dr. doooom's answering machine

Posted 7:25 PM by Alfred

MAUI day 3, Friday: The road less traveled, Hookipa beach, and Paia town

Woke up early, at about noon
Just thought that I had to be in Compton soon
Gotta get drunk before the day begins
Before my mother starts bitching about my friends

I just can't start the sentence "Woke up early" without going off into Eazy-E's "Boyz in the Hood."

But anyway, we did wake up pretty early, but not as early as the day before. Coffee and Nutri-Grain were hittin the spot like polka-dot.

Got on the road and headed North. Time to take the "road less traveled" as they call it, which is the road around the Northwest corner of Maui, to check out the sites and have some good times.

About fifteen minutes on the highway north out of Lahaina, after we passed through most of Kaanapali, we hit a turn-off to a beach, and thought we'd check it out. It was already 10 AM or so, and getting HOT. The beach was pretty cool, but the wind was kickin up like crazy, so we kinda lounged for a little while but ducked out after being coated in sand.

Back on the road. The scenery getting a little dryer and dryer. The ocean was to our left, and the highway started to climb up into the cliffsides. After a bit we spotted a turnout with a lot of cars. Using my same strategy from the Hana drive, like Sherlock Holmes I deduced there was something interesting there. We grabbed towels, goggles, magazines, etcetera, and walked down a staircase to a beach surrounded by cliffside. There were a lot of people snorkeling, so I grabbed my goggles and jumped in the water. After a short swim toward the reef area I was tripping out!! Never in my life had I seen so many different and beautiful varieties of fish. I waved to the wife to jump in and check this out.

Green fish, blue fish, yellow fish, multicolored rainbow fish, big fish, little fish. Even spotted a snake, which aren't even supposed to be in Hawaii. Maybe it was an eel, but it looked like a snake. Anyway, all these cool fish occupied our attention for a good 45 minutes. Supercool!! Like I said, I've hit up some pretty good snorkel spots, but this place beat anything I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure it was called Mokuleia Bay, in the Honokowai district.

So after lounging on the beach for a spell, we got back on the road again. After a while, the road started getting really narrow and sketchy, but the views were outstanding. Crazy valleys, cliffsides, the ocean, the mountains, all that good stuff. We passed a few little shave ice stands, souvenir shops, and one teeny-weeny little town, but there was nothing almost except dope scenery for the next few hours. Not as beautiful a drive as the Hana Road, but worth the time if you've got it. This road is crazy though, wild switchbacks, super-narrow, and blind turns. The whole drive is really high up, through the mountains, with the ocean on the left.

So after our crazy out-there drive, we rolled down the hill into Kahului and stopped off for some Guri Guri ice cream. This is some unique-ass ice cream, which they've only got on Maui. Just two flavors, strawberry and pineapple, it's like a weird combo of ice cream and sherbet and muy delicioso!! Hidden in a strip mall behind a Long's Drugs, worth it if you can find it. A little local secret.

Back on the road, headed toward Paia, which was on the road to Hana, and Hookipa Beach, which according the guidebook was a must-see. Passed through hippie-ville Paia and on to the beach. Parked and went to set up towels and chilling base. If you want to score some drugs, this is the spot. I was offered weed at least five times, and one guy, after I said no need for weed, was like "cocaine, amphetamines, whatchu need?"

"uh, I'm cool man, thanks."

Besides the drug dealers everywhere, this beach was really beautiful. There's only a small section of beach that hits the water, though. Most of the waterline is along a reef which fronts the sand. We had a nice mellow time kickin it though. This is definitely a locals beach though, and if you're intimidated by people with tattoos all over their body drinking beers and slanging drugs, then you might want to skip it. But don't get me wrong, no one was acting like dicks or anything like that, everyone was real mellow.

So after chilling for a while, it was getting towards 5 o'clock. So we headed into Paia to walk around and look for a place for dinner. This little town is really cool, kinda reminds me of a smaller Berkeley Telegraph district, but right by the beach and cleaner. We stopped in a hemp clothing shop and I made the mistake of striking up a conversation regarding weed legalization with the girl working there. These people can go on for hours. She busted out her copy of "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" and everything.

After extricating myself from the Hemp shop salesperson, we headed down the way. Lots of really nice looking restaurants, but we chose a little place called Jacque's. This was the best meal of the trip by far. The setting is dope. We sat outside, and could see the sunset as we ate, drank, and made merry. Mrs. P had Seafood Curry and I went for the rack of lamb. It was the BOMB!! Damn that food was good. I mean I'm chewing on my mousepad right now thinking about it.

