What the Heck? John Heckathorn

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What's next on TV? The past

The 90-Minute Century: Last Wednesday at the Bishop Museum, KGMB held a sponsor preview for its new special, "Honolulu: 100 Years in the Making."

Timed for the Honolulu Centennial, the special packs 100 years of history in 90 minutes. Some great moments: Ah Quon McElrath recalls guarding her father's okolehao in Iwilei when it was still a red-light district. Walter Dods talks about his father saving a man's life after Pearl Harbor. And a snippet from Booga Booga's Territorial Tavern days gives Rap Reiplinger a posthumous round of laughter.

At the end of the preview, the audience, which included Centennial Commission co-chairpersons Ron Wright and Linda Wong, stood and applauded. You can see it for yourself tonight on KGMB, 8 p.m.

History Lesson: It's a good month for local TV. Emme Tomimbang is frantically editing her documentary on 100 years of Filipino immigration to Hawaii. It will air in two one-hour segments on KHON, June 28 and 29.

It will remind islanders of an event called the Hanapepe Massacre. On Sept. 9, 1924, police gunned down 16 striking Filipino workers on a Kauai sugar plantation. As a result, labor activist Pablo Manlapit, the first Filipino attorney in Hawaii, was thrown into Oahu Prison, even though he wasn't on Kauai at the time.

"It seems that nobody wants to remember it," says Tomimbang. "You can't even find the graves of the men who were killed." It's time, she says, to get some closure on the event.

Chan Changes: Jackie Chan's movies draw crowds. His Ala Moana Center eatery, Jackie's Kitchen, never did. So after 2 1/2 years, Jackie has called in reinforcements -- Royce Ring and Alexander Urrunaga, two Texans who go around the globe redoing restaurants in trouble. You have to love the name of their company: Plan B.

The resuscitated restaurant will debut in August, with Chan and perhaps his Shanghai Noon co-star Owen Wilson in attendance.

Fish For Sale: If you ever ate at Big Island Steakhouse in Aloha Tower -- not everyone did, which is why it closed -- you'll remember that the dining room was festooned with stuff hanging from the ceiling. There were 40 different light fixtures and even a giant whale-shaped neon sign. It will all be auctioned off July 6 at the restaurant, in case you'd like to do some interior decoration.

The restaurant will make way for Fred Livingston's new Tower Grill. In his time, Livingston has owned Tahitian Lanai, Matteo's, Trattoria, Sunset Grill and Crouching Lion Inn. "Owning restaurants keeps me young," says the 77-year-old. "Shh, don't tell them how old I am," he says. "They'll never let me sign a 10-year lease."

Blast From the Past: Ran into singer Danny Kaleikini last week, and told him I'd just seen an old album of his, re-released as a CD. "Huh?" he said.

Called "Hilton Hawaiian Village Luau featuring Danny Kaleikini," it's vintage kitsch, with a happy tourist couple wearing outrageous aloha wear on the cover and liner notes that insist that at a luau, "natives play and sing song-stories of love and laughter."

"Oh," said Danny, "I did that 1,000 years ago." Actually in 1962, when Kaleikini was emceeing the luau, blowing the conch shell, even parading the pig through the lobby.

Kaleikini says he gets no royalties from the album. "In those days, they told you it would be good for you, good for Hawaii, and you signed. I was glad just to be working instead of parking cars."

Daydream or Nightmare? Sometimes a review tells us more about the reviewer than the play. Timothy Dyke's review of Joe Moore's "Unlikely Lawman" in the Honolulu Weekly pretty much savaged both the play and Moore -- a reviewer's prerogative.

But then Dyke found something unexpectedly positive to say: "Moore looks better packing heat than you might expect. At one point I even found myself daydreaming about what he might look like in assless chaps."

"Well, maybe he scared up some new customers for us," says Moore, who nonetheless rejected the wardrobe suggestion.

Scots But No Scotch: The Hawaiian Scottish Festival will be held next weekend. It was canceled in April because Kapiolani Park was too wet for the slightly insane athletic events -- like tossing 22-pound rocks or logs the height of telephone poles.

There'll be vendors, food and even a Scottish-themed Sunset at the Beach featuring a film called "Local Hero" with Burt Lancaster.

But there won't be any of what vice chieftain Steve Craven calls Scotland's greatest contribution to Western civilization -- Scotch whisky. "You just can't have that in Kapiolani Park," he says sadly.