Pretzels & Dick

Man, pretzels are so good sometimes! -know what I mean? Most of the time, you don't even think about pretzels, it's as if they weren't even food, and then, suddenly, for whatever reason, the memories come flooding back: lord, these are so salty and good with booze!

It's the same with getting drunk. When I grew up, people valued getting drunk, but nowadays, being pie-faced has somehow acquired a patina of unrespectability, as if it just wasn't p.c. -almost as if it was looked down upon! Sometimes I think it's this whole no smoking, avoidance-of-cancer thing, taken to extremes. Sure, you don't seek out cancer; but do you really want to see who's sitting next to you at the bar that clearly? At one time, these were like phantom figures. Now that everything's smoke-free, I can see my friends way too well. And now I'm supposed to stop drinking?

And if that's true, why did God give us pretzels? I mean, I'm glad He did and everything, but it's hard to believe nourishment was His goal with the pretzel. But pretzels are so full of mystery! Isn't it obvious that drunk people would've been satisfied with so much less?

Which brings me to browsing for music in the digital age.

Look, you've got to understand: I was a hard-core vinyl guy. I still have literally thousands of records, untouched for many years, surrounding the stuff I do touch, and in most cases sounding way better than the stuff I do touch, but all the ?new? stuff is on cd, so I end up playing nothing but cds. Records were my first love, and perhaps my truest, though even the ceaselessly, effortlessly, unavoidably radiant Mrs. Kelp might agree that I've tried to become more moderate in my ways to the point of appreciating in-person humans to a roughly similar degree (at least after the fact, on reflection); but oh my god, records were SO CUTE!!! So large, so space-ship like! Man, that was a product!

But cds would make nice earrings...

Anyway, the only reason I mention that is to explain that I'm not, by nature, a computer-y guy, though I definitely have become one. If you'd have told me ten or twenty years I'd be spending this much time TYPING! -well, I certainly would've denied it, in fact did deny it when some of you did in fact point out the painful obviousness of it: we're all in thrall to these little screens, these little keyboards. And they're, like, wicked cool!

OK, so, like, check it out, here's a message to my brethren old and cranky-ites: this is an arguably good browsing situation.

The premise is that you can pretty much hear thirty seconds of anything, on Itunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, eMusic, all these digital music outlets, whatever, people will play you thirty seconds of absolutely anything. They've somehow declared all beginnings completely worthless -what a nineties point of view!

So you've got to decide, really fast, is it good, or is it stinky?

Being contemporary is so relentless.

But here's the good news: I tried this test on the new Wilco album, ?Sky Blue Sky? (I've always kind of liked Wilco), first listening to the songs as 30 second samples (on Itunes) and then in full (on Rhapsody, as some sort of promotion), and I'm gratified to say that in retrospect the 30 second samples seemed to give me all the information I needed to choose the two or three tracks I liked enough to keep (this also takes into account the possibility of liking something ok, but not quite to the point of ever needing to hear it again.) This situation in turn made it possible to (more or less) avoid an entire Bjork album! (her latest, whatever it is.) (Which makes it sound like I don't like poor Bjork, and I do, I like Bjork a lot, but the thirty second hints told me I don't need this particular album. It's like I just found ten bucks!)

Remember, the world is getting worse and worse, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Speaking of everything going downhill continuously, I have to tell you that my good friend and personal hero Dick Wetmore died a few months ago, down in Naples, Florida, where he'd spent the last few years so happily with his terrific wife Marge. I'm sure Dick will be remembered by many locally, as he spent many years on the cape, which he obviously dearly loved -and visa versa. He was famous with hepsters as being one of the first guys to play bebop on a violin, and he was a wonderful musician on both violin and cornet as well as a truly charismatic singer. Dick was personable beyond reason, and playful as a pup. He always said he was from the planet Twylo, and most of us believed him.

And I wrote way more about Dick than I wrote about anyone else. After all, how often do you meet someone from Twylo?

