The list of 100 "notables" chosen to celebrate Honolulu's 100th birthday is a good reason why you should never be a judge for such a list. You might get stuck with a list of "notables" like the one that appeared in the Sunday paper.

I counted 18 entertainers and one newspaper editor. There are more surfers on the list than scientists. No wonder people in other parts of the world don't take us seriously. We don't, either. We look upon ourselves as a fun factory.

Maybe I missed something, but "notable" in my dictionary means "prominent, important or distinguished." We must have the most distinguished disc jockeys in America. It seems to me that, for the judges, history starts when they were born. Important historical figures are people they've seen in television commercials.

The best that can be said for the list is that it's a chop suey of people who live in Hawai'i. But there's little rhyme or reason to the choices. Why not just take somebody to a phone book, put on a blindfold and point a finger at the pages? It's cheaper to get chop suey that way and just as meaningless.

Take an example. Kimo McVay was a colorful character, a good friend and a great nightclub host. But the really notable host of the past 100 years was George Lycurgus. He started at the Sans Souci where Robert Louis Stevenson stayed and ended up at the Volcano House, a boyfriend of Pele.

Then there's Famous Amos, the chocolate-chip cookie king. You might instead consider Dr. Thomas Jaggar, Hawai'i's first volcanologist, who founded the Volcano Observatory and turned Kilauea crater into a world-famous scientific laboratory. I doubt that the judges know his name.

Several disc jockeys made the list but it doesn't include the man who brought radio to Hawai'i, Marion Mulrony. You've never heard of him? Shame on you. Mulrony introduced the Navy to radio at Pearl Harbor before he started Hawai'i's first commercial station. Without him. we wouldn't have disc jockeys.

Instead of picking 18 entertainers, why not choose somebody who made a difference, like Stanley Kennedy, who founded InterIsland Airways, which became Hawaiian Airlines. Kennedy changed the way we travel.

Randy Roth writes well but his credentials don't match Gavin Daws'.

How about Herbert Gregory or Sir Peter Buck, the New Zealand Maori scholar — both Bishop Museum directors? They turned the museum into the leading scientific institution in the Pacific.

How about Fred Makino, the newspaper editor who went to jail for supporting workers who struck the plantations in 1909? Their problem was that they died before the judges were born.

Instead of "notables," we've come up with a high school popularity contest.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.