A night to dismember

The TV set in the Boom Boom Room was blaring full bore on Sunday night as your superior correspondents settled down to watch the annual Academy Awards extravaganza. Naturally, we tuned in for the E! cable channel's pre-show special with Joan Rivers, who was stationed outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to interview the stars. Since none of the celebrity limos had arrived yet, the first half-hour of the show was the best. Just Joan being Joan. She dissed anyone who wasn't there to defend him or herself with lines like, "Kathy Bates won't come over here unless I have a muffin in my hand." Then, after Joan flew off on her broomstick, Whoopi Goldberg picked up the slack with a bravura performance of bodily function jokes not heard since the heyday of Jack Carter.

We're not going to recap the show for you, but we would like to share with you a few of the questions that came across our fevered brows during the evening. Don't you think that if the Academy was worried about the length of the show they would have dispensed with the tap dance tribute to Saving Private Ryan? If there were cages backstage, who should have gone in one first, the horse that appeared on stage with Val Kilmer or Roberto Benigni? Was the Linda Tripp lookalike that escorted Elia Kazan on stage there merely to further irritate Hollywood liberals? What's with John Glenn and Colin Powell -- can you say "gratuitous?" How come There's Something About Mary wasn't nominated for screenplay? And, speaking of non-winners, when does the greatest director alive, Martin Scorsese, get his Oscar?

Quonset Point partners: can you spell 'bankrupt'?

Gleeful chuckles and hoots all around from the environmental community at the meeting of the Quonset Point stakeholders on March 22 in North Kingstown. The participants had just been treated to the sight of ace political reporter Dyana Koelsch of Channel 10 chasing Chip Norton, one of the carpetbagging developers of Quonset Point Partners, through the lobby of the "O" Club, across the parking lot and into his car. Norton fled the premises with both his briefcase and his remaining shred of dignity flapping behind him.

It seems our favorite JAR-head, Ms. Koelsch, was interested in how Norton, supposedly one of the well-financed and wholly credible people who want to destroy the state by bringing a megaport to QP, just happened to have a lien placed on his home by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It seems Norton declared bankruptcy in 1993 after falling a more than $25 million in debt. Just the kind of shrewd operator you'd want controlling the destiny of Narragansett Bay.

And while Norton owed $5 million in state and federal taxes, he was able to negotiate the debt down to $300,000-$400,000. Obviously, the man has few qualms about bilking the state and country while other taxpayers pony up their share. Should send a pretty strong message about how much this out-of-state entrepreneur might care about saddling Vo Dilunduhs with a white elephant at QP if he and his pal Martin Grasso don't make enough money on this tainted deal.

What was galling to the stakeholders, and anyone else following this exercise in arrogance and disdain for the public by EDC biggie John Swen and Governor Bigfoot, is that the EDC was aware of Norton's big debts and financial ineptitude a year and a half ago. As Curt Spalding of Save the Bay told Koelsch after the exposure, "I think that's something they might have told us."

Well, looks like QPP, the EDC and everyone else pushing for the megaport are now two-for-two: they are both ethically and financially bankrupt.

Tank job

One may have noticed that the repugnant greaser Vinnie "Family Man" Mesolella is being allowed to stay on at his job controlling the state's Underground Storage Tank Financial Responsibility Fund Review Board (UST). That's because his old buddy House Speaker Pucky Harwood has yet to name a replacement now that Family Man has left the General Assembly. It "slipped through the cracks," Pucky says.

Phillipe and Jorge are begging Harwood to run for John Chafee's Senate seat, so he can revel in the public ridicule he will endure once he steps out of his third-floor fiefdom in the state capitol and tries to deal with the public face-to-face. Yeah, avoiding disclosure of public records and advocating for closed meetings are real crowd-pleasers these days, Puckster.

