IT'S not often that you find 500 people over age 18 heading back to school, unless it's the Iolani reunion in the school courtyard. Attending the inaugural all-class reunion there over the weekend were such Iolani grads and their spouses as City Councilman Mufi Hannemann and wife Gail, businessman Herbert Hong and wife Kathy, plus school head master Val Iwashita with wife Cynthia. Chef on the rise Russell Siu of 3660 on the Rise served up his trademark Bananas Foster (with lager splashed on them?) and there was a surprise performance by jazz vocalist Azure McCall. Just about everyone there agreed to return to school again if they can have as much fun strolling down Memory Lane ... SUGGESTED headline for the calling off of the locally staged Pacific islands games, which were a follow-up to the Olympics: "Runaway Truk Cancels Micronesian Games" ... During ABC's telecast of the preseason "Monday Night Football" game, which was held in Mexico, some mariachi music was being played and Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf kidded with broadcast partner Al Michaels that he'd soon be hearing "Aloha music at Carelli's on the Beach." I imagine that Maui's Tony Habib and his partners at Carelli's might well buy Michaels a drink or two when he does stop by this week during his Valley Isle stay ...
COINCIDENTAL juxtaposition of events at Barnes & Noble this week. Tonight Ian Harris' book, "Messages Men Hear," is featured. And tomorrow Glenn Lau and David Reese of Merrill Lynch will hold a "Wise Women Workshop" for ladies only. Presumably messages from two men, who teach financial survival skills to what, in more naive times, used to be referred to as the "weaker sex." ...
JUST a few days ago I was chatting with new KHNL honcho John Fink and decrying the fact that his station has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on technology, but apparently not a sou on a dictionary. No sooner did we have that conversation than KHNL's Dan Cooke tells his co-anchor, "Don't call him a chauvinist," which he pronounced as if it were "shaw-vin-ist." It's pronounced SHOW-vin-ist! And devotees of the work of George Bernard Shaw are called "Shavinists," only that's pronounced SHAY-vin-ist. The only thing Cooke might fall back on is that if a person were in favor of saying "pshaw" a lot, well, then he'd be a SHAW-vin-ist. But that's a stretch ... PORTUGUESE men of peace: KAUAI police chief George Freitas Jr. emceed the first Dos Santos family reunion over the weekend. Freitas is a Dos Santos descendant through his mother, Dorothy. The first of that clan arrived back in 1899 aboard the ship "Bonaventura" from Portugal. Aboard were Julio and Adelina Dos Santos and their five sons, Alvaro, Roal, Joseph, Alfred and Ceasar. There are now six generations of them in the islands ...
WHILE GST Telecom Hawaii G.M. Rob Volker has a big heart, he has a small staff and was in a quandary about what to do with 100 tickets he got for sponsoring the Queen Liliuokalani Keiki Hula Competition at the Blaisdell Center. He ended up donating them to Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the Hale Kipa Youth Shelter. He then threw in 50 GST-logo T-shirts for each of those organizations, leading some to conclude that GST stands for Volker being a "Genuine Soft Touch." ...
