Please come Friends to Oscar’s, all welcome. ‘Mahalo’ – I am assured means ‘to thank’ and ‘to be grateful’ in Hawaiian. The idea for MAHALO HOUR cracked across my mind in manner similar to electrical storm but the idea is not mine alone.

MAHALO HOUR comes from the movie “I Love Huckabees” or sometimes called “I Heart Huckabees”. Quirky, Indie – we like quirky, we like indie. They are both close cousins of Authenticity. The movie is about a Paris trained pair of Existential Detectives called Bernard & Vivian Jaffe played by Dustin Hoffman and Lilly Tomlin. They conduct existential inquiries into the human condition and hold ‘Mahalo Hour’, cocktail hour, for their clients to experience and develop connection with their infinite selves and each other through an ‘Attitude of Gratitude’. I know. Groovy. Right?

Albert Markovski, played by Jason Schwartzman, comes to their attention and quickly becomes their client as a consequence of a series of frustrating dilemmas he is encountering in his vocation as social activist. Albert is a committed poet, cyclist and leader of the local chapter of an environmental group, called the “Open Spaces Coalition.” They are trying to stop the building of a new Huckabees store. Huckabees is a chain of “big-box” department stores and local marshland is threatened by the project.

Albert is a rival of Brad Stand, played by Jude Law, a shallow charming attractive power executive at Huckabees. Brad infiltrates Open Spaces and charismatically displaces Albert as the leader. Dawn Campbell, played by Naomi Watts, is Brad’s live-in girlfriend and the face and voice of Huckabees. She appears in all of the store’s commercials.

It is a hoot if you have spent your life studying the art and science of therapy and transforming the cyclone of the internal universe. It endearingly eccentric if you have not. It is probably simpler if I just give you a clip …