Not gone, but we forgot them

Thanks to our good friends at the Urinal who pen the "Political Scene" column every Monday, we learn that our old pal, political consultant Michael Vallante, is now heading up the California Republican Party. This outfit is part of a recall election that is already politics’ biggest joke, featuring more broken-down, busted-up circus dogs running for governor than you could find in 100 Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey shows. But P&J’s best still go to the Silver Lake native, who worked for Mayor Bud-I and Governor Ed "Gerber Baby" DiPrete — two of the worst scoundrels in the history of the Biggest Little, and who once chaired Vo Dilun’s GOP. California should be a breeze after working the trenches in the Biggest Little.

What most intrigued Phillipe and Jorge was the mention of a visit Vallante recently received from local Republican mover and shaker Dave Talan, a 2002 candidate for mayor of Our Little Towne. Talan was on the Left Coast for a conservative Republican convention, one day of which featured a dinner with "conservative celebrities," as Political Scene described them. And how’s this for a lineup that would make you lose your appetite — Jane Russell. Gavin "Love Boat" MacLeod and Wink Martindale, the former game show host with the largest mouth seen on TV, save for Carol Channing cameos. And let’s not forget who led a prayer breakfast that day — Pat Boone.

While this is enough to make your skin crawl, it did remind P&J of the Nebraska state fair of a few years past, which conducted an off-the-wall billboard campaign that tried to boost attendance with one sign reading, "Come see bands you thought were dead!" Well, P&J don’t miss too many issues of the National Enquirer, but Ms. Russell, and Messrs. MacLeod, Martindale, and Boone don’t even make those pages any more, and we thought all of them had passed on to that big conservative celebrity B-list in the sky. Hope you had a great time, Dave. "Give me that Loooove Booooat . . . "

Is that 'oui' or 'jawohl'?

Speaking of California’s recall election circus, everyone from the Washington Post to the Smoking Gun Web site is picking up a 1977 interview from the now-defunct titty mag Oui with Arnold "Family Man" Schwarzenegger. It seems the frightening newsreader Maria Shriver’s hubby regaled Oui’s interviewer, Peter Manso, with admissions that he had done drugs and engaged in group sex — which in California might actually make him a mainstream candidate.

At least Arnie was a tasteful young bodybuilder as these comments reveal, speaking of an orgy consisting of one woman and some of his muscular mates, but "just the guys who can fuck in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. Some think that they don’t have a big enough cock, so they can’t get a hard-on."

And he might have a tough time getting the superior-behaving Log Cabin GOP boys when they read his deep thoughts on the homosexuality "business": "Men shouldn’t feel like fags just because they want to have nice-looking bodies . . . Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us. Well, I have absolutely no hang-ups about the fag business . . . "

And Mom and Dad, don’t worry about the living action toy corrupting your kids with drugs, because he only did "grass and hash — not the hard stuff." That ought to really please the Moral Majority (which, of course, is neither).

Personally, P&J are amused that Californians are seriously considering the son of an ex-Nazi who acts in movies geared to juveniles as their future governor, despite his lack of an economic plan or a brain. But he is a master manipulator, and in a state where people can’t distinguish between a real person and the roles they play (say hi, Ronnie Reagan!), he, of course, is a frontrunner. This is because the fools in the media suck up to ‘The Terminator" at every opportunity, giving him invaluable free publicity so they can impress their friends at cocktail parties with stories about "what he’s really like."

Sleep tight, Founding Fathers.

Pumped up

No, this isn’t another bit about Schwarzenegger, but rather someone who actually knows what he’s talking about and isn’t afraid to say it. Berets and sombreros off to Robert Murray, senior vice president of corporate affairs at AAA Southern New England in Rhode Island, for telling the press that the inflated gas prices we’re enduring are, basically, artificially inflated by oil companies to take advantage of end-of-summer travel. In most truth-speaking circles, this is known as price-gouging by the corporate white boys who are so cozy with Dubya Bush and his veep, Big Time Cheney, both of whom are wholly owned subsidiaries of Big Oil.

"This looks like some end-of-summer profit-taking," Murray told the Urinal last week. Say no more.

Doing it right

Much as we regularly lament the gradual diminishing of the Other Paper by its Belo-boy owners down in "big hat, no cattle" land, there are still times when the OP continues to impress. The ongoing sterling work of old pros like Kathy "Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill" Gregg, Scott MacKay, Karen Lee Ziner, Tom (now banished to the boondocks) Morgan, and columnists Charlie Bakst and (especially) Bob Kerr, continue to make the Urinal necessary and exemplary reading. Their bylines (along with others, like Bill Malinowski, Karen Davis, Mark Arsenault, and Jennifer Levitz) are always a sign of first-rate reporting. The recent series on Jeffrey Scott Hornoff by Ged Carbone and Cathleen Crowley is another example of what the daily can do when it puts its mind to it.

It’s time to pat the OP on the back once more, for its recent announcement that Rick Massimo has been selected as the new pop music critic. Not only is Rick a fine writer, he also knows music. This is an excellent choice, and save former copy editor Paige Van Antwerp, there hasn’t been another music writer on the OP staff with the chops to carry on in the tradition of Tony Lioce.

So good for you, BeloJo. We can rightly expect thoughtful and intelligent pop music reviews from the very talented Mr. Massimo.

Law and disorder

It has been a long time since your superior correspondents have seen such an entertaining police report as the one in the Other Paper on Monday, September 1, about the three boneheads who showed up at the North Kingstown police station at 2:30 a.m. to purportedly turn themselves in for what appears to be an impromptu fireworks display and fire.

After being alerted to the fireworks and fire, police found a vehicle parked nearby with the keys still in the ignition. They took the keys and left a note on the windshield, requesting that the owner appear at police headquarters. Steven McKay, 19, showed up along with his "buds," Michael Shoener, 19, and James Allen, 18, whereupon, it is alleged, they "shouted expletives and Allen made lewd gestures" at the dispatcher on duty. When the dispatcher called for help, MacKay allegedly screamed that he would harm the officer. He was immediately handcuffed and his pals were asked to leave, but they decided to "taunt and threaten" other officers present and were swiftly cuffed and whisked away.

If this tale is true, these are some of the stupidest junior miscreants we’ve seen in many a moon. Young Mr. Allen is also alleged to have exposed himself and urinated in his cell. That’ll show ’em.

Death wish

"Those are the guys who got Wladislaw in the men’s room."

R.I.P, Charles Bronson.

Quote of the week

From Robert Schlesinger’s September 1 article in the Boston Globe about the animosity between US Army leaders and our unspeakable, egotistical secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The septuagenarian warmonger Rummy is the one who, with President Dubya, has American soldiers’ blood on his hands — and it’s starting to reach their elbows since our troops continue to get picked off daily in Iraq. Schlesinger cites the quote of a former Army man:

" ‘You look at Rumsfeld, and beyond all the rationale, spoken and unspoken, he just dislikes the Army. It’s just palpable . . . You always have to wonder if, when Rumsfeld was a Navy lieutenant junior grade, whether an Army officer stole his girlfriend,’ said Ralph Peters, a former Army intelligence officer who writes on national security issues."

Mr. Discretion

A nice little campaign note in a recent issue of the New York Times in which Florida senator and presidential candidate Bob Graham was overheard on an Amtrak train loudly barking into his cell phone, demanding to speak to the likes of Jimmy Buffett and Warren Beatty. Apparently, Graham was also yelling out to the operator the phone numbers he was trying to reach, meaning anyone in the general vicinity could easily jot down Beatty’s super-secret phone number.

Nice going, Bob. Good to see that the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is so wise to the ways of security and safety.

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