The Colonial Theatre Tea Garden

2011-12-08T03:58:00.002-03:00

It is my lot in life... Oh, damn. I appear to have many lots in my life, but most of them are irritating. This is one of my favorite lots, for sheer amusement factor.

It is my lot in life to be asked for directions. Do I simply look as though I know where I'm going? Or do I look non-threatening? I've been told that I do look somewhat threatening, or at least crazy. For reasons known only to Atlas (who, I suppose, would be the god of mapmakers), people ask me for directions. A lot.

I am often asked for directions in Baltimore. This makes sense. I am from Baltimore and probably have a pretty fair idea how to get where you're going. I also get asked for directions in Richmond. This also makes sense. I am not really from Richmond, but I might as well be, and I can get you anyplace in town north of the river. I don't go South of the James and neither should you.

I get asked for directions in Washington. This almost makes sense. Since I grew up in Baltimore and have spent most of my life either there or somewhere in Virginia, I probably have a fighting chance of knowing where you need to go. There's no guarantee, though. Still, if you're asking for a major street or landmark, I can get you there.

I get asked for directions in Allentown. This does not make sense. I am not from Allentown. I like it, but I don't live there and never have. It is far away from my base of operations. Fortunately, it's laid out very much like Richmond, and after several visits, I know the street grid. Still, what makes the average visitor to Allentown pick me, when there are hundreds of other people on Hamilton street and they are actually from Allentown?

I get asked for directions in New York. This does not make sense for two principal reasons. The first is that I am not from New York, nor have I visited it frequently. I don't even LIKE New York. The other reason is that New York, of all the world's cities, probably has the most simple, comprehensible street plan known to Mankind. Also, the streets are conveniently numbered. Other than the really ancient part of the city, which does have some old oddball streets, I don't think it's even possible to get lost in Manhattan. You're at 6th and 50th and you want to get to 5th and 55th? The Hotel St. Regis? Sure. Go a block that way, turn left and walk five blocks. Just in case, you know, you can't read numerals and all.

The last time I visited New York, I was standing in Herald Square for no specific reason. I had a lot of time to kill, and was wandering around looking for remnants of long-dead movie palaces, trying to convince myself that one o'clock in the afternoon was a perfectly acceptable time to begin happy hour. (It was.) Now, Herald Square has not been as Disney-ized as Times Square, but it's still full of tourists, mostly because of Macy's. I also discovered on this visit that no one actually shops at the big central Macy's anymore. When I went in there to pee, feeling nostalgic for Hutzler's, I realized that the place was mobbed but that no one was buying anything. They were just taking pictures. I almost asked someone if they didn't have a department store in their own damn town, but then I remembered that there are very few department stores left and so no, they probably didn't. As I stood wishing that the Hotel McAlpin were still open so I could have a drink at its bar, I was approached by a man who had three family members and five cameras in tow. This was a clearly foreign gentleman, who very politely asked how to find the Empire State Building.

The Empire State Building is approximately two blocks away from Herald Square. It is also really obvious because...well, it's very tall and IT LOOKS LIKE THE GODDAMNED EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. Still, I didn't want to be rude (Richmond did a good job with me), so I just pointed at it and said "There it is. Right there." For a second or two, I think he didn't believe me, but then gathered the family and their AV equipment and trudged off towards New York's favorite phallic symbol.

On a recent trip to Washington, I was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue when a man (who looked like he'd just slept on the train) asked me how to find the Capitol. Much like the Empire State Building, the Capitol building is extremely obvious, or at least it is from Pennsylvania Avenue. Again, I pointed at the end goal and said "Its right there." This time, I failed. The man told me that no, he was looking for the STATE capitol. I was floored. I thought more or less everyone knew that Washington is not IN a state. I pointed this out. The man looked horror-struck. "But isn't it the capital of Virginia?" Trying not to become indignant, I told him that no, it isn't; that would be Richmond, which is ninety-eight miles south. He walked off, evidently torn between not believing me and trying to figure out how to get to Richmond. I hope he had trainfare.

None of these, though, can quite top yesterday's directional interlude. I had some errands to run downtown and, much to my chagrin, had to go to the Gallery. This is a Gawdawful 80s "downtown mall" kind of thing that has four levels and a variety of overpriced shops designed to part visitors from their money. After leaving the bank office there, I was headed outside when I was stopped by an angry-looking woman.
"Can you tell me where the Harbor is?" I could; it's right across the street. I told her this. She said "No, I mean the Inner Harbor." I told her that, indeed, that water she could see was the Inner Harbor. (We used to call it the Basin, but that sounded too much like a toilet, so in the 70s it became the Inner Harbor.) "No, that's just the water, I need to find the Inner Harbor." OK, lady, now you're pissing me off. I am from here. I know where the harbor is. Also, unlike you, I evidently know WHAT a harbor is. But no, I didn't want to be rude...so I calmly explained that that really WAS the harbor. It turned out that she wanted to find Harborplace. Which, shockingly enough, is right there. Alongside the Inner Harbor.

I'm thinking of starting a map concession downtown somewhere. If I'm going to be asked for directions to places that don't exist or are painfully obvious, I might as well get paid for it. Until then, if you ask me for directions, I may forget my English.

2011-12-07T18:06:00.003-03:00

It's hard to believe that my former employer, and one of my favorite department stores, celebrated its last Christmas season twenty years ago. It seems like I could go downtown right now and see all of the wonderful window displays and have lunch in the Richmond Room.

If Thalhimers is gone with the wind, its recipes aren't. The popover recipe was given to me by Miss Millie, who was the hostess at the Richmond Room since the earth's crust cooled, and was a friend when we both worked at the Big T. I didn't think to get the spoonbread recipe at the time--I always used the Hotel Roanoke's recipe--but I unearthed it in the Times-Dispatch.

These are both chock-full of carbohydratey goodness, and are very nice for Social Season entertaining.

THALHIMERS' RICHMOND ROOM POPOVERS

8 tbl vegetable oil, divided
2 c flour
10 eggs
2 1/2 c milk, divided
1 tbl sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Set oven at 400. Pour 1 tbl oil in each of 8 muffin cups. Place in oven until hot.

Beat flour, eggs, 2c milk, sugar and baking powder at medium speed for 15 minutes. Add remaining milk and beat 1 minute longer. Filling half full, pour batter into sizzling oil in muffin cups. Bake in preheated oven until "popped," about 20 minutes.

THALHIMERS’ RICHMOND ROOM SPOONBREAD

1/4 cup margarine, melted
3/4 cup white cornmeal
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cups whole milk
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoons baking powder (Must be Rumford brand, according to Thalhimers’ staff)
1 pinch salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour margarine into an 8-inch-square baking pan. Place cornmeal in a mixing bowl. Pour boiling water over. Mix well. Stir in flour, milk, eggs, sugar, baking powder and salt. Beat with a wire whisk until smooth. Pour into prepared pan. Bake in preheated oven until firm and golden brown, 30-35 minutes.

2011-06-08T02:18:00.002-04:00

If Proust were still around, I would be his poster boy. That whole business with the madeleine that brought memories flooding back seems to be my modus operandi for life.

Now, there's one thing that I don't get. Why something as basic as a madeleine? Sure, they're OMG exotic for us Americans; because we think that anything more sophisticated than an Oreo is somehow not only unfamiliar, but exotic and possibly sinful. I'm not even sure that you could really, successfully, DO anything sinful with a madeleine. I've done some sinful things with Krispy Kremes, but even that hasn't worked out very well, because I become much more interested in the Krispy Kreme than I am in the person with whom I am attempting to do something sinful, and the whole thing falls apart. Sex is awesome, but there is NOTHING like a good fresh raspberry-filled Krispy Kreme. (You were waiting for me to talk about the white cream filled ones, weren't you?)

