Kim and I met Charo at the Dal­las Museum of Art sev­eral years ago when she came there to hock some new salsa or some­thing for Pace. They had a car out­side dec­o­rated up by some artist or some­thing and she spoke and played her gui­tar for a few min­utes before a crowd of about one hun­dred peo­ple. After­wards she took ques­tions, of all things, doing that “Cuchi-cuchi” thing she says every once in awhile. It was goofy and sur­real at the same time, know­ing that this was that strange unin­tel­li­gi­ble Span­ish woman I’d seen on The Love Boat when I was a kid.

Kim, never one to shirk from mak­ing a com­ment, had the guts to pipe up when she said that she lived on the Hawai­ian island of Kauai.

“We had our hon­ey­moon there!”

It kind of threw Charo [1. Yes, I know Charo does not live in Dal­las, but she was there, and we talked to her. So there.] off, but hen became excited. She was bond­ing with the audi­ence, you know. “Oh, did you love it? Where did you stay?”

“South side of the island at a B&B.”

“The B&B’s on Kauai are won­der­ful, aren’t they?”

“Yes!!!” Kim was so excited.

What was even cooler was she even took a pic­ture with us. She was wear­ing a red sequined minidress and was com­pletely falling out the thing. We were going to use the pic­ture for our Christ­mas card (“Merry Christ­mas from Kim, Glenn and Charo”) but Kim was laugh­ing when the pic­ture was taken and her smile was Joker-esque, so we didn’t use it, but, you know, it’s still a great story.