in general. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but we did see scat, which, we were told later, is probably bobcat and/or coyote. They had rubber samples of both in the visitor center, and they are practically identical except the latter is rather larger than the former. I couldn't have told the difference out on the trail with any degree of certainty and without the side-by-side comparison, but it did look as though my housecats might have passed by there, so I'm guessing at least some of what we saw was bobcat. We did not, alas, see either bobcat or coyote, but as they are nocturnal, this was not too terribly surprising. After that, there was not a lot more of the park to see. We drove up to the end of the road, where one finds the trailhead for the Pinnacles Trail (and several others which branch off from it).
Tim decided he wanted to walk out the Pinnacles Trail for awhile, in one last attempt to see a condor.
You pretty much have to hope one flies over, I think, as their roost is several miles away. I decided not to go along; the trail appeared to be quite steep in places, and I'm not yet 100% from the fatigue I experienced when I had COVID several weeks back, so I didn't want to risk it. He had a very nice walk, and saw some things we hadn't seen before--like the entrance to one of the talus caves. Talus caves are openings which are formed by bolders piling up between steep sides of mountains. I had not heard of these before. The caves at this site are closed because someone vandalized them with a ton of graffitti, and park staff are trying to get it cleaned up. Some people, may I say, suck.
Tim has kindly allowed me to post some of his photos. I labeled them so you know which are his. He did not, alas, see a condor.
After a very good lunch in Soledad (where we had a choice between Mexican, Mexican, Mexican, Mexican, Mexican, Mexican, Chinese Sushi, California Gourmet Pizza, and Mexican--we chose Mexican), we headed to San Jose where we will stay the night and go to the drive-in! Our only movie foray this trip.
The drive-in is nothing to write home about (she says, as she writes home about it). It's one of the West Wind Drive-In Theaters. West Wind is a big corporation that runs six drive-ins in California, Arizona, and Nevada. We've been to three of them now (Concord, CA, Glendale, AZ, and now San Jose, CA), and they are all built on roughly the same plan: huge multi-screen jobbers, though with different numbers of screens--up to 9 on one plant. This one has six. The West-Wind drive-ins we've been to are all massive concrete-covered parking lots set in the middle of some industrial area of town (so with lovely backdrops and lights on all around). This one is on a flyover from the San Jose airport, and we had planes coming and going almost continuously all night. AND there is a train track adjacent to the drive-in. Only two trains went by while we were there, though. Tim says that West Wind Drive-Ins are what drive-ins would look like in the post-industrial apocalyse. If you want to go to a drive-in, and you're only going to one, go to a local family-owned drive in.
They have charm.
The snack bar you will see in my photos is identical at each place. It's an assembly line. They take your money, grind you through, and spit you out. This snack bar I have to say was a little strange. They pre-make hamburgers, hot dogs, polish sausages, and a bunch of other stuff, but if you ask for fries, they make those fresh. That is not necessarily a bad thing--french fries that have sat out for an hour are never good. However: the woman who made our fries acted like she'd never done it before. After a laborious process of weighing out the allowed amount for me and dumping it in the basket ready to fry, she realized Tim wanted fries, too, and then she suggested that we would be better off getting an order of the chili cheese fries without the chili or cheese. I'm not sure why this would have been an improvement, but okay. This launched a whole new process of weighing out during which she had to figure out what to do with the fries she had already weighed. I'm sure it would have been faster just to make Tim an order.
When she was done, she tried really hard to get us to take the chili and the cheese--even on the side. I guess she just couldn't fathom that we wouldn't eat it. ("Cheese" I bet would have been that poly-synthetic orange cheese goo that might be worse than Velveeta. Yuck.)
When we got to the cash register, the guy running the register at the line we were in appeared never to have seen it before. He couldn't figure out how to ring up the items for the party in front of us, then he had to have a long kibbitz with the girl (half his age) at the register next to his, which resulted in their deleting the entire order and his starting over. We meanwhile moved to the other line, and we were gone before the first guy ever finished ringing up that order--if he ever did. Maybe this was the first day at work for both of these people?????
