wasted opportunity

Our office is high, high up in the sky on the 26th floor. My boss has a floor-to-ceiling glass wall view of Waikiki, Diamond Head, the UH Medical School, and the Foreign Trade Zone dock, as well as a number of great Town surf breaks, like Tennis Courts and Point Panic. It's a beautiful sunny day, the ocean is endless blue, and the palm trees are nodding.

On the street far, far, below, somebody is parked in a gray Mini Cooper with a Union Jack painted on the roof, just like a target.

Where, o where, is a television set when you need to throw one out the window...

ye weekend

This is not earth-shaking news, but some of the things I plan to do this weekend are:

1. Buy a stove lightbulb, some organic eggs, and some sprouted bread.

2. See "Kung Fu Hustle."

3. Go see Neo Rauch again at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

4. Check amazon.com to see if they've posted any audio samples from "Get Behind Me Satan," by the White Stripes, which is due out June 8.

5. Finish reading Shakespeare.

Have a great weekend! :-)

the Apocalypse is upon us

Okay, Nightmare was *so* funny this time that I've been inspired.

The Seven Signs of the Apocalypse, local (Honolulu) style:

1. Delaminating tri-fin shortboards. "Verily, Pipe and Backdoor are no longer rideable." And the righteous raised their tear-stained eyes to heaven in consternation.

2. Foodland no got slippahs (cheap black plastic thongs, standard Hawaiian footwear). And the entire population of greater Oahu went barefoot.

3. Da bus drivah on my route retired after 30 years. Da Good Boss Up Dea take da buggah up inside da sky--or at least to a condo leeward side--so us wretched peeps got to walk cuz can no longer tell for sure that one City Bus arrive without fail 10 minutes late every hour on the half-hour. Fuck, the righteous blasphemed, with passion.

4. Mice. In the dry, defoliating summer, after the damp, lush winter, the mice hordes overrunneth, seeking Emmentaler and Gruyere. And the righteous did bruise their fingers in evil, snapping mousetraps, the machines of Satan, and verily ill was upon them.

5. Da God Kahano get off one white horse and lie down in the ocean again, arms outstretched, and those friggin' menehune (little people) start walking over the bridge of his arms from Tahiti and other places to Oahu again, jalike befoh little kid time (just like ancient times), and now every rainbow in the Koolau mountain range has 147 leprechauns fighting over an ephemeral pot of gold. And the righteous who were not licensed real estate brokers smote their breasts at skyrocketing median house prices.

6. Da Angels (or Rainbow Warriers) and da Bowls. Univ. of Hawaii Manoa hires Jerry Glanville as defensive coach, and the Rainbow Warriers go from second-worst defense to playing in one Rose Bowl. After Glanville again leaves a pair of 50-yard-line tickets at the box office for Elvis and Guest. And the righteous intoned, "Lay off of my blue suede shoes."

7. God's spesho guy come back. Yeah, da Jesus Guy. Can see him any time at Manoa Falls, in the vicinity of defunct Paradise Park. If you got da right kine eyes. (Don Ho is spesho, too, but his nightclub is a different gig.)

another last blast (like volcanoes, I can keep erupting every decade or so)

Vorkommnis (Occurence), 1994, oil on canvas, 150x200cm.
By Neo Rauch. He was born in 1961 in Leipzig, East Germany (or what used to be East Germany).

He is *really* great, and his exhibition (Works 1994-2002) at the Honolulu Academy of Arts has been extended until June 3.

I'm sure hordes of tour groups are going through there day and night, but most of the time when I've dropped by, I've had the entire huge gallery to myself. So if you're in Honolulu, this is a really unique opportunity to view an artist of our generation who is witty, highly-symbolic, and somehow down-to-earth in a dazzlingly spiritual way. Although quite a few of his pieces are small, many, like this one, occupy entire walls, and the overtowering effect is eerily like being out-of-doors in the summer.

For the last few years, we've had an extremely enthused curator at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and the traveling exhibitions have all been fab.