By Dave Donnelly
Friday, January 10, 1997
Sam Choy, Bonnie Blair
Sam Choy, Bonnie Blair
THEY'RE hoping to spice up the Hula Bowl this year by tying in a swimsuit contest. It's sponsored by the Hooters restaurant chain with 35 young women from around the world flying in to compete not for "Best Whatever," but in three categories: casual dress, traditional Hawaiian sarongs and swimsuits. The contest will be held Jan. 17 at Aloha Tower Marketplace, where the local Hooters restaurant is located. The winning entry, culled from 10,000 Hooters Girls (as they're called), will appear on the cover of Swimsuit International magazine's spring issue. Past cover models of this "S.I." include Pamela Lee-Anderson and Sandra Taylor. Oh yes, there's also a football game (now called the Hooters Hula Bowl) on Jan. 19, the Sunday between the NFC and AFC playoffs and Super Bowl. Hooters pageant spices grid bowl
AND there's been some hooterin' and hollerin' going on around Cheeseburger in Paradise on Maui, ever since owners Laren Gartner and Edna Bayliff got invites to President Bill Clinton's inauguration Jan. 20. Clinton's love of cheeseburgers is well known to viewers of both David Letterman and Jay Leno, but that's not why the Mauians were invited. Seems they met and became fast friends with fellow restaurateur Kathy Webb at a National Restaurant Show in Chicago, and learned she's been an "F.O.B." since Little Rock Days. (That would be "Friend of Bill.") Webb is an exec on the inauguration committee, hence the invites for Gartner and Bayliff. So how are the two preparing? "Shopping, shopping and shopping," says Gartner . . .
SPEAKING of Dave Letterman, I loved his line about how Hillary Clinton had been nominated for a Grammy for the recordings made of her book, "It Takes a Village." Letterman deadpanned that he was happy for Hillary, "Because I heard all her records had been destroyed." . . .
THE folks who work for Michael Jackson don't get out much, so the entertainer travels with his own special chef, Dan LeFevre, who prepares meals for everyone. And what meals! He got Sam Choy's sous chef, Todd Watabayashi, to take him on a food shopping spree during Jackson's stay here, and he ended up purchasing 3,000 pounds of produce, plus huge quantities of lobster, fresh fish and prime rib . . . So what was master chef Choy himself doing? He was taking friends out for some Mexican kaukau at Cisco's Cantina in Kailua, where he gave owner Martha Harding a meaty "two thumbs up." . . . Ode to Choy
THE February issue of Islands magazine has a nice piece on Maui called "On the Wild Side," and it includes some photos of flora not often seen by the average tourist on the Valley Isle . . . Two brothers are both in the transportation business in Hawaii, and quite by accident. Bruce Nobles runs Hawaiian Airlines and brother Jim Nobles is the top gun with American Hawaii Cruises here. So it's Brother One if by air and Brother Two if by sea . . .
THOSE two Honolulu men who were rescued at sea after being adrift for 28 days, David Summers and Richard Enslow, already have attracted a lot of national attention and they're about to get more. "Prime Time Live" has had a crew here doing a piece on the pair . . . Both the Richards Street YWCA and Kaneohe's Camp Kokokahi are offering swimming lessons beginning this weekend to kids starting at 9 months old. They figure it's good to start the keikis off in heated pools and teach them water safety before spring and summer beach days arrive . . .
BACK from a Girl Scout National Council session in Fort Worth is Hill and Knowlton's Megan MacPherson. Not only was she reelected to another three-year term on the Girl Scouts national board of directors, but she also got to introduce five-time Olympic gold medal speedskater Bonnie Blair to the audience of nearly 10,000. "Everyone said they didn't realize Bonnie was so short," reports the 6-foot-tall MacPherson. "I reminded them that most people look short next to me." Next time maybe Bonnie should wear skates . . . Tall story