Madeleines are, as French pastry goes, pretty damned basic. It is therefore not unusual to see one. So, again, Proust's memory flood is a bit of pretense. It would be like me seeing--oh, the aforementioned Oreo--which I see fairly often--and being awash in memories of every time I've ever had an Oreo. Since that's roughly ninety-three thousand times, it would make even such basic tasks as breathing difficult for the memory flood.

My versions of the madeleine are more esoteric, at least slightly. The one that set me off tonight was at a friend's house. I was innocently mixing a highball when I noticed something on his bar: DeKuyper's Creme de Menthe. (TM), I'm sure.

When I was a little shaver back in the distant days of the 70s, there was a big liquor store in the North Baltimore burbs. I always thought it was really cool. (This probably foreshadowed my future as a functional alky.) This one was really awesome, though. It was in a shopping center on York Road. When you went inside--it had those cool automatic doors with the big rubber mats that triggered their opening and closing--there was that pleasant liquor-store smell. The vast array of merchandise surrounded a big raised central section, about five steps higher, that was outlined in a wrought iron fence and contained a bar. This was the perfect 70s bar, too. It had lots of barrel chairs upholstered in leather and cocktail tables with rudimentary video games embedded in their surfaces. You could get hammered, feed quarters into your table, and play something like Pong. Except that I'm not sure even Pong had been invented yet. It was probably more like Tic Tac Toe, but who cares? I only regret that by the time the State of Maryland allowed me to drink legally, the bar section of the place was long gone. The store is still there, but what's the point without Pong cocktail tables?

What really stands out in my mind, though I'm sure all liquor stores in the 70s had the same thing, was the truly gigantic array of liqueurs that the place sold. I may need to explain this for the sake of younger readers.

Liqueur, of course, still exists, though God only knows who drinks it anymore. In the seventies, though, everyone drank liqueur, and it was as integral to a party as ice and salty peanuts. Creme de Menthe, Curacao, Drambuie, Cherry Heering, Framboise, Creme de Cacao, Creme de Banane, Creme de Horse Poop. It was all disgustingly, nauseatingly sweet and had the consistency of cough syrup. For all intents and purposes, it IS cough syrup. If you don't use all of your Creme de Cassis or whatever at a party, after a week or two, it develops those crunchy sugar crystals around the neck of the bottle, just like unused cough syrup does.

And, any party worth its salt back then had seventeen different varieties of the crap. My parents always kept a case of various liqueurs on stock because different friends liked different ones. If you went to a restaurant back then, after dessert they would always give you a thimbleful of one of these concoctions. It was just de rigeur. Repugnant, but de rigeur.

It was also the last gasp of dying eras.

In a more elegant day (read: pre-70s and decidedly pre-now) dinner parties ended with sherry or port. Somehow, this mutated into hyper-sugared cough syrup by the 70s, but the idea was still there. Now, we think we're all that because we cover a perfectly good piece of meat with seventy-four unrelated ingredients, but we can't be bothered to serve a "cordial" after dinner. Hmph.

Also, the 70s were the end of the road for the times when everybody, but everybody, drank. If you didn't like the taste of alcohol, you were screwed. What were you going to do, look like some kind of earth mutant drinking iced tea during happy hour? You were saved by the viscous charms of Creme de Whatever. It was alcoholic and would get you wasted, but you thought you were drinking a melted Snickers.

By the 80s, the only people left who drank dark liquor were diagnosed alcoholics and octogenarians; the With It crowd drank the newly-chick vodka, which of course tastes like absolutely nothing, and anyone who drank more than two cocktails per month was considered to Have a Problem.

Somehow, by comparison, Creme de Snot doesn't seem so bad after all.

2011-05-30T18:24:00.002-04:00

Laptops are exciting, aren't they? Oh, I know, you're all saying "But, they've been around for years now, and you yourself have had one for a couple of years--why is this new and exciting?" I'll tell you why, damnit. It's because it is now one hundred degrees in my house and the bar up the street is airconditioned. I can therefore do my work/surfing from the AC'd comfort of the bar without having to drip sweat on the keys.

Before getting on to the main point, I decided to give my Slinky a last chance to prove itself before I decide, once and for all, that Slinkies are useless. The stairs down to my basement are ridiculously steep, and the treads of the stairs are fairly shallow. I figured that this would give the Slinky a good chance. It wouldn't have to cover much horizontal ground, and its vertical drop should give it plenty of momentum. But no. Apparently, the Slinky only functions on ladders, or in the advertising dreams of the company shilling the thing. It did make it down three stairs--better than its usual ONE--but then stopped dead. I tried to help it out, emotionally; I rationalized that perhaps it didn't like the basement's humid atmosphere. Despite my best efforts, I was forced to remember that the Slinky is not an actual life form imbued with likes and dislikes. It just doesn't bloody well do what it's supposed to do.

On the list of things that do not do what they are supposed to do, let us add my car. I really cannot complain about the car. It has served me faithfully for about eight years now, and it was used when I bought it. It is, now, trying desperately to retire. Unfortunately, I cannot yet allow it to do so.

It was a rather nice car when it was new, but that was almost twelve years ago. It maintains its comfort level, but all sorts of stupid little dooflitchety things are going wrong with it. The cup holder broke; the climate control now does whatever the hell it wants to do instead of obeying the buttons that I press. I try to remind myself that the cars of my childhood did not have cupholders and barely had air-conditioning. At least the electric windows still work.

Sadly, the actual things that make a car all car-like are also starting to break down. The thing overheats if you look at it funny. I had a car like this years ago, but all you needed to do was set the vents to "heat," open the windows and let the engine cool itself. Since this one has an electronic climate control system which no longer obeys the order to "heat," that is lost. Also, its power steering system no longer wants to retain its vital fluid, so it makes Chewbacca-like noises unless I refill it every month or so. I now suspect that there is also something wrong with its electrical system, since last night it decided to destroy its battery after...oh, yeah, running the radio for six hours at the drive-in theatre. Supposedly, if you set the thing to "accessory," it will play somewhat indefinitely. Perhaps I should not listen to the nice drive-in people after all.

Much as I like this car, I reluctantly admit that its days are probably numbered. I've been aimlessly looking around at other cars, but I know that I'll end up with a dark blue Buick Century anyway.

2011-05-16T02:26:00.002-04:00

WARNING: THIS POST IS GOING TO BE ABOUT TRAINS.

But wait: before I go off on the wonderful world of rail travel, I do need to mention that one of my friends (who may or may not have been involved in the college Slinky experiments) pointed out that--the Slinky DID in fact descend ONE staircase at William and Mary. This particular staircase is the one that goes up to the organ loft in the College Chapel. It is a staircase in name only; it is in fact a beautifully-decorated ladder. OK, so Slinky is really snooty and particular; all it wants from you is a narrow, dangerous, shallow-treaded Colonial staircase. Fine. Slinky is trying to kill kids. I'm good with that.

Now, since I'd already talked about the joys of travel (at least, the joys of travel in my own outdated version of it), I thought I should discuss what it's like to be a living anachronism trying to travel in the modern world.

The only reason that I will ever willingly set foot on an airplane again is to go to Europe. The only reason for THAT is simple: there just aren't transatlantic liners anymore. Believe me, if the old Norddeutscher-Lloyd had even its sorriest, single-stack, one-class liner trudging between Baltimore and Bremen, I'd be on the damned thing. Even though she might be a century old and leaking like a colander, I'd trust the ancient "Koenigin Luise" much more than a giant airborne test tube.

I think that we have all become so immured to the concept of flight that we just don't see any other way. Lately, I've seen ads on Baltimore city buses for Southwest Airlines flights to New York.

Except the ads themselves tell you: you're not really going to New York, you're going to Newark.

