===================================================================== ________ /_ __/ /_ ___ ============================/ / / __ \/ _ \=========================== ==========================/ / / / / / __/========================== /_/ /_/ /_/\___ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ / / / /__ __________ / /___/ / / / / /__ _______ _ / /___/ / =/ /_/ / __` / __/ __ \/ / __ /=====/ /_/ / _ \/ __/ __` / / __ /= =/ __ / /_/ / / / /_/ / / /_/ /=====/ __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /_/ /=== /_/ /_/\__,_/_/ \____/_/\__,_/ /_/ /_/\___/_/ \__,_/_/\__,_/ All the News About Hal that Hal Deems Fit to Print ===================================================================== APRIL 1995 ~ Ite in Orcum Directe ~ Volume 4, Issue 2 _____________________________________________________________________ Now The Best Self-Published Newsletter in New England - Some Guy at the Boston Globe (Owens went belly-up) Publisher: Harold Gardner Phillips, III Editor-in-Chief: Hal Phillips Virtual Editor: Dr. David M. Rose, Ph.D. PR Coordinator: Donna Harris-Lewis Education Editor: Kelly Galligan Business Editor: Nicholas Leeson Expedience Editor: Ben Nighthorse Campbell Assistant Expedience Consultant: Richard Shelby Deputy Undersecretary of Expedience: Nathan Deal Spiritual Consultant: Mike Tyson Editorial Offices: The Harold Herald 30 Deering St. Portland, ME 04101 Satellite Office: c/o Golf Course News 38 Lafayette St. P.O. Box 997 Yarmouth, ME 04096 ARCHIVE SITES: fir.cic.net (pub/Zines/Harold.Herald) etext.archive.umich.edu (pub/Zines/Harold.Herald) Subscription requests to drose@fas.harvard.edu Hal-direct missives to hphillip@biddeford.com Funding for The Harold Herald is provided by our contributing readers including: Mrs. Charles Fowler... $5 Barbara Reeves & Paul A. Phillips.... $10 Tom, Abby, Bennett Rose... Stamps galore Rich Gibbons & Heather Moss... $10 Gov. David McDonald... $10 Bill 5'18" Paprocki... $25 (zoinks!) (All this, and still nothing from my own family!) Submissions welcome PHILLIPS TO LEAVE DEERING ST.; DRUNKEN MELEE PLANNED BY HAL PHILLIPS PORTLAND, Maine - Get to know me. Get to know the spirit of Thomas Brackett Reed. Get to know the lovely Sharon Vandermay. Get a measure of social religion. Get legless. Get while the gettin's good here at 30 Deering St. on April 22. A tri- level soiree has been scheduled for that particular Saturday night on the occasion of the fair Ms. Vandermay's birthday. Further, as I'm moving in with my betrothed birthday girl on June 1, attendees will have the opportunity to bid farewell to Thomas Brackett Reed house where I've resided for lo, these past three years - my longest tenure at any address since leaving for college. Upstairs neighbor "Aroo- stook" Mary Fowler has generously added her apartment for party use while access to the roof here at TBR house will allow wondrous views of Portland's Back Bay. [Let the record show the Herald Legal Department hereby warns invitees against getting drunk and falling off the roof.] All readers should consider this issue of the Herald an invitation to the party, almost certainly the last social event of any import to be staged at this 19th century historic landmark. Festivities should commence around 8 p.m. There will be nibbles, but big-eating folks would be well served to eat beforehand, if only to line your stomachs. Various libations - beer, spirits and NABs - will be provided, but even the most modest liquid birthday gifts (for Sharon, of course) would be much appreciated. Indeed, a six-pack or bottle of wine would spur our instant and endless devotion. Let's recap, shall we? What: A party on three levels Whose: Mine Where: Thomas Brackett Reed House, 30 Deering St., Portland; the corner of Deering and State Street (Route 77). When: Saturday, April 22 at 8 p.m. Why: Fair Sharon's birthday and goodbye to TBR House. Directions: Get to I-95. Get to I-295 towards Portland. Get off the highway at the Forest Avenue exit, going towards the city. Get right, into Deering Oaks Park. Get through the light, up the hill, through another light, and go left on Deering Street. Get a parking spot. Getting here from Cape Elizabeth is different: Get over the Million Dollar Bridge and go left on High Street. Get left as you pass over Congress Street and go left on Deering, across from the Royal Sonesta. Get a parking spot because 30 Deering is two blocks away. Got it? Good. /-/ \-\ ENORMOUS ANTLERS AND FUSED METACARPALS: CHICKS DIG 'EM By MARK SULLIVAN The Irish elk that roamed Europe 12,000 years ago had enormous branching antlers that spanned a dozen feet. The deer-horn equivalent of the barbecued bronto ribs that upended the Flintstones' roadster, these cumbersome appendages were considered the most fetching by female Irish elks. The Hal Phillips who roams latter-day golf courses from Kennebunk to Kuala Lumpur was born with fused metacarpal bones, effectively leaving him without wrists. The condition makes swinging five-irons or typing a challenge for this golf magazine editor, but renders him nearly invincible at arm-wrestling. Science suggests the long-extinct deer and Hal have something in common. Hal's wrists and the Elk's antlers, physiological departures that seem to flout practicality, may in fact have enhanced the owners' ability to reproduce - a paramount factor in the Darwinian scheme. Further, the evolutionary significance and hereditary impact of Hal's wristlessness have drawn increased scrutiny since he announced his intention to wed later this year. Hal's curious condition is not readily evident. One is reminded of another famous Harold, the silent film star Harold Lloyd, who early in his career blew off one of his thumbs with a prop explosive; Lloyd successfully hid this fact from the camera by means of a flesh-colored glove fitted with a prosthetic thumb, which he wore even when dangling from clock towers. In Hal's case you don't notice his lack of wrists until he begins to type, in a paddle-paw fashion that suggests a circus bear playing the piano. On the golf course, Hal finds his fused wrists are "good for coming out of the rough - the club doesn't turn in my hands." But he has a difficult time with toll booths. "I can't lean back and make a smooth, easy transition palming the money," he explains. Impractical as their design may be, Hal's wrists may fill a unique role in the evolutionary scheme. In "Only His Wings Remained," an essay in his 1985 book The Flamingo's Smile, Harvard paleontologist Steven Jay Gould writes: "Our world overflows with peculiar, otherwise senseless shapes and behaviors that function only to promote victory in the great game of mating and reproduction. No other world but Darwin's would fill nature with such curiosities that weaken species