GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Lanai works the crowd at Dave and Buster's.

A road break back
at the shack

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By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com

After, oh, say, 15 years in local entertainment, the artist publicly known as Lanai has seen several sides of the business. Lanai helped put the "hot" in "Hot I-94" back in the day, recorded several locally popular song parodies as one of Matt Young's original 3 Local Boyz (with Jimmy Da Geek and Alan "Da Cruzah" Oda) and busted "island music" radio wide open with the launching of "98.5 Island Rhythms" as the hard-hitting upstart rival of long-entrenched KCCN/FM100.

With all that on his résumé, Lanai says he's still learning the business from different angles.

"When you go on the road with some of the groups, you hear their feedback. Before, I saw the angles of the record label, the angle of the distributor and the angle of the consumer. Now I see all angles of it, and there's a lot of junk going on."

Lanai and Augie reopen "Lanai & Augie's Comedy Shack" at Dave & Buster's tonight, an encore engagement that's a welcome hometown pit stop in the middle of an increasingly hectic schedule.

"I know there were a lot of people disappointed because we took a break at Dave & Buster's, so we're looking forward to this weekend. The good thing about going on the road is that you pick up a lot of great new material."

GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Augie works the crowd at Dave and Buster's.

If that's the case, they should have plenty new material! The two took off for three weeks of performances in California, Las Vegas, Guam and Japan. They'll be catching a red-eye flight or two in the next month for another round of engagements in Vegas. More traveling seems likely.

"I feel like a rock star," Lanai said of the hectic schedule and long hours spent traveling. "You gotta do it (because) you never know when it's gonna stop, and me and Augie are ready to go. We've been getting more calls since we've been on the road, and it looks like this summer we'll be back on the road again."

Lanai and Augie are also working on a local comedy TV special, "Lolo No Ka Oi," that will be taped in June at a comedy concert at the Sheraton-Waikiki. Lanai will host; Augie, Andy Bumatai, Mel Cabang and some combination of Booga Booga alumni will be the featured performers.

"It's going to be one of the only first times you'll see the past and the present," Lanai of the lineup that covers more than 25 years of contemporary local comedy from the "Kanaka Komedy" of Booga up through the current "stand-up" format. Backstage footage and personality profiles will then be combined with performance highlights to create a comedy special scheduled for broadcast on FOX 2 near the end of the year. Lanai, Dirk Fukushima and Carole Kai are co-producing it.

Taking a longer view, Lanai says that these can be good times for local comedians.

"Comedy, I think, in Hawaii is resurging. Everything happens in 10-year periods, and I think the ones who can hang on and survive will make it, and the ones who can't will swim."

"In the past month, every comic on this island has asked to be a part of our show. It didn't happen, they got mad, so they started their own."

The duo and their sidemen -- Eddie L was the opening act at a D&B show in March -- are certainly winners with local audiences. Lanai is sharp and self-assured as the secondary headliner; his observations on the three types of local women who wear Hawaiian gold bracelets, the ways women communicate with men and how to tell whether you're Filipino or Samoan work perfectly at warming up a crowd. His riffs on growing up on Lanai rework classic bits into more or less believable local experiences.

Augie is ever more polished and accomplished as the headliner. His characterizations and character bits are more sharply defined, and his material overall has become cleaner and less reliant on bathroom humor than in the past. Augie's willingness to comment on social and economic issues -- some of them anathema to the PC police -- adds a element of informed commentary often missing from the work of contemporary local stand-up comics.

Add some of his popular "classic" bits, and Augie is better than he's ever been -- safely past the point of being a "flavor of the month" in local comedy.

Lanai & Augie's Comedy Shack Where: Dave & Buster's, 1039 Auahi St. When: 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Fridays through May 31. Cover: $10; early show cover includes a $5 Dave & Buster's Power Card Call: 589-2215

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