Steve Dubois, real artist, 1955-2001

It's with deep personal sadness that we note the passing of Steve Dubois. Steve was a colleague of ours in the early NewPaper days, writing, selling ads, and doing whatever had to be done to keep the paper going. In the "Renaissance City," Steve stood tall as one of the original Renaissance men. During a career that started a quarter century ago, he wrote and performed music with a variety of bands; penned myriad newspaper articles; wrote music for and acted in theater; and was at various times, "ad czar" of the NicePaper and editor of Providence Monthly. Steve's innovations included the interviews with local luminaries that always featured photographs of the inside of their refrigerators. That was a typical Steve idea. Most recently, Mayor Cianci prevailed upon Steve to join his speechwriting shop.

Steve made a point of knowing what was happening on the street, and this he dutifully reported when wearing his newspaper cap. More importantly, it seems to us, the music, theater, and cultural scene in Providence was built upon the vision of Steve Dubois and a handful of others. He instinctively understood, for instance, that AS220 was an important development in the city's artistic life and became involved early on with this visionary art collective.

The best creative things that are happening in Our Little Towne wouldn't have been possible, or even imaginable, without the contributions of Steve Dubois. He was a large part of the glue that kept this community together, and for that we all owe him a debt of thanks. For Phillipe & Jorge, he was a friend, a colleague, and fellow conspirator whom we will miss greatly. Our thoughts are with his wife, Marilyn, his family, and his many, many admirers. (This Sunday, June 24 at about 9 p.m., a number of Steve's friends will gather at the Custom House Tavern to sing, play, laugh, cry, and remember.)

White trash on ice

Why in the world would anyone be upset about the Dunkin' Donuts Center moniker soon to hang from the shingle at One LaSalle Square? It's perfect beyond belief. Yet city councilman Joseph DeLuca somehow finds the new name insulting. According to the BeloJo, his reasoning seems to have something to do with the fact that both Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley played there. Well, so what! Don't you think that Elvis, especially in his later years, was intimately familiar with the sugary, doughy treat? We'll bet his whole obsession with being a cop was based on the notion of . . . free doughnuts. And didn't Frankie know guys in at least three or four large cities who went by "Joey Bag-a-doughnuts"? Would DeLuca prefer to honor the two late singers by calling the joint The Scotch & Dilaudid Center?

Interestingly, on the same day that the Civic Center's new name appeared on the front page of the Other Paper, there appeared a brief squib about Tonya Harding in Lifebleat's "People" column. Seems that Tonya's recently completed "breast enhancement" surgery has emboldened her enough to try to sell her latest great idea, a topless skating show, to Las Vegas casino owners.

P&J think not only that Tonya's idea ("White Trash on Ice" sounds like a winning title) would make a perfect debut following the official doughnut renaming ceremony, it's just the sort of thing that could resurrect her career. We'd be more than happy to sketch out some scenarios for Tonya -- retrofitting a Zamboni to look like a trailer shouldn't be too difficult. It's Ice Capades meets Li'l Abner. But Tonya, it's not like this sort of thing hasn't been done before. Don't forget that Carol Heiss, 1960 Olympic gold medallist in figure skating, went from the glory of Squaw Valley to the glitter of Hollywood, co-starring in 1961's Snow White and the Three Stooges.

:CueCat scratch fever

Employing the usual corporate strategy of maintaining that nothing's wrong, Dallas-based Digital:Convergence, the technology company behind the boneheaded :CueCat scanning device, laid off most of its 225-member staff on June 15. D:C execs explained to the Dallas Morning News that this was a "restructuring," a notion that will probably not comfort the dozens of employees who were fired without severance pay.

Although we know few people who actually use or even have a :CueCat, regular Phoenix readers are no doubt familiar with the foolishness of the device - which has been relentlessly promoted by the BeloJo and WJAR-TV, Channel 10. The respective parent companies of the Urinal and NBC, Belo and General Electric, are major investors in Digital:Convergence.

So, how long before any of the geniuses involved admit that maybe the :CueCat's really stoopid stuff? Don't hold your breath. The Belo-owned Dallas Morning News had a real story, but coverage in the Urinal was limited to a paragraph inside the business section. This disparity hasn't gone unnoticed by Other Paper employees, who regularly mock the technology in taverns throughout Our Little Towne. And a Channel 10 reporter reacted to the latest news with, "Oh my God! No Digital:Convergence? Shit, I was looking forward to capturing more useless information that's supposed to drive my imagination." No satisfaction indeed.