and hinder good design but bring success where it really matters in Darwin's universe alone - passing more genes to future generations." Gould's favorite oddities of this sort are "the tail feathers of peacocks and the huge, encumbering antlers of Irish elks, both adaptations in the struggle among males for access to, or acceptance by, females, but certainly not contributions to good design in a biochemical sense." David Rose, PhD, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, suggests wrist-lessness may increase the probability of Hal's having children. "It might make masturbation more difficult, so it increases the likelihood he will reproduce with something else," observes Rose, who added: "If we lived in a society where the probability of mating rested on arm-wrestling skills, maybe he would have an advantage. Perhaps that explains why he visits Bubba's Sulkey Lounge with such frequency." Hal's fiancee, comely exposition organizer Sharon Vandermay, confirmed that Hal's wristlessness was a distinct attraction. "None of the other men I dated had no wrists," she said. "It was yet another unique characteristic that set him apart from my other suitors." /-/ \-\ TERM-LIMIT DRIVEL DIES GENERATIONAL DEATH BY HAL PHILLIPS The term limit debate has peaked and will soon take on the importance of other burning issues like the House postal code and anything to do with Lamar Alexander - which is to say it won't matter a lick. The entire argument never made any sense. To wit, 80 percent of the voting public is said to favor term limits, yet only 45 percent of the same voting public participates in elections. Do the math. You can't. It appears nearly half of those favoring term limits don't bother to cast ballots - or lie about it - therefore forfeiting the right to comment on the length of political careers, much less alter The Constitution forever. Republicans claim the nation damn near demanded term limits in November. But how are we to interpret that message in light of so many established senators and congresspeople getting the sack? Tom Foley opposed term limits, a stand that definitely influenced his defeat by a virtual unknown. Yet the defeat of Foley, the first House Speaker to lose an election in 130 years, is also the most eloquent argument one can make against the need for term limitation in '90s America. Clearly, we already have term limits. It's called voting. In Ayn Rand's libertarian treatise Atlas Shrugged, the author makes it clear the common good is best served when individuals look out for number one. As much as they might crow about removing government restriction, only rarely does your ideologue Republican stumble into a defensible position on libertarian grounds. In this case, the former minority unwittingly employed libertarian self- interest to defeat a distinctly alibertarian ideal the GOP itself espoused - that is, restricting voter choice. Now in the majority, Republican will see to it the issue slowly dies. Bear in mind one thing during any debate on limiting the terms of elected representatives: Remember it has always been and will remain a minority issue. If the Republicans manage to retain their majorities for 10 years, a new generation of Democrats will pick up the term- limit mantle and ride the voter dissatisfaction endemic to a free society back into office. Once the cycle is complete, self-interest will continue to prevail and the term limit issue will die a new death. And that, Rush, is the way it should be, you fat frothing ideologue. /-/ \-\ LETTER FROM BRITAIN (Loathe as we are to the idea of actually assigning stories, for this issue the Herald staff asked Mr. Ledger to examine the British phenomenon of Mr. Blobby, a sort of aggressive-but-guileless Barney jacked on ecstasy. The enormous appeal appears to center around impromptu meetings with celebrities who chat amiably with Mr. Blobby until the gourd-shaped polka-dotted mega-muppet becomes so excited he mauls his company with affection, often knocking them to the ground. During these "exchanges," the weebl-esque children's TV personality excitedly exhibits the limited extent of his vocabulary: "Blobby, blobby, blobby, blobby..." he burbles. Blobbymania has swept the normally reserved British landscape, triggering record deals and bemused features in American newspapers, one of which quoted an English sociologist as saying "Mr. Blobby reveals an aspect of British culture we're not particularly thrilled to discuss, especially with Americans." Contributor Trevor Ledger, who files from his Goose Cottage home in Victoria Lane, comments quickly on the Mr. Blobby craze before moving on to subjects further afield. We can ask, but we can't restrict Mr. Ledger's subject matter any more than we can insist he wash his knickers. On yet another subject he warns, "Stop the press: Interpol Alert - Adrian Praeter will be in the U.S.A. in July. Members of the public are advised not to lend him money or allow him anywhere near your stash of weed. You have been warned, by a victim.") BRITAIN CLOSES THE CULTURAL TRADE IMBALANCE BY TREVOR LEDGER MARKET DRAYTON, Shropshire - Ah! Revenge is sweet. So, Mr. Blobby has wheedled his way across the Atlantic and turned up on the hallowed pages of the Sunday New York Times. I'm sorry that you should been encumbered with a 7-foot,pink and yellow polka dot smegger whose vocabulary consists of "blobby, blobby, blobby," but let's be honest: You deserve it. It says something about the English, as a nation, that we let Mr. Blobby's debut single (adventurously entitled, "Mr. Blobby") sit atop the hit parade for a month or so. But we shouldn't be in the least bit apologetic considering the shit we've imported from Brother Yank for so long: McDonald's, rap, Knots Landing, Trident Missiles, the O.J. Trial... The fucking O.J. trial!! What is this shit? I don't know him. I don't know him. I don't know him, and I certainly don't care what happens to him (neither does his wife, tee hee hee). Now, if you lot are so crass as to want to court cultural suicide by making such a spectacle of a trial, then fine. But I object to having BBC2 programming disturbed by "Sonja Norbst with an O.J. Update." My proposal? Charge up the chair, fry the fucker (guilty or not), and let it be a lesson to 'im. Wanna be famous? Want loads of cash? Okay. But if you waste anyone, relatives or not, we're gonna shoot 100,000 volts up your jacksy live on TV. Now that, I'd watch. One of you better exports is baseball. How ironic, a nation that stamps all over trade unions for the underprivileged masses allows its national sport to be held ransom by a union! A union, mark you, comprised of the mega rich who, given a modicum of common sense, would only ever have to spend 5-10 years of their lives working (playing). "The Union forever, defending the right..." Out of interest, the average first-class cricketer earns L320,000 sterling per year. For the ignorant, cricket is an older, classier and better version of baseball. Stop Press: Is my son a genius? Having endured a very windy morning walk, the conversation went something like this: Ieuan: I'm going to kill the wind, daddy. Me: How are you going to do that then? Ieuan: I'll turn the low pressure into high pressure. Then the wind will stop and it'll be sunny. Me: *!X?