Some Hawaiian observations, upon our return from an astronomers' conference

By greg on September 1, 2002 7:30 AM


I got back this morning, with a broken toe and a completed script for an ultra-short, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are the things I posted in my head while on vacation:

  • Hawaiian Grafitti. The drive from Kona to our hotel crosses a basically 20-mile lava field, an otherworldly (read, Icelandic) landscape devoid of humanity. Except, of course for the ubiquitous/distracting/engrossing white-coral-on-black-lava grafitti. There's surprisingly little online, so I took a picture. There are some petroglyph-style examples, and a few hearts, but most tags are just head-on text (including a few in Japanese and Korean). Maybe it was tagging along at an astronomy conference, but I thought making constellation grafitti (foreshortened, so it can be read from a speeding car) would be truer to the medium.

    hawaiian grafitti. it says heck. Calling Roe Ethridge...

  • Heat The fine officers on Hawaii Five-0 did all that great detective work while wearing suits. Even with a childhood in the South and more than a little fashion victimhood, I could barely put on a t-shirt. (Fellow salad bar diners, don't worry; I did put it on.)
  • Crime. The pervasive "pay before pumping" signs made me think gas-n-go is the most common crime on Hawaii. Not a Triad or a jade smuggler in sight. Where did McGarrett & co. (and Magnum, too, for that matter) find all these criminals?
  • Christian Hip-Hop. While we were driving through the vast ranchland and lava fields, we found Urban Filez, hosted by DJ Sizzle; favorite lyric excerpt: "after three days and nights He popped up like a toaster." Righteous living=righteous music + righteous gear. Fosheezy is the clothing line named after a non-swear word I'd previously only heard on trips to Utah (where it dominates other f-words like "flippin'," "friggin', " and "fetch"). Maybe the proliferation of ChristAltRock cleaned up the crime; it's certainly influenced the taggers.

    • Since 2001 here at greg.org, I've been blogging about the creative process—my own and those of people who interest me. That mostly involves filmmaking, art, writing, research, and the making thereof.

    Many thanks to the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Program for supporting greg.org that time.

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    greg [at] greg [dot ] org

    find me on twitter: @gregorg

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    first published: September 1, 2002.

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