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TheBuzz
Erika Engle
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Businesses get behind annual college Quiz Bowl
Hawaii academicians, businessfolk and people from other walks of professional life have teamed up for some brainiac booty-kicking in the second annual College Connections Hawaii Quiz Bowl tomorrow night.
The competition could use more teams and spectators, as the nonprofit
College Connections Hawaii Inc. is staging the fundraiser to further help local kids get to college with tutoring and test preparation services.
It is a cause that attorney Joe Stewart -- a partner with law firm Kobayashi, Sugita & Goda, -- "would give to as a matter of course anyway."
Still, it helped that the event "sounded a heck of a lot more fun than the traditional rubber-chicken and slide show" in a hotel ballroom, he said.
He was on last year's winning team.
"We were on the low side, as far as preparation," he said.
Another team, from a respected consulting firm, had trained for weeks in advance and showed up in team shirts.
"It is very spirited competition," Stewart said.
This seems the time to mention that some of the spirits are served from a no-host bar and, unlike televised quiz shows, Quiz Bowl contestants needn't wait until they lose to partake of potent potables.
Stewart's team will be at tomorrow's Quiz Bowl as returning champs.
If you're the type that yells answers at the TV when Jeopardy is on, or if you're known as a killer Trivial Pursuit player, you are familiar with the types of questions that will be asked.
College Connections board member Amy Hennessey, by day a vice president at McNeil Wilson Communications, has been drumming up additional entries with a list of five reasons.
Among them, half the $250 entry fee is tax deductible; the price includes dinner at the Manoa Grand Ballroom of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, and "anyone can win." Spectator tickets are $60.
One needn't have an MBA, JD or Ph.D. to participate in the posterior-punting. The KGMB "Sunrise" morning show crew beat the College Connections team in a mock Quiz Bowl.
The grand prize is a one-night stay for each team member at Ihilani, but there are also gift certificates and, Hennessey notes, there is the cause.
PBS nets TV vets
PBS Hawaii has scored Linda Brock as vice president of programming and community relations.
Part of the executive exodus from KHON in 2006 when it was purchased by Montecito Broadcast Group LLC, Brock has since helped Waianae High School graduates establish Makaha Studios, a video and design company with a mission of social enterprise.
"I'm excited about the opportunity to work in a broadcast environment that is singularly focused on serving one entity -- the people of Hawaii," she said.
She joins filmmaker Robert Pennybacker, the new vice president of creative services. Pennybacker had been running his own business and, like Brock, wasn't sure he'd work at a television station ever again.
"We've both ended up at the one station where we can use our expertise to serve the community rather than the revenue goals of a commercial television station," he said.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4747, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at:
eengle@starbulletin.com