Exploring our Hawaii obsession with comedian Sarah Vowell

I've written quite a bit on my obsession with getting to Hawaii someday. And I've started (but never finished) many times reading James Michener's epic Hawaii. Well, I finally found a better option than spending three months on that tome: hilarious comedian Sarah Vowell's 2011 book Unfamiliar Fishes. Along with being funny, she is a true history scholar with an impressive collection of books authored, including this one on how Hawaii came to be a mishmashed U.S. state. Along with the "lunch plates" that contain a little bit of many cultures, there are plenty of other things imported to Hawaii that make Hawaii Hawaii, such as their famous Banyan trees, which came from India.

It’s only two pages in before Vowell mentions the Brady Bunch, which I firmly believe gives the place a good bit of its allure, after the classic multipart series when the TV family visits Hawaii. What a tourism initiative that was! Vowell says the concrete high rises that starting springing up after 1959 give downtown Honolulu a “Very Brady brutalism.”

Hawaii really became what it is now when the 25th U.S. President William McKinley invaded Spanish-speaking colonies Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and acquired Hawaii, mainly so they could all become bases for attacking other parts of the world when deemed necessary.

Hawaii, after having been annexed to the U.S. in 1898 became a state in 1959, even though there are still many native Hawaiians who think it’s ridiculous to call them Americans, as it kind of is.

Going back to 1776, Vowell details how Hawaiians killed British explorer Captain Cook, who had tried to kidnap the high chief, but not before Cook’s sailors spread venereal diseases left and right to the islanders.

From all this at the promising start of the book, Vowell veers down some arguably uninteresting and sidewinding paths on the early colonizing missionaries. That said, to the credit of and with the help of the missionaries, between 1822 and the end of their operations in 1863, the Hawaiian people … went from having no written language to 75 percent of all Hawaiians learning to read and write in the native language.” It had become one of the most literate places in the world.

Another element of this time had to do with the whale ships based out of New England and elsewhere that were killing thousands of whales for the many resources, including ship oil, that could be harbored from them. Luckily for the whales, they were able to not go completely extinct because “the whole world was about to go ape for fossil fuels” and the “Pennsylvania petroleum boom of the 1860s slowed down sperm whales’ extinction.” This wouldn’t hurt Hawaii’s economy much because sugar cane was filling the gaps.

I’ve only made it through the first half of Unfamiliar Fishes, but I’ll likely return to it because I’m intrigued to see what Vowell finds in Hawaii’s more modern history.

So far, I give the book 3.5 out of 5 stars. 

Beach and resort culture have a fascinating history

I’ve been reading The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach. The author, Sarah Stodola, after years as a travel journalist spouting endless positivity at beach resorts, wanted to take a more critical look, to try to determine where resorts and their industry are headed in light of things like climate change and the increase in natural disasters. 

I was probably influenced to read this based on my love of the TV show The White Lotus (she references it right away), which combined the long-held tourist Bob Marley/Jimmy Buffett perspective with the behind-the-scenes dark side of the lives of resort employees.

She concludes that paradise for humans is nature conquered, not actual nature. An infinity pool overlooking the ocean is much better than contending with the sand and waves and unknowns underneath in the sea.

Stodola looks back to the history of human infatuation with the coast. 

