What the Heck? John Heckathorn

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2 CEOs have right buff for magazine cover

Fit For Life: At the new Pearl in Ala Moana Center, Hawaii Business Magazine announced the results of its Fittest CEO competition. Of the 50 CEOs tested, the fittest were Chip Doyle of Group Pacific (Hawaii) and Ruth Limtiaco of Limtiaco Co. The magazine has two covers this month; half feature Chip and the other half Ruth, both looking buff.

Casting for Irony: Cathy Foy auditioned for the role of the villainess in the Broadway production of "Thoroughly Modern Millie," losing the role to Delta Burke of "Designing Women" fame. Broadway's loss.

In the current run of "Millie" at Diamond Head Theatre, Foy turns in a bravura performance. Her character is a stereotypical Asian dragon lady, but to be politically correct, the play's authors turned the character into a white actress disguised as a dragon lady. Which means that on stage at DHT, you have an Asian actress (Foy) pretending to be a white actress pretending to be Asian.

Foy, who's Japanese-Irish, has battled casting stereotypes her whole career. "I wasn't right for haole parts because I looked too Asian and for Asian parts because I looked too haole," she says.

Hawaii is ahead of the rest of the country in nontraditional casting. Foy points out that one of the characters in the play who is really supposed to be Chinese is played by Elitei Tatafu, who's Samoan.

The musical, by the way, has been extended to Oct. 15.

TheBallet: Did you know that Frank Fasi founded Ballet Hawaii, which celebrates its 30th anniversary Oct. 14?

In 1976, Fasi walked into a Cabinet meeting and told local author Bob Dye, then Fasi's executive assistant, he wanted to start a ballet dancing company.

"It was totally out of the blue," says Dye, "especially since I thought he said a belly dancing company." Even when that got straightened out, Dye had a problem: He'd never even seen a ballet.

Someone told him about a woman named Tessa Magoon, who'd grown up in Honolulu, trained in London and danced all over the world.

Magoon became ballet mistress, and the company, then known as the Honolulu City Ballet, became a success. Several of its original dancers went on to national careers, and its performances were a smash, including a baseball ballet performed before an Islanders game.

It was a success in another way. Once he met Tessa Magoon and saw her dance, Dye asked her out. The two were married for 26 years before her death in 2002.

Book 'Em: Walked into Costco last Saturday and found an old friend, longtime Honolulu writer Rick Carroll, who now lives in North Carolina. Carroll was signing copies of his book, "IZ: Voice of the People," already in its second large printing.

"The response is incredible," says Carroll. "But it has nothing to do with me. It's all Iz." People open the book, he says, and sometimes start crying.

Even on the mainland, he gets strong reactions. Signing books at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Carroll looked up to find himself face-to-face with one of his heroes, legendary saxophonist Charles Lloyd. "You write this book?" said Lloyd. "I want to take a picture with you. Hold up the book."

Whirlwind: AIG President Robin Campaniano and Campbell Estate trustee David Heenan have teamed up to chair a Bayanihan Dinner Oct. 20 at the Sheraton Waikiki. It's a gala fundraiser to benefit Waipahu's FilCom Center, the biggest Filipino community center outside of the Philippines.

Campaniano is Filipino. Heenan is anything but. "Oh, I didn't want Dave," chuckles Campaniano. Who he wanted was Heenan's wife, Nery, originally from the Philippines. Nery Heenan is usually described as vivacious, though Campaniano insists that's an understatement. Whirlwind might be more accurate.

"I've seen Nery raise funds before," he says, "but never on my behalf. Nobody can say no to her. CEOs find themselves committed to $10,000 tables before they can get a word in edgewise."

The high-end fundraiser is important for the FilCom Center, which still has a construction loan of $3.5 million to pay off. It was built four years ago largely on small contributions from many members of the Filipino community. "That community has been pretty heavily tapped," says Campaniano. "It's time for the downtown business guys to step up."

Art on Wheels: Ralph Perrine is known around town as a technology consultant. He's also an artist. His paintings go on exhibit tomorrow at Café Che Pasta, with a formal opening next Friday.

Most of the paintings have little wheelchair stickers on the price tag. Buy one and Perrine will donate $75 to the Wheelchair Foundation. The foundation matches the funds and delivers a high-quality, durable wheelchair to an adult, teen or child somewhere in the world who can't afford one and can't get around without one. "It's better than the usual 'a portion of the proceeds,'" says Perrine. "It's tangible. Buy a painting, give someone a wheelchair."

Music to Whose Ears? This weekend in Kona, there's a conference dedicated to the question, "What is Hawaiian music?" Which brings up another question: "We don't know?"

"No," says Alan Yamamoto of the Hawaii Academy of Recording Arts, one of the event sponsors. "And I don't think we'll know when the conference is over."

The debate has gone on for more than a century, notes Yamamoto, but it's been sharpened by the Grammy Awards. To be nominated for a Hawaiian Grammy, an album must have at least half its lyrics in Hawaiian -- with the unintended result that Grammy voters select instrumental albums with no lyrics at all.

Should you have strong feelings on the matter, the two-day conference repeats Oct. 6-7 on Maui and Nov. 10-11 on Oahu.