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Honolulu Lite
ANYONE who's read any of the Harry Potter books knows that Muggles are a peculiar species. Life for a Muggle
is a struggleMuggles are us. Humans. And in Harry's world of wizards, ghosts, witches and owls who deliver the mail, Muggles are sort of dim bulbs. They are so slow they can't even see most of the wizard people living among them.
Harry's a dorky kid who attends wizard school most of the year and lives with a dysfunctional Muggle family during the summer, sort of like Chelsea Clinton.
Critics of the first three Harry Potter books don't like the way they glorify the occult and make Muggles look stupid. I'm not so sure Potter author J.K. Rowling doesn't have a point about Muggles.
Let's look at some of the crazy things Muggles have been up to lately.
There's a Muggle named Brian Kanno who as a state senator voted to remove Margery Bronster as attorney general last year. This was when Bronster was investigating Bishop Estate. The political machine that supported estate trustees engineered Bronster's ouster in hopes of derailing the investigation. Kanno was one of the 14 senators who took part in the coup. With the trustees removed from office and many smarmy dealings of the estate exposed, Kanno and his co-conspirators don't feel so good. They'd hoped their dirty deed would be forgotten by next election. No such luck. So now Kanno is saying he made a mistake in voting against Bronster and is begging his constituents for forgiveness. Just like a Muggle.
Kanno says that with the benefit of a year of hindsight, he can see he was wrong. Unfortunately for him, he was elected to look forward, not backward.
Elsewhere on the Muggle front, police are searching for a man last seen getting the stuffing beat out of him at a Waikiki night club. A club bouncer admits he beat the stuffing out of Carlos Carillo but said he then took him to the airport. He also says he took a "soiled" carpet on which Carillo was beaten to the Waimanalo dump. It doesn't take a wizard to figure out that Carillo probably isn't sunning down in the Caribbean. Honolulu police Officer Joe Self, longtime missing Muggle investigator, is on the case. I met Self nearly 20 years ago on the cop beat. Trust me, Mr. Bouncer, Self is the last Muggle you'd want on your tail.
Like I said, it's hard for Muggles to see wizards. But if there is a wizard in Hawaii, it may be Brian Melzack, owner of Bestsellers bookstores downtown and in Waikiki. When bookstores began placing orders for "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the latest Potter opus, Melzack looked into his crystal ball and saw he was going to need heaps of books. The big stores underestimated Potter mania. As a result, while the big boys sold out, Bestsellers still has stacks of the 700-page book. He was irked at initial news reports that every store had sold out. But with the wave of the media wand, Muggles are pouring into his store.
I should disclose that Melzack used to distribute my book, "Hey Tourist! Buy This Book!" He didn't sell it, he just distributed it, gave it away when people bought other real books.
The new Harry Potter book is expected to sell a magical 10 million copies, making it the fastest selling book in the history of the publishing world. That's about 9,999,995 more books than mine sold. That makes this Muggle kind of miserable.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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