Santa sighting

Earlier this week, just a few short months after passing Pogo Dave on the highways of Rhode Island, I discovered another Rhody original whizzing along the asphalt artery of I-95 – Santa George. Also known as George Martin, owner of a Rhode Island vanity plate that reads “SANTA,” Santa George zoomed by me at a high-octane 80-plus reindeer-miles-per-hour on his way home to his summer North Pole in North Smithfield on his day off from Theatre By The Sea duties in Matunuck, where this month he is playing the Padre in “Man of La Mancha.”

On Independence Day Monday you can see Santa George riding in the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council’s “Polar Express” float at the Bristol Fourth of July Parade. After that he’ll appear in the Pine Acres Resort Christmas in July. Apparently, there’s no off-season for Santa. Look up “Santas for Hire” in Rhode Island and you’ll find Santa Lester and Santa James, both from Warwick, also in the mix for whatever stirs your eggnog. (Just fill out a Santa Request Form.)

In light of last Monday’s posting on the Believe It Tour, it appears that the Folklore component of Rhody Believeitology is alive and well with the likes of Santa George, Love 22 and Pogo Dave roaming around or beyond the state. Santa George has been spreading Christmas cheer for more than 30 years, including the last 11 as a Real Bearded Santa. (He’s listed No. 1322 on the National Beard Registry and is a past member of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas.)

You can follow Santa George on Twitter or My Space. Or just wait until Christmas.

What is your favorite Rhode Island vanity plate?

[Blogger’s note: Posting early because of Monday’s Fourth of July holiday, when I expect to vanish into a world that is half-hammock, half-cooler.]

'Blood Simple' Meets 'Complex World'

The Believe It Tour came to Rhode Island last Friday to host a vampire-themed blood drive at the R.I. Blood Center and celebrate the season premiere of HBO’s “True Blood.” The company promotes something called “Believeitology” and encourages exploration of the weird, folkloric and supernatural – all in good fun.

There are five fields of study: Cryptozoology (study of “cryptids,” or animal-like creatures such as Bigfoot, Mothman, the Loch Ness Monster and Chupacabra); Paranormal (mostly ghosts and hauntings); Extraterrestrial (aliens and UFOs); Monsters (zombies, vampires, dragons, werewolves, mummies or any creatures bent on destroying humanity); and Folklore (the beliefs, rituals and stories contained within a culture, including such seasonal and holiday customs as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Green Man).

Believe It Tour (or BIT as we’ll call it from now on) is a national organization but it’s hard to imagine a better place for them to detour than Rhody, home to the grandmaster of weird fiction, H.P. Lovecraft, two Roto-Rooter plumbers turned Ghost Hunters and enough legends of vampires, devils and phantom ships to fill a crypt. Rhode Island has its own state folklorist in Michael Bell. Providence cemeteries are sometimes converted into public art galleries. Edgar Allan Poe once spent a few months pining for a lost love on Benefit Street. Back when Rhode Island was a colony, records of visits by ghosts, witches and devils were legion. Zombie walks occur with increasing regularity in the capital city. Somewhere a few years back in Hope Valley, a Rhode Island couple converted an empty strip mall store into an extraterrestrial reporting center.

Here’s a guarantee: Spend a day walking through Providence and you’ll run into a cryptid. Probably more than one. It may not have a fancy name like Clam Man or Swamp Yankee Thing but you can be sure that it will be only vaguely human – although, oddly enough, quite often erudite.

What is your favorite example of Rhode Island folklore?

Our Cup Runneth Over

The Bear came out of hibernation, and suddenly 39 New England winters of discontent just melted, as if by magic, like the moment in “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” when Aslan returns to Narnia. The Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup last Wednesday night, and ever since it has been a nonstop love-fest between the fans and the team. The game 7 win, the plane ride back from Vancouver, the Stanley Cup popping up in neighborhood bars everywhere, the Rolling Rally on duck boats through Boston and streets lined by more than a million fans, and the surreal scene at Fenway Park yesterday, culminating in Bruins wearing Red Sox caps throwing out first pitches to Red Sox wearing Bruins caps. As celebrations of tribal euphoria go, it will be hard to top.