Nothing against Newark. I've been there before (and was indecently propositioned in the main waiting room of the train station, too). It's a dump, but so is Baltimore. Here's my problem: If I'm going to pay $69 (yes, sixty-nine...) to go to Newark, I'll still have to get from Newark to New York itself. That's going to be either a fairly complex public-transit ride, or a very expensive cab ride, or...wait for it...

A RIDE ON THE TRAIN, which I could have accomplished perfectly well if I'D GOTTEN ON THE GODDAMNED TRAIN IN BALTIMORE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

If I fly to Newark from Baltimore, I have to get to the Baltimore airport (20 minutes from home), get there an hour early (in case someone suspects me of blowing things up), fly for 45 minutes or so (assuming the flight is on-schedule), then get off the plane and get out of the airport (20 minutes), then get a cab into downtown Newark (20-30 minutes). Note that I said Newark, there; I'm not even talking about New York yet. So, what's our total time here? We're already pushing three hours. If I walk down the street and get on the train and go to Newark, it will take almost exactly the same time.

Now, here's the problem with train travel, much as I hate to admit it. It seems relatively obvious to those of us who travel exclusively by train that Amtrak doesn't really want our business. You'd think--wouldn't you?--that a mode of travel no longer stylish would be doing its damnedest to get people aboard. Amtrak seems to want to do anything BUT that.

On the trains themselves--well, there are still a few of the old '70s cars running. They're ugly (70s, remember?) and the seats are a bit sprung, but they're nicer than the new cars, which are barely a step above being rail-bound Yugos. I've seen nicer bathrooms in '30s gas stations than those on Amtrak's new cars. Dining car? Oh, please. You're lucky to get a "snack" car. Real dining cars now exist ONLY on VERY long distance trains. Even the Cardinal doesn't have one; though thankfully the Capitol Limited (once the pride of the Baltimore and Ohio RR) still does. I'll pause to give them some credit, here--the "City of New Orleans" still has not only a dining car, but boasts some New Orleans cuisine. If only the Capitol Limited and the Crescent would do the same! And, very few trains still have a lounge car. "Lounge Car" was an old railroad euphemism for BAR. Thankfully, again, the "Silver Meteor" (one of my favorite trains) still does. Even so, I can't smoke in it.

Perhaps worse are the stations. Almost every city of ANY size in the US once had a train station of which it was justly proud. Even Frederick had a pretty Italianate station built by the B&O in 1852. It might have been old, but it was beautiful (still is, but no longer served by rail). Amtrak often does not choose to use these. In Baltimore, it uses the Pennsylvania station, which is still beautiful, but probably only because it has no other valid option. In many cities, Amtrak has forsaken the big old downtown station in favor of a nasty little AmShack in the 'burbs. Richmond is a case in point. The city has two huge, beautiful stations; Amtrak prefers to use a station out in the burbs that is the size of my living room. I like my living room, but Richmond is far too large and important to have such a tiny station. A few years ago, the City revamped the lovely Main Street Station--my favorite--only to see it vastly underserved by Amtrak, which resents having to use it. In a few cases, Amtrak has used the TRACKS of the old station, but insists upon using a tiny facility next door. Pittsburgh's beautiful Penn Station is one of these; Washington was another. Washington, of course, is the US Capital, so it seems that Amtrak was finally shamed into using the real station again. Imagine all of those foreign dignitaries, when they saw the little shed: "DAS ist seine Hauptbahnhof????"

I still--and always will--love rail travel. There is a magic about it that I can't find in any other mode of conveyance. I love that I can get on the train in Baltimore, arrive in Richmond in a couple of hours, and have drinks on the way, which I surely can't do while driving. I love that when I'm able to take the Meteor, instead of a local hauler train, I can have drinks in a real lounge car. I also like meeting people on the train. I've met a LOT of fun people on trains. When William and Mary was in the Division II playoffs last fall, I had a really good time--when I boarded the train in Baltimore at 7AM, it was already full of W&M grads who had hung up signs in the windows that read WILLIAM AND MARY SPECIAL FULL STEAM AHEAD!!!! (I'm lucky that I was able to stumble off the train in Williamsburg.)

Even so, Amtrak could do a hell of a lot more to make people WANT to ride the train. I do because I hate driving and I hate flying. With very little additional effort, Amtrak could make its passenger trains a viable and desirable option, at least on the East coast.

I realize that only those who hate driving and flying will ever want to take the long-distance, cross-country trains again. But, even to those, I say: Yeah, it will take 18 hours to get to Chicago, but you could have a LOT of fun on the way. If that unofficial "William and Mary Special" is any indication, and I'm riding the Capitol Limited, by the time we got to Chicago, we'd have been partying for most of an entire day.

2011-05-05T03:59:00.002-04:00

Of my many idiotic obsessions, one of the least reasonable is moist towelettes. Not Wet-Naps. You BUY those. I mean the delightfully-lemon-scented things that you get in tiny little foil wrappers at restaurants.

I hoard them.

No, really, I hoard them. Every time that I am gathered with friends and someone orders Buffalo wings, I wait until I believe that no one is looking and steal all of the little moist towelette packets.

I have no idea why I believe that anyone else is so desperate to have these things that they will mind my taking them; nor do I know why I can't just ask if I can have them. I have to steal them surreptitiously.

I've tried valiantly to explain why I like them so much. "They're great for cleaning off your computer screen," I'll tell people. "And they're great for cleaning overhead sheets!" In either case, marginally true, but a thin guise for the simple fact that I MUST HAVE MOIST TOWELETTES.

I think I've figured out why they fascinate me so much. God knows they're not really very useful for getting wing sauce or Old Bay off your hands, especially when--one hopes--the restaurant that handed them to you has a perfectly serviceable bathroom sink. I believe it's another Proustian Madeleine sort of thing.

When I was a kid you only EVER saw Moist Towelettes on trains and airplanes. They were part of the exotica of travelling. Elsewhere, you washed your hands like any normal person, but while en route, your cardboard sandwich (whether rail- or air-borne) came with a little lemon-smellin' alcohol wipe. It just became part of the cool magic of travelling.

I also love the magazines that Amtrak and the airlines put into the little pockets on the backs of seats. Of course, they always tell the reader about the wonderful things to do in various cities that they serve. Since I only ever go to about three or four other cities, I don't know why I find this so fascinating; if there's anything interesting to do in Richmond, DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia, I've already done it. Still, reading about it in Amtrak's magazine makes me feel cool: "Wow, I already knew about the Virginia Museum, but I bet all these other losers on this train didn't!!!"

Needless to say, I'm endlessly amused with barf bags. The laminated safety card is fun too, though in most cases, I think it should just say "In case of emergency: Bend over, place head between legs, kiss ass goodbye."

Fairly recently, a friend who once lived in Baltimore but now lives in Florida told me that I should just "fly down next weekend." Even though I know that air travel is now ridiculously cheap, that sort of gallivanting never occurs to me. I know--technically--that I could. I won't, though. I grew up in a world where flight was almost prohibitively expensive, long train trips were a major ordeal, and long drives the sort of major ordeal that you planned for months. The idea that I might just say "Oh, what the hell, I'll fly down to Florida this weekend" is right up there with "I know, let's create a perpetual motion machine over drinks tonight."

This is why I like these weird paper (and moist paper) ephemera of travel. They make me think of travel when it was still a very big deal to go as far as Roanoke, much less Florida; travel as something to anticipate and to be excited about, rather than travel as just a daily--and probably annoying--event.

I also just cleaned the computer screen. If my computer is as excited about the lemony freshness as I am, the next few posts may not make a lot of sense.

2011-05-04T01:23:00.002-04:00

Having seen a couple of entries regarding iconic toys on theoatmeal.com, I figured I'd add my own take on some of them.

