Summertime blues

While Phillipe and Jorge always look forward to the summer with relish (not to mention Pickapeppa and Grey Poupon), the season also robs us of the mountain of fodder the General Assembly provides while in session.

Luckily for your superior correspondents, Governor Bigfoot still makes the rounds, and he's always good for a gaffe or two. May we point out, for instance, his highly celebrated getaways to Cape Cod?

P&J can only imagine how pleased members of the Rhode Island tourist industry must be every time these treks to Massachusetts are highlighted by the press, such as the front-pager in last Saturday's BeloJo on The Missing Linc's week in Wellfleet.

While we can appreciate the fact that the Guv has been going to Wellfleet for years because, as he says, the Cape is the perfect place to fish and enjoy the beach, he makes it seem as though these activities aren't available in the Biggest Little.

Perhaps the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce could get Bigfoot to do a promotional ad campaign for them, along the lines of "I love Rhode Island, but when I want to have some fun and relax, I go to Cape Cod!" We're sure they would appreciate it, and they'd probably even cough up a tidy little fee so Almond could treat the little lady to an ice cream cone on the Wellfleet town pier. Hey, big guy, don't forget to send us a post card!

OK, fair's fair. At least Bigfoot got our minds off the fact that we are the last state in the nation to make our Japanese friends feel extremely uncomfortable by continuing the tradition of Victory Day. Of course, the significance of this holiday is lost in the fact that it is also Bay Day, for which the state waives all parking fees at state beaches and parks.

Judging from the 10-mile parade of overheated cars, screaming babies, and snarling spouses P&J saw in South County last Monday, all of Rhode Island took the state up on its freebie offer this year. Even Bigfoot himself appeared at Colt State Park, Scahbro, and Roger Wheeler Beach in Galilee to press the Coppertoned flesh.

One thing we certainly can say in The Missing Linc's favor: he sure doesn't sweat much for a big guy.

Who cares?

Nice to see that John-John Kennedy has found a couple of new marketing tools for his faux magazine, George -- such as appearing virtually nude in a photo and dissing his cousins Joe and Michael.

We were quite amazed that any member of America's most dysfunctional family would come down on another of the tribe. Not that the pickings are that slim. If you count the number of Kennedys who have either dodged a felony rap or joined AA, you've got just about everyone covered.

So suggesting that the maritally -- and religiously -- challenged Joe and the amateur day-care worker Michael are less than upstanding citizens is as easy as shooting fish in a pond -- or, to be more apropos, driving a car off a bridge. Still, P&J did kind of like John-John's "poster boys for bad behavior" line, even though it lost a little of its sting when we spied John-John sitting cross-legged and naked on the same page. Hey, it sells magazines, don't it?

Fortunately, we knew we could depend on Joe Kennedy, the Massachusetts governor wannabe, to take the high-visibility feud down to its lowest common denominator intellectually. His retort, which distorted John-John's father's famous line about doing for your country, showed a sense of humor that is slightly less keen than Tom Arnold's.

Not that we should be surprised. The Boston Globe recently reported that after Joe managed to get his expanding head and neck into a shirt with a collar that was at least three sizes too small -- now becoming his trademark fashion statement -- he stunned the crowd at a conference of black professionals and government officials with his witless wit.

Noting that he was speaking in between two Italo-Americans, Boston Mayor Tom Menino and HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo, Joe quipped, "What's a poor Irishman to do?" (Well, given the silver spoon you were born with, Joe, you sure wouldn't know.) Kennedy then turned to the crowd and said, "Then I look out at all of you, and I see the blacks have taken over."

The remark was greeted by deafening silence. And after that comment, fella, you better hope "the blacks" don't take over in your lifetime.

The Bud-I show

Word is that His Fabulousness, the Bud-I, will have his own cable TV show on Cox Communications's local origination channel. If that's true, the mayor should check out some of the public-access competition to see how to really put on a show. Perhaps he could get a few ideas for his own production.

For instance, the most powerful fashion statement on all of public access is undoubtedly made by the regulars on Daphne's Madhouse -- they wear Star Trek uniforms. Although the mayor might want to lease out William Shatner's corset, he would certainly look striking in tights as well.

There is also the Jeffrey Starr Show, a program dedicated to the philosophical meanderings of the astonishing host, whose only topic is romance and "relationships." Jeffrey is usually joined by different female co-hosts, who serve as a target for his endless double-entendre ripostes. The whole show has a kind of smarmy, '70s-dating-bar ambience to it.

Phillipe & Jorge's favorite trend on cable television, however, is the "overweight guys sitting around in T-shirts discussing their obsessions" genre. The show dealing with the rock band Kiss (called Rock 'n' Roll All Nite and, for some unknown reason, generally aired on a weekday afternoon) is a classic of this, as is the Unofficial Star Trek Fan Club.

The Bud-I also will face competition from Judge Frank Caprio of the Providence Municipal Court. On his cable-TV show, the judge conducts court sessions and deals with overdue parking tickets, public urination, and yards with excessive trash. And it is actually a great program, thanks to the winning personality of Caprio and the decision by the producers (Caprio offspring) to air viewer phone calls at the end.

Hey, maybe the Bud-I could add a feature to his show that would allow people to call in and tell him what a great job he's doing. Oh, sorry, that was the Bud-I's old radio show.

Anyway, Mr. Mayor, keep watching those other cable shows for innovative ideas (the one in which masked and caped people wrestle in someone's backyard is really good, too). We have no doubt that you are up to the challenge.

The big picture

To your superior correspondents, statistics that indicate the continuing shift of wealth in the United States to a smaller and smaller group of people belie all the smiley-face news about the booming economy. If the economy is booming and the vast majority of people are still struggling, then who gives a shit?

This is why Phillipe & Jorge believe that if you care about social justice, you will root for the Teamsters in their strike against UPS. P&J are not philosophically against huge corporate profits. We are not philosophically against big salaries and compensation packages for CEOs either.

But if the way to keep those profits rolling in -- and to keep the big shots in private jets and Rolls Royces -- is to screw the middle class by offering, primarily, part-time work with few benefits, then what we're talking about here is not "successful business practices" but pure, unadulterated greed.

Although some of the issues in the UPS/Teamsters strike are not entirely black-and-white (i.e., who should control the pension fund), the big picture is really about the ability of corporate America to profit heartily at the expense of workers. Sure, part-time work situations can be beneficial, especially for single mothers, but this is about involuntary part-time work.

Does anyone believe that life will be better for all if more and more of the work available is part-time, sans benefits? Does anyone seriously believe that welfare-to-work schemes will be successful when the people enrolled in such programs are told that no, we don't even want to pay you the minimum wage?

If the Teamsters are successful in their strike against UPS, it could signal a reinvigoration of the labor movement in America. A lot of people have lost their sympathy for organized labor, because most of what makes the headlines concerns high-end unions like teachers, state and municipal workers, professional baseball players -- folks who are doing pretty well as far as salary and benefits.

This strike is about folks who aren't doing so well. And there are tens of millions of them who feel the squeeze. So if the economy is booming, why is this so? That's the question, and this strike could prove to be a turning point. If the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to grow, the country falls apart. It's as simple as that.

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