Howzit Howard

A muy sour tour

The saga of Hawaii Superferry is starting to remind me of Gilligan's Island. Every week there is a fresh reason why the castaways can't cast off and sail. There have been protests, lawsuits, dock damage, sickening waves, rudder damage, and, now, damage to the hull during dry-docking. It was supposed to be so simple: a three-hour tour. CEO John Garibaldi should hire a young deputy and start calling him Lil' Buddy. But one thing, little noticed, has gone Superferry's way. NCL's decision to redeploy two of its three Hawaii cruise ships could be a boon for Superferry. Some people go on cruises to gamble, get drink or gain weight. But others go for scenery, and the scenery NCL offers is for the most part the scenery Superferry offers, or will offer. A land-based Hawaii vacation that includes a Superferry trip could be, for some visitors, highly satisfactory. Maybe the Professor can figure out how to keep the company afloat long enough to benefit from that.

Are airline mergers a good idea?

Delta Air Lines spurned acquisition by US Airways less than two years ago, saying Delta would soon be worth more than what was offered. Today it is worth less. Should Delta have taken the deal? Well, if it had, its shareholders would have reaped a windfall, which they could have kept had they unloaded their shares soon after. And today the resulting airline would be back in bankruptcy. Soaring jet fuel prices have changed everything in the airline industry, making it even harder than before to make a profit. Otherwise Delta alone might indeed have been worth what Gerald Grinstein, then its CEO, said when he was rebuffing US Airways. (Grinstein, a former Burlington Northern Railway CEO, has since retired.) What about the other arguments Grinstein raised back then? That the economies of scale in an airline merger are largely illusory? The fact is, he had a point, and Delta shareholders may be about to learn that, since a merger with Northwest could come together within days. The thinking behind big airline mergers is that they can save money by cutting back flights on routes they both serve. Similar economies can be found at airports where one of the two component carriers has a hub and the other doesn't. But to merge two big airlines you need the support, or at least the acquiescence, of their unions, and the price of that support is usually a promise not to cut back their ranks, which limits any economies of scale. Further, an airline is not a railroad. If two railroads merge and look for economies of scale, another railroad isn't going to see an economy and lay new track into the same territory. For an airline, however, nothing simpler. The track is already there. You just have to deploy your engines. For example, Delta and Northwest both serve Memphis. Suppose they cut some redundant routes. What's to keep Southwest or JetBlue from jumping right in with their own flights. Nothing whatsoever, that's what. Mergers don't happen quickly and simply. They tie up management for months if not years. (Years after merging, US Airways and America West still hasn't got a merged pilot contract. Northwest is still wrestling over pilot seniority from an airline it acquired a generation ago.) The managers who are tied up with merging are the same ones who ought to be concentrating on competing with the airlines they didn't merge with. Airline mergers aren't good for passengers. They aren't good for airline employees. They aren't good for the communities served. They provide only limited short-term benefit for shareholders who dump their stock at the right moment.

The ebbing support for Hillary

Barrack Obama outpolled Hillary Clinton 3-1 in the Hawaii Democratic Caucus. What do you think this means? Until recently I would not have been surprised by either candidate winning. Obama's Hawaii ties are well-known but the Clintons, too, have generally had cordial relations with the local Democratic community. What happened, I suspect, is what's happening across the country -- Democrats, including some diehard traditional Democrats who don't personally have any problem with Hillary, see Republicans as vulnerable this year and want a Democratic nominee who can actually win. This next bit will seem off-topic but I'll tie it in. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was something called bubble gum music -- rock that appealed more to children, especially girls in their young teens, than to young adults. The Partridge Family, for example, and the early Jackson Five. From 1970 to 1975 I worked first for WNAV and then for WYRE, both in Annapolis, Md., and we took requests by phone. But most of the people who called were girls in junior high school who wanted to hear Tony Orlando & Dawn perform "Knock Three Times" or the Jackson Five do "ABC." And the problem with that was that senior high school students and young adults would punch over to another station when those records came on. The most requested records were also the records most likely to tune listeners out. They were popular, with some, but also had some "negative ratings." And that may be the issue with Hillary. If you're politically unaligned, as I am, you get spammed all the times from friends and relatives on the right and left, fowarding political attack emails, and the attack emails from conservatives make it clear that Hillary is Tony Orlando. And not everyone who opposes Clinton is a dittohead. There are some moderates who voted for Bill Clinton the avowed moderate Democrat, then felt betrayed when he seemed to delegate some issues to his wife, more of a Great Society type. You want a woman president, back someone who doesn't polarize the electorate. Something similar appears already to have happened on the Republican side, where voters seem to prefer John McCain, a Goldwater Republican, to the New Right and Religious Right alternatives they were offered. Democrats remember Goldwater for his comment that extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice, but as an unaligned American I remember him for understanding of the importance of civil liberties. You want a conservative president, back someone who doesn't polarize the electorate. BTW, some seniors support Hillary because she focuses on health care. The flaw in that logic is this: health care is going to be the dominant issue of coming years no matter who is president. Congress will do the will of the people on health care for the simple reason that so many deep-pocketed voters will be seniors who take an interest in this. Please feel free to respond. I would like to read some dissenting replies, especially persuasive ones.

