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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: PTO preparations</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @KennyKharisma2.0, who may need to stay home for a few days.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: PTO preparations

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Sterling Higa

Columnists

Stand-up comedian Tumua is doing crowd work somewhere on the Mainland, and 

 from the audience. The guy is from Kauaʻi, not born and raised, but “flown there, grown there.” He hasn’t lived there in nine years. While Tumua works the crowd, the guy shouts “chee hoo.” Tumua says, “That’s a solid chee hoo, man.” He does it again. Tumua has to shush him.

It’s a small moment, and Tumua plays it off with dry affection. The guy is playing out what he remembers of a place he left nine years ago. Much of the crowd never lived there at all.

Frank De Lima didn’t have that problem performing locally. Most of his audience hadn’t left. They were in the room — sharing the same plate lunch memories, cringing at the same accents, laughing because every joke was an inside joke. This wasn’t an introduction to local culture. It was a reminder, a celebration, even a reinforcement.

The plantation village was a truly different kind of place — shared land, shared labor, ethnic groups pressed close together with no way out. Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Hawaiians were all crowded into the same neighborhoods and schools. What came out of it — the food, the humor, the pidgin — came from people who couldn’t opt out of each other.

Even as that world was dissolving, people reached back for its symbols. By 1978, a political movement called Palaka Power had taken the plantation worker’s cloth as its name — a clear link to the past. The Palaka Power 

 said so plainly. The writers also noted, in the same breath: the ILWU was declining, sugar and pine would soon be gone, the Democrats of the ‘54 Revolution had mostly left the arena. They chose the symbol precisely because the reality was already receding. The myth was always partly constructed. But it was backed, then, by people who had actually 

The built world that replaced the plantation village included public housing, suburbs, and apartments. The Mainland has all of those. And then came radio, television, the internet, smartphones, and eventually TikTok.

Stand in the Sandy Beach parking lot on a Saturday. A kid near the lifeguard stand is hitting a vape and dancing to a song trending in Atlanta. The shaka sticker on the bumper is working harder than it used to. But social media didn’t cause any of this. It arrived to find the flattening of culture mostly finished and has been tracking it ever since.

The audience for local content skews diaspora: Aunties in Vallejo, Kalihi kids now in Las Vegas, people holding onto something they can’t quite name.

Nostalgia is real. But it runs in one direction. You can package a memory and ship it to Fresno. What you can’t do is put it back. A friend put it plainly: are we our own cover band?

Distinct cultures are not accidents. They grow from particular people living side by side. The plantation village wasn’t a brand. It was a neighborhood. The shaka sticker can travel, but the neighborhood can’t. Something real is lost when a place becomes content.

. He’s reaching for something he actually had, once. What is it, exactly? The memory of a place, a people. The kind of memory that swells within and erupts in shouts — or tears. It’s the memory that many hold of Hawai‘i, even those who visited only for a week.

Nostalgia can become sinful when we deceive ourselves. It’s easy to romanticize farm labor from the comfort of air-conditioned offices, but the plantations were not a paradise. And neither is Hawai‘i. The past is worth a visit, but no place to make a home. 

That’s a solid chee hoo, man — but once is enough. Shush.

Pineapple Plantation housing 16x9 Large

<title>What's in a chee hoo?</title>

Generations removed from the plantation era that forged it, local culture is in danger of becoming a nostalgia-fueled performance of itself, writes ASD columnist Sterling Higa.

What's in a chee hoo?

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Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

Aloha Spirit

 and Dave Bautista star in a new movie, “The Wrecking Crew,” which was filmed in 

, and releases next week. It will start streaming globally on Prime Video at 10 p.m. on Jan. 27.

The fast-paced action comedy features the estranged brothers, Jonny Hale (Momoa) and James Hale (Bautista), who reunite when their father dies mysteriously. In trying to figure out what happened, the brothers discover a conspiracy with the power to tear their family apart.

