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Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
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‘Making A’ is normal in Charleyworld
Tuesday Lite Notebook (wherein we educate, emasculate, emulate, emaciate and eviscerate readers on various issues of the day) ...
Welcome to Charleyworld (Episode No. 4,327): My wife brings me the phone bill and says there's a suspicious charge to a number in California. Always worried about identity theft and other techno- logical security threats I check it out. Yes, there's a $25, 70-minute call to Burbank. Obviously, I didn't make the call. Why would I talk to anyone anywhere for 70 minutes? So I go on the Internet and try to cross reference the number and find out it's unlisted. Very suspicious.
So I draw on my training as an investigative reporter and call the number. A man answers. I say "Hi! Who is this?" He says, "Who is this?" We go back in this manner, each getting agitated and finally I say, "I'm the guy with a $25 charge to this number that I don't think I called." He said, something like, "That's your problem." I ask him if he knows anyone in Hawaii. He says, "Well, I'm going to be at the 'Laughs for Lions' charity event in Honolulu on Saturday." I say, "Larry?" He says, "Yeah." I say, "Larry Thomas?" He says, "Yeah." I say, "Larry Thomas the Soup Nazi from the Seinfeld show?" He says, "Yeah." I say, "Larry! It's Charley the idiot newspaper columnist who interviewed you over the phone two weeks ago and forgot he did it!" (I thought I had used my Star-Bulletin phone, not home phone. Seriously.)
I will leave it to your imagination to consider how really, really ... fun it was to meet Larry Thomas in person at the event on Saturday night. Life is hard in Charleyworld.
I've suddenly got a lot of really cute girls trying to get to know me. It started when I posted my profile on My Space.com, a well-known interactive networking Internet site along the lines of Facebook and You Tube. I was a little worried because these sites have become hunting grounds for pedophiles and other sexual weirdoes.
But now I think those concerns are way overrated. Since posting my profile (mainly to let people know they can get my book on Amazon.com) I regularly get e-mails from young (adult) women seeking my friendship. They are all very attractive and apparently industrious because they have their own Web sites that you can log onto for a slight fee. I haven't paid any money to meet these women yet, but they seem to be very wholesome, girl-next-door types who just happen to be interested in large humor columnists in Hawaii. They all have interesting hobbies and jobs, like cowgirls, police officers, nurses and, I think, lion trainers. (One had a whip.)
Overheard at the morning diner: Two grandmothers chatting about cell phone text messaging.
"It's very useful and wasn't hard to learn at all."
"I like to use T1, it's so much faster than standard texting."
"I send photos and video, too."
Suddenly, I -- who have never text messaged -- felt very, very old.
Buy Charles Memminger's hilarious 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