Unretirement

...And so here I come thundering out of retirement for one more column.

Some of you may recall your great dismay at my recent announcement of my impending retirement, and some (it is becoming increasingly evident) definitely don't. While it is still difficult and painful for me to admit that there was actually a lot less mail (or comment of any kind, really) generated by this event than I had hoped, that hasn't stopped me from reconsidering my decision. My wife, the tantalizingly incandescent, blindingly mod Mrs. K, has prayed with me on the matter many times (or certainly would have if both of us weren't such confirmed life-long heathens), and reminded me more than once that we could sure use the money -yet the answer has been long in coming.

Still, I felt a decision had to be made, lest scores of angry readers rise up as one against us, anxious to bludgeon us with their crude cudgels and spears. (I've always hated spears. If someone asked, what is the way you'd not like to die worst? I would say, I would not want to get speared; second would be having my face eaten alive by fire ants; and third, I think, would be natural death/old age, which sounds like it's going to take forever -in fact, I might rather have my face eaten alive by fire ants.)

Anyway, so, my decision is, seeing as how no one disagreed with me about my decision to retire, I kind of took that as support for -and, more importantly, trust and faith in -my ability to run things well here at the column. What you have taught me, my faithful readers, through your complete lack of any reaction whatsoever to what I thought was really quite a sad and semi-historic announcement, was that you really trust where I'm going with the column. You like me! You really, really like me! The feeling of affirmation is indescribable.

And that, coupled with the fact that I totally forgot that I had retired for the next two weeks and kept writing anyway by mistake (which is exactly the kind of sign you're looking for when pondering retirement), has convinced me that it is time to return at last to my beloved Krepe de la Kape, where I hope to write until the end of my days, or yours (preferably yours, actually -I hate the idea of me dying.) Boy, it sure feels good to be back at the old place; it's just the same as I remembered it!

So, it sure seems like there's getting to be a lot of people down here again, and I hate to say it, but it's happening right around the same time it happened last year, right around end of June - beginning of July, and I think we're beginning to see the beginnings of some kind of pattern. There's so much traffic! Man oh man -you can't even go to the store! It's always right when it gets hot, too. Heck, we ought to start charging more this time of year -I'll bet we'd get it!

You know what else? If I ever do retire, I'll bet Florida would be a great place to do it. Don't tell anyone about this one, though - the Mrs. and I want it all to ourselves!

By the way, you might notice that ever since I came back from retirement, I've been using a lot more exclamation marks! I hope you like them -I think they've given the column sort of a younger, more exciting look -and zesty!! I think in the weeks to come, you'll be seeing a lot of improvements around here; or, if not here, somewhere else.!

In further entertainment news, we were able to ascertain last week that there is indeed a method for obtaining refunds for tickets still held for a handful of film showings at the Provincetown Film Festival that had to canceled. I'm told that most festival-goers were magnanimous about these mishaps, preferring that the money go to what is certainly a most worthy cause (as I've said many times, the wife and I are big fans of the fest). Still, those who lean towards greed and revenge will be delighted to know that they are most welcome to either call 508 349 0578 and hit *1; or to go on-line at piff2002@attbi.com to exact their pint of blood (we also enjoy a nice pint of blood every now and again.)

My friend Link Montana (aka Bruce Maclean) informs me that he's almost completed a new album of instrumentals, and that he's also doing a weekly gig at the Claddagh on Rt. 28 in Harwich, with drummer Rick Lemont and bassist Jay Cournoyer, every Sunday all summer (except July 14.) Coincidentally, Jay's old cohort in the High Kings, Cliff Letsche, also has a regular Sunday afternoon gig, with singer Krista DeLude at the Crown and Anchor in Provincetown.

And the never-missable Zoe Lewis, who recently won yet another award at the Kerrville Folk Festival, turns up tomorrow night (Saturday, June 29th) at the Duck Creek Tavern in Wellfleet, and the next night (Sunday, the 30th) at Esther's in P'town, where she'll also be performing most Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays throughout the summer...!!!