• In the 1500s, the British upper class would retreat to spa towns with a focus on the healing power of water. In 1660, a doctor there founded a mineral spring spa which just happened to be near the ocean, so he got the idea to begin marketing the health benefits of ocean water, a resource he had in great supply. By 1736, entire towns were starting to understand the game. Brighthelmstone changed its name to Brighton, easier to pronounce and seemingly sounding like a coastal town worth a visit. “The resort concept took hold.”
• In northern Africa, southern Europe, and Polynesia, people have been surfing since the 1700s, maybe even before in some places.
• Although “paradise” used to be an Iranian word referring to walled gardens, “paradise’s relocation to the shore is a twentieth-century phenomenon.”
• Monte Carlo used to be called Vininaia and changed its name to encourage people to visit, which they did, and the city in Morocco became one of the first major resorting destinations. At first the beach was the thing there, but the realization over time has been to get rid of that and build a marina for the exorbitant yachts and create massive homes all the way up the mountains overlooking the water.
• The Jersey Shore became big time throughout the 1800s for people in New York and Philadelphia wanting to escape the summer heat. Their reasons for visiting rapidly changed from caring for their health to more along the lines of entertainment. It became known as the “American Monte Carlo” and still today has a pretty good claim to being America’s first beach resort.
• With his follow up to The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald helped “immortalize the international beach culture” with his book Tender is the Night. Between him and Picasso, their depictions of tanned skin and “getting sun became something you have the leisure to do instead of something that happens to you while you’re out toiling in the fields.”
• Mark Twain, while working for a Sacramento newspaper, got to be one of the lucky few to steamboat to the Sandwich Islands in the mid-1800s. He loved it and spread the word that what we now know as Waikiki in Hawaii would soon become a hot destination. Hawaii would become a U.S. state in 1900 and, ironically, Waikiki never actually had much of a beach. It was constructed and even today still shows stretches that look more like an industrial port than a world-class resort strip. But sea-level rise is occurring there more rapidly than most places on Earth, and pretty much all experts agree that Waikiki will not exist anywhere close to what it looks like today in a mere 100 years.
• Waikiki was largely able to enter the pop-culture psyche because silent-film superstars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks (and much later the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Dean Martin) vacationed there. Then, after World War II, a strong economy and the advent of paid vacations for the white-collar working masses allowed for more creativity and leeway in their vacation ambitions, even at a time before air travel became affordable.
• I love this quote from the author on the eternal struggle for the beach resort or really any coastal development: “The issue is not that the sand is moving - that’s what nature intended, in fact - but that we insist it stay in one place.”
• Hawaii, taking this insight into account, can be credited with taking some of the most action on climate change in the world - a low bar, but still. It became the first U.S. state to create a law to follow the Paris Climate Agreement and, in 2021, banned the sale of sunscreen to protect coral reefs from bleaching.
• Much of the beach resort culture now seen throughout the world originated in Hawaii, including beach umbrellas in cocktails, colorful shirts, and surfboards. Actions started in Korolevu and Denarau in Fiji that have taken hold most other places include the layout of individual bungalows extended longways down the beachfront, with bamboo walls and thatched roofs, and also the idea (paid for by massive Japanese investment) of moving tons of dirt from a nearby mountain to the coastline and to fill in mangrove swamps to raise the elevation of the island.

Global Warming Vacations

Here's my weekly environment column for NetGreen News. You can see all my columns here.

When my wife and I took our honeymoon to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, we did it partly because we love adventure and partly because we figured it might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit a place that would drastically change in the near future.

With global warming seemingly wiping out so many of the world's natural wonders, here's a select list of places to visit quickly before they are gone.

Mt. Kilimanjaro - The glacier at the top has retreated by more than 80 percent in the past 100 years and should be gone in the next 10. Glad I checked this off the list. It just wouldn't be the same without Hemingway's "snows of Kilimanjaro."

Great Barrier Reef - The "Blue Outback" is quickly becoming a dinosaur on this planet. It is largely agreed that extinction will happen by 2030 because of coral bleaching turning it white and brown, warming water temperatures, and acidification from carbon dioxide pumped out of our factories.

Amazon Rain Forest - Episodes of Johnny Quest as a kid have provided a lifetime of yearning by me to get to this massive land of beauty, and I may still have time yet. Reduced rainfall and warmer temperatures (along with the region's much-documented deforestation) are expected to decimate the Amazon, but possibly not entirely for another 80 to 100 years.

Hawaii - Higher storm tides will cause more frequent flooding and erosion of coastal areas. Many of the Northwestern Hawaii Islands and other Pacific lands are already being submerged and many more are expected to be under water by 2100.

Mt. Everest - As if this monsterous peak were safe to climb, it is now becoming almost impossible to mount due to reduced snowfall and melting glaciers. Sherpas are finding it more difficult to stick their ice axes and crampons into snow because much of it is now rock, which makes an extreme climb even more impossible.

Patagonia - Glaciers in this Argentina region have receded nearly a mile in the past 13 years. Forty-eight of the country's 50 glaciers are melting. That should make for a very different Patagonia if I ever get there.

