|
Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
|
It's a fast world, try to keep up
I'M NOT saying that these recent southwest winds are the strongest ever to hit the islands, but the voyaging canoe Hokule'a apparently just reached San Diego.
This is a monumental event in the history of Pacific voyaging because it shows that the Polynesians could have reached North America before Columbus or Leif Ericson and, well, kind of own America now. The Hokule'a's race to San Diego apparently set a new Polynesian Voyaging Society speed-sailing record, seeing as how they made the 5,000-mile trip in a day and a half.
But it is just another example of how fast the world is moving now. Take Emma Faust Tillman, who set an amazing speed record in an event that likely will never be matched. Ironically, the key to her victory was that she paced herself.
See, Tillman was 114 years old. But she wasn't the oldest person in the world. That title was held by 115-year-old Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico. Then del Toro died last week, and Tillman assumed the title of the oldest person in the world. But she died just four days later. That's the shortest amount of time anyone had been the oldest person in the world. I mean, they couldn't even get the T-shirts printed fast enough. She didn't even get a Web site. Congratulations, you're the oldest person in the world! How you feeling? Uh ... next?
THE WORLD is moving so fast that there's this guy Kevin Federline who apparently had some kind of a career. I'm not kidding. He went from nobody to somebody to nobody and I never even knew who he was. That's fast.
Wanting to be hip to the happenings of the entertainment industry (is the term "hip" still used?), I did some quick research. Federline's stage name was K-Fed because he apparently was a delivery boy for Federal Express. Or maybe the FBI. Anyway, he was a Fed of some sort. Or security guard at Kmart or something.
He also was married to a very famous pop singer whose name escapes me. I think it was Boy George, but don't hold me to that. What I know about the pop music scene you could write in big letters with a crayon on the back of a Britney Spears CD and still have room for her deepest thoughts. Britney! That's who K-Fed was married to! Then she apparently became K-Fedup with him, and now he's doing a Super Bowl commercial making fun of his lightning-fast singing career. Turns out he was a rapper. No, really. I found out he was the most popular white rap star in the entire country for almost 37 minutes. That's fast.
The world is moving so quickly, it's amazing that kids can even keep up. When pop stars have entire careers in the time it takes to make a Starbucks soy mocha frappachino grandé with whipped cream, kids have to stay on their toes. One way they apparently are doing it is by ingesting enormous numbers of soy mocha frappachino grandés. And cappuccinos. And espressos. And Cokes in 55-gallon barrels. Anything with a lot of caffeine in it.
Americans between the ages of 12 and 24 are consuming more caffeine then the rest of the caffeine-consuming world put together. They need the caffeine to keep up in a fast world. And they are getting it in surprising places. Did you know that Mountain Dew, that refreshing lemony-lime soda, has more caffeine in it then the entire night-shift detective squad in a medium-size city? True. If you fed just one can of Mountain Dew to a Kentucky Derby horse, he would be disqualified from competition as soon as they captured him in Montana.
And now a molecular biologist in North Carolina has found a way to load up doughnuts and muffins with caffeine. Soon, caffeine will be in everything we eat. That way, we won't miss a thing in the fast-paced world. Of course, we'll never live to be 114. It will just seem like it.
Buy Charles Memminger's hillarious new book, "Hey, Waiter, There's An Umbrella In My Drink!" at island book stores or
online at any book retailer. E-mail him at
cmemminger@starbulletin.com