Hawaii
Family time is tempered
by seriousnessFAMILY comes first for Keanu Reeves. Several times he flew back to L.A. from Australia, where he's been filming "Matrix," to be with his sister Kim, who's fighting leukemia. Keanu has always been close to Kim, who's a year younger, but never so much as to help her in what are perhaps her final days. He spent a bundle taking her and a group of her friends to the Isle of Capri, where Kim reportedly told Keanu, "This is the best I've felt in two years." Now he's ensconced with her and helped her see in the New Year at the Hotel Hana Maui, a kind of homecoming for the part-Hawaiian actor. A hotel spokesman would only tell us she couldn't comment but did say there's been no deaths reported there in the past several days ...
IT was a joy watching "Forever Tango" again at the Hawaii Theater, though not all houses were near full. One audience member shouting out "Bravo," which is also the last name of producer Luis Bravo was Hawaii's own salsa king, Rolando Sanchez, there with his vocalist/pianist Judi Palmeira, who was as hot as the Argentine music and dance ...
Viva Las Vegas
FORMER Honolulu Boy Choir director Blake Nuibe is back from Las Vegas where he brought aloha to the Society of Seven from Hawaii, not in the form of leis, but with 16 pounds of Zippy's Chili which SOS leader Tony Ruivivar had to divvy up among the group. Nuibe reports the group is thrilled with the 400-seat theater built for the group at the Aladdin Hotel. They've been filling it nightly, alternating with sister group Society of Seven-Las Vegas ...ALSO back from Vegas is dancer Lito Capino, quite a bit poorer and not from gambling. He had to fly off on an emergency get-away when the people living in the unit above his condo in Vegas left their water running, damaging his ceiling, and then the pipes in their bathroom burst and his bathroom ceiling collapsed. If that weren't enough, the husband of the woman Capino had let stay there "almost free" for eight months, made off with much of his belongings. Refitting his place with custom lights and decorations made his holiday costly, but at least livable ...
BACK when she was practically a child, Star-Bulletin feature writer Ruby Mata-Viti worked for KIKI's Kamasami Kong and Frank B. Shaner. Kong, now a hot D.J. in Japan, was in for the holidays and, with Shaner, invited Ruby to join them in a noisy dinner, ripe with nostalgia, fortunately in the closed-off private room of Sunset Grill, the better to muffle their songs, impersonations and laughter ...
Year of goodbyes
WATCHING the photos and death notices of various Isle personalities on Channel 9 was a touching sight. One by one, they passed by: Arthur Lyman, Moe Keale, Henry Ayau, Walter Tamashiro, Jim Benton, Kam Fong. One thing struck me -- they were all good friends of mine. Add to that list three women, Tessa Magoon Dye, Cynthia Child and Rose Marie Alvaro, all in their 50s and all dying in the last two months of 2002.I'll miss them all.
Dave Donnelly has been writing on happenings
in Hawaii for the Star-Bulletin since 1968.
The Week That Was recalls items from Dave's 30 years of columns.Contact Dave by e-mail: ddonnelly@starbulletin.com