Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World: Dancing Cop, House of Oversight and a Thanksgiving Trip

You all know that Phillipe & Jorge are eternally thankful to live in the Biggest Little because of its rich history and culture. Last week there was a story in GoLocalProv concerning the ongoing saga of “Tony, the Dancing Cop.” Tony Lepore (the Dancing Cop) is a former Providence police officer who began his dancing act in 1984 and was subsequently hired for the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas back in 1988 (when he was still an active member of the force) by former Mayor Vincent “The Bud-I” Cianci, to perform his dance routines at downtown Providence intersections. His act was a big hit with a certain segment of the population and has continued for many years (despite the fact that he was supposedly directing traffic in between the dance moves, but actually causing traffic jams).

In October, Tony got embroiled in a bit of controversy. When a Providence police officer ordered a cup of coffee at a Dunkin Donuts on Atwells Avenue and found the message “#blacklivesmatter” scrawled on the coffee cup by a young employee, the officer took this as a threat of sorts and it became a media story. Tony also took umbrage at this and called for a national boycott of Dunkin Donuts (opening up a can of worms since Tony once did a TV commercial for the rival Honey Dew donut chain). Within 36 hours, Tony thought better of his boycott and rescinded his announcement.

So. on Tuesday, November 24, Kate Nagle (Casa Diablo regular and news editor at GoLocal), filed a story about a meeting between Tony and the Providence public safety people. Tony  was told that he would not be retained this holiday season due to the incident (it was deemed  he was not a good representative of the police even though he’s not an active officer).

Just to make this a total Vo Dilun thing, The Bud-I solicited phone-ins from Kate and Tony on his radio show on WPRO that day so they could all explain. Best part of the conversation? Buddy describing the classic moment when he, Tony and City Hall fixture Walter Miller would arrive in a automobile at Tony’s corner (now that’s entertainment!). Although Tony feels he has been treated badly (the finger of blame seems to be pointing at Mayor Elorza), he promised that he would keep dancing at schools and public events and that he would “design his own police insignia patch” to wear on his generic uniform. Needless to say, your superior correspondents anxiously await the unveiling of this new design.

House of Oversight(s) Committee

As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make a member of the House Oversight Committee think. Or something like that.

The House Oversight Committee, a.k.a. the “Out, Damned Spot!” Committee, continues to provide more yucks than Phillipe and Jorge could wish for as it pretends to look into circumstances surrounding the passage of the legislation that allowed a $75 million dollar loan to Curt “Bloody Sock” Schilling’s farcical 38 Studios, for which Little Rhody taxpayers are on the hook after Schilling’s naïve foray into the world of video games went under faster than the Titanic. (Never mind that current House Speaker Nick “Sgt. Schultz” Mattiello was House Majority Leader at the time, and some members of the committee voted to approve the legislation. We’re looking for answers, goddammit! As long as we don’t look in any mirrors.)

Sgt. Schultz and his handpicked committee chairwoman, Lady Macbeth (Rep. Karen MacBeth), have been demonstratively slapping their riding crops alongside their thighs in a show of force lately, trying to get Mr. Schilling to appear before the committee and bare his soul to no avail.

Now the Out, Damned Spot! Committee has reared up on its hind legs and issued a mighty subpoena to bring in the alleged culprit. Wow! Bow-wow. Because after Mattiello and Lady Macbeth signed the subpoena and issued it, the committee’s lawyer advised them that under Massachusetts law, where Schilling resides, the 38 Studios frontman would reportedly “probably not be required” to respond to it. In legal terms, that means he can say “Nice try, you morons. Kiss my ass.” Well, back to the drawing board, eh kids?

Now the committee is left with the option of trying to nab Schilling in a way that is worthy of Maxwell Smart. Curt’s daughter attends Salve Regina University in Newport and pitches on the Salve softball team, of which her father is quite proud. So may P&J suggest that Mattiello and Lady Macbeth dress up like Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale and hide in the stands at a Salve softball game this spring to ambush Schilling and serve the subpoena when he shows up to watch his darling daughter play? Although guessing from the committee’s shrewd strategic work thus far, they probably wouldn’t think to ask the big guy wearing the gorilla suit three rows in front of them to remove the head of his costume. He’s a clever one, Holmes.

 Come on down!

As is our wont in recent years, Phillipe and Jorge take an annual trek to sunny Palm Beach right around Thanksgiving. Luckily for your superior correspondents, this year’s excursion coincided nicely with the wedding of official Hollywood/Burbank mannequin celebs Joe Manganiello (of the idiotic Magic Mike and “True Blood” fame) and Sofia Vergara (of TV’s unwatchable “Modern Family” and straight-to-DVD films like “Machete Kills”). But boy, do they look good in half-naked Photoshopped publicity stills.

Naturally, P&J were on the invite list, a must for this event, since the site of the wedding was The Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, which was under a “security lockdown” for the event.  Rather than not let people get in without the proper credentials and vetting, the lockdown was most likely initiated by the old money billionaires of Palm Beach to keep the Left Coast Philistines out, as the only way either of these two would be allowed into the palatial estates surrounding The Breakers would be if they were in a housemaid’s uniform or on the business end of a leaf-blower.

The Breakers, decked out for the festivities in a manner that would embarrass a drag queen at a Rio de Janeiro Carnival, is favored by the denizens of Kardashian World for hosting weddings of arriviste vulgarians, which P&J can back up by citing the fact that the loathsome Donald Trump once married one of his Eastern European mail order brides on the grounds.

P&J mingled with our usual charm and social graces at the affair, which ended a bit abruptly for our taste, especially as we still had a few unopened bottles of Dom Perignon left on our table. The hasty retreat from the reception was precipitated by a quite tired and emotional Jorge tearing off his tuxedo shirt and bow tie and leaping onto a tabletop, where he proceeded to act out Manganiello’s dancing routine as a male stripper in Magic Mike. This heartfelt tribute to Big Joe may have been considered acceptable had J not chosen to have an enormous temporary tattoo of “Magic Mike” star Channing Tatum painted onto his chest in the wee hours the night before at a Palm Beach waterfront bar at the squealing provocation of a bunch of Eurotrash young adults. As it was, P&J were whisked quickly out of the ballroom and through the fortress-like front gates, although P could tell from the sly and amused looks of many of the guests that J’s performance had impressed more than a few of the celebrants.

Switching gears effortlessly, while in Florida, P&J are always pleased when a bit of New England culture rears its refined head down South. So it was on another evening when P was forced while out shopping to break into a Chuck Berry duck walk through the golf section of a Dick’s Sporting Goods in Palm Beach when, quite inexplicably, “Roadrunner” by Boston’s legendary Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers began blaring over the store’s sound system (“I’m in love with modern moonlight, 128 when it’s dark outside, I’m in love with Massachusetts, I’m in love with the radio on…Roadrunner, Roadrunner…I’ve got the world, got the turnpike, got the power of the AM…radio on! Got the radio on!” Oh, yeeaah!)

Surprisingly, no one else seemed to share in or emulate Phillipe’s ecstatic response to an old Casa Diablo favorite, but fortunately by the time security had been summoned and subsequently arrived in force, the song had ended and P managed to slip unnoticed into a large crowd surrounding a display of bright orange golf shorts festooned with blue alligators in tribute to the University of Florida and its signature “’gators.”

Thank you, Joe and Sofia, and you, Jonathan and the boys. We always love recounting the highlights of our trips. Come on down!