A memorial service will be held for him at the Duck Creeke Inn in Wellfleet at 12 noon on Sunday, May 27^th ... there's bound to be some great anecdotes, so come on down.

They may even have pretzels.

Frozen Foot Baby Ping Pong

Great new game! It's called "Frozen Foot Baby Ping Pong", and it's way fun! You folks who already like ping pong will completely lose it when you play this delightful and wicked zangy new sport; in fact, your bowels may explode with happiness (I know mine sure did.)

So basically, like I said, if you've got any kind of grasp of regular ping pong, Frozen Baby Foot Ping Pong won't really even be all that much of a stretch. The only difference is, you can't move your feet at all, and you have to try to make it as easy for your opponent as you can by hitting the ball really softly and right to him. That way, the not-moving-your-feet-rule makes it harder, but the fact that you're only playing baby ping pong, with someone who's handicapped and trying his hardest not to win, balances that out pretty well. It ends up being sort of the same as regular pingpong, in that it's harder, but also way easier. But it's still different, kind of, and it's been a long winter.

Every winter is a long winter, and that's why I wish I didn't live here. But I do, and if a mild-mannered diversion like Frozen Foot Baby Ping Pong (which, by the way, doesn't even use real babies) can relax me a little every now and then, I'm happy to endure it, I think (probably.)

What I'm particularly excited about right now, though, is that the ever-increasingly superb Mrs. Kelp and I are headed away on a fabulous vacation on Monday, and we are totally psyched (or, if you prefer, "glad.") We haven't been on a vacation in years, other than the fact that we're almost never exactly working to any noticeable degree, anyway. Perhaps we don't actually deserve a break as much as a regular couple that had "actual" jobs, but we feel that not having a job produces quite a bit of anxiety, and that's why we're going on vacation.

Of course, going on a vacation is a delicate matter. My thoroughly bitchin' wife, the ever rhapsodic Mrs. K., prefers not to travel too far from home, the better that we can get back there right away when whichever poor sap we got to pet sit realizes what they've gotten themselves into (our collection of mutts -we don't like to say how many, let's just say more than five -is relatively high on mange, not to mention random, impractical and un-recommended velocity; there's just so many of them, and each one is so extraordinarily unstable!) If the stupid sitters would just use the damn moat, they'd be better off, but they always forget to wind up the drawbridge.

Anyway, it's a hilarious assignment, and we've grown accustomed to the panicky phone calls; but while my wife wants to be available in case of trouble, I feel it's funnier if we aren't. Thus, I'm always trying to talk her into going somewhere far away, while she's a little reticent about crossing the bridge (especially since that time a few years ago when we went to Worcester for Oktoberfest... man, I'll never live that one down.)

But this year she said she'd go somewhere sporty, and there was this place I've always been dying to go to, but I was worried about the language barrier; and then we both decided "aw, what the heck? It's not like speaking English really seems to help that much anyway!"; so, we're going, day after tomorrow, to New Bedford! The only downside is, the travel time means you lose most of the first day (we travel kind of slow-ly), which is too bad.

Mrs. K is all in a tizzy tonight, as we're not sure what the climate there might be like exactly, so she can't figure out what to wear. I always tell her, "you wear whatever you want -I'll be in my sweat suit", but it never seems to help. That woman is impossible!

Random suggestions: go rent a movie called "Half Nelson" with Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps. It's a about a high school teacher with a substance problem, and it is remarkably free of false notes of any kind -both Kelps just loved it.

Also, here's some good things to look up on YouTube: talking cats (you could also try entering "Long John Johnson"); human slingshot; and dick in a box. Also be aware that there's a large wad of Ricky Gervais (the genius creator of the original British "The Office"
series) material up there, including a five part presentation of Gervais interviewing "Seinfeld" / "Curb Your Enthusiasm" creator Larry David.

Ok, you're on your own.