BOOK 'EM

The first piece that I wrote was published during eighth grade in KA PUNAHOU, the school's paper. Sadly, it was an obituary for my lifelong friend, and one of the few Jews in the place, Donald Milbauer. It was a shock to us all; Donnie being the first of my young peers to pass away. Before that I drew juvenile cartoons In the elementary school paper NA OPIO .

Later, I wrote at least 93,000 one-liners for what was then called “radio.” As the form died I became more interested in writing. My heroes were/are Poe, Whitman, Mencken, Hemingway, Mailer, Ginsberg, Roth, Tom Wolfe, Maraniss, Lord Buckley and on and on. I played music on the air ... but the printed word has more meaning than what is writ to be merely heard. Once.

Reminds me of an all-night session while I was at KGB-San Diego in 1972. “Mr. Pipes,” Michael C. Gwynne, and I were stonily speculating about things, specifically radio. I said, not for the first time, that one major head hassle with the medium that bothered me was that once one’s jock shift was over, there was nothing to show for it. Gwynne is both a gifted announcer and also a fine actor. Plus, the man is a suave big band jazz music man, a drummer mostly. He and I were employed in the 1960s by the company that owned KPOI-Honolulu and a few stations in Southern California. Through a series of circumstances that are bizarre albeit nonfiction, Gwynne worked in Honolulu as a "Poi Boy."

Mike first encontered Frank Terry at KMAK-Fresno. Terry’s infamous KMEN-San Bernardino "Drum-A-Thon" inspired KPOI PD Tom Rounds to stage one here in the islands with Gwynne on the sticks. And shticks. Both drew huge ratings. Ah yes, before I made it to Hollywood and KHJ in 1965. More than anyone knows our “Circus Radio” (as Art Laboe called our KPOI on-air shenanigans when he first visited KPOI in 1959).

Back to Mike and me in La Jolla in ’72 and our brain-wired rap. I bitched about radio’s SDS (Simultaneous Disappearance Syndrome.) He said, mellifluously, “Well let me tell you something, Ronny boy.” He told me of radio astrolnomers at the London Royal Observatory, who back in the 1950s were doing round the clock surveys of all they could see and logging that results. About three in the morning the scientists saw and logged something unseen for the record. Several days later during follow up on the records, it was discovered that the “thing” they saw was actually a radio station in Texas… which had signed off ten years earlier.

Hmm, spooky and “chicken skin” (Hawaii slang for “goose pimples.”) Anyone who ever performed on radio should contemplate the physics and universalpuzzlement over this tale told me in all honesty some 40 years or so before,

Mike worked with me on some of my most important works: “The KGB Documentary,” the “Child’s Garden of Grass” album on Elektra, to this day a "cult classic." It is rare to find someone as diversely talented as Gwynne. Mega-mahalo to Uncle Ricky Irwin’s ReelRadio.com, a gift to the future for folks curious about was once called radio much of the best of Top 40, a total labor of love. Go there and check out sample of Michael C. Gwynne’s collaborative work with me. versatile, he once was employed on a “R&B” station in Oakland, the only white dude on the staff. Cool old school radioman.)

Ever since that San Diego flash I always think about permanence vis-a-vis. flashes in the pan. Now, with some of my work is in the Bishop Museum and the Library of Hawaii are preserved for the ages wthin thick cement and lava rock structures. If you get high on a whiff of new ink on a printed page might relate to this sensory sensation.

After doing “stage, screen, TV and radio” I was drawn to my IBM Selectric typewriter and began writng poetry about my days back in Waikiki where I was born before it became Tijuana-Tokyo-Tsurisville. Poetry? Hey, gotta grab it when the muse strikes. Titled “Back Door Waikiki," it was published it in 1986. Now out of print, the slim paperback still brings back fond memories to us keiki o ka ‘aina (child born in the islands). It was composed with the invaluable aid and comfort of Mac Simpson, who produced it on the first Apple computer (Mac’s Mac) in his kitchen. Mac has been with me on my subsequent books.

In 2002, when I was asked 93.000 times to publish my KHJ jock memos, meticulously saved by Carol Williams, wife of Boss Radio’s first all-night man, jovial Johnny Williams. Carol sent them to me in the 1970s when Johnny was at WTAE-Pittsburgh. I had them bound in a leather volume and everyone wanted a peek at “how we did” 93/KHJ during my term as PD, 1965-69. After loaning this volume to a trusted friends, the material became the nucleus of “KHJ: Inside Boss Radio.” When I backed away from radio in the 1980s I became a free lance writer with over 300 pieces published in various magazines here and on the Mainland. The KHJ book, even at $93 for 455-pages it resulted in a second edition, published by Mr. Magic, San Berdoo’s own Don McCoy. Now out of print the boss book sometimes shows up on eBay.

My most ambitious effort, it began in 2008 when Carl Hebenstreit, owner of Trade Publishing in Kalihi (between Republican and Democrat streets) and the first face on Hawaii TV in 1952. He was known as “Kini Popo,” more local pidgin English for “right on,” bought my concept of a heavily illustrated history of Barack Obama’s first 18 years when he was born in Kapiolani Hospital until he left for college in 1979. And yes, this is the first work to pront both the 44^th President’s BIRTH CERTIFICATE and BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT in Honolulu newspapers. It happened because of dozens of friends/colleagues here and off-island. It became the #1 best-selling nonfiction book in Hawaii, selling out 15.000 copies, mostly all in Hawaii. For more info, reviews, photos, etc., check: http://tinyurl.com/7lnyd9m.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to national sales: Litigation regarding the book shut everything down until recently. Now I finally own my own book! "Copyright 2008 by Ron Jacobs."

I won’t go through the hideous mess for two years. Now it's time to tell the world that the book is now available for $20 plus $5 shipping for a BRAND NEW PRISTINE COPY of the book, which I will happily inscribe to you. (Used on eBay the book sells for as much as $108. It is collectible: the first book published about Obama on Inauguration Day 2008. All volumes about our nation’s leaders grow in value. And I am told this is the case with "OBAMALAND: Who Is Barack Obama?”

Payment please by PayPal only to rj@hawaii.rr.com. Kindly contact me with any questions about the book, how you wish it inscribed or group prices.

So, what I have been “saying” in twelve-hundred WORDS is: My book is back and my girl friend’s got it. (See: The Angels, 1963.) And now it is ready for you, a perfect Christmas gift or keepsake for future generations when we are alll gone, Obama included. Nice ending, good karma, after two years of anguish for me. We are now delivering copies arond Honolulu for the huge Obama-hosted APEC Convention (esimated 20,000 coming) starting November 10, 2011, at the Honolulu International Convention Center so please allow one week for delivery. And remember, radio’s past, but OBAMALAND will last.

Warmest regards from Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii …currently 77-degrees. Below: your "best-selling author" in action at the Kamehameha Swap Meet last Sunday. Retail, on da street is where it's at! Just ask The Big Kahuna.

Apologies to the hundreds of folks, dead and alive, who have aided, assisted,

put up with and supported me since I started in 1952: you know who you are.

THANK YOU for your invaluable contributions, memories and wonderful creative input.