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Elementary, my dear Watson

Phillipe And Jorge

Paging Dilbert

What’s black and white and re(a)d all over? Certainly not the Providence Urinal, whose circulation has been falling faster than a 1000-pound safe pushed out of a sky-scraper window.

But in a desperate attempt to draw in more readers, the BeloJo has just changed its visual format, in a font overhaul worthy of a high school sophomore’s first graphic design project. P+J must thank editor Tom Heslin for teeing it up for your superior correspondents on October 28, when he attempted to explain the paper’s overhaul. We particularly liked the line, “Months of analysis, debate, review testing and approvals by Publisher Howard G. Sutton culminated in the work you see here today.” This is especially important because “the use of color is standardized.” We can imagine the bowtied Mr. Sutton, a well-known art critic, with chin in hand, informing Mr. Hes-lin, “I think the black needs to be blacker, Tom,” sending him scurrying down to the print dock to make things right.

We also enjoyed Heslin’s explanation that the paper would now have a more telling “sense of energy,” and there would be “an emphasis on shorter stories and vital information.” Yep, that’s what P+J want from a newspaper — abbreviated stories and not too much vital information clouding our minds.

Onward and upwards, gang!

DO THE MOUSE
A harsh blow was dealt to Phillipe and Jorge on October 22 when we learned that Milton Supman, aka Soupy Sales, departed this mortal coil.

Phillipe remembers rushing home from his paper route in the mid-1960s to catch the Soupster’s show on WNEW in New York, reveling in the antics of White Tooth, Black Fang, and Pookie the Lion, who often rubbed shoulders with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. Soupy was over the top in a way that made Rip Taylor proud. His signature stunt was a pie in the face, but he is perhaps remembered most for telling his youthful viewers to go into their mothers’ purses and send all those green pieces of paper with pictures of presidents’ faces on them to the address he would flash on the screen. He was also not beyond the R-rated double entendre, even if his young audience never got the drift.

It was only until a few years ago that Casa Diablo was not adorned by the reel-to-reel tape of Soupy’s contribution to music, “Do the Mouse,” despite the fact that he was a true jazz aficionado. You can do it in your house, yeah.