In a world where kids seem to increasingly only want things that are electronic in ways I can't fully imagine, the lifespan of some of these things is incredible. Now, with that said, I ponder a couple of other things: do the kids really want the latest game platform, or does Daddy want it? Also, some of these iconic 60s and 70s toys; do kids want them, or do their parents want them to have the toys because they wanted them in 1974?

Here goes, though:

Big Wheel. I was dying to have one. It was fun. You were at a weird angle to the street and a little plastic thingy on a spring made it sound like a motorbike. Kind of. Except that it was actually just a tricycle--a plastic tricycle at that, and by the time I got a Big Wheel, I could already ride a bike like a big kid, but like all the other kids in my neighborhood, I HAD to have a Big Wheel. I remember very sadly, though, that once I outgrew it, it lived in back of the house anyway and slowly faded from bright orange into a vague lip-glossy color. When I tried to ride it again out of childish nostalgia (when you're eight or nine, it's easy to be nostalgic for something that passed only two years before), the plastic cracked and it fell apart. Maryland winters 1, Big Wheel 0.

Silly Putty. What the hell was this stuff EVER good for? Oh yeah: lifting comics off the newspaper page. Except that they were then backwards, and after you did this a few times, the Silly Putty looked like a giant grey booger. You could not do anything else even vaguely entertaining with Silly Putty. It just stretched and looked like a big booger. I am aware that a lot of toys don't actually do anything--in fact, most of the best don't--but really, with a big booger there's only so much that imagination can do. I predict that in the near future, Silly Putty will be done. I'm not sure how it's lived this long, but as real print newspapers and therefore newsprint comics are dying a rapid death, the only purpose of this stupid crap will be obsolete. (NB: As a child, I was also dying to have Silly Putty, until I got some and shortly realized that the comics made a lot more sense on the page, where they weren't mirror image and weren't the consistency of mucus.)

Slinky. WTF, Slinky? How can you have betrayed me consistently for THIRTY FIVE DAMNED YEARS? As with the aforementioned icons-but-actually-crappy-toys, I was dying to have a Slinky as a kid. My parents (who also realized the foolishness of the Big Wheel and Silly Putty) didn't want to get one for me. My grandfather did, though, and I was so excited that I nearly peed. It had so much going for it, in theory. It descended stairs. It had a REALLY catchy TV commercial. And it descended stairs. Also, that's about all it did. And it DIDN'T EVEN DO IT. I don't know what kind of midget staircase the kids in the commercial had, but even the fairly modestly sized staircase of our suburban Baltimore house was more than the Slinkster could handle. It would get down one, maybe two, steps, and then just recoil itself and sit there glaring. It clearly resented having to fulfill its stair-descending typecast. It eventually got bent (probably from when I tried to MAKE it go down the steps) and disappeared in one of my Mom's cleaning frenzies.

Then, years later, as a college freshman, I re-entered the World of Slinky. One of my friends had one. A small group of us spent the day taking the slinky to various academic buildings, playing with it and trying it on stairs (which it obstinately still refused to descend properly). In a building with a two-story lobby and an open staircase, though, we discovered that you could stretch it out and make sine waves with it. It also made an awesome humming noise while doing this. (Please note: WE WERE ACTUALLY NOT HIGH WHILE DOING THIS.) I became enthralled with Slinkies all over again. Someone gave me a plastic one. Let me tell you: If a regular Slinky isn't worth a crap, a PLASTIC Slinky is about as useful as a carburetor on a walrus. Several years later, I got a real live Slinky again. After fifteen years of trying, it STILL won't go down the stairs.

Now, for a toy that's actually worth while: The Magic 8 Ball. I make major life decisions with this thing's assistance. Sure, it requires yes-or-no questions; most of its responses are positive, and "Ask Again Later" means that I will ask again in five seconds (it doesn't define how MUCH later). Does *blank* like me? Do I like *blank* or do I just think I do? Will I like *blank* when I'm sober? Should I buy stock in *blank-Corp*? Hey, as far as I can tell, the 8 Ball's advice is no worse than anybody else's.

2011-05-02T02:34:00.003-04:00

Last weekend was Easter in Richmond, and what a nice time I had. (I realize that it was Easter everywhere, but I am not really concerned about the rest of the planet.)

I will now avoid talking about the parties and dances over the weekend, and the Easter Parade, because the Times-Dispatch is perfectly capable of handling that. I need to tell you all about my stay in one of Richmond's also-ran hotels.

The Massad House has been around since the '20s. I'm not quite sure what its original name was--it seems odd that a '20s hotel in Richmond would have had such an Arabian name--but I've never been able to find out much about the place because frankly, I never gave a damn. To the best of my knowledge, it has existed as a little tourist hotel on 4th street forever.

I never really intended to stay at the Massad House. I have always been secretly pleased that when most other cities have long forgotten such things, a little "tourist class" hotel still exists in downtown Richmond.

"Tourist class" hotels, in general, are a thing of the past. The name is--and was-- a bit of a misnomer, or probably a euphemism. These were the sort of hotels that never had grand ballrooms, usually didn't have a restaurant, and were fairly lucky that they even had elevators. Nonetheless, they were cheap and they flourished in every city of any size. Richmond herself had several of them. In the dying days of downtowns, most of them turned into flophouses--or, one of my favorite terms, "hot pillow joints."

I decided to stay at the Massad House because I just didn't feel like crashing on anybody's sofa, or blowing the cash for the grandeur of the Jefferson. I also categorically refuse to stay at one of the city's new hotels. And, the Massad House is cheap.

I've been walking or driving past the old place for years. The upper three floors still boast the '20s Tudor-ish architecture of its origin, but the first floor, as long as I can remember, flaunts an early '70s update. No worries really--this is now old enough to be historic in its own right.

When I checked in (the desk clerk couldn't have been nicer, but this IS Richmond) I noted the Super Seventies lobby decor. I was sorely tempted to hang out in the lobby for a bit, but since Tourist Class hotels don't have bars, I had to forego the temptation. The clerk pointed me toward the elevator.

It has been a good thirty years since I've seen an elevator like this in full function. It's just a regular wooden door, like any other room. You open the door, pull back the iron grille, and step in. There is enough room for you and your suitcase. When I mashed the button for "4" (the clerk told me that he'd given me Suite 401), the elevator crankily came to life. I got to see the other floors drifting past. (This was cool. Very few elevators like this still exist.) Unfortunately, the elevator, obviously annoyed at being called to life, climbed up to the fourth floor, took one look around and promptly went back downstairs. Maybe it was just trying to give me a good ride. Back on the first floor, another dude got onto the elevator. He told me that you just had to be nice to it. Apparently, the elevator knew him and respected him. He got it to take me to the fourth floor and, when I jumped out, it took him back to the third floor (where it seems that he lives).

Suite 401 is a far cry from the usual plushiness that I expect of Richmond hotels, but then I'm used to the Jefferson. It is, however, a suite, which is something I don't get from the Jefferson, because the Jefferson charges a cool thousand for a suite, and this was only ninety dollars.

It also features some of the most bizarre seventies furniture I've ever seen, very strange paintings, and windows that still open all the way. Why don't hotel windows open anymore? Well, most hotels have central air now (the Massad House does not) and they're afraid you'll fling yourself out of them. Should you want to off yourself in 20's tabloid-paper style, you can still do so at the Massad House.

Suite 401 contains a parlor (aforementioned 70s furniture), a bedroom (surprisingly comfortable bed, if crummy pillows) and one of the more bizarre bathrooms I have seen to date. The bathroom apparently had only a tub originally, but sometime between 1927 and now, someone decided that it needed a shower. The original tub was removed and a tub/shower was installed. Unfortunately, this seems to have required the construction of a strange bump-out in the wall, which means that the resulting tub is about four feet long, three feet wide, and six inches deep. The shower head, which has to span that bump-out, is nearly two feet wide. I don't quite get it, but it was highly amusing.

