Sin of the Month • Abby Bardi
	Gossip

Recently, the town of Ellicott City, Maryland, has become the birthplace of a new media giant. After only four issues, the Main Street Gossip Rag, written and published (if that's the right word) by media mogul, gutter cleaner, and banjo player Bob Pyle, has taken the historic district by storm.

Scrawled onto yellow paper, photocopied at the local copy shop, priced at five cents, and then left in stacks in Sarah and Desmond's Gourmet Café and Bakery, the Rag is a fascinating compendium of local news. The headline of its first issue read, "Jimbo's Weedwacker Runs out of Gas." The accompanying story explained, "When asked why this happened, [Jimbo] said, 'There wasn't any gas left in there.'"

Another story stated, "Marvin at Taylor's Antique Mall has announced, 'I'd like to lose forty pounds.'"

My favorite piece of breaking news is, "'I understand the market,' says big-mouth pedestrian on Main Street who probably doesn't understand the market.'"

The Rag also contains some hard-edged reporting: "Local drifter 'Flood' accidentally stabbed in drug dispute on Mother's Day." The third issue contains a two-page interview with Flood, who claims to have read 7,500 books, and continually exclaims, "Lock and load!"

I hope it won't seem like bragging when I say that impresario Bob Pyle is one of my best friends. He introduced me to the person who is now my husband, and has, in fact, been written about in this column before–the time I was writing about the sin of Fabrication (somewhat related to the sin of Gossip). I explained how Bob, perhaps in the spirit of performance art, decided to pretend to his psychotherapist that he had Multiple Personality Disorder, and represented himself for weeks as a variety of personalities, including Bob, Little Bobby, and a mean guy named Steve, and only called a halt to the deception when the therapist tried to have him committed.

Being a small part of a media conglomerate myself (I refer of course to the Takoma/Silver Spring Voice), I can appreciate the way Bob has gone, in only four issues, from being known on Main Street solely for his propensity for dramatically illegal parking to being the most talked-about personage in town. The extent of his popularity has been demonstrated to me several times this week, as my husband and I have sat with Bob in Sarah and Desmond's–which has the best baked goods this side of Columbia–and watched as hoards of patrons streamed into the café, demanding the latest issue of the Rag.

However, as the Rag has burgeoned in popularity, it has also become the site of controversy. The first two issues were relatively tame, containing stories about a woman being bitten by her own dog (yes, it was me) and the fact that Mary D. was quitting her job at High's ("I just don't feel fulfilled"); however, they contained seeds of what now threatens to blossom into a problem for Bob.

For one thing, there is an item about a Main Street steakhouse not paying its bills ("It's cash only for them now," states the Rag's source, a driver for U.S. Foodservice). Another claims that a certain Main Street boutique "goes to Wal-Mart to buy clothes for their store when inventories are low."

The most recent issue has a cover story on the arrest of a local kid for burglary ("Krazy Kyle Kaptured"), and accuses a local store owner of making an anti-Semitic remark.

The potential for unrest created by the Rag was illustrated to me the other day as my husband and I sat with Bob, yet again, in S & D's. (If I fail my doctoral exam in the fall, it will be because I cannot seem to tear myself away from this ongoing drama, not to mention the decaf chai.) Bob sat at his usual table, scrawling the latest edition of the Rag, a restaurant review issue. As he scrawled, people came in and out of S & D's, glanced at him, realized that Bob was the author of the Rag, and either glared at him or heaped him with praise.

A guy ordering a latte, who works at one of Main Streets umpteen antique shops, informed Bob that the baker was still very upset at what Bob said about his buns.

Bob shrugged and went back to scrawling. The antique shop guy grabbed his copy of the Rag, gave Bob a nickel, and, referring to the color of the paper it's printed on, said that the Rag gives new meaning to the term "yellow journalism."

By the time we left S & D's, Bob had written four pages of scathing restaurant reviews, and countless pastry-seekers had stopped in to get their copy of the Rag and to say that everyone on Main Street was waiting impatiently for the next issue to come out.

"But you're going to get in big trouble," said a woman from the flower shop.

"The thing is," I told her, "everything Bob says in the Rag is true. For example, the bartender at [local eatery] really is a crack dealer. And that guy who owns [local store] really did call the woman who owns [different local store] a 'dirty Jew.'"

"You better watch it," she said to him, plunking down a nickel and grabbing a yellow copy on her way out the door.

Then another woman, whom we didn't know, sat down next to us, holding a copy of the Rag, and began holding forth about the restaurants in town. She hated them all, and so did Bob, and for that matter, so do I–except, we all agreed, for S & D's, which has great vegetarian sandwiches, and the French restaurant Tersiguel's, which none of us can afford. We all badmouthed restaurants for a while, and then she said to Bob, "I'm so glad someone has the nerve to tell it like it is."

As Bob finished dissing his last restaurant and wiped his brow, I looked at him, as I often do, with admiration. Bob has frequently impressed me–for one thing, he is the only musician I know who has actually eaten a toothpaste sandwich onstage. But this time, he has outdone himself. How many newspapers, I thought, have the nerve to print the unvarnished truth? As far as I know, the only ones brave enough are the Takoma/Silver Spring Voice and the Rag.

"Aren't you afraid of being sued?" I asked Bob.

"I aspire to it," he said.

EDITOR'S NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATION: Created by R. F. Outcault in 1894, the Yellow Kid (above) was the first successful comic strip character. His popularity led to a "newspaper war between William Randolph Hearst (The New York Journal) and Joseph Pulitzer's (The World).The World had the Kid, and the Journal wanted him. The circulation battle spun out into increasingly sensational drawings and articles in both papers. Because of the very public battle over the Yellow Kid, both papers became widely known as "The Yellow Kid Papers," shortened to "The Yellow Papers," shortened to "Yellow Journalism."