Last Friday, February 22, your superior correspondents attended the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies, one of the annual social highlights for the residents of Casa Diablo. Held on the last Friday in February for the past 29 years, the Follies were conceived in the wake of a bitter 1973 labor dispute (featuring a 12-day strike). This fact presumably invested this year's event with some added drama.

As those who have followed Ian Donnis's award-winning series of reports in the Phoenix on the current strife at the Other Paper already know, the Belo Corporation, the Texas-based media conglomerate that owns the BeloJo, appears hell-bent on breaking the Guild. This is the union that represents some 500 Urinal employees (janitors, advertising salespeople, reporters, copy editors, photographers, etc.). Belo's tactics have led to the departure of scores of longtime Urinal employees, not to mention 46 charges of labor law violations against the company by the federal government. It's been an ugly time for a once-proud newspaper.

The Follies recipe is simple: Guild members and their friends put on a show consisting of song parodies and sketches for more than 1200 of the state's media, labor, political, and social elite at the Venus de Milo in Swansea, Massachusetts. This comes, of course, after all have spent an hour or two chewing the fat over cocktails and tucking into the Venus's notorious cholesterol bomb buffet. The whole thing is like prom night for the usual suspects in Vo Dilun. Even House Speaker John Harwood was there.

As dinner wound down, Guild President Bob Jagolinzer took the stage to deliver a pointed diatribe against Belo and then present the John Kiffney Awards. The latter, given for public service, are named for one of the Other Paper's most beloved and respected reporters, who passed away in 1987. This year, Nancy Gewirtz, professor of social work at RIC, tireless foe of poverty and despair, and, most recently, a thorn in the compromised conscience of Bob Carl, was given a Kiffney, as were the Brown Graduate Employees Organization, which has been waging its own bitter fight to create a union for grad students at Brown University.

P&J had already noticed the thickness of the printed program for this year's show. This was due to a brace of ads (many from politicians), photos, and a brief bio for each Follies participant, and the lyrics to the evening's songs. In the past, lyric sheets were passed out to the audience at the end of the show, but we found this inclusion in the program to be helpful.

Scott MacKay serving double duty as co-producer (with the fragrant Babette Augustin) and emcee, may not want to quit his day job for a go at stand-up, but his snappy patter still managed to hit the target most of the time. He regretted the fact that Governor Almond wasn't in attendance this year, primarily because the guv had heard that "Nick-at-Nite was running Joe Mannix reruns on Fridays." MacKay also thanked the community of Johnston for being "one of those gifts that keeps on giving (for reporters, anyway) . . . the mayor's high and all the guys are bi."

Ah yes, here are the long swords we've come for. The first song of the evening was a localized version of "This Land is Your Land" -- "From Sundlun's love child, to Buddy's toupee/You want a job here, who is your Daddy?/From the Central Landfill to Central Falls, yeah/Rhode Island's home to you and me" -- and this was followed by an ode to the Big Blue Bug. As the evening went on, it seemed that a number of this year's tunes were more generic Vo Dilun than about specific events. An early bravura performance proved to be "Don't Take My Gun Away From Me," to the tune of Elton John's "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me," greatly enhanced by the soaring vocals of Michael D. Evora. One member of the audience told me after the show that this song, a salute to Senator Michael Damiani and the other pistol-packin' hahas at the State House, actually brought tears to his eyes.

Myrth York and Tony Pires (who were both in attendance) were roughed up with "Unelectable," to the tune of "Unforgettable" while John Mulligan of the Washington bureau's aimed the annual Bob Dylan turn, sung to the tune of "Just Like a Woman," at Linc Chafee: "His heart bled just like a liberal/ He jumped into the teachers union's bed like a liberal/That's how he got elected, just like a liberal/But he registered Republican." Another fine performance from John, but longtime Follies attendees may recognize that the concept was recycled from an old Claudine Schneider bit. (That one, delivered, as we recall, by former Urinal pop music critic Tony Lioce, had the former congresswoman leaving the room in tears.)

Another "high" point this year was a tune about Patrick Kennedy's evolving hairdo to the tune of "High Hopes" (High Hair). For some reason, Patrick's hairdo seems to be as much a topic of conversation in the BeloJo newsroom as the script subtleties to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! are at Casa Diablo.

Rob "the Bob" Rainville, made his annual appearance as the Bud-I, singing "He's Gonna Slide" to the tune of "Stayin' Alive." We love you, Rob, but lose the shiny fuchsia shirt. We suspect a stray cigarette would fully incinerate the offending tog in about eight seconds.

Other targets included the Dunkin' Donuts Center, Pascoag water, the state of nepotism under Pucky Harwood, and the Raphael's face-off between John "The Journalist" DePetro and Artie "Bud-I's Sidney Falco" Coloian. The DePetro/Coloian number was of particular note as it was, technically, a medley of West Side Story tunes, melding "Tonight" with "Gee Officer Krupke."

There was no shortage of standout performances this year, from Barbara Tannenbaum to Naomi Schick and Steve Smith to Bill Oziemblewski (whose singing gets better and better). As usual, it was a quality show and a big fun evening. Let's hope there'll be a 30th Follies -- something that we suspect has a lot to do with the Belo Corporation wising up.