THANKS. GIVING.

Monday, November 24, 2009 was, for me, the best day in months.

I was at Farrington High School in the Kalihi section of Honolulu, there to discuss my book OBAMALAND: WHO IS BARACK OBAMA? It was released on Inauguration Day, back in January. The book is the #2 non-fiction best-seller in Hawaii for 2009. A nice way to begin the year.

But, things started sliding in August, when I did something, a definite no-no: Shooting baskets with an 11-year-old boy. That resulted in two broken ribs -- and my being pretty much immobile for three weeks.

The day before Halloween I awoke at 6:30 in the morning to discover that the house next door (eight feet away) was ablaze. So was part of the house that I have been renting since 1997. It was a nightmare. The fire inspectors said that I would have died of smoke inhalation in another four minutes if I remained asleep. The adjacent house was destroyed, leaving a family of four homeless. Way too close for comfort.

And the back end of all that has been a continuous hassle since October 30.

But Monday I crawled through traffic to reach the school. The staff and students were wonderful. The older folks remembered specific things from listening to KPOI-AM … from 50 years ago, 1959. The kids were quiet at the start. By the time I was finished I was getting laughs from usually taciturn teenagers, most of whom are one-fifth my age.

A successful encounter with young people is always a good trip. Best way I know to keep up with their reality, not the Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. digital, distant and disposable means of "communication" used by many "kids these days."

Thanks, Farrington Governors, for giving me a much-needed reality check.

Better than Turkey Day. Mahalo.

Too Hip for Woodstock

Too Hip for Woodstock

By Ron Jacobs

... who is too lazy to post a slide show

and ain't into flashy FTP upload software

bells and whistles

for anyone to see.

Besides,

this is a friendly interruption of the usual

PREDICTABLE BULLSHIT EMAILS

No ... just a little trip with a cool song

and some pictures of paradise.

The real deal, from da inside,

my bras and seestas.

I dig doing it like this,

mostly for the way~back~folks

who can dig the first blitzed stoned sessions

laid back chilled out fractured sodden tightly cackling

acid soaked lady horning potheads of Laurel Canyon.

1965.

Doing it in the hills on weekends

with some fine shooters

like Allen Daviau

and Henry Diltz

and Tom Rounds

with hot mid-60s SLRSs,

Armpits hung with hundred-frame 35mm rollers

for "friendly" communal showings at

Me & Lenore's pad

hooked to the the mountainside

big hangover lanai lookin' over the San Fernando Valley.

Later ...

None cooler, right at the top.

Greenvalley summers of love.

Music lifting up through and above

the green pine trees of Mullholland.

Samurai slide/stoned/showings

MMA-vicious, shuffling, focused and hustling

(no one would admit it)

just to impress others, mainly the wahine.

Sixties USDA chicks were the

youngest, loosest, goofiest, hippest, hottest

sweeties of the day, you know?

Sucked into Hollywood primo kind head there.

Being on top makes it Kosher

Yeah any chick that powdered my dick

did it because I was the cool

Jewaiian dude from Waikiki, yeah sure.

Barracked in the Melrose

Boss Boiler Room of Rock and Roll

"Where History Was Played and Made"

Off duty, up from the studios

Coupe DeVilling into winding eucalyptus hills.

Authentic hippies we were,

going nuts with ideas flashed

over bongs and bottles of pure discovery.

On shiny silver screen from Sears

erected on an extractable tripod

supporting vision-triggered flickers

brain-strobing cinematic frames.

Cool. No fucking microchip detritus

ADD in da DNA.

Toxic electron inhalations

Lordy, these kids today.

Remember

when things were better,

we, America,

finer?

It was Old School,

in your facelook

myspace is your space

twitter your clitter.

Lookin' at the mighty blue Pacific

past Kamehameha Highway

Kaneohe Bay, Mokapu, The Marines,

and East, beyond the horizon ...

choomin' for the season to kickoff.

Aloha note me and my mac.

Inspiration: These Are The Days by Van Morrison

For Allen Ginsberg & 1959

Renais "Ratte" Faryar & Ron Jacobs

Photo by Henry Diltz

$25,000 OBO

© 2009 Ron Jacobs

Kane'ohe, O'ahu, Hawai'i

Obama Administration, Day 200

"Cool Head, Main Thing"

THE ONLY PERSON AUTHORIZED TO RECORD THIS WITHOUT PERMISSION IS

MICHAEL C. GWYNNE, Mt. Kisco, NY

THE MICHAEL JACKSONS

I first heard Michael Jackson on the radio in the early 60s in San Francisco and later in Los Angeles. He was erudite, sophisticated and verbally skilled. Not unusual for one born in the United Kingdom. But what made this Brit unusual was that he was a first generation "talk radio" host.