So that was about it. Had a phat dinner, drank a phat NewCastle, watched a phat sunset, and headed back to the hotel. We even decided to hunt down a nightclub in Lahaina that night for little dancing. I was afraid Lahaina town would be dead after 10 PM, but we found a Moose McGillicuddy's a few blocks down that was BUMPIN. They even played Cypress Hill, so I was like, gyeah. So we danced, drank, and partied the night away. Good times.

Next on Alfie's travelogue: Day IV, Kihei, Wailea, Big Beach, and cruising in the Lava flow

Posted 2:24 PM by Alfred

Alfred!

Hello, Master Bruce. Long time no talk, wussup?

Alfred, this place is falling apart. You've gotta come back. The giant dinosaur statue is dusty as hell. The Batcave and Stately Wayne Manor are a royal fukn mess. The batmobile is coughing up black smoke and I can't get it into fifth gear anymore. And the frikken laundry. Aunt Harriet ain't doin SHIT around here!

I'm sorry to hear that Brucie, but I ain't comin back to Gotham. I've got a wife, I've got a life, here in Hawaii. Things are cool. I'm happy.

But Alfred. Robin is standing right here. He's seriously depressed all of a sudden. He misses his parents, and you were like a father to him.

But what about you? You've gotta help him through this time Bruce. The teenage years are always hard, especially for crime fighters.

I miss my parents too Alfred. Please come home. We miss afternoon story time.

See this is what I mean Bats, you guys were just getting too weird over there. I had to dig out. I mean I'm sorry about your parents and everything, but you were like 8 years old, don't you think it's time you got over it?

No Alfred, all the forces of darkness must pay. They will pay, they will spew forth blood from their guts at the mercy of the BAT!!!

Uh, OK, Bruce. Look, why don't you guys come visit if you miss me so much? I mean Hawaii needs the tourism right now, and you're a frikken milllionaire for crying out loud! I'd love to show you the island, maybe see Don Ho or something.

Well I guess we could. We'd have to come by boat though. I mean we'd have to bring the batmobile and our crime lab. Which Alfred, the batcomputer is on a serious fritz right now. All it does is print out cards saying "holy shit!" now. See what happens when I let Robin surf the internet on it. Fukn porn put a virus in my batcomputer Alfred. Maybe you can look at it if we bring it out.

Whatever Bruce. Look I gotta go. I gotta job.

Alfred, the forces of evil are everywhere. I think I'm seeing the Joker in my closet at night. I'm scared.

Bruce, you need help. I really gotta go. Say hi to Robin & Aunt Harriet for me.

OK Alfred. Well, thanks for talking to me, I feel better already. Well be thinking about you while we're beating up the Penguin's gang tonight.

Right on Bats.

Thursday, July 18, 2002

Posted 8:46 PM by Alfred

Gettin' Blunted Drinking Coqui 900...

The only reference to Coqui 900 I've ever heard outside the liquor stores of Berkeley, CA, courtesy of the RZA as Bobby Digital.

This is one of the most solid rap albums of all time, in my humble opinion. And you just can't argue with this fine cover by comic book legend Bill Sienkewicz. Bill stands out most in my mind for his all-star run on the New Mutants circa the late 80's. Out there, really out there.

As for Coqui 900, or 9-Ball as we used to call it in B-town, it tastes like piss but will fuk up your world in a hurry, and isn't that what malt liquor is all about? And you thought fukn Old English was hardcore. Child, go back to your room and play wit yo toys. I've got fond memories of chilling in the Berkeley pad, sippin on 9-Ball and playing go-stop, an asian card game, which every time a korean saw me play, and win, they were like how the FUK did a white boy know how to play this game. And I wuz stackin up they's chips playa.

B-Town brutha check it out I'm bout to throw down.

All right that's it. I put in more work than a trick on hollywood blvd. today. It's fukn heinekin time, I'm too old for 9-ball.

PEACE OUT MY PEEPS

Posted 2:00 PM by Alfred

I feel like Lyle Alzado in a steroid rage right now because I'm rewriting this whole fukkin entry from memory after fukking up and losing it by going out of the window I was in. Basically I just tore apart my office, smashed my coworkers head through a windshield, and squirted goat's blood all over the front door, in a bizarre voodoo ritual. I feel much better now, and I think I'm ready to spew forth from my brain again. But, thinking of how perfect an entry I just wrote... Wait, I'll be right back.

