I hear it too matt chambers -- the call of the endless vacation.
Take me with you for every cheeseburger in paradise because you, Matt Chambers, are Ulysses, Dante, and Don Ho all wrapped up into one bitterly ironic Caucasian from the post-industrial pata-paradise called Buffalo, Ny.
On Matt's exotic island, a place located both in the Pacific and in the none-Specific, it's unclear who is in charge: the scantily clad natives, raking sugar and hula dancing, or the visiting nuclear families and Price Is Right winners.
In his booklet, Matt portrays the dangerous song of the mindless romantic getaway like only a person with a deeply concealed longing and a knack for metaphor can.
Like most of Chambers works, there exists a clever, high humor cynicism, yet also something so very sad in identifying the writers’ private alienation, and ones own experiences with the desire for love and belonging.
In this sense, Chambers presents us with a Hawaii that is everywhere.
Among the rest of the fun-fun is also a touch of deep fear, exploitation, profiting on exotic otherness fantasies, and good old fashion colonialism.
Wait, what’s that noise? Oh no, the long toot of the conk shell, the distant death song of a ukulele…wait for me Matt Chambers, let us follow the lulling charms together…

[entire scans of Oh My Hawaii, visit Matt's blog at Rocketship 7]

Originally reviewed as Aronevin Racer