Galapagos Islands - Dead coral reefs and warm waters are altering the ecosystem of Darwin's volcanic island west of Ecuador. Too much fishing and too many tourists have reduced the number of wildlife in the seas, which in turn is reducing the number of animals on land. The end of this era for the Galapagos will remove its allure as a destination.

Sahara Desert - This is the true definition of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's catchphrase "global weirding:" the greening of the Sahara. Increased rainfall is slowly turning the desert back into the grassy savanna it was 12,000 years ago. It's not that I wouldn't want to visit a green Sahara, it's just that it would be pretty weird.

There are plenty of other places I would like to see before they disappear, including Micronesia, the Virgin Islands, and the Maldives. And there are plenty more endangered places that I would like for my grandchildren to see: New Orleans, New York, London, Tokyo, Death Valley, Indonesia, Glacier National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.

George Clooney Shines in Layered Performance of The Descendants

I went to see George Clooney in The Descendants the other night at the same time the film was named best dramatic picture at the Golden Globes. And while I'm a little surprised this is considered the year's top drama, there is no doubt that it is the study of a complex individual in a heartbreaking situation.

Clooney also won best actor in a drama. He was the reason I wanted to see the movie. Along with the always-lovely-to-see setting of Hawaii. And Clooney does not disappoint. This layered performance is one of his deepest character explorations and ranks high in his top 15 movies.

Shailene Woodley is also amazing as one of Clooney's daughters, left behind by a mother lapsed into a coma after a boating accident. She is believable and lovable all the way through her transformation from a crazy kid to a responsible and helpful adult during the short time arc of the story.

Director Alexander Payne now has a perfect trifecta of Election, Sideways, and The Descendants. He, along with Clooney, have really solidified themselves as a couple of the greats.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Mike and Dave may not be for critics, but it is for those who want to laugh

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is the perfect kind of movie to be panned by critics who are way too uptight to be caught approving of such low-brow taste.

That said, it's also the perfect entertainment to kill a couple of rainy late-afternoon hours in Johnstown, New York.

Zak Efron keeps up his muscle-assisted winning streak after Neighbors (like this movie, written by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien) as a likable but self-admittedly dumb brother to slightly-more-annoying but still funny Adam Devine, who had a semi-funny 21-episode run on Modern Family.

Aubrey Plaza (Safety Not Guaranteed and Parks and Recreation) is always captivating. She and Anna Kendrick begin the movie as sleazeballs hoping to connive their way into a trip to Hawaii with the brothers, who have been forced by their parents to take nice dates in order to keep them from prowling the wedding for girls.

The girls turn likable, watchable, and funny after becoming nice. The movie has a surprising amount of laughs throughout, including an uproarious massage scene, an ATV ride in Jurassic Park, and a wedding speech/songs by the brothers at the end.

Perhaps what's most remarkable of all is that Mike and Dave is based on a true story about two brothers going to a wedding in Saratoga, New York who truly took out a Craigslist ad that went viral with hundreds of girls responding.

***1/2 out of ***** stars

TV Snide: For August 2021

TV of the Month: The White Lotus - Season 1 (HBO Max): nobody has ever gotten into the mind of a beach resort as well as this show. Steve Zahn, Connie Britton, and Molly Shannon are the biggest names of a powerful ensemble that digs into the class warfare that happens when the layers of the onion are peeled at a Hawaii resort. Jennifer Coolidge of Mrs. Stifler American Pie fame needs to be guaranteed a bunch of awards as the loony, spacey older single woman, and Murray Bartlett plays the best hotel manager since John Cleese in Fawlty Towers, and is even clearly inspired by the master comic Cleese. It’s like an Agatha Christie novel if she included hilariousness and shocking sex in her oeuvre. 5 out of 5 stars

Novel of the Month (tie): Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid: In any other month, this would be atop the pop-culture list by a mile. But this was an extraordinary pop-culture month. Reid’s follow up to her legendary Daisy Jones and the Six is likely her masterpiece. It centers on the biggest party of the year in Nina Riva’s cliff-side mansion but, in doing so, unveils the story of the Riva family through generations. Mick Riva is the centerpiece as the Frank Sinatra-like figure who has commitment issues with his wife June and their children. The kids - Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kat - are all surfers who make their way to the end of the story the best they can with the cards they’ve been dealt. 5 out of 5 stars 

