Kelly and I sprang awake at some ungodly hour (6 or 7 AM), and with a hankerin’ for breakfast, we headed down to “Perry’s Smorgy Restaurant”. A breakfast buffet for $5.95! Oh yeah. Fresh papaya and pineapple and kona coffee. Very nice.

Afterwards, we farted around for a little bit and then decided to go to the Waikiki Aquarium. It’s only about a 15 minute walk from our hotel down towards Diamond Head. It’s kind of a small affair — but well worth the $7 fee. Quite a few large tanks, and some really neat tanks with cuttlefish (ne’ squids), octopi, chambered Nautiluses, frog fish, etc. Shortly after arriving, I realized that the batteries in the cam were exhausted, so alas! no photos. Check out the website… Anyway… we wanted to go outside and see the monk seals and other exhibits outside, but it was raining hard enough for even the most accustomed of Hawaiian to consider staying inside. (It is worth noting that rain comes and goes as it pleases, and does not stay around long. Much like Kentucky’s weather patterns, far quicker in cycle.) Kelly and I took seats in the auditorium-style seats in front of the main tank.

After a couple of minutes of idle watching, Kelly begins to assign not only names to the fish we have been watching, but also personality traits and backstories. The two blacktip reef sharks were Arliss and Mason, well-tempered but somewhat silent cousins of the Zebra shark — B. B. B. B. is slightly retarded, and is both tolerated and protected by Arliss and Mason. B. B. appeared to Kelly to be retarded on account of his lazy, yet tight circles he (she?) would swim, and the silly expression on his face. Me, personally, I think he just appeared lazy because of his elongated body structure, but WHO KNOWS. I’ll operate under the assumption that there can be retarded sharks. There were also Ed and Ted (short for Edward and Tedward) — I think they might have been Tuna, but who knows. Oh, yes, they are twins. Kelly says they are known to often finish each others sentences, and dinners (they already dress alike). B. B. required protection because of Stuart, a species of long and angry-looking fish. Little is known about this one. Other players included Snaggles the buck-toothed red snapper, and Carl the Bluefin Jack with a hard past (Kelly says he spoke like Tony, the mob boss on the Simpsons).

We finally decided to brave the rain, so we headed outside to check out the Monk Seals, coral, etc. The Monk seals were awesome! They looked like giant, underwater cat people. One of them (they were also by named by Kelly), Conrad, often would stand upside-down in the tank, and stay there for minutes at a time. He would then float in front of us, standing upright like a human, and spin himself around with one fin. It was cute as all hell! I would trade him for Mr. Cheese any day. Well, maybe some sort of timeshare. Mandy was the other seal, and Kelly likened her to some sort of young, seal trophy wife. If a seal could fit in our tub, we’d have one by now.

After the aquarium, we hit the beach for a while to wait for Chuck and Danna who arrived about an hour and a half late due to massive headwinds. We met up with them at our hotel, and we walked down Kuhio Avenue and just fooled about, really. It started raining a little bit — and Danna managed to get lei’d by a young 14 year old girl. This girl came up and slapped these leis around us all, and then demanded money. Ah well, thank you no, save for one. Danna utilized it to make their room/closet smell a little better. Hopefully Chuck and Danna can post photos of their “closet”. It’s roomy, for a closet.

After a walk on the beach, we headed through the lobby of the Sheraton, dripping wet, through a gaggle of black-tie affair attendees. Oooh boy, too funny. But that is the dichotomy of Hawaii, I think. Any place where it rains all the time in short bursts and there is a good possibility of sweating, everyone has an understanding.

Anywho, we split up as Kelly and I needed a bite to eat, and Chuck and Danna were no doubt jet-lagged. In the morning — Aloha Stadium and Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial.

Hey hey! I’m uploading some photos as we speak. When they go up, they will be in the Hawaii Gallery! Keep an eye out. Off to some big-assed mall. Kelly is chomping at the bit!

Update: it should please the gentry that photos from our “Day Two” here in Honolulu are now uploaded into the Hawaii Day Two gallery. Nothing exciting yet, as the rest of the crew has not yet arrived.

