Hmmmm … the newspaper hasn’t asked me to cover the tsunami, so I guess I’ll ride it out at home. We’re only about five feet above sea level, but we’re inland, so if it whacks Kailua, we likely won’t get any wave action but we might get flooded. Filling containers with water. Boiling eggs for when (not if) the power goes out. Getting stuff off the floor. Wondering and watching.
When the 1986 tsunami was imminent, the paper sent me to Ala Moana Beach Park. It was blocked off, but when I told the policeman I was press, he just smiled and told me to enjoy the beach. I went out on the beach, prepared in case the shorebreak started to recede to beat it. My car was left running and pointed away from shore. I stood on the sand for a long time and not much happened. When the time passed, I tried to leave and discovered that the police had bungled the Waikiki evacuation so badly that traffic was gridlocked. That became the story.
Well. I’ll file this note. And hope there will be updates …
9:44 — Guy on TV noted that folks should be careful because “THERE WILL BE NO ONE AVAILABLE TO SAVE YOU.”
9:45 — Stores are limiting SPAM sales to two cases — cases! — per customer.
9:46 — TV guy: “It’s not a wave! The entire ocean is moving ashore!”
9:50 — We’re relying on TV. Alas, the TV newsroom cutbacks are showing.
9:51 — I’m going outside and do some woodworking instead of sitting on my hands. But I’m enough of a journalist nerd to have already recharged my cameras.
11:00 — Boards I primered yesterday are sanded and put away, so the driveway is clear. Ladder to roof in place. Should I take a shower?
11:08 — Hilo is still standing.
11:14 — My daughter’s workplace at Kailua Beach Park is keeping its employees in place.
11:23 — Giant wasp invades Hilo! Oops, never mind. Regular-sized wasp on weather camera.
11:25 — TV guy refers to a swimmer in Hilo Bay: “What an idiot!”
11:35 — The water is trickling in and out on Hilo Bay. Like a quick tide.
11:45 — Beach in Hilo has disappeared.
11:52 — Will there be mail delivery today?
11:53 — Anecdotal tales of whales and crabs heading for cover. My dogs are sleeping.
11:56 — Using fast forward on the DVR, you can really see the water churning in Hilo. The bay has changed color.
11:58 — Uh oh. Water rushing out of Hilo Bay.
12:03 — Water rushing in.
12:08 — Water rushing out. The surges are getting more fierce.
12:16 — My wife is chitchatting with friends in St. Louis, getting caught up on news THERE. Apparently there’s a crazy cat lady there with 45 cats in an apartment.
12:18 — Kathy in Half Moon Bay, CA, was expecting their tidal surge almost exactly same time as here. Guess we’re the same distance from Chile.
12:25 — Big Dog is awake and anxious. He’s hiding in the shower stall.
12:26 — TV guy: “Even the fish are caught by surprise!”
12:28 — Daughter is home, but only because police ordered her workplace evacuated, no excuses.
12:30 — I usually spend Saturday afternoon volunteering at the aviation museum. Might still go.
12:35 — Hey, there IS mail! Rain, sleet, snow and tsunamis!
12:39 — Cold beer in fridge is calling to me.
12:43 — It looks like we’re experiencing dramatic tidal surges but managed to dodge the killer waves.
12:58 — Big Dog is sleeping again. I think that’s my cue to wrap this up.

The Arizona Memorial Visitors Center opened about the same time I started at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1979. This afternoon, I was watching machines tear the building down, the walls collapsing in dust, when my phone rang. It was my wife, telling me the Star-Bulletin office was having a mandatory staff meeting in a few minutes. Obviously, I couldn’t make it back in time from the story I was working on, so I asked Mary to call me back as soon as she knew anything.
Announcements like this are never, never good. We’ve been through a lot of them.
The callback came soon. Our owner is putting us up for sale and buying the competition. The smart money thinks the papers will actually merge. The Honolulu Advertiser staff had a similar meeting at the same time. They are getting a taste of the uncertainty the Star-Bulletin staff has lived with for the last decade.
Obviously, everything is up in the air at the moment. The only good news — Gannett will be gone from Honolulu.