Novel of the Month (tie): The Final Girls by Riley Sager: This is the first of three horror-thriller books already out from someone who has already vaulted near the top of my favorite authors. A true page-turner that would make for the best film of the genre in years, it twists and turns through multiple mass killings, all of which have one thing in common: a lone survivor. The premise is perfect and the sociological commentary of our modern obsession with the news cycle and niche communities of people obsessed by some of those news stories and the characters involved is truly scary in real life, as it is in this fiction. I can’t wait to read Sager’s next two thrillers. 5 out of 5 stars

Outer Banks - Season 2 (Netflix): This heart-pounding young-adult-aimed show keeps satisfying as one of the best things on these days. The lower-class Pogues continue their quest to get back the gold that’s rightfully theirs, but the rich folks keep foiling them at every turn. The biggest cliffhanger yet leaves us waiting (probably for at least a year) at the end of the season’s final episode. 4.5 out of 5 stars

Bridge and Tunnel - Season 1 (Epix on Sling TV): Edward Burns was one of my favorite indie rom-com actors and directors in the 1990s. He's back now as the dad in this story of kids home from college in Long Island and trying to figure out what's next in life, possibly in nearby NYC. 4 out of 5 stars

July is For Family Fun

July has been filled with some nice family time. The month started off in the Adirondacks at Rachel's grandmother's lake house. The picture to the left is Jackson (wearing devil's horns) and his cousin Julia ganging up on their older cousin Hannah.

We also went to Fairfield, Connecticut last weekend for our cousin Stanton's 60th birthday. The party was on the beach there and we stayed at our cousins James and Ellen's beautiful house in Pound Ridge, New York. This is an area we could really live. It's got the more mountainous feeling area around James and Ellen's place (which Rachel would like) and the beach (which is more my style).

This was also a chance for me to narrow down the number of states I need to get to. Connecticut was a new one for me. So now the list is five: North Dakota, Hawaii, Alaska, New Mexico, and Rhode Island.

While in Connecticut, we took Jackson to his first amusement park, Rye Playland in Westchester. He gave it thumb's up, as you can see in the photo. And it was a good warmup for me, as the little rollercoaters hopefully got me back into shape for the big ones that are sure to be headed my way as soon as Jackson gets a little taller.

Where in the world do I wanna go?

My bucket list of places to go travel is still pretty big. I've been lucky enough to visit all the continents so far except Australia and Antarctica. And I think I've hit 45 states in the U.S. But there are still plenty of nooks and crannies to get to.

One of them is coming up for a family spring break (coronovirus-willing): campervan-ing across Southern California. We'll start in L.A. 'burbs Santa Monica and Malibu, then we'll make our way out to Palm Springs. The Frank Sinatra-sparked allure of the place has always intrigued me. Then we'll camp in perhaps Coachella, Joshua Tree, perhaps the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, and Red Rocks outside Vegas.

Also high on my travel list to still see?

• Hawaii, for beach beauty and mountain hiking
• Japan, for the majestic mountain peaks - and subway-rich cities 
• Hong Kong and Singapore. while we're in that region 
• Riding a train around the parts at Europe I haven't seen, like Croatia, Portugal, Italy, and Greece
• All of the parts of Africa I haven't been to yet. If north and west Africa are anywhere like west and south Africa, they are can't miss, and that, to me, feels like the way humans were supposed to live, not like the plastic wasteland we live in here in the (somehow still beautiful) U.S.
• Honorable mention: India, Australia, New Zealand, and the Amazon (I've been to many places in Brazil, but not the deep forest yet). 
• Oh, and also, Ireland and Scotland (for ancestral purposes), Liverpool (for, I would hope, obvious purposes), and Costa Rica (for adventurous purposes).

