There was much to-do and flexing of cultural muscles and civic pride as Our Little Towne placed in the top 10 in many prestigious categories in Travel & Leisure magazine’s 2009 survey of “America’s Favorite Cities.”
La Prov scored highly in categories such as the style and intelligence of its residents (how we slipped the latter by them we will never figure out in a million years) and for its everyday institutions such as T.F. Green airport and local theaters. We also particularly liked the fact that Travel & Leisure readers gave high scores to the Capital City’s ethnic food, cafes and coffee bars, and neighborhood taverns, showing that tourists actually got outside the front doors of the Westin Hotel and Biltmore during their visits.
P+J look forward to further high marks from other national publications, such as Grooming mag’s ratings of “Women with Moustaches”; Prancer International’s survey on “Men Who Wear Pappagallos”; the American Speech survey, “People Who Can’t Pronounce the Letter ‘R’ Correctly” (with bonus points for it coming out either “ah” or “vee,” as in “Pahk the caah, Chevyl”); and the highly regarded Global Catchphrase Monthly international poll, which is sure to honor Little Rhody’s best, “Waddya you, an asshole?”
Final note: Vo Dilun has already retired the trophy for best state motto, that being, of course, “Mobsters and Lobsters.”
BROWN DOWN
Speaking of polls, The Times Higher Education Supplement, in conjunction with Quacquarelli Symonds, Ltd., produced their yearly rankings of the best colleges in the world, which saw Brown slip four places to number 31.
Shocked and appalled by this descent on the international scene, Phillipe (a Brown grad) and Jorge have this message for Ruth Simmons, president of the school: “We need more Euro-trash, dammit! Emma ‘Hermione’ Watson is just not cutting it alone! Can’t we get the kids of some deposed Balkan royal families or a bunch more of those Mideast oil families to send their spoiled rotten progeny here and pay for high grades, or give the school’s image some notorious panache by rolling their Ferraris at 3 am and then paying off the cops to beat the rap?”
This slip in the haute monde infuriates P+J, who were already in a dither over the faculty’s uber-politically correct decision to eliminate the celebration of Columbus Day on College Hill. P+J implored Brown’s leadership to obey the credo of “What happens in Hispaniola, stays in Hispaniola” when making their decision, but it fell on deaf ears. And did the oh-so-smug faculty even bother to hold any events to commemorate “Fall Weekend”? Not that we could tell. All they succeeded in doing was to lure WPRO ratings tamperer and blowhard John “The Journalist” DePetro to the campus to lead a protest, which should be argument enough for bringing back Columbus Day.
NOT SO JOCKULAR
It was a dire weekend for New England, seeing the Patriots get stuffed in an ugly affair with the upstart Denver Broncos and the Red Sox meekly capitulating to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, San Berdoo, and Other Surrounding Cities when Jonathan Papelbon blowed up good right in our faces.
It isn’t enough that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is an unctuous creep and butt-boy for the owners who allowed the steroid scandal to take place on his watch. But he seems determined to undermine the possibility of engaging an entire new generation of fans for the National Pastime.
