More than ‘Tiny Bubbles’

HONOLULU – It was like a Hawaiian dream – directed by David Lynch.

I thought I had an idea of what to expect at a show by music icon Don Ho when I was on vacation in Honolulu this spring: maybe an audience sing-along of Ho’s classic tune “Tiny Bubbles,” a hula dancer or two, a couple of requests from the audience.

But I certainly didn’t expect this wonderfully surreal scene:

•A free pre-show photo op with Ho, dressed in his signature white slacks, Aloha shirt and aviator sunglasses (and an autograph session afterward).

•An audience whose average age was well past retirement, including several veterans of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

•Not one, but two renditions of “Tiny Bubbles.” (“I always sing ‘Tiny Bubbles’ twice during a show because some of you will probably forget I sang it,” Ho says.)

•Incredibly witty and self-deprecating stage banter by a mumbling Ho as he sat on a rattan throne behind a console that only later did we figure out was his organ.

•An Italian aria sung by Ho’s longtime band member Angel Pablo.

•An audience sing-along of “Oh, Canada” when a couple from Alberta were recognized for being married 50 years or longer.

•A dirty joke told by Ho’s commanding officer when he was in the Air Force.

•And an amazing 17-year-old who all but set fire to her ukulele – yes, her ukulele – when she played “Wipeout” and “Johnny B. Goode.”

Oh, did I mention the banjo whiz who sang “Rocky Top” with a thick Japanese accent? Or the inclusion of a song solely about missing marijuana?

How about the “Scooby-Doo”-like cartoon in which Ho and a pet monkey outrun evildoers by enlisting the help of Hawaii-linked celebrities Jack Lord, David Hasselhoff, Tom Selleck and Pamela Anderson?

Had a backward-talking dwarf stepped onstage, I would have been certain I was in a David Lynch movie. But this odd little circus was all real.

Strange as the experience was, though, I left the Don Ho concert thoroughly entertained. Simply put, the man knows how to put on a show.

There was no velvet rope here, either. Even though Ho, 74 – who has performed his Waikiki show for about 40 years – is a living legend, we had the opportunity to sit not even 30 feet from him.

For two hours, he sang, told jokes, poked fun at his aging, cantankerous self, interacted with the audience by recognizing veterans (something he has done at every show since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001), took requests for songs and frequently turned the spotlight on his fans.

“I plan to still be singing when I’m 100; that’s my goal,” Ho told Hana Hou magazine in 2003. “I may look like hell, but I will still be on stage entertaining.”

Three nights a week, 300 or so people line up to see Ho – tourists and locals, fans, and people like me, who until seeing Ho knew nothing of his career outside of “Tiny Bubbles.”

If their experience is anything like mine, they will leave glitzy, touristy Waikiki with a smile on their face and an idea of what Hawaii was like in the good old days.