Christmas at Casa Diablo

With our plans to spend the celebration of the new millennium on the international dateline with a host of well-tanned Polynesian lads in grass skirts -- which should nicely complement P&J's matching feathered halter tops and thong Speedos -- your superior correspondents moved up our annual Casa Diablo party to Christmas Day. Since most of our close friends are agnostics and atheists, if not downright pagans, this posed no problem in still getting a door-busting turnout at chez nous.

What we were most impressed by was the effort made by so many other local dignitaries to attend, whether invited or not. Evidently word had leaked out about the Casa D. creche featuring a Michael Jackson doll in swaddling clothes, cutouts of Moe, Larry and Curly as the Magi, Joe "Prince of Darkness" DeAngelis making a quick holiday buck by personally standing in as Joseph, a department store mannequin in a dominatrix outfit as the Virgin Mary and a stable full of Pokémon figures as the various barnyard animals in attendance. None of that cheesy Somerset Town Hall Paul Bunyan's Santa from hell stuff for us. As always, a tip of the beret and sombrero in the direction of our Hebrew brethren, and we must say that the duel between political fund-raiser Mark Weiner and the newly-engaged Bruce "Captain Blowhard" Sundlun, who employed menorahs equipped with Star Wars-style laser swords, is one that will not soon be forgotten by all those who witnessed it.

Naturally, the local media turned out in force. Doug White had offered to donate his hairdo for use by partygoers as a flying saucer for sliding down the backyard hill, but unfortunately our snowmaker was in the shop for repairs. So Doug had to settle for getting his kicks by lacing the drinks of his fellow JARheads, Karin Reed and Patrice "Holly" Wood, with grain alcohol, and then provoking them into a cat fight worthy of an high school girl's room. Holly came out victorious through some nasty inside work with her rat-tail teasing comb, although we thought her making Karin crinkle her nose until she cried was a bit over the top as far as being a gracious winner goes. Much to our chagrin, Dan Jaenig was a no-show as he had previously planned to officiate at his Mensa chapter's holiday gathering.

As usual, the Urinal's M. Chuckie Bakst was there, obviously on the outside of a few too many Dom Perignons, when we caught him in the kitchen smearing Crisco on his inimitable combed-forward and slicked down hairdo. "This keeps it flatter better than Kiwi shoe polish!" he exulted as we had his fellow BeloJo-ite Bob Kerr lead him back to the festivities. We missed Charlie's wife Elizabeth's legendary Chanukah latkes this year (world's best). We suspect that the ravenous crowd last Sunday at Patrick Kennedy's Yuletide gathering polished them off in short order (shame on you, Larry Berman).

Instead of being upset when former EDC chief John Swen crashed the party, P&J used the chance to point out that our old pal was what we call an Agatha Christie date -- "Murder On the American Express." At least he wasn't out of place, since Bigfoot's director of administration, Bob Carl, also showed up unannounced and did a good job of behaving himself. At least until the stress of the holidays became too much and he started bawling, "I wanna be president of URI! I wanna be president of URI! We had it all greased to go! What happened?" At this point, Sally Dowling broke down in tears and copped to fumbling the ball.

Despite it being standing room only from the Boom-Boom Room, adorned for the occasion with a shrine to Quentin Crisp, it was on to the sauna and spa, where Attorney General Sherbet Whitebread was doing readings from Catch-22 while dressed only in huge white boxer shorts and a bow tie. And a few people ran into problems and missed the affair. Holiday party regulars Senator Charles Walton, Superior Court Judge Rogeriee Thompson and her husband, Bill Clifton, storyteller Lenny Cabral, Urinal reporter Karen Davis, assistant AG Richard Rose, and Channel 10's Nicole Livas were coincidentally all pulled over by state troopers, while en route to Casa D., for putative speeding violations and forced to spend the evening being booked. We learned of their plight when head statie Col. Edward Culhane showed up just before midnight, and informed us of their difficulties. Although what "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?" had to do with his tale we couldn't fathom.

