I’ve been getting so many inquiries this week about (the relentlessly photogenic) Mrs. Kelp that I thought I should start right off this week by coming straight out and confronting the rumors being spread around here by all you two-bit, no-account readers. No, Mrs. Kelp (the person for whom I live, breathe, and vacuum) and I are not "on the outs", as they say; the truth is, we’ve never been so in love. (When we pass, other couples say "gosh, I wish we looked more like them"; sometimes, in unison. Sometimes the woman says it, alone, and then the man says something like "yeah, except for the fat one with the moustache". I shuffle listlessly, adjusting my cardigan.)
The rumors apparently stem from the fact that She (my dewy-eyed enchantress) somehow failed to make Her usual appearance in the last couple of columns (unbeknownst to yours truly, who’s been off on a gambling spree the last few weeks; it would appear the new ghostwriter is not working out). (I tell them again and again, make sure you mention my completely and fabulously legal yet still fresh as snow Mrs. every now and then because that’s who the people pay to see but noooo, do they ever listen to me? No, of course not! And why should they? I’m only the guy they’re supposed to be imitating!
Well, just because I can’t afford a decent ghostwriter, that’s no reason to assume our marriage is on the rocks. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to get so worked up about it, but we’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, between my recent enormous skin graft (over four yards!) and our young son Kody’s court battles (as you may’ve read, young Kody has been accused of selling guns to people from Harwich; it was all just a tragic misunderstanding- )
Thankfully, my darling wife, the surprisingly resilient, unexpectedly stretchy Mrs. Kelp (for whom I do a series of tricks) has stood right by me all the way through this difficult time, and we all hope (even my young thug son, Kody) that someday, together, we will kill all our detractors.
Well, it certainly feels good to have gotten that off my chest.
Also, I’d like to take full responsibility for a couple of mistakes I made in my recent coverage of new releases by John Sedlock, the High Kings, and Anna Whiteley. First of all, i’d like to apologize to John for losing his album before listening to it, and acknowledge that while conventional journalistic wisdom would in fact dictate listening to something before writing about it rather than after, I still think this was a pretty interesting little experiment that admittedly just didn’t quite get off the ground.
I have since managed to find (and listen to) the album in question and was delighted to find a very nice version of one of the afore-mentioned Anna Whiteley’s better songs, "The Night Was Thunder", which also features some nice harmony work from High King Danny Lyons. The seven-song CD is called "Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing" and is available from John at P.O. Box 764, S. Yarmouth, MA 02664. I was also interested to find that, according to the cover photo, Mr. Sedlock is much younger than I pictured him.
I further erred in the same article by saying that Mr. Sedlock was the man behind Tollie, which put out Ms. Whiteley’s fine new effort; he isn’t, though he does play bass on it and did lend a hand in production. As we all know, there’s a world of difference between playing bass on something and owning it - as I’m sure even the unprecedentedly flexible Mrs. Kelp would agree.
I was also amused to see, on my return, that my good colleague Alan W. Petrucelli had seen fit to write a rather scathing review of the Spice Girls; I propose, in a show of fellowship, to savage the new Hanson album (regardless of what it sounds like) in these very pages next week. (If there’s one thing I never could stand, it’s popular young people.) Together, Alan and I will bring the music industry to its knees!