When I looked at "Trip Advisor" after the fact, I was somewhat disturbed to read all of the negative comments about the Massad House. After all, in my mind, nothing in Richmond can do any wrong at all. And there wasn't anything really wrong with the place.

People had commented that "it smells like smoke." Hey, folks, it's Virginia, we smoke here. "It's old." Well, you knew that going in, didn't you? "The elevator is scary." I thought the elevator was one of the cooler aspects of an already cool weekend. "The air conditioner didn't work." Mine did, although I didn't need it to, because the windows actually open and Richmond's air is probably nicer than wherever you came from in the first place.

I may not need to stay at the Massad House again, but I wouldn't mind. It wasn't perfect, but it WAS clean, and it DID have character. I could have spent the same amount of money for a totally sterile place in the suburbs which would have been much less convenient. I think that the people who don't like places like this are mostly just products of Mall Culture: they want everything to be brand-new and cookie-cutter style. This old hotel is still doing exactly what it was meant to do: provide decent and clean but not particularly luxurious accomodation.

Even if I never stay in the Massad House again, it's likely that I will show up once in a while to ride the elevator. I think that I finally made friends with it.

2011-04-01T02:33:00.002-04:00

For whatever reason, when I was a kid, we used Washington's National Airport more often than Baltimore's Friendship Airport. Even though my father was the sort of person who prized city loyalty above all, he also prized his bank account, and I think that most of our relatives lived in places that had more direct flights to Washington than to Baltimore. Actually, I know that's why; my mother's family lived near Kansas City, the home of Trans-World Airlines, which flew into Washington.

Until yesterday, the last time I saw National Airport (which I will NOT call "Reagan" airport) was in about 1989. It was then in the throes of modernization. Those throes are long over; the airport is just plain dead. This is sad, because it was my favorite airport.

There, you little creepers, I actually said that I liked something in Washington more than something in Baltimore or Richmond. Fine.

National was a cool airport. It had '30s style and stainless-steel accents, and etched Art-Moderne glass. Just like when you were in Union Station, you felt like you were Going Somewhere, even if you were there only to pick up a relative flying in from Greenville.

When I clapped eyes upon National Airport yesterday, I could think of little but Stephen King's short story, "The Langoliers." In King's tale, a few airline passengers make it through a weird wrinkle in time (apologies to Madeleine L'Engle) and find themselves in a dead airport. I'll not summarize the story here; it's wonderful and if you don't know it, go find it.

Poor National is like this now. The "new" terminal--now two decades old--already looks a bit tired; even more so than the gigantic 1910 Union Station, which was renovated at about the same time. But then--Oh, dear God. The old main waiting room of the airport is a ghost town. I wouldn't have been surprised to see tumbleweeds. It has been preserved, because it's "Historic!!!" but there are only a few chairs. There are no ticket booths. The balcony is walled off. The great glass wall that allowed people to look out onto the airfield is still there, but no longer are there big Eastern Airliners right there before the eye. It's eerie.

I remember very clearly, too, the Trans-World section of the terminal. It was built in the early '70s and was the Very Latest in style. Since Trans-World Airlines has gone the way of the White Star Line, its once-stylish terminal wing has now been given over to the "Bob's Airplanes!" type of lines. Even more than the 1941 building, it looks--TIRED.

I even miss the bizarre little AIRWAYTE buildings that once stood outside the airport proper. They were short-term hotels: if you had a four-hour layover, you get a bunk and crash until your plane...well, hopefully didn't crash, and took you on. They were symbolic of the Brave New World of air travel, just like National Airport itself. Now that air travel is just a workaday sort of thing, the sleek elegance of the ancient airport just strikes most as an artifact.

Shouldn't this be the scenario that I always wanted? Richmond's 1901 Main Street Station is glittering and reopened (if underserved by Amtrak), while the Washington airport is mothballed? Well, yes. I'd rather travel by rail, and I do like stepping off the train into Main Street. Yet, it's sad to see National as it is now. I remember that big waiting room crowded with people and, in the '70s, full of Moonies trying to sell roses and religion. To see it preserved, but dead, is akin to seeing a dollhouse that no child will ever love again.

2010-11-12T03:12:00.002-03:00

As most faithful (?) readers know, I loathe the sort of people who say that they've "discovered" something. Who the hell are you, anyway, Vasco da Gama? Chances are much higher that you're just another dumbass from West Asslick, Indiana who now lives in Washington DC and pretends to have never heard of West Asslick, Indiana. Until, that is, West Asslick reopens its old movie house as a Repertory Cinema and develops a scourge of coffee bars, in which case you'll have Discovered it without ever admitting that it's your hometown.

Thus, I never claim to have discovered anything, other than the rather unfortunate occasional discovery that I am out of bourbon or cigarettes. Also, since I almost never leave Maryland and Virginia, it's awfully hard for me to discover anything new anyway. Mostly, I just notice things that I hadn't previously noticed because I was drunk at the time, or that I'd forgotten because I hadn't seen them since I was six years old. In either case, these can't really count as discoveries.

One of my favorite re-noticings (remember, I reserve the right as an English teacher to invent words as I go, which also helps me to avoid saying "discoveries") is the lovely little town of Bath, West Virginia. Regarding the aforementioned rarity of my leaving Maryland and Virginia, it barely counts--the place is five miles from the Maryland border and predates the defection of West Virginia from the mother state.

Bath is known to much of the world as Berkeley Springs. In reality, it is only the waters themselves that are Berkeley Springs. The town is still Bath. However, since the Post Office was all powerful once upon a time, it decreed that since there was already a Bath County in Virginia, having a town of Bath that wasn't in Bath County would be confusing, and so mail must go to Berkeley Springs, which is now in West Virginia anyway, but...oh, bother.

Foremost, I love old spa resorts. I always did like that idea of "taking the waters." There's just something awfully...oh, I don't know, Dickensian, or 1880 Richmond, or Habsburgian about it. Besides, there's something wickedly magical about the old spas. In their day, they were wicked places with hotels and dancing and all sorts of other naughty things, but it was all predicated on the idea of taking the waters for your health. Never mind that everyone promptly destroyed the health benefits by drinking, smoking and dancing themselves silly while there; it's all part of the process of Taking the Waters.

While I've had the chance to visit a few of these old places now, Bath/Berkeley Springs is far and away my favorite. Here, in one odd little town a few miles from the Potomac, the worlds of ancient spa-goers, hippies, and rednecks collide rather peacefully and pleasantly.

There's a little movie house called the Star, which I expect is so named because the marquee is too small for a longer name. It started its life as a garage, but in the '20s became a movie house. Not only does it still have first-run pictures, it has sofas in the first few rows. There are used book shops, and places that sell homemade soap, and there are lots of friendly cats wandering the streets. Best of all, the '30s hotel is still operational and doesn't appear to have changed significantly since opening day.

And just think--you can really still Take the Waters, there, too. Although the hotel has its own spa, and there are several small day-spa operations, the best for your dollar is the Park itself in the center of town. It offers the ancient 1815 Roman Bath House and the New Main Bath House (1929). Remember those old movies where people got closed into steam boxes? You can really do that here. There are big seven foot long Victorian tubs, or the Roman style baths--750 gallons of hot mineral water--to soak in. I never really thought that I'd like a massage until I threw caution to the winds and had one. DAMN. I've never been so chilled out in my life. At Bath, the masseurs/masseuses are still uniformed in white; there are male masseurs on the men's side and lady masseuses on the ladies' side. This IS still West Virginia, after all--all VERY proper and no hint of the "happy ending" offered by city places. And all of this for forty dollars! (Similar treatments at the beautiful, and newly-restored, Bedford Springs run upwards of $120.00.)