Spurned

I can't write another column this week -I just can't. All of the wonderful things I had planned for you have gone right down the toilet. I'm so depressed.

I had such big plans for this column! Jugglers, elephants, huge sets, crazy bald people. I spent thousands of dollars on these imported Persian rugs you see here, or actually, you don't, because they're not pictured, and that's what's driving me crazy: it's a newspaper, you don't even get to see all these special decorations I bought ... I mean, the place looks just beautiful, I got these lamps and these big hangings and the caterers have been wonderful and this is just to make me feel good enough to write a great column; you don't even get to see all the machinations, all the extra care, the attention I lavish on every detail to make things perfect, and you don't even get to see it, and that of course is one of the really ironic things about it that's just driving me crazy is that I'm out all this extra money for nothing, basically.

Man oh man.

First I was going to try to interview Jonathan Richman, who's playing at the Wellfleet Beachcomber this Friday (June 21.) Actually, I completely succeeded in trying to interview Jonathan Richman; where I slipped up was in getting him to answer any questions or speak to me at any time, which he didn't. As always, I emailed him a bunch of incredibly stupid questions, but Mr. Richman apparently decided not to email back a bunch of really stupid answers, thus upsetting, however temporarily, the flow of information. I'm not mad -I'm just really disappointed and depressed. I'm starting to think about retiring again.

By refusing to answer my questions (which, luckily, were actually the same questions I emailed to Engelbert Humperdinck a year ago, who also didn't answer them; under the circumstances, I'm just so glad I didn't bother to think up new questions, as long as he wasn't going to answer them anyway!), Mr. Richman is sending a message to right-thinking journalists everywhere, which is: just ask me the same questions Engelbert Humperdinck didn't answer, because I am too stuck up to answer them anyway, so why make up new ones?

More and more important people are refusing to talk to me; I think this is their way of signaling to the world, "I don't care about anyone who reads this column, because I am too rich and handsome to read stuff like this." Which I think is kind of a pity, because as long as there are people in the world who do read this column, I will email questions to people who don't care about answering them; yes, that long, and longer! Because I care about you, the little people: the unsung, the unwashed; the undiscriminating; the uninformed.

Maybe Jonathan Richman doesn't care to answer questions like "You once wrote that you were a little airplane; are you still a little airplane?" On the other hand, maybe I don't care about reviewing his new album, "Her Mystery Not Of High Heels And Eye Shadow" (Vapor), which probably isn't any good, anyway. Ha!

Other people who have been ignoring me a lot lately are almost anyone from the Provincetown Film Festival, which happened last weekend; I'm guessing I was probably not the only person who had tickets for a movie that was either postponed or canceled and is still trying to find out what happened. Besides inclement weather, the organizers suddenly found themselves fighting uncooperative projection equipment at the last minute at their largest venues, the two-screen New Art, on Friday night.

I did eventually get a call back from publicist Marianne Lampke, who said that she had heard that the problems had all been ironed out by Saturday night, and that Marcia Gay Harden had done an exemplary job of entertaining the troops when the projector originally went south during the premier of her new "Gaudi Afternoon" on Friday night.

She also reported that the Audience Awards for the festival had gone to local filmmakers Jay Critchley and Casey Clark, for (respectively) "Toilet Treatments" and "Off Season" (tied for best short film); "Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House" (best documentary); and "Elvira's Haunted Hills" (best feature film -so much for any highbrow pretensions here!)

I managed to get to "The Cockettes" and the "Cowgirls"/ "Laughing Club of India" double-bill (all of which were quite novel and amusing but a little long), and to the French thriller "Read My Lips" (which was very good) and to "Independent Spirits", a documentary about animators Faith and John Hubley that was fascinating and romantic and utterly delightful. I'm a big fan of the fest, and they again had a great line-up of films this year, but I must admit it was pretty frustrating trying to figure out the cancellation/postponement situation; I'm sure they'll have better luck next year.

