Vindauga

Its weird how we understand and interpret things throughout the course of our lives. Finally, on Thursday night, I understood something that had never made sense to me before.

At the risk of having you think this was some meaningful experience of something profound, I’m talking about the movie Airplane. Airplane II was on television and I watched it (because that is what I do late at night, flip channels). I have, for many years now, written off Airplane II as a wholly inadequate sequel that sought to capitalize off the success of the original by rehashing the same jokes in a only mildly different set of circumstances. And, in large part I still believe this. But I now think that Airplane II: The Sequel deserves more credit.

There is a joke, much repeated in the movies, about being over macho grande (internet sites talk about the joke only in reference to Airplane II, I’ll double check later to see if it does indeed appear in the original).

Ted Striker: blah blah blah “that day over Macho Grande”

any other person: “Over Macho Grande?”

Striker: “No, I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande”

I recognized that this was a joke but never understood it. I figured it had something to do with “macho grande”, which I invariably interpreted to be “much big” because i kept transferring it to “mucho grande” (though every time I  did, I knew it was wrong). It really means something like “Big Man” but that never helped me get it as funny. Sure, I could see a little humor in it but it never seemed enough to cause the kind of laughs, and the repetition, which it elicited. While watching the sequel the other night, I got it.

Its the “over” part that is the joke. When the interrogator asks “Over Macho Grande?” Striker interprets it as , ‘have you gotten past Macho Grande?’ instead of “what happened over Macho Grande?” Explained this way it seems like one of the least funny jokes of all time. And you might have understood it without me having to explain it. But, clearly, it has taken me years to understand that joke. And that is interesting.

So here’s the weird part. Turns out there is a Naval Air Station here in Florida called Macho Grande. Its apparently where antiquated airplane squadrons go to die. Squadrons that have no other base and have lost their combat effectiveness get transferred to this station. This makes for an interesting collection of planes and the possibility of seeing in the air planes that fly no where else. But, put that back into the context of the joke and suddenly Striker is saying something like “I will never be put out to pasture” which isn’t a joke at all but could be either an extremely arrogant claim or the admission of his own fatalistic nature; he could be claiming that he will die long before going into retirement. Admittedly, I am discussing an interpretation of the movie which, in all likelihood, is completely off-case but I think its fun to do that sort of stuff.

Supposedly, this phrase (Macho Grande) has become slang for witnessing something that you cannot get over. I’ve never heard anyone use it though.