Should you wish to visit, the nicest way from Baltimore and Washington is via I-70; even that interstate has some lovely scenery of Western Maryland. It's a bit more arduous from Richmond; one must first get to Winchester and then north. Though it's possible as a day trip, I'd certainly recommend a night at the old hotel--the Country Inn, originally the Park View Hotel. Do eat at the hotel, too--the food is nothing adventurous but very tasty, and they tend to have good soups.

Watch this space for things that if I were from West Asslick, I would have just Discovered.

2010-07-12T01:30:00.004-04:00

Before hitting the main point, another brief note to something inanimate:

Dear Rain:

What have I done to annoy you? I know I get a little cranky when you decide to fall on me when I'm not expecting you, but really now.

You've stayed away for an entire month and then, blam. I put clothes out to dry, they dry, and then right about the time I realize "Oh, the clothes should be dry now," you elect to appear and make them not dry anymore. Then I let them hang out for another few hours to dry for the second time and NOW I CAN SMELL YOU IN THE AIR AGAIN. Damnit, rain, do you have something against my need for clean clothes?

Just wondering.

Sincerely,
Dan.

Now for my non-inanimate peeve of the moment: Publicly bad grammar.

I am perfectly aware that I am a grammar Nazi and that no one in the "real world" cares about grammar because it's all, you know, old-fashioned and stuff, and doesn't "really matter" because "you know what I mean." Well, you know what? Sometimes, if a person's usage is really awful, I don't know what he means and therefore, sadly and outdatedly, grammar does matter. Also, if we hope to achieve world peace (or much of anything else) it's just a wise idea to be able to communicate with some level of efficiency.

Tonight, while somewhat distractedly watching "60 Minutes," a commercial for Mutual of Omaha was shown. This was a touchy-feely commercial. It featured a woman who was talking about how proud she was to have finally finished her education, and how VERY proud she was of her mother, who had (at some advanced age) gone to college and finished HER education.

One would think--wouldn't one? that in a speech about the importance of education, someone might have done enough proofreading to make sure that the speaker used correct English. Unfortunately, no one did, and she didn't. She referred to "a picture of my mother and I."

Why do people insist on misuse of the first person pronouns? Do people think that "I" sounds more formal than "me" and is automatically preferable? Does anyone say "This is a picture of I?" (Just in case you don't realize what's wrong here: "mother" and "I" are both objects of the preposition "of," so that the objective case pronoun--"me"--should be used instead of "I.")

Retail establishments have fallen into an equally annoying pattern of incorrectness masquerading as either misguided friendliness or perceived correctness. The proper thing for employees to say, it seems, is now "Can I help who's next?"

Dear stores: THIS MAKES NO GODDAMNED SENSE. CUT IT OUT. "Who's" is a contraction. What the employee actually says here is "Can I help who is next?" Does this make sense to anyone? I didn't think so. Also, since they're store employees, one would hope that they can help the customer. The question is whether or not they may. So, let's correct that part: "May I help who is next?"

Not much better, is it? Perhaps it should be "May I help the person/customer who is next?" Unfortunately, that's a bit unwieldy, and probably sounds too formal. Modern people don't like formality; it frightens them and they start worrying that people will judge them and that someone will ask them which fork to use and they won't know and will be looked down upon. Which, frankly, they should be because figuring out which fork to use is about as difficult as figuring out how to breathe.

I'm not sure what's wrong with "May I help the next customer?" but something must be, because I've not heard it in years. "Next, please?" was a fairly workable option, but I haven't heard that in quite some time either. Its problem may be that it doesn't sound formal enough.

I've noticed that my students will invariably pick the most convoluted, overwrought answers on multiple choice tests. This lends some credence to the idea that people want to be more formal at the expense of being correct. The fork concept fits in here, as well: Obviously, it can't just be the first fork on the left, which is the easiest to pick up, because that would be--well, obvious, and because table service is all Formal and must therefore be Complicated, that couldn't be the right one. Never mind that it's far and away the logical (and correct) choice.

My conclusion is that the vast majority of people are stuck in a hopeless conundrum. They want things to sound more complex, or to be more complex, because if it's difficult to grasp then it's probably right. However, because the complexity is frequently unnecessary (or just plain wrong), they fear it and deride it as unnecessary (which it frequently is).

So, here are some of my basic life tenets for Society:
1)Grammar is easy.
2)Use grammar correctly. Do not overcomplicate your sentences. What you think sounds intelligent and important actually makes you look stupid.
3)Forks are also easy. Do not overcomplicate dinner. What you think makes you look sophisticated also makes you look stupid.
4)Overcomplication taxes small brains. Cut it out, or you'll blow a gasket. It also taxes the patience of people who are smarter than you are. Now you know why I'm angry.

2010-06-25T02:39:00.002-04:00

Warning: Post of great randomness follows.

Boy, do I ever feel productive. I have just finished seven pints of pickles and a quart of preserved blueberries. I love preserving things; I get to be Home Ec Dude, Science Boy and Food Beast all at the same time. Please realize, though, that I'm really none of the above. I'm the least efficient person in three counties and I don't believe in science, as long as everything does what it's supposed to do. My recipes are all decades out of fashion. I am very good at following directions, though, which is about all you really need to do when canning food.

I also wish to point out that this is no mean feat in a house with three mostly possessed cats. Wally wants to be involved in everything, and Pickle almost became part of the pickles, because she kept jumping on the table while I was slicing cucumbers. (Daisy, who is not the brightest light in the marquee, actually has the sense to get the hell out of the kitchen.) Also, they like getting underfoot while I am carrying a ten gallon pot of boiling water. Brilliant cats, they are.

Like most of the known planet, I've long since been sucked into the world of Facebook. That thing has got to be the best invention EVER for sheer time-wasting abilities. Apparently, I have three hundred and seventeen friends! Who knew? What bothers me, though, are the random "friend" invitations. Hell, it's one thing to hear from someone in beautiful Walkersville, Maryland whom I've not seen in the last twenty years. It's entirely different to hear from some 22 year old chick (they all seem to be named Hayly, Kyly, or Gabby) whom I've never met and who may or may not be a hooker. Seriously? I don't look THAT desperate, do I? (Don't answer, please.)

Last on today's "WTF???" list: bugs. Just like every other summer. Damnit, bugs, WTF??? Fruit flies, you know I hate you. Why do you insist on moving into my house? Especially when you decide to hover around the sink: WHY??? There's nothing in there. There's no food. If all 672 of you are going for that microscopic bit of something that didn't go down the drain, it's not going to last too long. Give up. Invade someone else's kitchen. Moths!!! You too! You're even worse because you seem to have a tiny modicum of intelligence. You have gathered that there is food that you like here. Why you feel the need to invade my Old Bay, I don't know; it doesn't seem very moth-y to me, but then I'm not a moth. And, aren't you supposed to be interested in flour? I mean, I'm glad that you aren't, but it's right there, and you go ahead and infest things that are much harder to get into. Now--and moth #2345236, you know I'm talking to you--what on earth possessed you to get inside the radio dial??? That just can't be a good idea. It must have required considerable effort on your part. And what did that effort get you? FYI: No food inside radio. You're going to roast alive from the heat of the little dial light and there is NO FOOD IN THE GODDAMNED RADIO. Ants, I perhaps have the greatest respect for you, because you actually go for easily-accessible, normal ant-attracting food products. Also, you only go after things that I'm dumb enough to leave out. My bad. Oh, wait--no, a horde of you inexplicably invaded the bathroom! What, is soap the new haute cuisine in antdom? I'll still give you credit; you're bright enough to see the ant trap, realize that I hate you and don't want you here, and you've left. Please send a memo to the fruit flies and moths.

2010-05-31T01:03:00.002-04:00

I love tattoos. Really, I do. I've been too cheap to get one yet, but I've wanted one, or several, for quite some time now.

