Caine's Arcade

If you were ever a little boy, this video will thrill you. If you are a father, it is mandatory viewing.

The lesson I took away from this video is, as a father, it behooves me to enable my son to follow his dreams, act out his wishes, pursue his pursuits. That's what Caine's dad did for him when he gave him the majority of the frontage of his auto parts store in East L.A., so that Caine could build his own game arcade out of old cardboard and odds and ends.

The coda to this, and by far the least important part of the story, is that over $100,000.00 so far has been raised on line because of this arcade. It will go towards Caine's college fund and other scholarships. Read the entire story at www.cainesarcade.com.

Christmas at the Lodge

Once in a great while the OnceABachelor must drop his offspring with the Grandparents and make a brief escape. With the Christmas season starting, my beautiful wife and I did just that, with a trip to our favorite "resort" hotel: the Lodge at Koele, on the Island of Lanai. My law partner and his wife (both of whom were my closest high school classmates) came along for the good times. It was certainly a quick vacation worthy of the Epic Life we should all try to lead.

The Lodge was where my bride and I had our honeymoon, and it is where my law firm holds its annual retreat with the wives. This Christmas marks the first time I've come back For No Good Reason. We flew in on a small Cessna Caravan in which the two of us were the only passengers, and on the way to Lanai I got a view of Honolulu you rarely ever get on the big jetliners. Contrast the cityscape with the cliffs of Lanai, and you get an idea of what the latter island is all about.

We arrived to find the hotel bedecked in Christmas ornaments, trees, and holly. The only thing missing, of course, was the snow, but the brisk highland air would do. Our room, as always, was cozy but far from small, with a view of the pond and immense banyan trees.

The Lodge is hardly a big resort hotel. Never crowded, it is small enough that its staff know you by name, even before you arrive. The illusion is similar to a ride up in the First Class cabin, where you are given personalized attention. This, combined with the authentic hunting lodge ambiance, make Koele my favorite hoteling experience. The Lodge is a very masculine place, all wood and leather and stone, boasting artifacts ranging from Polynesian to Asian and African.
Aside from the Lodge's great hall and two dining rooms, there are four other rooms of importance. The first is a semi-octagonal game room equipped with billiards, shuffleboard table, chess and backgammon tables. Next is a library, another octagon, with several conversational areas. There is a music room with a grand piano. These rooms all have stone fireplaces that are useful since upcountry Lanai's nighttime temperature often dips into the fifties.
And of course, the Lodge has a small, well stocked bar with excellent wait staff, all of whom, again, know your name. It is quiet and the other guests, all feeling that they are in on the same juicy secret that you are in on, are always friendly. It is a whispering kind of bar, but it is so inviting that we've been known to turn whole afternoons to haziness in there. My libation of choice for the weekend was the Lodge's special Mai Tai. Not always a fan of tart sweet cocktails, this one I felt was appropriate for the Pineapple Isle.

And lest you think the weekend was all about the indoors, the Lodge has a spectacular grounds, too, including a large koi stocked pond, a greenhouse, bamboo forest, an occasional flock of wild turkey (which seemed abundant this year), a 9 hole putting course (not to mention a world class golf course I've never seen (I'm not a golfer, but I'm told it's called the Experience), three croquet pitches and a huge bowling lawn. My wife indulged me a cigar under the eaves of its church (what other hotel has an active Congregational church on its own grounds?). We taught our wives how to shoot shotguns at a nearby sporting clays course. Turns out we married natural born killers. The only thing we didn't do was our traditional midnight cocktail raids to the hot tubs (our numbers were meek).

I really wanted to sing the praises of the Lodge and I feel I have failed to do that sufficiently. All I have done is summarize it. How should I put it. It is a place we truly love. In writing this, I realize that what I love about this place, besides the memories we make, are the spaces it gives us to occupy. It's not a hotel you pass through. It's one you inhabit.

Merry Christmas to all. May you be with your loved ones occupying places close to your heart.

*Click on the painting at the top to visit the website of Lanai artist Mike Carroll, who painted this image of the Lodge.

King Kamehameha Club

We've spent a princely sum on my son's swimming lessons these past three years, and he's only now feeling comfortable in the water. Money well spent, though. Proof? Here's a cool video of my son doing the armed side-stroke in the pool of the fictional King Kamehameha Club, the same club that retired Navy Seal turned P.I. Thomas Magnum belonged to.


When I was in high school, Magnum fever was everywhere in Honolulu. Their studio was a few blocks from my home in Diamond Head, Tom Selleck lived even closer, and around town we would frequently see the film trucks, T.C.'s helicopter, and occasionally, the red Ferrari 308, sometimes laden with camera scaffolding. Larry Manetti ("Rick") rented videos at the same store I did and Larry Hillerman ("Higgins") lived in a friend's condo. Good times.

We didn't join the "King Kam", as Magnum called it, because he was a member, though. We joined so my son would have a readily accessible pool for his use, with a large sunken bar not five steps away from which dear old dad could keep an eagle eye. They serve everything from Guinness and Sam Adams to above-average trop cocktails (word to the wise: avoid the martini, it ain't that kind of place) and local-style finger food (sashimi, garlic steaks). You can go from cannonballs with your kid to mai tais with the mates as the sun sets and the waves lap at the sea wall nearby.

Life is good when you're a OnceABachelor who belongs to a private club on the beach and a son who can swim laden with weapons.