*!! Ieuan David Ledger is four in June and, to my untrained eye, does not have "666" tattooed on his scalp. And yes, I am showing his intelligence off, proud father that I am. /-/ \-\ THE HAROLD HERALD BOOK REVIEW Sarum: A novel of England, by Edward Rutherfurd The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx Mary Renault: Biography by David Sweetman The Cnamber by John Grisham SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC - The only discernible bright side to spending 24 hours in air transit to Singapore, and 24 back again, is the chance to read virtually uninterrupted by work, social obligation or, sadly, sleep. I can't sleep on planes so I had the opportunity to knock off four books and several periodicals during my late-March junket to the Pacific Rim. Brief reviews follow: * Finally finished off Sarum: A Novel of England, by E dward Rutherfurd, somewhere between Portland and Chicago-O'Hare. This 900- page historical novel tracks the community living on and around the Salisbury plain (an area known colloquially as Sarum) from the last ice age through the 19th century. While the premise at first sounds absurd in scope, Rutherfurd manages to pull us along with phenomenal coherence. Of course, English history provides a lengthy, intriguing timeline, which Rutherfurd decorates with all manner of interesting fictional devices while furtively slipping the reader not-at-all-dry details of social history. The birth of English parliamentarianism and the textile trade are explained as well by Rutherfurd as anyone I've read. Because virtually all the fictional characters are descendants of two iron-age men - one tall and dark with long fingers, another fair and stocky with stubby digits - the author continually strings eras together, connects Picts with Romans, and offers believable insight into the English psyche, such as it is. Rutherfurd makes it clear, for example, that Elizabethan Peter Wilson - with his long, delicate fingers - is related, however distantly, with the bronze-age river man, Tark. With these blood ties made clear, what could have been a awkward, disjointed history becomes, on another level, a pair of compelling family sagas. Good stuff. * When you win the American Book Prize and your novel is recommended by two such disparate characters as my mother and Mark Sullivan, you surely don't need my affirmation. But let the record show that I thoroughly enjoyed The Shipping News, Annie Proulx's quirky novel about growth through retreat on the briny frontier of Newfoundland's coast. Proulx's writing style is, to say the least, unusual. The sentence fragments alone are enough to roll the eyes, especially those of certain Globe columnists. Yet it's a measure of the author's storytelling skill and ability to craft dialogue that her novel can be judged on its considerable merits, thereby rising above her aversion to coupling subjects and verbs not to mention her loopy choice of character names. Luckily the reader comes to care a great deal about Tert Card, Billy Pretty and Quoyle, the mono-monickered central character. Quoyle is a 300-pound, long-suffering loser and widower who moves his family to The Rock, mysteriously depicted by Proulx as a sort of Island of Misfit Toys surrounded by the ever-present Atlantic, at once therapeutic and dangerous. Great choice of setting here. Quoyle marvels along with us at the prospect of waking up and seeing an iceberg float by the kitchen window. Quoyle is at first bewildered by the engaging but thoroughly imperfect Newfoundlanders and their ability to thrive in this bleak environment. Eventually it empowers him. He falls for a fellow widower named Wavey, transforms himself from a tentative, third-rate newspaper reporter into an insightful editor, and readers go home happy. * Mary Renault's The Charioteer and Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar - both published in 1947 - debunked the myth that homosexual central characters were not capable of generating mass appeal. While Vidal went on to become America's foremost man of letters (when he wasn't calling William F. Buckley a crypto-fascist), Renault moved to South Africa and churned out an acclaimed series of historical novels set in Ancient Greece, including the Persian Boy, Bull from the Sea and Fire from Heaven.. David Sweetman's biography of Renault (pronounced re-nolt, not like the French car) isn't written with any great elegance or insight, but the author's life was so full the reader is sated. Born Eileen Mary Challans in 1905, the British author was among the first to integrate Oxford, trained as a nurse and published three rather light, romance novels before leaving for Durban and Capetown where she brought Theseus, Alexander and Alcibiades to life, chaired PEN International and actively worked against the institution of apartheid. All of this she did with a considerable amount of courage and controversy. Judging from Sweetman's text, Renault didn't have much use for women. Indeed, Sweetman opines that Renault honestly considered herself a Man. Though she was a lesbian and spent nearly all her adult life with a single companion, Renault clearly eschewed the company of women, much preferring social associations with gay men. In her novels, virtually all her lead characters are gay men. Female characters, usually some hero's overbearing mom, are notoriously bitchy, weak and irrational - not unlike her own mother. A consistent critic of Afrikaner nationalism from the outset, Renault ran afoul of fellow PEN members (including Nadine Gordimer) by opposing the free world's cultural boycott of South Africa arguing that small-minded Afrikaner needed outside influence, not a blind eye. * Read my first John Grisham novel, The Client, on the plane back from Hawaii. I was out of reading material and borrowed it from a colleague. Sure, it was a page-turner, but one is required to turn pages in the phone book, too. What a piece of rubbish! In addition to proving that he writes with all the flair of a tort lawyer, Grisham proves that it's damn near impossible to write good dialogue using flat, uninteresting characters. I wasn't expecting much, figuring I was unconsciously avoiding Grisham because everyone else seems to love him. I'm gratified to have a legitimate reason to avoid him further. /-/ \-\ CD'S AND OTHER RETIRMENT STRATEGIES WATT GOES SOLO, STINSON GOES SOUTH By DAVID M. ROSE If you don't know who Mike Watt is - and most people don't - you've missed a lot. In the late 70s and early 80s, Watt came of age as the anchor for the seminal jazz/punk trio, the minutemen, breaking bass strings in booming counterpoint to singer/screamer d. boon's swirling guitar leads. After d. boon died in an auto accident in 1985, Watt and Brockton, Mass.