The story is set in Hawaiʻi, but filmed in the United States and New Zealand. Filming included 12 days in Hawaiʻi and 43 days in New Zealand, Angela Laprete, the Hawaiʻi producer for “The Wrecking Crew," told Aloha State Daily. Scenes captured in Hawaiʻi include a murder in Chinatown (which doubles as Kalihi in the movie), a chase scene on the H3, and motorcycle rides along the coast of east Oʻahu.

The idea for the buddy film started when Bautista and Momoa were working together on 

 that follows the human race when it has lost its sense of sight and has to find new ways to survive.

“I got to spend some time with Jason offset and realized he's just such a fun guy, and our energies are so different,” said Bautista, in a global virtual press conference. “We just don't clash. He's super high energy. I'm super low energy, which it just works. It works in real life. It works on film.”

The virtual press conference included Momoa, Bautista, the movie’s director Ángel Manuel Soto

 and moderator Alex Zane. It was streamed from London, England, for the United Kingdom’s premiere of “The Wrecking Crew.”

If character introductions in the movie give a glimpse of each actor’s role, we first see James (Bautista) effortlessly floating under water in a pool where he is training cadets to hold their breaths. The cadets are holding weights to stay submerged and keep dropping those weights to float to the surface for air until only Bautista remains, serene and underwater.

The introduction scene for Jonny (Momoa) is a bit different. He is on a motorcycle flying down a rural road and gets home to see his girlfriend packing the car because she is breaking up with him.

After working together in “See,” Bautista had wanted to do another production with Momoa that was more of a buddy cop film.

“So anyway, I tweeted one night: I want to do a buddy cop film with Jason Momoa, something like ʻLethal Weapon.’ I want David Lee to direct it. This is before I knew you,” he said of Ángel Manuel Soto, the movie’s director seated to his right. “But anyway, that was my tweet. And it exploded! It got more response than anything I've ever tweeted, which has been mostly garbage, just random thoughts. But anyway, people responded. So I called Jason. I was like: ʻHey, man, I want you to know about this because it is getting such a response, I probably should let you know and make sure you even want to do this. And he said, ʻYeah, actually, I already got an idea.’ And so basically his idea was pretty much the foundation of what the film is.”

“The Wrecking Crew” stars several actors who appear in “Chief of War,” including Momoa, who was Kaʻiana, 

It also features actors from Disney’s live action version of “Lilo & Stitch” (2025), including 

, who makes an appearance with shave ice, and died just after the movie's release. "The Wrecking Crew" also features 

, who stars in Disney’s live action movie “Moana,” set to release this year, as Moana’s mother.

“The Wrecking Crew” has multiple fight scenes, of course, including a notable one between Baustista and Momoa that involves rain, mud, a parked car and some blood.

“This was the most fun I've ever had on a film, throughout my career,” Bautista said. “Moments like that, they sound awful, but we were having a great time beating the hell out of each other, but also we were jumping in a hot tub between takes.”

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“And we got to shoot in New Zealand and Hawaiʻi,” 

. “It was awesome. We had to ride motorcycles in Hawaiʻi. It was great.”

What does Momoa hope audiences take away from the film?

“It's definitely up there as one of the funnest films I've ever made in my life,” he said. “I had the time of my life. I don't [usually] watch the premieres over and over. I've seen this movie five times now. I'm still laughing. I'm excited to watch it tonight. ... And I'm actually having a little private viewing for my kids, because we're very mad that it's not playing in theaters because they just love it.”

The movie leaves room for a possible sequel, as their father’s murder is solved, but another remains open.

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

“The Wrecking Crew"

<title>Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista reflect on ʻThe Wrecking Crew’</title>

The action comedy launches on Prime Video on Jan. 27. It features two estranged brothers as they try to figure out who killed their father. Actors Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista share how the idea of the film got started and the role X played in its creation.

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Social Media Editor

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