Stage / Recipe for a play: take one book of poetry, preferably plump and fully-grown, with a crop full to bursting. Grasp it by a wing lest it escape, squawking, back onto your shelves.
Galleries / For youngsters growing up in Honolulu before the Hawaiian Renaissance revived an eye and an ear for our own traditions, Paul Gauguin’s “Two Nudes on a Tahitian Beach” in the Honolulu Academy of Arts made art relevant to our daily lives. If the models in this large oil painting had been wearing bikinis, they could, with the sandbar and shorebreak behind them, have been contemporary girls in Waianae or along the North Shore.
The seductive singer-dancer-actor Ben Vereen won back-to-back Tony Awards for his unforgettable roles as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar in 1972 and as the lead in Pippin in 1973, and was recently on Broadway in I’m Not Rappaport and Wicked. On TV, he played Chicken George in the series Roots and Wayne Brady’s father in How I Met Your Mother.
Music / As a local radio DJ, I am fortunate to have access to a large collection of Hawaiian music. I’m either checking out a newly released album or admiring an old favorite, whether on vinyl, on cassette or on CD.
Concert Review / There’s something really wonderful about the acoustics of the Hawaii Theatre. The sound always seems huge and lively, but you never leave the venue with that annoying ring in your ears from having been exposed to high sound levels.
What’s it take to win the Honolulu Weekly Fiction Contest? Nothing short of an intriguing, beautifully crafted story with a local edge.
How will you spend your New Year’s? Getting together with old friends and creating sweet new memories?
A small, red-lettered sign leads guests into a driveway where a single lantern stands, illuminating a charming pale-pink house with a white fence. Stairs traverse a wide, high-ceilinged space.
Art / The Honolulu Academy of Art is famous for the quality of its Asian art collection and the shows it puts together, so it’s easy to take “Masterpieces of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City” for granted. That truly definitive art from China’s Forbidden City is on display for regular people in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a kind of satisfaction in and of itself–but only if you make the visit.
Holly Jolly Garments! It’s an unwritten rule: Buy someone clothing, be sure it comes with a gift receipt.
Cheers Couture Diane Von Furstenberg, Aloha Rag, milk & honey The occasion: “The Cocktail.” In this economy, it’s natural for someone to want to get glam and Occupy Bar once in a while, right? Go all out in high fashion style with haute shops like the new Diane Von Furstenberg or the exclusive boutique collections at milk & honey and Aloha Rag that are sure to turn heads (they did on the Parisian runways, anyway).
Soak Up The Sun Local Motion, Pualani, Hawaiian Island Creations The occasion: “The Beach.” Okay, living in Hawaii, it’s something of a strain to consider going to the beach an “occasion.” That’s why getting dressed for it is akin to slipping on a pair of socks. Going to the beach is like any other thing.
Sweat Some Style Lululemon, HNL Fight Shop, American Apparel The occasion: “Da Gym.” Between treadmills and bench presses, they won’t really need you to look good, thankfully. But you can still help them in the process.
DJ Paul Oakenfold deserves his own star sign. Right there in between something fierce like Leo and Scorpio–his sonic gravity is just that powerful.
Philanthropic gifts are those that truly keep on giving. They can’t break, go out of style or be exchanged for a different size.
Explore. Enjoy.
Walk the Walk Honolulu Aids Walk Volunteer with the Life Foundation, a local organization that provides services to those living with HIV/AIDS, (as well as free HIV testing and education), during the 21st annual Honolulu AIDS Walk at the Kapiolani Park Bandstand on Sunday, April 15, 2012. Performances, food, prizes and family fun follow the 5K.
Clean a Beach Local Foundations Take your family and friends to participate in a beach cleanup: There is a cleanup almost every weekend if you explore opportunities with the Surfrider Foundation, Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, Adopt-A-Beach Hawaii and Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawaii (B.E.A.C.H.). Surfrider’s offering a Holiday Gift Member Package that includes a one-year membership, a bar of Matunas natural wax, a bamboo wax comb and six issues of Making Waves.
Gift Guide / There are many amazing local non-profits. Here are just a few inspirational organizations that could use your physical or financial gifts.
Greener Than Your Tree Akihiko Izukura For those who need to embrace their inner Heather Brown or Solomon Enos, turn up your own creative gift ideas with resourceful and beautiful expressions of appreciation. The Honolulu Academy of Arts offers an exclusive opportunity to work with Japanese textile artist Akihiko Izukura, whose philosophy on art includes a reflection dedicated to zero waste.
