At some point after I turned 40 I realized that I needed to replace my old silverware. I got this stuff from Pottery Barn a million years ago. It is stainless steel on top but devolves into a fern frond at the bottom. I thought it was really cool at the time. Now it just seems kind of weird. My plan has been to systematically steal silverware from first class airline flights. I have not been completely unsuccessful at this. Air France is now forced to use plastic.
I got a new spoon today. Yes, I’m in Honolulu for the long weekend. The fact that I was just here in Hawai'i two months ago collecting silverware is really not relevant at this time.
Lynnette graciously offered to take us to the airport. This was so nice…but it kind of bothered me. Having someone take you to the airport instead of just parking there seems a bit too downwardly mobile. But it was a lovely gesture. I am really worried that Jana’s car will get stolen out of my driveway since my car is in my garage now. Poor Jana. I hope she does not slip in my shower and get eaten by my kittens. Cat sitting is dangerous! They jump at you, the kittens.
Check in at Sea-Tac is fine. In the security line I drop my boarding pass and cannot get my hands to work to pick it up. Mark yells at me and says I am spastic. I smile and plot early revenge. Soon we are having breakfast at Anthony’s and I accidentally knock a glass of champagne in his general direction, dowsing him. Spastic that!
I nearly run into Steve Johannesen, my old director at the mermaid and the best manager I ever had. He pretends not to see me, which is best for both of us. There are 4 million people in Seattle and Sea-Tac is the 30th busiest airport on earth. Why do I have to run into Steve right now? Isn’t the point of living in a large city the anonymity? God!
The silverware harvesting….I mean the flight over… is fine. Much nicer that that flight to the Big Island two months ago when this insane loud man with no legs got on the plane and would not shut up about how he had lost his legs to barracuda bites in the Amazon and then gangrene set in and then he got flesh eating virus. There is no one like that sitting in first class this time. No one.
I watch Twilight again and remember just how bad that Molly Shannon lookalike lead actress is. What a black hole.
After my 5th glass of champagne I turn off the movie and start reading Chelsea Handler’s book, Are You There, Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea. Oh my God! This is the funniest thing I have ever read. Fuck David Sedaris. I am literally crying tears of spastic joy for like 2000 miles over the Pacific Ocean. I am scaring people around me. At some point it occurs to me that maybe this not all that funny and I just needed a good cry, but I don’t really think that is true. This is just fucking hilarious. Suck it, Kathy Griffin. I have found my god and she drinks vodka.
Once we get off the plane in Honolulu I see all these stupid Japanese tourists wandering around the airport with masks on so they won’t get swine flu. We get the car and then head towards the freeway. There is a large billboard in Japanese. I use my new iPhone Japanese Billboard Translation App:
We drop our stuff off at the condo and head over to see the recently remodeled and reopened Royal Hawaiian Hotel. My reaction is not positive. They have painted the building and it is less pepto-pink than before. I am against this. The fun striped umbrellas at The Mai Tai Bar are gone, replaced with beige. Who did this remodel, Callison Architects? The service is terrible, the food is bad, and our drinks are watery. They are playing crappy 1970’s pop music. Boo! The view is as good as always though.
After a bit though a real Hawaiian band starts playing and a hula dancer comes out. The mai tais work their magic. I can’t be mad at this place. I love it here. The view of the water, Diamond Head, boys on the beach. It’s all good. This Japanese family is facing me, watching the hula dancer. We make eye contact. They get it. This is magical.
Later we head to Nobu for dinner. I am so excited I can hardly contain myself. I send Facebook spam over my iPhone trying to make people feel bad but no one knows or cares what I am talking about. As we walk up we see the place is not full. Damn this recession. We do not have to wait in the bar and have drinks while they get our table ready (which makes me a little sad). Our waitress is this kind of punk rock Japanese American hipster chick. I can tell for the first couple seconds she struggles how to read us. But we order Saketinis and tell her we want the Omakase chef’s menu and now she loves us. Our drinks come out and then she sets two silver spoons on the table. I know these spoons. I stole two from here last year. Does she read my blog? Apparently she does because almost immediately the spoons are whisked away, never to be seen again. Weird.
After our cocktails we ask waitress for help ordering sake. She steers us towards this high end sake that is aged by lovingly playing it classical music in a dark room. I ask if it’s good classical music like Brahms or something wankey like John Williams. She looks at me as says, “Given the appalling state of Hawaiian Public Radio, what do you think?” Good point. We order a less expensive but much cooler sake that is aged by playing it KCRW from Los Angeles on Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm to 5pm Pacific time.
OK, so rather than try to write orgasm noises here I will just tell you what we had:
We each start with 4 petit komimoto oysters each with different things on top like Kula salsa, Japanese peach, Peruvian chilies, smallish green caviar. And then?
