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What the Heck?
John Heckathorn
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How does Moore hold pants up?
Sparks Fly: After making a big deal of the fact that Joe Moore would be wearing John Wayne's belt buckle on stage, I caught the preview of his new play, "Unlikely Lawman," and there was Joe ... wearing suspenders.
Moore explained, "The buckle was so large and shiny, it was like a beacon on stage. You couldn't see anything else." It stayed in the dressing room, where the cast rubbed it for luck.
How's the show? When Moore and black actor Derrick Brown, playing a freed slave, take the stage, dramatic sparks fly.
Close Shave: Care to have a menacing-looking guy with a shaved head and wicked goatee hold a straight razor to your throat? Master barber Michael Felton will offer complimentary shaves at Tori Richard Ala Moana tomorrow and Tuesday. Felton insists he can shave you so close you won't have to shave again for two or three days.
Why the bald pate? He shaved his head for a part in a play, but since his silhouette is now on Art of Shaving products, he's forbidden to grow it back. He shaves his own head. With his grandfather's straight razor. In the shower. Without a mirror.
Bird Dog: Serial entrepreneur Eddie Onouye's Body Mint, a chlorophyll-based deodorant you take like a vitamin, is now in 4,000 stores nationwide. So what's next? Smell Goodies, a deodorant tablet you feed your dog, due in stores next month. Supposed to make dogs smell better from the inside out.
A friend who tried it on his basset hounds insists they no longer smell. "Though maybe it's because we finally got them to stop eating birds," he says.
Devotion: The Contemporary Museum provides a "Talk Back" board where visitors can tack up notes about the exhibit. The museum is showing works by American Filipino artists, and many of the notes are reactions to "Prayer Room 2" by Honolulu artist Bradley Capello.
"A beautiful statement," says one. "Very disturbing," says another.
It's both. Imagine a prayer room decorated by a prom committee gone wild with tassels and crepe paper. There's thumping music, a Barbie video and a heady mix of religious symbols and (quite mild) pornography, gay and straight.
If that's too much for you, the exhibit also features a rowboat-size replica of a Manila Galleon, made out of, what else, Manila folders. And a map of the world made from Spam. The latter is supposed to be a comment on something or other -- perhaps the usefulness of Spam as a construction material.
Sisterly Love: Although she got shut out locally at the Na Hoku awards, Jasmine Trias remains a hot item in Asia. Having completed a tour entertaining troops at American bases in Japan, she ducked into town last week to sing at a party for her brother Ronel, who just graduated from UH Lab School. A couple of days here and she jetted out again. "But I had to come, he's my little brother," she said. "Even though he drove me crazy when we were growing up."
Way to a Man's Heart: Duane Kawamoto has been a steady presence at L'Uraku for a decade. But this week he began as general manager of Sergio's at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. It's quite a jump from East-West cuisine to an Old School Italian eatery. What sold Kawamoto on the move? He went to dinner there. "I think it was the crab risotto that made up my mind," he says.
Chef's Holiday: Chef Kelly DeGala has been a hit in the Bay Area with his Hawaii- inspired flavors. His Walnut Creek restaurant, Va de Vi, is packed, and this fall he opens a new, larger restaurant at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco, just built by George Lucas.
DeGala's back home briefly to celebrate the opening tomorrow of his brother Charles' new mortgage company, Pacific Coast Capital.
So what does chef do when he hits Hawaii? Eat. First stop was A's Bistro in Ewa Beach for Filipino food, followed by Alan Wong's, Helena's, Side Street, Hiroshi's, Chef Mavro and the Little Kitchens fund-raiser last Friday. "I packed stretch pants," said DeGala.
Spin: Did you know that the Earth -- and you -- are traveling a million and half miles a day and spinning 1,000 miles an hour? If those facts eluded you, you haven't been listening to Maui astronomer Harriet Witt.
Witt, who teaches at Maui Community College, will be featured at next week's Maui Film Festival, where she's billed as "the only film festival astronomer in the known universe."
Listening to Witt can make you dizzy, literally. Since most of the Maui films are shown outdoors, the clear dark sky is Witt's planetarium. Once she points out that the stars seem to move because the earth is spinning, she says, "People have to grab on to something. It's the first time they've ever realized they're in orbit."
John Heckathorn's radio show,
Heckathorn's Hot Plate, broadcasts 12-1 p.m. Mon.-Thurs. and 1-2 p.m. Fri on SportsRadio 1420 and repeats on 1080AM 6-7 p.m. He can be reached at
heck@sportsradio1420.com.