Meanwhile, if you need a really interesting and different (albeit extremely talky and philosophical) video to rent, try Richard Linklater's "Waking Life", which is at the very least a totally different sort of animated movie, in both style and content, from any we've yet seen. I was surprised, because I wasn't much of a fan of his popular early movies "Slackers" and "Dazed and Confused"; nor am I a fan of animated movies in general, but I really liked this one.

OK, gotta go consider retirement again, bye-bye.

Cornsy's New Job

Writing last week about the Alloy Orchestra, who perform exclusively as accompanists for silent movies, got me thinking about my other friends who have incomprehensible jobs.

My wife, the needlessly beguiling Mrs. K, has an old friend named Cornsy whose job no one has ever been able to understand, and when she sent out an email announcement last week that she has accepted a new position, some of us were understandably concerned that we might finally know what she was talking about. It was a relief, then, to see that she had been appointed Director of Biostatistics at Cubist Pharmaceuticals -a brand new bunch of words as intriguing as they are impenetrable. She still had us flummoxed after all these years!

Long ago, before she was Director of Biostatistics, I had tried on more than one occasion to get Cornsy to explain her job to me, and each time come away more confused than ever. At the time, she was an epidemiologist, a word that even to this day somehow brings my mind to a dead stop. Needless to say, when I got the news about her new assignment, I was anxious to start failing to grasp it as soon as possible, so I called her up for a detailed explanation.

First of all, it turns out she had a couple of other jobs between: most recently, she had been a Director of Biostatistics at MacroChem; as is usual in any conversation about Cornsy’s occupation, this caused me to tilt my head and furrow my brow like a golden retriever.

Probably just to fill the giant pause that had resulted from this last revelation, she continued, saying that her company runs clinical tests to try to get product approval from the FDA, and that she herself collects data prior to submissions and writes protocol and study design prior to the data being processed into a data base where it is checked, verified, and queried -at which point it gets analyzed with biostatistics.

Of course, at this point I was gasping for air and flopping around on the floor like a fish. Man, she still had it!

Somehow, I rallied for a moment, enough to weakly ask her what a biostatistic was. (God, I hate science. Anything to do with science fills me with ambivalence.) She replied that there’s a lot of them: “there’s a nova; regression; uhmmm... exact statistics, non-parametric statistics. You have to get significant efficacy and an acceptable safety profile; then you have to write up the report.”

At this point, my face had turned green and there was smoke pouring out of my head. “Isn’t there...don’t you... is there anything at all, some word that you might... is there really no part of your job that, uhhh... caaa... ” I stammered.

Perhaps she was starting to lose her patience a little, but she did finally say, “well, at MacroChem we worked in the areas of erectile dysfunction and toe fungus...”

Ah HA! There! Some words I can understand! So her job does have something to do with some actual thing on earth! Or did, anyway -apparently, now that she’s at Cubist Pharmaceuticals, erectile dysfunction and toe fungus are things of the past.

Always good to see ol’ Cornsy, though... talk about a solid sense of humor!

That reminds me, don’t forget that the Provincetown Film Festival is happening this weekend; Mrs. K got a brand new extra long cigarette holder, and I got a Nehru jacket and a fairly stunning perm, and we’re planning on a pretty glamorous time.

Which doesn’t mean we won’t be checking out Link Montana’s latest incarnation, the Maplewoods (also featuring Jay Cournoyer) Sunday at the Cladagh in Harwich on Rt. 28 from 4 to 8; word is they’ll be doing Sundays all summer, so heads up.

Alloy Orchestra

Oops! I forgot! I can't retire -need the money... must write column...

Think back for a second. "City of Angels"; "The Legends of the Fall"; "Chariots of Fire"; history is littered with movies that would've been much better if only you couldn't hear the actors speak. That's why foreign movies are such a relief - because even though you can hear the actors speak, you can't tell what they're saying.

If there's one thing we've learned in our first hundred years or so of the cinema, it's that it's a lot easier to get things to look good than to sound intelligent; seventy-five years after movies first added sound, we're still trying to figure out what to do with it.