The colonel was deeply apologetic when we gave him the evil eye, pointing out the empty space on the banquet table where Chickie's butter cookies were missing. But the law enforcement head ramrod at least brought a couple of blank videotapes to the party. This proved to be a big hit with speaker of the House, Pucky Harwood, who watched the snowy screen in rapt attention for hours. The rest of the crowd from Halitosis Hall had a fine old time singing carols and occasionally breaking into an impromptu State House version of "My Sharona." This consisted of Senate Majority Leader Paul "Slappy" Kelly bleating out the bass line of the song and, at the appropriate time, all the assembled solons responding "John Celona" to the chorus.

No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't pry DOT chief Big Bill Ankner from the food table as he did his best Homer Simpson imitation, intoning "Mmmm, hors d'oeuvres!" with a deep and satisfied sigh. We were certainly pleased to see former governor Ed "Gerber Babe" DiPrete, looking no worse for the wear after his recent hiatus in another part of Cranston. The Gerbster was in a game-playing mood, leading the whole gang in a round of Dumpster diving for dollars. But boy was the eventual winner, state senator Dominick "Rubbers" Ruggerio, upset when he found out the pension check he retrieved from the bottom of the Dumpster was vulcanized.

Nice to see Mary Ann Sorrentino there, reminding everyone that, come January, she'll be back on the air with her very special brand of talk radio. However, the megaphone was a little much. Senator Jack Reed had the Other Paper's Michael Janusonis pinned in a corner, offering up his list of the year's 10 best films. We were glad to see that Jack has forsworn his former habit of performing his Bogie, Jimmy Stewart and James Cagney impersonations for all within earshot. Doing a great imitation of Jerry Lewis, however, was JARhead weekend weather guy Bill Gile. Bill also entertained the troops by grabbing the phone every 10 minutes and calling R.J. (who was holding down the meteorological fort back at the station), disguising his voice and claiming to be "weather watcher Ben Dover from West Warwick."

Speaking of Channel 10, we were hoping that the entire crew would show up when we announced on the invitations that the highlight of the evening would be the official naming of the small man-made (thank you, Trevor and Enrique) pond in the back of Casa D. "Art Lake." But that damn Jaenig never arrived from his Mensa meeting, and Gene Valicenti was also a no-show. Seems that Gino caught wind of the fact that Cox Cable's Interconnect A was offering a full weekend marathon of past installments of Caught in Providence, Judge Frank Caprio's fabulous traffic court show, and he just couldn't pull himself away from the tube. But the pond renaming went on as scheduled, as partygoers positioned themselves on the Umm Bridge that overlooks the lovely body of water, and smashed giant glass vials of martinis against the hull of P&J's personal yacht, The Good Ship GoodGollyMissMollyPop.

Perhaps the most disappointing part was when Governor Bigfoot passed out on the couch at 8 p.m. At first, we thought the big guy had gotten too deeply into the Ouzo-and-Moxie punch we made up, but his wife, Marilyn, informed us that he had simply gone wild at the early bird Christmas buffet at Chelo's when they stopped in for their usual 4:30 dinner. "If you haven't seen a person eat two piles of mashed potatoes bigger than Bill Ankner's head, you ain't seen nothin', baby!" she enthusiastically exclaimed, with what we thought was a trace of Moxie and a faint anise-based substance on her breath.

And, of course, no Casa D. Christmas party would be complete without a big name show biz star dropping in to entertain the gang. This year we were fortunate to engage the services of Richard Simmons, who led us all through a vigorous "Sweatin' to the Oldies" workout. Richard surprised everyone when he introduced his super-secret special guest, Ricky "Livin' La Vida Loca" Martin, to the crowd. Apparently, Ricky was in tow because he and Richard were on their way up to Vermont to buy a summer place.

After such a momentous event, your superior correspondents had to retire to the boudoir with cold compresses in hand to await this week's even bigger New Year's Eve gala. Stay tuned.

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