One of my biggest issues with tats on others, though, is the nattering insistence on having a tattoo that "means something." Jesus, people, it's just decorative. Sure, get something that YOU find decorative, but why search for an entire personal philosophy just based on the thing? Do Catholics look for neckties that symbolize the Holy Trinity? Do Buddhists look for shoes that symbolize...well, whatever it is that Buddhists believe?

I will point out that I would like to get tats that are Richmond-centric, because as everyone knows my sun rises and sets upon Virginia's sacred Capital. I am also a devout W&M alumnus. Therefore, I might get ink along the lines of the W&M cipher, or the City of Richmond's motto (for heathens, that would be SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Look it up). Though I may be rabid about Richmond (oh, wait--what a cool marketing slogan for the City-- Rabidly Richmond! Get bitten!!!) I am surely not going to go the route of the white trash dude I saw last summer, who had the outline of the State on his chest with a giant star for the City and RICHMOND VIRGINIA in huge script involving both chest and arms.

And, I do like pretty designs that also cary a bit of personal meaning. Friend A., for instance, is a band nerd who's also into ocean-based zoology, and is a Marylander; hence, her ink involves big waves intertwined with the shield of Maryland and the marching band in which she once played. OK, cool and still decorative.

So what's up with the douchebag patrol and Chinese pictograms? Do you actually speak Chinese, much less read it? My guess is a resounding "Oh, hell no." So why get it tattooed on your body? Invariably, these idiots will tell you that "this is the symbol for a)power b)strength c)love d)patience e)tranquility." Are there also people zooming around in Shanghai with English words inked on their chests? And if so, do they really know what those words mean?

I occasionally wish that I were fluent in Chinese AND a tattoo artist, just so that I could do horrible things to these dudes.

Douchebag: "Um, yeah, I like serious want a tat with the Chinese symbols for Strong Silent Dragon?"
Me: "No problemo, dude. I GOT you."
Douchebag: "Fukin awesome."
Me: *snickering to self*....

...because what I would actually tattoo upon this dude would be the characters representing "If you must know, my sexual preferences involve small rodents."

And he wouldn't know, because he doesn't understand Chinese pictograms, but for some reason believes that Chinese pictograms for what he wants to say are more cool than saying the same Goddamned thing in English (which he may not speak very well anyway).

If you want permanent markings that explain your philosophy, for God's sake use a language that you can actually speak and understand. Otherwise, just get an anchor or a star and have done with it. It's still attractive and you don't end up looking like a moron.

2010-05-24T00:15:00.002-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had the rare opportunity--well, sort of--to go back in time. One of the last surviving movie palaces in downtown Baltimore was open for tours, right before it gets destroyed.

Not destroyed entirely, of course. The city and the destructive organization are very proud of themselves for "saving" the place. Unfortunately, what they consider saving is pretty much the outside walls and nothing else.

The Town Theatre has had a long and rather beleaguered existence. It opened in 1911 as the Empire Theatre, supposedly a vaudeville house, but one that tended to the burlesque instead. It became the Palace in 1913 and was mostly a movie theatre. In this capacity, it was supposedly a rather beautiful place; it abounded in marble and mahogany and bronze fixtures. Unfortunately, it was always sort of in the wrong place at the wrong time: in 1914 the much larger and more beautiful Hippodrome opened around the corner, and in the '10s the best movie houses were several blocks away. The Hipp, despite an also-unfortunate location, managed to draw business; the Empire/Palace just never really did. By the late '20s it was showing crappy movies and extremely questionable burlesque, which finally killed it--the shows were just too sketchy for a big downtown theatre. It was gutted and became a parking garage. Finally, its glory days came in 1946--for a theatre already 35 years old! It was refurbished with spacy late Moderne interiors, extremely bizarre metal sculptures, black lights--the whole nine yards. Its reopening night feature was the Maryland premiere of "It's a Wonderful Life!" with Jimmy Stewart himself in the audience.

If there's one thing I hate about live theatre types, it's that they're live theatre types. Sorry, guys, admit that your art form should have died in 1915. There's a reason why God made movies.

Reason for that mini-rant? The Town is being taken over by the local Everyman Theatre. This organization is currently in my neighborhood, but is outgrowing its Charles street digs, and has been more or less given the Town to do with what they will. What they will is to completely destroy the 1946 theatre interior, create a "space" (Oh, JESUS, why do live theatre people always talk about a "space?") in which to perform, and of course acres of "support space."

While the '46 interior certainly isn't as pretty as the 1911 original must have been, it's undeniably a major part of theatrical Baltimore. The Town was one of the city's premiere movie venues for years. It finally died a day or two before the Hippodrome, in 1990. And, that interior, bizarre as it is, also represents an era of theatre design that is largely gone AND overlooked. Preserved, it could be the standout of its era in the entire country. Oops--it's in the hands of people who have NO use for movies or their theatres, and are willing to do anything to further their own "art"--that is, the clomping about onstage of an amateur theatrical. (Admittedly, Everyman isn't amateur at all; and I *have* enjoyed a few of their offerings, but damnit, I like movies and movie palaces.)

And of course, very few of those involved seem to be from Baltimore. This city is suffering from a vast influx of people who have lately moved in and then congratulate themselves for having "discovered" it. Look, assholes, this town's been here since 1729. It didn't take YOU to discover it. The Everyman folk are quite pleased that they "discovered" a big "E" at the top of the theatre's facade. Hell, I've known that was there for at least thirty-five years, although it wasn't until about twenty-five years ago that I knew the "E" stood for "Empire."

Rant over, I suppose. They're going to do whatever the hell they want to, actual history be damned. And, if they can pump some life back into that block of Fayette street (good goddamned luck), more power to 'em.

It was nice to see the old place again, though; it wasn't markedly more filthy than it had been the last time I was inside it for a movie. What was particularly odd was the realization that it had now been TWENTY YEARS since the last time I was inside the Town Theatre--and that I would never see it again.

2010-02-09T04:30:00.002-03:00

The Cities of Baltimore, Washington and Richmond are buried in snow. This is somewhat delightful for me--as long as school is closed, I don't have to go to work, and I can walk to everything that I actually need--but it does present the problem of What To Do With Your Time Off.

I could, of course, clean the house, which is currently in such a state of disreptutability that the local crack whores are in shock.

Fortunately, I have net access and do not have to worry about such things. Rather than subject you to a giggly version of "Baltimore in the snow!" or a maudlin version of "How I'd love to be in Richmond in the snow!" I have elected to find, for your viewing pleasure, some youtube postings based on something I wrote a while back.

Every year at Super Bowl season, I wait for the ads. As a Redskins fan, I kind of have to live for the ads; my team hasn't done diddly-squat for eons. I love the commercials when they're witty and fun; hate them when they're just too slick. In any case, I always have to remember the guileless commercials of the '70s. Did we really fall for these goofy things? Oh, yes, we did--and how.

Some time ago, I marvelled that Monchichi still existed. I then mentioned that its '70s commercials were always hand-in-hand with Dancerella. Here you go:

Monchichi, in all of its hideous creepiness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od3cNTl40VI

Dancerella, cute li'l fat chick that she is (Viennese-style music and all!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7-WQv0M04w

and, just for fun, BIG WHEEL!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjTAA_da97w
What the hell was up with Big Wheel anyway? It was a plastic glorified tricycle. Still, I thought I was the shit because I got one, and proceeded to terrorize the streets of Baltimore with it. Most kids who were old enough for it were also old enough for real bicycles, and I do remember that within a couple of years the thing sat lonely in the backyard, its colors quickly fading,long eclipsed by a bike--which would eventually be eclisped by a hand-me-down Chevy, and that by a Buick. And then, the kind of commercials that I'd once watched on snow days would be eclipsed as well.

Would life be easier for us all if we still worried about things like Big Wheels?

