PUMPUPD'ANGELO

Rip It Up, Issue 184, 1 November 1992, Page 37

PUMPUPD'ANGELO

Sorry no column last month but I was sunning myself in Hawaii. Nice place but bring lots of money, it can be quite expensive. It's cheap if you stick to bread and water, and wear only what you arrived in, otherwise be aware the place is over-run with Japanese tourists who think everything is a bargain. It's ironic that the Japanese now own most of the Waikiki beachfront hotels.

What was I doing in Hawaii? Well, I decided to get with the programme, join the Team, buck up my ideas, be positive, and everything else Jim Bolger would have us believe about good times ahead. We're told the recession is over, that it's time we adjusted our attitudes, that the sooner we wake up and start spending again the quicker we'll be back in the swim of things.

Swimming in Waikiki was fun - beautiful blue water and golden sand, silky smooth. They truck it in from somewhere else each year because there is no natural beach and the waves wash the sand out to sea. Someone was talking about shipping sand in from NZ but it was too expensive. Why do NZers spend thousands of dollars flying to foreign shores to sit on the beach when those same foreigners want the sand from our beaches?

It's because in NZ after a day at the beach there's nothing to do. The sooner we sell off large tracks of Northland to the Japanese the better. That's probably why the Maori want it back. They've probably already got some megabuck deal in the pipeline. Why spend all that money to send our fish overseas when we can serve it up here for half the price. What they save on sushi will probably pay for their NZ holiday. Ditto for steak.

Buying steak in Hawaii is expensive. Luckily there are various All-You-Can-Eat places for $6.95 (or $5.95 with the coupon in Tourist Times). It pays to check around as to what's available as some places are quite icky with a nasty selection. There's always plenty of pineappple though. In fact for only $5.00 you can even tour the Dole Pineapple Planta-

tion and Cannery. Never quite made it myself, even with my free-admission coupon from Tourist Times.

Those coupons are really quite good: Two Big Mac's for the Price of One, Buy One Meal & Get Your Second Entree Free, sl2 worth of Peep Show Tokens for Only $lO. If you actually pay retail you're a fool, there are coupons for everything. I didn't get the Peep Show tokens because I had my own Peep Show back at the Hotel.

The Travel Agent assured me before I left NZ the Hotel had Cable TV. What they didn't tell me was that all the movies were Pay Per View. To watch one cost $ 7.95 (but you could watch it as often as you liked that day! Wow!). I'd actually seen all seven movies, and wasn't prepared to pay for the three porno channels. With Pay Per View you get two minutes of free preview time to entice you to pay for the whole movie.

I'd watch two minutes of Dyke Action before the "Order Now" screen came on and then flip over for 2 minutes of what looked like Nude MTV, then flip over for two minutes of Debbie Does it Doggie or something. Often if I was lucky I could flip back to the first channel and start again. The stuff was completely soft-core (you never saw the man's willy or anything, and definitely no slow-mo jism spraying everywhere) and the same movies played every day. After seven days in Hawaii I think I'd seen all three movies in their entirety — in two minute vignettes! Shopping in America is an experience. I shopped in the Ala Moana Mall for eight hours. It was all indoors and when I got back the Hotel staff apolo-

gised for the rain. What rain?? I never noticed. Shopping for eight hours is not recommended. Your feet swell up, you lose all feeling in your toes, and then you can't tell if those cheap Boks fit or not. If you're going to buy shoes buy them first thing in the morning. It's better that you try some on before you leave NZ to find your American Shoe Size too, because in Hawaii they expect you to buy off the rack. If the shop assistant has to open the box to show you a pair then he expects you to buy. If you have the balls to actually ask to try them on first then you better have your credit card handy. God help you if you try them on (he won't lace them) and then say "No thanks". He will fix his coldest stare upon you and drive you out of the shop without turning his head. Then he will ring the other shops and warn them about you (all shoe shops are owned by the same Japanese cartel). No mention of Madonna's Sex book in Hawaii, although it did get the odd mention in some late night talk shows. I never got into The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, but Late Night With David Letterman which followed at midnight was really funny.' It was great to watch Arsenio live, rather than in NZ eighteen months after it aired in the US. Arsenio had Fab and Rob, formerly of Milli Vanilli on and they were a real treat. They had the audience (including me) totally won over with their "we're just two bimbo's who did what our managers/producers told us" line. They then proceeded to sing live for the very first time, and they were terrible! When I got back to NZ I saw Donahue advertised. His guest was some US Senator who had

decided not to run for President. Why do we have to wait so long to see this stuff? Watching sitcoms in the US is funny because they're cracking jokes about the week's issues. The Simpsons in particular was really funny. So is the new series of Baywatch. David Hasselhoff is the only remaining member of the cast, probably because he's also the producer! 'Shawnee' has been replaced by two women - one flat, the other not. She is so obviously cosmetically enlarged it's ridiculous. When she runs down the beach there's no bounce - just two globes moving forward like alien craft. I was promised I'd see plenty of the 2 Live Crew Pussy Posse on the beach but no such luck. Where the chiseled bronzed babes were I don't know, but they weren't at Waikiki. Instead there were only pasty white anorexic Japanese, and fat broads from Mainland America. Too ashamed to sunbathe in their own state they fly to Hawaii where they think noone knows them. You could make big bucks snapping photos and threatening to send them to their neighbours. American women (and men) are obese. Like, really fat. Like, not like the cola commercials we see here. They have not heard about the dangers of smoking, they have not heard about the dangers of skin cancer. For most Americans melanoma is a cocktail made with melons. Watching American girls sitting on the beach applying full make up is a sight to behold. Watching the Bimboys posing on the beach is another sight to behold. Nirvana have a lot to answer for. Beverly Hills 90210 fans will be pleased to know the series is now subtitled 'The College Years' meaning life will go on after they leave West Beverly High. On Melrose Place the gay guy gets beaten up and loses his job for being a homosexual, and the blonde space cadet waitress lands a job on a NY soap and leaves the series. And those two WASP cuties stop flatting together and start sleeping together. I hope I haven't ruined it for you.

NICK D’ANGELO