Review by Joseph Bean Maui Weekly January 24 2005
If youve been around the islands for a while you must have run into Peppos Pidgin to Da Max 1981 its sequel Peppos Pidgin to Da Max Hana Hou 1992 and the companion volume Hawaii to Da Max 1992. The news is good. All three books are back in print or still in print? whatevahs yeah! But it gets better than that too.
Now you can get a package of the words from the pidgin books printed up on magnets. OK. Doesnt sound like so much but it really is fun. Want to warn your husband not to steal the cookies you made for the church bake sale? Use the cockaroach magnet to hold the warning since that word means to steal or sneak away with. Or go the whole way by just spelling out the message in Pidgin to Da Max magnets. By the time a haole hubby figures it all out maybe youll be back to save the cookies.
Everyone I show the packet of 500+ magnets to wants to borrow it or take home a few chosen words for some purpose. Some people have begun to invent games to play with them too. For me I dont know quite how Ill use them but I expect my metal front door the front of my refrigerator icebox in pidgin of course and every other metal surface in the house is going to have words of some sort soon enough.
If you dont know the books the magnets may not mean so much. So heres what you need to know to get akamai about the books and to no make a. Dont make an a** of yourself when you hear of them.
The first book is a kind of pidgin dictionary with words ranging from act as in no act meaning dont show off or be cool all the way to zoris defined here as sleepahs. Douglas Simonson aka Peppo has illustrated the whole book with great and very funny cartoons. For zoris the cartoon has a boy stretched out on the ground for a nap and another boy is pointing at the bottoms of his ratty slippers saying Wow Dextah yo zoris went trough da war or wot? Get air-conditioning undaneath! Maybe you have to be there but I laughed on just about every page including this one.
The sequel the hana hou volume is? well ditto will do. Same thing only more so and maybe more funny too.
Hawaii to Da Max is the same format-dictionary style-but it covers a little pidgin all kine local food and events and chicken-skin experiences.
All three books are great but now Im thinking of them as the background youll want before getting proper use of the Pidgin to Da Max magnets fo da icebox.