Holiday Gift Guide / Jewelry 101 Bead It! DIY jewelry can make a great gift, but why not take it one step further and offer to “repair” your loved ones’ broken jewelry?
Holiday Gift Guide / Just Brew It Homebrew in Paradise If you’ve ever worked in a brewpub, you might’ve hoped you could one day fill the shoes of the brew master. Thanks to Homebrew in Paradise, you can find supplies and ingredients for making your first batch–over two-dozen types of hops and over three-dozen kinds of grains.
There’s a swell on the horizon. Listen closely and you’ll hear it…AUDIO INVASION 2012.
It’s been a while, but a man donning dresses and surgical gowns, spouting rap-rock assaults over a bed of crunchy guitars, has drifted back into the sunbeam of MTV like a forgotten fleck of light. With the spastic delivery of a fallen patient from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Matt Shultz, lead singer of Cage The Elephant, is channeling the preeminent poster-child of grunge–Kurt Cobain.
Boys, beaches, bags of weed. In 2010, Best Coast blazed onto the music scene with a sealed Zip-lock of 7” singles that led the indie pop duo to roll out a fatty debut record called Crazy For You.
So what do you do if you’re a band who made it big in the L.A. hardcore-punk scene with several critically acclaimed self-titled albums under your belt?
Last Thursday, Foster the People sent news through their publicist that they won’t be performing at Audio Invasion 2012 due to “unforeseen circumstances.” (They’ll return to Hawaii on March 18.) Rumors are their two Grammy noms for Best Alternative Album and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance led to their cancellation. What a let down.
On Jan. 26, members of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) Finance Committee mostly sat in silence while listening to an earful from Wynnie Joy-Hee of Mililani, who said that she had taken the bus all the way into town at 7am to address the issue of how her tax money is being spent.
HART intends to hire an executive director as early as March 1, 2012. The semi-autonomous agency is currently headed by interim executive director Toru Hamayasu, who is also a candidate for the permanent position The ED’s salary has been estimated to be within the range of $150,000 to $350,000, and HART has allotted $300,000 for the position thus far, Vice Chair Ivan Lui Kwan told the City Council Committee on Transportation on Jan.
Poor communication between the union and the teachers themselves, on top of a general sense of mistrust, were blamed for the overwhelming rejection of the Hawaii State Teacher’s Association (HSTA) contract last week–an unprecedented two-thirds voted against the union-backed contract. The president of the teachers’ union, Will Okabe, quickly took the blame, stating in a Jan.
The “war on terror” has taken a bite out of beach access on Kauai, where the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) has kept five miles of westside shoreline off-limits since Sept. 11, 2001.
A bill that would require bags of roasted coffee sold in Hawaii to list the place where each type of coffee it contains was grown, and its percentage by weight in descending order, was introduced to the state legislature by Sen. Josh Green.
In September of 2011, the Weekly ran a piece highlighting one of Hawaii’s most dangerous invasive threats: the dreaded brown tree snake. Following up on Gov.
HART Board: The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit will meet and take public testimony before convening an executive session. For more info, contact the project hotline at 566-2299 or e-mail [email: info].
[Jan. 18: “Cheap Advice”] Robert Kiyosaki did not talk, or attend.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] The anti-rail pundits are right of course.
I propose that President Obama devote the remainder of his presidency to doing something useful, which would be to seek out all the crooks on Wall Street and Washington who have contributed to the sorry state of the economy in this country. Obviously he has not lived up to the expectations of a president and continues to perform as if Saul Alinksy was a member of his cabinet and the United Nations was his political platform.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] Traffic follows commercial development.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] To all those opposed to the “rail.” You are the very people who will be in gridlock on the freeway, not able to move.
I was delighted to read the new USDA guidelines requiring schools to serve meals with twice as many fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, less sodium and fat and no meat for breakfast. The guidelines were mandated by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act signed by President Obama in December of 2010 and will go into effect within the next school year.
[Jan. 25: “Kyo-Ya-Ya”] Making an exception on zoning sets a dangerous precedence that will undoubtedly be followed by other properties.
The protests last year of Turtle Bay’s expansion plans highlight the challenge facing us in Hawaii. We need to find a way to balance the need for new, upgraded hotel and timeshare offerings that visitors are increasingly seeking with the desire by nearly all residents to protect the remaining undeveloped areas of the island.
[Jan. 25: “Gridlock”] If the plan is to create a second city in West Oahu, I would consider that to be an urban center.
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