Hot Picks
Stage

Muggle from Another Mother

Stage

Stage / Roald Dahl–you know, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory–also penned a fanciful, albeit subversive tale called The Twits, about a grotesque old couple bent on capturing Muggle-Wumps from an exotic, faraway, tropical forest to turn them into a circus act. Professional voice actor John Gruhler plays the narrator (on stilts!) accompanied by a highly trained and talented cast and crew of local professionals, including three members of Hawaii Theatre Center’s Junior Ensemble as the loveable Muggle-Wumps.


Concerts & Clubs

Drink For Loungevity

Concerts & Clubs

Concerts & Clubs / Back when Downbeat Diner & Lounge opened in 2011, it quickly established itself as the best spot in Chinatown for a cheap bite and beer. Only thing, they didn’t have the lounge part (yet).


Museums

Top Shelf Freak Show

Museums

Museums / Stand between Serious Fun, Thurston Twigg-Smith’s collection of unconventional art and Little Worlds: Video Sculptures by Tony Oursler, in a nearby gallery, and you’re in the midst of some of the wackiest, most-heretical contemporary art the Honolulu Museum of Art has shown in years. Twigg-Smith, the mega-rich, polarizing and political former publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser is also a renowned art collector of international artists.


Extras

Women’s Day

Extras

Extras / There are some phrases that will never lose their thunder. “Girl power” is one of them.


Galleries

Art Birds

Galleries

Galleries / Correction: The title for this event is First Light Last Light. The original article is below.


Outside

Heavy Chase

Outside

Outside / In the TV series Shaq vs, the cocky NBA Champ would take on other elites such as Tyson Gay on the track and Michael Phelps in the pool. Of course, the opponents would be handicapped to give the out-of-shape former Laker a fighter’s chance.


Learning

Place of Mind

Learning

Learning / The dictionary defines the word topophilia as “The feeling of affection which individuals have for particular places.” It’s also the name of an incredibly influential and versatile book by philosopher, teacher and innovator Yi-Fu Tuan, who will hold a rare public lecture, “Cultural Diversity and the Ideal of Progress.” The talk will range from how we study landscapes to how we study ourselves, exploring the aesthetic and moral dimensions of human culture, the meanings of home, place, wilderness, human goodness, art and the environment. Tuan’s work in human geography–he was the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for scholars in geography–has reconfigured the way we view the relationships between space and society–a concept obviously relevant to Hawaii.


Festivals & Fairs

You Had Me at Yogi

Festivals & Fairs / Surfers love yoga almost as much as they love barrels. Getting loose and finding balance enhances game in the water.


Concerts & Clubs

Lonely No More

Concerts & Clubs

Concerts & Clubs / Texican rock ’n’ roll is not that common in Honolulu, despite your best friend’s drunken karaoke version of “Heaven,” by Los Lonely Boys. The brothers of LLB–Henry, JoJo and Ringo–took home a Grammy in 2005 for the song.


Concerts & Clubs

Sunsets with Sossamon

Concerts & Clubs

Concerts & Clubs / Go back to A Knight’s Tale and think about the sweet face of Shannyn Sossamon, the only reason a guy could get into that musically blasphemous, medieval Heath Ledger chick flick. She also starred in the short-lived CBS vampire drama Moonlight with Alex O’Laughlin before he was Steve McGarrett.


Extras

Meteor(b)ites

Extras

Extras / In April, a crew of six will fly over to the Big Island for a mock Martian mission near Mauna Loa for four months. “There are parts of the Big Island that are very Mars- and moon-like, in their physical nature,” says Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) researcher Kim Binstead.


Stage

Hero-bayashi

Stage

Stage / When was the last time you stopped to ask yourself what it means to be American? This morning, stuck in the Middle Street merge?


Learning

Taking Direction

Learning

Learning / American director Ramin Bahrani is one of independent cinema’s most exciting voices–one worth listening to. The auteur behind Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo and upcoming At Any Price starring Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron, Bahrani will lead Narrative Filmmaking with Ramin Bahrani, engaging attendees in a hands-on workshop over the course of a weekend.


Concerts & Clubs

No FXing Around

Concerts & Clubs

Concerts & Clubs / Punks, parties and politics go hand in hand (in hand) when it comes to NOFX. The 30-year-old group of misfits (an impressive run for a band that never signed to a major label), currently on tour in support of their 12th studio album, Self Entitled, isn’t done yet–they just released their 30th-anniversary limited edition LP box set and will tear it up at The Republik this Saturday night.


Go Ape Sh*#

There are highbrow music fans who appreciate Bonobo’s chilled-out, downtempo, intelligent symphonic trance, and those who want earfuls of electronic funk. Weekend revelers who decide to check out award-winning DJ/producer and Bonobo founder Simon Green are in for both when he takes over the table at Space Truckin’, thirtyninehotel’s monthly music showcase.


Galleries

A High of 85

Galleries

Galleries / It’s been 85 years since the Honolulu Printmakers (HP) first assimilated, and they’re celebrating their Annual Exhibition: 85 appropriately with “85,” a theme on which artists can riff any way they want. Juror Hiroki Morinoue says, “[The theme] was a surprise, especially on a state-juried show, but we’re looking at the quality of work in general.” The Big Island artist is the first local artist in 25 years invited by HP to jury the show.