Jackson began broadcasting when Rush Limbaugh was barely out of diapers (if indeed the man has ever stopped wearing them). In 1972 the fat and fatuous Limbaugh was a Top 40 deejay hiding behind the air name of "Jeff Christie." That same year Jackson was riding high on top-rated KABC, Los Angeles. This lead to national syndication and critical accolades.

It took 15 years of kicking around--in and out of radio--for jumpin' "Jeff" to become raucous, rowdy Rush. Meanwhile mellow Michael Jackson's philosophy of, "You do not have to be rude to be successful," was validated by rising ratings and revenue.

My career intersected with Michael Jackson's in early 1965. Since then much has been said and written about KHJ's "Boss Radio" format, which we launched in the spring of '65.

Few facts remain of what was on-air, kicked off by our new crew of Boss Jocks. Dig it: The Real Don Steele replaced Michael Jackson. Robert W. Morgan took over mornings, displacing a breakfast show broadcast live from Mr. and Mrs. Steve Allen's breakfast nook in Beverly Hills.

Those days radio comprised a large, lexical, living landscape. There was space enough for all ... and the bigger and better things yet ahead for Jackson, Steele, Morgan, and the Allens. All of them would be honored with "stars" on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Michael Jackson's cement tribute is at 1541 Vine Street between Selma and Sunset.

There are some who would say that Rush Limbaugh deserves to be walked, or even spit, on. To those who oppose his views, saliva is insufficient street scum to suit his sensibilities.

In candor, Morgan and Steele were not saints. They could be kicked around for some of their stunts--the behind the scenes kind. Alas, there is no Limbaugh to stomp on along these Show Biz Boulevards. You see, one must be judged big enough in Hollywood to be awarded a piece of such prestigious pavement.

Of the 2400-plus such honorees, Rush would be listed between Liberace and Linkletter. But Limbaugh appears to have fallen between the cracks (which is not to equate rock cocaine with Oxycontin for those keeping, uh, score).

If one reads the tabloids, watches Entertainment Tonight or is a TMZ blogee, there is no lack of connection between some stars embedded in the sidewalk and those indicted for walking on the wild side of the law. To have one's fame celebrated on a slab fronting a bar is one thing. Spending life behind bars in not nearly as glamorous.

This brings us to that other Michael Jackson. You know, the singer/dancer from the Neverlands. He died Thursday ... along with Farrah Fawcett (of the Angels) and Sky Saxon (of the Seeds).

Fitting. There were things both angelic and seedy about the late, lamented Michael Jackson. He of the white glove and reconfigured face earned not one but two Hollywood stars. Being a member of the Jackson Five qualified him for this double dip. Sorry, but being Elvis Presley's son-in-law didn't earn him a third.

The Walk of Fame star saluting the Michael Jackson who has hijacked all media news for days is located in the pedestrian path fronting "World Famous" Grauman's Chinese Theater, which was prepping for a flashy opening on Friday night, June 26, 2007.

The flick, "Bruno," had a scene in which the lead character conducts a mock interview with Michael Jackson's sister, La Toya. An attempt to obtain Mr. Jackson's cell phone number brought things to a halt when an upset Ms. Jackson up and walked off the set. By late Thursday these events were deemed not fitting. The offensive section was cut out. The splashy opening was delayed. So all day the moon walking Michael's star was covered by scaffolding placed there for the premier.

Thus, a throng of stunned, shocked, grieving fans were left to beat it about Hollywood looking for a spot to place their flowers, cards, candles and other mementos of mourning. I wasn't there. But it must have been a thriller: Tearful fans, held hands on Vine Street, looked to heaven and sang "We Are The World." Only problem is that it was the right song ... for the wrong Mike.

Mega-ditto that!

Michael Jackson, two years older than I, is alive ... alive!

Hoo-ray for Hollywood!

Memorial Day 2009

National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific

Welcome to the outer reaches of the Technology of History: http://www.amazon.com/OBAMA-TIME-CAPSULE-History-Making/dp/B0025VKZ02

Another attempt by 21st Century man to Live Forever. How "audacious" was it to label a book FUTURE SHOCK when it was premised on the continuation of books and the survival of everything we assumed fifty years ago?    

As each electron-drenched generation passes, speed and bandwidth reset standards at ridiculous rates; records that expire before the print is dry in the inkless world into which we’ve passed.  If desert tombs, heroically named aircraft carriers or post offices measure man’s ultimate ego manifestation, humanity’s need to verify its existence is bequeathed in traces of trivia to a presumed “future” that can only resemble what we now imagine .     

