Resignation

I have been mocked! I have been accused -and in the pages of my own newspaper, too, my beloved Krepe de la Kape, for which I have toiled selflessly (except for a modest stipend) lo these many years -of using a pen name. A pen name! As if!! Can you actually imagine anyone, granted the right to choose his own last name, deciding that “Kelp” was absolutely the most colorful and romantic of all the various possibilities?

For the record, when I first came to this office some thirty-seven (is it really thirty-seven years? can that be possible? actually, no, now that I think of it), make that, nine years ago, I did in my naiveté ask if I could use a pseudonym; but my editor at the time deemed my choice, R. Nalton Thruppy, too “suggestive.” Since then, I’ve always been proud that I listened to that wise editor, for my work has brought me much honor in the years that intervened (and a modest stipend.)

This is most patently a filthy and scabrous lie, perpetrated by an evil, villainous cad, a so-called “musician”, despite the fact that his band of aging, oily, talentless, balding fatsos can only get a job in one bar in the world, having no doubt been fired already from most of the rest. Yet this stinking wad of malignant offal is given a forum right here in these pages, in my very sanctuary!

Oh, why was I not made of stone like thee? This is hard enough on the men-folk; Mrs. Kelp (who, even in mourning, is one hotsy-totsy cutie) hasn’t come out of her room in three days, so affected is she by the scandal.

As much as it saddens me to say this, under the present circumstances, I don’t see how I can possibly continue in the good humor for which I have long been noted, and thus I respectfully submit my resignation.

I will consider returning if (and only if) the perpetrator of this ugliness delivers a prompt and sincere apology and is shot out of a cannon into a big lake. (After all, to forgive is divine.)

I don’t mean to keep going on about it -and I promise to get off it in just a second -but the same “writer”, in his so-called “article” last week about the Wellfleet Beachcomber, seemed to select the most boring anecdotes possible, to the exclusion of the much spicier stories I might have provided, had I been consulted.

For instance, did you know that, at one point in the nineties, Beachcomber manager Danny Murray (with whom I am, even today, so intimate that I call him “Danny” instead of the more provincial, less playful “Dan”) brought in a band called the Clamdiggers (which was basically a different version of a venerated Boston band that at various points called itself the Titanics, the Satanics, and the Upper Crust), and that the Clamdiggers broke up when one of their members, Ted Widmer, was hired to be a speech writer for Bill Clinton?

Now, that’s an anecdote! Other writers’ anecdotes stink, while mine stay colorful and zesty!

Let’s not dwell. I had a pretty good run while it lasted -we had some good times together, didn’t we? Let’s not let this one aberration, this one ghastly, freakish accident, dis-color all our happy memories together. What the hell -these are probably the last few sentences I’ll ever write, now that I have been so thoroughly disgraced and betrayed. What the hell -let’s go out on a high-note, with more of the same hard-hitting, impartial, practically award-winning music journalism you’ve come to expect:

Babaloo is playing this Friday, June 1, at the Beachcomber. They are sometimes referred to as a punk-mambo band, but those are only two of the many world music elements they combine to such danceable effect. Go see them -they’re a real fun band.

Damn, now I’m really starting to mist up. This is really taking a lot out of me. After all this time, to have it all just end like this... it’s not fair, it’s just not fair. I guess now I know how Johnny Carson felt, or Seinfeld, or that other guy on TV who quit.

Still, I guess it’s time to just say goodbye, so... I love you all
-goodbye.