OK that wasn't pretty. Due to local animal protection laws and a number of other city and state statutes involving defecation on public landmarks, I won't go into detail on what transpired, but I feel better, I am now ready to blog again.

Am I the only one who doesn't trust this Taco Bell / Pizza Hut conglomeration thing they got going on? If you haven't noticed, at least here in Hawaii, slowly but surely every Taco Bell has a Pizza Hut in it, too. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but this disturbs me on so many levels, and I don't really know why. I mean, I guess you can make tacos and pizza in the same kitchen, but, is it really that simple? It almost like, offends me, that the food I'm buying is so basic that they can cook it all in an area the size of some people's shoe closets. I liked to think that making Pizza hut pizza required more than a little corner of a Taco Bell. Am I weird for thinking about this? On a similar note, Dunkin Donuts and 31 Flavors are joining forces too, now you can get an ice cream cone and a dozen donuts at one quick stop. This is frikken dangerous. I mean what's the next step, fat implants straight into your ass while they hook your face up to the sugar feeding trough? Were getting herded like cattle into a world designed by a sick crossbreed of marketers and economists, whipped and prodded into dens of iniquity, blinded by the flashy lights and value meals.

or something like that.

I know I married a good caring woman, because my wife woke up concerned about the nature people. She had a dream that she was at a swap meet, and at one booth there was a bunch of neanderthals, full on cave people, selling mud sculptures. She asked somebody, what's the deal with them? "Oh, they're the nature people," the person told her. They were jumping around like monkeys, scratching their armpits, going ooga ooga, and having a good ol time, but my girl was concerned about them and asked if they needed something to eat, as they looked pretty skinny. Some burgers maybe? The nature people didn't want burgers. Chicken? "yay, chicken, chicken!" This caused them to jump around all over the place, pumping their spears in the air, and spitting out the ticks they'd half chewed off of their buddies' backs, celebrating the chicken they were going to eat. So my wife heads over to the chicken stand, but gets distracted by some jewelry booth or something like that. And then she wakes up. And she tells me, she feels bad because those poor cavemen were so hungry and I never got them their chicken, they were so excited about it.

Is that a nurturing personality or what? Me I would have been like, yeah let me get you that chicken, Chaka. shabba! and walked on my way to buy a t-shirt or something.

I'm really diggin this Cam'ron album I picked up about a month ago. It took me while to get into it, but it's getting heavy rotation now in the Philips mini system. In fact, I'm announcing it as the Alfie's music club pick of the week. I haven't heard his new one yet, I'm the type to usually wait till I see stuff in the used rack at the little underground record shops. Except for the following: new Snoop, Cypress, or Eminem albums. And sometimes the Beastie Boys, if I've got extra cash. And maybe I'll make an exception for the new Weezer album. There's always exceptions here and there, but, oh whatever, you get my drift. And if you don't, tell me in the shout out section.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I got shit to do.

Peace out

the ultrablogger

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Posted 12:55 PM by Alfred

Jonas part III

Jonas sat in class, staring at the board, hearing the voice of Mrs. Spangler, but not the words. Not the words. "Jonas." He turned his head and looked at Rob. "Jonas check it out." Rob had drawn a picture of Wonder Woman, but with no shirt on. It was actually a pretty good effort. "pretty cool huh?"

"Yeah, not bad." He looked to the left and out the window, past the ivy along the fence, and onto Palmlawn Avenue. That freaky looking mailman with the long beard was making his rounds. Zeke. At least that's what Jonas and his friends called him, because it sounded like a hillbilly name. Zeke the mailman, the ZZ Top postal worker.

As Mrs. Spangler droned on and on, Jonas continued to stare out the window, only he wasn't looking at Zeke anymore. Zeke had gone on his merry way. Jonas was thinking about Wok-Wok the poodle, and what that little dog had told him. "Look kid, leave it alone. Cookie jar, remember the cookie jar. Now buzz off." Everything was blank after that. He remembered coming back to planet earth, skating off to Darryl's house, and trying (unsuccessfully) to ollie for the rest of the day. He'd just pushed that fukn dog and that weird old lady out of his mind.

That had been 3 days ago. Wok-Wok and Mrs. Hawthorne were steadily creeping their ways back into his consciousness, and he was getting scared. Was he going crazy or was there really a talking dog on his block? And a sarcastic little bitch of a talking dog at that. He hadn't told anyone about it, who would he tell, what would they think? It was fukn nuts.

