Working for Gridskipper’s Hawaii bureau

As I mentioned earlier, I was in Hawaii for a spell this winter. While Gridskipper’s correspondents are assigned to cover the cities in which they live, I figured 45 days in Honolulu qualified me as a kama’aina so I pitched the idea of of submitting some dispatches from the middle of the Pacific.

My then-editor, Chris Mohney, was agreeable. Here are my posts from Honolulu:

• Finding Good Wine in Honolulu
• The Brady Bunch Guide to Honolulu
• Drink with Locals at the Pro Bowl

Writing about Honolulu led to a more enjoyable experience there, as I set about trying to get a deeper knowledge of the city. And while not the most useful post I’ve ever written, The Brady Bunch one was a blast to research.

Covering the Pro Bowl, and the NFL’s worthless fan events, for Deadspin

For six weeks this winter I was in Hawaii (my wife was assigned there for work and freelancing usually allows me the flexibility to work from anywhere).

We were in Honolulu during the NFL’s Pro Bowl, so I pitched Will Leitch at Deadspin, the second most visited sports blog on the Internet, to see if he was interested in on-location coverage of one of sport’s most worthless events.

He liked the idea and asked me to write two pieces: one that ran before the Pro Bowl and covered the first few days of game-related hullabaloo and another that was posted the day after the game and reported on the weekends’ doings (which, yes, included something resembling a football game).

Here are the posts:

• “Fun” In The “Sun” At The NFL Pro Bowl
• We Watched The NFL Pro Bowl So You Didn’t Have To, But We’re Not Doing It Again

Make sure you read the comments too; as is customary on Deadspin, they’re hilarious. And from a writers’ standpoint, it’s an ego boost to have so much response to a blog post (even if most entries on Deadspin receive a lot of feedback).

The Brady Bunch guide to Honolulu

Sometimes watching TV can pay off:

The Brady Bunch Guide to Honolulu

Growing up I wasn’t allowed to watch much television, but somehow The Brady Bunch (airing nightly on WLVI 56) was an exception. Thanks Mom and Dad—it made writing this Gridskipper post on the Brady’s trip to Hawaii easy.

I was surprised there weren’t any references to this three-part episode on line. For example, there are several websites dedicated to documenting where Lost has filmed in Oahu.

(And if you are looking for an idea for a website or blog post, I don’t think anyone has written about Magnum, P.I.)