And that’s saying something for a region that has been blessed to see seven world championships from its four major sports teams in less than a decade. The Patriots (three Super Bowls), Red Sox (two World Series titles), Celtics (one NBA finals trophy) and Bruins (one Stanley Cup) have accomplished something that no group of teams in any city or region in America can claim. Boston is Banner Town, and now the Bruins legacy has another piece of hardware, adding a glint of silver to the generations of stories spanning Eddie Shore to Milt Schmidt to Bobby Orr to Cam Neely to Tim Thomas.

We’ve said it before when the B's were alternating seasons of heartbreak and futility. Even though basketball was invented in Springfield, Mass., and the modern American gridiron version of football evolved out of games on the Boston Common, where the Oneida Football Club of Boston became the first organized team to play any kind of football in the United States, this is a hockey and baseball region first and foremost, representing our winter and summer souls. The Red Sox are the oldest team still playing in Boston, a charter member of the American League, winners of the first World Series, a storybook franchise playing in a storybook park. The Bruins are the second-oldest, one of the Original Six, and the first club from the United States to join the NHL.

Yesterday at the Fens, the Bruins were the toast of the Olde Towne. Speakers blared team anthems: “Dirty Water” by The Standells, played after every Bruins (and Red Sox) win; “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” by The Dropkick Murphys; “Black and Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa (apologies to Pittsburgh fans, since the anthem was written for them; then again, the Penguins took the Bruins colors when they came into the league, so maybe we can call it even); and most enjoyably, “Nutty” (a.k.a. “The Nut Rocker”) by The Ventures, a surf-rock instrumental version of “The Nutcracker Suite” beloved to all fans that grew up watching Bobby Orr and The Big, Bad Bruins through the fuzzy static and twitching rabbit ears of Channel 38. To top it off, during the Red Sox’ romp over the Brewers, every time Boston scored a run fans heard the Bruins’ goal celebration of a foghorn followed by Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400” sample from the soundtrack of “Shaun of the Dead.” (Even the Celtics were represented, with Ray Allen sitting in the box seats with his children next to the Red Sox dugout.)

Great stuff. And the Stanley Cup, the world’s greatest sporting trophy (ah, the stories it could tell…), will be starring all summer in a local version of “Where’s Waldo?” called “Where’s Stanley?” We’ve already seen it on a rooftop apartment and in a baby stroller in the North End, at Tia’s on the waterfront, Stella on the South End, at Gypsy Bar, Foxwoods Casino and even the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park.

Amazing. Summer starts tomorrow and everyone is still talking hockey. Earlier this spring, while trying to get some sleep at 3 a.m. at Blackwoods campground in Acadia, Maine, I couldn’t help eavesdropping at the campfire conversation next to me, a dozen or so young people talking excitedly about the Bruins-Tampa Bay series. The next morning, at Trailhead Café in Bar Harbor, one after another Bruins fan came in, asking the owner whether the B’s could contain Vancouver’s dynamic Sedin twins (they could) and whether Timmy Thomas, the University of Vermont graduate who spent the early part of his career sweating it out in Finland and Sweden and minor-league outposts such as Birmingham, Ala., and Houston and Hamilton, Ontario, could summon up one more stellar series (he could). After Wednesday’s victory, Sen. John Kerry phoned a sports talk radio show in Boston (J.K. from D.C.? The Senator from a van down by the Potomac?) just to exult in the triumph and relive some of its highlights.

