STADIUMANIA!!!

Your superior correspondents have predicted for some time now that when all is said and done, much will be said and nothing will be done about "the stadium deal." For the local news media, however, frenzied coverage is the order of the day, whether there is anything substantial to report or not.

A tip to Channel 10 reporter Chris Wall -- get yourself a good book on how to pronounce Italian and Native American names and browse through it during your stakeouts at the Westin. Although pronouncing local names is a challenge for any broadcast reporter new to the Biggest Little, P&J happened to catch Wall struggling to pronounce state Representative David Cicilline's last name on the Monday newscast at noon. It came out sounding something like "Sicily." We took pity and wept.

Of course, any scenario involving drama and suspense, maximum news coverage with lots of speculation and few facts, and a potential for wasting large sums of public monies is tailor-made for none other than the head ramrod of Protown, the Bud-I. Because he has not been invited to Bigfoot's negotiations with the Patriots, the mayor has been left to his own devices and has had to cook up nightly press conferences to get his Hamlet-with-a-rug act on the TV news.

On the other hand, the Missing Linc's continual reassurances that there won't be any public risk involved in the construction of a stadium and that "we're not in any bidding war with Massachusetts" for the Patriots could mean only two things: there's plenty of public risk involved and that this is, indeed, a bidding war with Massachusetts.

Kraft's comment last week that Vo Dilun is great because he has to deal with so few people (none of that messy representative government or democracy stuff) sure made us all feel proud. You know, if we really wanted to, we could streamline government and make the process work with even more efficiency. We just need stronger leadership, someone like that Mussolini fellow.

This is also the time for your superior correspondents to remind Governor Bigfoot about notorious former Boston mayor James Curley's remark that the best way to get back at your enemies is to name a public building after them. We're sure the guv would love to see the sign "Lincoln Almond Stadium" stretched across the rusted facade of a rotting hulk of a stadium 15 years from now -- after the Patriots have left town and his legacy resembles a mausoleum.

Cooking the books

Phillipe and Jorge can just imagine what ran through Governor Bigfoot's mind when he first heard that Ernst & Young agreed to settle with Leonard Decof and the DEPCO investigators for the tidy sum of $103 million -- "There's the money for the new stadium!"

But perhaps Bigfoot should wait and see what the impact of the Ernst & Young deal will be on two local law firms that Decof also has targeted in the RISDIC mess -- Adler, Pollack & Sheehan and Edwards & Angell. Both firms are now probably quaking in their wingtips at Ernst & Young's demise, and if the state is as successful at getting repaid by Addit, Porkem & Seeya and Eddie & Angie, maybe we can even afford a dome!

Given the rampant rumors and misinformation surrounding the stadium deal, P&J wish that reporters would begin each press conference with the Missing Linc or his chief negotiator, Ed "The Black Pope" Morabito, by asking as simple a question as, What would the deal at this stage cost the average Rhode Island taxpayer?

And rather than giving some obfuscating answer about "no risk" and "new tax money," Almond and Morabito should just address the simple question all Rhode Islanders would like an answer to.

Fact facing

It was helpful for taxpayers to check out the Sunday BeloJo's Red Alert supplement, because it served to remind Vo Dilunduhs that virtually every publicly financed project that's come down the pike in the last decade has featured cost and revenue projections so far off the mark that one would have to assume that either: a) those projections were made by a small group of orangutans kept in a secret room in the basement of Halitosis Hall for consultation on important fiscal matters b) the books were cooked well in advance in order to sell the public or c) they just make this shit up. People are suspicious because they have good reason to be. Just consider the state government's track record.

Of course, P&J are suspicious of whoever puts together those Red Alert spots. We love the Bousquet stuff, but the strange layout and tortured prose style are truly unique, as was last week's gift to the local vocabulary -- the "Fact Facer: finding and facing facts."

Upon seeing this phrase, regular staffers at Casa Diablo rose as one, instinctively waggled their largest digit in the air, and blurted out, "See if you can find and face this."

Here's something John Hazen Thunder & Lightning should face: if you don't admit that you and a couple of teenagers working for minimum wage put these ads together on special "Craft Nights" at your kitchen table with scissors, glue, and crayons, the rumor that those orangutans in the Statehouse basement were involved will gain credibility.

A few simple questions

While we're asking for ease and simplicity from media interviewers such as those covering the proposed LincDome, our great journalistic minds hereabouts apparently have overlooked another basic question in the case of Lamar Odom, the young basketball star who has enrolled at the University of Rhode Island.

Coverage of this bizarre basketball recruiting saga has ranged from making Odom the heavy in this sporting soap opera to questioning URI President Robert Carothers's sanity. But has anyone interviewed Carothers, Rams basketball coach Jim Harrick, or the head of the admissions office about whether the erstwhile hoops savior Odom has been asked the one pertinent question in all of this -- "Do you plan to stay at URI for four years?"

One would think that if Odom answered "no," we would indeed have good reason to question the integrity and credibility of all three URI officials, nevermind the institution's commitment to providing an education. And we can't wait to see which Vo Dilun lawyer is the first to file a class-action suit on behalf of the thousands of Rhode Island kids who applied to URI last fall and were rejected, while Odom waltzed into class after school had already begun.

Could this be a burgeoning new field for Brian Cunha or Abrams and Verri? Get out the trench coats and head for Kingston now, guys.

Goethe goes homo

He may not be as marketable an artist as Ellen DeGeneres, but Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) had some clout in his day. Those were different times, of course. Since Heather Locklear and cars blowing up were not available then, folks turned to stuff like "theater" and "the written word" for entertainment.

Goethe was the heavyweight literary champ of Germany, and P&J mention his prominence so that you might understand the uproar expected in Germany when, in the newly published The Caresses of the Tiger: An Erotic Goethe Biography, author Karl Hugo Pruys argues that Goethe was an actively homosexual man, "whose work cannot be understood without acknowledging this background."

In America, this would be like saying Walt Whitman was queer and . . . hey, wait a minute. Well, let's try this again. Outing Goethe would be like outing Shakespeare. Well . . . hold on, that's been done, too. And that's the problem. According to the New York Times, Germans find the whole thing pretty much a non-controversy.

It seems to your superior correspondents that as our historical knowledge increases, the only controversy will be why so few scholars, artists, and literary giants were straight.

Although we can't answer that, darlings, we would like to leave you with this excerpt (English translation by Walter Kauffmann) from Faust. Here's Mephisto, who's a little irritated that a band of angels are making off with Faust's immortal soul:

You hover there, come down: I feel a passion;

Please move your lovely limbs in a more worldly fashion!

There's merit in your serious style;

But just for once I'd like to see you smile!

That would put me in an eternal trance.

I mean the way that human lovers glance;

Just move your lips, that's all -- not in disgust!

You, tall one, are the fairest boy I've ever seen;

But what is unbecoming is your popish mien:

Do look at me with just a little lust!

You might be nude and still of decent mind,

The flowing shroud is much to moralizing;

They turn around -- I see them from behind!

The little rogues are all-too-appetizing!

Live on the BBC

Congrats to Anna Ford, who had this cogent observation about Britain's recent sorrow while she was speaking on the BBC: "And let's not forget the other people in this tragedy -- such as Dodi, whose death seems to have taken a back seat this week."

---

The P & J archive

---