TV Snide: For March 2021

Movie of the month: Queen and Slim (HBO Max): Daniel Culuuya is one of my favorite actors, and he is on fire in this one with Jodie Turner-Smith, as the two are accused of killing a cop and fleeing on an epic 6 days to get to their escape hatch. It’s a strong statement on how some white people are so clueless when it comes to understanding the richness of so many Black people’s lives. 5 out of 5 stars 

TV of the Month: Brady Bunch Season 5 (Hulu): Arguably slightly inferior to Season 4 and its Hawaii episodes, the last year of this show is still must-see TV. My young daughter and I watched the season and she would stare open-mouthed at the screen the whole time as wonderful morals bounced around everywhere. The entire series abruptly ends when Greg accidentally bleaches his hair before high-school graduation and the real-life Mike Brady refuses to appear because he doesn’t like the premise, not knowing this was to be the final, anti-climactic episode. 5 out of 5 stars

Reading of the Month: Danny Sugerman, “It’s My Life:” This is an excerpt from one of my favorite rock books, Wonderland Avenue. The author is 12 years old when he first encounters Jim Morrison, who thinks the kid is stealing his band's equipment. Turns out he is helping his Little League umpire, who offered to take him to see The Doors and be a roadie if he hit a home run. The home run happened and the concert was the point Sugerman's life dramatically took focus. He also badly missed his curfew due to The Doors’ extremely late and tardy performance.  From The Penguin Book of Rock & Roll Writing. 5 out of 5 stars

Patti Smith: “The Rise of the Sacred Monsters:” The rock poet’s essay for Creem places the reader in her swampy house at the moment she sacrifices her complete allegiance to her father, who rants about the obscenity on TV that is the Rolling Stones’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan. She completely falls in lust with the band and in love with rock music. I have never been a big fan of Smith’s music, but this is one of the great pieces of music writing, and is available in The Penguin Book of Rock & Roll Writing. 5 out of 5 stars

Julie and the Phantoms Season 1 (Netflix): I’m pretty sure it’s not just because I have a 7-year-old daughter that I love this show. It’s so well written  and heartfelt, with music that is truly catchy for adults and probably too-die-for for kids. It’s simply everything a TV show should be and a classic first season. 5 out of 5 stars 

Nomadland (Hulu): Frances McDormand turns in a powerhouse performance of likable sorrow. After her husband's plant shuts down and he dies, she goes out on the road to see a different side of life from the seat of her 15-passenger van. No wonder it won the Golden Globe for best drama movie, it’s a wrenching mix of joyful and sad. 4.5 out of 5 stars 

Citizen Kane (HBO Max): Being often called the greatest film is quite an overstatement, but Orson Wells’ masterpiece is indeed riveting. Taking parts of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer’s lives as newspaper magnates, and mixing in a lot of shades of Trump to come, the tycoon falls apart and finally dies longing the days before his parents gave him away. 4.5 out of 5 stars

kid90 (Hulu): Soleil Moon Frye, better knows as Punky Brewster, took copious notes and video footage of her years growing up in the ‘90s with her celebrity friends. How she rebuilds the story of her life for us is truly fascinating, with help along the way from stars of 90210, Saved By the Bell, House of Pain, Jane’s Addiction, and the skateboarder movie Kids, to name a few. My high school and undergrad years flashed before my eyes. 4 out of 4 stars

Coming 2 America (Amazon Prime): Eddie Murphy compiles an ensemble cast that kills it in this wacky wonderful spoof of Black Panther and a look at what happens when the cultures of an African nation and Brooklyn collide. 4 out of 5 stars

Moxie (Netflix): Amy Poehler stars as the former rebel-girl mom to a quiet girl who ends up leading a revolution against toxic male culture at her high school. The empowering story is made even better with Mac McCaughan of Superchunk supplying the musical score. 4 out of 5 stars

Tom and Jerry (HBO Max): A family fun good time with all the classic adventures of the cat and mouse in a live-action adventure ala Roger Rabbit. Chloe Grace Moretz is adorable as an impostor trying to event manage a major celebrity wedding in a New York City hotel. 4 out of 5 stars