Part of the reason for such universal joy about this year’s team is how unexpected it was, following so many seasons of epic collapses, Game 7 losses, high expectations dashed and – some years – little to root for. In that way, it was like the Patriots winning their first Super Bowl and the Red Sox toppling the Yankees then sweeping the Cardinals for their first World Series title in 86 years. Like those seasons – the Snow Game, the Tuck Rule, Adam Vinatieri’s Greatest Field Goal Ever (45 yards in a blizzard), followed by an overtime kick and winning the Super Bowl as time expired for the Pats; the Dave Roberts steal, Big Papi walk-offs and Curt Schilling’s Bloody Sock game for the Sox – this Bruins year had the stuff of magic about it. Tim Thomas’s Greatest Save Ever (“stick save and a beauty!”) against the Lightning. Bobby Orr waving the giant, black-and-gold No. 18 banner in honor of injured Bruin Nathan Horton. Former Providence Bruin Brad Marchand (forever known as “Marshmont” to loyal listeners of 98.5 The Sports Hub, the B’s flagship station) completing the holy trinity of hockey antagonism in 30 seconds, beginning with a Kevin McHale-like clothesline of one Canuck, followed by a ducking up-and-under to topple another oncoming skater, then an immediate fists-up skirmish with a third Vancouver player. Horton smuggling melted Garden ice and pouring it on the rink in Vancouver just prior to Game 7. Or the stoic captain Zdeno Chara, who stands 7-feet on skates, hoisting the Cup higher than it has ever been lifted before and uttering a Slovakian primal scream.

What was your favorite moment of the Bruins’ run to the Stanley Cup?

Remembering the Tent

In “The Tent: Life in the Round,” a documentary of the late, lamented Warwick Musical Theatre, one scene shows comedian Howie Mandel engaged in a battle of wits with a moth. The moth chases Mandel around the revolving stage before settling on his crotch, prompting an inspired sequence of physical comedy and more than one hysterically improvised one-liner. Then the moth, aglow in applause, takes its act to the audience and alights on the bare thigh of a woman in the front row. Mandel calls security over for help and together the comedian and the teenage staff member plot the best way to disarm the insect.

It’s a great Rhody moment, the summertime moth stealing the show from the headliner as if to remind everyone in the room not to get too full of themselves. Even better, Mandel played along enthusiastically, losing himself completely in the moment, recognizing the rich potential for comedy in the absurdity as the audience roared.

That was the thing about the Tent. Just like the summer musicals at the old barn in Matunuck, where moths join the antics on stage, lightning bugs illuminate the parking lot and coyotes sometimes howl in harmony to the score, the rough-and-ready venue carved out of a former Warwick cow pasture brought celebrities down to earth. Following up on last year’s hit exhibition featuring Rocky Point Amusement Park, the Warwick Museum of Art is presenting “Life in the Round,” a look back at the legacy of the Tent, which operated from the 1950s to the 1990s, bringing Broadway shows, pop crooners, country musicians, TV stars, Vegas acts, wrestlers and comedians to the only place in Rhode Island you’d ever see them.

The show, which runs through July 29, will have an opening reception on Friday, June 24 from 7 to 9 p.m. Comprising memorabilia from the personal collection of promoter Larry Bonoff, whose parents, Barbara and Buster, founded the place, the show positively drips with nostalgia. Ephemera includes playbills, posters, schedules and photographs of the big stars, including publicity stills with autographs and handwritten sentiments and backstage snapshots of Bonoff and the likes of George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld, Barbara Mandrell, the Smothers Brothers and Huey Lewis & The News. The old color seating chart and some of the original chairs are on display along with signs and T-shirts. The DVD documentary plays several times daily. Like last year’s Rocky Point show, the exhibition’s value lies mostly in its carefree ride down memory lane. For Rhode Islanders of a certain vintage whose summers always included a taste of Broadway, Vegas or Hollywood between chowders and clam cakes, the Tent – and its uncomfortable seats, stifling heat and scene-stealing moths – will be forever missed.

What is your favorite memory of the Tent?

Wild, Wild Life

Rhode Island, unlike South Africa, doesn’t have a Big Five moving about beyond the confines of Roger Williams Park Zoo. There’s no Cape buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant, leopard or lion to watch out for…although some locals still swear that mountain lions roam in the wilds of Matunuck and Hopkinton. Any talk of a Little Five would have to start with the quahog and the Rhode Island Red, and perhaps include the endangered American burying beetle, a species that lives on Eastern Standard Time only on Block Island (and a Massachusetts island to which it has been introduced) and an insect that warrants its own headquarters in Rhody.

