Hawaii
THIRTY days hath September, April, June and the Star-Bulletin. It doesn't rhyme, but sometimes there's little rhyme or reason to things ... Take Vice President Al Gore's comments on the NBC "Today" show yesterday. Just after Time magazine came out with Democratic presidential challenger Bill Bradley on the cover, Gore abruptly changed tactics, as interviewer Matt Lauer noted. Where he never used to mention Bradley by name, Gore now says he's challenging Exhilarating?
It’s debatablehim to a series of televised debates, one every two weeks. He says they'd be "exhilarating and exciting." Either that or a quick cure for insomnia! At least Hawaii politicians are a bit livelier than their national counterparts ...
STOPPING by Queen's Medical Center to visit colleague Ben Wood, there for elective surgery, was Star-Bulletin reporter Helen Altonn. She promptly slipped and broke her hip, requiring a hip replacement. All she could talk about from her hospital bed was work she had to finish and appointments she had to keep. A real pro ... Some may find yesterday's headline about "Major League Soccer" an oxymoron, but don't let soccer maven Jack Sullivan hear you say it or you'll have a feisty Boston Irishman (triple redundancy?) on your case ...
Athlete or supporter
RESTAURATEUR Don Murphy has built a solid reputation as one of the University of Hawaii athletic teams' top supporters. Now he's getting kidded about being something of an athlete himself. He was entered in the Nissan/Easter Seals Golf Tournament at Hickam along with teammates Puna Chillingworth and ringer Bob Akinaka. And would you believe they won top honors? Sometimes good guys don't finish last after all, though there were some who felt the winning team swaggering into Murphy's Bar & Grill after the match, trophy held high, singing "We are the champions," might have been a bit much. Still, the 186 golfers raised more than $45,000 for Easter Seals ...SPEAKING of UH supporters, mainland-based Jeff Ruffolo has been heard doing play-by-play for UH men's and women's volleyball teams on KCCN and the Rainbow Sports Radio Network for the past seven years. He's traveled everywhere on the mainland where the volleyball teams have played, including the 1996 NCAA Final Four in Cleveland (Wahine) and L.A. (Men). In all, he's called more than 200 Hawaii volleyball events live. And so it'll be a momentous occasion tonight when Ruffolo sits on press row at the Stan Sheriff Center for the TCU/UH volleyball match. You see, it'll be the first time Ruffolo has seen a Wahine home game and the first time he's been to the Stan Sheriff Center. You can hear his reaction to all that when he speaks to the Quarterback Club lunch Monday at the Pagoda ...
Mmmm, Mmmm, Good
WHEN Rhonda, now billing herself as "Queen of the Jungle," uh, I mean "Pacific," sings at Hawaii Public Radio's Atherton Hall Sunday, one of the tunes she'll be doing has lyrics written by Channel 4 cameraman Bob Campbell with music by his dad, Warren "Beans" Campbell, a retired fighter pilot who lives on the mainland. Bob said he wrote the lyrics for Holly Richards on the occasion of their anniversary last July, and when he heard Rhonda would be singing it, called HPR to get an OK to videotape it to send a copy to his dad. Permission granted. Rhonda will be backed by Pierre Grill and Ernie Provencher on piano and bass ...
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: ddonnelly@starbulletin.com