Go figure

When you did it as a kid, it was known as "getting caught in a lie," with a spanking possibly to follow. But when big-time consulting firms do it today, it's called "over-projecting," with "adjusting one's figures" and "scaling back" to follow. Jeez, too bad your superior correspondents didn't know about such lingo years ago. We could have saved ourselves some sore buttocks.

We refer to Arthur D. Little, Inc., the firm that rolled out some incredible revenue predictions in an effort to sway the Providence Gaming Commission to support the Narragansett Indians' bid to build a casino in Our Little Towne. (Of course, this was after the freebie trips out West offered to commission members and attempts to hold closed-door meetings with the commission by the Narragansetts' Great White Father, Capital Gaming International, didn't work.)

Little's "adjustments" and "scaling back" came after the BeloJo hired Matthew Krepps, a hotshot economist at the Economics Resource Group, to critique the original report. Among other things, Krepps said that Little's figures ranged from overly optimistic, in the Urinal's words, to "implausible" in his own words.

In any issue involving huge sums of money, paid consultants usually find it difficult to come up with anything but rosy projections, especially when they are fed bogus numbers to begin with, as Little now alleges. What's scary is that such preliminary reports can be enough to sway a public that doesn't have the time or resources to vet the numbers themselves, as the BeloJo did in acquiring Krepps's services. Also, BeloJo Kathy "Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill" Gregg actually gets all this stuff, so we'd advise the Narragansetts and Capital Gaming to hit the trail, pronto.

Indeed, the credibility of Arthur Little and Capital Gaming in the Biggest Little should be about zero by now, and the Narragansetts' reputation has been eroding for years. But there is too much money at stake for any of them to go away.

If you don't want a casino to become the hub of Providence nightlife (and if you've ever taken your skin for a crawl to Atlantic City and skirted the lowlifes littering the once-resplendent boardwalk, you'll shudder when someone boasts of building an "Atlantic City-style casino") then sleep with one eye open. Thankfully, Mr. Krepps kept both of his on the "Little" bouncing ball.

Hot-wired white folks

File this item under the category of who's really got the juice in Rhode Island.

According to a front-page article in the June 29 issue of the Providence Business News, local attorney David Cooper is suing Manasett Investment Corp. for illegally stealing electricity from him for 15 years. The company allegedly did this by wiring into his office's electric box, which is adjacent to the Manasett office on Dorrance Street in Providence.

What's most interesting, though, is that the BeloJo has ignored the lawsuit, possibly because Manasett just happens to manage the considerable assets of several board members of the former Providence Journal Co. No doubt, the added $35,000 that the PBN says these poor folks saved in allegedly pilfering electricity helped thempurchase that canned ham for Christmas, since Manasett probably didn't profit much from the board members' approval of the highly suspect sale of the Urinal to the BeloJo Co. Hey, whatever it takes to get by, right?

Genius on parade

A few tidbits gleaned from recent reports in the Urinal about our august local politicos.

Positive IQ required at the door: Quote of the week goes to House Speaker "Pucky" Harwood, who had this to say about the General Assembly's willingness to compromise on issues with Governor Bigfoot during the last few days of the legislative session -- "We don't have a monopoly on brains over here." No shit, Sherlock. But the House's market share of greed and stupidity makes AT&T look like a mom-and-pop corner store.

A Moveable Feast: Patrick Kennedy hopes to shore up his ties to organized labor leaders by hosting a clambake for members of Rhode Island's AFL-CIO executive committee. While this is quite a generous gesture, P&J wonder if these local champions of working men and women will have anything to say about the shindig's being held at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts, rather than at Patrick's supposed "home" state? Oh well, the caterer will no doubt come from Rhode Island and have a union staff. Funny how these noble ideals have taken a quick back seat to lobsters and cold ones at Camelot on the Cape.

Winnebacome, Winnebago: Phillipe and Jorge were mighty amused to read about Democratic attorney general aspirant Eva Mancuso's new 35-foot recreational vehicle, which made its debut as her mobile campaign headquarters at the Bristol Fourth of July parade. Of course, images of former governor Ed "Gerber Baby" DiPrete quickly came to mind, and we're sure the outgoing Ms. Mancuso will carry on the great tradition of RVs on Little Rhody's political highway by plastering the same bumper sticker as the Gerb's on her new wheels: "If this van's rockin', don't start knockin'."

Making book

As we race toward the end of the century, we expect to be inundated with "lists" of every stripe, and this weighs heavily on your superior correspondents. A few weeks back, it was the "hundred greatest American films." This week, it's the "hundred best English-language novels of the century," helpfully selected by the Modern Library's editorial board.

The theory is that if you're under 30, you've never heard of 90 percent of the titles and, what's more, don't give a shit. The only value in all of this (other than a little self-promotion for the publishing industry) is that it gets a few people talking and arguing about books.

And Casa Diablo is not immune. We would go to the mat for Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which was not on the Modern Library's list over, say, Doctorow's Ragtime or Caldwell's Tobacco Road, two books that did make the cut.

But what's that worth? They could've called the list "one hundred good books that only 2 percent of the people on Earth have ever read," because what people really read is Danielle Steel and Stephen King, Valley of the Dolls and Gone with the Wind.

And then there are those brave souls who made it through about two chapters of Lolita (because they heard it was dirty) before tossing it down in disgust. This is not unlike putting a quarter in the jukebox to play Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling" and finding out that you've pressed the button for Billie Holiday's "I Cover the Waterfront" instead. (This could only happen at Nick-a-Nee's bar in Providence, by the way.)

Of course, Jorge was pleased to see Ford Maddox Ford getting two titles on the list, since once, in a fit of inexplicable good taste (and encouraged by the fact that it's a really short book), he read the Good Soldier. But don't let that fool you. It's obvious that both P&J have read a lot more Iceberg Slim than Henry James. But we feel okay about this, despite what the editorial board of the Modern Library might think. We do draw the line, however, at picking up the Cliff Notes to the Celestine Prophecy.

Punching it up

Well, it took less than a month for Jerry Springer to bail out on his promise to eliminate the faux fighting from his preposterous TV show. And it can be considered only a tribute to the highbrow content of the Jerry Springer Show that the new round of on-air fisticuffs took place on an edition titled "Lesbian Love Affairs," which we presume focused on the lives and loves of Eleanor Roosevelt and Virginia Woolf.

Following reports that the near-daily fights had beenactually staged (and here's another stunner we'll throw in for free -- TV wrestling is not real!) and numerous complaints from do-gooder parents organizations about the trash and trashing that regularly had filled the show, Springer had been forced to agree to edit out the fights before the episodes publicly aired.

However, a higher source has now intervened: the audience ratings. Sans the brawls, Springer's numbers slipped into a tie with Oprah Winfrey, which caused the high-minded execs at Studios USA, which also owns cable's USA Network, to let Springer renege on the deal. Sleep tight, Bob Finke.

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