2001-07-14 | "SONGS OF HATE AND DEMOTION"

before i start todays show i forgot to name a couple people to the peaceful dedications. i may have forgotten jerry garcia. maybe pigpen too. i don't know much about him but he was part of what became grateful dead as we know it. and a couple of hawaiian musicians who are in a class by themselves:

IZRAEL KAMAKAWIWOOLE

GABBY PAHINUI

aloha o'e, guys

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this is a pretty cool story i guess.

I used to work at Safeway from may of 1992 to june of 1994. somewhere in 1994 it must have been i was very disenchanted with the whole Safeway experience already, so i had a license to kill. i was planning on leaving in a few months anyway. and was also planning to move to Las Vegas at the beginning of 1995. so once during the college basketball season, so it must have been december of 1993, not 1994 at all...the University of Hawaii Rainbow mens basketball team was doing really well. they had alot of players back from the year before and lots of expectations. i think they ended up being slight under-achievers, but they had a fun and exciting season nonetheless. they were lead at that time by Trevor Ruffin i believe, who played for the Phoenix Suns for a couple years, and then kind of dissapeared. I imagine he is playing european ball by now. so every year the Rainbows have an awesome tournament with big name teams, right around christmas time. this year the championship game was on the same night i was working a 3pm to 12am shift or something close to that. i had given up on the chance of going to the final against the Louisville Cardinals led by future nba-er Cliff Rozier. my basketball watching partner, Bryan, kept asking me if I was going and I said i would see what i could do. after awhile i told him too forget it, and that i had to work. he was semi-bummed. nobody else we knew went to the games, except me and him. so i'm working in the liquor department which was my designated job at that time, and at about 5 i start thinking to myself "I've got to get to this fucking game". i get absorbed by this feeling. so i decide i'm going to ditch work at lunch time and go to this game and just deal with the rest later. I call Bryan and luckily he's still home, and i tell him we're going. and he's like "We're going?!!". and i'm like "yeah!". so i go to lunch at like 7-ish i guess, and pick up Bryan and fly to the Blaisdell Arena (it might've been at the Stan Sherrif Center by then, but i don't think so) just in time to somehow get some tickets way in the rafters and get in there right around tip-off time and the place was buzzing like crazy. that championship atmosphere is hard to explain unless you've experienced it. so we watch one of the most memorable UH games I'll ever remember, and UH loses at the end by a very short margin, but I was so happy to be there. A game like that makes you leave feeling good, even if your team lost. the energy was very positive. so I decide I'm going to go back to work and pretend I over-slept at home....either that or I'm thinking, "hey, they might not even know i was gone. i mean i work in the liquor department by myself, and they never bother me when i am there....." but as murhpys law would probably suggest, the manager, the prickly Nathan, did look for me and when i came back he had 20 questions for me. he made a mild threat and told me "security" could get involved, which i don't know means, and I don't know why that would scare me. anyway i was like "dude, I'm not lying to you..i overslept...i would tell you if i did something." After that i expected to hear something the next day or something, but it was one of those crazy things....I never heard a damn thing about it never again. i went to a college basketball game during work, came back and nothing happened to me.... i'm fricking awesome. I ended up quitting safeway in june of 1994 after taking a two week vacation and not showing up for work after the two weeks. my parents were out of town so i left the phone off the hook. when they came back the phone was still ringing for me and my boss was still asking me if I wanted to come back. I probably should've said yes, but i said, no i can't come back already....too much shit going on for me to come back. so i worked at Dominos Pizza for a few months, then i moved to Las Vegas and fell in love with Tiffany Macourt. that's the most memorable thing about Las Vegas...that and being dumped and heartbroken by Tiffany Macourt. i worked at Schlotzkys Deli in Vegas and had a great boss Bill White. i miss the crew there, even though it was a shit job. i was so happy back then. i never slept, i lost weight, i was in love, i did cool things, saw a couple great concerts, walked around that crazy town a hundred times, drank alot of beer, smoked cigarettes, ate good now and then. lost my virginity. learned alot about life and love. and most importantly i started writing. i started writing to express how much i loved Tiffany, but ironically, as in most writers cases, my writing never got that good until i was scorned by her, and the songs of regret and devastation were always so much better. i'm alot better at writing love stuff now. i think. ask Stephanie, i think she'd agree. but the painful songs always seem alot less contrived. it's hard to write about stuff and make it your own. when it all seems like it's been done before, you just have to write down what you feel. even if it sounds similar to something you've heard. you have to give those people props when it's due. but you also have to write it down when it happens to be about you too. i do alright though. i hope things keep going perfect with Stephanie so i don't have to write depressing songs forever.

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