Gold watch time for Fidel Castro

Most Americans can't remember a time when Fidel Castro was not the head of state of Cuba. Castro was in power for years before the Cuban Missile Crisis, something else most people can't remember. I decided to look up some comparisons that show just how long Castro has been on the world scene.  The 50th anniversary of the final overthrow of the dictator Battista arrives this coming December, but the war to overthrow him lasted years. Castro led an attack on a Cuban military barracks on July 26, 1953. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, I was exactly one month old that day. Eisenhower was the new U-S president. Ian Fleming had just published the first James Bond novel. Everest had just been conquered. The Corvette had just rolled off the assembly line for the first time, and you could still buy a Studebaker or a Nash Rambler. The Kinsey Report had not yet been issued. It would be a couple more months before the first computer with random access memory. There was a Vietnam War but it was being fought by the French. And it wasn't until December of that year that the first color TV went on sale. To give you an idea of how long ago Castro launched his military attack, here are more people born in 1953 -- William Petersen of CSI -- Tony Shahloub -- Cyndi Lauper -- Kim Basinger -- Hulk Hogan -- Pierce Brosnan -- Ben Bernanke -- Governor Lingle -- and June Jones. Fidel Castro has been around a LONG time. If you would like to feel what it was in those days, I suggest you rent the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Topaz," starring John Forsythe. It not only portrays the Cold War well, it has a Fidel Castro-like figure (played by John Vernon, the same guy who played Dean Wormer in "Animal House" years later) and another character who seems to be based on Castro's brother Raoul. I don't know if it accurately portrays Cuba in those days but it feels the way the world felt to me as a child growing up in the 1960s.

Sting and his old friends

It may seem strange since I have so much fun on the air, but in traditional environments where people have fun, like parties and dances, I am a real stick-in-the-mud. A lifetime of being an observer of events makes me feel uncomfortable in the crowd. I should be leaning against a wall taking notes. So I tend to go to concerts only when dragged to them. In the past 10 years I attended concerts by Steely Dan, Yes and Crosby Stills Nash & Young -- until last night. Bernadette loves Sting, and I recently posted about how impressed I was by the album "Brand New Day" and more recently by Sting's album devoted entirely to the pre-Baroque composer John Dowland. So I was looking forward to Sunday's "Police" reunion finale even though I got the tickets for Bernadette. Well, it was an excellent concert. Lead guitarist Andy Summers, who is in his sixties, looked the way I felt, but played like a young man. A lick or two hinted at some appreciation of jazz. (Some online research reveals he does have a jazz background and has composed soundtrack music as well.) The same could be said of percussionist Stewart Copeland, though he has that unnerving "I'm going to have a heart attack in 10 seconds, I swear to God," look that some drummers always have (even Buddy Rich did). He did a couple of things that left me wondering if he, too, has classical music affinities. (More online research: yes, and soundtrack experience, and btw he actually founded The Police.) Sting (real name Gordon Sumner) still has a remarkable voice, and he seemed genuinely happen to be performing the old repertory again. (Of the three, he has the least to prove, and he is 10 times the star the others are, but his appreciation of the abilities of the other two was palpable; in fact, I may be relying to much of my hunches but it felt like he was hearing things that told him his old friends had grown over the years.) As one who came late to some of this music, the biggest hits like "Every Breath You Take" and "Roxanne" were less interesting to some of the hard-rocking numbers that failed to penetrate my consciousness when they were new. I did not previously appreciate the importance of certain sonic choices by Summers and Copeland in establishing unique sounds for each number, something Sting has continued to do in his solo work. Even the warm-up band was good, delivering one catchy tune after another with a solid groove throughout. Anyone know more about this band? Bernadette led me out during what she felt would be the last song, knowing I would get less than three hours sleep before working this morning. It was a very kind gesture because she could have danced all night.

