UH preempts
story of the yearTHANKS to the practice of delaying the telecasting of sporting events in Hawaii, I figured I was the last person on the planet to learn of the death of the Princess of Wales. I'd avoided watching any television programs or even getting on the Internet for fear of learning the outcome of the UH-Minnesota game I was unable to attend, and wanted to watch at 7 p.m. without knowing the outcome. That I did, and felt pretty good about UH winning, and then came the news that Diana and her boyfriend were dead. Others, I learned later, didn't find out about it until morning, but it's a rarity when I'm not tuned into the news somewhere. I may never watch another delayed telecast for fear of missing out on such a story, which may turn out to be the news story of the year ...
IT was quite a weekend for sports in general, with politics surrounding the UH game filling the sports pages. Bill Kwon wrote an open letter to Gov. Ben Cayetano yesterday telling him what a game he missed and wondering how his speech went on Maui. The guv, you may recall, had less than flattering things to say about Coach Fred vonAppen shortly before the game. And then Mayor Jeremy Harris jumped in to hand out "Go Bows" signs that read "Support the Coach" on the other side. Is the campaign for governor off and running like the Rainbow Warriors backfield? (By the way, how many guys named Klaneski are on the UH team? They were all over the place.) Even Dick Enberg, doing the Denver Broncos-Kansas City Chiefs game on national TV, got into the act. Mentioning localite Ma'a Tanuvasa, he said something about Hawaii's Gov. Cayetano supporting UH football players. Did Broncos owner Pat Bowlen get to Enberg? ...
LET'S hope the opening game ceremony for the UH Wahine volleyball team was just somebody's "great idea" gone awry. It was a case of somebody seeing too much excess on TV and thinking, "We can do that." Why else would they have to resort to turning out all the lights in the Special Events Arena and waving spotlights around like they do at Chicago Bulls games. Then the public address announcer, thinking he was Michael ("Let's get ready to rummmmmmmble") Buffer of Las Vegas fight fame, tried to imitate him and pretty much made a fool of himself. To top it off, they filled the arena with smoke for the Olympics-like parading in of the volleyball team and, as Jim Leahey sagely observed on the TV cast, had team members hold hands so they wouldn't get lost in the smoke. And the national anthem singer out Jose'd Feliciano. Happily, all that was missing Sunday evening and, let's hope, forevermore ... Wretched excess
YOUNG Michael Feeney is an adventurous sort. Besides owning Internet C@fe on Kapahulu and piloting for Aloha Airlines, Mike also won a silver medal in the luge event at the International Airline Olympics. He's run with the bulls in Pamplona, and now he e-mails from Bunol, Spain, that he was one of 20,000 or so -- you may have seen them on the news -- participating in "La Tomatina," the Goliath of food fights. About a million tomatoes were thrown, Feeney reckons. He heard the event began after bullfights were banned in Bunol in 1932. "Most of the action is hormonal," Feeney reports, "as young boys and girls vie for each other's attention by pelting each other with ripe tomatoes and ripping off their shirts." He adds, "I wonder what would have happened if I tried THAT at Punahou?" ... Excess, you want excess?
Contact Dave by e-mail: donnelly@kestrok.com.