– The Republican President sends the troops to war.
– After the War there’s an Insurrection so the Repubican President sends additional troops to the embattled area.
– For the first time since before the start of the war the Democrats regain control of the House.
The war was the Civil War; The Insurrection was in Mississippi; and the Presidents were Lincoln and Grant.
For Political purposes, a Deal (AKA Bipartisanship) was made. The troops were withdrawn; Reconstruction ended; And Generations of Jim Crow began….

Gonna go cruising up to the northwest corner of the island, known as the Kohala Coast. I’ll probably hit Hapuna Beach for an hour or so before that. Spent all day yesterday working on questions and writing my scandalous column for the Metro, which is going to forever sully my reputation as a innocent little angel. It’s kind of like when NKOTB came out with the Hangin’ Tough album. Things are good. Have a toothache, but other than that, I’m holding up pretty well. Tommorrow I’m gonna hit the other side of the island with my buddy Mark. He and I grabbed dinner a few nights ago at Teshima’s, a great Japanese restaurant that opened in 1940. The lady who opened it, known affectionately as Mama Teshima, is over 95 years old and still works there. She also has a ridiculously cute great-grandaughter who works there as well. I’ll be back. Oh, and the picture above is of a gecko eating syrup at a restaurant called the Coffee Shack (click on it to blow it up. It’s a pretty wild picture.)

Despite the nasty weather out there Baseball will be starting 3 weeks from Monday. Every year I make my predictions and every year I’m more right than wrong. (Did anyone outside of Detroit pick Detroit?) Anyway, these are my predictions for the play-off bound teams for the 2007 season. Some of these are based on past performance; some on future expectations; and some on wishful thinking. Feel free to name your picks.
National League: East – Mets; Central – Cubs; West – Dodgers; Wild Card – Phils
American League: East – Yanks; Central – White Sox; West – Angels; Wild Card – A’s

World Series – Cubs over Yanks (I told you there was some wishful thinking)

Hey, I got off to sort of a late start today due to a fairly wild and borderline scandalous night last night. Details forthcoming, possibly in the Metro. Anyways, so there is no question of the week this week. I know, I know. I’m a slacker. You’ll be OK. Anyways, I got to get these friggin questions done, so I’ll holler at you later. And speaking of the Metro, here is the article I did last week, in case you didn’t get a chance to read Thursday’s paper. Oh, and I hear it’s really cold in Philly, so in an effort to warm you guys up, I posted a photo above of a beach I was at a few days ago called Kauna’oa, out in front of the Mauna Kea Resort.

Last night I saw “Zodiac” and last week “The Departed” won Best Picture. I thought both films were O.K. but long. So I decided to put a list together of my All-Time Top 10 Favorite Gangster/Crime Films. It was tough. There are a lot of good films that didn’t make it. If your favorites didn’t make it feel free to let us know what they were. For one reason or another there were films I didn’t see. Next time someone goes to the video store and nothing new catches their eye they might check out these movies. My Favorite 10 in order of release: 1. 1938 – “Angels With Dirty Faces” 2. 1941 – “The Maltese Falcon” 3. 1949 – “White Heat” 4. 1971 – “The French Connection” 5. 1972 – “The Godfather” 6. 1974 – “The Godfather 2” 7. 1990 – “Goodfellas” 8. 1992 – “Reservoir Dogs” 9. 1995 – “The Usual Suspects” and 10. 1997 – “LA Confidential” For Foreign Language Movie Lovers rhere’s “City Of God” 2003.

Spent yesterday at Kua Bay, where I went from being “the whitest person in Hawai’i” to the “person in Hawai’i with the dorkiest sunburn”. Yep, missed a couple of spots on my chest, so that there are now splotches of pink following no observable pattern against a strikingly white background. I think I’ll stay off the beach today. Just gonna go cruising around, I think. Been taking it pretty mellow. There’s not a whole lot of nightlife here, so I have most of my fun during the day. Hung out with some old work friends last night. It was extremely mellow. They’re all married now, so the party broke up around nine o’ clock. Looks like I’m the only one who’s not growing older (or is it not growing up?)
LOTS MORE PHOTOS!!!

Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny will be showing tonight at the Trocadero. I’ll be back next week for Scarface, which is gonna kick a lot of ass, then we’ve got Spaceballs the week after that. Word.

This is a disgrace!
TAXES – You go outside to smoke. You go inside to drink. Back and fourth. Less Smoking! Less Drinking! Less Taxes! Coupled with the fact people are going to the suburbs to drink and Delaware to buy smokes they’re getting even less taxes. But they’ll spin it and say less taxes means less smokers.
HEALTH – Some politically correct ‘scientific’ studies have been done showing the harm of second-hand smoke…but effects don’t kick in for about 150 years so they’re irrelevant
What is a fact is creating a climate where citizens inform on other citizens is TOTALITARIANISM!
So the only ‘reason’ for a Smoking Ban is … They want you to be as miserable as them.

My buddy Mark (above, in red shirt) and I became friends 1999, shortly after he opened his used bookshop in Kainaliu (Island Books). So I went to visit him the day after I arrived, and we just sat out in front of his store and “talked story” for hours. He’s the type of guy that every used book store owner should be; well read on anything and everything, and yet completely at ease socially. And, of course, unabashedy liberal, with a reasoned argument behind every one of his beliefs. So we went cruising yesterday, and decided to hit up an old road side store shortly after leaving his shop. The owner of the store was a Japanese man named Charlie (below) in his 80s.

His store was a remarkable hodgepodge of completely worthless items: old brooms, garden hoses with mold growing on them, reel to reel tape, a VHS tape about baseball card collecting that was, according to the price tag, $24.95. Vaguely threatening handwritten signs were hung around the store: “You like, you buy. You no like, you no buy. Just kiss off!” Another read, “This is heavenly place where they came to destroy. They’ll be cursed slowly but surely.” He said that, other than snacks, he stopped taking inventory when the US stopped producing goods. Charlie owned the store but not the land, and I quickly came to the conclusion that he was keeping the store open more to talk story and fend off loneliness than to make money. Or perhaps he kept it open out of a sense of duty. His father had opened that very same store in 1919, and his family had been in charge ever since. He had never been married and never had children, so that when he left, the store went with him. Considering the cherry locale, it was not hard to imagine a million dollar home being erected soon after he passes.

Charlie’s course of discussion was every bit the delightful melange as his store was. He went on about his father, about his monthly bills, about watching the White Sox during his brief life as a drifter in Chicago in the 1950s, about putting out a fire at the old auto mechanic’s store across the street, all within about two minutes time. We could have stayed all day, but after a couple of hours, we decided to press on.
UPDATE: More Photos!