Tia Carrere and Jamie Lee Curtis engage in a cat-fight made in heaven in True Lies.

Marc Farzetta was discussing the Saturday Night Live 40^th Anniversary Special on Sunday night – Marc’s one of my favorite hosts on WIP. And that discussion evolved into the movie Wayne’s World and eventually to Tia Carrere.

Gotta admit that I have very narrow parameters when it comes to women that I find attractive, but Tia Carrere would be near the top of my list.

Also have to mention – Marc, by the time you started watching SNL, the best years were long gone.

But next thing I know, a song’s playing with Tia Carrere singing in Hawaiian dialect and Marc’s mentioning that she’d won a Grammy. I had no idea she was actually a singer, so I looked it up and learned:

• She performed “I Never Even Told You” as the ending theme on Batman: Mask of Phantasm.
• Her second album Hawaiiana – accompanied by Don Ho – was nominated for a Grammy in 2008.
• She won a Grammy in 2009 for the song “He Nani,” which was on her third album ‘Ikena – produced by Don Ho.

During the show, I sent two tweets to Marc – “her sister was a porn star” and “Tia vs Jamie Lee Curtis in a cat-fight in True Lies” – photo of the cat-fight below.

On Monday, I decided to do a little checking.

Tia Carrere was born Althea Rae Janairo in Honolulu with a perfect blend of Hawaiian, Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino heritage. She was “discovered” while grocery shopping in Waikiki and given a cameo role in Aloha Summer. She landed a role in Airwolf in 1985 and another in General Hospital also in 1985.

I saw her in Married … With Children, Wayne’s World, True Lies, and Rising Sun. She’s been in a bunch of other movies, appeared on Dancing With the Stars, and posed nude in the January 2003 issue of Playboy.

That layout in Playboy was an easy transition to a rumor that I’d heard about her sister being a porn star. Just go to Google and run variations of “Tia Carrere, sister, and porn star” and you come across Asia Carrera.

The resemblance was sufficient for me to believe that Tia and Asia were sisters. I failed to notice the difference in spellings – the “e” at the end of Tia Carrere versus the “a” at the end of Asia Carrera – until today. So, it was back to the computer.

Asia Carrera was born Jessica Steinhauser in New York City to a Japanese father and a German mother, and she grew up in New Jersey. She was a child prodigy on piano and performed at Carnegie Hall as a teenager. I don’t know how this next part was possible, but Wikipedia says that she taught Japanese at Tsuruga College in Japan when she was 16.

Thanks to an IQ of 156 and a membership in Mensa, she was awarded a full academic scholarship at Rutgers. She majored in Japanese and Business – but never finished. Instead, she entered the porn world and used the name of Tia Carrere when selecting her stage-name – but changing the last letter from “e” to “a” to avoid legal complications.

She appeared in over 400 adult films between 1993 and 2003.

Sorry, Marc – Tia Carrere’s sister was not a porn star. I was wrong.

Marc also mentioned a rumor about Tia Carrere having an affair with Tie Domi. Google confirmed that rumor and mentioned that the affair might’ve been the catalyst for divorces by both parties. Hard for me to believe, however, because Tie Domi doesn’t look like a handsome man to me – and you can tell him I said so.

 

 

I’m America’s Best Crime Writer

and I approve this message.

Warner Books published Born to Be Wild in 1992 & it still sells every day at Amazon & Kindle. True story about certain members of the Warlocks motorcycle gang.

The story takes 21 years to play out – with many twists & turns – an amalgam of Sons of Anarchy & Breaking Bad – but these outlaw bikers make the Sons look like Cub Scouts.