Unlike the South African quintet, the Rhode Island candidates don’t pose much of a hazard to the careless observer. You won’t find them hanging on the walls of private lodges or exaggerated in Big Game conversations at the neighborhood Elks or Lions. But there is one creature that deserves more respect than it gets in this state: the tick. By all accounts (and “by all” I mean generally a few friends and neighbors) this has been a terrible tick year already in Rhode Island (and by “terrible” I mean there’s a lot of ’em around). And given the damage they can wreak on human life, through debilitating afflictions including Lyme disease and other vector-borne illnesses, having a state full of ticks during beach-and-backyard grilling season is like the summer thundercloud that follows us wherever we go.

Fortunately, Rhode Island has Dr. Thomas Mather, University of Rhode Island entomologist and director of the TickEncounter Resource Center and URI’s Center for Vector-Borne Disease, to tackle the tick problem. Mather raises tick awareness through solid science, detailed reporting, sobering statistics, helpful tips and a healthy dose of good humor to bring more people to the cause of preventing serious diseases like Lyme, babesiosis and anaplasmosis.

The fifth annual Big Tick Gala will be held on Friday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center in Providence. The fund-raiser will include a silent auction, tick-bite prevention “marketplace,” speaking program, live comedy and a custom martini dubbed the “tick-tini.” The bug-inspired cocktail is the latest creative venture from Mather, who a few years back helped sell the state legislature on a “Scratch the Tick” instant lottery ticket to raise money for the cause. (Folks in Hollywood want to see their names in bright lights on a marquee or in stars in cement but it’s a bigger honor in Rhode Island to find your way onto a scratch lottery ticket.) Mather doesn’t have his own TV series yet, but maybe he should.

What animals would you look for on a Rhode Island safari?

Mascot mania

Once the purview of sports teams and colleges, mascots have become ubiquitous in Rhode Island. We all know the Big Blue Bug, the crouching giant termite off I-95 that welcomes drivers to and from Providence and does double-duty as the mascot for New England Pest Control. The Providence College Friars had Dalmatians serve as mascots before introducing a live-action, bald-headed, big-bellied Friar that routinely patrolled Schneider Arena and the old Providence Civic Center (while students at both venues blew up inflatable Friars to complement the live mascot, presumably to raise the intimidation factor.) A newer, slimmer, more serious Friar replaced the jolly, portly one a few years ago and has made appearances on ESPN’s “This Is SportsCenter” commercials and on SportCenter’s Top-10 Plays.

The University of Rhode Island’s mascot – Rhody the Ram – pays tribute to the school’s agricultural origins and the state’s textile heritage. It also got itself thrown out of a game between URI and Wake Forest, played in Providence, back when Tim Duncan played for the Demon Deacons. I know because I was at the game, yelling at the referee that threw out the Ram.

Strangely enough, that incident didn't make the Ram's Wikipedia page, but controversy continued to dog Rhody in subsequent years:

February 3, 1998 - Rhody the Ram tried to prevent the St. Joe's Hawk from his eternal flapping by putting an inner tube over its head, temporarily immobilizing his arms. While trying to remove the tube, the Hawk's head (costume) fell off. The incident was televised and repeated on ESPN.

December 2, 2006 - Rhody the Ram was assaulted by a fan at the Dunkin' Donuts center during halftime of the annual URI-Providence College game, a fierce in-state rivalry. The assailant was never found, but Comedy Central talk show host Stephen Colbert has claimed responsibility for the attack. The Ram was taken to the hospital for minor injuries, making this another incident in the long and sometimes ugly rivalry between the two teams.

The beloved mascot bears of Rhody’s professional minor league teams (“Paws” for the PawSox and “Samboni” for the P-Bruins) are more popular than the players taking the Landon Wilson shuttle back and forth to Boston.

But beyond sports, mascots are now selling everything. For a couple of years at least, the R.I. Resource Recovery Corporation, partnering with Recycling for RI Education, has promoted a multi-colored, oddly costumed alien superhero named MaxMan to champion the cause of recycling in the Ocean State. According to Encyclopedia Superheroica: “MaxMan saves the world by recycling.” And “MaxMan roams the Ocean State spreading the word regarding the wonders of recycling.” He even has a catchphrase: “Recycle it right!”

