Fly the unfriendly skies

What do you get when you cross US Airways with Philadelphia International Airport? The chance to be treated like crap, judging by our recent experience.

Last month, Phillipe & Jorge took a flight from Providence to New Orleans, via the City of Brotherly Love. The ground crew in Philly was so inept that the captain of the flight actually urged passengers over the intercom to never fly the airline again. Since this followed a similar incident at Philadelphia years earlier, when P. was returning from a writing assignment on the "Tough Man" competition for TV Guide, only the worst was expected. Forced to spend two hours awaiting departure on the tarmac with a screaming baby next to him (leading P. to want to throttle the stewardess, a move prevented only by his traveling companion, Mr. Etchells), he was a distinctly unhappy camper. The financially troubled airline delivered again more recently, but this time the targets were Phillipe’s mother and sister.

Readers of the New York Times got to see a huge front-page photo of passengers’ luggage in a heap at Philly International after the Christmas holiday. This following a massive Christmas sickout by US Air’s baggage handlers and flight attendants. For Phillipe, this resulted in another flameout by a captain — since no one was available to move the necessary apparatus for 30 minutes. This was nothing compared to the airline’s behavior, bordering on the absurd, later that day and the next.

P.’s mother was attempting to reach the Harrisburg airport via Cincy, with his sister due to go through Philadelphia on the way to Williamsport, near Harrisburg. They were on the way to their scheduled mutual destination in Lewisburg, home of Phillippe’s brother, or so they thought. First, Moms twice got rerouted due to snow in Cincinnati, and ended up in Philadelphia, told that she could not fly to Harrisburg since no flights were available. This evidently didn’t apply to P.’s sister, who was rerouted from her intended destination of Williamsport, and placed on an unscheduled flight to Harrrisburg, not realizing that she and mother were within shouting distance in the same airport at the same time.

All the while, the buffoons at US Air were in the process of sending the luggage of both of Phillipe’s wonderful women – loaded with Xmas presents, of course — to Charlotte. This took place over a 12-hour period. As everyone knows, there is nothing more exciting than killing time at an airline terminal with drunken, obese NACSAR fans wearing matching terrycloth warm-up outfits about three sizes too small that haven’t been washed in a week and reek pleasantly of Big Macs.

The upshot of this comedy of errors was P.’s sister arrival in Harrisburg a mere 10 hours late, while — get this, sports fans — mater familias was bundled into a limousine and taken on the three-hour ride from Philly to Harrisburg. She arrived at 11 p.m., forcing P.’s brother to make a three-hour roundtrip to pick up sister and mother, rather than Phillipe simply being able to meet up with them eight hours earlier, as planned, for a leisurely ride.

As P&J go to press, our girls are still awaiting the delivery of their luggage. Maybe we all should have booked with that fat bloke’s airline with the eight reindeer. Salud, US Airways, corporate America, and the Federal Aviation Authority. As Phillipe’s distinguished, sophisticated, and elegant mother might say, "Go fuck yourselves."

THE SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE T-SHIRT

AS220’s Broad Street Studio recently held a "T-Shirt Release Party," featuring shirts made by the young people who are involved in the studio’s programs. It was noted, "All proceeds go to supporting youth and programming at Broad Street Studio. As young people and artists, we recognize the cycle of exploitation oppressing people around the world: from the streets of Rhode Island to the sweatshops of Indonesia. Therefore, we work to ensure all of our products are manufactured under fair conditions. All of our shirts are made in guaranteed sweatshop-free environments and printed by local screen printers."

The Broad Street Studio is a suite of programs aimed at engaging Rhode Island youth in the efforts and mission of AS220. At the heart of each of the Broad Street programs is a dedication to AS220’s core belief that everyone should have an opportunity to develop their creative voice and present it to the world.

Check out what’s going on at the BSS (for details, visit www.as220.org), and purchase a T-shirt while you’re at it. To quote the immortal Al Cerrone, "You’ll be glad you did."

LIBRARY ALERT

Al Gunther, a good friend of P&J’s, who works in the Providence Public Library system, tells your superior correspondents that community meetings will be held at the various neighborhood branches of the PPL, starting next week. (Al says the meeting at the Smith Hill branch, where he works, will take place Wednesday, January 5 at 6:30 p.m.)

The meetings are meant to get public opinion about what services are considered most important to the community and the schools in various city neighborhoods. Discussion topics at the meetings will include:

• What library programs are most important to you, your family, or your students?

