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Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
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Jervis breaks a few eggs to stop vandals
Welcome to the Lite Tuesday Notebook (which, as a "morally debatable experiment," apparently is a violation of one of the Vatican's new deadly sins. We could never be accused of the newly unveiled sin of "accumulating excessive wealth," so we're lucky there).
» The Honolulu Lite Committee on Road Rage, Vigilante Justice and Ono Pupus is taking the side of former Bishop Estate Trustee Gerard Jervis in his quick-thinking action against a carload of egg-throwing high school football players. After his Lanikai house was egged, Jervis chased down the miscreants in his BMW and "ran them up a telephone pole," so to speak. He was arrested for, I believe, excessive reaction to a poultry-related prank, which is outrageous. Any kids who throw eggs at houses in posh Lanikai have to assume they will be chased down by an irate, liquored-up millionaire. The young vandals will face charges of, I believe, nothing more than high-velocity littering. To Mr. Jervis the committee says, "Good on ya, mate. That'll teach the punks not to carry all their eggs in one SUV."
» Blithely exhibiting elitism on a scale we haven't seen since Bette Davis -- who, upon seeing homeless people lined up at a soup kitchen, allegedly told her limo driver to "get those extras off my set" -- a University of Hawaii sociology professor claims the Honolulu Symphony can save Hawaii from all the common, low-class tourists cluttering up the islands. In a curious op-ed piece in this very newspaper, professor David Swift essentially says hoards of riffraff tourists are "wrecking the islands." He wants Hawaii to switch from "mass tourism to class tourism." To that end, it is essential that Hawaii have a world-class symphony to attract the right kind of tourists, instead of, I guess, all the trailer-park trash that currently infects the state. He wants a big chunk of the state's tourism budget to go to the symphony, to attract the kind of visitors Mr. Swift deems "desirable."
Apparently, the view from the academic ivory tower is breathtaking. What are all those "extras" doing milling around in Waikiki?
» It was sad to see the state Health Department close down venerable Sekiya Restaurant after several customers became ill from a "poopie-borne" type of bacteria. The restaurant reopened after a hazmat-type housecleaning that would have made psychotic British chef Gordon Ramsay proud. But it got me thinking that Hawaii newspapers should do what the Pacific Daily News did when I was on Guam: publish health department ratings of local restaurants. It was a popular feature because you could find out if the restaurant you wanted to visit was rated A (all spick and span), C (uncovered rubbish cans, signs of roaches) or F (a 3-foot-tall rat takes your lunch order). Sadly, the Health Department doesn't make those kind of interesting bits of information available to the general eating public.
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