1986

Patriots 17, Bears 9
January 22
Chip Young had a bad case of Patriots fever after the home team had squished the fish in Miami . . .

There. Now you don't even have to read the article to find out who I think will win Super Bowl Dos Equis. I wouldn't want your lips to get tired.

I sincerely believe the Pats can walk away from the Superdome in New Orleans as NFL champs. Destiny isn't going to be throwing any blocks or catching any passes, but I'm willing to rely on Hog Hannah and Stanley Morgan for those chores. And despite the fact that both teams have absolutely devastating defenses, New England's grind-it-out style figures to have more potential for success against the Bears' vaunted "46" alignment than does Chicago's attack against Andre Tippett and the Karate Kids.

A moment of silence
January 29
. . . but what a difference a week makes.

Jeezus!

I might not be the biggest New England Patriots fan in the world, but you can bet I was pulling for them on Sunday when they got absolutely shellacked at the Superdome. The Patriots only lost a football game, but I believe I've probably lost three or four friends for good, and the benefit of communicating with my full-time dancing partner for the better part of a week. Humiliation does not go down well at the Young household.

All there is to say in retrospect is that it is amazing how you can allow your emotions to be dictated by a bunch of behemoths who are more likely to try to pick up your girlfriend in a bar than buy you a drink. Ah, romanticism.

Twisted system
January 29
Before she became a radio talk show host, Mary Ann Sorrentino was dealing with much weightier matters. Bill Van Siclen commented on the public firestorm.

Mary Ann Sorrentino must have known that something like this could happen. As a Roman Catholic in a predominantly Roman Catholic state, she must have known that she could become the target of anti-abortion advocates and conservative Church interests when she took the job as head of Planned Parenthood's Rhode Island chapter in 1977.

The possibility of public confrontation came with the turf. This, after all, was the state where the governor (then-Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy) annually took to the streets to protest the 1973 Supreme Court decision upholding a woman's right to have an abortion.

What Sorrentino could not have been prepared for, however, was the storm of controversy that broke over her last week as news of her excommunication was broadcast simultaneously on five area cable television stations during a program produced by one of the state's leading anti-abortion crusaders. With no advance warning, Rev. John F. Raindall, pastor of St. Charles Church in Providence, announced that Sorrentino had been formally excommunicated from the Catholic Church in June, 1985 and had been so notified by the Diocese of Providence.

Not-so-divine Providence
April 2
Johnette Rodriguez spoke with Geoffrey Wolff about his novel, Providence, which proved truth can inspire pretty good fiction.

The long, hot summer of Providence has the snow plows and frontloaders found in the river; the stolen manhole covers; the mayor's trial for going after his wife's boyfriend; the chrome horse atop Astro Bumper Sales; the Boss, always conveniently too ill to attend his arraignments; the Biltmore, the Cable Car, the Westminster Mall.

Yet the basic "triggering mechanisms" for Wolff's book went deeper than place names and headlines. Shortly after Wolff and his family moved to Providence in 1980, their East Side home was burglarized, a "downstairs job," as in the novel. It happened again three weeks later. Wolff was struck by the very commonplace nature of such thievery ("There is a sense that people can come and go as they wish through your life") and he became curious about what kinds of people those are.

The author spent a lot of time at the courthouse, watching, listening, trying to fashion a more "realistic" picture of what petty criminals are like, quite apart from the image presented in movies or on television and quite apart from the fantasies which his own anger and fear had conjured up for him. Wolff came to the conclusion that in the city of Providence, despite its unemployment rates and poor neighborhoods, "We are not talking about a culture of desperate need, but a culture of desperate want. These are people who have had `want' developed to a rather extraordinary degree."

Waylaid in Warwick
July 11
Some background: The Rolling Stones made two visits to Rhode Island. When they played Loew's Theatre (now the Providence Performing Arts Center) in 1965, the band got through fewer than 15 minutes of music when hordes of young Rhode Islanders charged the stage. Mick and the boy fled to the wings as their equipment was thrashed by the throng. Seven years later a tempest cast the frightened Stones again upon our quahogged shores. Flying to a concert at Boston Garden in the middle of what may have been the most heavily hyped rock tour of all time, bad weather forced the Stones' plane down at Green Airport in Warwick. While the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band waited in what was alleged to be a "V.I.P. lounge" for transport to the Hub, Andy Dickerman, a ProJo photog, appeared and pestered them for pictures. After posing for a while, the Rolling Stones told the fellow to get lost. He persisted and a scuffle ensued. Another battle in the ancient war between singers and papparazi (from Sinatra to Lennon, blackening a shutterbug's eye has been a rite of manhood for musicians) was waged that evening. Whatever really happened, the cameraman ran for the local police, who arrested Mick and Keith for assault and dragged them off to the Apponaug jail. When Keith Richards sat down with Bill Flanagan for an interview, he broke into a smile at the very mention of the Ocean State.