• What hours are most important to you, your family, and the children in the neighborhood?

• What do you use most? Computers? Books? Videos? Research?

Members of the city council, city administration, and library administrators have been invited to hear what residents want from the library. As you know, the PPL has been experiencing budgetary problems for a while, and some of its own ideas about how to put the fiscal house in order (staff cutbacks and more restrictive library hours) have not exactly been greeted with praise. We urge you to find out the dates for the meeting at your local branch, and to let your voice be heard.

DEATH WATCH

We saw only minimal local reportage about the recent deaths of two men highly respected at Casa Diablo. Jack Newfield was one of the great muckraking newspaper reporters of the second half of the 20th century. He wrote for a variety of New York publications, but it was his work with the Village Voice in the ’60s and ’70s that is most highly regarded. Newfield was an early civil rights activist and a strong voice for the powerless in his long career. He also was a boxing aficionado and frequently wrote about the not-too-sweet science. Newfield’s advocacy journalism made a difference. We doff our sombreros to one of the masters of advocacy journalism.

Music fans in these parts were fortunate to have seen the great guitarist Son Seals many times. He was in and out of Providence quite frequently in the ’80s and ’90s. Jimmy Celenza, head ramrod of the workplace safety group RICOSH, tipped us off to Son’s passing, and he had this to say about Mr. Seals: "He played through a bass amp to get a raspy chopping reverb, which today you get through digital technology. He played Prov a lot. [I] caught him at Lupo’s, at the Met, and the Call, and the old Church House Inn — now a fancy man hotel with ‘friendly women’ — and he blew everyone away. The [New York] Times obit says, ‘Mr. Seals was shot in the mouth by his wife, whom he later divorced.’ Well, I would hope so. He wore a cowboy hat and ambled about like a regal Egyptian god, which I think he might have been. Any man who wrote and sang: ‘Love is like a cancer woman/Lord eating away my life,’ knows a thing or two."

SLITHERING UP

Fred Malek is a real blast from the past. He is involved with the new Washington, DC-based Major League Baseball team (you know, the guys who are pressuring the public to pay for everything). Back in the ’70s Freddie was one of Nixon’s top henchmen. He was a deputy director at CREEP (the Committee to Re-Elect the President), but Fred forever endeared himself to RMN for helping with such classically Nixonesque ventures as compiling the famous "Jewish cabal" list at the Labor Department and finding ways (like using IRS audits) to harass those who made the extensive and legendary "enemies list."

Isn’t it interesting how Republicans always seem to pay such great lip service to the "free market," but when it comes to putting up the bucks to make them a bundle, they think it should come out of the public’s pocket?

SEEING RED (SOX)

Speaking of the downside of the business of baseball (our fearless leader got rich with the help of a sweetheart deal in acquiring the Texas Rangers, by the way), there were some well-placed brickbats about the recent money-grubbing appearance at the Rhode Island Convention Center by members of the Boston Red Sox. Bill Reynolds of the Other Paper registered the outage of many in writing about this. For our part, we can’t imagine the allure of participating in such an event for someone like Manny Ramirez, who makes somewhere like $20 million a year. What’s another $25,000 or $50,000 on top of this?

Still, we will remember the stirring and unprecedented comeback of the Red Sox against the Yankees, and Boston’s ultimate victory over the Cardinals to end the 86-year drought, as one of the great events of 2004. We’ll close with the words of the slugging designated hitter David Ortiz — who plays the game with the child-like enthusiasm that it deserves — in explaining his team’s motivation against New York after the heartbreaking loss of 2003: "We saw a lot of the fans crying and feeling hurt, and I think myself and all of my teammates, we were worried about it and kept that for ourselves. And that’s one of the big reasons for us to come to the field and represent the way we did the last four games."

BONEHAD FACE-OFF

Finally, as the year ends, we’ve got to hand it to House Speaker Bill Murphy. We were convinced that the boneheaded move of the year award belonged in the paws of Governor Carcieri for his ridiculous "Constitution, what Constitution?" legislation, when he attempted to dust off anti-sedition laws of WWI vintage and pass them off as security moves

Big Bill, however, has come on strong at year’s end with his ridiculous suggestion that the CRMC and Lottery Commission are somehow exempt from the implementation of separation of powers. This is pretty desperate. One would have to be a moron not to know that the CRMC and the Lottery Commission are two of the biggest reasons why separation of powers became such a popular issue in the first place. Nice going, Bill. John DeSimone thanks you for your great political instincts.

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