Newport Nightmares Ah, Newport. Sailing Capital of the World. City by the Sea. Rhode Island’s #1 tourist attraction. And seemingly determined by state and local pols and planners to make a visit there as unpleasant as possible. P&J refer to the ill-conceived need for a median strip on the Newport Bridge, an overreaction of the […]
A Small Favor This request will doubtless set the bad taste bell a-ringin’, but Phillipe and Jorge are at their wits’ end. Would a local blond, white, teenage girl please manage to get abducted or at the least, go missing? P&J figure this is about the only thing that will get the clapped-out, mind-numbing coverage […]
Bribes and Bullshit There are bribes and then there are “contributions,” the latter of which won’t pass the laugh test when you pull them off at a political scale that makes Wall Street investment bankers and brokers whiny. Disgraced former RI House Speaker Gordon Fox proved himself to be an arrogant, power-broking wannabe piece of […]
Criticism is not about the conscious refusal to distance oneself from the audience, but about trying to explain why or why not a prospective audience member would want to invest in experiencing a particular work. Every film has some plausible audience, but some films are cynically made for an audience of idiots and it is […]
Truth to Power House Speaker Nick Mattiello recently got his knickers in a twist over remarks made about the Little Rhody budget and sausage-making process by Governor Gina Raimondo at Politico’s State Solutions Conference in Washington, part of the National Governor’s Association confab. Here’s what Our Gina had to say that got Nicky’s careful coif […]
Ben Mondor, after buying the franchise out of bankruptcy in 1977, turned the Pawtucket Red Sox into a national model of how to run a successful, fan-friendly, family-friendly, and profitable minor-league baseball team. Until his death in 2010, Mondor defined the beloved institution that became, arguably, Rhode Island’s premier professional sports organization. On February 23, […]
Bus World Issues having to do with RIPTA buses are always on Jorge’s mind as he has been riding them his entire life and has never had a driver’s license. He talks to drivers and other passengers and, with the weather we have been experiencing, it seems that the frustrations of many folks who are […]
Aftermath Well, Juno (the blizzard) didn’t turn out to be ’78 redux, but it did shake everyone up, and it seems a lot of those responsible for dealing with the storm did their homework and got Vo Dilun back on track in a day or two. It was bad enough to shut down RIPTA for over 24 hours, […]
FUSVP So now self-absorbed blowhard nancy-boy Catholic Bishop Tommy Tobin has used another major event — Gina Raimondo’s inauguration — to draw attention to himself by refusing to attend. Wow! Bow-wow! Phillipe and Jorge believe that there is an easy way to halt this grandstanding by the belligerent bishop: Don’t invite him. If you were hosting parties […]
North Korea is one of history’s most brutal, irrational, vicious, and cruel regimes. The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not democratic, views its people as dehumanized slaves to the collective, and sullies the notion of republicanism through rule by a monarchic dynasty now in its third generation. Despite its status as the closest […]