Scooper Bowl Wednesday

I'm a charitable guy. When I heard that The Jimmy Fund was asking for $7 donations at City Hall Plaza yesterday at Scooper Bowl, I was more than happy to oblige for this excellent organization.


They were also asking donors to eat copious amounts of ice cream, probably because children love ice cream, and they wanted us to keep the Jimmy Fund children in our hearts, prayers, and bellies. Who am I to turn away the interests and needs of children?


I arranged to meet Kelly and Brian there, and invited co-worker Karin, who has moved from our Connecticut offices to our Boston office just this week. What a fitting way to involve her in local charities.


All of the big guns were there with 3 or 4 flavors each. Caramel and blueberry flavors seemed to be overrepresented among all booths, while chocolate-based concoctions were almost entirely absent.

Although I live in Southie, I have yet to experience the debauchery known as "Harpoon Fest," but I am assuming that Scooper Bowl is similar to that with fewer drunks, many more small people in carriages, and failed American Idols.

Upon arrival, I walked over to the first line I saw, which peculiarly was away from the ice cream tents. I took a stroll to the front to see what I would be waiting for, and saw a woman signing B&W photos. I thought an exclamation of "Who are you" would have been deflating to her, but an equally or better ego-reducer could have been waiting in line, and asking her for some Butter Pecan when reaching the autograph table.

Turns out she was Ayla Brown, our venerable local New England Idol hero who just missed the Top 12 in 2006's season. She's tall, goes to BC, and actually had a good voice. Technically, the MC did not lie to us, claiming that Ayla's new single was climbing the charts (I checked my sources...it moved from #43 to #40 on the Adult Contemporary airplay chart, but 94% of the 47 times radio stations aired her single last week, they played it overnight - the graveyard for airplay and the way record labels try to push songs up the chart by begging for tons of overnight spins to overinflate a song's popularity). Ayla always seems to be available for events like Scooper Bowl, or anything sponsored by Kiss 108, Mix 98.5, or Magic 106.7. I give her credit for making as many local appearances as possible over the past year or so, and trying to build her local career and create a story for her career.

Opening for Ayla was someone who I kept calling Phil Stacey, but turned out to be Nick Pedro. Poor Nick was terrible. He sang 4 songs, each one all over the place and pitchy (dawg), and his thick Boston accent interjected uncomfortable and unwitty banter between songs. The engineer helped his cause by drowning out Nick and keeping the levels very high on the karaoke CD's used to accompany him. Poor Nick doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry.