El presidente vacation

Your superior correspondents are certainly heartened to see the BeloJo spending so much time and energy covering President Billary's vacation on the Vineyard. What would we do without daily updates from seasoned Other Paper reporters on the president's wardrobe and eating habits, what he uttered to a few passers-by, and how well he played golf? Speaking of the Head Ramrod's golf game, Phillipe claims that he, too, could regularly shoot scores of 79 if all the putts within a 15-foot radius were instantly considered "gimmes."

Our favorite part of the daily vacation-watch, however, are the reports on who hasn't shown up yet. As of deadline, we understand that neither Princess Di, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jordan nor Tiger Woods has appeared on the island.

Also (and much to our surprise), none of the original cast members of the Leave It to Beaver television show has arrived. Since last week's release of the the movie version of the classic Boomer sitcom, just about all the surviving members of the series have been dredged up and interviewed.

Our suggestion to the president is to forget about Princess Di -- if you really want to electrify the frisbee-tossing media contingent camped out on the island, you and golfing buddy Vernon Jordan should show up on the links with Rusty Stevens and Frank Bank (Larry Mondello and Lumpy Rutherford) as part of your foursome. Of course, dinner might be a bit more expensive.

. . . You may recall how "Cool, Cool World" revealed last week that the Secret Service had been seen poking around the golf course in Jamestown, purportedly because Billy Boy had shown some interest in playing

a round on our beautiful isle. Why Jamestown?

Phillipe & Jorge believe that we may have the answer. We heard reports that a "great tit" had been spotted there by some excited bird watchers. Could it be that the White House advance people had bungled the news report of the rare 5-inch songbird and interpreted it as "great tits" seen on Jamestown? Considering the reputation of our commander-in-chief, that might have been sufficient information to attract him to our shores.

. . . "I'm sitting next to him, and he's talking to you, and he's asking for something for lunch, and my family is there, and I realized, `Oh, my God, it's just an incredible feeling to be that close to the President of the United States. The President of the United States!" One might expect this sort of breathless commentary from a Patrick Blow, who runs the Ben & Jerry's concession in downtown Providence and whose closest brush with celebrity was the day he saw Salty Brine duck into Haven Brothers, but these words came from Excitable Boy, Congressman Patrick Kennedy.

Here's a guy who counts JFK as an uncle, RFK as another uncle, a father who is arguably the most famous person in the US Senate, a cousin who was once voted "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and another cousin who is a glamorous network newsie married to mega-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger. We mean, the guy's family is virtually the living, breathing version of Vanity Fair magazine.

People Speak: But out of which side of the mouth?

Phillipe and Jorge usually come down on the side of John Hazen White Sr.'s "Red Alert" campaigns, and we greatly admire his ongoing commitment to involve the public in policy and issues in the Biggest Little. However, we were very surprised at the result of Red Alert's ?People Speak initiative, which gave out thousands of dollars' worth of prizes to those citizens who submitted the winning answers in a contest held in May.

Participants had been asked to come up with suggestions for how to reduce the size of state government, make it run more effectively, and create lower taxes. And four out of the five answers provided by the winner of the $5000 first prize gave the prime role of downsizing, departmental budget control, and personnel decisions to the same state legislature that Red Alert frequently lambastes for its unethical behavior.

What's going on here, John? You need only look at the recent witch hunts conducted by state Representative Brian Kennedy's commission on the affairs of the Department of Environmental Management to see what happens when highly politicized and appallingly ignorant members of the General Assembly try to micro-manage state government departments.

And at a time when people are howling over legislators sitting on quasi-judicial state boards and commissions, is ?People Speak really endorsing handing the entire chicken coop over to the not-so-sly foxes on Smith Hill?

Crikey, suggestions such as these would give the General Assembly the ability to eliminate government departments and boards the minute legislators were displeased with them. The General Assembly also would be able to hire outside consultants to review departments that legislators could work like marionettes.

Perhaps we have this wrong, or were you not on the judges panel, Mr. White? When ?People Speak in this manner, Phillipe and Jorge are not quite sure we believe what we're hearing.

A royal pain

There's nothing Phillipe and Jorge enjoy more in the summer than inviting friends over for a bit of skinny-dipping followed by a back-yard barbecue with olestra snacks, Hudson hamburgers, and a skinful of frozen Pernod-and-grapefruits.

Naturally, gossip reigns supreme at such events, particularly stories surrounding England's royal family, such as Princess Di's recently photographed and highly publicized fling with the dusky Dodi al-Fayed, a true embarrassment to Queen Elizabeth and Phil the Greek.

Although Dodi is portrayed as a film producer (no Oscars as yet, and don't hold your breath), he is actually just the over-privileged, layabout son of the hideous multi-millionaire social climber Mohammed al-Fayed. Daddy is desperate to be accepted in Britain, to the point where he has bought the famous Harrod's department stores.

Unfortunately, he has yet to get a British passport, which should come as no surprise in a country where the overriding sentiment is "Wogs begin at Calais." Needless to say, now that his son has insinuated his way into the affection of the mother of England's future king, there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth at Buckingham Palace.

We do enjoy the running English joke of the moment, though, about why the younger al-Fayed is named Dodi -- "because he wants to do Di."

More revolving doors

What a shock to find out that local radio stations WHJJ, WHJY, and WSNE were bought by yet another, bigger company, Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, Inc. The most recent changing of hands took place in 1996, when the stations were sold to SFX by Multi-Market radio. Prior to that, it was Liberty Broadcasting and the Merv Griffin people.

It's been a long time since these stations were owned by local people and, of course, Hicks Muse is not merely in the radio business. They also are involved in industrial products, food, and real estate. We can't help but suspect that WHJJ, the news and talk station, will get pared down even more.

The big companies have a history of buying and quickly turning over the stations they gobble up, raking off the profits from the most profitable FM components of the company and largely ignoring the AM part of the franchise.

The talk/news format is not only expensive to run, but it is often considered deadwood by the owners, much to the chagrin of the local management folks trying to make things work against all odds. Will the time come when there is no local talk around here? We don't want to think so, but a hard look at the numbers leads us to believe that unless there is a commitment from one of these companies to try and build up the AM part of the franchise, the easiest and cheapest thing for them to do would be to allow the whole station to go syndicated. It's a bad trend, but what are you gonna do?

A big fan

As faithful readers of the work of The Other Paper's TV and radio writer, our old friend John Martin, we were delighted to see his superior descriptive approach to profiling another Casa Diablo favorite, Geoff Charles, in the August 24 Sunday Urinal.

Martin wrote, " `They shipped me to a private mental hospital,' recalled Charles, who despite his intimidating height and muscular frame (not to mention booming voice), is a more gentle person than you would imagine, with exquisite skin and a disarming twinkle."

Whoa, Johnnie, it sounds like Liz Smith describing k.d. lang there. We almost expected to hear a whinny after that "exquisite skin and disarming twinkle" line, not to mention the appraisal of Geoff's muscles -- although it should noted that when it comes to looking like professional underwear models, a la Marky Mark, with skin as smooth as a baby's bottom, one need look no farther than P&J.

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