But what one may not have noticed is that Vinnie is currently doing a deal with the City of Providence to build a hotel on the site of the old police and fire headquarters in LaSalle Square. And guess what, boys and girls? There may be some problem with fuel contamination at the site due to underground storage tanks. This, of course, would run up the cost to the City of Providence, which may then increase the cost to the developers through the still-being-finagled sale and purchase agreement. This means Family Man and his business partners would take a direct hit to the wallet -- unless someone were to guarantee that La Prov could get the clean-up paid for by . . . wait for it . . . the UST, which Mesolella heads up!

Disregard the fact that UST monies have traditionally been aimed at paying back gas station owners for clean-ups, or the fact that Mesolella is maintaining his influential position at UST under suspect circumstances. But a dime will get you a dollar that the Harwood appointment will continue to "slip through the cracks" until Vinnie gets his deal done. (NOTE: Although the above questions have been asked many times in the past in the Little Rhody, they are considered a viable, working part of our children's testing experience and should not be copied.)

McGraw-Hill's titans of ambiguity

In case Americans are worried that their kids are not privy to enough marketing and advertising, have no fear. Sunday's New York Times featured an article describing the 1999 edition of McGraw-Hill's sixth grade textbook, Mathematics: Applications and Connections. The book, currently in use in more than 15 states, is chockfull of references to Oreo cookies, Barbie dolls, Frosted Flakes, Sony PlayStations, McDonald's burgers and Disney World. I.e., "Will is saving his allowance to buy a pair of Nike shoes that cost $68.25. If Will earns $3.25 per week, how many weeks will Will need to save?" Just to the right of this math problem is a lovely full-color picture of a pair of Nike shoes. Another math problem begins with the line, "The best-selling packaged cookie in the world is the Oreo cookie. The diameter of an Oreo cookie is 1.75 inches. Express the diameter of an Oreo cookie as a fraction in simplest form."

McGraw-Hill told the Times that the publisher has "no commercial or promotional arrangements to use particular brands." If true, it seems awfully dumb to pass up an opportunity to rake in bucks for access to captive and vulnerable junior consumers.

According to McGraw-Hill, the well-known products were included simply to make the math problems more relevant to sixth graders. The publishing company's inspired and selfless explanation for why they were flacking for some of the biggest corporations around reminded us of a similar bit of spin, this one from fiction. In chapter 17 of Christopher Buckley's 1994 satiric novel, Thank You For Smoking, Jeff, a Hollywood mogul described by the book's protagonist as "a titan of ambiguity," is explaining the philosophy of product placement:

People see their heroes up there on the screen. They want to know everything about them. Take James Bond. He drinks, what is it, a "medium vodka dry martini shaken not stirred?" Don't you think people want to know what kind of vodka James Bond drinks? I can tell you this . . . they will find out what kind of vodka James Bond drinks in the next James Bond movie.

Now, as it happens, the makers of that particular vodka -- whatever it ends up being -- are more than happy to participate financially in the creative process. But the money was all along a byproduct of a creative decision . . . It's nice when that happens.

Yes, it certainly is nice when that happens. We wonder what sort of gratitude will be expressed by McDonald's, Nike, Nabisco, et al., for the opportunity to be a by-product in the "educational process"?

Ringing the bad taste bell

Hats off to the Urinal for setting the bad taste bell pealing last week by running a photo of Senate Majority Leader "Punchy Paul" Kelly posing with Miss America at Halitosis Hall. Nothing like having the paragon of American pulchritude standing grinning like a chimpanzee with a man whom is now best known for pleading guilty to beating his wife. We're sure the Miss America pageant honchos must be quite pleased with their champ for lending her tacit Kodak endorsement to a spouse-abuser. Perhaps they can continue in this vein at the next competition by having Mickey Rourke host the show.

P&J's friends in the anti-domestic violence community were incredulous that the BeloJo would feature such a shot. But hats off to photographer Connie Grosch for maneuvering the clearly clueless duo into agreeing to the shot, and to the intrepid editor who obviously saw the black humor in featuring it in such a prominent position. Or, wait, did they just slap it together?

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