Being that the old man was turning 60, you'd think he'd expect a little more than our usual night out. But, he was absolutely fine with the same routine. He's just happy having the family together. Little did he know that we've been working on a big shindig for almost a year now.
The plan was to lure him into our uncle's hotel (the Embassy Suites in Arcadia) thinking we'd have more family with us to celebrate his birthday over brunch. To his surprise, we had over 200 people over to celebrate the occasion. To make it a little more interesting, we celebrated Hawaiian Style.
It was perfect. He had no clue what was going on. There was a fun filled agenda prepared for the shindig. We hired the always flamboyant "Dion" to emcee the celebration. He always knows how to entertain these Filipino crowds. He kept the events moving, sang some Michael Buble songs, and led some games. We also had a couple videos lined up. The first was a video made by a relative in the Philippines. It included snippets of various Filipino celebrities wishing Pops a happy birthday. I guess you'd have to be an avid TFC (The Filipino Channel) subscriber/ viewer to know any of these people.
I helped my uncle out a little bit on the second video. It contained a slide show which my brother provided most of the pictures. It also had a bunch of clips ripped from really old 8mm reels. Apparently, my uncle loved to shoot fake commercials and short films many moons ago. The funny thing was that most of them starred my dad and uncles. I got to help out on the last segment of the video. My idea came from watching many Late Night with Conan O'Brien episodes. Conan liked to do interviews of celebrities he couldn't pull into his show. So, he'd take a still photo of these people and have some one impersonate their voices and superimpose their lips moving over the photos. So I did the crappiest Kobe Bryant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fidel Castro (made to sound like Scarface), Manny Pacquiao, and one suprise guest impressions for our little video. I'm not really sure what people really thought, but I did hear them laugh. So, that's all that really counts to me.
You could tell that my dad was really overwhelmed with the love our family & friends showed toward him. Ever since my grandpa passed, he's just got to realize that he's the head of this family now. Its time for him to just retire from his 9 to 5 and just enjoy life. As he does that, he can also take the time to give a few words of wisdom here and there to guide this family (or should I say Ohana) in the right direction.... just like Grandpa Tonio.
To another 60 yrs (or more) Pops.
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