You’ve probably heard of King Kamehameha (kah-MAY-ha-MAY-ha), also called Kamehameha the Great. He founded the Kingdom of Hawaii and is the most famous figure in Hawaiian history. He was a chief from the Big Island, born around 1758, and died in 1819. Over about 15 years of warfare and diplomacy, he united all the Hawaiian Islands into one kingdom by 1810. His dynasty ruled until 1872, and the kingdom itself lasted until it was overthrown…
Yesterday we decided to see the island of Oahu beyond what our tour guide the other day called the “armpit” of the island, the city of Honolulu. I feel that was a bit harsh on Honolulu since it seems like most tropical cities I’ve been to in that the combination of congestion and vertical construction contrasts starkly with the natural beauty of the surrounding island, but there is nothing offensive about the city from what…
Today is the biggest single reason I wanted my first real trip to Hawaii to be to Oahu. I have been a WWII Pacific Theater buff since I was six years old, drawing pictures of dive bombers plunging out of the sky down towards battleships and aircraft carriers. My favorite war movie is probably the newest Midway, which starts with the attack on Pearl Harbor and takes you through the turning-point of the battle at…
“Punked” is slang for being pranked or made a fool of, like “You got punked.” The term was popularized by Punk’d, the MTV hidden-camera show Ashton Kutcher created and hosted starting in 2003, where celebrities were set up with elaborate pranks. Kutcher was born in 1978, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His career trajectory has had three tracks, going from TV star to film lead and then mega tech investor. That has left him somewhere between…
“Old comedy standards” are classic routines and joke formats that got passed around and performed for decades, the comedy version of songs from The American Songbook. Many began in vaudeville and burlesque, where comics freely borrowed each other’s bits and there was no internet to act as spoiler. The most famous routines were things like, Who’s on First?, by Abbott & Costello, the baseball wordplay bit and probably the best-known standard of all and Slowly…
You are forever hearing older people say that waking up each and every morning is a pleasure. Folk sayings like “Any day above ground is a good day,” “Growing old is a privilege denied to many,” and “Today I woke up. That’s the win; the rest is gravy.” Lots of comedians like to riff on their age, but the most famous for doing that were George Burns and Bob Hope, both of whom live to…
Kim is a game player and crossword puzzler…and sudokoer. All but crosswords and sudoko she does on her phone. She is very religious about it all and the only other thing that occupies her as much is keeping up with the various news feeds she reads. She focuses mostly on Substack, Apple News and the New York Times (NYT) for news and despite the fact that I subscribe to the NYT, the Washington Post (WAPO),…
I have stopped saying that we plan to travel less. The thought was genuine, but unrealistic. Unless Mother Nature, Father Time or Fiscal Fear overwhelm you, if you have been a traveler your whole life, it’s not sensible to think you can just throttle back as a normal lifestyle adjustment. I look around our neighborhood for comparables and find that Mike & Melisa (more homebodies than most) have just returned from their African safari, the…
By this time, everyone knows that the suspected blue wave has been a blue tsunami and all I can say is, THANK GOD! After a decade of losing our minds, losing our infrastructure, losing our most sacred institutions, losing our healthcare, losing our civility, losing our sense of propriety, losing our democratic process, losing many of our legal norms, losing our caring for the human race, losing our global respect and basically losing our way,…
Six years ago I wrote a story called The Morning After. No, it was not about The Poseidon Adventure, that kitschy movie when Red Buttons and Shelly Winters helping Gene Hackman redeem himself in an upside-down cruise ship. When I started to write this story with that title, my early warning system told me I had already used that title. It was a story about the loss of Kim’s soulmate pup, Cecil, who died during…