"A 'Coaster' For New Years"

On our Hawaiian vacations, our family typically rings in the New Year in the company of some, often big-time, show biz entertainment. This generally involves a trip into Honolulu, where we sit with strangers at long tables in cavernous showrooms, our un-drunk “minimums” arrayed before us.

Over the years, we have enjoyed stage shows starring Ray Charles, James Brown, a fifties revival show featuring classic acts without the original people, Howie Mandell, and “Bobcat” Goldthwait (twice.) My favorite “Bobcat” joke:

“If you ever see people beating the crap out of me, put down the video camera, and help me.”

One year, we eschewed our tradition patronizing of shows headlined by performers flown in from the Mainland, and attended instead a show featuring a homegrown, Hawaiian standby – The Society of Seven. The leader of this group is the father of an actor I once hired to star in my pilot, Island Guy. But that’s not why we went to see them, however. We went because they’re extremely entertaining, their show invariably included on “Best” lists of the “Top Acts On The Island.”

What they basically do is an up-tempo, Vegas style, music and comedy lounge act. And they’ve definitely got it down. You go, and you love it. Drinking “Lava Flows” only increases your enjoyment.

We’re sitting a table next to the stage. I have consumed one blue drink with an umbrella in it, which means I’m drunk, because, for me, that’s all it takes. (Actually, it only takes half a blue drink.)

The Society of Seven have completed their Elvis routine and their Sonny and Cher routine. It’s now time for their “Tribute to the Fifties.”

The group opens with a song I’m extremely familiar with. This requires me to sing along. Drunk has nothing to do with it. I need no inducement to sing. All I have to hear is…

Fee fee, fi fi, foe foe, fum

I smell smoke in the audi-tori-um

…and I’m there.

Charlie Brown

Buh-da-buh-da-bum

Charlie Brown

Singin’ up a storm.

He’s a clown

Buh-da-buh-da-bum

That Charlie Brown

It is now the Society of Eight.

A member of the group leaps to the floor, directly in front of me.

He’s gonna get caught

He gives me an almost imperceptible nod.

Just you wait and see

He shoves the microphone in my face, and, on cue, I “low voice”,

Why is everybody always

Pickin’

On

Me?

The audience is momentarily silent. Then, suddenly, they erupt. Clapping, cheering wildly, and screaming, “Whoo-hoo!”

I had nailed my moment.

Hit it way out of the park.

And as I circle the bases, I am showered with well-deserved adulation.

It’s a little thing, I admit. But for a “Performer in my Mind”,

It was a very memorable

New Year’s Eve.