Superheroes — do you have what it takes to become one? Or do superheroes have what it takes to become YOU? Superheroes are as different as can be, but they have certain characteristics in common. They come in as many flavors as there are Spandex colors.
What kind of superhero would you be?
The quiz below may help. Circle the number next to the answer that best decribes your response. Add up the numbers when you’re done — there’s no “high” or “low” score — and check the answers at the bottom to find out your super-score.

A — You come to a tall building and need to get around to the other side. You:

1. Look carefully to make sure no civilians will be injured as you jump over the building, and if anyone is inconvenienced, you apologize.
2. Jump over the building.
3. Jump over the building, acutely aware that people are watching you, and you’re both embarrassed and excited.
4. Wait until no one is looking, preferably at night, and jump over the building, pausing only to look into windows in case someone is doing something illegal or erotic.
5. Smash building!

B — You need some sort of superhero outfit. You:

1. Make lots of sketches, ask friends for advice, get your colors done by a professional, remember what looked good on your mom.
2. Use whatever’s available that won’t rip in a tussle and is easily cleaned.
3. Make it yourself and you’re convinced that all people notice are the mismatched seams.
4. Choose an outfit that’s dark, mysteriously detailed and draws attention to your slim waist and padded codpiece.
5. Go naked!

C — A situation arises where you’re tempted to use your powers for evil rather than good. You:

1. Refuse, and talk about it at length with friends during late-night phone calls.
2. Refuse.
3. Are really tempted, and eventually don’t do it, but you feel like a sucker. You wonder if you’re an idiot.
4. Know that whether you do it or not doesn’t matter, because no will ever know.
5. Score!

D — During a no-holds-barred brawl with evil-doers, you:

1. Search desperately for a way to restrain them without causing either short-term physical damage or long-term psychological damage.
2. Restrain them.
3. Get the snot pounded out of yourself before prevailing, and try to cover up with onlookers by making feeble wisecracks.
4. Efficiently beat the snot out of the bad guy, and if he gets hurt or killed in the process, well, too bad,
5. Pound them!

E — It’s necessary to have a secret identity, so you:

1. Dress as drably as possibly, hiding your physical attributes, but you still check yourself out in the mirror whenever possible.
2. Put on a pair of shades. Good enough.
3. Are convinced that everyone sees through your disguise, and are secretly laughing at you.
4. Keep your superhero outfit on under your disguise, and your hand keeps sneaking into your pocket to caress the Spandex stretched across your taut muscles.
5. Forget it!

F — Every superhero needs a sidekick, so you:

1. Choose a bright, young — albeit disadvantaged — person who needs guidance, and carefully explain your actions and feelings before and after each mission. Homework is assigned.
2. Choose someone who will fit into the suit when you retire.
3. Stay a loner, because a sidekick will see right through you to the phony underneath.
4. Choose someone who looks like you and doesn’t mind you dressing him in the mornings.
5. Shriek, “I don’t need no psychic!”

G — You’re desperately attracted to someone who doesn’t know you’re a superhero. You:

1. Keep a diary about your inner feelings and stare at the person moonily when they’re not looking.
2. Settle for someone who won’t explode when you kiss them.
3. Blurt it out at the worst possible moment and get your face slapped.
4. Install mirrors on the bedroom ceiling and lock yourself in the mansion with your sidekick.
5. Jump her!

SCORE

• If your score adds up to 7 or close to it, you’re Wonder Woman.
• If your score is 14 or close to it, you’re Superman.
• If your score is 21 or close to it, you’re Spiderman.
• If your score is 28 or close to it, you’re Batman.
• If your score is 35 or close to it, you’re the Incredible Hulk, or on the Honolulu City Council.

