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Hawaii
IT should come as no surprise that with every other commercial on TV being for a cellular phone -- the rest are for "dot.com" companies -- they're as ubiquitous as sunshine. I've long been of the opinion that people being distracted while talking on cell phones in their cars is a great danger on the road, but adman Jim Loomis thinks that's only the beginning. His personal pet peeve concerns people driving while applying make-up or reading a paper, but now he's found an ad in Home Office catalog Car office a dangerous idea
that really has him shaking. It's for a "portable office." The car unit sits on your lap while attached to the steering wheel. You can place your computer on it, and there is a pull-out workstation with clipboard as well as a compartment for holding letter-size files. Of course it includes a cell phone holder and a place for your coffee cup. Kind of makes you want to take up walking ...
WHEN you mention Hawaii anywhere on the mainland, you get one of two responses: "Don Ho" or "Hawaii Five-O." And so it is that Ho, who's been around seemingly forever, has been named the Sales and Marketing Executives 1999 "Sales Person of the Year." Jack Lord was a previous winner as were Duke Kahanamoku, Chinn Ho, Neal Blaisdell, Hilo Hattie, Henry J. Kaiser, Dan Inouye, Walter Dods and Richard Kelley. Ho will receive the award Feb. 10 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village ...
Tawdry Hepburn flick
THE other night I sat through about half of what has always been considered a film classic, "Breakfast at Tiffany's," starring Audrey Hepburn. Times certainly have changed. I mean, Mickey Rooney playing a moronic, comic-book version of a Japanese artist, complete with about 60 front teeth, terminally clumsy and with such poor vision that he bangs into everything? He was broader than Jerry Lewis might have been. If such a portrayal were to come out today, the people who complained about the casting of Jonathan Pryce as the part-Asian engineer in "Miss Saigon" would have had apoplexy. And Hepburn being the wife of Buddy Ebsen? Think "Jeb Clampett" or "Barnaby Jones." Truman Capote's original story was charming, but the screenplay, by George Axelrod, was about as subtle as "Hamlet" would have been had it been transformed to the screen by Mickey Spillane. Director Blake Edwards was fairly lauded at the time of the movie's release (1961) I seem to recall, but today the work seems shoddy ...SUCH questions the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism receives via the Internet! One e-mail read in its entirety, "What are Hawaii's economic patterns? What is that blue grey stuff they eat made of, I think it is called Poi? Do you think you could mail me the recipe?" ...
Aloha oy vey
LAST Saturday was pronounced "Rabbi Goldfarb Day" in honor of Rabbi Morris Goldfarb, who was rabbi at Cornell for 32 years earlier in his life. He turned 86 on Saturday and proved to be as spry and funny as ever. Mayor Jeremy Harris made the presentation before heading off to greet the Narcissus princesses. Music was by Aileen and Pierre Grill plus Lisa Leung and a klezmer band normally called L'Escargot, but which for the night changed its name to Kosher l'Escargot ... And Abe Weinstein is back from playing jazz and klezmer music on board the Pacific Princess through Turkey, Greece, Israel and Egypt. He reports New Year's Eve was quiet in Haifa ...
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