President ' s Day trivia

This morning, in the third hour of "Sunrise," I hit Steve and Grace with a pop quiz on presidential trivia. Want to take it? Or give it to someone? Here are the questions, including one that I dropped on the air due to time constraints:

• Name the only president who also became chief justice of the United States.
• Name the only president to serve two NON-CONSECUTIVE terms.
• Name the only president to LATER serve in Congress.
• Name the only bachelor president.
• Abe Lincoln, the first Republican president, was the GOP's second presidential nominee. Name the first.
• How many presidents were closely related to other presidents?

While you ponder the answers, if you're boning up on these things, the shortest president was James Madison and Lincoln was the tallest.  Okay, here again are the questions, this time with the answers:

• Name the only president who also became chief justice of the United States. ANSWER: William Howard Taft (better known as the fattest president, at more than 300 lbs.) became chief justice several years after his presidency and served through the Roaring Twenties. Taft had a strong legal resume. In fact, it could be argued he was better qualified to be chief justice than to be chief executive.
• Name the only president to serve two NON-CONSECUTIVE terms. ANSWER: Grover Cleveland, first elected in 1884. Defeated for re-election by Benjamin Harrison, he then unseated Harrison four years after that.
• Name the only president to LATER serve in Congress. ANSWER: John Quincy Adams served in the House of Representatives for a full 17 years after his presidency.
• Name the only bachelor president. ANSWER: James Buchanan, the president before Lincoln, never married.
• Abe Lincoln, the first Republican president, was the GOP's second presidential nominee. Name the first. (This is the question I didn't get to on the air.) ANSWER: California explorer and governor John C. Fremont.
• How many presidents were closely related to other presidents? ANSWER: You should cite two father-and-son presidents -- George W. Bush and his dad George H.W. Bush in our lifetimes, and John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams from the early years of the republic. Then there is Benjamin Harrison, whose grandfather was William Henry Harrison, who famous gave an hours-long inauguration speech in a blizzard, then caught pneumonia and died a month into his term. The tricky thing about this question is that the answer should not include Teddy Roosevelt/Franklin Delano Roosevelt. There not close relatives. There were fifth cousins, with a common ancestor only half a dozen generations back. Get this, however: Eleanor Roosevelt was a Roosevelt by blood as well as by marriage -- Teddy Roosevelt was her uncle.

Eluding the Police

Sting reunites with the Police this weekend at Blaisdell. I was too slow to get decent tickets for the first concert but learned my lesson when the Sunday show was added. The tickets were a Valentine's Day present for Bernadette, who turned me on to Sting's solo music. I needed to be turned on to Sting? Well, see, in 1975, I moved from a rock station to an all-news station, and began listening to R&B on my commute. Then, really sick of disco, I got into classical music. I never really got into rock again until the Seattle era, and I might have missed that had my daughter not brought it to my attention. So Bernadette played me Sting, years after most of his albums came out. For the first time I noticed his use of unusual time signatures, his songs that double as character sketches, the word play. I like what I like and don't give a damn what other people think -- so I'm unashamedly a fan of both Steely Dan, which is cool, and Yes, which in most circles is not -- and Sting went into the same company with his album "Brand New Day," especially the song about the lovesick pooch whose master acquired a poodle (that raps in French). Since then Sting has also recorded an entire album of John Dowland, an English composer of three centuries ago. The Police, Sting's home prior to his solo career, recorded much of merit, too, and if I can shake the flu in time and find my earplugs I'll be there. Look for the grumpy grizzled guy next to the grooving Filipina.

What ' s going on at Hilton?

Gary Seibert, Noel Trainor and Dieter Seeger, the top three Hilton executives in Hawaii, are leaving the company. Two of them -- Seibert and Seeger -- are retiring, while Trainor, who has 24 years with the company, appears to be resigning to pursue other interests. Seibert is the senior Hilton executive in Hawaii, Trainor is general manager of Hilton Hawaiian Village, and Seeger is general manager of Hilton Waikoloa Village. The simultaneous departures of three men who never previously behaved like the Three Amigos -- Trainor and Seeger both worked for years under Peter Schall, but rarely on the same island, while Seibert came in from Chicago less than three years ago when Schall retired. What could have driven three diverse guys to depart at the same moment in Hilton's history? Trainor may be a special case. He was passed over for promotion once when Peter Schall retired; if he thought he was going to be passed over again, he may have decided it was time to see what the rest of the world offered. Trainor married local and has two daughters going to Kamehameha Schools -- he's not moving. And he has a lot to give to any local enterprise that needs his skills. Seeger, who has 35 years in the company and is able to retire, has spent a lot of years in Hawaii -- including a Hilton-branded hotel on Maui and Turtle Bay when it was a Hilton. The Waikoloa campus has performed well under his management. Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Hilton Hotels Corp. was acquired last fall by The Blackstone Group. The strangest thing about the nearly simultaneous departure the entire senior management in Hawaii is this: that neither Blackstone or Hilton headquarters management did anything to prevent it. It would have made sense to try to keep at least one of these guys to stay on a little longer for continuity. The only way it would not be sensible is if Hilton's new management holds these fellows in low regard and is happy to see them go. If that's the case, they may be in for some unpleasant surprises when they send in the hotshots they think can do better.

