Attleboro, city of sin

What's an aficionado of S&M to do? After Woonsocket closed the doors on the Black Key swingers' club last year, it seems that fun lovers converged on the little Massachusetts border community where, for $25 a pop, folks could get spanked, whipped and humiliated to their heart's desire. Until the night of July 8, that is, when Attleboro's finest raided an industrial building in the center of town and busted nearly 60 scantily clad free spirits wielding whips, chains, paddles and sporting various versions of the latest in rubberwear.

According to reports on the raid, none of the participants were actual upstanding citizens of Attleboro, but out-of-towners including (according to the police) teachers, lawyers and doctors. We guess these folks just don't get enough humiliation at work.

The best part of the story is that these un-Attleboro-like activities were taking place right under the noses of the city's establishment. The industrial building in question is mere yards away from not only the police station, but the Chamber of Commerce and the offices of the Sun Chronicle, the local daily that first broke the story.

Errata from the land of media and politics

You gotta love the folks over at the BeloJo's photo department. Last week they ran a gossip column story on the ongoing sniping between actor Jim Carrey and New York gossip columnist Liz Smith. Beside the story they ran a file photo of Carrey with Peter and Bobby Farrelly, taken while the Cumberland natives were shooting Me, Myself & Irene in Jamestown last summer. Once again, the paper mislabeled the brothers. We've pointed this out before, but apparently the Other Paper can't get it together to change the identifications in their photo files. Perhaps they should check next time with film critic Michael Janusonis, who at least knows which one is Pete and which one is Bobby.

Meanwhile, reading Darrell West's slim tome on Patrick Kennedy last week, we noticed that the Brown professor, generally a scrupulous researcher, attributed the song "Satin Doll" to Louis Armstrong. West was recounting a story about the teenaged Patrick learning how to play the staple of the Duke Ellington canon on the piano as a surprise offering at a birthday party for his mother. We know jazz standards are not Darrell's long suit, but we were shocked, simply shocked.

The clone rangers

Your superior correspondents agree with the critics who have been chiding Providence artist Barnaby Evans for his insistence that he has some sort of copyright on the lighting of fires on bodies of water. Still, we can't help but sympathize with Barnaby as other municipalities attempt to clone their own versions of Providence's WaterFire. After all, San Antonio, Texas, has been doing a similar event for years now. But Evans does it right and one can't expect the same will be true for every other city and town that wants to piggyback on the success of this marvelous installation.

You would think that Pawtucket and Wakefield could come up with a festive event all their own without having to consciously ape the unique and highly successful Providence event. Much to his credit, Pawtucket Mayor James Doyle quickly extinguished his city's plans for a number of "Pond Fires" to take place in Slater Park this year. While we would never expect originality from governmental bodies, this sort of blatant rip-off of a genius idea is, well, pretty feeble.

In honor of this seeming proliferation of water-and-fire-based events, we rip-off artists at Casa Diablo are planning our first ever "puddle fire" after the next rainfall. We expect to be lighting a book of matches and floating it along the gutter next to Casa D. Of course, if things dry up, we'll considering asking some volunteers from the student body of Providence College to come down and urinate to produce the desired effect.

Lunchus interruptus

Your superior correspondents have frequently found that the most pleasant time to consume a leisurely and civilized lunch is between the hours of 3 and 4 in the afternoon, when the rest of the crowd has returned to their cubicles and we can eat without interruption. This being the case, on Sunday last, we repaired to Hemenway's at the appointed hour.

While Hemenway's has excellent cuisine and a highly professional staff, it is situated in one of the ugliest buildings in the metropolitan area. Being inside, of course, we didn't have to gaze upon this monstrosity, but we do make it a point, whenever we're in the area, of scaling a few flat stones at the concrete just to make our disapproval known. (This recalls the strategy of the late great songwriter, Doc Pomus, who under cover of darkness, would visit in his specially equipped van -- Doc was wheelchair-bound -- the Manhattan dwellings of people he was feuding and urinate on the side of their buildings.)

On this particular Sunday, after the traditional stone toss, we arrived at Hemenway's and were in the midst of a pleasant repast at the bar when a party of four arrived and began barking in the way of those with too much money and too few manners. That's why we weren't surprised when, after arriving to decry the current state of affairs on the Vineyard and the dearth of really good sales at Nordstrom, this party whipped out the weapon of choice for such heathens -- the cell phone.

For some ineffable reason, these people felt that talking into a cell phone was roughly equivalent to using a soup can and a string, as their already elevated volume increased threefold. It seems, because they were too busy ordering metropolitans (one of the most labor-intensive drinks a bartender has to mix) at the bar, they had to get word to the grandparents to drop the kids off at the house. Of course, the uncouth types weren't calling a residential phone, but a retail business -- necessitating the staff there to identify and find the said grandparents.

Needless to say, this was the end of our pleasant luncheon. But it did inspire us to come up with an order of business that the General Assembly might want to take up next session. This would be the mandatory sterilization of all Caucasians with an income in the six figures. We don't think it's too much to ask, and we fully expect that anyone else who has been similarly assaulted would firmly agree with us.

It's not food, it's fun

Yes, it's true -- the Heinz Company has decided to produce a green ketchup, pronouncing the unusual color of the tomato-based condiment a "hip" marketing idea. The demographic they are attempting to reach is the kidlets, who, Heinz believes, think red ketchup is just too stodgy. That's why they've also created a plastic container for the stuff with a thin squeeze spout, so the little ones can get creative and draw Kandinsky-like patterns and smiley faces on their burgers and sandwiches. "Heinz is bringing fun to food with a ketchup that physically and intuitively encourages both control and creativity," is part of what the preposterous press release on this fabulous New Coke of an idea actually states.

Although we learned from President Reagan that ketchup was a vegetable, we never knew it was a vegetable with "intuition." It's only a matter of time before purple mustard and turquoise horseradish start making the rounds. Parents will then have the unenviable task of having to staple not only their kids' construction paper projects to the refrigerator, but their half-eaten lunches as well.

Kudos & congrats

. . . to Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Mind" Ventura, who, on Monday, made his long-awaited appearance, playing himself, on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless. The plot line of the story had Ventura offering to make Victor, the soap's heinous bad guy, his running mate in a fictitious run for the presidency in 2004. If the ratings for this bump the show up, it's bound to encourage our own governor, the Missing Linc, to seek an appropriate soap venue for his dramatic television debut. How about the role of a dazed Yeti wheeled in on a gurney to be revived on General Hospital?

Another potential offshoot could be the show that your superior correspondents have been steaming for all these years. Since our belief is that the most dramatic acting taking place on television these days occurs on professional wrestling shows, we humbly sent a show development idea, entitled Wrestling with the Classics, to the networks.

P&J envisioned pro wrestlers reenacting famous scenes from plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekov. We acknowledge this might put a lot of legitimate actors out of business, but, hey, there's a crying need for wait staff and burger flippers in restaurants all across this great nation.

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