Gettin' Lei'd

Tate and Terry Take Hawai'i 2011 (Kona Edition)

For my dad's (67th) birthday (and his guilty conscience) he decided he and I should pay a visit to his house in Hawai'i. He is worried we will never have quality time like this again, so I obviously I jumped on the opportunity.

On the flight over, I sat in-between my dad and an Asian girl who I thought was about twelve. She watched Tangled on her portable TV while eating chocolate chip cookies, and was wearing an oversized flower ring and a Hello-Kitty necklace. My claustrophobia aside, I managed to observe her during the last thirty minutes of the flight in which she applied copious amounts of purple and pink sparkly makeup, revealed her Asian character shoulder tattoo, and changed into stripper boots. When we landed, she made a series of phone calls that indicated she, surprisingly enough, calls the shots. One to family on the island "Don't give grandma anything spicy. Or alcohol. You will regret it," and one back to California, "Are you serious? Why isn't that done? I need my f*cking car when I get home! Give the phone to someone who can fix this." This transformation shocked me, and only cemented my theory that Asian girls successfully act 1/2 of their actual age.

The first day, we went grocery shopping and saw a rainbow. Not as good as a double rainbow, but almost. Interestingly enough, the rainbows' end was found in a Costco...

Also, this coffee is from a place called Lava Java. We woke up at 6:30 day one, still on California time, so we spent two hours deciding whether people walking down the street were homeless or not. Nearly impossible to tell, and my dad and I argued over this one guy (who I thought was a woman for a good 30 minutes) reading a newspaper and then some sort of a journal. I decided there was no way he was homeless because he was smoking.

I later checked out the pricing behind the counter at the ABC store, and addiction is incredibly pricey around here - 10 bucks a pack. There is no way someone is wasting 50 cents a cigarette on a homeless dude in penny loafers. (Upon close inspection, you can spot said man perched behind my coffee cup). [Update: Today, I saw same man climb out of a bush, wearing the same outfit. I hereby retract my argument against homelessness.]

It is a bit odd to be reading Lolita on the beach, but lovely nevertheless. True to his word, my dad and I have spent some serious quality time together, mostly conversations about his "bad boy" days in the 70's. The days where he owned a "shag wagon", drank on the beach, dropped out of highschool, and had peroxided hair down to his shoulders to compliment his porn mustache. (Vintage photo update when I get home).

He also told me, on the beach yesterday, that he is thankful he never "got into drugs", besides the fact that he regularly smoked pot. Now, he is retired to edibles. He told me a great little ditty about his company Christmas party where everyone passed around a tray of brownies, and he was trapped inside his own body and therefore unable to stand. Go dad.

P.S. The statistic that about 1/3 of Americans have tattoos is largely contributed to by the beaches of Hawaii. Almost every person in sight had at least one unseemly tattoo. Unseemly because the portion of their body the tattoo is located now busts seams.