1. Seems like everybody is doing beachy bracelets, appealing for their simplicity and ocean-inspired themes.
I love that Flotsam & Co. at South Shore Market in Ward Village lets you design hammered-metal bangles with your choice of shells, glass beads and freshwater pearls in sterling silver ($35) and 14-karat yellow or rose gold fill ($45). This also ensures you’ll get the right size that doesn’t dangle too low on your wrist. Although the price includes one shell or glass bead (pearls are $8 extra), I supplied my own shells from a lifetime of beachcombing for added meaning.
Find examples on Instagram at @flotsamco or visit flotsamand.co.
— Christie Wilson, Star-Advertiser
2. At a recent dinner party, a friend brought a bottle of wine that we couldn’t stop talking about, mostly because the bottle talked back. 19 Crimes is an Australian wine named after the crimes that were punishable by “transportation” from Britain to Australia in the late 1700s (including “stealing fish from a pond or river” and “clandestine marriage”).
Download the free Living Wine Labels app to your phone, hold it to the label, and the criminal tells his story. The app is available on iTunes or Google Play. As for taste, the red is described as “dark with jammy flavors and a smokey finish,” which sounds about right. Available at places like Tamura’s, Times and Foodland for around $13 a bottle.
(Look for other bottles with Living Wine labels including The Walking Dead wines, where Rick Grimes steps off the label to battle walkers.)
— Lee Cataluna, Star-Advertiser
3. There’s nothing especially outstanding about what’s inside a bottle of Mishima furikake. It’s perfectly good, and perfectly ordinary. But the bottle itself is oh so fabulous.
The dried seaweed flavoring comes in a glass bottle with a plastic screw-on, flip-top cap that has a puka for pouring. It is perfect for mixing salad dressing or storing small amounts of random things like sesame seeds, grated cheese or leftover half-and-half — or nails, paper clips, vitamins, marbles, buttons.
A bottle holds a little more than half a cup. Find it in the Asian aisle of most grocery or multipurpose stores (such as Longs Drugs) for $3 to $5.
— Betty Shimabukuro, Star-Advertiser
4. Alternative history is popular with people interested in militaria or politics. For example, what would Hawaii be like today if the United States had restored Lili‘uokalani to her throne in 1893?
With “Upon Further Review” (Twelve, $28; twelvebooks.com) sports podcaster Mike Pesca presents “what if?” alternatives involving sports.
For example, what if the forward pass had never been added to football?
If the pass had not been added to the game in 1876, the book states, football might have remained an American version of rugby, never gotten played professionally, and by 1900, all but faded away.
Imagine no weekly games with all the related activities, no gazillion-dollar college football programs, no superstar quarterbacks. It would also mean … no Super Bowl Sunday.
Other questions posed range from straightforward to complex issues written for people with deep knowledge of a particular sport. Scenarios also include Bobby Fischer, the one-time Olympic sport of tug-of-war and even Richard Nixon, expanding the focus of the book and making it recommended reading for sports fans and “what if” aficionados alike.
Available at bookstores and online where books are sold.
— John Berger, Star-Advertiser
