Hot dog

After a nasty (and since rectified) falling-out at Casa Diablo between Phillipe and Jorge, P. flew the coop to travel around the world and is now stranded in Indonesia by the Northwest Airlines pilots' strike. Here is his latest missive home:

Dear Jorge,

Simply had to get out of Jakarta after a harrowing experience that proved to be the breaking point in the City of Smog. I have flown to Manado in North Sulawesi, a port city about the size of Our Little Towne nestled among volcanoes on the Celebes Sea.

In Jakarta, the worst of it came on my last night there during a visit to the Jaya Pub, a fairly hip (by Indonesian standards) rock and jazz club. If you've never witnessed a guy from Irian Jaya singing Eagles songs phonetically, you ain't seen nothin'. And when his father got up and did a Lionel Ritchie turn, replete with gold jewelry and shirt open to the waist, I thought someone had actually slipped LSD into my Bintang beer.

Fortunately, I remained cogent, because there was a, well, not to get into semantics, but let's just say a woman at the bar who could have been the most frightening creature I've ever seen. "She" had taken a hankering to me. But while I probably could have made it past the black beehive hairdo and a cosmetic treatment that would have cleaned out Tammy Faye Baker's makeup kit, I couldn't help but notice when she stood up how her orange Capri pants did little to conceal some heavy equipment.

I frantically waved off the attention and retreated to the men's room, hoping my friend wasn't ready to give up his cover that early in the evening. Then, upon returning to my table a bit more relaxed, I glanced around the room and saw a rat the size of Rin Tin Tin gallop across the floor toward the kitchen. Safe to say, I was winging it north within hours.

Manado is quite a place for journalists. And the next I knew, I was going up on one of the volcanoes with a National Geographic photog I met. After driving out and up to Woop-Woop, we wound up taking pictures of his pals rappelling down a 150-foot waterfall. I would have taken part, but I'd just had my hair done.

Still, even the rappelling wasn't as terrifying as driving home, Indonesian-style, along the side of the volcano, which means "Take a hit of nitroglycerin and hop on the roller coaster, pal." Only about 50 hairpin turns on which, by local law, someone must try to pass coming in at least one direction.

We agreed that the winner was when our driver passed while coming into a dead-man's curve with two little children walking on the opposite side of the road and three trucks heading straight at us. Fortunately, we managed to duck back in as the trucks veered off, but I'm willing to bet there were a couple of empty desks at the Tomohon Elementary School the next morning.

Come that evening, we were treated to a traditional Minahasa dinner, which included änjing padas, or "hot dog." Yes, Rover was on the menu. And actually, it wasn't too bad. It was a bit rubbery, but the meat had been cooked with enough hot chili peppers that we could have been eating our wallets for all we knew.

All in all, it was better than the next meal I had at a fish restaurant. I slapped the waiter when he said, "Chew me, chew me." But it turned out that someone had ordered squid, which is "chumi-chumi," and that he was merely offering me a taste. And it's not like they dress it up like calamari, either. This chumi-chumi was the longest, whitest, and most hideous thing I've seen since Linc Almond donned his swimming trunks for a dip at Scarborough on Victory/Bay Day.

Got to run, Jorge. Chew me, chew me.

-- Phillipe

Under the big top

Despite the dire predictions of a low voter turnout for the primaries on September 15, it has not escaped your superior correspondents' attention that a number of the more hotly contested campaigns have slid into classic Vo Dilun political stupidity in the last few weeks.

Congratulations all around! And a special tip of the sombrero to Dyana Koelsch and the gang at Channel 10 for what turned out to be a fabulous time last Sunday, when three of the four candidates in the Democratic primary for mayor of Cumberland (Frank Gaschen, David Cruise, and Daniel McKee) name-called, bitch-slapped, and personally attacked each other over such vitally important municipal issues as whether Cruise owed back taxes on a car he bought and sold in 1990.

Meanwhile, the attorney general's race promises to entertain to the very end thanks to that bomb-tossing homegirl, Eva "Park Avenue" Mancuso. So far, she has established to Casa Diablo's satisfaction that Sheldon "Whitebread" Whitehouse is, indeed, a) rich and, b) an Anglo-Saxon. Unfortunately, P&J's casual polling figures indicate that these revelations have yet to horrify potential voters.

Par for the TV course, we heard one Channel 10 television anchor proclaim that the AG's race was the only statewide general-office primary. Well, tell that to Jack Potter, who is putting up a Democratic challenge to Myrth York for governor. Assuming Myrth will walk away with that one (conspiracy-theory and pornography fans tend to be decidedly minor voting blocs, even in Vo Dilun), the issue of whether Bob "Cool Moose" Healey will be a "spoiler" (and, if so, for whom) is a topic we frequently hear on the streets. But we expect that, as in '94, the Healey factor will be a wash.

The reason why is that Bob gets his support from two distinct groups. Among the miniscule number of voters who actually pay attention, many with a libertarian streak will pull the Cool Moose lever. And

this, most likely, will cut into Almond. Then there are those asleep-at-the-wheel slackers who, wowed by the Whirlwind-from-Warren's sartorial statements, also may pull themselves away from reruns of Green Acres just in time to vote for Bob. This, arguably, will cut into Myrth's vote. Hence, a wash.

Despite M. Chuckie Bakst's belief that Bigfoot will start to pull in front of York once his campaign begins in earnest, we have our doubts. (The latest poll shows the two in a dead heat.) If the Missing Linc's campaign metabolism is anything like his own, there's a good chance that the TV ad campaign won't begin until two days after the election. We also expect debates in which Bigfoot's "charisma" will be AWOL, left behind at the Dunkin' Donuts drive-through.

Scamming the youth

It's been said that the best test of the First Amendment's vitality is when it covers truly obnoxious and offensive speech. That would mean that the so-called "Million Youth March" last Saturday on Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem was a raging First Amendment success.

Watching some of the speeches courtesy of C-Span, P&J had to hand it to chief organizer Khalid Muhammed, a man so given to spouting bigoted nonsense that he had to be relieved of his duties in the Nation of Islam by that other paragon of virtue, Louis Farrakhan.

Apparently, Muhammed was able to locate just about every irresponsible rabble-rouser in the country to make cameo appearances at the rally. Among our favorites was the Native American woman who couldn't praise her "brother," Moe Khadafy, enough. Indeed, after getting a load of her mindset, we were surprised by her failure to extend greetings and support to other great "freedom fighters," such Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

A better sense of what the rally was really about can be gleaned from an item in the "Talk of the Town" column in the September 7 issue of the New Yorker. While much of the speechifying centered around the usual calls for some sort of violent revolution, the magazine noted that the March's Web site made it abundantly clear that the most vital element of the agenda was old-fashioned capitalist hucksterism.

"Take the lead in marketing your products & services to the throng of Million Youth March attendees!," trumpeted the pitch for on-site retailing opportunities. And sponsorships for such ranged from $2000 for the right to set up a card table and sell T-shirts to $200,000 for more lucrative "opportunities."

The sad reality is that there are some great black and minority community leaders (Kwame Mfume, John Lewis, Julian Bond, etc.). But none of them attended this rally run by and for the benefit of minority scam artists.

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