What the Heck? John Heckathorn

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Amy sings and Matt conducts in Hawaii Kai

One more time: Ever wondered what happened to the old Dolly Parton's restaurant location in Hawaii Kai? Quietly, it's been turned into a state-of-the-art recording studio.

Last weekend, Matt Catingub seized on an off day in his "Return to Romance" music fest to lay down some tracks for Amy Hanaiali'i Gilliom's upcoming album, "Generations USA."

Through the speakers in the control room you could hear the orchestra playing. You also could hear Amy singing, though she obviously wasn't, since she was wandering around capturing the proceedings with her new video camera.

"Amy just laid down a scratch vocal; we'll put in the real one later," said producer Allen Sviridoff.

At the moment, Catingub was just trying to get the strings right. "More MGM-ish," he implored. Suddenly the sound swelled like it does in hundreds of movie soundtracks. "Perfect," said Catingub.

Recording engineer Leslie Ann Jones looked up from her 1,480 knobs, sliders and switches. "The horns are phrasing differently than the strings," she said.

"OK, boys and girls, let's do it again," said Catingub.

"Isn't that always the way," said Sviridoff. "Perfect. Now do it again, better."

Home cooking: The new issue of Hawaii Home+Remodeling magazine features photos of Maui chef Bev Gannon's home kitchen, newly redone.

You'd think a chef would always have a great kitchen. Not Gannon. She's lived in the house 25 years, but her first kitchen stove she moved to open Haliimaile General Store. When she finally got another stove, oops, she opened a second restaurant.

"It was pathetic," she says. "When I cooked at home, all I had was an electric skillet and a countertop convection oven."

Gannon's so happy with her new kitchen, she's thrown six dinner parties in the last nine days. "Come over," she said. "I'll cook."

Tiki's West: The second of the new Beachwalk restaurants, Holokai Grill, opened last weekend, owned by the same folks as Tiki's Grill & Bar. "They wanted us to do another Tiki's, but the first is only a couple blocks away," said managing partner Bill Tobin. "We tried to make this one different, so it wasn't Tiki's West. But maybe not too different."

The new restaurant has both a 20-foot outrigger canoe and a 33-foot-long waka (Maori-style) canoe, both carved from a 150-year-old tree slated for removal from Queen Emma's Summer Palace.

The band Vaihi rocked the opening night party. Vaihi's Bruddah Sam looked at the one-ton waka canoe in the center of the second-floor restaurant and said, "We'd like to dedicate this song to the guys who carried that thing up here."

Cover up: The Iona Dance Theatre is back from two weeks in Alaska, performing their "Hawaiian Myths & Legends" show. The finale usually finds the dancers performing wearing only body paint, but Alaskan authorities demanded they cover up. Good idea, if only to keep them from freezing. As it is, director Cheryl Flaherty is still nursing a wicked cold.

The art of tango: Da Space Gallery in Chinatown was packed last First Friday. Tango masters George and Kai Garcia were dancing, joined by their students. The crowd was mesmerized by the couples doing cortados, ganchos and sexy-looking enganches.

On the walls was an exhibit of tango paintings. "The art was supposed to be the focus, and the dancing the ambiance," said one of the artists, Janice Robinson, who tangoed a little herself. "It turned out the other way round. But, hey, I had a great time."

All wet: Former business reporter Stewart Yerton paddles with the Outrigger Canoe Club's Novice B Team. Last week, the team huli'd in the Ala Wai. Yerton got soaked.

Yerton turned accident into opportunity: "I might as well investigate if you can get dunked in the Ala Wai without getting sick, with myself as guinea pig." Results reported via podcast on Yerton's new Web site, VolcanoRadio.com.

"We're calling it an exclusive investigative report," laughs Yerton. "At least I hope it's exclusive. Nobody else would be foolish enough to copy me."

Yesterday's papers: Hawaii was once the most literate nation in the Pacific -- in Hawaiian. Much of what we know -- and much we haven't discovered yet -- about Hawaiian culture is contained in the 125,000 pages written in Hawaiian newspapers between 1834 and 1949.

These nupepa, to use the Hawaiian word, have been nearly impossible to access, even if you could read the language. A small cadre of scholars, lead by Kaui Sai-Dudoit, has been patiently digitizing them before the paper they're printed on falls apart.

The newspapers contains hundreds of oli, or chants. As a kind of celebration, on May 5 notable chanters, including Kealii Reichel and Leina'ala Kalama-Heine, will perform them at Mamiya Theatre. Details will be announced sometime this week.

Goodbye, Tom: Writer Tom Horton died last November in California. Responding on Hawaiian time, his friends here gathered at Murphy's last week to remember him.

The history of Hawaii media was in the room: Kini Popo, the first man ever on television in Hawaii, still going strong. Don Robbs, who's been the voice of UH baseball for more than 30 years. Ray Sweeney, who in the '60s was Hawaii's first celebrity chef, "Radio Chef Ramon" on KHAI, with cameo appearances on Channel 2. Carl Lindquist, one of the original wild boys at Trade Publishing. Writer Barbara Holm, who insisted she was "everyone's favorite bad girl."

Everyone seemed glad to see Mickey Hummer. Hummer ran the bar at Boyd's, the most famous downtown watering hole of Horton's day. Said Ray Sweeney, "You couldn't hold a memorial for Horton without at least one bartender."