The NewPaper: I'm from Warwick, Rhode Island.

Keith Richards: I remember the tank in that town! That all came about 'cause I was sleeping on a fire truck, waiting to go through this temporary customs area after we'd been diverted because of fog. Some photographer lit off a flash right in front of my face and I thought a bomb had gone off! I jumped up and grabbed his shoulder bag and immediately we were under arrest, thrown in the wagon. If the cops are lookin' to arrest you, you're arrested.

It's a funny little tank in that town, too. They've got all the cells angled so you can't see. Knock-knock. Hey, Mick, you still there?" "Yeah, man, I'm still here. (Note:Keith has not yet inspected Warwick's new police station.)

You do have a long history of tangles with policemen.

But Imean, it's been 10 years and we're treated a lot differently by authority now. Most of those old cats have been retired and put out to pasture. If I go to an airport now it's like, how many autographs will Ihave to sign, or, "Come this way and we'll get you out." I can't say that I don't enjoy it sometimes.

Disturbing the peace
July 23
Jim Macnie put an end to any notions of peace and quiet in his little corner of Olneyville when Sonic Youth's Evol hit the turntable.

For the last five weeks I've had to check the driveway from the third floor palace I inhabit whenever I wanted to listen to Sonic Youth's latest record, Evol (SST). Gotta know who's home and who's not. The reason it matters is because Evol doesn't fully translate at the "normal" living room listening level; like the band itself, I refuse to play it at low volume. Yeah, there are children on the first floor and the parents have already warned me that if the sound of any satisfied-with-themselves young vocalists -- like Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore -- bleeds down to ground level again, especially if he's singing (quite cheerfully) about how he is going to "kill all the California girls" and "fire the exploding load into the milkmaid maidenhead" and "find the meaning of feeling good," it would be met up with some drastic action.

Not your typical rock stars
October 1
Evelyn McDonnell went to the City-By-the-Sea to meet the down-to-earth members of the wildly acclaimed Throwing Muses.

Kristin Hersh looks like a tired but happy woman as she sits in the just-moved-in clutter of her Newport apartment. That is, after all, how you would expect a 20-year-old to feel when the band that she writes, sings and plays guitar for has just released its first album, and it has been heralded in the British press as "the finest debut album of the '80s" and "the most shrilly promising American debut album since Horses." Kristin's contentment, however, stems from a more universal source:namely, the four-month-old Dylan nursing at the breast of his musing mother. "We don't get the magazines," the rock 'n' roll mama says. "We just get all the iron formulas."

Imagine the surprise the guys from Melody Maker must have felt when they flew in fromEngland last week to do a feature on these mysterious New England kids, Throwing Muses, who are the talk of London town. And they find these totally unpretentious, unglamorous, sweet-looking 20-year-olds who have never even played in New York and who are more interested in raising toddlers or banging on their new drumset than in worrying about what those raving Brits are saying now. "I just feel relief," Hersh says. "Now I'm free to live in Newport and buy tinfoil."

Field of screams
October 29
The Red Sox's 1986 season was a roller coaster of emotion. Chip Young penned a prescient eulogy for the seventh game of the Sox's nightmarish World Series before it was played.

You can't accuse the Boston Red Sox of being either predictable or dull. As we head into Monday night's climactic game, as this is being written, we are at a point which the baseball pundits thought never would be reached -- the Red Sox alive and kicking against the Media Mets in a seventh game.

And it could have been so very, very different. If there was a God in Heaven who ever once smiled in recollection of "sweet swingin' " Dalton Jones or Don Buddin, Billy Bucks and Bob Stanley would be enjoying the dull throb of a champagne hangover headache, instead of the vicious, cutting paint of a migraine. If anyone had ever thought that within two weeks the epic fifth game of the Red Sox-Angels series would be made to look like just another day at the ballpark, we would have had the foresight to put out a bowl of Valium alongside the peanuts and popcorn on the living room snack tray as we watched the tragedy unfold live from New York on Saturday night . . . .

But what a tragedy to have to play a seventh game. If they weren't doing so already, the true Red Sox fan will forever be doomed to twitching eternally to look back over his or her shoulder at the spectre of doom which is always approaching from behind. There is no more question about whether or not Boston is snake-bit -- the puncture wounds are the size of hubcaps. Even with a miraculous escape from this auto de fe at Shea Stadium on a cold Monday night nearly in November, the bad dream of Saturday night will haunt supporters and players alike for the rest of their days.

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