Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World: Press, Press Secretary, Dumpster fire, Hard Drivin’, Bombs

Huge Blunder at Urinal?

Phillipe and Jorge fear that GateHouse Media, absentee owners of the Biggest Little’s organ of record, The Urinal, may have made a colossal mistake – not the first since the carpetbaggers have taken over from their kindred much-removed spirit, the A.H. Belo Corp. of nearby Texas.

We note that Alan Rosenberg has now been named executive editor, surely a major blunder. Alan is talented, respected, highly capable and a longtime Urinal employee who knows Little Rhody inside-out – characteristics seen in the past by GateHouse as superfluous to the job title. This surely flies in the face of their hiring practices.

Rosenberg replaces David Butler, a hired gun from within the GateHouse chain who brought all his local wisdom drawn from San Jose, California, to bear on the Fountain Street fortress. Butler turned out to be a perpetual apologist for the redesigns, firings and re-assignations within the Urinal in his short time as exec editor. And he had plenty of ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy, with GateHouse pulling his marionette strings in his short reign.

P&J now worry that The Urinal might be forced to retreat and rely upon its outstanding reporting, inside knowledge of the region and the recently ignored institutional memory of its admirable staff to bring Vo Dislunders news that actually matters to them, god forbid. And perhaps add a few pages of news that are not simply picked up off national news services and reprinted, but allow the paper’s fine journalists to use their insight to do longer features, and not rely on larger-than-required headlines to fill content space. We hope readers are not baffled by this switch in media tactics under the obviously unqualified Rosenberg.

On the bit more serious side, congrats and good luck, Alan, it is a well-deserved promotion, we love ya, baby. Just pray that GateHouse doesn’t find out you actually know what you’re doing.

Everybody Into the Pool!

After Barrington’s own lying imbecile Sean Spicer, press secretary to the unspeakable, for his incredibly sensitive and historically accurate (honk!) remarks comparing Adolf Hitler to Bashar al-Assad’s use of gas to kill people (or not, according to Sean), we must give him credit for coming up with a wonderful new euphemism: “Holocaust centers,” in lieu of that buzzkill, “concentration camps.”

You know those “Holocaust centers,” right? Where people spent their carefree days hanging around the communal pool, playing mah jongg and card games on the deck, getting up for a little shuffleboard now and then, and coming back to the community center in the evening for bingo night or a little ballroom dancing. All before the wonderfully attentive cabana boys and courteous staff escorted them all off to the showers. How delightful.

Please, any and all gods, we could use a hand down here right now, as our embrace of compassion, truth and human kindness is slowly slipping under a president who knows nothing of those trivial things.

Nepotism 101

Jared Kushner, son-in-law, “senior advisor,” and now international envoy to President Pussy, of no demonstrated skills whatsoever, shares with Daddy-in-law the benefit of having inherited all his money; the proverbial “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” Does dimwitted Dubya Bush also ring a bell here, boys and girls?

But rather than Kushner’s father merely being nailed for racism in their real estate dealings, as did Drumpf pere et fils, Kushner’s daddy Charlie was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering, and spent some time at the federal government’s pleasure at a penitentiary in Alabama. Convict Charlie’s supposed strict adherence to Orthodox Judaism (sans felony convictions, one supposes) led young Jared to demand that his blushing bride, the shameless and tasteless Ivanka, to convert to Judaism, no doubt to keep himself from being cut out of his disgraced father’s will.

One can only imagine what was going through the minds of Iraq’s top politicians and generals when they saw that the preening Kushner had been dispatched by the chief groper to their country to discuss future strategies against ISIS terrorists. They probably couldn’t take him less seriously unless he wore a burkha.

A former editor-in-chief of the New York Observer, which Jared bought and ran into the ground in his life prior to the White House, said in The Washington Post that Kushner’s new role was doubtless yet another personal “vanity project” and that his “expertise isn’t just low, but nonexistent.”

Sounds about right for someone who has the ear of a president whose understanding of, never mind expertise in, government is also nowhere to be found. (Unless of course the Orange Orangutan is taking some online courses at Trump University.)

Hey, Founding Fathers, your Dumpster is on fire.

RIP, Hard Drivin’ Man

Long ago, on a faraway planet (Thayer Street in Providence, to be precise), at the Rubicon coffeehouse, Phillipe and Jorge first saw the J. Geils Band perform. This led to a year-plus of following them around like leather-jacketed versions of Deadheads to all the college and small bar gigs they played to which we could hitch a ride.

J. Geils passed away just recently, leaving a local legacy that ranks among the finest ever in New England.

If your feet weren’t moving at a J. Geils concert, it was time to slip the mirror under your nose to check for signs of life. J. Geils, Magic Dick, Peter Wolf and the gang put on shows that were unrivaled in flat-out intensity. Their national fame came a bit later, when they had moved on to more mainstream, and with all due respect, much inferior songs like “Freezeframe” and “Centerfold,” but anyone familiar with the J. Geils Band will have songs like “Wait,” “Homework,” and “Cruising for a Love” from their seminal first album far above them on the band’s greatest hits list. And their cover of “First I Look at the Purse” can still bring the deadest soul back to life with an adrenaline shot to the heart worthy of “Pulp Fiction.”

Thanks, Mr. Geils. Weren’t nothin’ like it.

I don’t care if their legs are thin
I don’t care if their teeth are big
I don’t care if their hair’s a wig
Why waste time lookin’ at the waistline?
First I look at the purse

Bombs Away!

All rightee! Here’s that round-up of world leaders who are setting off bombs and missiles around the globe.

Murdering dictator and Russian stooge Bashar al-Assad of Syria (okay, so the U.S. has been propping him up behind the scenes … the devil you know, right?)

Murdering dictator, Chinese stooge, and mentally ill child Kim Jong-un of North Korea. (Hey, he’s just foolin’ around and trying to get attention, no worries.)

Wannabe dictator, Bannon/Kushner stooge, and mentally deranged third grader little Donnie Trump, the Mother of All Clowns.

We keep such nice company. As the saying goes, this is not going to end well.