St. Patrick's Day, local style

We had the world's first corned beef musubi eating contest at the L&L Drive-In in Kahala Mall. Predictably, a heavy guy won it. He got a free trip to Las Vegas.

Musubi is a popular local food, available in every gas station mini-mart. Fermented rice wrapped in dried seaweed with a plum inside, with some type of meat on top-- Usually, it's Spam. In honor of St. Patrick's Day yesterday, it was corned beef. And the rice was dyed green with hana ebi powdered shrimp.



Photo courtesy of the Honolulu Advertiser.

Top o' the morning to ye!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

"GARDAI last night promised 'visible enforcement' on all road networks during a festive weekend crackdown aimed at avoiding a repeat of last year's carnage."

"A STANDOFF between angry potato farmers and supermarket chain Superquinn has been resolved after a dramatic day in which 25 tractors were driven into the car park of the company's flagship store."

"IRISH roads are pretty safe, the Irish are relatively slim, and the North has less crime than anywhere in the developed world. These are among the surprising statistics in the OECD Factbook 2005, which collates reams of statistics from the organisation's 30 developed countries."

"CLOSE to half a million people will attend today's St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, which starts on the northside of the city for the first time. More than 3,000 people will take part in the parade, which includes 17 international marching bands. Ten theatrical pageants designed to a theme of 'Mischief, Mayhem and Madness' will also travel along the 3km parade route. The parade will start at 12 noon at Parnell Square North and travel down O'Connell St, past festival VIPs at the GPO grandstand seating area, before crossing O'Connell Bridge. It will travel up Westmoreland St onto Dame Street and to Christchurch, ending as it passes St Patrick's Cathedral.
Members of the public are being encouraged to make their way to a massive outdoor ceili and concert on Earlsfort Terrace afterwards. Festival organisers said they were disappointed that Luas managers have refused to take down overhead cables in O'Connell Street to allow the tallest floats to pass. A range of road closures will be in place along the parade route, including travel restrictions on the North Quays starting at Church St... In Galway, the thousands of people expected to line the city streets for today's big parade have been urged to arrive early as severe traffic restrictions will operate in the city centre. City Councillor Terry O'Flaherty has appealed to parade goers to play their part in ensuring that Galway does nothing to reclaim its title of one of the dirtiest towns in the country. Gardai have said that they will be particularly vigilant in ensuring that the episodes of drunken and anti-social behaviour which marred the parade for many families last year will not be repeated."

--stories courtesy of The Irish Independent

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland:

"Twenty-thousand people are expected to converge on Downpatrick for Northern Ireland's biggest St Patrick's Day cross-community celebrations. The centre-piece will be the carnival which gets underway at 2.30pm - with the theme A Rock 'n' Roll Rainbow. Led by the chairman of Down District Council, councillor Robert Burgess, the parade will feature 1,500 participants on floats, as well as costumed dancers, musicians in rock 'n' roll, samba, jazz, pipe, accordion and silver bands... Coronation Street barman Keith Duffy will compere a St Patrick's Day concert outside Belfast City Hall (1pm to 3.30pm). The former Boyzone singer will introduce a string of acts including U2 tribute band Elevation and rock band More Power To Your Elbow. For the younger ones the Tweenies will also be putting in an appearance. Organisers of the carnival have stressed that there will be a ban on alcohol and that flags will not be welcome... [In Londonderry,] The Irish traditional theme will be given some oriental spice with a Chinese Lion Dance, samba bands and a massive Geisha girl street theatre puppet inspired by the Trinidad and Notting Hill carnivals... [In Armagh,] The traditional Blessing of the Shamrock ceremony will take place at St Malachy's Chapel in Lower Irish Street. With St Patrick's Catholic Cathedral undergoing major renovations there will be no parade of youth organisations and voluntary groups through the city centre, which has been a feature in the past. The festival day will be marked in the Cathedral Church of St Patrick with a service of Holy Communion celebrated for the first time in Irish by the Rev Eric Culbertson, rector of Newmills in Tyrone... Around 1,600 are expected to take part in a 26-band Ancient Order of Hibernians parade in Dungiven, Co Londonderry - with hundreds more attending as spectators."

--stories courtesy of The Belfast Telegraph

Holy Honeoye

Following His last appearance in a lightly-browned chapati, He has apparently decided to give us all our just desserts:





The "Jesus Cross Strawberry," available here on eBay, frozen and shipped with dry ice.

I want to see the DVD, The Passion of the Earliglow.

other tropics

Somebody has this poster for sale on eBay.
I think it's *such* a pretty image.

Weekend

I spent most of the weekend reading and updating my iPod, so to satisfy everybody who might be undergoing beach deprivation at this point in my blog, here is an excerpt from my book, Wave of Incarnations. This is actually something that could happen practically any weekend during the winter on the North Shore:

Finding one of the last parking spaces, Otis took his favorite bigger board off the roof of the car and headed purposefully for the shining ethereal blue gap between the shadowy trees, where the sand fell away like a golden waterfall down to the ocean. The trees were full of people sitting, squatting, and leaning, all of them earnest surfing fans, many of them kids and teenagers and many of them sun-darkened wiry older adults. Stepping lightly over the lip into the moist yellow sand, Otis observed the grand phthalo blue, white-capped stretch of Pipeline/Backdoor materialize before him like heaven on earth, simultaneously noting from the corner of his eye the tripod jungle of cameras set up to the left, the presence of six surfing magazine editors named Matt, the mixed-race busty popular blonde nicknamed “Tarzana” in her pink crocheted bikini, the twin boy and girl in old-school punk attire, the guy carrying the proposed independent Hawaiian nation flag if sovereignty ever became a fact, the Gala Daliesque woman with the charmed alive white cockatoo on her shoulder, the kid hawking board leashes, the Brazilians under the black cabana, the black Rastafarian couple holding hands, the grinning young professional tourists, the insouciant lanky beach bums in faded t-shirts, board shorts, and baseball caps turned backward, and the not-infrequent soulful-eyed and modest faces of the Surf Junkies, who simply found this beach, and all its attendant beauty and insanity, the closest they would ever find to a spiritual home on earth.

I Came to Surf. Otis spotted the rip, and, grinning, launched into it. Diving deep under the first break, and the serious second break, knee driving down tail of board, he came up to see Sammy and Adam, and a host of variegated strangers, floating in a flotsam lineup, half-submerged photographers bobbing in clusters like mines left over from World War II.