The Flight Attendant Season 1 (HBO Max): Kaley Cuoco is captivating - and makes me want to finally watch some episodes of The Big Bang Theory - in this mash up of trying-to-be-Hitchcock and the often funny but still annoying HBO show Girls. As Cuoco and her fellow flight attendants spring surprises about who they are, lots of interesting insights show up to display how these are people who are invisible to the world but have aspirations to be much more. A second season has been promised and it will be interesting if they can keep up the twists and intrigue. 3.5 out of 5 stars

The White Tiger (Netflix): A rags to riches tale of a rural kid growing up and running away to build an entrepreneurial route through the tangled web of Dubai. He does a great (if crooked) job in his professional life, but his personal life is unimaginably sad. 3.5 out of 5 stars

Kingpin (Sling TV): Woody Harrelson could save any sinking ship. This Farrelly Brothers comedy is not that, but Harrelson - as a washed up superstar bowler - is at his funniest, his arch nemesis Bill Murray is at his Donald Trump-iest, and the 90s soundtrack is top notch, even including a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stage appearance by Urge Overkill. 3.5 out of 5

Fleabag Season 1 (Netflix): I know this show was all the hype, and it definitely has a few laugh-out-loud lines per episode, but I think it moves a little slow. Definitely worth checking out. I’ll be interested to see if Season 2, what with all the accolades it’s received, gets better. 3.5 out of 5 stars

A short history of nearly everything … special edition: geology

I started reading legendary author Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything years ago and, like with everything he writes, it’s so good. But I somehow didn’t finish it. You could give this book to every high-school student and they would learn more than they’re probably learning in their science classes.

Here are some great tidbits from the section on geology that I learned or relearned:

• The idea that the continents were once all connected, in a landmass called Pangaea, was not originated until the early 1900s, and not fully accepted as scientific fact until the 1950s.
• There was long-held belief among geologists that there was a continental drift causing the continents to shift, but that shifting wasn’t really just along the shorelines. The world’s largest mountain range extends underwater throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (Hawaii is one of its mountain tops), and runoff sentiment from above land is coursing throughout the whole range. These findings led to the establishment of plate tectonics, and a shifting under ground and water throughout the entire Earth, which is a large part of the reason why the planet has earthquakes and a shifting climate.
• Still, tectonics can’t explain everything. Denver doesn’t appear to have been formed by plates. When dinosaurs roamed the earth, it was much lower, as part of an ocean bottom, and it has only recently slowly been “baking like break” up to its current Mile High status. An opposite example is that Indonesia has been slowly sinking and taking Australia with it, with tectonics not being a likely part of the explanation.
• Meteor Crater in Arizona is the biggest, well, meteor crater in the United States. And, believe it or not, scientists didn’t really know until research in the 1980s just how imperiled we actually are by meteors from our own solar system.
• Very few scientists are actually studying asteroids, but these tiny chunks of rock (one the size of a house could destroy a city) pass by Earth a few times a week. Relatively speaking, they are like a bullet that passes through a person’s shirt on her arm but misses the arm.
• It’s amazing to recall that paleontologists pretty much always thought the dinosaurs had died off over a long period of time. It was not until the 1970s that the current science has them all dying at once from a meteor hit.

Remembering Nirvana's road to Nevermind

Nevermind by Nirvana remains certainly one of the top 10 albums of the 1990s. Here are some of the most interesting things to know about that release.

When Scream broke up, Buzz Osborne of the Melvins connected Scream's drummer Dave Grohl with Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic. This was the lineup that was going to change the rock world.

In early 1991, the band traveled from Washington state to L.A. to sign a $287,000 contract with David Geffen's DGC label. This was quite a step up from the alleged $600 record contract Nirvana had secured at the time of its debut recording Bleach.

Next, Nirvana landed on Butch Vig to be their producer, after Vig had recently produced the incredible Smashing Pumpkins debut Gish. Once in the studio, Vig learned to record warmups because leader Kurt Cobain would be temperamental and sit alone for periods of time but could also blow out his vocals sometimes after a few takes.

When Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman heard early versions of what would become Nevermind, he was not kidding when he said Nirvana could be bigger than The Beatles.

Before the band decided on the album's eventual title, it was originally going to be called Sheep.