Not to be outdone, the mascot for the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council is a larger-than-life-size Chinese Mitten Crab named Mitzilla. Created by Providence puppet masters and international performers Big Nazo (who last year crafted the always-hungry, bloodthirsty plant Audrey II in Theatre By The Sea’s production of “Little Shop of Horrors), Mitzilla was commissioned under the R.I. Aquatic Invasive Species Management Plan. According to the CRMC Web site:

The mitten crab was inspired by the R.I. Resource Recovery’s MaxMan puppet, which serves as a mascot to educate the public on recycling. The crab’s purpose will similarly be to educate the public on the problems of aquatic invasive species and will appear at public events and school programs.

The latest mascot to enter the mix is the R.I. Blood Center’s Captain Hemo Globin, who appeared on the scene just in time to raise awareness of the need for summer blood donations. (You can find a picture of him by scrolling down on this Facebook link.)

Where the next Rhody mascot will come from is anybody’s guess. In the meantime: What is your favorite Rhode Island mascot?

Blueways blues

Once upon a time in Rhode Island, everything was a Greenway or a Blueway. This was a place of wild seas and wilderness, providing a home for people who fished or farmed –or most likely, both. But with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, which turned Rhode Island into America’s first booming mill and factory community, the state rapidly lost ground to the ravages of modern living, requiring some visionaries of the day to insist on building public parks, riverside cemeteries and protected lands just to keep a little green alive in all that soot. Then in the baby boom following World War II, Rhody became suburbanized. We got mall-crazy and lost our wicked feng shui in a sea of asphalt, dead end streets and cul-de-sacs. From 1964 to 1997, Rhode Island’s farmland was cut in half. Not long after that, Smart Growth Rhode Island estimated that one of the consequences of unchecked sprawl would be a $1.5-billion tax bill for Rhode Islanders over the next 20 years. Just another reason why we should preserve what’s left of our Greenways and Blueways, before they all turn into Sprawlways.

We already mentioned the Greenways folks a couple of weeks ago, so this week we’ll give a nod to the R.I. Blueways Alliance, which is organizing a dozen unique paddling excursions down rivers, in lakes and ponds and along the coast of Narragansett Bay beginning in June. Collectively titled, “Paddle 2011: River, Pond and Bay Stories,” the trips are a joint effort between the alliance and several of the state’s watershed and historic groups.

The Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum in Exeter and the Wood-Pawcatuck River Watershed Council in Hope Valley are teaming up for a talk-and-tour, with the first part inviting paddlers to the museum to learn about the way Narragansett, Wampanoag and Niantic Indians used kayaks to fish and forage, followed by a trip down the Wood River, among the spring anglers and wildlife found in abundance along the banks. The Ten Mile River Watershed Council will lead paddlers on a trip that follows the route Roger Williams took when he fled Massachusetts and landed in what would become Providence. Paddlers can explore a gorge, a fjord-like estuary, a pristine river or a salt pond. They can celebrate the summer solstice, the state’s historic mill culture or the natural world. Or they can learn the technique of stand-up paddle boarding.

Eric Wertheimer, who submits a pictorial column to the Arts & Living section of Independent Newspapers titled “Only in South County,” said that only when he began taking photographs in his “second life” did he become aware of how much water you find in Rhode Island. The more Rhode Islanders notice and engage with our waterways, the greater the possibility of keeping them blueways, instead of sludgeways. The more Rhode Islanders experience the woods and trails and pocket wildernesses of the state, the greater the odds of keeping them greenways, instead of trashways.

We may have lost the battle of sprawlways forever – I’m talking to you Bald Hill Road in Warwick and West Main Road in Middletown. Our main highway (Route 95) is mostly eyesore from the Route 4 split north to the Massachusetts border (despite the tidy skyline of Providence and whatever cheer the Big Blue Bug brings to the kitsch-minded among us). The concrete arteries spewing through Providence, Cranston and Warwick are so lacking in aesthetic that drivers apparently have no qualms about opening their windows en route and tossing out their trash in the scrub along the medians. The contrast with our greenways and blueways could not be more striking – which is why we should fight for their continued evergreen, everblue health. It's the kind of local color we can be proud of.

Where is the worst sprawl in Rhode Island?

[Blogger’s note: Half Shell will be testing the waters of Maine next Monday. Check back on Tuesday to see how the world is living la vida Rhody.]