will the real hawai`i please stand up?

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dateline: oZpad

9 august 1996 11:04 p.m.

Someone shoot me. This is so bad! Do they still show "One West Waikiki" on FOX anywhere else? They do here, of all places. The one market where viewers cringe in pain any time one of the actors makes a cool offhand references to King Kamehameha (the pronunciation mangled beyond belief) or when a car chase magically starts by Kualoa and in the next cut they're racing through Aina Haina -- twenty miles away! Most ironic, I think, is that the show has "Waikiki" in the name, and they rarely show it. If the director of this dramatic masterpiece defined reality, Waikiki would be a remote shore with breezy white houses and big green lawns. Come on! My 'hood isn't a concrete jungle like New York, but it's still a city. Traffic, nightclubs, cheezy trinket stores on every corner and a good population of ISPs (oZterm: "Intercourse Service Providers"). Oh, this is too much. This episode has special guests "Manpower Australia!" -- one of the touring beefcake shows that swing through town every year. I can just see the script meeting at FOX HQ: Guy One: You know what? I think we've been overdoing the gratuitous bikini girls and hula dancer shots. Guy Two: You're right. Guy One: Maybe we should introduce more intelligent female characters; women with depth, charisma, power. Guy Two: Yeah, sure. Let's be historically accurate about native Hawaiian culture while we're at it. [They laugh] Guy One: Welp... Male strippers it is. Too bad all locally filmed shows bomb. They're great for local actors and the economy in general. Okay, "Hawai`i Five-O" lasted a while, "Magnum P.I." too. But does anyone remember "Byrds in Paradise"? "Tropical Heat" (or something... I don't even remember the name of that one)? There was one more, by CBS I think... it lasted exactly two episodes. Get this... the star of the show pulls up in an Honolulu Police Department vehicle, which just happens to be an electric-blue convertible Camaro. ("Take him down to the station, and don't forget to put the top down!") They're making a movie for "Hawai`i Five-O," you know. Which reminds me... it's going to be painful seeing that "Brady Bunch" sequel. Full on 60s Hawaiian kitsch (?), grass skirts and tikis (which aren't Hawaiian, thank you) to the max. I'll wager maybe five total minutes of footage was actually filmed here. I'll also bet the rest of the scenes were shot on a Los Angeles soundstage modeled after Don Ho album covers. Hey! I missed "The X Files" tonight. Was it a repeat? Jen and I drove all the way to Anna Millers for our after-midnight snack last night. When I picked her up at Tower, I finally got to see the guy she's all hot for. Yuck. The woman has serious lapses in taste when it comes to guylust. She's got a winner of a man to marry, no doubt about it, but why she otherwise goes for goofy-looking guys is beyond me. Her "sexy boss" is just a stocky, bowlegged rocker dude, right down to the black wardrobe, Def Leppard T-shirt and tinted long hair (even though he's Chinese). Let's review her track record: She also worshipped Yuval Katz (really goofy looking), Keanu Reeves (a few tacos short of a combo meal), the actor who's now doing "Sliders" and is in "Joe's Apartment" (good, but not great) and this guy in one of her classes who was thirty-six, bearded and balding (just plain ick). She's all giddy, of course, that Derek and I are hanging out "on our own," rightfully taking credit for introducing us. I told her about my dream, and she nearly choked on her loco (heart attack in a bowl, I'm telling ya). She said at least its not as weird as my recurring Marilyn Monroe and Barney JFK assasination dream (which is too bizzare to even attempt to explain). She's now Country Goddess Jen again. "Probably the only 'out' expert on country music in this entire state," I said. You never know what people will like. Open Pages is going great, my diary entries are getting long and involved again, but the most mail I've gotten in the last couple of days has been in response to the page I whipped up for my darling Boris. Go fig (as Dot would say -- I've been in "Animaniacs" mode lately). Happy aloha Friday! Let the total slacking begin!