Phillipe + Jorge are alerted to how Las Vegas plans to create a museum paying tribute to organized crime and the role played by the Mob in creating this living monument to neon, excess, kitsch, Elvis, and gambling in the Nevada desert. We assume there will be splendid and inspired touches like the Meyer Lansky Gift Shop, where you can launder your gambling money, and the Bugsy Siegel Wing, with tour guides who bitch-slap the folks entering the joint.
This sparks an idea in P+J’s fertile imaginations. If it’s good enough for Lost Wages, it’s good enough for the Biggest Little, especially when Harrah’s and the Narragansett Indians basically gave us the same message last year.
So how about a Providence Mobster Museum and Hall of Fame on Federal Hill, to celebrate our bygone years as New England’s headquarters of organized crime? We have plenty to glorify, since Providence gangsters still get play in contemporary works, like The Departed and The Sopranos. And that doesn’t even get into past dark deeds at City Hall, which should warrant an entire floor, with dioramas depicting Joe Doorley slumped behind his desk with a drink in his hand, the Bud-I browbeating hang-dog members of the University Club, and Frank Corrente slipping an unmarked envelope into his pocket while a camera hidden in a briefcase rolls tape.
We could add a Disneyesque animated robots kick line of cops, firefighters, and public works employees doing their Rockettes’ impersonation while singing “Look for the Union Label.”
What better time to launch such a project, when the current mayor of Our Little Towne, David “Little Chi-Chi” Cicilline, just happens to be the son of the famed defense lawyer Jack Cicilline, who defended a number of clients with dubious pasts and associates, such as one Raymond L.S. Patriarca, a sweet, charming, shy, mysterious, diamond geezer of a guy.
Jack deserves special mention, because he always assured us that there was no such thing as the Mafia. Hey, just a bunch of old “hats” standing outside social clubs on the Hill, minding their own business, if you please. And what body in a car trunk? He was probably just looking for his spare tire when he fell in, shot himself in the back of the head, and locked himself in.
Ah, imagine the glory of the opening day for such a paean to our past. How lovely it would be to see little children playing stickball in the street on a beautiful summer day on Atwells Avenue, across from the new museum on the site of the former Patriarca-owned Coin-O-Matic vending machine company.
Sinatra songs will be pumped into the air as we inaugurate the first class of honorees with plaques that include both head-on and profile images of the new Hall of Famers, a la police mug shots. Raymond, Junior, Baby Shacks, Buckles, the Saint, and the Moron, we salute you!
Not for nuthin’, but it brings a fuckin’ tear to your eye, know what I mean?
Flying high
Speaking of Hizzoner, La Prov was featured in a recent edition of US Airways’ in-flight magazine.
In a package of articles by our lovely friend Paula Bodah, former editor of Rhode Island Monthly, Mayor Cicilline is extolled for creating a positive sea change in the Capital City.
While we can hear the screams coming from the Bud-I, Mr. Renaissance City, and the steam vents exploding at WPRO’s studio over in East Prov, Paula cites Little Chi-Chi’s claims to improving Our Little Towne’s bond rating, substantially lowering crime, and expanding after-school learning programs. This, of course, will not quiet his mighty predecessor claims of pulling his own Lazarus trick with Providence, but there is plenty of credit to go around.
Ms. Bodah also included a take on four of Little Rhody’s most talented artists: Barnaby “WaterFire” Evans; famed New Yorker cover artist and painter Gretchen Simpson Dow; set designer extraordinaire Eugene Lee; and out-of-this-world illustrator Chris Van Allsbug. This all made Vo Dilun look like a million bucks in small change. And hey, that’s before we even get the Mobster Museum and Hall of Fame up and running!
Another day, another doughnut
The Week magazine published a report showing, perhaps, that striking TV comedy writers are being employed elsewhere, although it meant for this to be taken at face value.
“[A] man named Warren Whitelightning (if that is indeed your name, Colonel Batguano) stole a Krispy Kreme doughnut truck and led several police cars on an 80 mph chase, leaving a trail of hundreds of donuts roiling down the streets of Madison, Wis.”
While no reference was made to moonshine, we hope that someone got a video of cops in hot pursuit of a doughnut truck. You can’t make it up.