-born drummer George Hurley teamed up with boyish Ohio native Ed Crawford. The new band, fIREhOSE, was less political and more subdued, but Crawford proved an able successor to d. boon, and they approximated the genius that was the minutemen about as well as anyone could reasonably expect. A couple of months ago, Watt announced - in Rolling Stone of all places - that fIREhOSE was no more. After eight years, Watt said, the members had grown too comfortable with one another. It was time for something new and on Feb. 28, Watt's first solo effort, "Ball-Hog or Tugboat" was released. The title refers to two diametrically opposed roles a musician can play: self-promoting prima donna or nurturing team player. The solo album format, of course, is the ultimate ball- hog playpen, so it's refreshing to see Watt take the tugboat approach and make it work as well as he does. Watt's metaphor for the process that yielded the album is wrestling; by calling different participants into the ring for each of the disk's 17 tracks, he essentially ends up with 17 different bands, composed of 51 different performers. Participants range from relative unknowns (Anna Waronker? Pat Smear?) to the heavyweights of post-punk arena rock: Evan Dando, Eddie Vedder, King Ad Rock, and Flea. The obvious danger here is the result will be a disjointed mess, but the thread that runs through all this is Watt himself; he sings only three songs, but he produces and plays bass on every track. By virtue of his unmatched technical proficiency and clarity of artistic vision, he's able to straddle the ball-hog/tugboat dichotomy as few others could. Each track is unique, but the whole thing never stops sounding like a Mike Watt record. My personal favorite here is probably "Piss Bottle Man", Watt's tribute to his dad's eminently practical means of avoiding unnecessary pit-stops on long car trips. It brought back warm memories of the lemon yellow bottle my parents kept under the front seat of our '64 Chevy station wagon, and it was nice to hear that we weren't the only ones. Equally effective are "Against the 70's" (a treatise on the dangers of mindless nostalgia) and the jazzy "Sidemouse Advice", featuring a very capable Flea on trumpet. Some have criticized Watt for including such luminaries as Dando and Vedder on the record. Indeed, one such critic - Kathleen Hanna - appears on the disk, deriding the project as a "white rock-boy hall of fucking shame" and urging the arena rockers to get over their "big-white-baby-with-an- ego-problem thing." Hanna's diatribe is funny, and some of her points well-taken, but I don't think they have much relevance to BH/T; to a man, the rock stars seem to have checked their sizable egos at the door. As to whether the inclusion of some big names constitutes a sell-out on Watt's part, I think the music speaks for itself; you won't be hearing these songs on MTV unplugged anytime soon. *** There was some sad but not completely unexpected news this past month: Bob Stinson, lead guitarist for the influential pre-post-punk band, the Replacements, died of heart failure, presumably the result of drug use. In their early years, the Replacements - devoted substance abusers all - were perhaps best known for their drunken live shows, during which they often abandoned their set list in favor of a long string of top 40 covers that no one in the band had actually bothered to learn. With this backdrop, Stinson's ejection from the band in the late 80's for excessive drug and alcohol abuse was ominous, indeed. I never saw the Replacements in the early days but my brother, Tom, caught the original line-up at the now-defunct Channel in Boston. When the band took the stage, Stinson was nowhere to be found, and the band was forced to begin playing without him. During the third or fourth song, Stinson was spotted in the crowd; members of the audience lifted him up and he was deposited on stage, clutching a fifth of Jack Daniels. He strapped on his guitar and played the rest of the set and three encores more-or-less without incident before returning for the fourth encore completely naked except for his guitar. He will be missed. /-/ \-\ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Dear Hal, Delighted to be on the list to receive your personal publication. Thanks. I've read other issues at Mary's. Enclosed is an article connecting Newt with Thomas Brackett Reed I thought interesting. Didn't you mention in another issue some fascination about T.B. Reed? Congratulations! And my best to Sharon! Dawna Fowler Fort Fairfield, Maine Ed. Mrs. Fowler, mother of my upstairs neighbor Mary and frequent visitor to Portland, was kind enough to enclose a Bangor Daily News feature on Newt Gingrich, Thomas Bracket Reed and James Blaine, House speakers all - though some with more impressive credentials than others. The story noted that Gingrich on several occasions has compared his own revolutionary tactics to those of Reed, who masterfully rewrote House rules late in the 19th century. Of course, Gingrich couldn't carry Reed's parliamentary jockstrap (Sorry, Mrs. Fowler). Indeed, Gingrich bears more of an historical resemblance to the wordy Blaine, whose political rise was similarly meteoric and likewise studded with ill-considered off-the-cuff remarks and scandal. Blaine went on to earn the GOP's 1884 presidential nomination and serve as Maine's governor. In any case, the continued irony is that Charles Fowler, Dawna's husband and Mary's dad, is a Reed - distantly related to Speaker Reed, in whose Portland home Mary and I now reside. Dear Hal, You pandering excuse for a newsman. What a shameless display of begging and groveling in the last issue of the Herald. Knighting the likes of Allan Jones (no offense, Allan) in response to his mere $30 donation summed it all up. I suppose you have the capability to boot QEII from her regal stature, drape your readers in ermine and perch them on the throne were they to donate, say $60? Monarchy should come so cheap. You make me sick. On the other hand, I will laud you for having the courage to print the caustic yet accurate "Letter from Britain." While I agree with Trevor's insightful analysis of the Herald as a "shitty little rag", "arsewipe (spoken like a true Brit) of a tabloid" and "self-serving pile of shit", I add myself to that growing list of "dickheads who are coughing up." I've been called a hell of a lot worse. Enclosed find $10 from me and my beautiful wife, Heather. According to your subscription rules, that should put us in good stead until the year 2097. After a great deal of deliberation on our part, we will accept the titles of "Duke and Duchess of Davis, California." P.S. "Open the pod bay door, please Hal - Heather. Rich Gibbons Duke of Davis, California Ed. Thanks, Rich, for the cash and, Heather, for the completely original reference to 2001: Space Odyssey. Never heard that before... Consider your new title and subscription status confirmed. As for the authentication of Trevor as a "true Brit," you needn't refer to his spelling habits. Just smell him sometime; or examine his teeth. Dear sirs, Enclosed please find a check to help with production and mailing costs. I realize the high cost of doing business these days (it must have cost a king's ransom to get the lovely Sharon Vandermay to change her name to something as bland as Phillips). I look forward to future issues of the Harold Herald and hopefully, we'll be able to meet the fair Ms. Vandermay in the coming months, as we the readers really need to talk to this woman. I am one reader who became aware just how far Mr. Phillips will go. One evening while visiting 30 Deering St., I was led out for a few brews and a fair game of pool. Well, Mr. Phillips really took advantage of this. First, he pointed out all these really cool clubs only to take me to this basement [Leo's Billiards] where someone such as my 5'18" self could only hope to survive a walk through this head- crushing maze. Later we drank what proved to head-crushing, rot-gut beer. My point is, I lost at pool, hit my head many times [on low- hanging pipes], and was late for a meeting the next morning. Mr. Phillips, on the other hand, was on time for his meeting, never came close to hitting his head and, of course, won in pool. And lest I forget - he did not appear to be hung over the next morning. In any case, please keep the Harold Herald coming, and let us meet the lovely Sharon Vandermay. She needs to know. William 5'18" Paprocki Vernon, N.Y. Ed. This letter arrived in promising fashion - inside an Augusta National envelope. I opened it and noticed the check, figuring the boys down in Georgia had finally considered my offer to serve as paid press-tent czar at the Masters. Unfortunately, the author, a devoted reader of Golf Course News, has a sick sense of humor. While we appreciate his generous contribution to our Circulation Endowment, we must point out that Leo's was built for homo sapiens of normal build, not for those who played hoops for Syracuse in the mid-70s. As for the quality of beer, you'll have to take that up with Mr. and Mrs. Geary. Besides, "All's fair..." Just ask Sharon, who's keeping her surname. /-/ \-\ PEJORATIVE CORNER (Like Homer's Kerouacian central character, Briton Tim Monaghan began his oddysey on a once-proud island off the coast of a more populous continental landmass (It could be argued Ithaca has come through its cultural upheaval with more dignity). In any case, Monaghan's professional route - he's now an editor at the Springfield Union-News - has been no less circuitous, beginning in Sudbury and looping through suburban Boston before heading ever more west. While toiling at the Middlesex News in Framingham, his lovely wife, Lynn Hatch, decided to go for her economic doctorate at UMass: "One of the few North American universities still harboring left-wing economists who believe that Marx, on the whole, got it right," Tim explains. "As a sensitive New Age kind of guy, I immediately suppressed any unhealthy reactions about income loss or life disruption and began searching for suitable economic bondage in the western part of the state." According to Monaghan, the Union-News and Sunday Republican are "about as left- wing as American papers tend to get, and the unfortunate name of the Sunday edition comes from the earliest history of the paper, when the founder helped set up the Republican Party and get Abe Lincoln nominated for president. A very different kind of GOP back then, and an uncanny Springfield connection.") By TIM MONAGHAN Ah, western Massachusetts. Home to more crunchy- earthy types than you can shake a daikon at, the People's Republic of UMass (PRU), the Island of Lesbos (Smith College Chapter), and the car-theft capital of the state, Springfield - also known for its cheerful gang-related drive-by shootings. Having only lived in the Pioneer Valley for six weeks and as the only known reader of the Harold Herald ever to have been a card-carrying member of a socialist party, I am more than ready to offer judgment on this politically correct, alternate Hub. It sucks. But not for the facile reasons you might imagine... I began my bondage in January. It was soon pointed out to me that if I wanted to go out for a drink after work, at one of the less-uninhibited imbibing establishments dotting the city, I had better bring cash to work with me. Going to an ATM machine in the early hours of the morning was an invitation to robbery, rape and murder. Surely not? In this socialist paradise? You betcha, bub. Springfield, it was quickly pointed out to me, is one of the toughest cities in the Northeast. Holyoke runs a close second, barely surviving its current white flight. If it's not gang members shooting you down because they think you're a member of a rival gang or an innocent bystander, it's the cops drilling you with a 9mm because they mistake you for a gang member (I learned today that wearing a bulletproof vest while committing a crime is a felony. Makes it too hard for the cops to nail you, I guess). A brief example of the depravity prevalent in urban western Massachusetts: Immediately across from the card-key exit to the supposedly secure Union-News parking lot - only last night we were told not to leave the building until given the all-clear, because the police were brutalizing some kids found breaking into employee's cars - a constant procession of vehicles turns into a small parking lot outside the local Blue Cross-Blue Shield offices. They don't stay long. Someone gets in or out, there is a brief conversation, the car speeds off. Innocent me, I thought this must be a local car pool drop- off. No way, I was told. That's the local male prostitute pick-up spot. Guys hot to get HIV are in and out all night looking for the perfect blow job. Hardly dangerous to sensitive New Age guys with monogamous life partners, you might argue. As I did. Think again, my mentors warned. Street bums and gang hoodlums prey on the male hookers and find it hard to distinguish between cock-sucking entrepreneurs, their