As I said: there are six screens at the West Wind Capitol Drive-In, our 68th drive-in theater, so you'd like to think there would be SOMETHING you would like to watch.
Here was our choice:
- Stephan King-esque horror movie starring Idrus Elba as a guy who has to fight a gigantic man-eating lion
- DC pet movie we have already seen
- Goonies from 1985 (the West Wind advertising proudly proclaims that they always show first-run movies!)
- Action-Adventure movie about a bunch of hit-men (and women) on a bullet train in Japan all trying to kill each other
- Horror-comedy movie (no, I did not make that up)
- Double-feature horror movie horror movie
Nope. Nothing we would like to watch. We chose #5: action-adventure movie with in-fighting hit men. I did not have high hopes, especially since the star is Brad Pitt. The last Brad Pitt movie we saw was Bad Astra (excuse me Ad Astra), a memorably bad movie which I reviewed here. (Aside: We saw Ad Astra along with Joker, and Ad Astra came off very much the worse for that comparison! Joker was an exceptionally good movie; one of the very few we have seen at drive-ins.)
So: Bullet Train. **spoiler alert.** If you intend to see this movie, go see it before you read this review.
The last thing we said before the lights came figuratively down was "Okay, surprise us!" Who knows MAYBE it could be good. As it happened, we were surprised. Bullet Train turned out to be an unexpectedly good movie. My one major complaint is that it is incredibly violent. Many of the hit men (and women) on the train die--some of them twice--usually in a bloody mess, and in the end, we get one of those scenes of massive destruction wherein many bystanders would have necessarily died and millions of dollars' worth of property would have been destroyed (two bullet trains crash head-on and wreak havoc on the countryside). This scene, however, despite pushing all of my pet peeve movies category buttons was the only unnecessary element in this movie. The movie is hard to characterize. It tops out the weird-shit-o-meter with a huge number of quirky and totally unexpected elements; however, ALL of them work to either develop or resolve the plot. This is not just random weirdness slung in there because someone thought it might be funny.
Before you go on, try this: try to write a story in which all of the following elements are not only present but essential to the plot:
- A truck full of tangerines
- A sheet of stickers with characters from Tommy the Tank Engine.
- A boomslang (an extremely venomous snake from Sub-Saharan Africa). Note: the snake in the movie was not an actual boomslang. Don't know what it was, but it looks nothing like a boomslang. Just as well, I am sure!
- A bottle of Fuji water
- A person in a huge blow-up costume of a Japanese cartoon figure
Go ahead. I'll wait.
Here's the thing: Bullet Train uses all of those elements to effect. It is funny, albeit with a very black humor, it is clever, and the only plot hole I could find was that the conductor disappears partway through and his disappearance is not explained. The plot is extremely complicated, but it is carefully and intentionally constructed and it works. Finally, an American actress, Joey King, playing a Russian, spoke in a perfectly rendered British accent. (I read she spent three hours a day working on it.
Kudos to her--she beats Robert Redford and Dick Van Dyke.) It's not Joker (or Parasite, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2020 and of which this one is pretty reminiscent in terms of style) but compared to everything else we've seen this summer, this was all right!
My main complaint: the movie is based on a Japanese novel, and most of the main characters here have been converted into westerners. I find that to be rather off-putting, but apparently the Japanese author of the novel was okay with it. Or so the Internet says. I'm guessing given whatever they paid for the rights, he is not likely to say anything else. But really: what would have been so bad about Asian stars?
2022 Drive-in Summation: Somehow we managed to miss the Top Gun sequel this summer. Pity about that.
Tomorrow, we head back to the Bay Area where we will spend the next few days visiting my dad and his wife and friends of mine from grade school, high school, and college, and attending the Giants' game.
2025-05-22