Friday 5: Lyrical Gangsta

I’m not as prepared for this hurricane as I normally am for impending potential disaster.  For some idiotic reason, I’m just fairly convinced it’s going to veer west and just give us some bad wind and rain without being catastrophic.  Famous last words, I know.

Local governments have moved quickly to keep us informed and prepared.  The information flow has been steady and clear, and the local daily has lowered its paywall until this hurricane is no longer news.  It’s updated the hurricane story about once an hour.

After January’s false missile alarm, everyone, including our emergency response agencies and our governor, is making sure to present as transparently and clearly as possible.  Not a bad response to something that turned Hawaii into a punchline seven months ago.

The state shut down all schools and non-essential government offices on Hawaii Island Wednesday.  Then did the same for Maui and Oahu Thursday and Friday.  I work on the campus of a public university, so when they shut down school, my employer followed suit so we could all prepare ourselves and our homes, and to keep as many of us as possible off the streets.

I’m writing this in the wee hours of Friday morning, and it’s blustery but clear with no rain.  If the projections are accurate, the storm will get closest to me between 8 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday as it veers west.  Hurricanes are more predictable than they were thirty years ago, but they’re still not super predictable, so it could continue north instead without veering west, in which case this island is in for it.

My Kindle is charged up and loaded with new material (the second and third Kevin Kwan books), so I think I’m ready.

From here.

1. What’s a stupid lyric from a song you like?
   I like a lot of songs with stupid lyrics, but how about “Wild Thing?”  “Wild thing I think you move me / but I wanna know for sure / come on and hold me tight / you move me.”
2. What’s a pretty good lyric from a song you dislike?
   This is a pretty difficult question to answer.  If I’m familiar enough with it to remember its lyrics, I probably don’t dislike it, and if I dislike it, its lyrics are probably one of the reasons.  But okay, I just thought of one.  James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful,” a song I really hate, actually has a decent premise, and I like “She smiled at me on the subway / She was with another man / But I won’t lose no sleep on that / ‘Cause I got a plan.”
3. What’s a good non-Weird-Al-Yankovic lyric about food and drink?
   Talk about songs with stupid lyrics: Ehukai’s “Molokai Slide” should have come first to mind.  I looooove this song and once recorded myself singing and playing it for my grandmother as a birthday present, but boy are the lyrics terrible.  Still, one reason I like it is the way it waxes (not really) poetic about some of the food we love here.  “I like the fishes swimming around in the sea / I like to hop ’em on the grill and cook ’em up for me / with a big pan of butter / man it can’t get better than this.”  Thinking of my beloved islands on this really strange weekend as we wait for nature (most days a blessing around here) to have her way with us.
4. What’s a good song lyric to describe your week?
   AC/DC’s “I’m a rolling thunder, a pouring rain / I’m comin’ on like a hurricane / My lightning’s flashing across the sky / You’re only young but you’re gonna die!” (“Hell’s Bells”)
5. What’s a good song lyric about inclement weather?
   “Stormy Weather,” recorded by a million artists, always makes me think of my favorite TV show of all time, M*A*S*H, because the song pops up in a couple of episodes.  “Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky: stormy weather…”

Take me back, back to da kine
Take me back, back to da kine
All ova’ mo’ bettah, Molokai
I will return…