The final cut of Nevermind was recorded at Sound City in L.A. and, ironically, hair-metalers Europe was recording there at the same time. Of course, Nirvana in often single-handedly credited with the death of hair metal. But, in January 1992, it wasn't that genre that was replaced by Nirvana's grunge but rather Michael Jackson’s Dangerous that was replaced in the number-one slot by Nevermind in England?

I was lucky in getting to see Nirvana on my 21st birthday, on October 16, 1991 at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis. Kurt, Krist, and Dave didn't tour at all in 1992. In January, Cobain married Courtney Love in Hawaii, and the rest is history.

A short and fascinating history of the Caribbean through the eyes of the tremendously wordy James Michener

James Michener’s novels are of a time before the Internet, when people could still absorb themselves in 1,000-page tales with hundreds of characters. His typical format was to start from the very beginning of existence and travel chronologically through until the present. (Memorably, his novel Hawaii begins with a bird pooping on the land, which gives rise to life there.) 

I’ve always been in awe of the writer - who I’m distantly related to through my mom’s dad’s sister’s husband Guy Michener - and the legendary amount of words he wrote. Without summing up the massive novel Caribbean, here are 10 really interesting things we should all know from the book, which was written in 1989. (Michener died on October 16, 1997). It should be noted that Michener mostly used historical facts to color the background of his stories of people, who he fictionalized.

• Technically, Florida and the Bahamas are not part of the Caribbean, but all the countries that border the sea in South and Central America are.
• Warriors from South America arrived on the islands in the 1300s and ended the long peace that had flourished with the Arawak people, who were skilled farmers and fishermen with an advanced social structure.
• These warriors were cannibals and often ate the men they captured and would steal the women for procreation. This goal of exterminating other types of people was happening all over the world at this time. 
• These “Caribs” were not unlike the Spartans in Greece, and they believed eating the most powerful male enemies gave them particular skills and bravery in battle, while mating with the most beautiful women enhanced their own race for the future.
• Christopher Columbus accidentally landed in the Caribbean in 1492 and began a long campaign of European colonization and exploitation of gold and many other resources. Columbus and Spain introduced slaves from Africa there.

• 

  James Michener

  England's Sir Francis Drake became legendary for raiding Spanish ships and settlements and essentially entering the region into the golden age of pirates.
• Barbados and other countries became major sources of sugar, which became a heavyweight economic driver, making many European colonists exceptionally wealthy through their morally and ethically corrupt explotation of slave labor.
• Later, the French would also swoop in and their colonization style contrasted in significant ways from the Spanish colonizers. Generally, while the Spanish were interested in wealth and power, the French - and also the British - wanted to build settlements and create trading networks.
• The Haitian Revolution was the first successful slave revolt and became the first Black-led country in the Western Hemisphere.
• During World War II, the islands would again become strategic spots for both the Allies and the Axis nations as locations where they all wanted to place their military warships and subs. Leading into modern times, the Caribbean countries continue to evolve their cultural identities as they all still struggle for freedom and self-determination. They are fascinating places far beyond their basic island sand-filled beauty.

RIP Russ Francis

I haven't cared a lick about the New England Patriots throughout the Tom Brady era, or even before that during the Drew Bledsoe one. It could be that I've always held a bit of a grudge for the team's design decision to forego the classic red uniforms with the ball-snapping patriot on the helmet for their hideous blue and silver look with some misguided futuristic-looking patriot on the helmet.

Regardless, I rememeber fondly looking forward as a little kid to the rare times the team would appear on Monday Night Football or another TV game of the week. Those uniforms seemed to enhance the abilities of already-great stars like quarterback Steve Grogan, running back Sam "The Bam" Cunningham, and arguably the greatest tight end during the era he played (1975-1988), Russ Francis.

Francis died in a plane crash this week in Lake Placid, New York at age 70. Growing up in Hawaii, Francis set a national record in high school in the javelin. Once settling on football as his primary sport, he became known as one of the first tight ends to be used as a primary receiver, helping change the way tight ends were used in the NFL.

After his years with the Pats, he went on to play for the San Francisco 49ers, winning one Super Bowl, then owning several businesses and even becoming a professional wrestler with the American Wrestling Association and National Wrestling Alliance.

And along with those TV games, I probably still have about 15 of this card. Something always to remind me of Russ.