Short memory

Phillipe and Jorge are a bit befuddled by the recent demand that Rich Lupo move his Heartbreak Hotel and Met Café out of downtown, so that our yuppie legions can move in and "revitalize" the neighborhood, adding even more luster to our as-seen-on-TV Renaissance City. How soon we forget the role played by our old pal Rich in being one of the first to inject some interest and revenue into what used to be a ghost town after 8 p.m.

Back in the mid-'70s, Lupo, hard on the heels of John Rector, owner of the legendary Leo's, and Tom Bates and Josh Miller, proprietors of the original Met Café, put his hard-earned house painting money on the line with the Heartbreak Hotel. Rector had made the first foray into the unknown of what was to be known as ProHo. Soon thereafter Chestnut Street, which primarily housed junk-jewelry sweatshops, became the newly desirable section of town with Leo's and the Met serving as bistros of choice for hordes of the chic and certifiably insane.

In a bizarre stepping-off point, Leo's nurtured your superior correspondents; renowned artists such as Kay Ritter and Dan Gosch; Johanne Killeen, kitschy kitchen queen of Al Forno; People magazine and Variety editor Mad Max Alexander; star of stage, screen, and outer space Charlie Rocket; and virtually any staffer with a degree of talent at the Other Paper -- which explains why Leo's was regarded as the Providence Night School of Journalism until Hope's, with a shorter stagger back to the newsroom, came along. Indeed, the Urinal's former publisher, Stephen Hamblett, actually proposed to his wife at Leo's, and the Bud-I was a frequent customer, parking outside and beeping his special "La Cucaracha" car horn until he was noticed.

Lupo beat all the odds by becoming a howling success in a part of downtown where you'd previously go only to take your skin for a crawl. Now, after being a linchpin of the downtown scene, he's being politely asked to take a hike, so some faux trendy suburbanites can pretend they're living in Greenwich Village, but please keep the music down, Mr. Dylan. If Lupo is to relocate, the City of Providence should pay his moving bills and five years' rent for the contribution he's made to La Prov.

And we should all give him a standing ovation worthy of every act he's booked, from Bo Diddley to Lucinda Williams. (But not the Dead Boys. They found out what "punk" really meant when they played Lupo's and were fleeing the beer bottles two minutes into their act. We well remember the not-to-be-trifled-with J.O. O'Neill planting Stiv Bators with a shot to the jaw on his way to the dressing room after O'Neill's girlfriend, Joyce, became the recipient of the faux-vomiting trick that Stiv thought would carry him to Sid Vicious-like depths.)

Salud, Rich, and let the yuppies wait until they give you what you deserve.

Long memory

Sam Jethroe, one of the first great black players in major league baseball, died on June 17 at age 83. He was the oldest rookie of the year ever selected (we'll let you guess why), winning the honor in 1950, at age 32, after becoming the first black player on the Boston Braves. The Red Sox gave him a tryout at Fenway Park in 1945, along with two other black players, Marvin Williams and some no-talent kid named Jackie Robinson. None were deemed good enough for the Olde Towne Team, which went on to be the last club in the majors to field a black player, third baseman Elijah "Pumpsie" Green, in 1959. Oh, where have you gone, Whitey Bulger, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

'Fess Up

Linc Almond doth protest too much.

Governor Bigfoot's preposterous withholding of the controversial Quonset Point container port white paper, despite being ordered by AG Sherbet Whitebread to release it, strongly suggests a smoking gun, such as the fact that no other options were considered for the site. It's bad enough that lily-livered Linc is defying Whitebread's demand. Bigfoot's office now says state Senator James Sheehan is giving out "misinformation" -- a tactic for which the Missing Linc has held the patent since this fight began. Perhaps Linc was a bit miffed that Sheehan hit the nail on the head when he suggested that Bigfoot will be lolling around Wellfleet after November 2002, while the rest of us pay for his folly in North Kingstown.

Sheehan, at least, was on hand at the "O" Club with nearly 500 people, all but a handful of who were against the port. There's no way Bigfoot should get even one cent of funding for a misguided environmental impact statement. We can't believe the enormous amount of opposition to Almond's pet project could have been lost on Tony Pires, chairman of the House Finance Committee and a possible gubernatorial candidate. If even a cent for the EIS comes out with his blessing, Pires won't get a single primary vote from Warwick and points south.

The inside track: Whitebread gets the nod and wins governor in 2002, while Pires moves up to become House speaker, with the disgraced and disgraceful Pucky Harwood giving up his seat to "spend more time with his family," or some such BS.

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