The day wore on and slowly grinded to a halt at the 3 o'clock bell. Jonas walked towards home alone. About two blocks away from his house, he changed his mind and busted a left to hike up to Honolulu Ave., which was a cool couple blocks of shops in Montrose. Mom wouldn't be home for another couple hours anyway. Maybe he'd check out SoundTrack and see if the new Iron Maiden album had cracked the top 10 yet, putting it on sale for $5.99. His friends were into tapes, but Jonas was a vinyl man. Something about the ritual of slicing open an album, checking out the record sleeve, he thought it was cool. Vinyl was cool. He could even stop by Mr. Paperback and check out that stack of old Teen Titans comics someone had dropped by the magazine rack.

The Teen Titans were the shit. Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid-Flash, and a bunch of other teenage heroes. It was like the b-league makes good. Plus the art was amazing, courtesy of George Perez. And the stories were pretty hard-core.

Well presto-change-o, he'd gotten that talking fukn dog out of his head for five minutes. Maybe the rest of the day would go buy normally and he could slowly march his way back to some semblance of sanity.

Maybe.

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Posted 8:21 PM by Alfred

I just don't have the energy or mindset for any kind of organized thought right now so I give you - Random thoughts, part deux.

Ted Williams must be turning over in his frikken grave. His punk ass son makes him sign baseball bats for the last ten years of his life all day long, and now he's frozen his ass in a cyrogenic chamber on the hopes of hawking his DNA to the highest bidder. Makes me want to puke. At what point does greed get overwhelmed by shame and sense of family responsiblity? I mean, can't this guy get another kind of job rather than soaking off of his old man's legacy? It should be fukn illegal to sell your old man's fukn dirty jockstraps for a living. This guy should be forced to work at Taco Bell and see what it's really like. Did you know that sumo wrestlers in Japan have a servant that does everything for them, including wiping their ass? He should be forced to be a sumo butt-wiper boy. Butt-Wiper boy Williams. He should be fukn ostracized from the human race for whoring out his father's name to the highest bidder.

Speaking of baseball...

I really got into watching the ninth inning of the Dodgers/Cardinals game while huffing my way through the stair master at the gym last night. Even thought the Dodgers lost, they put a real scare into the Cards' reliever, got a couple guys on base off of a couple errors, but then hit into a double play. I'm not much of a baseball fan, but I love the Dodgers, and I think if they had the ninth inning of every Dodger game on TV, I would watch it pretty religiously. They could have a special show on every night: "Dodgers ninth inning." It would be must-see TV. Cuz really, the first 8 innings are a snoozefest. Some might say it's the same for basketball or football, that it's only exciting at the end, but baseball is unique in that there's no time limit, a team could technically come back from down 12-0 in the ninth inning.

Another thing about baseball. I've been hearing stuff here and there about how baseball better not go on strike, or it could be the end of the game, blah blah blah. The sad truth is that baseball can and probably will go on strike, and that the fans will all come back like a whipped dog limping its way back into the kennel. This is Amerca's game, and we'll basically put up with any amount of abuse. There's just too much history associated with it. And all this talk about baseball clubs losing money and barely making it sounds like fancy book-cooking, just doing the opposite of a Worldcom, making the company look poorer rather than richer. The money's there, people just want to keep all of it for themselves.

Bumping Guns N Roses Spaghetti Incident. Pretty solid. I've been rockin out lately. Yesterday I was cranking Dio. Maybe later on I'll throw on some Grim Reaper or Iron Maiden. I think I still have my skull full of goats blood if I get thirsty and need a drink in between head bangs.

Posted 2:01 PM by Alfred

Bumpin Kool Keith and eating Fritos.

Random thoughts:

My favorite line from a movie of all time just might be "Sew, old one, sew like the wind!" from Three Amigos. Thinking of that line never fails to give me a chuckle.

I'm still bitter about the Raiders getting screwed in the playoffs in the "snow" game. No, I'm not gonna get over it. And I don't care if it was karmic destiny or whatever from a bullshit call that went the Raiders way against the pats like 20 years ago. That call was the biggeest piece of horseshit I've ever seen in my life and I'll never forget it.

Worst thing about living in Hawaii as a former southern California native: No In 'n Out burgers. Second worst thing: No Tommy's burgers.

I'm pretty stoked that Predrag Savovic got picked up by the Denver Nuggets. He was the best player for the Hawaii Rainbows last season and could be a pretty good pro I think. Now let's see if UH can improve on last year and win their first ever NCAA tourney game. They choked SO hard in the first round last year against a Xavier team they had on the ropes. I mean, the bows had that game.