johns, and hardworking lackeys of the imperialist press. I was regaled with horror stories of colleagues being robbed at knife- and gun-point as they tried to leave work. The cops don't patrol the area because they hate the Union-News. The paper recently published their salaries and asked what they were doing to earn them. No one cares. Therein lies the reason why western Massachusetts really sucks. Up in Amherst and Northampton, the sons and daughters of the relatively privileged spout their neo-socialist dogma. They indulge in predilections for ethnic food from countries their parents would never let them visit and strange tastes in music, recreational narcotics and sexuality, oblivious to the real world around them. To the south, working people are struggling to build ordinary lives amid chaos akin to that of downtown Mogadishu. And never the twain shall meet. But hey: The Weld administration is too far away to hear the handguns a- poppin'. And academia is on another planet, zip code lost. My life partner excepted, of course. MORE PEJORATIVE CORNER BY HAL PHILLIPS KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Centuries before the birth of Christ, Indian and Chinese traders fought for hegemony of the Malaysian peninsula that lies at the crossroads of Asia's lucrative trade routes. The Portuguese took control of the area in the late 16th century, only to be supplanted by the 19th-century English, who stayed on until 1957. Once you arrive here, you wonder why anyone bothered. Kuala Lumpur, the modern capital of Malaysia, means "confluence of two muddy rivers." An updated interpretation might read Kuala Lumpur Schmeg, or "confluence of two extremely muddy, polluted rivers." It's a filthy place that lacks the old world charm of Melaka, the old Portuguese capital to the south. KL is a new city, founded in the 1840s, and one can only imagine how decrepit it might become 200 years down the road. Speaking of roads, the master plan of Kuala Lumpur could only have been laid out in an opium den. Despite the city's relative modernity, the arteries have no rhyme or reason, which results in a rush-hour traffic nightmare the likes of which Bostonians have never seen. Nineteen-century Malaysian planners appear to have set a few cows loose on the plain and followed them anxiously with buckets of yellow paint. * KAUAI, Hawaii - Hard to be pejorative about our 50th state, which is fairy-tale gorgeous and brimming with outstanding golf courses. It's even harder not to see the truth in stereotypes about the number of Japanese there. When I flew in, seven of the eight flights at baggage claim originated in Japan. There were thousands of backpacked Japanese milling about with camcorders, filming loved ones as they a) waited for their baggage; b) pulled baggage off the carousel; or c) walked away from the carousel with bags in tow. I saw one father filming his son drinking from a water fountain. Get a life! I traveled in Europe when the dollar was strong, but I never saw American acting so unabashedly like tourists. I blame MacArthur. /-/ \-\ HAL, INK. ALTERNATIVE NEWSWEEKLY SEES THE LIGHT By RUDY MARTSKE "In the low-budget, low-visibility, low-literacy world of electronic 'zines, the Harold Herald stands out as an example of how someone with an education, a sense of humor and a modem can make a small dent in the cybersphere." So wrote Dan Kennedy in the Feb. 24 Boston Phoenix. How happy my parents must be that my expensive Wesleyan education has been justified by the city's alternative weekly. Mind you, this was no back-page blurb buried beneath classified ads for sinewy mixed-race males with a taste for cool whip and randy adventure. No, Kennedy's contribution to our growing cult of personality lead the page 2 feature, This Just In, under the headline, "Welcome to Hal's World." "Informed by a nihilistic political sensibility and sophomoric crudity," Kennedy continued, "the Portland, Maine-based Herald is nevertheless one of the funniest, best-written journals on the Net." Nevertheless? The staff here was nevertheless flattered by the write-up. Especially well chuffed was political reporter Mark Sullivan, whose prose was featured prominently. Turns out he's a friend of Kennedy, who was particularly taken with Loid's account of the November Republican sweep and its likeness to a "noxious Old Testament plague that stopped at every door without an 'R' swabbed in lamb's blood on the door." Sullivan's breadth of coverage drew considerable praise - enough to move Phoenix editors to include headshots of Mark's targets du jour, Lydon LaRouche, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Mickey Mouse. Conspicuous by its absence was mention of Virtual Editor Dr. David M. Rose, whose Net acumen electrifies the Herald and prompted the Kennedy column (examples of Dr. Rose's haunting prose were surely victimized by the bane of every writer's existence: space considerations). The Phoenix commentator, who has never seen the print version, bumped his head on the electronic Herald which floated head and shoulders above an ash-like collection of motley 'zines. By all rights, given their off-beat, underground professions, Phoenix editors should have been first to notice the Herald's innately earthy qualities. Who better to appreciate self-absorptioin as high art? Instead they are the last of Boston's journalistic cognoscenti to "get it." We're not even waiting for Murdoch's Herald, where the buffoons who endeavor to formulate editorial tone will almost certainly never le comprend. Boston? Done that. It's time for us to heavily market in uncharted waters. I've got a feeling they're going to love us in Cobb County. *** A pre-nuptial congratulations-in-print was discovered in The Highly Esteemed Howl, that barely post-pubescent newsletter whose suprisingly conservative staff is secretly pleased as punch to have been called "little fucks" in a recent Herald. In any case, I thank you for the warm wishes and generous contribution to our Circulation Endowment (which is, as always, locked in "accept" mode). However, I must invoke the memory of Winston Churchill who said something like, 'If you're old and liberal, you have no head. But if you're young and conservative, you have no heart.' In these reactionary times rife with revisionism and xenophobia, never has this been more important to remember. Nixon was an ineffectual domestic leader, the most conniving, duplicitous politician of his generation, and a perfectly monstrous human being. Indeed, crypto-fascist is about the nicest way to describe Dick Nixon, the most aptly named president of all time. In any case, your kind words and money have warmed the cockles of my heart. I call for a respectful truce and would interpret as an act of naked