The kids have never been the let’s-go-play-catch type of kids, although I still have my glove and a fairly scuffy hardball, and now the kids are all growed up, so that opportunity has passed. Still, I was kind of taken aback the other night when I was talking baseball with my youngest. It turned out she had played baseball once.
That’s right. One time. Same for her sister.
They were shown how to play baseball in PE class in high school, and for one glorious hour, actually allowed to swing, hit, catch and run. That’s it. Not even a whole game. Next class, some other sport.
But didn’t they play pick-up games with the other kids during recess? We’d do that. Get get to school a little early to loosen up for some fielding. Shag some pop flies. Then bolt down some lunch out of our lunch pails and hie out to the field for a couple of quick innings. Just for the fun of playing.
My kid looked at me like I was describing hunting mammoths. They were not allowed to bring equipment like bats and balls and gloves to school. And the school didn’t provide any except for the PE class exercise.
What about after school? You know, stickball. Sandlot games. Ride your bike down to the park, form ad-hoc teams and play until dark.
It turned out the parks are unavailable — they’re booked daily by Little League teams and amateurs aren’t welcome. There are no open fields elsewhere. Open areas are ringed by chain-link fences specifically to keep kids out. The school fields are locked down as well. You can’t play in the street, because the police are called by community associations to yell at the kids.
There are ways to play. We managed to play baseball almost anywhere. But there’s no urge among suburban kids to play ball unless it’s regimented and from the top down. And that’s a sure way to suck all the fun out of it. I played Little League ball, mostly warming benches, but it was nothing like the hustle it is today.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of catching a difficult throw, feeling the ball thump into the glove, the slight sting of the impact. The tingling crack of a solid hit, watching the ball arc away as you dig in for first. My kids aren’t sorry they missed it, but I am.
I should mention, however, that I am a terrible baseball player. I may be the worst baseball player of all time. Here’s a clue: I tried out for the Radford High School baseball team my sophomore year, played with them for a week, and was then cut unceremoniously. The coach explained that they had a much better chance with only eight players than with me on the team.
Still, I loved playing, even as the kid picked last.
And, oh: Go Waipio!

This antibiotic I’m on — Clarithromycin — really kicks my okole. I wake up feeling like the worst hangover ever, and that’s after a night of vivid intense dreaming that, oddly (for dreams), have “plot” lines and dramatic construction. Last night’s involved a lovely, rather rustic mountaintop retreat, impressionable young ladies, lovely old friends, complicated architecture, extended evenings and — of all things — Lenny Kravitz playing “Purple Haze” at inappropriate times.
Let’s see, a description of possible side effects of Clarithromycin:

Most common side-effects are gastrointestinal: diarrhea, nausea, extreme irritability, abdominal pain and vomiting, facial swelling. Less common side-effects include headaches, dizziness/motion sickness, rashes, alteration in senses of smell and taste, including a metallic taste that lasts the entire time one takes it. Dry mouth, anxiety, hallucinations, and nightmares have also been reported. In more serious cases it has been known to cause jaundice, cirrhosis, and kidney problems including renal failure. Uneven heartbeats, chest pain, and shortness of breath have also been reported while taking this drug.
Clarithromycin may cause false positives on urine drug screens for cocaine.

I can absolutely vouch for the metallic taste.

I had one of those dreams that seem to grip you all night long. I was watching the new sitcom “Shit My Dad Says.” Seemed pretty normal (and lame) but there were colored dots floating in front of the characters. Turned out they could be manipulated. One color controlled the character’s emotional state, one the amount of interaction with other characters, another the speed with which the character moved from scene to scene. A kind of on/off switch floated on the right. Flip it, and suddenly you were IN the scene instead of watching it on a screen.
It was very much like one of those immersive video games in which an artificial world was rendered around you in three dimensions. There was a certain amount of randomness in the environments, but they stayed true to the show’s (presumed) plot line, which I could monkey with by dialing in more characters and environments. It all seemed pretty real. You had to look carefully to find the rendered seams. At one point, whilst floating down an endless, tree-shaded canal, I just lay back and looked up at the trees, comparing them to each other. Turned out there were just six tree “designs,” placed in random groupings and angles to present an impression of a complex forest.
OK, it was just a dream. And it was interesting that, even in a dream, I was aware that it was an artificial world. Still something I haven’t figured out, though.
Why “Shit My Dad Says”?

