Making A Deal With Politicians
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Rick Davis, John Bowman, Lewis Black and yers truly at MidPac
As an independent, here’s my deal with politicians: If I vote for you, I’ll be watching how you perform, and may or may not vote for you next time. It all depends. Thus my vote for Bush in 2000, and for the other guy in ‘04 ...
In light of the Iraq Study Group’s report, here’s my short take on Iraq: The reasons given by the administration for staying - if we leave, the country will devolve into sectarian violence and become a breeding ground for terrorists - have been happening for some time already ...
As for the predicted “regional conflict” if we leave: Iran (Shia) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni) are already heavily involved in the Iraq ground war ...
Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, one of the most intelligent, independent and insightful reporters anywhere today, put the American quandary best: One day recently U.S. troops bailed out a Shia militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr that was under attack by Sunnis, and the very next day the same Shia militia opened fire on U.S. troops ...
And there’s this: Iraq was a tribal area and never a country until the Brits drew up arbitrary boundary lines - something Winston Churchill considered one of his greatest mistakes ...
On a much lighter note: While comedian Lewis Black was in Hawaii to do concerts in Honolulu and on Maui, I got to play golf twice with him. It started when he told our managing editor Terri Hefner in a cover story interview that he intended to play golf while he was here. (“And you know why I play golf?” he said. “Because I’m f———stupid!” It’s a line with which all golfers can relate.) Anyway, I’ve known concert promoter Greg Azus since we played together on a basketball team (that won a media league championship) more than 20 years ago, and offered to set up some golf for Lewis. We played MidPac CC in Lanikai with Rick Davis of the Davis Entertainment Agency here and Lewis’opening act, comic John Bowman. A couple of days later, it was the King Kamehameha Golf Club (formerly Grand Waikapu) on Maui. Can’t remember ever laughing more during a round of golf than I did on those two days. And there’s no “act” to Lewis’ act - what you see on TV or on stage is the same thing Rick and I experienced on the golf course. You learn a lot about a person during a four-hour round of golf, and I learned that Lewis Black is a genuinely good guy ...
I asked him and John about Michael “Kramer” Richardson’s blowup at an L.A. comedy club.
Bottom line: Richardson is a great comedic actor, but not really a standup comic, and that’s a tough club on the best of nights ...
For more laughs: If you’re of a certain age where you recall the music of Jim Morrison and the Doors, you’ll get a kick out of a very clever Christmas spoof on YouTube by McCrea Adams, a magazine editor in L.A. with whom I sometimes work. You can view his impersonation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4baSntmh4w ...
With veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack getting together officially for the last time on the 65th anniversary, here’s hoping their descendants, as well as Hawaii’s younger generations, will ensure that 12/7/41 always remains a Day of Infamy ...
Sorry to hear of the passing in California of former Advertiser 3-dot columnist Tom Horton. The list of Honolulu’s former 3-dotters continues to decline - just Eddie Sherman (Author! Author!), George Daacon (living in Florida, the last I heard) and yers truly are left ...
As great as the UH-Oregon State game was - not counting the final score - watching from the upper deck I was most impressed with how truly awful the Aloha Stadium sound system is. So bad, we could not understand a single word that came through the speakers. It was all just audio mush. In this digital age, that’s unacceptable ...
On the plus side, I suppose: The mush was really, really loud ...
Go figgah ...
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