Dutch: It coulda been cooler

Loosely Speaking by Nancy Gaines

Abnormal encounter of the suds kind What better place to show off your new brand of beer, Three Stooges, than at the annual Stooges convention in California? That's exactly what local brewery founder Dewey Parsons was doing recently when word came that the convention had to close early to allow a certain VIP to wander through. Complete with entourage, in came Michael Jackson, who, wouldn't you know, is a huge Stooges fan. As he passed by the display, Parsons offered him a sip. Jackson, saying he didn't drink, at first declined, but when Parsons told him it wasn't a "normal" beer, Jackson lifted his trademark surgical mask and took a small slug. As Parsons tells it, Jackson professed delight with the brew and passed it along to a comrade. But what really caught the Gloved One's eye was a life-size cardboard cutout of Curly, touting Curly's Light, another brand from Parsons's Panther Brewing, the Westwood operation whose name comes from a Stooges film. Jackson wanted it; Parsons told him it wasn't for sale. "Everything's for sale," Jackson whispered in Parsons's ear. Parsons relented; Jackson could have it, free. But even that wasn't enough. Jackson wanted Parsons to autograph the cutout, which he did, right across Curly's chest. "I got home and told my partner," says Parsons, "and he said, `Can you imagine? Michael Jackson has your autograph.' It doesn't get much stranger than that."

Elmore "Dutch" Leonard, in town last week to promote his newest novel, Be Cool, said the one thing that could make his visit even cooler would be to meet with his two favorite writers, Bostonians George V. Higgins and Robert B. Parker (he called Higgins's The Friends of Eddie Coyle the best crime novel ever written). Unfortunately, both Higgins and Parker were out of town. "While Dutch was talking at Lansdowne Street, I was reading in Washington," said Higgins, "which is the history of our careers together." Phoning from LA, where he was working on his new Spenser project, Parker said he had read Leonard's Cuba Libre on the plane. "Dutch is one of the two best writers writing today." Who's the other? "Your humble servant."

Spiro Agnew would've liked this one

At the rate George Bush relatives are proliferating in politics and media, blood sport takes on new meaning. In a recent speech about potential conflicts of interest, ABC News reporter Ann Compton mentioned how a network staffer once recused himself from covering George Herbert Walker Bush's campaign because he was a Bush cousin, a Walker. Which sounded an awful lot like an anecdote recently recounted in these pages about Boston Globe columnist and former NBC newsman John Ellis, a Bush nephew and a cousin to governors George W. and Jeb. Good story, wrong name? No, says Ellis with a laugh. "There really are two of us. She meant my cousin, Jim Walker, from ABC News, who lives right down the street from me."

Not amused

In a small but inescapable irony, at the same time that Boston magazine rails about the evils of making up stories (à la Mike Barnicle), its sister publication, Philadelphia, invents its own. David Lipson, publisher of both magazines, last week fired his Philly editor after learning that a story about a gay construction worker who wanted to march in the city's revered Mummer's Day parade was a hoax. For Lipson, who says he fired the editor for other reasons as well, placating angry groups -- gays in Philly, blacks in Boston -- seems to be part of his job description. Not that that's new. Reminded of the incident 20 years ago when Boston reeled -- and heads rolled -- over a satire on the late Cardinal Medeiros, Lipson (son of owner Herb Lipson) yelped, "Jeez, don't blame me for that. I was a 22-year-old ad salesman. Unfortunately, I had the same name as my father and had to deal with all these people screaming at me for something I had nothing to do with."