aggression any posting of Tracy Chapmen CDs. And for the record, all my pants are happy once I've donned them. /-/ \-\ (Tim Dibble, a venture capitalist and freelance body shaper, lives in San Francisco with his wife, Maureen, a shaper of young minds and would-be society hostess. A Wesleyan graduate, Mr. Dibble comments on current cinema for the Herald in between cups of expensive coffee and equally pretentious discussions on the nature of free will.) FROM SAN FRANCISCO SANS QUENTIN By TIM DIBBLE Cinema Critic Ad Eundem Gradum Not since the arrival of the half-caf/half-decaf double latte has the nation in general and San Francisco in particular been so enamored and bamboozled by propaganda as is found associated with Plump Diction, the latest film from Quentin Tarantino. "Genius violent comic fantasy" is a label that can be applied to H.G. Phillips' collegiate sexual tenure, but is not apropos with regard to Plump Diction. To give credit where credit is due, not since the American Oval Office has there been a better utilization of unemployed, washed-up thespians. However, this does not overshadow the glaring holes and weaknesses found in the film: Plump: What has happened to John Travolta? He hasn't been the same since Jamie Lee Curtis dumped him at the end of Perfect. Someone get that guy a treadmill. Diction: Why is it, in this age of cultural literacy, that for a film to smack of art its actors and actresses must express themselves as if they were attending a Teamster's bachelor party? Sodomy: It is not the specific act that I find reprehensible. Rather if Tarantino wants to sell-out the joint, he should make Bruce Willis the recipient while forcing the Moonlighter to hum the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Pugilistic Carnage: If Bruce Willis is going to kill a man with his bare knuckles, have it be Mickey Rourke. Uma Thurman: Uma, after your pied-a-terre in Henry and June, why bother doing anything else? Rosanna Arquette: One question: Were you acting? Harvey Keitel: Harv, you've had a good run lately. But if we can't tell the difference between you and Tommy Lee Jones, you are not ready for weak Brando-esque cameos. Samuel L. Jackson: "Senator, you're no Laurence Fishburne!" (I actually thought that he was great but was dying to use that line.) Foot Massage: Quentin, in such a public forum, how could you possibly divulge the second-best trade secret of the sensitive, pseudo- intellectual Cambridge bachelor (second only to the Dali restaurant)? The only positive to the film is that every time I see Amanda Plummer, she makes my wife look like Lady Di. In sum, any moviegoer with a modicum of cinematic expertise (and who leaves their latte-sipping pretensions on the cutting-room floor) will agree that Plump Diction is an over-hyped, rich man's Dr. Giggles. Boy, you'll be a director... soon! /-/ \-\ HAROLD NOTEBOOK... IN SINGAPORE, YOU DO WINDOWS OR ELSE! SINGAPORE - Perhaps you've heard of Flor Constacion, the Filipino maid executed by officials here shortly after being convicted of murdering another maid and the four-year-old on her watch. It's the latest in a series of diplomatic flaps generated by the hang-'em-high-but- whatever-you-do-hang-'em-now regime here in the cleanest, greenest most orderly and productive totalitarian state in Asia-Pacific. Michael Fay, his butt and any hackles they may have raised here in hypocritically righteous America are small potatoes compared to the indignant snorts now traded between Singapore and The Philippines, who've recalled their ambassadors and dug in for a political siege. Defiant Singaporean officials could care less, but the Philippine government is seething, and ASEAN countries have publicly quarreled quite this testily. Word on the street in Singapore, something tendered and received with trepidation here, sides with the indignant Filipinos who note that Ms. Constacion had no motive at all. Indeed, no plausible motive or scenario has been forwarded by any Singaporean official - and it'll snow on Orchard Avenue when the island nation's only newspaper, the government-controlled Straits Times, offers anything by the party line. Only when I traveled to neighboring Malaysia did I hear confirmation of the unofficial conventional wisdom: Apparently, the four-year-old drowned in the Chinese family's swimming pool. When Dad came home, discovered the body and flew into a rage, he killed the maid who presumably had been charged with making sure bad things (like drowning) didn't happen. The desperate father offers Flor a couple hundred thousand dollars (U.S.) to take the rap, arguing that - with the grieving family's support - she will only receive manslaughter and a two-year sentence. She confesses, but the zealous judicial system in Singapore rules for the death penalty, swiftly administered. Filipino pleas for a stay, if only to establish some sort of motive, are ignored. Despite the country's self-promotion as a peaceful melting pot, there's an underlying suspicion there are two sets of rules in sunny Singapore: One for those of Chinese descent and another for everyone else, and that latter group includes Singaporeans of Malay, Indian and Tamil descent, not to mention actual foreigners like Filipino maids, Thai prostitutes and American teenagers. And, of course, anyone at all engaging in dissent. *** Encountered a promo for the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" while foolishly interrupting my channel surf on NBC the other day. The 10-second spot dramatically teased an upcoming episode in which Prince Fresh was tragically but oh-so topically swept up in the growing urban phenomenon of gunplay. The closing voice-over was grave: "The French Prince has been shot." "Finally," I muttered with relief. I'd like to think I spoke for everybody. *** One Man's Baseball Strike Retrospective: It was like sitting around in post-Alarick Rome reminiscing about when you could watch Christians disemboweled by large ravenous animals. Even though it's on the way back, apparently, baseball has been on the fritz for so long, it seems so far away as to have been before our time. Just pictures, statistics and film clips of past glories. SportsChannel America has been running an otherwise fascinating series of "Baseball's Greatest Games," full-game tapes of various World Series and playoff thrillers. Always a game of significance, but you always know who won ahead of time, too. All of baseball has taken on this nostalgic quality as we rave and moan by turn about foregone conclusions and negotiative snafus of the past. When we're not militantly vilifying both sides, we lazily indulge in the maudlin jingoism/marketing plan that preaches baseball as a kind of group worship to the pagan god of leisure. Rubbish! If there were