Here are a couple of pencil sketches I made some time ago to illustrate a story about the Japanese aviator who crash-landed on Niihau, an event that is still much debated. P/O Shigenori Nishikaichi wiped off his landing gear and belly tank by striking a barbed-wire fence. He was taken captive by the island Hawaiians, but managed to convince residents Yoshio and Irene Harada to help him escape. They pulled the machine guns out of the plane before burning it. After several days of terror, Nishikaichi and Harada were killed by Hawaiian paniolo Ben Kanahele, after shooting the Hawaiian several times. Click on the sketches for enlarged versions.

This piece by the tireless Wayne Harada was the first time any of my books got a newspaper review. He liked it. About a month later, Pierre Bowman of the Star-Bulletin hated it. Shrug. The book came out in 1977 and it’s now out of print. I might bring it back as a print-on-demand volume with added material. It goes for about $50 to $90 at used book stores.

Da Kine Sounds good
By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor
Aficionados of Hawaiian music, performers, and even sociologists and historians will find delight and charm in a new book dubbed “Da Kine Sound.” It is a collection of 12 interviews with local troupers, liberally illustrated, and lively with savory morsels.
Its release last week came amid a shroud of secrecy — intentional, according to its authors. It also was a long-distance marvel: One of the trio involved in writing the book is a transplanted Hawaiian who now lives in Toronto.
“We’ve been very quiet, very silent about this book.” says Burl Burlingame, a freelance photojournalist, who helped conduct the interviews with his out-of-town partner, Robert Kasher, who made frequent trips to Hawaii in the past year to gather material for the book. Burlingame’s wife, Mary Poole-Burlingame, served as editor of the 176-page paperback volume.
Why the secrecy?
“We didn’t want a cheap rip-off version,” says Burlingame. “It took us a bit longer than we anticipated, and with Bob an ocean away, we had some physical problems.”
The book is a marvelous word-and-picture folio of some of the leading entertainers in town, kind of a print version of a “Home Grown” album. Though one can question some of the omissions among the interviewees, there’s no denying: The cross-section represents the mixed complexion of Hawaii’s musical scene, from Gabby Pahinui (the lead-off interviewee) to Kahauanu Lake (the concluding subject).
“Da Kine Sound” is essentially an examination of the musical climate today, with rap sessions (interviews were conducted via tape recorder over a year’s period, and printed in Q&A form) that result in a breezy, candid style. The format of the book is crisp and clean: Large type, plenty of fresh photographs of the personalities, and lots of insight into what makes ‘em tick.
Each interview is smartly and aptly subtitled; Pahinui, for example, is labeled “The Legend,” Genoa Keawe is “The Auntie,” Carole Kai is “The Show Biz Kid,” Hokule‘a is “The Concept Band,” Charles K. L. Davis is “The Golden Voice,” The Brothers Cazimero are “The Male Duo,” Nona Beamer is “The Teacher,” Loyal Garner is “The Spiritualist,” and so on.
“We started out thinking we’d do a magazine,” admits Burlingame. a former staff member of the Sun Press. “After we conducted the interviews, we discovered we had a book.”
The chief appeal of the book is its candor, its currency. There are oodles of chuckles and a smidgen of fresh insights via candid quotes.
Samples:
Pahinui: “My reflexes are slower now. My voice is just about-shot to hell. I got no teeth. Every time I go to L.A. I lose about two teeth going down, two teeth coming back.”
Garner: “If I can bring just one person to a higher vibration, if I can just make one person smile, then I’ve done my job and I can go home satisfied.”
Kai: “I’ve been labeled the ‘Lala girl.’ Only because I’ve been afraid to jump out of my Oriental self and say, ‘This is me!’ … I worry that people might not believe me.”
Jerry Santos of Olomana (dubbed “The Recording Artists”): “The new interest in the music is tied to the diminishing factor of the Hawaiian life-style. With the buildings and the condominiums and the thousands of people, a lot of the older things vanish very quickly. There is more of an urgency to remember the old values correctly.”
And so on.
The book also spotlights Ke Kai (“The New Band”), Kahauanu Lake (“The Influence”), and Moondance (“The North Shore Sound”).
The Burlingames and Kasher envision perhaps two more follow-up volumes of “Da Kine Sound,” though work has not yet begun on future projects. The new book retails for $5.95, and is published by Press Pacifica.

