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Hawaii
REMEMBER Van Johnson, the old actor/song and dance man who was known for always wearing red socks? Well, he has nothing on French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who'll be Symphony goers
will be seeing redperforming with the Honolulu Symphony this weekend. He's also addicted to red socks of a particular nature, as he'll demonstrate when he performs tonight at Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It started 14 years ago when Thibaudet woke up late for a concert at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C., and the only pair of socks he could find were red. He thought it would be no big deal, but people made such a fuss over it that they became a part of his regular wardrobe. He now buys them only from Gamarelli, a shop in the Vatican City that furnishes clerical garb to Cardinals. As a result, he now eschews tuxedos and wears outfits made for him by his favorite design house, Versace. He'll perform here, red socks and all, on March 26 and 27 ...
FROM red to green: Jack Sullivan has long dressed as a leprechaun and walked in the local ST. Patrick's Day Parade, and in recent years enlisted Frank Conkey to join him. Now Conkey has slowed down a bit -- forgivable for an octogenarian -- so Sullivan commandeered the use of a green electric car for "Wee Frank" to ride in during the parade. They referred to the car as the "Pope-mobile," and fittingly it was preceded in the parade by yet another frank papist, Frank DeLima, who was dressed as his alter ego, Cardinal Vermicelli ...
Aran as in islands
WHILE we're still recovering from St. Patrick's Day, it might be a good time to mention that when I wrote about the son of David Wilson and Carolyn Tanaka last week, his name was inadvertently misspelled. Wilson reminded me that when the boy was born 10 years ago, he'd enlisted my help on the correct spelling of the name he and his wife wanted, unsure whether it should be Aaron, Eiren or whatever. I told him the Aran Islands were among the most Irish of places, where only Gaelic is spoken, so Aran it was. Heartfelt apologies, then, for letting it appear as "Aron." ...SCHULER Homes is building a doghouse for the Hawaiian Humane Society's "Bone Voyage" fund-raiser. At last year's event, the dog quarters were fashionably trendy and called "Neiman-Barkus." This year, it's a boathouse and will be a tribute to cartoonist Charles Schultz, so you can expect the house, to be called "S.S. Snoopy," to have a "Peanuts" look about it. The boat day-themed affair is April 1 at (where else?) the Captain's Table of the Holiday Inn ...
SHADES of Jose Feliciano: What possessed the Divas (Melveen Leed, Carole Kai, Loyal Garner and Nohelani Cypriano) to rewrite the melody of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that they sang before the UH-UCLA volleyball game? Francis Scott Key must have been turning over in his grave ... After mentioning how much I enjoyed the combining of classical guitar and ukulele by Winston Tan and Eddie Bush at the Kahala Mandarin lobby, I find they're working toward becoming a duo with the name Koa & Rosewood ...
Ironwoman
DID you happen to catch Karen Smyers on the NBC "Today" show last week? Winner of the Ironman competition here in 1995, Karen was talking about her battle with thyroid cancer. She'll be back on the Big Isle later this month to speak at a sports medicine conference and compete in the Big Island World Cup Triathlon April 1 at Waikoloa Beach Resort ...
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