Mid-Sixties Honolulu

My parents married two years before I was born and I know a bit about their story. After the wedding my parents travelled often. Here are some pictures I have of them in the Honolulu of 1965 or '66.

I wonder what it was like for them before I was born. I imagine in their lines of work, without me to chase around, and at that time in Manila, life was pretty cushy. It shows in their faces, if you know them. Here they are at the Ala Moana Shopping Center, once known as the largest shopping mall in the world.


I love the way Mom is standing in the picture above, still at Ala Moana. Like one of those sixties models. Below, I don't see a bit of the game face that Dad almost always wore around me when I was a kid, nor do I see the stiff "parade rest" that I think was always for my benefit. I also love his trim trousers, Florsheim loafers (always Florsheim. The day he stopped wearing Florsheim, I knew he was mellowing), and the French aviator sunglasses. By the way, the parking lot below later became the location for one of Mom's medical clinics in the Eighties.


I also can't ignore Dad's shirts. Not exactly cheesy, but certainly not traditional either. I imagine those are the same shirts the Mercury 7 were wearing whenever they hit the Cape back then.

Next, they are with another couple in front of the apartment they bought. Pilots used it as a crash pad well into the Eighties, and I remember going there occasionally and finding three or four of them at a time. A new flight crew would move in every few days. After my father left the airline, he kept his interest in the place until the end, although he never used it other than to see old friends. We always referred to it as "The Apartment". We still see the other couple regularly.

The other "star" in the pictures is definitely old Honolulu. The sky seems emptier, more exotic. Today, there would easily be three times as many buildings in the background if you were to stand in the same spot and snap the same image. And this Savings & Loan failed long ago.

If I can steal some from Mom's albums, I'd love to show you some pics of them in Europe. Dad looks like a secret agent and Mom looks like Jeannie Shrimpton.

The Very First Night of September

On this night not too long ago, but long enough, I treated myself to a birthday present as I often do. I proposed to my girlfriend, she became my fiance, later my wife, and now the mother of my son. That night we played this song over and over again, it's lyrics written on a little piece of paper encircled by a diamond engagement ring. And that's how my bachelorhood ended.

The Unified Theory of Pop Music

There’s been a general lack of one of those Unified Theory posts of late. Fancy cars, movie reviews, and the occasional witty bon mot do not a good read make. I suppose this can be attributed to nothing in particular. Or it can be blamed on one specific thing.

On December 18, 2006, I had been married for four years and my son was not quite three years old. We had just taken on a new mortgage and my law firm was just getting its legs. Possibilities stretched out before me, my bachelorhood a distant and uninteresting past. Then the world came crashing down. Tower Records closed its doors worldwide, including the three locations in my town.
This doesn’t have to be an Eighties Nostalgia blog in order to highlight the importance of Tower Records. Tower was born in the Seventies. It grew through the Eighties and Nineties, during which time it saw the transition from record albums to CDs, Beta and VHS tapes to DVDs. When I first started going to the Tower on Keeaumoku Street (pictured above), disco was still a living, breathing, pulsating beast. Aside from Cheap Trick, Devo, and Cars records, I was only ever interested in the hundred or so albums in the “import” bin. Adult contemporary was a vast expanse that I never explored. At the dawn of the MTV era, “imports” disappeared as a category and the more obscure artists that interested me (which included the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Police) found their way into the general population. There was a time that the only place one could find a copy of the Clash’s Sandinista was at a genuine communist bookstore near the University. When it appeared in Tower’s stacks, I knew a new era of pop music had arrived. In the new millennium, there was little evidence that we were seeing Tower’s final years.

No matter where I lived, D.C., London, even northern Indiana, the location of the nearest Tower Records was one of the first navigation points I committed to memory. It was that important.

In 2006, Tower was unceremoniously shelved, its stock unloaded at ever-plummetting discounts. There were many items I acquired cheaply during these final weeks of liquidation before that December 18. Things I wouldn’t otherwise have bought at retail prices. AC/DC. Pink Floyd. Jack Johnson. But there were things I failed to secure only because I was waiting for prices to drop further before the axe fell, but they never fell far enough. I had my eye on them, though. The Heavy Metal movie soundtrack. The updated Criterion Collection boxset of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (I had already owned the previous edition and wouldn’t justify the repeat expense without deep discounting).


This last ditch flurry of spending at Tower was mostly afterthought, and really, for me an unfitting farewell to an establishment that I used to wander through, often for as long as time would allow. Hours? Maybe. The better part of one for sure. Stack after stack after stack? Definitely. I used to love the unscheduled stop into Tower, when I had nowhere else to be. Maybe I had an inkling that a new CD had been released and I wanted to find it and snap it up quickly, so I could immerse myself in the new music, headphones on and liner notes open. Maybe I had absolutely nothing in mind and I would just let my thumb and forefinger do the searching. That’s how I discovered the Violent Femmes back in 1984, and Pearl Jam in 1991.

The protagonist in one of the books in my canon, High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby – a man as adept at observing the immature male of the species as Britain has ever produced – finds comfort in organizing his record collection not alphabetically but autobiographically ("How did I get from Fleetwood Mac's Rumours to Howlin' Wolf in just seven moves?"). Similarly, I tell you, for example, that I bought Husker Du's Warehouse: Songs and Stories in the Tower in D.C.'s Foggy Bottom neighborhood amidst a lengthy bout of angst.

I find that my acquisition of music is slowing down and more focused. I think in general, once far away from bachelorhood, musical tastes have cemented, and that is probably the biggest cause of this narrowing. But also, when the journey of discovery is no longer tactile, across the stacks at a record store, and more often on a website like Amazon or at a brick and mortar like Best Buy (which is unabashedly set up for the Transaction, and staffed with generalists), something is lost.

