The champ and the chumps

What a thrill for the lucky folk who happened to be near the Providence Market on Broad Street in Providence on Monday night around 9 p.m., when Muhammad Ali dropped by for an ice cream sandwich and ended up shaking hands, posing for photographs, and hugging and joking with the neighborhood crowd. Ali, in town to appear the next day at Hasbro Children's Hospital, hung out at the market for over an hour.

Of course, "The Greatest" looks even greater these days -- and not just because he is viewed through the hazy prism of nostalgia. A cursory glance at boxing's heavyweight division reveals a less-than-stellar group of pugilistic pipsqueaks who couldn't even tie Ali's shoelaces.

There's Mike "The Naughty Nibbler" Tyson, for instance (and we've certainly heard enough about that), but what about Henry Akinwande, the former number-one-ranked contender who showed up last Saturday night for a WBC title match versus Lennox Lewis and forgot to fight.

Instead, the 6'8" Akinwande proceeded to dance around the ring with his arms clutching Lewis, as if all the cameras were there not to cover the match on HBO but to film the upcoming They Shoot Heavyweight Contenders, Don't They? made-for-TV opus. A third man in the ring, referee Mills Lane, who also handled the chores at the Tyson-Holyfield Chew 'n' Screw three weeks ago and must be the most frustrated man in America (he'd be pulling his hair out if he had any there to pull), finally disqualified Akinwande in the fifth round for not fighting.

Then there's Andrew Golota, master of the low blow and also a genius of sorts. According to Tom Friend of the New York Times, Golota was recently eating at a Las Vegas buffet when he asked his trainer, Lou Duva, if he could borrow some money. When Duva asked why, Golota explained that he was so hungry, he'd gone back to the buffet six times, paying for it six times.

"No, no, it's a buffet, you pay once," explained Duva, who, by all indications, is quite knowledgeable when it comes to all-you-can-eat buffets.

And what about the buffet-wise George Foreman, who continues to be licensed to fight even though he's nearly old enough to personally accept a proposed public apology for slavery? Or Oliver McCall, the fighter who had what was described as a "nervous breakdown" in the ring when he burst into tears in a match against the aforementioned Lennox Lewis?

The only upside of all of this is that Akinwande, McCall, and Tyson are all under contract to that P.T. Barnum on Steroids, Don "Only in America" King. Ironically, King first weaseled his way into the world of big-time boxing by sucking up to Ali, but how many others have ridden that gravy train?

Anyway, here's to the greatest sports figure of the 20th century. As you may recall, a documentary on the 1974 Foreman/Ali championship fight in Zaire won an Academy Award this year. It was called When We Were Kings. P&J sadly note that if a film were to be made about the world of boxing today, the title would probably be When We Were King's.

Road warriors

Your superior correspondents couldn't believe it when the state Department of Transportation reported that ancient Native American artifacts had been discovered at a road project near Phenix Avenue in Cranston and that the DOT planned to catalogue and display the pieces.

Unless Phillipe & Jorge are mistaken, our understanding is that there are quite a few federal laws and regulations concerning the reclamation of Native American graves and/or sacred items. In fact, an article in a recent issue of the New Yorker gave a pretty good indication of how rigid some of these regulations can be.

The story centered around a controversy involving forensic anthropologists, the Army Corps of Engineers, and a number of Native American tribes. Seems there have been a couple of discoveries of remains that experts have verified as having a "caucasoid" racial background in spots in the western United States, a place heretofore believed to have been occupied only by native groups of a different racial background.

But before scientists were allowed to study the remains further, the Army Corps swooped down, grabbed the goods, and announced their intentions to hand them over to the native tribes of the area to be reburied.

If the laws of how to deal with such discoveries are so rigid as to actually stifle important scientific inquiry, howzabout the idea of a DOT history exhibit? The cases out west detailed in the New Yorker article reveal a bias and a problem with these laws. But the Vo Dilun dig is a clear-cut example of the reason why such regulations exist in the first place.

Walking Eagle

Phillipe and Jorge were shocked, shocked we say, to see that former Central Falls state representative Bobby Brousseau had been disbarred for embezzling money from one of his clients. What isn't surprising is that Brousseau bilked his unlucky friend last year for more than $70,000 during the end of his 15-year stay in Halitosis Hall. After all, isn't lining your pockets with the public's money part of the job description for the General Assembly?

In noting this unfortunate episode, P&J feel it would be only proper to honor Bobby with a belated Walking Eagle Award, given to those people who are so full of shit, they can't fly.

We do this not only to celebrate Brousseau's claim that he planned to pay his client back with interest but to retell one of our favorite stories concerning Brosseau during his days in the state legislature.

When The Other Paper ran an expose a few years back on politicians taking junket trips to conferences they conveniently failed to attend, Brousseau was nailed for a foray to Montreal, where he was a no-show at the various conference events. He quickly explained that he had tried to attend the sessions but had gotten lost on the way.

This story almost passed muster, until a reporter discovered that the conference had been held at the hotel at which Bobby had been staying. We weren't buying it then, and we aren't buying it now, Mr. Brousseau. However, we do hear there's a job opening at the McDonald's on Dexter Street. Would you like fries with that?

Washington phoenix

Good to see P&J's old pal Ira Magaziner emerge into the sunlight in a June 30 feature on the front page of the New York Times business section. Much to the dismay of Ira's local detractors, the story showed his recent work for the White House in a very positive light, unlike the shabby way his efforts on revamping the health care system were treated. Of course, the latter had been half self-induced (that 1400-page report was a pip) and half partisan-provoked, anti-Hillary rantings, which no doubt had pleased those 40 million still without health insurance as a result.

The cause for Ira's rising from the health care ashes is his crafting of the Clinton administration's policy on global commerce on the Internet. Magaziner's recommended free-market, laissez-faire approach attracted praise from both the industry and the Republicans in Washington (gee, those are real surprise bedfellows, eh?) and is viewed as having a great deal of promise.

While the Times reporter couldn't resist a few tweaks of Ira's noted hubris, P&J were glad to see Ira again making valuable contributions far in advance of the madding crowd.

Blank verse

Yes, a Rogers and Hart melody played on and the memory of a moonlit embrace lingered as your superior correspondents read this breathless prose from the Providence-Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau brochure describing the WaterFire Providence display that has become a regular fixture here in Our Little Towne: "42 beacon fires by Barnaby Evans combined with musical elements are situated upon the Woonasquatucket River running through downtown Providence. Stroll and enjoy the enticing aroma of burning wood, brilliant yellow lights, and faded instrumental music."

The aroma of burning wood? Faded instrumental music? Hey, how about the "lurking beauty of the Travelers Aid free medical bus?" Nice to see that one of our many fine local poets has been put to work in public relations.

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