So I called our portly cat The Big Kahuna this morning, and I got to thinking: Is that from the Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon beach movies such as Bikini Beach or the 1960s television show Gidget starring Sally Fields? I’ve never actually seen any of the former, and although the latter was in syndication on channel 11 (KPLR) in St. Louis through the 1980s (along with The Flying Nun, another Sally Field vehicle from the 1960s), if I have seen any of them, it’s bits from when the television was on in the background–I cannot remember actually watching a full episode, much less multiple episodes of either.
Welp, gentle reader, it was neither.
Frankie Avalon’s character in the Beach movies had a nickname, but it was Moondoggie. Although there’s an episode of Gidget that features a character named simply Kahuna, it’s not probable that I picked that up as the source of the trivium.
No, gentle reader, The Big Kahuna is a character in…. Gidget, the 1959 movie starring Sandra Dee as Gidget. The movie, based on a novel of the same name, probably launched the beach movies and perhaps the California beach sound of the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and so on. And, clearly, the television series which might have been closer to the books than the original film was.
A movie I have not seen, either.
I picked up a lot of trivia by reading things about popular culture, much more than experiencing popular culture. Which is just as well, since I don’t tend to watch streaming services as a matter of course and because:
- Trivia nights timeline of trivia has reset so that all knowledge, and it’s mostly pop cultural knowledge, began in 1990;
- When I caught sight of Jeopardy! at the gym earlier this week, it had questions about streaming television shows, and although I could name some of them, I’m a little less clear on the actors in them.
So I have some studying to do. Perhaps after I finish the Winter Reading Challenge 2023. And if only they had TV Superstars ’20 and TV Superstars ’22 books to clue me in.