The further away I get from December 18, 2006, part of the enjoyment of music is lost. The act of discovery part. Which is a damn shame because then the sharing of music part eventually also diminishes. I used to play music for my wife all the time and once, she had a friend steal my truck so she could have a new stereo installed as a Christmas gift because (a) she knew how important music was to me and (b) my old stereo was really only a radio.

I can’t share music that I’ve already shared, otherwise it becomes a crusade. That would be like a Jehovah’s Witness coming back to knock on the same door twice.

Reflecting on this I realize that, as much as I love my wife and as much as she completely dwells in my heart, I don’t believe I’ve ever made her a mix tape. High Fidelity very nearly fetishizes the mix tape. The mix tape is a proclamation. It is a love letter. It is a seduction. It is an entendre. I’ve been known to make mix tapes in my time, and they’ve always had meaning (it’s like that conversation between Jackson and Travolta in Pulp Fiction: “I’ve given lots of foot massages and every one of them meant something”).

Now, without Tower Records, I’m not sure if I can really make that mix tape for my wife with the meaning it should have.

Literal Video for A-Ha song "Take On Me"

Take on Me: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

Usually, I try to come up with some kind of hook to the title of these posts. Don't think I didn't this time. In fact, in keeping with the spirit of the re-make for the A-Ha throwaway "Take On Me", which I found on my Facebook "Wall", I think I've hit the nail on the head. Watch the video. You decide. It's at least hilarious.

And what of Facebook? It's an excellent time-waster. It's kind of hokey, what with all the "poking" and "sending gifts" that can go on. Not to mention the fallout one can experience from "ignoring" the wrong "friend requests". It's also potentially malevolent, as it has recently come to light that from a CIA/NSA-spying-on-us point of view, it can be an actual data-mining trove. But in simple terms, it is an extraordinary means to get back in esoteric touch with old friends and acquaintances. I've reconnected with friends from high school, college (both of them) and law school, and I continue to do so on a weekly basis.

And at the risk of incurring the wrath of my beautiful wife (who now knows how to operate a shotgun, I hasten to add), my senior year girlfriend and prom date posted some incredibly sweet pictures from that time. Who wouldn't want to go there after 20 years of real life if not just to be reminded of the possibilities you were looking at from that vantage point, when A-Ha looked like the new U2. And if you can conclude, like I have, that you're still headed in the right direction, the excercise, and the time-wasting, is in fact not so wasteful.

BAND MONTAGE!

The Green Rat

Drinkin' and Dronin' posted an entry comprised of Life Magazine Steve McQueen candids. One image in particular captured my attention. Mr. McQueen climbing into his 1950s era Jaguar XKSS in BRG (aka British Racing Green), somewhere in Hollywood.

Now, I don't know squat about Brit sports cars other than the usual mythology (they have bad electrical, leak both oil and rain, and are some of the most beautiful rolling stock ever hand-hammered), so I did some research and came up with more background on the King of Cool's car. The XKSS was a street version of Jaguar's D-type racer. When the D-type started to get outclassed in races, no one wanted them, so the Coventry factory took the remaining examples (over 20 of them), and re-specced them for the road, by adding a full-width windscreen, a passenger seat and door, modifying the exhaust, and removing the vertical single tailfin. These modifications not withstanding, the XKSS was essentially a road-going race car. McQueen loved his, chassis #713, so much that he bought it twice. He affectionately named it "the Green Rat".

I found some nice images of the detailing of #713 from Motor Trend magazine, including the custom cubbyhole for McQueen's everpresent Persol sunglasses and the wood and steel vintage racing steering wheel.

Imagine that man and that car at that time in that town. Technically, he was married then (to international model Neile McQueen) and had a son, Chad, but I figure this is about as far from being OnceABachelor as you can be yet still qualify as one.

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.

Parla Italiano?

Here's a OnceABachelor taking his wife for a little spin in the Spanish countryside. Be patient. It's worth watching, and his wife is a big-eyed Italian beauty.



Who's the driver? That's Riccardo Patrese, retired Formula 1 driver, and he's on the racetrack at Jerez. I sure would like to know what his wife is saying, especially when she gives the Italian Salute. I'm pretty sure I recognized at least one word.

Mid-Life Crisis Anyone?

I turned 40 years old nine months ago and I haven't gotten any crankier than I was before, I haven't begun to get up ten times a night to pee, and I haven't begun to forget people's names (except for the inconsequential many who populate the background of my life). So how do I know I'm deep in the throes of a mid-life crisis? Three words: Little. Red. Porsche.



Yes, I bought a 1984 Porsche 944 sports car with a 150 horsepower, normally aspirated four cylinder engine, allegedly squeezing out a top speed in the 130 mph range. As much as I love my wife, son, and family, I find that this car occupies my waking thoughts quite frequently. I like to think of it as the car I only dreamed of owning back when it was new and I was a senior in high school, the car that Jake Ryan drove in Sixteen Candles, the car that Porsche Purist Dicks love to hate. It's a quick little piece of german engineering, that can turn in on any car and embarrass it in front of the popular girls, even cars twice its price, twice its horsepower, and half its age.

But I also recognize that it's a desperate attempt at bottling youthfulness. It also represents compromise, being cheap and able to transport a young son in an otherwise useless backseat. Moreso, this particular model has the less-desireable 3 dial dash with unattractive yellow gauges using Seventies technology. I have changed them out for better looking ones, but still it's a work in progress. Note the jokey tank commander goggles hanging from the mirror in this image; I'm trying not to take it seriously, yet I love it.



As the inaugural post of OnceWereBachelors, why is my car even here? Perhaps it's because lost bachelorhood is a desperate state of compromises where fatherhood is a work in progress. And you need to wear tank commander goggles to make it through the black smoke with a smile.