Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World: Nethers at Brown, Matt Lauer and So Long, Bobby

Hygiene News

You’ve come a long way, baby.

The reigning academic LGBT king/queen of political correctness and insipid and fragile sensitivities, Brown University, recently announced it will provide free tampons and sanitary napkins in all university building bathrooms. Yes, we mean women’s, gender inclusive and men’s rooms. Guess the guys will have to continue to find condom machines in the gents’ at their local dive bar, strip club or highway truck stop.

As for having the products in men’s rooms, P&J imagine the clever laddies at Brown will figure they might be valuable in stuffing a tampon down their undershorts to give enhancement to their perceived wedding tackle, certainly much cleaner and less messy than using the traditional salami. But remember, boys, it goes in the front.

National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill told the Associated Press in a statement, “Feminine hygiene products are not a luxury. They’re as essential as toilet paper, just ask anyone who has ever struggled to obtain or afford them. Students’ participation in school should not be hindered by insufficient access to this basic necessity. Universities around the country should follow suit.” At a higher level, elimination of sales taxes on feminine hygiene products has become a national issue, and rightly so.

To its credit, Brown has always been a leader in proper use and maintenance of the nether regions. Back in the day, when men were men and women were women, Brown made waves nationally by being the first to provide safe sex products to their students, including birth control pills. The program drew fire for seemingly encouraging their bright young things to have as much sex as they wanted (obviously in the interest of it being a learning experience). In 1965, an article in Time magazine reported: “Latest benchmark on US manners and morals: Dr. Roswell Johnson, director of health services at Brown University and its women’s college, Pembroke, last week acknowledged that he had prescribed birth-control pills for ‘a very, very small’ number of girls (perhaps as many as five) in his official capacity. The girls were over 21 and intending to be married. He emphasized that he had had lengthy consultations in each case, because ‘I want to feel I’m contributing to a solid relationship and not to unmitigated promiscuity.’ Brown President Barnaby Keeney stoutly backed his health director…”

Associate professors of the female variety at the Phillipe and Jorge-founded Institute of Casual Research who attended Brown and Pembroke at that sexually liberated time recalled their own experiences, including prior to Brown opening the gates further on their hot topic distribution center, having to go “downcity” to Planned Parenthood to get contraception, because “Johnson wouldn’t prescribe to anyone under 21 or who was ‘promiscuous.’ HA!”

Those who followed saw the loosening up of restrictions, if not morals: “By the time I got there five years later, pills were handed out free and unfettered to anyone — no questions asked.  (Saved me from having to go to the PP downtown and lying about being a married grad student at Brown.)”

We can just imagine Donald Trump coming to Brown to campaign (which like P&J’s election to the RI Journalism Hall of Fame, is dependent upon the weather -­- like when Hell freezes over), and wandering into a men’s room where there are free tampons and sanitary napkins on display and running out screaming “Disgusting! Disgusting!” and heading straight for his gallon-sized jug of Purell. “I sing the body antiseptic,” indeed.

After Brown’s more recent idiotic pc-driven decisions (eliminating Columbus Day jumps to mind), spineless and milquetoast coddling of spoiled brats and endorsement of trigger warnings and safe spaces in recent years, among other travesties, it looks like they may have gotten at least one right. And if our lack of respect for the supposed best and brightest on College Hill offends someone in the ivory towers, let us repeat the soothing words of comfort offered to us on many occasions by our dearly beloved, sainted mothers: “Tough shit.”

The Show Must Go On (but can the country?)

RIP, Major Minor Celebrities

Hurry home early, hurry on home,

Boom Boom Mancini’s fighting Bobby Chacon

–       Chorus from Boom Boom Mancini, by Warren Zevon (1987)

Phillipe and Jorge are longtime fans of the Sweet Science, aka boxing. And with all due respect to Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” about Ruben “Hurricane” Carter’s mistreatment at the hands of the law, the best boxing-related song ever composed is Warren Zevon’s “Boom Boom Mancini,” which P&J are known to crank up to 11 at Casa Diablo when the fighting mood strikes us.

Back when boxing actually mattered in the US (quick, name one of the current heavyweight champs), Boom Boom Mancini was a public darling, the national version of our own adored Vinny Paz. (More on the P&J/Paz relationship in this space as the November debut of his biopic, Bleed for This, nears. And we’re still waiting for those tix to the Little Rhody premiere, Vinny.) Boom Boom was notorious for the fatal beating in the ring he gave to South Korean fighter Duk Koo Kim, known forever after at Casa D as “Duk Too Late.”

At any rate, Bobby Chacon was a flashy, all-action featherweight and super heavyweight champion who took on Boom Boom for the lightweight title in 1984. Unfortunately, moving up in weight doesn’t bring your punching power up with it, and Chacon got pummeled in a third round TKO. But the anticipation of the all-out street brawl was enough to spur Zevon to write his somewhat obscure hit.  Bobby Chacon has also hurried home early, dying last week at age 64 while under care for dementia. (Wonder how he got that?) Salud, Senor Chacon, Warren Z. immortalized you.