EXTRA...

11,281 dead deer; That Obama-Kennedy hug; Local property tax bills soar; Hyannisport is a ghetto?

   Not a good day for a swim

This shot, taken Monday looking east from Corporation Beach in Dennis, shows the rough, post-nor'easter Bay waters and the headlands of East Dennis. Photo by Kevin Morley.

Cape and Islands dig out from near-blizzard
80 cars, 6 trucks in line, 24 hour wait for ferry

"It's hard, we wanted to go home," said Kathy Molloy, who was returning home Sunday to Nantucket with her 9-year-old daughter Kelli after a precision skating competition in Virginia.HYANNIS -- Hundreds of weary and frustrated travelers flooded ferry docks on Cape Cod early this afternoon, trying to find a way home to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket after a severe Northeaster dumped nearly a foot of snow.

The wait for vehicles was estimated to be 24 hours at the Nantucket ferry's Hyannis terminal with 80 cars and six trucks in line, according to The Steamship Authority's website. There were no waits for the Martha's Vineyard ferry out of Woods Hole, but mechanical issues cancelled two Vineyard boats this morning, adding to the storm's blustery aftermath. The Steamship Authority did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment...  Globe. 
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Snow helps heat up deer season’s numbers
2,848 bagged in Cape Cod area

A respectable mid-December snowstorm rescued the 2007 deer hunting season, drawing muzzleloader fans into the woods in droves, giving them the second-best season ever and resuming an upward trend in hunting with the challenging single-shot primitive firearm that began a decade ago...

A total of 11,281 deer were taken during the hunting season, including 149 shot during the controlled hunt at the Quabbin Reservoir, according to preliminary numbers released by the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. The storm helped boost harvest numbers about 6 percent over the 2006 season, but well below the state’s record harvest of 12,417 in 2002.

For the second successive hunting season, the most deer overall — 2,848 — were taken in the southeastern part of the state between routes 128 and 1A and the Cape Cod Canal. Central Massachusetts hunters followed closely, bagging 2,775 deer... Telegram. 
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The Kennedy Endorsement

The midday Washington rally at which Ted, Caroline, and Patrick Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama may not have enough political weight to change the outcome of the primaries. What it definitely did have was a huge supply of political irony.
First, the candidate whose entire campaign is premised on the need to “turn the page,” who defines the contest as one “between the past and the future,” received the blessing of the political figure most solidly identified with a storied past. Ted Kennedy was elected to the United States Senate in 1962, when Barack Obama was 15 months old. He remains, after 45 years in the Senate, the “last liberal lion,” the embodiment of a kind of Democrat anchored in a New Deal-Fair Deal-New Frontier-Great society era...  CBS/Jeff Greenfield.  

Preppy, sure. But who cares?
Columbia grads live up to the hype with 'Upper West Side Soweto'
and "Hyannisport is a ghetto / Out of Cape Cod tonight"

Internet forums and music blogs have the ability to build up a new band before it even releases a full-length album. The result is typically a crushing disappointment; an album rarely living up to the expectations. From that point forward, said band will forever be referred to in causal conversation as "a product of the hype machine."

Remarkably, Vampire Weekend has avoided this catastrophe...

On the singsong "Walcott," Koenig declares, "The bottleneck is a shit show / Hyannisport is a ghetto / Out of Cape Cod tonight." This kind of unabashed hipster ethos has led some to loathe the band from the start. But it would be far too easy to be put off by this kind of haughtiness. Trash-talking the land of the rich isn't arrogant if you're one of them - it's irony... Michigan Daily. 
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Local property tax bills have soared
Chatham's increase smallest at 24%

Think you're property tax bill has risen dramatically in the past few years?

It probably has.

A new state report shows that the average single-family tax bill increased 48 percent between 2000 and 2007...  Among larger communities in Eastern Massachusetts, Everett (100 percent increase) and Woburn (79 percent), both just north of Boston, saw the biggest increases. Meanwhile, Chatham, at the elbow of Cape Cod, experienced the smallest increase, 24 percent...  Sun Chronicle.
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Vampire Weekend's African Transfusion
Its calling-card track is "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"

Long story short: After graduating from Columbia, the men of Vampire Weekend began cobbling together their debut, a giddy indie pop album with an African backbeat. They dubbed their style "Upper West Side Soweto" (because they're clever like that -- and because they couldn't let poor Paul Simon have this one thing). They then foisted it on a grateful blogosphere, which proceeded to anoint Vampire Weekend the next big thing before their first full-length was even released... 

Informed by ska, calypso, Men's Vogue, Talking Heads and low-budget horror flicks -- and fortified by organs and various classical fillips -- "Vampire Weekend" is sui generis. Its calling-card track, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," is a preppies-go-to-Africa charmer that acknowledges its own inherent weirdness ("It feels so unnatural/Peter Gabriel too"). Like most of "Vampire Weekend," it's bouncy and driven by bongo-like island drums, though whether the island is Madagascar or Nantucket, it's hard to say...  Washington Post.