Bring Lawyers Guns & Money, the Shit Has Hit the Fan

If you don't already know, I'm an attorney - a combat attorney, to be precise. It helps that my partners are my most trusted friends, but it also helps to get away to discharge firearms with them. We do this several times a year on the Island of Lanai, where we go after deer or mouflon sheep, which are similar to bighorn. Also after Thanksgiving, we institute what we call the No Fly Zone, a high-spirited bird hunt with game as wide ranging as pheasant, grouse, and pigeon.

This year we changed it up and went to the Kenai Peninsula in southern Alaska for a moose hunt and salmon fish. To put it bluntly, we collectively threw up a brick, shooting no moose and catching no salmon worth keeping. But we sure did achieve our goals: maximum fun far from the nerve-jangling courtrooms. We ranged far and wide for moose, even finagling a hot tip from a local as to where best to find them. The tip proved honest as we spotted lots of moose and caribou, but none that were legal to harvest. We also bent lots of fishing rods and reeled in lots of pink salmon, but this late in the season and that far from salt water, they weren't particularly grill-worthy. We were after the silver salmon, which were very rare indeed but prized for their tasty flesh at this time of season. This OnceABachelor did manage an amazing feat: hooking a 30lb king salmon, also out of season, which I had to return to the fast running river on which our cabin was located.

The cabin itself was the vacation home of an Anchorage attorney who generously loaned it to us for a week, through his aunt, who is married to the friend of one of our party. She gamely stayed with us to act as den mother, doing the cooking and cleaning. This turned out to be a good stroke of luck because she was able to coordinate the emergency tow with heavy equipment when our rental 4-wheel-drive got stuck 12 miles from the main road in a bog. If it wasn't for her, we might have been forced to spend the night in 40 degree weather or walk out in the dark.

Additional thanks go to Clint from Sterling Towing for bringing his impressive flatbed tow vehicle out through the mud and rain and then driving it backwards up two slick hills to tie up to our truck at 1:00 a.m.

And permeating the whole trip was the possible encounter with Alaskan brown bears. Everywhere we went we were grimly reminded by the locals of the increase in bear encounters, sightings, and attacks. The week we arrived in fact, a brown bear found its way into traffic in downtown Anchorage (near the courthouse, ironically) where it was struck by a car. Joggers and hikers have been mauled. Because of this sobering reality, Alaskans more often than not can be found armed. We spotted joggers wearing holsters, and people walking their dogs with rifles slung on their backs. No one looked twice when one of us walked into a Home Depot wearing his .357 on his hip. Luckily, we saw no browns, although I did spot two black bears. My partner even took a shot at one from an impossibly long range on Skyline Trail after a harrowing hike one mile up.

So my son was thrilled to hear about all of the guns we brought along, and peppered me with questions during each phone call home. He was uncontrollably curious when he saw my gun case loaded into the back of mom's vehicle when she picked me up at the airport. Once at home, he insisted that I identify each weapon and describe it in detail. This is Uncle Jeff's 30-06 with variable scope, this is Uncle Rick's magnum, which he calls the Hog (and which we fired in a redneck "holler" out in the woods). And this is daddy's trusty 30-30 lever action, which is not big enough for hunting in Alaska but plenty good for personal protection there. It is black and brown and has a thumb operated hammer, just like the "practice" gun I brought home for you from the Sportsmen's Warehouse in Anchorage. You can imagine how happy he was to be given this gun, especially when I pulled it out of the same gun case that transported all the grown-up weapons. And you can also imagine how much I look forward to teaching him proper firearms safety with it. No joke.

Incidentally, think twice about leaving your wife and son for a 10 day trip. It had better be worth it, because you will miss them uncontrollably.

Images from top to bottom: (1) an Alaskan Amber ale on the back deck of our cabin; (2) moose cow in Soldotna, AK at a popular though undisclosed hunting spot; (3) the same herdlet of caribou we spotted 2 mornings in a row; (4) spincasting psychiatrist on the Russian River (he'd rather be fly casting, but TSA broke that rod); (5) fishing off our own backyard; (6) flatbed towtruck belonging to Sterling Towing, off road on Mystery Creek after midnight; (7) spotting from our truck before hiking in; (8) target practice with the Hog in Soldotna; (9) my son with his new practice gun.

OnceWereBachelors Careers: High Stakes Thief

Meet Neil McCauley. No wife. No kids. No Mortgage. So what makes him a OnceABachelor? Well he's got a nice shiny unfurnished home overlooking the bioluminescence of the City of Los Angeles. He's got the "crew", ready to rock and roll, who will do anything for him and vice versa. And he's forgotten more ways to rip off people than many of us will ever know. He knows how to deal from the bottom of the deck, to enter a building through a roof, drill or burn open a safe, and get in and out, on the prowl or strong.



He's got no time for nonsense. He's married to his job and his job is High Stakes Thief. He's ready to do what it takes to take down scores but he's also ready to walk out on everything in 30 seconds flat if he spots the heat around the corner. That's the discipline. But look what happens when he lets a doe-eyed graphic designer with a needy gene into his life.

Yeah, we're talking about the Michael Mann movie Heat, with Robert De Niro playing McCauley. I'm tempted to fail to mention Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna, because I haven't been a Pacino fan since his last good performance in Godfather Part II, but I digress. Watch Heat if you feel you need to be reminded of what it takes to be a man on a mission.

Incidentally, I know that the first embeded hyperlink is to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, with Robert DeNiro portraying Harry Tuttle, not Neil McCauley. But the idea is the same: go anywhere, travel light, get in and out, a man alone, wherever there's trouble