Yearbook

What a year it was for news! And not just for news, but for the people reporting the news; people like, well, me: your basic, blue-collar reporter, your average guy, your Joe Shmoe, getting closer and closer to stories that weren't even all that interesting the first time with my swarthy, in-your-face style of hard-edged local music journalism.

Sure, I rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but most of them deserved it. This was the year I really let the chips fall where they may: if I heard a record that really stunk, no matter how many of my close friends played on it, I said a lot fewer nice things about it than if it had been good. And this is my pledge to you, my constantly growing, changing, seething, roiling readership, for the future: if I hear something really bad, you'll know it right away by the virtually noticeable faintness of my praise.

2002 was also the year that the Cape Codder embarked on a bold, new experiment when we decided to expand our local music coverage to keep up with the public's increasing appetite for sensational, outlandish, muck-raking stories about local semi-celebrities and their foibles. Originally, I came to you once every two weeks; now, because of your near-constant clamoring (and probably hectoring, too), I'm in there every week, bringing you twice as much news about the exact same amount of actual events.

In other words, the same things happened again, as they tend to, but this year you probably heard a lot more about them. For one thing, now we have a van, the "Cape Codder Rocket News Van", that we're always zooming around in, trying to catch people doing something. Well, no we don't, but that would be cool, wouldn't it?

Looking back over the big stories of the past year, you can see that many of them were fake substitutes for stories that couldn't, and therefore didn't, exist. My challenge: not many things happened; how could I make them more involving?

Before I answer that question, I'd like to say a word or two about year-end issues of magazines, where they purportedly sum up the major stories of the year past and attempt to put them all in perspective; like the Rolling Stone Yearbook issues, in which we get to re-live what color Madonna's hair was last February. What a scam! It's a way to get a whole issue out without anyone actually having to do anything- a way to make nothing last longer. Let's take a crack at it!

The subject that tended to pop up the most was failure -usually my own failure to accomplish one task or another. Though this path had been fairly well trodden in previous years, I think the variety and scope of things I failed to do this year was much more impressive. I had problems getting celebrities on the phone for interviews (even people like Jonathan Richman and Bill Staines; I chased Bill around for three weeks before finally giving up.) Sometimes, when I found them, the result was even worse: I wrote two pieces on singer Lori McKenna that were so bad even I was embarrassed.

(By the way, is there anything more embarrassing than not being able to spell the word "embarrassing", despite having used it so often? I'd be completely sunk on that one without the spell checker.)

I also had no luck whatsoever picking the Oscars, and got in trouble for trying to sneak illicit clam chowder into a restaurant. At one point, I even retired, only to un-retire a week later when the money ran out.

When I wasn't apologizing for one debacle or another, the column bristled with lively stories about Liam Hogg sitting in with NRBQ, Dan Cormier (the guy who does the phone messages for the Wellfleet Cinemas), and the Fred Fried scandal (I did a two-part series on Fred using more strings than all the other guitar players, and yet he's still being allowed to roam free.)

I warned you about the Asian restaurant in the mall that changed overnight into a Cajun restaurant without changing any of the food; confessed to bouts of open sobbing at oldies shows; detailed some interesting new ways of torturing june bugs; and explained why the new James Taylor CD is like a rectal exam, except even better. In what can now be seen as a desperate attempt to attract a younger, hipper demographic, I even briefly changed my name to Jocko.

It was an exciting year; thank god it's over!

Khristmas at Kelp Manor

Is Christmas the one where you’re thankful? I might be getting this confused with some other holiday, as I am old and confused though still largely continent. No, I’ll bet that’s “Thanksgiving”, because of the “thank” part. So what is it we do on this one? Do we wear something? Is this the one with the hats? No, wait, that’s “Hat Day.” Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Of course, Christmas is always whoops! -sorry an occasion of much good-natured merriment here at Kelp Manor, where the dwarves are even hungrier than usual this time of year, for they know jolly old St. Nickisonhiswhoa. Christmas is wicked intense, don’t you think?