The big-assed mall — the Ala Moana Center was indeed big, and filled to the brim with stylish and not-so-stylish Japanese girls. The Von Dutch trucker hat is lame in America, girls, so get with it! Gonna catch some sushi at this joint down by the beach.

Update, night edition: Kelly and I ate at Furusato (not Futosako, or whatever I told Gary earlier and he translated into “Old Sugar”) tonight. Wow. Man — such excellent fish at decent prices. Tuna sashimi, yellow tail sashimi, barbecued eel, poke (a tuna/seaweed/tomato/onion/sesame salad), Philadelphia and cucumber rolls were all had and delivered graciously and with an attention to detail that made me question the sanity of the waitstaff. I also had a double-deuce of Asahi which was fantastic. Really, all this is just a run-up — a test of my sushi mettle until we get to SanSei on Monday for the “pre-game dinner” (as Gary is calling it). Tomorrow, we intend on meeting up with the Pearsalls, and quite possibly hitting a luau.

… and the bottom of a glass of bourbon. As I write this, I am enjoying the mid 70 degree weather of a cool and somewhat overcast Honolulu night from the balcony of our hotel room. I am coming to you live thanks to the unknown soul who has left an open wireless (wi-fi) access point in the general vicinity of my lofty nest. The glass of bourbon sweats a bit in this humid weather, the ice cubes occassionally shifting on their own.

The flight was OK — but only survivable thanks to a number of books. I managed to finish Neal Stevenson’s “Cryptonomicon” (what dozen pages I had left to finish), and even managed to complete in a single sitting Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger” (The Dark Tower Volume 1). I consider it one of my most focused reading attempts to date, especially in light of the fact that it took me nigh on 3 months to complete Cryptonomicon.

My mind is teetering on the edge of madness right now — according to my watch, which has been set to HST (-6 EST), I should be kissing Kelly asleep at home, but my body knows better. It thinks I need to get up in approximately 2 and one-half hours. My brain (and Colonel Bourbon) say otherwise. When we stepped into the Pacific for the first time, Kelly should have been at home in bed, but there is no time for such dalliances into logic — we are on vacation!

Neither Kelly nor I had ever seen the Pacific with our own eyes, and I must say it is beautiful — but in the way that Hawaii is beautiful. Kentucky has it’s own simple, weathered beauty, as do the Appalachians and the Atlantic Ocean. Here, the island is still very much being created and the ocean seems to reflect that youth and vigor. The Pacific is the temperature of tepid bathwater and nearly as clear.

PS – I don’t think that there is anything more alluring to me right now (aside from you, dear bourbon) than the image of a girl on a surfboard silhoutted by the sun setting on a flat horizon framed by the ocean.

Surfing tomorrow, maybe. Pictures for certain, as I have confirmed that the bandwidth is here to be had.

Kelly and I are off to beeeea-utiful Hawaii tomorrow morning at 10AM! Hopefully I’ll be able to score some wireless Internet access and upload some photos and a rolling travelogue. Watch this space…

A couple of days ago, Major League Baseball unveiled a plan to use the first, second and third bases in 15 major-league ballparks as billboards for the new Spider-Man 2 film, due out in June. After a collective “what in the hell are you thinking?” from most Americans — they have decided to shelve that plan.

Advertising in ballparks is nothing new — it is a tradition so old that it almost seems part of the game. However, there are two aspects of the game that have never been touched, and in my mind, should never be touched — those being the uniform and the field. To do so would be to break the sanctity of the sport itself.

Major League Baseball has rules about pitchers not having “distracting” parts of their uniform (like a bright wristband, for example).

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Kelly and I went to the "/gallery/20040429pegasusparade" >Pegasus Parade last Thursday evening. The honorary Pegasus Parade Grand Marshall was none other than Cathy Guisewithe. Yeah. The woman who created the abhorrant cartoon “Cathy”. No, I am not joking. Last year was pretty rad — we had none other than GEORGE TAKEI. Yeah.