. . . but who gets the Bad Guy Award?

Although we're not sure who'll nominate Jerry Lewis for the Nobel Peace Prize this year (it could be the same person who'll petition the Roman Catholic Church for the sainthood of Princess Diana) rest assured that someone will continue the longstanding tradition.

Now, from the same area of left field that produced the Jer and Di proposals comes a missive from the General Assembly's press office announcing that state Representative Joanne Giannini (D-Providence) will present the "1997 Good Guy Award" to J. Daniel Lugosch III on Saturday, November 8 at the third annual Northeast Women in Business & Women Entrepreneurs Conference at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

According to Giannini, Lugosch will receive the "Good Guy" not only because of his 20-year career in developing shopping malls but "primarily for his work in making Providence Place mall a reality."

More of Rep. Giannini's vital reasons for giving Lugosch this award (from the press release): "Today's award is not only about giving women a superb shopping opportunity, which I know many women in Rhode Island will enjoy with the opening of Providence Place mall. Shopping is not the only or most important advantage the mall will create for the women of Rhode Island. A greater . . . benefit will be the economic opportunities that the mall will open for women who are interested in careers in retail sales."

You know, P&J were just telling somebody the other day how a new McDonald's down the street from us was opening up opportunities for people interested in a career operating a Fryolator. And it's too bad about that Patriots stadium and all the lost opportunities for those interested in a career in retail peanut sales or hosing barf from concrete bleachers.

Getting behind the candidate

Phillipe and Jorge were pleased to see Senate Majority Leader Paul Kelly give up his flirtation with running for the Democratic nomination for governor -- but not because he believes he should be on hand at Merrill Lynch the next time the bottom drops out of the stock market.

A Democratic primary against Myrth York would have been costly and potentially damaging to the party. What's more, York is easily the Dems' most viable candidate, and we have been quite open about our admiration for her.

Kelly's name recognition, on the other hand, is confined to political insiders. He would've been stomped by York or Governor Bigfoot anywhere outside of Providence or his North Smithfield constituency.

The key message P&J heard in Kelly's bail-out announcement was the need for a unified Democratic Party behind Peppermint Patty -- that's if she gets the nod, which she should. Her potential challengers, after all, are clapped-out former Warwick mayor Frank Flaherty, whose day has passed, and US Attorney Sheldon Whitebread, whose day is yet to come. (Shel, we'd love to see you take on Patrick in the Dem primary for US Senate in 2000. Talk about column fodder!)

One thing York has never been assured of is the support of the rank-and-file good old boys in her party, but if someone of stature such as Kelly were to show his support and rally the suspicious troops, he would prove his real leadership abilities without having to run for Little Rhody's number-one spot himself. We'll be watching.

The Existential Channel

There are problems and then there are problems in our little part of the world. But certainly no one can overstate the level of crisis inherent in any problem concerning cable TV reception.

Undoubtedly, the glitches experienced by Cox Cable customers during last week's channel reorganization were the closest thing (in terms of "altering life as we know it") to the Cuban Missile Crisis that this generation has experienced.

The most unusual aspect of the cable service problems was probably the avant-garde presentation P&J caught for a couple of days on Channel 73. At first, we thought that this was a new public-access feature Cox had added for the express purpose of providing an outlet for emerging art school filmmakers. Either that, or they had passed out camcorders and pints of ginger brandy at random on Washington Street in downtown Providence, promising the participants that their handiwork would be aired.

Finally, the BeloJo set us straight on what exactly was up when John Martin noted that, among other features, some viewers were receiving the video portion of the TV Food Network mixed with the audio from Black Entertainment Television.

Of course, P&J tuned in immediately, with visions of Graham "the Galloping Gourmet" Kerr swishing into the kitchen to the theme from Shaft ("they say this cat Prudhomme is a baaad -- shut your mouff") dancing in our heads. The idea that we could watch Julia Child's lips move and have an entire episode of Good Times come out of her mouth was equally "dy-no-mite."

The closest we came to an epiphany, however, was a little episode we'll call "Cooking with Snoop Doggy Chan," the particulars of which we will leave to your multicultural imaginations. We may be in the minority, but we applaud Cox for their bold experimentation.

The fish ate my homework

Kudos to the URI mechanical engineering students who carried the Ocean State banner to Milwaukee this summer and won the best engineering design award in an intercollegiate solar/electric boat competition.

The Rhody team might have come home with even more honors -- their craft was the fastest qualifier in one big race event, but it ultimately came in second, down by eight points to the winner of the overall design and race competition, UMass-Dartmouth.

One slight problem -- the URI kids forgot to do their homework. Each team was supposed to do a technical report, for which they could have scored up to 100 points. In fact, the URI students would have received 20 points just for putting their names on a blank sheet of paper, and those points would've guaranteed a win. Instead, of course, they got zero points -- and the silver medal.

Although the URI team claims that they forgot to do the report because it was due at "the most chaotic time" of the competition, P&J wonder if Milwaukee harbors Midwest outlets of Charlie O's or the Bon Vue.

Nike symbol? I thought that was a hammer and sickle!

Nothing amuses your superior correspondents more than angry and anguished letters to the editor. Especially those from right-wing nutbags, who often fulminate on and on about this or that outrage and miss the point entirely.

A beautiful example of this was found in the BeloJo letters section this week, where a citizen complained about an editorial cartoon: "What is the purpose of the black-and-white portrait of Che Guevara in your October 21 edition? Do you really believe that precious newspaper space should be used to commemorate a dead Marxist terrorist?"

Here's the answer to the letter: "The cartoon was meant to show how Che, a cult figure, had been commercialized. He sported a Nike symbol on his cap."

This one was so good that we suspect editorial pages editor Bob Whitcomb wrote it himself, for his own amusement. And ours.

Once more from the top

The public gaffe of the week in the media comes from Radio 5 Live in London, whose news reader led off his story with, "The crash on the Hong Stong Kock Market . . . " Thanks to Private Eye for the catch via Seth Gillman.

Kudos and congrats . . .

. . . to the intrepid Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker. Jeff's the guy who first introduced the world to Mark Fuhrman back when he was writing about the O.J. trial. Now Jeff is on the Paula Jones case, and in the November 3 New Yorker, he claims to have the inside skinny on President Clinton's "distinguishing characteristics." Here's an excerpt from Toobin's article:

According to two people who are familiar with Jones's affidavit on the subject, Jones lists three `distinguishing characteristics' of the President's erect penis: it is about five inches long; it has the circumference of a quarter; and it angles to one side. As a strictly legal matter, it would seem these facts favor the President.

P&J would like to add that, as a strictly Casa Diablo matter, these facts would not favor the president. But hey, that's a pretty detailed (and incredibly commonplace) description coming from a woman who claims to have immediately leaped behind the sofa after Clinton allegedly unleashed Slick Willie for Ms. Jones's inspection.

Hey, we don't know what happened at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock on May 8, 1991. Still, it's so rare that there's even dubious justification for writing descriptions of some guy's unit, we thought we'd go with it. And because it appeared first in the New Yorker, you know it's tasteful.

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