Silent movies have always been close to my heart, going back to when I was a kid. Part of it was just the fascination of them being so damned old, and wondering if all the actors were dead -like walking through an animated graveyard! Perhaps the real resonance, though, came from the simplicity and directness of the acting and the starkness of the black and white, both somehow conjuring up unexpected degrees of subtlety and nuance, so primitive yet so complicated. (The pie fights were good, too.)

You rarely get a chance to see silent movies today, even on TV, so the Woods Hole Film Festival's presentation tomorrow (Saturday, June 8th) of "Masters of Slapstick", a trio of classic two reel comedies that includes Chaplin's "Easy Street", Buster Keaton's "One Week", and Laurel and Hardy's "Big Business", as a well as a mostly silent contemporary by Jane Gillooley, "Dragonflies, The Baby Cries", with live music provided by the Alloy Orchestra at the Boch Center for the Performing Arts at the Mashpee High School Auditorium, is a rare and most welcome event.

Not to mention a really weird yet obviously very satisfying gig for the musicians involved, including drummer/clarinetist Ken Winokur, with whom I spoke last week. Weird because they play in the dark while the audience's attentions are directed elsewhere, but satisfying because, as Winokur says, "every show goes great; for one thing, these movies have been great for 75 years already, which does take some of the pressure off."

Those expecting your basic tack piano accompaniment may be in for a shock, as the Alloy Orchestra is actually a trio made up of two drummers, Winokur and Terry Donahue (who also double on clarinet and accordion respectively), and a synthesizer player, in this case Roger Miller, who is also a member of both Birdsongs of the Mezozoic and the lately much-heralded Mission of Burma (and by the way, just what is going on with all that heralding? Burma are a swell little band and all, but the last time I saw this much critical overkill was on the Doors, who we're still trying to get rid of. And Mission of Burma don't even have one dead guy! What gives?)

Other instruments include bedpan, horse shoes, plumber's pipe, and "the rack of junk." Winokur says that the variety and eccentricity of their instrumentation once totally overwhelmed an Italian customs inspector as they were crossing into Slovenia -apparently, he just gave up. The band travels a lot -90 to 100 gigs a year, all over this country and others as well, Lincoln Center, Telluride, etc -they're, like, famous. Roger Ebert calls them "the best in the world at accompanying silent films."

I loved Winokur's story of the band's creation: he says that the Coolidge Corner was showing the Giorgio Moroder version of "Metropolis", but were understandably dying to find some substitute for the dreadful modern rock score the seventies disco icon had added, and presto, the Alloy Orchestra was born!

Anyway, go see 'em -it's not a chance you're likely to get that often, and the movies are great ones. (For more info, go to www.alloyorchestra.com -or read the excellent story by my colleague Rebecca Alvin in last week's Codder.)

As long as we're on a movie tear, don't forget that the Provincetown Film Festival is almost upon us as well; it kicks off Thursday, June 13th, with an outdoor block party in front of Spiritus on Commercial St.with the always photogenic Chandler Travis Philharmonic presiding.

I always love the film fest; unfortunately, I went on and on about the Alloy Orchestra so long I'm almost out of room! Suffice to say that this year's effort looks like a particularly good one, with personal appearances expected from a diverse group of celebs including Marcia Gay Harden, Gus Van Sant, John Waters, and Elvira (!!), not to mention a whole host (or at least half a host) of other celebrities we've probably never even heard of!

There will also be rare showings of films from both Martin Scorcese and former Codder editor Seth Rolbein; plus "Provincetown artist/activist Jay Critchley continues his obsession with septic tanks in his new short "Toilet Treatments", a 'dank' comedy described as 'David Lynch meets 'Alice in Wonderland.'" Don't worry, there's some mainstream Hollywood fare too (and Elvira!!!)

Music fans will be amused to note the showing of a variety of music bios, including films on They Might Be Giants, Phranc, and the Cockettes. Needless to say, the blindingly radiant Mrs. Kelp and I will be on duty, trying to pretend we know famous people, throughout the entire weekend.