Anyway, thanks SO MUCH for coming to our swingin’ Christmas soiree (I believe that “soiree” is French for something you’d eat in France), where we’ll no doubt be partyin’ down groovily until the wee, wee hours. Won’t you join us? Not actually, but in the sense of reading about it later? Wow! Cooool!!!

Hey, isn’t that my wife, the cruel, devastating, yet kinda young, kinda wow Mrs. Kelp? Hi, honey! (Look, she’s waving!) What? Oh, sure! Would you like to go and briefly meet my wife, the disastrously lovely and enchanting object of my ne’er flaccid zeal, da wif, Mrs. Kelp? She’s certainly been asking about you...

Honey! Oh honey! This is those people I’ve been telling you about, the Readers? The very same! (She always used to kid that you never existed.) You must’ve scared her out of her skin! I know! I am! Really? They’re taller than I pictured, too! Me, too! She says, you guys are so tall! Ha!!! Bye!

Isn’t she wonderful? Now, let’s go over to the kitchen and see what Yolanda, our Lithuanian houth girl and tragic chef, has cooked up for this merry occasion. Ooops! Well, nothing edible, obviously! Sorry Yolanda! We’ll come back later when she’s feeling better.

Ah, you’ve noticed the dogs! More than eighteen roving, medium-to-giant size dense black dogs acting really personable and affectionate, all at once, and forming a giant, writhing mass of coursing, roiling fur! Down! Down! No! No no no!

That little one’s Checkers. Look, he’s got different color toes; what a fine canine! He’s all excited about Santa. Aren’t you, little fella? Aren’t cha? Aren’t cha? Oh, yoouuu! Aren’t they precious?

For all those of you who may have the urge to hit the author in the head with a large mallet at this point, I’d remind you that that’s not exactly the spirit of Christmas, as entirely intended by our Lord and Savior, da Nazz. The spirit of Christmas would be more along the lines of: this person is a feeb, and certainly doesn’t have the wind to sustain this for more than a page, what the hell, we’ll leave right after. It’s a time to ignore your neighbor, as he would ignore you if he even noticed you in the first place.

For even as Joseph gave unto Mary a shawl, probably (or something), at Christmas; not wrapped, because they had no money for wrapping paper, but licked clean, for Joseph wath alwayth a funny guy at holiday time. They swaddled the Babe, who hit many a long ball, as if to say, Merry Christmas to all, batting for Tidwell, and whoa! watch out for that huge, rumbling, galloping cat! A cat so insane the dogs actually seem to respect it, a cat who could and would crush you like a pancake under her thundering hooves; our only cat (even I have my boundaries); dear Bill the Cat.

But I digress...

What I really meant to say, before I so rudely interrupted myself, is that supposing Christmas was the one where you’re thankful, (which I don’t think it is), then I would be thankful for the Sopranos. I know this sounds idiotic, because I always hate to hear people talking, or worse, writing, about TV shows (in part because, usually, I’ve never seen them); but this show has gotten awfully close to my heart. It’s the first TV show I can remember that absolutely could wipe the floor with any movie released the same year. (Bad year, maybe, relatively, but still...)

The acting and the writing are both as good as it gets, and it always manages to be completely unpredictable yet somehow strangely evocative of real life. The whole cast is flawless (save Miami Steve, who looks and talks like a “Dick Tracy” villain), but James Gandolfini and Edie Falco are beyond wonderful. Folks who can’t get beyond the violence and obscenities are missing a real, nasty, funny, soulful, brutal heartbreaker.

So if Christmas is a time to be thankful for all the wonderful things we have (which it isn’t), then, well, there, “The Sopranos” is something I’m really thankful for (along with the wonderful Italian dinner we frequently get with it, from our neighbor across the street, the Grand Duchess of Garden Lane and Keeper of Tiny E, who Sticks Her Butt Way Up in the Air When You Pet Her (whooo, boy, now there’s a good sounding Indian name!) (Oof! Excuse me!)

Man, this eggnog is totally happening! Oh, jeese, now I’m getting really mushy.

OK, you guys gotta go. Yeah, yeah, merry Christmas.