King St. John's Jim

From the Famed GutBuster Institute of The St. John’s Infirmary

— For immediate release

Dr. Bernard Gutbuster announced success with retraining the emotional responses of hardened criminals. In a measure of prisonyard violence at the Big Rock Men’s Prison, the volunteers in his gut retraining regimen eliminated their rate of violent interaction with other inmates from 80 to 100 percent. In fact, the subjects that did were involved in breaking up a prison yard altercation, not instigation.

Dr. Gutbuster’s technique involves intense sensory and dietary practices on an infants four hour interval to re-train the emotional responses of the subjects through the intestinal neural ganglia — the gut level response. Dr. Gutbuster has analyzed the 120 basic nutrition based emotional and functional responses that are learned through successful mother to baby interactions.

Dr. Gutbuster’s early success were adapting cats to adapt the diet of the common squirrel. Somebody thought it was seriously wrong to have cats eat acorns and so Dr. Gutbuster adapted the squirrel to have the dietary needs of cats. Dr. Gutbuster went on record as saying “While there have been examples of birds killed by meat eating squirrels, this killer squirrel thing is blown way out of proportion.”

Dr. Gutbuster’s researches have been funded by the Big Rock Candy Burger Foundation, and so far, the only side effect is a strong preference shown by the volunteers for Big Rock Burgers.

– While Dr. Gutbuster may come up with an artificial infancy, don’t even think we can do better than what mommies do naturally. We hope.

We notice things that we don’t pay attention to.  I know that doesn’t seem to make sense,Friend, but bear with me.  It’s the small things. A dog barking in a lot when I walk by. Hmm. I been walking this route for months and no dog. Now there are two, and as grouchy as Tommy with a hooker who wants extra money to say "Oh, Tommy you are the biggest."

Are these dogs with stay over guests for Christmas? Ya’ Think?

It’s that way at christmas, but also all year long.  Little things to expect.  And when they happen, you notice them and then,just as quickly,notpay attention to it. Guests will be gone after Christmas, life will return to normal: God’s back in his heaven and dog’s back in his yard. And that makes for a good reason to ignore it.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.

When you live in an area for a while you stop noticing.  When you move from HNL, you start noticing.  For me, St. John’s Jim, Portland is a newborn baby experience of only a year old. The PNW Native in me wakes up and pays attention when something happens here that is odd or different from Honolulu.

The Kama’aina in me wakes up and pays attention when things do NOT happen.

No L and L drive in (they are not really drive inns are they?)  – We got the James John Cafe.

No ABC stores. – Thank goodness, except at 2AM when I need a pineapple ashtray and a lighter with a hula dancer on it.  Sometime that happens.

No palm trees. – ouch, but we got great evergreens.

No roaring winds at the Pali. We got the Bridge.  It roars day and night.  And it’s as beautiful to look at as well.

No Merrie Monarch Festival. – Poop.

No slack key guitar – We used to have John Fahey.  Does that count?

No tutus doing Tai Chi at 6AM inAla Moana Park. – Sigh.

Nohuli-hulichicken.  – Huh?!?!

What?! No open cart barbecued chicken to raise funds to fly the baseball team to the championship? That’s serious. All the other stuff makes sense, but no more seeing racks of uniformly nude bird-soldiers tumbling in formation?! No more smelling the pavlovian aroma of seasoned drippings flashing into vapor on the coals below?

The truck is usually parked in a Safeway parking lot. Safeway knows it draws customers. You can walk by the tent and truck, but you WILL stop and smell. Like popcorn at a theatre, your mouth will fill with saliva and you can make the choice to keep walking or to buy a half a bird and eat it while it is still hot. Greedily.

Or you can keep walking and ignore the siren call of a Military Bird Barbecue. The Big Rock Candy Burger company should have it so good.