This week’s edition of the OVUII honor roll leads one to believe that the extras from a pirate movie are in town. Hey, they are! “Pirates of the Caribbean 4″ starts lensing soon.

The YikeBike is about $3,500 — half the cost of a Segway. Range is about eight miles. Double the range and halve the price and they’ve got a winner.

This little blog, you know, gets about a dozen or so readers, I’m convinced. But yesterday Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times film critic, tweeted a link to this site, and goodness, my daily average is now badly skewed. Check out this graph. Also humbling, the large handful of folks who “retweeted” Roger’s original tweet. Chicago Sun-Times, whatever you’re paying Roger Ebert, it ain’t enough.
As many of you know, Roger has had a health problem that has robbed him of his power of speech and his ability to eat and drink. This is documented in a brilliant profile by Chris Jones in the current issue of Esquire. But rather than being down, Roger has evolved into a joyous communicator on the pleasures of life. His blog (linked at right) is a weekly must-read ramble through green memories and bemused commentary, and the comments of his readers are also fascinating. He’s touched a common-sensical pulse in American culture that traces back through Garrison Keillor, Will Rogers and Mark Twain. Roger is striking sparks that ignite fires in readers.
He’s also become a Twitter fanatic, tweeting and retweeting an astounding cascade of quips and catches all day long and into the evening. I’m not sure he sleeps. It was a shared appreciation of songwriter John Prine that caused Roger to tweet-link to an earlier posting on this blog. In these tweets, he has revealed himself to be as Oscar-struck, star-gossipy, fond of word games and annoyed with current politics as everyone else.
I first met Roger Ebert during the spring years of the Hawaii International Film Festival. He and Gene Siskel were regulars in the early years, and occasionally we’d have a beer together or a hotel snack. (I’m still astounded that he remembers me at all from these brief, long-ago moments, but his blog accounts prove he has a phenomenal memory.) At one time Siskel excused himself from the table and Roger’s lip curled; “Siskel! He sleeps early!” in the exact same tone Jerry Seinfeld goes “Hello, Neeeewman.” And then he laughed delightedly. It was clear that he and Siskel had an interlocking yin/yang, left- and right-brain relationship and that they loved each other. Their give-and-take in the “At The Movies” balcony basically invented the concept of a vigorous cultural dialectic on television.
There was an interesting repartee Roger and I had on a film-festival panel about racism at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, which I won on points, but to be fair, Roger had been badly misinformed by the Chicago press. He encouraged me to write more film criticism, and commented on the pieces I wrote that appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and that’s a clue about Roger — he’s an enthusiastic reader as well as a natural communicator. His advice to me — don’t let the readers catch you “writing.” Good advice, kindly given.
Roger also would lug a collection of laserdisks into town and use the medium to analyze beloved films. I don’t know if that predated audio commentary on digital disks, but it shows that he wasn’t afraid of technology.
That’s a clue. Even though Roger and I bumped into each other at the film festival, we rarely discussed film. We were both fascinated by the then-new Macintosh computer and by the newspaper business in general. My impression of Roger Ebert that has survived over the years is of a compulsive newspaperman and techno-geek. My kinda guy.
Here’s the only Roger Ebert story I usually tell. We were at a preview screening at the Arizona Memorial. Roger settled into his seat, and as the credits started to roll, the young couple behind him whispered something to each other. Roger stood up, turned around and leaned over so his face was inches away from theirs. “Are you going to talk through the whole movie?” he stage-hissed. They shrank and they also shut the hell up.
I damn near applauded.

I have this idea that might increase attendance at the University of Hawaii women’s volleyball games. See if you can imagine this.

• No change to the game itself, except that
• The women play topless and oiled up and
• The game is played in complete darkness, except that
• The volleyball is on fire. The only light comes from the flaming ball.
• And everyone at courtside is given a drum to pound on.

Hey, I’d pay a dollar to see that.