On the Sauce

Albano's Brand

Reprinted from the November 17, 2002 edition of Tommy Devine's Online Journal:

 



I finally got around to trying out the coffee and spaghetti sauce the Mayor of Springfield Michael J. Albano has been peddling for several years. I purposely avoided doing so any earlier because I regarded the whole concept behind selling the products as essentially a political scam. Both the coffee and the sauce are overpriced, but that's supposed to be okay because the profits go to charity. Of course it is Mayor Mike who determines which "charities" receive the funds.

All politicians who intend to be re-elected do a lot of charitable giving. In fact it's considered a routine expense of holding public office and usually comes out of their campaign re-election funds. But by making such contributions out of coffee and sauce profits, Albano is able to make politically advantageous charitable donations while leaving his official campaign treasury intact, where its size can serve to intimidate possible opponents. It also gives him free advertising in an unlikely but valuable place - supermarket shelves. I consider all the income from those products to be little more than a glorified slush fund, and therefore never saw any reason to contribute any money to it by buying the coffee or sauce.

However a friend recently argued that I had a duty to at least try the products one time, and even bought me some samples so that I couldn't refuse on monetary grounds. And you know what? I like them.

The coffee is pretty good, if brewed as dark as the circumstances surrounding a community development project. The aroma is not that great, but won't remind you of Bondi's Island, while the high caffeine content gives you that extra energy you may need to outrun a man with a subpoena. Of course such a powerful brew might lead to high blood pressure when combined with the sight of an FBI agent, but is probably otherwise harmless under normal circumstances. Just remember that caffeine can be as addictive as a contractor's kickback, so don't overdo it.

The sauce is also pretty good. It's supposed to be based on the Mayor's mother's secret recipe, but some cynical critics have suggested it is really the generic BigY brand with a Mayor Mike label slapped on it. I had the "meat flavored" version of the sauce, which had a meaty taste without encountering any evidence of any actual meat. But so what? For years when it comes to Mayor Mike we've been wondering where the beef is, so why should his sauce be any different?

So surprisingly I find myself recommending the Mayor's products. Just be sure to attend confession and mass after every serving, in order to seek forgiveness for where the money you spent on Albano's products may end up.

On July 9, 2002 I printed an insider's account of what went down at one of the FBI interrogations into corruption in Springfield.

 




Sources in Springfield, some of them deeply connected, keep telling me this story, which I must share with you even if libel laws demand that the names be omitted to protect the guilty.

Recently a certain somebody and his wife were being interrogated by the FBI. The agent handed the wife some pages from her husband's expense account and asked her to examine them.

"What I would like to know m'am," the agent asked, "is how do you justify taking all of these luxurious trips with your husband and then charging the cost to the taxpayers?"

The wife stared at the documents in silence for several long moments, then quietly began to sob. Her husband slumped in his chair, burying his face in his hands.

"I'm sorry," the FBI agent said, "but I had to ask that question."

What a way for your wife to find out about your affair!

Dope and Change!

Drug enforcement authorities released this photo of a quantity of Obama blotter acid they confiscated recently. 

Daisy Deadhead offers this review: The Obama acid comes at a high price, lots of intense build-up and flash early on… then only performs in a relatively mediocre fashion, leaving you with a ferocious hangover wondering what was I thinking? Afghanistan-shaped blotter next!

The Obama Administration may wish they were on acid when they see this poll by MoveOn.org of 50,000 of its members on whether they approve of his escalation of the war in Afganistan. If Obama loses his liberal base, what will he have left?

In the Fortress of Solitude

An interesting painting of Superman by Jay Buck. 

Around Amherst


Planting bulbs to bloom in the spring in Kendrick Park.

 



This giant mural shows UMass as it was when it opened - all of three buildings! Dig the first class with their showboaters and high hats. 

In the early days of the University, the Old Chapel was a religious institution where students were required to attend prayer services every morning. Too many absences from Morning Chapel was considered grounds for dismissal. Today the Chapel is hardly used at all, preserved primarily for its historic value.

Lost Posters

Drawn By Jerry Garcia

 



An integral part of any music scene is the promotional posters that are created to advertise the shows. All the cool posters you see around Northampton are some of the strongest evidence of what a vibrant music scene there is in this area.

Many people collect music posters, and the ultimate collectibles are the old posters from the 1960's psychedelic scene in San Franciso. The rarest of the rare are the Acid Test posters, those that were used to promote the "happenings" where author Ken Kesey and his house band the Grateful Dead performed at dance halls where LSD was served to the sometimes unsuspecting audience, as part of Kesey's belief that if a significant percentage of the population had the LSD experience, then revolutionary changes would begin to occur in society as a whole.

It had long been believed that Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist for the Grateful Dead, who also painted and drew throughout his life, had drawn some of the earliest Acid Test flyers, but none were known to have survived. However, last year a mysterious old vinyl Grateful Dead album surfaced at a record swap that had stuffed inside it nine never before seen posters from the earliest years of the Kesey/Dead scene. After extensive research, the posters were identified as the long lost Jerry Garcia Acid Test posters. The collector who discovered the first poster on eBay tells the tale: 

 



Around the time period of April 2008, a very strange, very amateurish-looking Acid Test handbill for the Fillmore on Jan 8, 1966, appeared on E-Bay and was sitting up for several days before I noticed it. I looked at it carefully. Nobody had ever seen one like this before. Every day I scan E-Bay for Acid Test related items and on this day, there was some "energy" about the piece because I was scanning down through the page and it literally jumped out at me as being something interesting.

I contacted the seller and asked if he was interested in selling me the item for $400, and he agreed, removed it and mailed me the item. The next week, I took it in to Dennis King and had it authenticated, and Dennis concluded he believed it was real, and not faked. Dennis said he believed it was printed on Day-Glo green paper which had faded. This gave me a boost of confidence in the item, and likewise, confidence in the seller.

At the same time I contacted the seller to acquire it, I also asked where the item came from, and how he happened upon it. The seller was very nice, and responded that he got it from a record swapmeet where it was inside an old Grateful Dead mono version of the first album.

 



The past has a tendency to slip away, but here is an example of the long lost past unexpectedly resurfacing. It would be interesting to know more about the original collector. Was he an Acid Test attendee?

The Poe Down

In case you didn't notice, this is the 200th anniversary year of the birth of Edgar Allen Poe in Boston, Massachusetts. UMass is holding a Halloween weekend symposium in honor of the event. 

It's mostly for Poe scholars from around the country, but I strolled past to check out the scene. There were Poe t-shirts for sale.

Also posters were on display from the many mostly cheesey Hollywood movies made from Poe's work.

 



The father of the modern detective story and a pioneer of fantasy and science-fiction, Edgar Allen Poe is indeed worthy of having his birthday celebrated.

By the way, there's a big party at Sam's in Northampton tonight.

Evil pumpkins haunt a porch in Hamp.

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