My little girl just turned two years old, a passage she noticed only because Mommy and Daddy made such a fuss. She’s a big, strong girl, very verbal, has good problem-solving ability and is able to interact well with others, if somewhat shyly. These are the things educators say they look for, so we didn’t anticipate any problems when she started school recently.
It’s a day-care center close to where my wife and I work, where I can drop her off and her Mommy can pick her up. It seems to be ideal. In terms of distance, she’s closer now than she’s ever been.
I miss her.
Something’s going on in her life now that I’m not a part of. When I drop her off in the morning, she still clings to my leg and watches the other kids play. After a while, she ventures away and slyly picks up a dropped toy, or climbs up a vacant slide, or stands to one side as the other kids noisily splash paints or pound Play-Doh or something equally exotic. She’s fascinated.
I’m fascinated too, watching her begin to learn the ground rules of society. But that’s my cue to slip out. If she sees me going, she cries and runs to get me. She wants me to be there with her. I want to be there. But she has to learn, even in these little steps, to be her own person.
The teachers say that, like most kids, she cries when the parent leaves, and when she realizes the parent can’t hear her, stops and does something else.
Crying, according to all the child-raising books, is just another form of communication. The child quickly learns the specific pitch and tone and volume guaranteed to jangle a parent’s nerves. But I don’t think of that when I leave her surrounded by strange children. I imagine I can hear her sobbing even blocks away, until the street noise swallows her up.
That’s dumb. When I come home at night, she stops what she’s doing and says “Hi, Daddy!” Then she runs pell-mell at me, angling for a hug. She gets it. She’s just fine — a smiling, sunny little girl.
I know I’m in second place on her list of priorities. If she can’t get Mommy, Daddy will do. (Followed by Grandma and Grandpa, then her sitters and teachers, then perhaps by anything that looks like a large fuzzy dog.)
When she wakes up in the night, yelling from a nightmare, only Mommy can calm her down. When she skins her knee, Mommy’s kisses heal it faster than Daddy’s. It’s Mommy who can convince her that sleeping is a good idea.
There are compensations. Daddy gets to see all the new tricks, over and over. “Watch, Daddy, watch!” she insists as she does this week’s special, sliding on her belly in the bathtub and making a small tsunami. It’s something that she watched other kids do at school, but waited to test at home.
It’s Daddy whom she imagines is a jungle gym. She likes to scale up my back like a mountain. She likes to sit on my shoulders like an elephant mahout. She likes to sit on my foot and ride it up and down, and yell, “Pony!” She misses us during the day, so she climbs all over us at night.
Then she tells me what happened that day. I can’t figure out the details, usually, except that it involved “kids at school” and “big mess” and “eat,” accompanied by a lot of body English. The excitement comes through, though, and I wish I’d been there to see it. According to my little girl, it was the most amazing thing ever witnessed.
Then the adrenaline burns off, and she goes to sleep, fighting it every second.
I like to look at her when she’s asleep. It’s been a long time since my days were so exciting I resisted the advance of night.
In the morning it starts all over again; the school, the good-bye, the tears. But lately, more often than not, she barely peeps when she goes into the class. It’s an exciting place. I’m just her Daddy.
But I can be at work, and I imagine I hear her cry. It’s just imagination, but there it is, insistent against the clatter of office noise. And all I want to do is run to her, and pick her up, and hear her say “Hi, Daddy!” soft against my ear.

This piece originally ran in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1987. My little girl is now 24 years old and living in New York City, and has turned out just fine.