While in Honolulu last month, Dad, Mom, and I spent a few hours driving around the old stomping grounds in the Manoa valley. Included in our stops was the house I was brought home to on 3017 Manoa Road*. We drove by it a few times; it took several takes for the kids to realize which house was theirs. In the last few decades, the owners had constructed a wall out front, making it difficult to recognize.
The house has apparently doubled in size, with a huge addition out back. And hey, it’s for sale. Anybody wanna go in on it with me?
From 1964, an interview with David Jones (Bowie) on BBC Tonight. At the age of seventeen, Bowie was already busy fighting the good fight as, get this, the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men.
Best guess is about 1979, give or take a couple years, with the clue being the Lightning Bolt logo. I was obsessed with that thing in my formative years, incorporating variations of it into every doodle I ever did at the time. I even had the Bolt necklace. Silver.
Looking at it now, I suspect the Bolt logo was likely a shaping force in my dominant taste for sharp angles and straight geometric lines to this day. (In my freehand sketches, I’ve always found myself favoring straight lines to curves. Same with logos.) It’s also unsurprisingly trippy to see that the cover of this card boasts two ambigrams: the Bolt logo is a rotational ambigram reading the same right-side-up and upside-down; the “MOM” is a reflective ambigram reading the same forward and backward. My affection for ambigrams and symmetry has obviously always been there.
A killer collection of commercial parodies via nerve.com, with the majority of them obviously coming from Saturday Night Live. I’m glad to see one of my all-time favorites make #7.
“We can handle those types of requests. Usually the same day.”
Remember this one? I just stumbled across this classic from the Norwegian band a-ha, from 1985. I wasn’t a bona fide waver, but I remember being totally blown away by this video. Way ahead of its time, both mechanically and conceptually. The comic book metaphor, the alternate reality thing, the worlds-colliding love story, all of it. Created before digital tools; eventually taken to entirely new levels half a generation later with films like Waking Life and The Matrix.
Great stuff. Twenty-three years later, and the thing still holds up. Easily one of the coolest things ever to come out of MTV. Well, you know, that and this.
1974. Mom and Jed, Auntie Joni and me, my second cousin Gui and his mom Susan. OH MY GOD I TOTALLY REMEMBER THOSE GOLD METAL MUGS AND THAT CEILING LAMP AND THOSE CHAIRS AND THE PARQUET FLOOR AND THE PICTURE OF THOSE TWO MUSHROOMS.
Okay, now I’m starting to get into Twilight Zone territory. Uncle Sonny gave me a handful of photos, some of them from his and Joni’s wedding in the summer of 1966. Below are a few of ‘em.
I can’t believe how much Pop looks like Micah in the first shot, and how much Mom looks like Heather. I’m also thinking about personally bringing the beehive back into mainstream culture.
Where it all began. The apartment in which I was conceived. 1638 Anapuni Street, Honolulu, Hawaii, in the Makiki section of town. Still painted a horrendous mauve taupe. Second floor there. End unit.
I know exactly what you’re asking, and it’s a good question. It’s been a long time, nearly forty years now. But if my memory serves me correctly, I think it was, you know, hanging over the balcony rail.
Long day. This was the last time I’ve been anywhere near a horizontal position in the last thirty hours, snapped yesterday from the 37th floor lanai above King Street in Honolulu before eventually catching a red eye to Los Angeles by way of a two hour layover in Salt Lake City. I’m now pulling down a bunch of pics from my phone and camera documenting Pop’s induction, and will be posting them here sooner than later.
So not without a few minor complications, I’m finally getting on a flight in a few hours. To get in the mood, I just revisited the vintage footage of Pop’s stellar game in 1961 against Roosevelt. I got an extra kick out of his jock-busting move on his 44-yard punt return, which starts at 00:39 in the clip below.
*Trip out alert: here’s a still photo of the same play that showed up in the newspaper. Pause the video at about 00:49 and compare it to the photograph. Then, at 00:50, you can see photographer Jack Matsumoto in the white shirt on the sideline.
The brunette cheerleader in blue touching the ground at 01:16 may be Mom. If not, she’d be one of the others in yellow. She was the songleader of the squad; I’ll ask her which color she wore.
I’ll be enjoyably droidless for the next several days for the induction, so there won’t be a whole lot going on around here outside of the usual tweets. Until next week, I was backing up some media and stumbled upon 26 of my letters from Honolulu recorded by my grandfather on October 15, 1972. The kid could hit a note, right?
Jace D's World Wide Web Site is a completely mental product. It is made from pure lateral thought processes, distilled ideas, and 100% whole natural bits: past, present, and future.
(1) ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL CONSENSUS, WINDOWS USERS SHOULD NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER DURING BROWSING BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF SOFTWARE DEFECTS. USE A GOOD BROWSER INSTEAD. (2) CONSUMPTION OF ONLINE MATERIAL IMPAIRS YOUR ABILITY TO KEEP FRIENDS OR OPERATE MACHINERY, AND MAY CAUSE HEALTH PROBLEMS.
