Next day we went to see Maria Muldaur and Dan Hicks. All I knew of Maria was “Midnight at the Oasis” which was never a favorite of mine, but Mitch said that she’s a great musician and would be fun to see. And besides, Jorma and Barry had opened for her on Maui so that spoke for itself.

The venue was Hawaiian Brian’s, a pool hall in a parking structure on Kapiolani (no lie). We got there before the door

opened so we could get a good seat but when we saw that they’d covered the pool tables and added chairs around them and there was only this odd looking couple from Molokai ahead of us, we went out to find dinner. We ended up at a place called Angelo Pietro, a Japanese/Italian restaurant (to add more surrealism to the evening). Mitch had a spaghetti salad for dinner which he said was good because they didn’t overcook the pasta. Huh.

Anyway, the gig was fun and Maria and Dan were great. Most entertaining was the colorful crowd of finely aged baby boomers with their various versions of facial hair, and the old babes who were all dolled up for a night on the town. We were sitting at the bar and were additionally amused by the train wreck of having only one bartender, four waitresses, and fried whatevahs continually coming out of the kitchen with nowhere to go. Seems like they didn’t write down the table numbers for the food so it sat around on chairs or the bar before being served. I think Brian’s has some kinks to work out…

Sunday, I went over to Kailua to meet with Carolann, stopping first at Boston’s North End pizza for a slice. I had no idea that I was walking into a scene as the Patriots were being trounced by New York and the crowd there was not happy. Ah well…the subsequent walk on the beach was wonderful even if the water west of Kalama Beach park was as brown as chocolate and not nearly as appetizing.

Trying to recall last week—I haven’t done enough drawings but I’ll just say that we’ve been in the water pretty much daily. Most times we’re boogie boarding at Walls or just snorkeling there. It’s so fantastic to be 3 blocks from that place where there are either waves to catch or fish to see.

Mitch has been talking about this potato head fish. [Holding up a papaya he points to the top] “It’s got eyes right here on top and this big body and it’s got little excuses for fins on the side that looks like they’re good for nothing. Maybe the big head is its defense.” I didn’t draw this fish but here are some of the ones I did see.