Posted on: Sunday, March 6, 2005

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

It wasn't very long ago that Michael Qseng decided what people in Hawai'i would be talking about each day.

But it might as well have been a different era.

Qseng ruled the radio airwaves in the late 1980s. He was brazen, irreverent and acerbic, but compared to today's shock-jocks, playas, homeboys and blowhards, he was intellectual and stylish.

He died Wednesday in Bangkok, Thailand, of an apparent heart attack. Though he hadn't been on the air in Hawai'i in 10 years, it is suddenly too quiet without him.

Qseng didn't have the silky baritone you'd expect from a DJ. In fact, his voice was reedy. Still, his legions of listeners waited impatiently for the music he played to hurry up and be over so they could hear what he was going to say next.

It might have been silly. It might have been outrageous, but at the heart of Qseng's observations about life in Honolulu was a vein of golden truth. He said things no one dared to say in public, he gave voice to the annoyances and injustices of local life, and he did it with biting wit.

Like his bit called the "the L.P.N.A.I.A.J.T. Awards" which stood for "Local People Not As Important As Japanese Tourists Awards."

Qseng took calls from listeners and aired their angry tirades about getting the bum's rush in stores, restaurants and hotels while shopkeepers, waiters and other service industry workers tripped all over themselves to attend to visitors from Japan. He even named names. The town was abuzz.

He made up contests that encouraged listeners to be as wildly creative as he was, like "Slamarama," where the only rule was the caller had to slam something into something else. The most creative slam won. One nuha woman said she was going to slam all the dirty dishes her husband and his drinking buddies left in the sink the night before. Another woman slammed her 1970s-era wooden clogs into her dirty oven. Some kid slammed his face into his father's beer belly.

Qseng not only let his listeners in on the joke, he gave it over to them and let them expand on what he started.

Fred Hemmings, who had a competing radio show at the time, described Qseng as "funny, intelligent, well-read ... sort of the Bart Simpson of Hawai'i."

What set Michael Qseng apart was the way he treated his audience. He assumed a higher level of intelligence on the part of his listeners than most pop radio DJs did then and do now. He spoke to us as though he trusted us to be just as quick witted and observant as he was.

He invited us to play along. He never pandered to or picked on callers. His targets were the Big Guys, the ones who treated regular folks poorly. He wasn't the Cool Dude making fun of dopey callers. He was the outspoken clown who couldn't let anything perceived as unfair slide.

He will be missed. He has been missed for a while.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.