We learned nothing from the failed conversion of "Hearts and Minds" in Viet Nam.  "Spreading Democracy" has only resulted in death, deprivation and debt. Left standing in the way of "World Peace" are starvation, endless warfare, self-destruction of the planet by its greedy, unheeding occupants. There are more shocking future possibilities than a million metaphorical monkeys could type on manual typewriters long before random symbol generation was possible to create "anything."    

"Immortality" might hang on the survival of the adhesion components of data preservation. The very life of the Internet can be terminated at any moment. Who, or what, comes out and says so? Facts, please, about our exponential dependency on the World Wide Web. There is no survival kit for terminally dead air.    

What took this evolution of Us to come this “close” to one another while we can evaporate in a flash, unseen as Hiroshima by victims of the bomb (the meaning of the word "bomb" itself blown topsy-turvy to signify something good in raptalk.)    

We “bond” “together” by clicks, and screens, and email, in an IT world. Alas, the real “it” is more vulnerable to shutdown than the most improbable action-adventure terror scenarios. How can an island with nearly one million souls aboard be knocked out by persons unknown in a typical rental van cruising past the Nu'uanu Reservoir?Those crackling wires that rear up from paradise bringing tropical juice on the Trans-Ko'olau lines to those who live here can be easily cut as any other act of anarchy by people gone mad.

Hawai'i depends on electrical power more than all other American electricity junkies can comprehend. Here in the 50th State, with no connection to any U. S. power grid, we are only connected in the seat of "power" by one born on this island, Barack Obama. Future writers will be tested to portray a SELF-DOCUMENTING SOCIETY, where action is dictated by simultaneous media distribution based on existing user systems.

Seated at a keyboard and monitor, overlooking the Pacific and beyond the blue horizon, I move back and forth in time, superseding in quantum leaps and bounds the old gumshoe, thumb-the-files, spiral threaded microfilm, "working the phone" in Rolodex Days to capture unequivocally what went down.  Imagine if there were Twitter capability at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Or Hitler with his own MySpace account. Or sweeter, J. S. Bach ripping his own discs.     

Reality as perception is shifting swiftly. The limits of perception are defined and controlled by access to electrical power, or at the least, electronic communication and data storage. Kevin Gershan gifted me the above OBAMA TIME CAPSULE on this Memorial Day 2009, a day to both make and recall, memories.  This new thing, its link above, will be a wonderful project, I bet.  Produced in part by Rick Smolan, whose groundbreaking photojournalism was magnificently on display in A DAY IN THE LIFE OF HAWAI'I and his other illuminating imagery, this is more than one family’s online photo scrapbook.     

Historian, documentarian or bloggist must reexamine the principle  questions posed in the 1960s by Professor Marshall McLuhan: Is, truly, the media the message?  What is Barack Obama without his message?  What is his message without media? A moot question in Colonial times. No weekly radiocast from President Washington. No online Monroe Doctrine. How compelling would Abraham Lincoln’s Facebook page be? Would he have more "friends" than enemies?  

McLuhan writes of monks, their realizations and revalations of the pre-Guttenberg Era recorded by pushing pens with feathered quills dipped in homemade ink. McLuhan's distinction between aural and oral media is vividly described when the monastics first write silently, not moving their lips, no longer mouthing ideas reflected in their words. Is that more, or less, difficult to imagine than: Humans adjusting from grounded to airborne? Homo sapiens seguing from mono to hi-fi to stereo? Switching from black-and-white to color TV? JPEG or fiction? What would Paul Revere tweet on a midnight clear? 

"Planned obsolesence," "disposable society" and other Orwellian options emerge as "life" is rendered on the "tube" (itself an anachronism in a age of fishing with chips for information.) Are we but chameleons of comprehension, reflective of all to which we are exposed, blending in with a Mass Think environment?  What the difference between a green field or a field of green in a photoshopped universe? We are long past knowing the difference between what is real, what is Memorex.   

The metrics of time between events and their consequences can be measured by how quickly humans apply their many motives, variants of the endless battle between Love and Hate.  We have reached the point where our ability to "witness" an event and feel its consequences happen all at once, "in the moment." If one believes the New Testament, its Doomsday Checklist is immeasurable in bytes.     

We live in a delusion of connectivity, a sea of simultaneaty. But from where I sit, the distance between Coconut Island, HI and San Pedro, CA remains the same as it was when the white man first invaded these islands.  Contemplate this: If the 49 other states were destroyed by the Forces of Evil, they perhaps harboring no beef with the Hawaiians, would the populace of the "Aloha" State turn to cannibalism, survival of the farthest?  Out here we are one tsunami, eruption or blackout away from being blown back, from iPods to petroglyphs.     

