Every campaign deserves a memorable hula, and kumu hula Patrick Makuakane delivers with the “Birth Certificate Hula.” If you follow the link, you’ll hear him say he was born at Kapiolani maternity just a couple days apart from Barack Obama.
The line “drunk in a taxi” is good.
Performance before enthusiastic audience here: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/288532_Birth_Certificate_Hula_-_Na_Le
Patrick Makuakane
Photo by Kathleen Bender
From India, a story about pawn customers murdering a 14-year-old assistant in a pawn shop: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/2-arrested-for-murder-of-boy-in-pawn-shop/articleshow/17012776.cms
As usual, the complete records that pawn shops everywhere keep were a big help to the police in fingering the suspects. Every item in a pawn shop has a ticket that says who it came from, where he lives etc.
There are a few cultural differences between th4 pawn shop in Chennai and any American pawn shop.
For one, it would be unusual to find a young teenager left alone in a pawn shop. Here, you have to be 18 to be a customer or to work in a pawn shop.
For another, the robbers got away with 6 pounds of gold. Few, if any, American pawn shops keep that amount of gold on hand. For both safety and financial reasons, they ship out their gold regularly to refiners.
It doesn’t pay to keep gold lying around when you can so easily — and instantly — get a refiner to transfer cash into your account.
But India is by far the world’s biggest 
importer of gold. Indians have a strong tendency to keep their wealth in gold, rather than in a mutual fund; so Indian pawn shops probably move a lot more gold in a day than American shops do.
The word “lakh” in the story means 100,000 and is commonly used to count large numbers of rupees. So the robbers got about $1,900 worth of rupees, a tiny amount compared with the $350,000 worth of gold they carried off.
Chennai, by the way, is a huge city, with a population about equal to that of Manhattan.
Pawn shops will consider a loan on anything of value (unless, as we say, it eats), but fashions have pushed some items out of our universe.
For example, in 1838 Manhattan pawnbroker was happy to make a loan on 8 collars. He lent 37 1/2 cents.
Kamaaina Loan doesn’t make loans in fractions of a cent any more, or even fractions of a dollar, but in 1838 37 1/2 was close to a day’s pay for some laborers.
Writing in Bloomberg News, pawn historian Wendy Woloson listed the loans made on a typical day, Aug. 31, in Simpson’s shop.
The full list is available at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-09/a-brief-history-of-the-american-pawn-shop-echoes.html
Today, we’d take the accordian, the watch (although the “silver watch with broken hands” would be a close call), the broach, the saw (usually a power saw these days), the gold watch and chain and the silver medal.
It would have to be a special table cloth these days at get our assent.
As in 1838, most pawns are for small amounts, and most pawns are for jewelry or household items. But these days household items are more like to be TVs and video games than shawls and trousers.
The goods change over the generations but the business is mostly what it was long ago. As Woloson says,
Yesterday’s music box is today’s DVD player.
From Florida, a story about a burglar who thought he’d fence the sterling silver he’d robbed at a pawn shop.
It didn’t faze him that the pawnbroker demanded that he produce a driver’s license and give a thumb print. (The same procedure is required by law in Hawaii and followed rigorously at Kamaaina Loan.)
Perhaps he thought, they’ll never connect the dots. Little did he know.
All the local detectives had to do — once the victim had reported the loss and provided some identifying information (in this case, a “D” monogram on the silver flatware) — was look in Pawn FINDER for a record of a pawnshop acquisition of a set of flatware with a D monogram.
A simple collar. http://http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49519029/ns/local_news-fort_myers_fl/t/thief-arrested-pawning-silverware/
There are a number of electronic pawn reports in use around the country. Kamaaina Loan has one of the oldest — two actually, one in a secure server for access by Maui law enforcement, pawnreport.com, which is similar to Pawn FINDER; and another, public free service for victims, mypawnreport.com, where victims of theft crimes can post (after filing a police report) information about what was lost.
It’s one thing for a burglar to leave a fingerprint for police to find at the scene. It’s a higher level of stupidity to give up a fingerprint on purpose when fencing the swag. But there are some really stupid criminals out there.
At the very least, you should vote because that other guy who’s for all the wrong things is voting this time, and you’ve got to cancel him out.
A more civics-class-positive view of voting is this story from Honolulu that’s catching the world’s attention (or, at least, that part of the world that uses the Internet):
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/175248241.html?id=175248241
Frank Tanabe, 93 and sick, is voting.
Wrecked yacht from Inside Bay Area
Get dumped in the ocean when your $8-million America’s Cup sailboat crashes.
However, it did happen in San Francisco Bay. Brrrr.
Well, that’s another reason Lanai island owner Larry Ellison won’t be having his Oracle yacht team practicing off Lanai. No boat.
This isn’t the first time one of Ellison’s boats has crashed. In 2011, it happened off San Diego.
Bloomberg News has video of what $8 million worth of highest-tech sailboat looks like after it stumbles:
Boat captain Jimmy Spithill said, ” There’s no question this is a setback.”
D’ja think?
Does it seem like every year the whales return from Alaska a little earlier than the year before? http://mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/566031.htmlttp://
At this rate, the humpbacks will just be staying year-round in, oh, about 150 years from now.
Mary Unwin in her Aston-Martin
From England, a story about a minor celebrity pawn customer. Mary Unwin was featured on a British TV show about luxury pawnshops.
Following her divorce, she wanted to buy an Aston-Martin but was about 5,000 pounds (say nearly $10,000) short, so she pawned a diamond ring to get it.
She told the interviewer, “Since when do ladies want to wait for anything.”
Sadly, it looks as if her impatience may have cost her her life.
Since that show, according to the Mail Online, she had remarried her original husband and over the weekend bought a sailboat. (She paid by check, no word whether she had to resort to her pawnbroker.)
Jerry Hobkirk, who owns Falmouth Yacht Brokers, said he had warned the couple against trying to sail the vessel without proper training.
He said: ‘They came in and bought the boat, which was moored up in Falmouth marina.
‘Mrs Unwin seemed totally determined to take the yacht as quickly as possible.
‘She told us she had a ‘navy ticket’, which didn’t mean anything to us but which she said was some sort of qualification.
‘We urged them to go and get some proper sailing qualifications at a local yacht school and assumed she would do so over the next few months.
‘But the next thing we heard she had taken the yacht and set off.’
But it appears that the sailboat wrecked, and Mary Unwin, who couldn’t wait, is missing at sea.
A columnist at the Washington Times gives10 reasons why Rick and the rest of the Pawn Stars should moderate the political debate.
Reason Number 6: The “old man” would let the participants know they are boring by nodding off.
The Pawn Stars franchise has announced it will televise a British version. The original, Nevada-based Pawn Stars is already big in Britain.
Apparently, television viewers just cannot get enough of us fascinating pawnbrokers — or is it the customers who keep them tuning in? In any event,
“We’re excited that Leftfield Pictures will be producing this new
, original version of History’s most successful global brand,” Christian Murphy, senior VP of international programming and marketing for A&E Networks, said in a statement, reports WorldScreen. “This commission establishes a new model whereby History channels around the world will own this phenomenal franchise extension.”
It’s always nice to be a part of history.
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