Good sports help UH team
SPORTING news: With the exception of basketball, which is in a labor lockout I could well live with for a long time, we're surrounded by sports these days. Football has returned to TV, with already an overtime game in Tokyo between Green Bay and Kansas City in which one announcer said, "They're getting their yen's worth tonight." Don Murphy's "Pigskin Pigout" at his Murphy's Bar & Grill raised over $63,000 for the UH football program, a ten percent increase over last year's fund-raising auction and dinner. And when that Beanie Baby Murph brought back from the All-Star game in Denver brought in $500, Dick Barry winced, since the usually astute Barry sold his identical Beanie Baby at the game to a guy who offered him $100 and he thought the guy who bought it was nuts ...
GOLF is also in full swing, so to speak, and some announcers had best learn how to speak, particularly the female announcer during the du Maurier Classic yesterday. She used the phrase "at this point in time" five times in the last three holes I watched, and was about to hit a record sixth when she suddenly stopped after "at this point." Maybe someone being driven as crazy as I was got to her ... But I did get a chuckle over the comment about golfer Meg Mallon, who is quite zaftig. As Mallon walked down the fairway the announcer said, "You can almost see a little bounce to her step." Trust me, you could see it ...
Once in love with Amy
SINGER Amy Gilliom will be filing away her Hawaiiana when she performs tonight at a black tie dinner hosted by Beckman Instruments for 1,500 people at Chicago's Navy Pier. She'll be emphasizing jazz and Broadway hits instead of local music. Her appearance came about when she performed at a Beckman function in April at the Grand Wailea Resort, and the company honcho so loved her singing that he decided to fly her to the Windy City for the function tonight. She'll be backed by the Stanley Paul band, whose members also play with the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra ...SO where does that leave her significant other, Willie K, you ask? He's living out a dream, playing blues in Chi-town. He's booked into such clubs as Lily's, the Beat Kitchen and Joe's Sports Bar, and also at Buddy Guy's Legends and B.L.U.E.S Etc. Prediction: He'll knock their blues sox off. Incidentally, the twosome will be bunking at an upscale boutique hotel called the WhiteHall, where the G.M. is Maui-born Richard Markham, a 1960 Kamehameha grad. He's a good buddy of school president Michael Chun, who probably wishes he were there about now, taking his mind off Bishop Estate matters ...
AND to complete the busy fortnight of Amy and Willie, they'll perform at the San Francisco Aloha Festivals Celebration (attracting 40,000) on Aug. 9 and at Santa Cruz for a show at Palookaville the next night. Then it's back to Honolulu for the Aug. 15 Shell concert with the Makaha Sons and Keali'i Reichel ...
Epitaph
FORMER major leaguer Bill Tuttle had his final at bat last week, and he kayoed one out of the park. Tuttle, who was diagnosed with oral cancer five years ago after nearly 40 years of chewing tobacco, as ballplayers of his day often did, campaigned against chewing tobacco for the past couple of years, and on Friday, unable to speak, wrote a note to his family: "I know what I did to myself was wrong and I'm so sorry I hurt everybody. But maybe I can show them how sorry I am by teaching other people" ...
Dave Donnelly has been writing on happenings
in Hawaii for the Star-Bulletin since 1968.
His columns run Monday through Friday.Contact Dave by e-mail: donnelly@kestrok.com.