God speed to those archaeologists yet to come, sifting through our deranged digital detritus.

BILLY V REVIEWS OBAMALAND

The apartment building across from Honolulu's Punahou School, 

where Barack Obama lived with his mother and sister.

If youʻre still dazzled by the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, I caution you about this next item weʻre going to talk about.  "Obamaland: Who Is Barack Obama?" Itʻs a new book in stores now.  Itʻs written by someone who knows alot about Hawaii...Ron Jacobs, who is a radio veteran...one of the original “Poi-boys from the K-POI days, or if you remember him like I do from the KKUA days.  

Reason why I caution you is...when you pick it up youʻre not going to be able to put it down.  Itʻs a read from cover to cover book.  Yes itʻs about our President of the United States who grew up in Hawaii, but itʻs also a look into our own history as well.   

Itʻs about those famous places that we as locals know well.  And when the book catches up to the campaign for the White House, you canʻt help but smile at the pictures of the enormity of the situation that Barack Obama created as he sought to be Commander In Chief.  You also visit Barack's friends, hangouts, his history which is tied into who we are as a people in these islands.  Youʻll want to put some time aside for this one.  

Good Book, Good conversation piece in the house or gifts to others far away.  Obamaland, by Ron Jacobs...available online and in stores here in Hawaii.

UP YOURS MARK ZUCKERBERG!

"Wisdom comes with age." Try this when you are 70, kid. 

Yesterday at 10:21am: So, I try to connect with Wally Amos, my friend for 40 years, and FB proclaims: "Warning! You are engaging in behavior that may be considered annoying or abusive by other users." Facebook is annoying ME!

11:39am: To paraphrase an LA "underground" newspaper of the 1960s: The Internet is THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES. It appears that Facebook has gone from a cool idea to a TYRANNY. Yeah, look up the definition of TYRANNY. "Always be suspicious of anything free" still applies.

12:02pm:  Facebook tells me to: SLOW DOWN OR YOU'LL HIT A BLOCK. Base on WHAT? Such BS. Like, social life is based on robotic computer software tabs. Pilau!

12:04pm: Hawaiian: pilau -- nvs. Rot, stench, rottenness; to stink; putrid, spoiled, rotten, foul, decomposed. Absolute power is absolutely corrupt!

27 minutes ago:  "UP YOURS MARK ZUKERBERG! Wisdom comes with age, kid." (See photo above. Unless I am CENSORED again).

4 minutes ago:   Breaking News. "Please note that Facebook accounts are meant for authentic usage only. This means that we expect accounts to reflect mainly 'real-world' contacts ... rather than mainly 'internet-only' contacts ... Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a 'social networking site'. Marissa, User Operations, Facebook." THEN SHE APPARENTLY REACTIVATES THE OLD ACCOUNT. Huh?

Stay tuned, perhaps, since I'm "bi-polar," I get two "Facials."

BACK TO STAY, Promise

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On the right is one of 

Treasures of 
GENOA KEAWE

(1918 – 2008)

In the summer of 2006
this Queen of Hawaiian Music
remembered me
and we go back to the 1950s.

We're a homsesick machine

Back on new recording with live sessions

Mihana with Greg Martin 

and Jerry Santos

She first blessed this hale, 

the second brought rain,

a blessing here in Hawai'i.

I am blessed to have 

the most creative people in the 5oth State

working with me

as well black belt brains around the Earth.

tues 556 pm

Remove Ron Jacobs before he goes to far!
BACK ON-THE-AIR !!! NOW STREAMING...
AUTHENTIC HAWAIIAN MUSIC & ARTISTS INTERVIEWS
~ LIVE ~
with ALOHA and MAHALO NUI LOA
from RJ & Crew
Kane'ohe, O'ahu, Hawai'i
Big Boss 15,000 title iPod
and can get anything
send request or audio confirmation:
Ron Jacobs :: rj@hawaii.rr.com
© 2007-2009 APHO: Association for Preservation Of Hawaiiana Online

PUKA IN PACE'S PANTS

This large ceramic mug, shows St. Louis Rams equipment manager Todd Hewitt reparing a hole in the backside of future Pro Football Hall of Famer Orlando Pace's pants, during a game last season. Todd wields  Industrial Strength needle and thread, patching sidelines. Tivo'd in HiDef, frozen at this frame and shot with Sony point-and-shoot, a taste of Photoshop and embedded in the Chinese mug by Kodak. 

Selected Rams autographs for sale serious collectors with cash (Warner, Faulk, Holt, Bruce, S. Jackson, Deacon Jones, George Allen, and more.)