For decades Bill Maher has pushed the boundaries of political satire with TV shows like “Politically Incorrect” and his current “Real Time” on HBO. Maher is also a bestselling author, his newest book, The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.
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.
The Weekly interviewed District 1 city councilman Tom Berg back in July [see “Rail Done Right,” July 6], well before the police were called to a Waipahu Neighborhood Board meeting when he refused to stand down, and an allegedly drunken argument took place with APEC security details. At the time, it was hard not to agree with a lot of what he had to say about the rail project’s misgivings.
Q&A / Last week, fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg visited her brand new haute spot in Hawaii–the first DVF store in the Islands. She spoke to the Weekly about her signature wrap dresses, Hillary Clinton, the secret to confidence and why she doesn’t find it in plastic surgery.
Email interviews are usually impersonal, dry, lacking in zzha zzha zzhoo. So when I had the “opportunity” to exchange e-mails with one of my all time favorite songwriters, I was a little bummed and a bit skeptical that some publicist was going to insert agenda-inspired comments as a boring reply.
Q & A / As co-sponsor of Act 55, which established the Public Land Development Corp. (PLDC), state Sen.
The Descendants is a stunning movie, full of surprises, its visual sweep and rhythm tied to Hawaiian music, its pacing as changeable as the weather and tragicomic adventures of our days. She knew it would be true to Hawaii, author Kaui Hart Hemmings told the Weekly, when they were filming on Kauai and it rained.
Shailene Woodley Speaking by phone from Texas on a day set aside for media interviews, Shailene Woodley, 20, who plays Alexandra, Matt King’s 17-year-old daughter, sounds as fresh and spontaneous as if this is her first call of the day (it’s not). “Aloha,” she says.
Celia Kenney At Town, her father Ed’s restaurant, we caught up with 13-year-old Celia Kenney, a Punahou 8th grader who plays Reina, the “bad example” pal of Scottie in the film. Do you think the film toned down Reina’s character a bit?
Star-Advertiser columnist Lee Cataluna just released her first novel Three Years on Doreen’s Sofa. She took some time out from studying for her MFA in Creative Writing at UC-Riverside Palm Desert Campus to talk with the Weekly about the book, her writing process and her impending cult status in prisons.
An international conference takes place Wednesday, Nov. 9, and is designed to bring attention to Pacific Island peoples’ struggle against APEC and globalization.
It’s easy to recognize Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants, of which the movie version opens this month, in Morning Brew, a Kailua coffee house. Standing a bit apart, wearing a faded jean jacket, she is slight of stature, but has the outsize presence of the extra pretty and smart.
Your book alternates between sessions in dusty library archives and the surf. Did you get in the water today?
The Queen and I: A story of dispossessions and reconnections in Hawai’i by Sydney Lehua Iaukea University of California Press, 2011 $24.95 Cross-cutting between territorial and contemporary Hawaii, Sydney Lehua Iaukea’s brilliant memoir/ historical expose provides a gripping and revelatory read, endowed with all the trappings of romance, melodrama and ghost story. There’s a mysterious old family portrait, two young heiresses robbed of their birthright growing up in poverty, and Iaukea’s discovery of uncovered chapters in Hawaiian history, in the long-forgotten papers of her great-great-grandfather, Curtis P.
Will Wiesenfeld, aka Baths, was classically trained in piano from age four. When he got bored with piano, he did what any twelve-year-old (or pirate) would do: abandon ship.
How did you decide what would be on the dessert menu? How did we decide?
Most people don’t consider P.F. Chang’s high-pedigree.
It’s Sunday morning, and a fresh-faced Dee Jay Mailer is unloading the car with her husband Donny, carrying in bags of Hawaii-produced groceries for their Eat Local week. Mailer joined Kanu Hawaii’s Eat Local Challenge as an individual, but she says she’s also found a serendipitous connection with her role as CEO of Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate (KSBE), which owns about half the farmland in the state and is implementing a strategic agricultural plan to increase Hawaii’s food independence.
Book / I am listening to Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. You know the main theme: flutes, drums, chants and war cries, and then the mariachi-surf guitar comes in.
Julio Cesar Miranda / July 5: Rest and relaxation may have been on many people’s post Fourth of July agenda, but Waipahu’s own Brian Viloria was up at 4:30 in the morning ready to partake in a 7-mile jog. Following a workout and spar session, in preparation for his title fight against WBO Flyweight Champion, Julio Cesar Miranda, the “Hawaiian Punch” spoke with the Weekly from Los Angeles about why he doesn’t talk trash before a fight, what it’s like to play the underdog role and what it will take for the two-time world champion to get title number three.
R. Zamora Linmark / Rolling the R’s author R. Zamora Linmark returns to Honolulu to promote his second novel Leche, a compelling and often funny tale of a young, gay Filipino.
Shawn Steiman’s mother apparently wasn’t worried about her son rocketing off the walls from heavy caffeine dosage. Her lax regulation of his coffee intake–starting before fifth grade–led to his life as the coffee world’s equivalent of a sommelier.
Anne Burrell / With her bleached, spiky blond hair, Anne Burrell is Food Network’s female version of Guy Fieri. She has her own series, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, and co-hosts Worst Cooks in America, which puts home cooks through culinary bootcamp.
KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance / A 26-story condo/hotel proposed by Kyo-ya Hotels and Resorts for the lot between the old Moana Hotel and Kuhio Beach Park will be the target of a grassroots protest organized by KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance. The public is invited.
Drew Astolfi is the state director of Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE) Hawaii–a grassroots, faith-based organization founded in 1996 to work on social issues in our community. Its statewide membership reflects Hawaii’s cultural and socio-economic diversity.
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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