And then: raw kampachi with chili and cucumber
And then: raw toro with a yummy-tasting miniature Stonehenge structure
And then: more sake
And then: Butterfish
And then: Kobe beef
And then: sushi of salmon, moi, ahi, shrimp, and fluke.
And then: some chocolate stuff and blood orange sorbet.
The sorbet was fine. No chocolate with Asian dinner, please.
This was one of the absolute finest meals of my life. Just like the last time I was here. Before I go to bed tonight I get down on my knees and pray. “Dear God, please let Nobu survive this recession and please let me be able to come back here again some day, like in two months."
At the moment there is a 3 hour time different between Seattle and Honolulu, so I sleep in till 7am and feel like a big slacker. As I wake up, I smile. I am in Honolulu! I pinch myself and say that again, I am in Honolulu. Lately I have been struggling with this weird phenomena when I travel. I never quite feel like I am in the present when I am someplace else. Part of it has to just be that William Gibson Pattern Recognition stuff about how jet travel fucks with your head, but even after 7 days in France I was never really able to just relax and “be there”. Discovering that the entire country had been overrun by space aliens disguised as cicadas was part of the problem, but I digress.
Anyway, here I am in Honolulu again. I have come here four years in a row now. Four out of my fourteen obsessive trips to Hawaii. I hope these annual visits will continue for a long time.
Oh Honolulu, much unfairly reviled Honolulu. I have no idea what caused all the bad press in the past but, but I just love it here. The mix of cultures that makes the food so amazing, the beautiful people, the psychotic skyline, the gorgeous mountains, the beach… it’s all just so good. All but Hawaii Public Radio. Hawaii Public Radio just sucks ass. There is no other way to put it. Thank god I can just take KCRW with me on my iPhone now.
Today we are going to Doris Duke’s Shangri La house. You know Doris Duke, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Duke
We have to drive to this museum downtown then take a shuttle bus over to the house on the other side of Diamond Head. We hope on the H-1 freeway, which is like 10 lanes of ridiculous traffic at 11am, then hop off in Kahala and drive through these rich neighborhoods to reach her house. En route we see this big house painted pink with a very large Hello Kitty on the garage door. There are many disapproving gasps from the other people on the bus. I'm not against it.
We drive up to this gate which has just like a Joe regular mail box next to it. The gate opens and we are in Shangri La. Basically, Doris Duke fell in love with Islamic Art during her world travels and decided to build a house devoted to it here. It was this obsessive lifelong project for her. You cannot take picture inside but it is pretty amazing. We have a good guide who gives us lots of details about the art, and especially about what a bitch she was to people. Apparently she loved Hawaiians, specifically Duke’s family, but to most people if you breathed or ate lunch she would just fire you on the spot. This makes me sad. Her pictures make her seem like this larger than life Dagny Taggart type of character. There are great shots of her blowing up the lava rock in front of the house to build a place to moor her boat. She is this tall, lean, strong blond woman. Maybe this isn’t really all true and she just did not put up with crap from stupid people.
The house is amazing and bitch or not she was a pretty incredible person. I am glad I got to see this.
Mark noted that this is very much a one person mansion. She didn’t really like people so they had to stay across the pool in this grand guest house. I can relate. Speaking of next door, apparently Jim Nabors, aka Gomer Pyle still lives next door. Golly!
After Shangri La we head to this new little restaurant we read about called the Paina Café: http://www.painacafe.com/. This is just a little walk up place in a little strip mall, but it rocks. It’s a great concept and perfectly executed. If I had money to invest in this I would open these all over Seattle. I had spicy tuna poke on brown rice with some kalua pig and lomi lomi salmon. Just an absolutely perfect lunch. Except….except there is this large Hawaiian guy sitting near us sneezing. And sneezing. He sneezes so much that his bowl of rice explodes all over the table. I know what is coming. I label him Typhoid Harry. We leave quickly but I know I am going to get sick now. I just am not sure with what.
Assuming we only have a few hours before the flu sets in, we rush off to an Indonesian import store to buy art. I get a new large Buddha for my new Buddha collection:
And a really cool mask that looks just like Charisma Carpenter from Buffy:
Then we drive over to Chinatown to buy bags and bags of Sichuan peppercorns and star anise for about 14 cents. The woman at the counter pretends to not speak English. Her cash register does speak English though and it says in this weird computer voice that we owe 14 cents. I can tell she is like: “You stupid white boys really should buy this online from Dean and Deluca for $79.” Ha! No way, mean old woman!
We go back to the condo and have martinis made with Maui Ocean Vodka. We toast Chelsea Handler.
Dinner tonight is at Alan Wong’s. This is supposed to be the best restaurant in Honolulu. It isn’t.
More later....
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