Wakefield Tonight, 20 Years Later
I know what got me thinking about “Wakefield Tonight,” the weekly live cable TV comedy/variety show that I produced on Wakefield Public Access Television twenty years ago, from late 1985 through the end of 1986.

It is generally believed that dogs are easier to train than cats. That’s probably true if you are looking for a pet to fetch the newspaper or sit up and beg. For complex reasons of evolution and breeding, dogs are by nature more eager to please than cats are.

Like cell phone users who won’t shut up and drive, people who cruise around with their headlights permanently set in the “blind” position are a menace and a danger on the roadway. I used to think that the problem was just people who left their high beams on by mistake, but I now realize that [...]

Sure, it’s been cool so far this summer. The average daily high temperature for July has been 77.6, almost 4 degrees below the normal average high of 81.4. The average mean temperature for the Boston area has been 3 degrees below normal.
You think that’s bad? Try the New England summer of 1816. That’s the year [...]

Most schools have already secured their commencement day speakers, and again this year, my phone hasn’t rung. But if the featured graduation day speaker for your college, high school, middle school or driving academy should happen to cancel, I am ready to fill in at a moment’s notice. To prove that I’m fully prepared to [...]

“Anyone who sells merchandise by going either from town to town or from place to place in the same town, either on foot or from any animal or vehicle, is acting as a hawker or peddler. No vendor has a right to a specific location.”
–Chapter 210, Code of the Town of Wakefield
Somebody remind me. Why [...]

Owner Richie Canto is sitting in a booth in the dining room of the new Toody’s restaurant at 49 Water Street in Wakefield, Massachusetts. It’s approaching the 3 p.m. Saturday closing time, and the double lines still stretch from the counter almost out the door.

Friday, November 3, 2006 is Cliché Day. I kid you not. Would I lie to you?
Now that I’ve let the cat out of the bag, please don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger. It’s right here in black and white, in Chase’s 2006 Calendar of Events. “Use cliché’s as much as possible today,” advises Wellcat [...]

For many years, his name was preceded by the title “Father” or “Reverend.” Then the Catholic Church stripped those titles away as he became known by a different title: alleged child rapist.
Finally, we can drop “alleged,” substitute “convicted,” and we now have the name by which he will henceforth always be known: Convicted Child Rapist [...]

Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks at the Regattabar in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Thursday, August 3, 2006. 

I’ve seen Dan Hicks perform in various incarnations of his act dozens of times over the last thirty years, mostly in the Greater Boston area, but once in San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall for an early ‘80s reunion [...]