a baseball deity (an American deity, mind you), it would be a benevolent god; a god that wouldn't subject us to TV contracts that don't show National League Championship Series games in American League cities. Agrippa, God of Rosin, would not have allowed Marty Bystrom to come back and pitch in a major league baseball game. The Christian equivalent is akin to a New Yorker cartoon I clipped and saved somewhere: Sitting at his desk in Hell, Satan reaches to his pager so as to call his secretary - "Ms. Clark, find Joe Stalin and tell him that communism is dead." *** It occurs to me that if you have trouble reading the bottom-left credits on MTV, it's either time to get glasses, or it's time to stop watching MTV... The Young Ones are back. After a solid run on MTV (they laudably broadcast all 10 episodes over and over again), the ultimate British comedy series is back on cable thanks to Comedy Central. Talk about sophomoric crudity! Even the crudite is sophomoric on The Young Ones. I was first exposed to the lads (listen!) at the University of London in 1985, two years after it had established its cult status in England. My flatmates - Adrian Praeter, publisher of the clever but rarely circulated Adrian's Oracle, and Herald columnist Ledger - quoted liberally from the show and a Young Ones book, which I never actually saw (if anyone is familiar with this and knows where to find one, contact me immediately). In any case, the show finally surfaced on MTV in 1989, then disappeared in 1991. If you've never experienced the Young Ones, set your VCR to Comedy Central on Saturdays at 11 p.m. /-/ \-\ HEY, IT'S MY JOB! A COMPENDIUM OF THE GRATIS GOLF EXPERIENCES OF OUR ESTEEMED EDITOR BY HAL PHILLIPS HOMMASSASSA SPRINGS, Fla. Played my last round here with , the temperamental clubs Ive used since my old set were stolen from the back of my car at 11th and Independence, in the shadow of our , nations capital. That was 1988. Delta Airlines, not street crime, was responsible for the latest debacle. While visiting Orlando in late January I played here at World Woods, a nice 36-hole Tom Fazio design two hours northwest of Shaqville, near the Gulf Coast. The last round with the ill-fated clubs - a custom set of extra-stiff shafted Wilson Staff bootlegs - was a typical gag-job 80 that included bogeys on four of the last five holes. A birdie on the 18th was all that prevented me from choking to death right there on the putting surface. Anyway, clubs were checked in at Orlando International, may have made it to Cincinnati but definitely never arrived at the Portland Jetport. After three days they still hadn't shown up, so I called the contrite Delta baggage guy: "They're gone, aren't they." "Yeah, I'd say so." Sad, but Delta was clearly forcing me to buy a brand new set of golf clubs, which I did, with their money: Tommy Aaron irons with stiff, graphite shafts; Big Bertha War Bird driver; Ping 3-wood; and a Ray Cook putter. I will miss my Wesleyan golf bag, which contained several items of sentimental value including the five-year-old, orange Chanukkah lighter that refused to run out of fluid. Truly miraculous. *** KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Played my first legitimate, 18-hole round of night golf here at - are you ready? - Kelab Golf Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah. Pretty nice course actually; a hilly, smartly bunkered designed by Australians Peter Thomson and Michael Wolveridge. First round in the former British colony of Malaysia, too. But the cache lay in the idea of golf after dark: Tee time at 8:15 p.m ., drinks in the bar at 12:30 a.m. Lights line the fairways and continually cast a distracting four shadows at all times. It is important to keep the ball away from dark, out-of-the-way places but the mandatory caddies are very good. They speed along on these special caddie buggies which hold two bags but no golfers, who are free to walk. The loopers also indulge in a fair amount of betting on players in the foursome. Interesting because it's instantly apparent when you've cost them money. *** KAUAI, Hawaii - Played the newest addition to my personal top five here during my first-ever trip to America's 50th state. The Prince Course at the 45-hole Princeville Golf Club is sweeping romp through the canyons above Honalei Bay, where holes rise and fall 100 feet or more by turn and Peter, Paul and Mary smoked some really good weed apparently. With its gratuitous use of out of bounds stakes, tight fairways and trade winds blowing at their traditional 25-30 miles an hour, this Robert Trent Jones Jr. design can be downright Machiavellian - but still elegant, inconspicuously woven through a near jungle complete with waterfalls and lush ravines. Wow. I lost at least five golf balls and shot an 87, the scorecard for which I wouldn't sign under tournament conditions. But I had a great time! Sometimes, when I know I'm going to play an historic or scenic course, I bring along my camera but rarely do I take the time to use it. Many pictures of The Prince on file here in the Golf Course News/Herald Photo Archive. *** Old friend George Howe, who met brother Matthew during his short stay at UMass-Amherst and later hung with Phresh & the Claymoss crowd, has resurfaced in San Diego. Out of the blue, George called me in February to report his stunning double-eagle ace at Steele Canyon Golf Club in Jamul, Calif., southeast of San Diego. For those of you unfamiliar with the ultra-rare double eagle, let's put this feat in perspective: A birdie is one-under par; an eagle is two-under; and a double-eagle (or albatross) is three-under par! A hole-in-one on a par-3 (a green you're supposed to hit in one shot) is rare, indeed. An ace on a par-4 (a green you're supposed to hit in two shots) is damned near unheard of. Bravo, George! I played Steele Canyon, a 27-hole Gary Player design, in early 1993 while attending to Golf Course News business in Southern California. Howe recorded his double-eagle at the first hole on the Ranch nine - a downhill, dogleg right. George was so keyed up by his Herculean accomplishment, apparently, he whiffed his drive on no. 2... Now, that's the George I remember from Glen Ellen in Millis! The Southern California lifestyle has done wonders for Howe's game. Always a big hitter who struggled around the greens, George reports shooting 78 the day of his double-eagle, which gave me the chance to mimic Herb Kenny, my golf coach at Wesleyan. I eagled a hole at our home course, Lyman Meadows, during a match with Central Connecticut and Trinity. I shot 79 in the process and was pretty pleased with it. When Herb heard about the eagle, he bellowed: "You had an eagle and only shot 79?" copywrite 1995 the harold herald all rights reserved for what it's worth