BeloJo follies

Like everyone else in the Biggest Little, your superior correspondents were highly amused and entertained by the BeloJo feature a week ago Sunday on the plethora of #1 license plates. Indeed, since there are 28 such plates in Vo Dilun, one's chances of copping a #1 are only slightly better than winning a food accolade in Rhode Island Monthly magazine's annual "Best of Rhode Island" roundup.

But despite the research the Other Paper did on all the #1's out there, Phillipe and Jorge believe they missed one. There's also a "#1 News Photographer" plate, and we're still trying to figure out how the state's Paper of Record missed that. Maybe because it belongs to one of the BeloJo's own? Not only that, but veteran camera ace Jim Malloy, the holder of that plate, is also the guy who took the photograph for the article.

Maybe the folks at the Urinal missed this rather obvious addition to the story because they were too stressed out from all the legwork they'd done on a story published two days before -- a story that mistakenly asserted that Richard James, the state Democratic Party's head ramrod, had had his stock trading license revoked.

There's no telling how many people read that -- or how many read the corrected story a couple of days later. But the original piece couldn't have bolstered James's campaign in the Pawtucket mayoral primary. James got creamed.

Although it's impossible to know whether James could have grabbed enough votes to have qualified for the runoff election to succeed Mayor Metivier, P&J are certain of one thing -- there is little legal recourse for such screw-ups.

Getting your head screwed on straight

P&J were not surprised to see the following headline in the Boston Globe:

Obviously, Governor Bigfoot has undergone a major operation to correct his wrong-headed pursuit of the New England Patriots. We're just glad that the good doctor was able to accomplish the feat and that Big Linc's head has been restored to its proper spot. After all, we weren't too comfortable with where it was before, when Almond was futilely and embarrassingly wooing Bob Kraft and his franchise in the Codpiece Ballet.

Fur flies over the stadium

Speaking of the stadium fiasco, Bigfoot didn't do a bad job of trading quips with the master, Providence Mayor Buddy "Vincent A."Cianci, over who ostensibly blew the deal that was never to be. One of our favorite Casa Diablo house guests, Urinal reporter Scottso McKay, provoked the Missing Linc, the Bud-I, and Almond's humor-challenged chief of staff, Ed "The Black Pope" Morabito, into a name-calling cat fight worthy of a junior-high-school girls bathroom.

The Missing Linc actually showed as much cleverness as we've ever witnessed with his line, "It takes two to tango, and Buddy is doing his one-man tap dance." Unfortunately, P&J missed Cianci's impersonation of Bigfoot's petrified-forest speaking style, which ended with Hizzoner saying, "I may not be Abraham Lincoln, but I'm surely not Lincoln Almond."

But the Bud-I cleaned up the most on Morabito, saying, "You can always tell when Ed Morabito is lying, his neck starts twitching." Upon hearing this, Morabito told McKay, "My neck always twitches."

Well, Buddy doesn't miss those kinds of Marx Brothers-level setup lines. It was game, set, and match when he finished off the exchange with, "That's because he's always lying." See ya at the Capital Grille, guys.

Giving you the business news

Ya gotta love those hard chargers in the business world who continue to make "greed is good" America's number-one slogan. Take the charitable folks at Occidental Petroleum.

Now we all know that oil companies make the tobacco industry look like Mother Teresa's nuns order, but Occidental is really setting a torrid pace in the shameless Olympics. A recent New York Times report revealed that the Secoya tribe, which lives on the border between Ecuador and Peru and has no words for numbers, sold the rights to drill for oil on its land for a staggering fee -- three cooking stoves, three water pumps with solar panels and tin roofing, an outboard motor, and three first-aid kits. Evidently, Occidental drove a hard bargain and wouldn't come across with five packs of Juicy Fruit gum and a Madonna poster to sweeten the deal.

While other local tribes and environmental groups severely criticized Occidental's unconscionable theft, one of the company's Bakersfield, CA-based spokesmen told a Times reporter, "The perception that [the Secoya] are unsophisticated, don't know what they are doing, like children, couldn't be farther from the truth. They have a very clear picture of what they want." However, they seem to have a very unclear picture of what the words "Bend over" mean in English.

But don't think the Secoya are the only ones who just arrived from the Planet Stupiter. Black & Decker, the guys who give Tim Allen and Pat Summerall wet dreams, put out a new line of kitchen tools called, well, uh, Black & Decker Kitchen Tools. B&D's Becky Bunnell explained that the Kitchen Tool line "taps into the `Martha Stewartization' of the world."

By this, we assume she means the virtual lobotomizing of women around the world. But who's to argue with a woman such as Ms. Bunnell, who holds the official title of director for marketing, communications, and -- wait for it -- consumer intelligence. No doubt she reports to the vice president in charge of oxymorons.

Finally, how about that new joint effort between PBS and Microsoft to allow specially encoded TV broadcasts of Barney and Friends to control the actions of a 16-inch Barney doll right in your child's living room? Well, we shouldn't be alarmed -- TV shows have controlled the actions of human beings for years.

However, we are waiting on the edge of our sofa at Casa D. for the first computer hacker to crack the code and have Barney's catch phrases turn from "I love you, you love me" to "What's REALLY big and purple on a dinosaur?" or "Why don't you turn on the gladiator movie festival on TBS now?"

But even this would be better than the subliminal ads that no doubt will be wound into Barney's pitch. ("Hey, let's go to the toy store soon!") After all, who needs parents to tell kids what's right and wrong when you've got Bill Gates and Barney?

Promise this

Like you, we've heard just about enough about the Promise Keepers in the last week . . . not that that's going to stop us. Whatever else it meant, the rally in Washington probably served as a good opportunity for local Patriots fans to practice crying and beating their chests in anticipation of the big Denver game's climax last Monday night.

Be that as it may, P&J find Promise Keepers founder "Coach" Bill McCartney's claim that the group has no political agenda less than convincing. Basically, the group is just another fundamentalist Christian outfit, and McCartney himself made his reputation as an activist in the right-wing attempt to rid Colorado of laws protecting the civil rights of superior behaviorists. He's also big on the anti-abortion scene. Are these not political agendas?

We've got nothing against mass demonstrations of repentance (although, please leave us out. We prefer to cry, hug, and share in the relative quiet of Casa Diablo), but P&J would like to see McCartney and company add a few new promises.

One suggestion, first proffered by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, would be for them to "stop thinking of sports as a metaphor for life." Your superior correspondents, of course, already had our fill of this during the recent "Great Stadium Debate," during which Governor Bigfoot and Providence Mayor Bud-I got on a roll with talk of "being on the goal line" and of who was "quarterbacking" the discussions with Swiss Family Kraft.

We'd also like to hear the PKs promise to use the word "women" rather than their preferred gender designation, "ladies." Every time we hear McCartney say the word "lady," it conjures up the image of Jerry Lewis. What's the equivalent -- fellas? We hate that one, too.

Much as they try to murk up the message, there's no doubt that the Promise Keepers are all about old-fashioned patriarchy. But this is obvious, and the National Organization of Women can't win any points by complaining about it. Talking about "hidden agendas" is almost always a losing proposition, and Patricia Ireland would do better to deal with the group in a more low-key fashion.

Comparing the Promise Keepers rally to the Million Man March is a reasonable analogy. Each group has some valid ideas to offer, but in both cases, the messenger, be it the anti-Semitic Farrakhan or the homophobic McCartney, is carrying baggage that undermines the message.

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