Hau`oli Makahiki Hou!

2009...

DO YOU BELIEVE IT?





"O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that WAIKIKI was still there."

New Year's Eve...

more than six decades later.

Being the old coot that I am rapidly becoming, I faded around 10:30 P.M. with the sweet mele that is Waikiki Beach exploding in the background, nonstop since about eight o'clock. I suddenly woke up around twenty minutes before the bewitching hour, for some unknown reason, the pyrotechnics still raging. Hit the lua, hit the lanai, grabbed some Lipton Diet Green Tea and watched the local scene, immediately around me, mauka of the Banyan Hotel and Prince Kuhio and watched the reflection of the pro and non-pro show at the beach about a block away, being able to see only reflections in the overcast sky. It had been raining for hours but had stopped, which kept the black powder and heavy metals used for colors somewhat at bay. At about 11:48 P.M. there was a cease fire while people got ready for the bewitching hour. Grabbed an apple banana and some soy milk and waited for the midnight morass, nodding in and out in a dream-like sleep, in my beach chair.


The finale came with a thunderous bang, definitely not a wimpy whimper. Every corner, every vacant lot (Yeah, we still have a few), every green zone and failed 1980s construction project and of course the beach exploded nonstop for forty minutes. Whoops, hollars, screams and paroxims of delight cut through the war-zone like din.









These will be interesting times. The Iraq debacle, the greedy Wall Street shysters who fuc..d up our ecomomy, the crooked car barons who have taken taxpayer dough just to try and beat the foreign competion who, by the way, is kicking our collective manufacturing asses and a new president who seems to part Regan, part Abraham Lincoln, part YouTube, and arguably a visionary who could possibly turn out to be one of the most important statesmen ever to hold our sacred office, who promises to pull us out of the muck and mud created by Bush, Cheeney and their gang of thieves. It is a scary time. It is a hopeful time. And, it's about damn time!
Aloha nui loa to you all. Two-Thousand Nine is yours and mine... let's work to make it the paradigm shift that it portends to be and may each and every one of us do his or her part to regain America's honor and respect in the world. We've got a shot. Let's take it.
---Da Fish