[This was published in the "Not Honolulu Weekly" column of the 06/14/00 issue of the Honolulu Weekly. This is the letter (more or less) that I used to pitch the idea of the column to editor Stu Dawrs. He emailed saying that the idea for the column sounded good, but how to introduce it to the readers? I told him to just run the pitch letter! And he did! -- Doug]
Yo Stu,
Congrats on your new chair. Now you'll besieged by friends, relatives, and fucked-up drunks pitching all kinds of weird shit.
Anyway, I have this idea...
What I've always thought the Honolulu Weekly needed was some kind of regularly occurring thingie (column, that's what it's called) about everything and anything as long as it has nothing at all to do with Honolulu. The "NOT Honolulu Weekly," a column about issues, art, politics, whatever at all happening anywhere and everywhere but Honolulu. Los Angeles, Paris, Cordoba, Dakar, Jakarta, Kabul, Kingston, Suva...and of course, Cozad.
I mean, what makes Honolulu Honolulu? For one as worldly as you, well, you've been there done that...etc. so you know the answer so that's why you're the editor. But what are we ignorant local guys to make about the goings on in our town? How do we put all this into perspective?
Here's the scenario:
Okay, so the Weekly reader turns to the movie listing to see what's playing and here's the list of movies. Well, is that a lot of movies or not? Who knows? What we got is what we got. Let's see a list of all the movies playing in Los Angeles! I know, not fair, that's where they make movies, plus they got a lot more people. So you'd expect Los Angeles to have more movies playing, but how much more? Guess. C'mon guess! C'mon. Eighty one! Eighty one movies playing in Los Angeles versus 33 here in Honolulu. Albuquerque-Santa Fe has 43.
This is something to make readers go, "Hmmm..." Or even, "guh?" Either way is okay with me.
There must be those in town who wonder about such things. Another for instance: What songs constitute the Top 40 in Kingston, Jamaica? You'd think there'd be a lot of reggae on that list, right? Wrong!
The Honolulu Academy of Arts has a pretty cool exhibit of Egyptian antiquities. Wonder what they're exhibiting in Cairo. My guess is Egyptian antiquities, but who knows? Where are they displaying Hawaiian antiquities? Probably the British Museum where all the Egyptian, Hawaiian, and everyone else's antiquities ended up. (By the way, the slogan of the British Museum is, "Illuminating world cultures." I guess "illuminating" sounds better than "strip-mining." Their homepage features a Moai from Rapa Nui. I kid you not. Take a look: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/. )
And there's stuff Out There that we don't have here. Truck stops. There seems to be a recurring character in movies at least since Bonnie and Clyde: The 17 year old truck stop waitress who will do absolutely ANYTHING to get out of the place. I'd like to find such a person and ask the really crucial questions, "What's the price of lunch, what's a good tip, and why are you dying to be anywhere else?"
Let's see, where am I? Oh yeah, here's something: Someone sent me a poem about Vieques, the Puerto Rican target island. Beautiful, man. And something about that sounded familiar, you know what I mean? Okay, so I print it (meaning you print it in the column).
Aha! You see? It's called Not Honolulu Weekly, but everything in it is tied to what's happening here in Honolulu this very week! What a gimmick! The venue is the entire world! No, the whole damned Universe! Unfadeable! What a wonderful dilemma: overabundance.
So the typical Not Honolulu Weekly would be a mini Honolulu Weekly except without any mention of Harris, Hannemann, Mirikitani, Fasi, et al. At the same time, completely tied in to what is happening here.
How do we let readers know what the column is about? Just keep reiterating, "it's NOT about Honolulu, it's about how Honolulu is like or not like places that are NOT Honolulu." As Buddha said, "Repetition is the key to success." No, wait -- that was Pavlov.
Of course, since it is the NOT Honolulu Weekly, I wouldn't be able to write or comment about anything here in Honolulu. I mean, it's good that South Carolina legislature decided to remove the Confederate battle flag from atop their Statehouse , but I don't know why the whole flag questioning issue didn't lead to some discussion here about why the Union Jack should be on our state flag. As I say, I wouldn't be able to mention such things except by apophasis.
So that's the basic idea. But you know, this is a completely altruistic suggestion -- I'm not saying I should do the column. You know my writing style, I leave skidmarks, but I've never gone completely off the road yet.
I'm suggesting it 'cuz it'd be fun to READ. I don't know who you could get to do it, probably someone with a computer, bottle of wine, and a regular job so he wouldn't be hitting you up for $$$ -- someone who just wants to impress the girls in the office with his byline.
Whatever. It's late, my glass is empty, and I gotta go to work tomorrow. Talk to you later.
P.S. One thing though, I don't know if something like this should run weekly. After a while the writer would feel like he's being clubbed to death. But hey, it's up to you.