Extras

Tuesday Night Fever

Extras / Mercury is the planet closest to the sun, which is a star, which could be YOU! The star of the golden-hued Mercury stage, that is.


Stage

Heads Will Roll

Stage

Stage / The second production in Hawaii Opera Theatre’s brief season is Dialogues of the Carmelites–evocative and eloquent, despite cataloguing the deaths of 16 nuns at the guillotine during the French Revolution. Francis Poulenc was 58 when he wrote both libretto and music, and he knew his craft well.


Stage

Float On

Stage

Stage / In 1940, writer and illustrator Armstrong Sperry published a book that set children’s imaginations on fire. In it, a young Polynesian boy, Mafatu, battles the mighty ocean alone, his only companions a little yellow dog and an albatross.


Galleries

The Friend Zone

Galleries

Galleries / Artist Adam Funari and photographer Michael Keany get by with a little help from their 200 Friends. The upcoming exhibition showcases 200 photographs and monotypes of some familiar faces that create a single multi-faceted portrait of Chinatown’s diverse arts scene.


Concerts & Clubs

Cupid Crooners

Concerts & Clubs

Concerts & Clubs / K-Ci and JoJo, Blackstreet, Shai and Bobby V will rock the house at Soul Sessions Vol. 4, a Valentine’s Day serenade and ode to the closeness and comfort of yesteryear’s R&B.


Festivals & Fairs

Come Together

Festivals & Fairs

Festivals & Fairs / Bring yourself, a sweetheart or the whole family, but–most importantly–bring your appetite. It’s time for that other private-school festival everybody loves: Kamehameha Schools’s 83rd Annual Hoolaulea.


Museums

Beyond the Barracks

Museums

Museums / Switch on FOX, HLN or CNN. See their coverage of warfare, the poker-faced weight of it.


Festivals & Fairs

Wow Factor

Festivals & Fairs

Festivals & Fairs / For many, the week around Valentine’s Day doesn’t have anything to do with roses. It means it’s time again to the paint the town Pow Wow.


Extras

The Vinyl Countdown

Extras

Extras / Listening to an album on vinyl can be downright addictive. That feeling of anxiety as you thumb through sleeves at a record shop; the moment your eyes fall upon the beautiful cover art of your favorite band’s best album; the frustration of hitting every red light on your way home so that you can hear that needle finally get into the record’s groove–there’s nothing quite like it.


This week

Derelict Downtown

For as long as we can remember, Chinatown has been notorious for drugs, homelessness and filthy streets. Some claim nothing has changed–and that it never will.

Sweet Ride

Bicyclists have long been overlooked by four-wheel riders on Honolulu’s congested streets. In the gleaming, armored pecking order of the road, cyclists are too often dismissed as lane hogs, hand-signaling nuisances and unfortunates who can’t afford cars.

Hoopili miss

The fate of some 1,525 acres of land at Hoopili in ‘Ewa may have been decided last Wednesday in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. The decision might have gone differently, but the appellant attorneys’ strategy seemed to collapse as Judge Rhonda Nishimura picked it apart based on technical errors.

Housing First $

Last Thursday, May 9, the Caldwell administration revealed its action plan for solving Honolulu’s homeless problem. But at the City Council’s budget meeting the same day, Budget chair Ann Kobayashi wanted to know where the money for “Housing First” (see Cover Story, pg.

Do it Wright

The Mayor Wright Housing project has been slated for major redevelopment by the Hawaii State Housing Authority (HSHA); requests for qualifications will be going out to developers in three to six months. Nonprofit group Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE) wants to make sure the project’s tenants have a say in the redevelopment process, which could include major renovations or a total rebuild.

Street Disconnect

The Honolulu City Council held a special Committee on Transportation meeting on Tuesday, May 7, to go over its Complete Streets initiative with input from the department directors of Design and Construction (DDC), Planning and Permitting (DPP) and Transportation Services (DTS). At prior meetings, including the Moiliili workshop, community members pressed the idea of combining Complete Streets with Caldwell’s repaving projects, which Dan Burden of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute and some councilmembers have said makes sense.

Stopping Growth

Not much to agree with my friend Doc Berry (“Limits of Growth,” April 17). None of the scenarios he posits will ever materialize.

Get it together

In your Diary of May 8 (“End of the 27th)” you reported on SB 1214, passed by the Legislature. In their nimble way, the Legislature tacked the wheel boot prohibition on a bill that was intended to abolish the Commission on Transportation.

Look both ways

On Friday, May 3, at 3:45 p.m., I was driving town bound through the Wilson tunnel on the Likelike. I was parallel to another car, and there were several other cars following closely behind me.

Thank you!

Congratulations Honolulu Weekly on the recent Pai award for investigative reporting (“Boss GMO,” Jan. 4, 2012).

Truth be told

When the biofuel guys say that costs are “confidential” (“Big-foot Biofuel,” May 8), I reply that since I am the one who is going to end up paying the cost, I have a right to know. Frankly, when everybody tries to hide the costs, I smell rat …

Nature’s beauty

The Foster Botanical Garden never ceases to inspire for an urban setting it is like a step back in time (“See the Flora,” May 8). If Koko Crater Botanical Garden contains the world’s largest plumeria collection as suggested, it may be thanks in part to the Prussian born Dr.