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Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
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Just another afternoon in Charleyworld
I'm not sure how many husbands, when asked by their wives, "So, honey, what did you do today?" reply, "Well, my love, not much. Wrote my column in the morning, and in the afternoon I was in Waikiki with a Little Richard impersonator sitting in my lap singing 'Tutti Frutti' while I pretended to be a ventriloquist."
"You don't say," she says disinterestedly, thumbing through her magazine.
"Wop-bop-a-loo-mop-alop-bam-boo, but I do, my love."
And the weird thing is, that doesn't even faze her. I think she's come to expect that a husband spending an afternoon in Waikiki with a Little Richard impersonator in his lap singing "Tutti Frutti" is a normal thing. At least I think it was "Tutti Frutti." I was concentrating on not moving my lips so as to enhance the entire "ventriloquism effect" and thinking, "Man, this guy has a bony butt. He's really killing my legs."
That guy was Garry Moore, one of the performers in the "Stars in Concert Hawaii" revue, and we were clowning around at a taping of Andy Bumatai's "NightTime" talk show. I was a guest during the show's first taping last year at the Honolulu Design Center and then again when it moved to the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Now the show, which airs on K5 nightly at 9:35, has settled at the Outrigger Main Showroom. It's like, no matter where Andy moves the show, I track him down.
Actually, Andy invited me back to find out what's happening on the "Honolulu Lite" front and was amused that one of my readers claims he doesn't do ethnic humor anymore because it's not politically correct. Andy then launched into a politically incorrect riff about haoles (i.e., white people) and popolos (i.e., black people) which Little Richard thought was pretty funny. ("Wop-bop-a-loo-mop-alop-bam-boo!")
So I guess Andy still does ethnic humor. I talked about how silly it is for people to be surprised that telephone poles in Hawaii keep falling over. "They're made out of termite food!" I pointed out. "It's like making ocean buoys out of Spam and being surprised when sharks eat them."
Then Patricia Woods, a nice, quiet local author, sat down with us to discuss her new book, "Lottery," but accidentally mentioned that her father had just won a $6 million lottery. So I climbed over Little Richard on the couch to get closer to her, and Little Richard tried to climb over me but I sat on him, and since I outweighed him by a few hundred pounds, I won.
I think Andy made some joke about haoles and popolos, but I was too busy trying to shove my business card into Ms. Woods' hands while telling her of my current dire financial situation. I'm not sure it's "Must See TV," but it will air Monday night on K5. (Go to the "NightTime" Web site, ntphawaii.com, for a list of past and upcoming guests.)
Andy now has more than 100 "NightTimes" in the can and seems quite comfortable in his talk-show host role. And he knows that wherever he moves the show, I'll find it. Wop-bop-a-loo-mop-alop-bam-boo.
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