Hawaii
Humor’s a zero
to 2000 gradsNOBODY laughed louder than retired Punahou president Rod McPhee at the commencement address delivered by David McCullough. The son of the author who wrote "Truman" and who hosted "American Experience" on TV, McCullough told graduating seniors they'd be forever known as the last graduating class of the millennium, where the 1998 class would simply be known as -- the 1998 graduating class. He addedly offhand that the class of 2000 was destined to be known as a bunch of zeroes ...
THE state's newest beauty queen is Liana Green, 16-year-old winner of the Miss Hawaii Teen Pageant, beating out 23 other contestants. Her mother, Estell, is a former beauty queen herself, having won the Miss Hawaii Filipina contest. And her dad, attorney Michael Green, was especially pleased with the win, having gone down to defeat defending ousted Bishop Estate trustee Lokelani Lindsey. Liana will compete for the Miss American Teen title in Orlando, Florida Aug. 19, and is being coached by another L.A. Image beauty queen, Ms. American United States Angel Teves, who won the title in Orlando last year ...
Revival of the fittest
MOST of the favorites in the Tony competition of Broadway shows won -- Brian Dennehy (whose acceptance speech was brief, yet funny and eloquent) for "Death of a Salesman" and Dame Judi Dench (blissfully brief and to the point) for "Amy's View." Winner of the best revival of a play was "Salesman" (with playwright Arthur Miller getting a lifetime achievement award) and best musical revival was "Annie Get Your Gun," which may explain why Rosie O'Donnell bagged out of appearing this year. She was scarcely missed, what with all the name presenters. The best new play, "Side Man," and new musical ,"Fosse," won kind of by default for lack of much new material in this, the year of the revival ...JUST back from New York where he attended the world premiere of a new contemporary American opera, "Sorry, Wrong Number," is retired adman Pat Davis. The work started out as a radio drama with Agnes Morehead in the 1940s, and the film version starred Barbara Stanwyck. Davis had his interest stimulated by the fact his niece, opera singer Patricia Sonego, was in the cast ...
ONE reason "The Phantom Menace" may not be doing as well at the box office as its backers thought it would is potential moviegoers feel they've already seen it. Look at all the commercials featuring Colonel Sanders with a light sabre, the Taco Bell dog and many others plugging scenes from the film ... Do you get the feeling the "Apocalypse is Upon Us" what with all the people throwing perfectly good money around to buy bean bags with funny faces and limbs sewn on them? ...
Hispanic semantics
FILE this under "We get results." Last week an item here mentioned how surprised longtime Mexican public relations man Hector Venegas was to read that Jose Villa was calling his Hispanic Hawaii "the only Hispanic Public Relations and Advertising Agency in Hawaii." Villa calls it "a matter of semantics." He admits Venegas has a "Hispanic-owned" agency which handles clients across the board. He meant that his own agency focuses exclusively on the local, national and international Hispanic market. In any case, Villa has re-written his slogan and is re-doing his advertising to avoid confusion ...
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.