Seinfeld is my favorite sitcom of all time. My secret fantasy is to tune in to the Seinfeld rerun at 10:30 every night and see that one episode I haven't seen yet. Every time I see anyone that was ever in a Seinfeld episode in any capacity, I always go "hey it's that guy/girl from that episode of Seinfeld!" I think my favorite is when I see the guy that was the library detective that busts Jerry for his seriously overdue library book, he was one of the president's advisors in "Sum of All Fears," which I actually liked even though Ben Affleck usually sucks.

Which brings me to the upcoming Daredevil movie. Why why Ben Affleck? Why? I mean it almost would have been better if they'd cast Jean-Claude Van Damme. At least then you'd know they were going cheesy all the way. Ben Affleck bothers me.

Saw Mr. Deeds this weekend. It was allright. I just can't bring myself to say that it was good. It was entertaining and I enjoyed myself and actually I laughed my ass off in some parts, but I just can't shake the feeling that Adam Sandler is just phoning it in now. The preview for his upcoming animated movie looked so horrible I felt ashamed.

Well I guess that's about it for now.

Monday, July 15, 2002

Posted 3:31 PM by Alfred

Back when I was 3 years old, I was the king of the castle, the lord of the manor, the bat in the belfry. I was the sun and my parents were the planets, or something like that. Anyway it was just little old me.

Until the day that THEY showed up.

I remember it clearly. I was sitting on the carpet, in our new house, playing with a dumptruck. I remember thinking Batman would make an awesome truck driver. Now, I knew that us moving to a new house had something to do with Mommy getting really big, and that a new brother or sister were on the way, but, well, those were all secondary to Batman driving a dumptruck.

Anyway, the fateful day arrived and two bundles of joy were brought home. My dad layed them on the floor for my approval. Two of them! They looked kinda wrinkly, and their eyes were barely open. They were really small, and didn't have much hair to speak of. Also, they looked almost exactly the same. Identical twin sisters.

So anyway, a year and some change went by, and these two little rugrats were crawling all over the place. It got to the point where I had to set up a special area of the living room for my office. By this time I was almost 5 years old, and had lots of important documents to go over and coloring books to fill in. I mean, I had deadlines, commitments. I was now mature enough to know that Batman had better things to do than drive a dumptruck. It was at this time that my parents came up with the idea of sectioning off the corner of the living room for my little fort/office. My sisters would climb up the side of the little fence and stand there looking at me, fascinated, while I colored, drew pictures, planned ways of conquering the world, etc.

More years went by. The little rugrats grew into young girls. We were the kind of kids that were always fighting, which drove the folks crazy, but we were good at not holding grudges. We could be screaming and thrashing tooth and nail one minute, and side by side happily watching the Muppet show a half hour later, best of friends again. (Well, at least not bitter enemies.)

A good example of this was one evening, I must have been about 11, putting them at about 7 or 8, and I was "babysitting" while the folks were out for dinner. My sisters hated this "babysitting", because as they saw it, I was barely older than them and probably about half as responsible, but there you go, I was officially in charge. Now sometimes I was a benevolent ruler, but this particular evening I was being something of a little tyrant.

So there had come a breaking point where they just couldn't stand me anymore, and they had retreated to their room. I wasn't having that, so I tried to push my way in. They pushed, I pushed, we were yelling, screaming, freaking out. At that moment they hated my guts and I probably wasn't too fond of them either.

Then it happened. The door hinges broke apart right off of the wall. The door kind of hung there in a sick slanted angle. They stared at me. I stared at them. Dead silence for about two seconds.

"Oh shit." Whatever we were fighting about was immediately forgotten. At that point we were all jewel thieves, packing loot in a vault, and the alarm had just gone off and the police were on the way. We had to figure out a way to fix the door before Mom & Dad got home. Of course we soon realized that we were little kids and there was no way this could be accomplished. But the fight was over. We decided to relax, watch TV, and enjoy the momentary peace before the folks came home, saw the destruction, and the shit really hit the fan. (As I remember, our folks were actually pretty mellow about it, must have been worth a broken door for a few hours of peace & quiet.)

Anyway, the reason for this little trip down memory lane is that it was twenty-six years ago today that those two little bundles of joy were brought home and set before me. And even though we drove each other crazy a lot of the time, my memories are full of a lot more joy & laughter than sorrow & tears. The road growing up can be a tough one, and having good people by your side on the journey is a beautiful thing. I had two of the best, and I'll always love them for it.

Happy Birthday S & M!!!!

Love, Big Bro