Isn ' t it romantic?

Honolulu Symphony Pops maestro Mat Catingub is preparing for the 2008 Hawaii Romance Festival. Catingub has found a niche that promotes tourism, promotes local musical talent, and showcases his own abilities, by focusing on the modern equivalent of liebeslieder -- love songs. Such songs are often among the best written lyrics of modern culture, as well as some of the best music. Consider Cole Porter's "In the Still of the Night." It is not the only love song filled with yearning, but it also expresses poignantly low expectations. The musical climax does not occur at the end, or on the words "I love you," but in the middle of the song, on the question, "Do you love me?" And then it subsides into doubt and resignation, so gently and softly you can hear a heart break. Consider, to veer into R&B, "Midnight Train to Georgia." For years I appreciated this song only for its humor -- the Pips sometimes sing more than Gladys Knight does (and, I recall, once performed the song on TV without Knight, a fascinating event) and throw in a "Woo, woo!" after one of the references to the train -- but more recently it has seemed more poignant, considering the sacrifice of one who abandons a dream to be with one's love. The festival helps to fill the void left by the death of Hawaii International Jazz Festival founder Abe Weinstein, provides extra employment for members of the Honolulu Symphony, offers opportunities for local Hawaiian music stars to show their ballad chops, and brings some famous mainland stars to Hawaii as well. Catingub, who lures big names in part because he is a gifted arranger who can give singers a full orchestra backdrop to songs they usually perform with leaner resources, has again lined up a mix of mainland and local talent. Just look at the festival schedule as of today:

• Friday, May 2: Opening ceremonies at Iolani Palace with the Matt Catingub Orchestra of Hawaii performing outdoors. Aaron Mahi -- the former music director of the Royal Hawaiian Band and husband of Cathy Foy -- will do the blessing, and Kahu Curtis Kekuna will perform a renewal of vows. Free.
• Saturday, May 3: Four James Beard award winning chefs including Alan Wong contributes dishes to a dinner and dance to benefit a local charity.
• Sunday, May 4: Jake Shimabukuro, Amy Hanaiali'i and other U.S., Japanese and Korean vocalists perform at the Waikiki Shell.
• Monday, May 5: In conjunction with the Hawaii International Film Festival, a special screening of the wide-screen version of "Gone With the Wind," on its 70th anniversary, plus a Q&A with Ann Rutherford, who play Scarlett's younger sister Careen.
• Tuesday, May 6: The Romance Center Induction Dinner will spotlight "Gone With the Wind" and another movie as well as two novels and two TV shows; two romance-promoting chefs will be inducted, too, in an event to raise funds for children's literacy in Hawaii.
• Wed/Thu, May 7-8: Nick and Nina Clooney again host an evening of the most romantic songs ever written, performed by various singers at the Hawaii Theatre.
• Friday, May 9: Many of the men who perform on Catingub's album "Back to Romance" will perform at the Shell with Catingub's full orchestra; also performing will be Smokey Robinson. (I'm not kidding when I say there is a romantic aspect to "Tears of a Clown," one of my favorite Motown hits, and I hope he performs it.)
• Saturday, May 10: Gladys Knight and Aaron Neville headline a large cast for an evening of "The Rhythm of Romance" at Blaisdell.
• Sunday, May 11: A dinner and fashion show with music and dancing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel will honor Mother's Day and raise money for the Race for the Cure.

For more information, and to make sure you see the latest information, you can go to http://www.hawaiiromancefestival.com. Tickets go on sale Valentine's Day.

Community colleges rock

This week, for the second year, it was my pleasure to give a talk on Hawaii's economy at Kapiolani Community College, the school on the ridge in back of Diamond Head. Again, despite the fact that it was given at lunchtime between classes, it was well-attended, and the questions were excellent, even by the high standard I'm accustomed to here. It reminded me that babyboomers who look down their noses on community colleges don't realize how far two-year schools have come, not to mention the students who attend them. In a age of straitened financial circumstances, many students work for a living, and don't really have time to go to school, because they are hungry for the education. And that's the kind of people who go to community colleges these days -- motivated people. Hawaii in particular has a strong community college system, with teachers who care and students who totally get the important of taking something away from the experience. The next favorable development I await is for people who do not have a financial need for more education choosing to undertake classes anyway, because education is good for itself, not just for what it may buy you.