Blue Hawaii

I’m sitting on the balcony of my room on the 27^th floor of the Hyatt Regency Waikiki in damp swim trunks and a still-creased OBAMA SURFS t-shirt, purchased yesterday at an ABC store, sipping a little rum and oj. It’s dusk; the sun has just collapsed in a heap over the Pacific Ocean.

Far below me, Waikiki is just starting to put on her night face. There are cars streaming up Kalakaua Avenue, like fish in an aquarium, as everyone heads for their favorite Friday evening destination. Mixed in with the sounds of the traffic are the distinctly Hawaiian strains of electric ukulele music coming from the little park next to the Duke Kahanamoku statue where there’s a free concert going on. Even from here, I can see the hula dancers doing their thing on the stage.

photos by David Lansing

It feels like I’m sitting way-up in the nosebleed seats of a darkened Broadway theater, furtively watching rehearsals for a new big-budget musical that you just know is going to be a smash hit. I mean, nothing much is happening and yet…and yet…it’s all very thrilling and moving and evocative. The whole Waikiki scene below me makes me feel inexplicably happy. Like sticking my head far out over the railing and yelling, to no one in particular, “I love you, man!”

But wait—it gets worse. As I finish off my cocktail and start to make myself another one, that melancholy Iz tune starts playing in my head. You know the one I mean; don’t make me hum it. The one that makes you puddle up even when they use it to sell Volkswagens or life insurance.

I’m sitting on the 27^th floor of my hotel and looking over Waikiki, unshowered, unrepentant, and with a slight buzz on, and even though I’m the most caustic, cynical, misanthropic excuse of a human being you’ll ever meet, what I see all around me are trees of green, skies of blue, friends shaking hands saying, “How do you do?” And I think to myself, What a wonderful woohooorld.