Men vs. Women vs. Dishwashers

So very much to talk about this week, for instance: why can't women load dishwashers? My wife, the insultingly glamorous Mrs. Kelp, is an altogether more resourceful and vigorous housekeeper than I, thank god, and in fact way ahead of me in every other respect, but she has no understanding of how to load our dishwasher, and in fact openly rebels against the whole idea of there even being a proper way to do it in the first place.

She repeatedly -despite my protests -puts plates in spaces that have obviously been designated for glasses and insists on loading cutlery chaotically and including large pans that are obviously better dealt with elsewhere. A perfectly reasonable woman in most every other regard, she has absolutely no understanding of the need for orderliness in the dish washing sector as a means of cramming the damn things as full as they could possibly be.

Magically, Mrs. Kelp is not an isolated problem: I have at least one friend (well, truthfully, also at most pretty much one friend) who says his wife frequently does loads of up to forty or fifty percent under capacity, and it's slowly tearing their marriage apart. I have a feeling this is a lot more wide-spread than you might think, so don't be taken in by a pretty face, only to wake up one day and have your forks facing the wrong way.

Unfortunately, they don't have support groups for this yet (well, maybe in California, but not in the regular United States), but as soon as they start up, we're going.

In other scary news, they've discontinued the Spicy Baconator at Wendy's. Sure, they've still got the regular Baconator, and it's still as spectacular as ever, and you can have them throw a few jalapeño peppers on there, and that's not bad at all; but without the special sauce, it can never truly scale the heights of the Spicy Baconator. Still, it's hard to stay mad at them, granting that they were the first visionaries to realize that almost any sandwich benefits from twelve pieces of bacon.

I've heard two really interesting new local bands lately, namely Johnny & the Hellhounds, an extremely spirited little rockabilly quartet spearheaded by the slappin' string bass of Jared Souther and almost Hank Williams-like vocals of Johnny himself (didn't catch the young feller's last name, but you'll know him, he's the one with the Hellhounds); and Toast and Jam, an altogether more refined outfit helmed (perhaps) by Wellfleet maestro Tim Dickey featuring lovely, polished three part harmonies and generally impeccable musicianship.

Toast and Jam -and yes, I've talked to them about the name; I suggested calling it the Mormon Tabernacle Trio (band name courtesy of comedian George Carlin), but they didn't listen -play a relatively fresh and adventurous selection of rootsy song choices (I certainly wasn't expecting the New Pornographers song they covered), while Johnny and the Hellhounds write most of their stuff (and who wouldn't go for any song graced with the title, “Zombie Hooker”?)

The good news is, both bands are so new that they (delightfully) don't have websites yet! The bad news is, I can't get either of them to tell me where they'll be playing in the near future -I'm not sure if it's because they just don't have any jobs, or that they're worried that if they tell me where they're playing, I might show up again. No worries -I'll just keep stalking both of them until they crumble, and pass the savings on to you!

(Wait! Hold the presses! One of 'em already succumbed: Toast and Jam will be back at Joe's Beach Bar in Orleans on May 9^th.) (Wait, now the other one has a job, too: Johnny and the Hellhounds will be at the Land Ho with the East Coast Tremors -also led by the ubiquitous Mr. Souther -on Saturday, June 21^st!!! Make your reservations right now -this one's doing boffo box office, as they say in Variety.)

Meanwhile, my friend Julie who works at Blockbuster gave me my favorite movie review of the young year so far when, describing the recent Tim Burton – Johnny Depp version of “Sweeney Todd”, she opined “it's good, but they do sing.”

Myself and the radiant Mrs. K (who, despite her considerable intelligence and generally angelic demeanor, puts the forks in funny) are absolute devotees of the original musical, and though neither of us warmed much to the casting (the leads are altogether too young and nice-looking), I liked that it maintained a high level of nastiness and malevolence. Surely, this was a man who would've known how to load a dishwasher.