2009-12-08T02:57:00.003-03:00

With the first Sunday of Advent just past, I am now entering the Annual Christmas Hell Experience. I believe this should be one of the major rides in a new adult-oriented theme park. Other exhibits/rides might include such horrors as "Reconciling your Hopes and Dreams with Dismal Reality," "Trying to get your kids into a decent College," and "Coping with Your Parents' Growing Senility." If the TV networks want reality shows, this is the kind of thing they need to examine.

I did some shopping on Sunday with a friend who really, really likes Christmas. He decorates his apartment within an inch of its life. Fortunately, I was able to exercise a little bit of proper Richmond taste, so he's using pretty white lights and candles in the window, and no neon or freaky plastic moving figures. We might BE in Baltimore, but we don't have to ACT like it.

We visited Watson's, which is a nice old nursery on York road a few miles north of the city. Since time began, this place has put up an annual "Christmas Wonderland." It really is pretty nice. There's a little walkway of decorated trees, acres of Christmas greenery, and a wonderful selection of nice German ornaments. There is also a showroom of other Christmasy stuff; china and linens, electric trains, lights, and all of that. Best of all, Watson's always has live animals.

Now, in my long-departed childhood, they had reindeer. Yes, REAL reindeer, and right there on York road in Lutherville, Maryland! But it seems that reindeer are much in demand and hard to accomodate, so in the past few years the animals have descended from reindeer to camels to llamas, and this year, to alpacas.

Alpacas are cute and do not spit, which is important, but I miss the reindeer.

The sparking of my Annual Christmas Personal Drama hit today when, as always, I heard that damned Chipmunk Christmas song. It's something that is meant to be cute and happy, but all I can think about is the day eighteen years ago when we learned that Thalhimers would close forever after the '91 Christmas season.

Downtown is so terribly changed now. M&R has turned into a condo/hotel development, and Thalhimers is just plain gone. The Colonial is nothing but a facade for an office building and the State is also just plain gone. The Hotel Murphy is gone, too; and the Hotel Capitol. But what's this? The National is open again! It has a pretty neon marquee again, too! And there, the Hotel Richmond is supposed to reopen sometime soon. And even though it's long closed, someone has fixed the Berry-Burk sign so that it still blinks out the company name. Look around the corner into Capitol Square; the State's own Christmas tree is as pretty as ever.

I hate to see MY downtown gone. I do so miss those wonderful stores and the big movie houses. I know that the crowds of shoppers will probably never again throng the corner of 6th and Broad; surely there will never again be a two-block line waiting for the Colonial box office. Much as we loved them, though, these things were flashes in the pan of Richmond Eternal. The city remains and weathers all storms.

Well do I remember the day in 1991 when, after learning that the store would close forever, I drove home to Monument Avenue with that damned Chipmunk song playing. It seemed the saddest thing on earth. It still does, but now I see hope for my world. For, while I stand on Broad street, with my back to the place where once was a great department store, I look around. The silly Chipmunks replay eternally as my mental soundtrack. But I look to the southeast and see the ancient Capitol; to the northeast and see a movie palace come back to life; to the West and see the fashionable bars and restaurants that are slowly but OH so surely moving back to downtown.

Merry Christmas, Richmond.

2009-09-23T19:40:00.003-04:00

One of my friends, a native Richmonder who hasn't lived there in the last quarter century, says that the problem with Richmonders is that they really believe the world revolves around Richmond. He gives as an example the statement that Richmonders frequently make: "Rome is like Richmond. It is built upon seven hills."
He believes that Rome, having once been the capital of a world empire and still the seat of the Catholic Church, trumps Richmond, so they should say that "Richmond is like Rome." I point out that Richmond is the capital of Virginia and the former Confederate capital, has several pretty Catholic churches, and furthermore is not full of Italians and does not smell like garlic. And it IS built upon seven hills. I can still name them--can you? (That, of course, only applies to people who have lived there.)

It is not necessarily true that Richmonders believe the world revolves around their city. Mostly, this is because it rarely occurs to them that there IS any world much beyond Richmond herself, and what there is is almost entirely in Virginia, which DOES pretty much revolve around its capital.

So, you can imagine my pleasure when I noted that one of my companions at the beach this year was reading something called South of Broad. Naturally, in my mind, Broad street only exists in Richmond, and all fashionable districts are indeed south of it. And, thus, you can imagine how quickly my pleasure evaporated when I realized that the book was in fact about another charming Southern city--Charleston--which also has a Broad street.

If my annoyance was meager upon discovering a book NOT about Richmond, it could only grow from there--and did it ever.

South of Broad is Pat Conroy's latest oeuvre. While I'd never read any of Conroy's work before, I'd always sort of dismissed him on hearsay. I'd heard his writing called "the revenge of the weepies," and according to most I knew, it was all decidedly Chick Lit. Within the first chapter I realized that this was, indeed, Chick Lit. Worse, it's a specific form of Chick Lit. Jane Austen is serious Chick Lit; Pat Conroy is for girls who graduated at the bottom of their class of 12,000 from a giant Midwestern university, and therefore think that they're too well educated for Danielle Steele.

Anyone who's made a pilgrimage through a bar frequented by nerdy English majors (i.e., me) has probably heard the disparaging remark that something is "fraught with symbolism," "fraught with error," "fraught with meaning." South of Broad is just fraught. It's fraught with everything. I can't even begin to provide a summary of the story, because it's so completely convoluted that I couldn't possibly get it all in order. Let's just be content with some of the elements, shall we? South of Broad includes:

--aristocratic Charleston families and
--persevering black folks and therefore
--inherent racial tension especially once you add
--Southern white trash and
--late '60s integration.
--Descriptions of Charleston that make the truly beautiful city sound like a Sears catalogue
--teen suicide
--insanity (brought on by the suicide's little brother's discovery of grisly same)
--awkward teen love
--orphans
--bigamy
--Malicious insane man who is also a pedophile with mildly insane alcholic wife and
--twin children -->
--slutty sister
--gay brother who of course ends up with
--AIDS
--Homelessness and AIDS victims in San Francisco
--loving if amateur descriptions of a football game
--loving descriptions of the Citadel (at least I get the last two)
--a climax centered around Hurricane Hugo (did we really need to hear about the dead rotting cats? That was the only part of the damned thing that moved me)
--a mom who was once a nun
--a pedophile priest (Damnit, can't someone ever write about a pedophile Presbyterian? Those frigid Scotsmen can be horny and inapprop, too)
--frustrated love sacrificed at the altar of society which is symbolically sanctified by rescuing
--a stranded porpoise post-Hugo.

Dear God. I could go on, but I couldn't stomach it, and neither could you. Since one of Conroy's myriad themes is "How the Catholic Church can Fuck You Up," he must have gotten sucked into Catholicism enough to learn about litanies. This book reads like "1,001 Conflicts for Beginning Writers." Conroy seems compelled to have a crashing climax per chapter. Halfway through the book, I found myself wondering how many more shockers he could administer to the beleaguered psyche of his readers. Of course, the devotees of this sort of thing eat it up.

I was also a bit put off/surprised by the presence of not one, but two pedophiles. Either Conroy got jumped by a motorcycle gang as a child, or he wanted to be--I understand that Prince of Tides has a similar undercurrent. After slogging my way through this lurid loser, I don't feel any compulsion to try out his earlier work.

South of Broad did have one positive effect in my universe. I haven't been to beautiful Charleston for many years and just reading about it--no matter how awful the read itself--makes me want to buy a ticket on the Palmetto State Express. While I can't afford that, I can afford to make Charleston-style food. Time to dust off my copy of Charleston Receipts.

By the way, the Seven Hills of Richmond are: Shockoe, Church, Navy, Union, Gamble's, French Garden, and Council Chamber.

2009-09-14T23:36:00.002-04:00

Let's segue back into the Temping Chronicles, just because I'm giving some thought to rejoining that world. Perhaps, if I revisit those not-so-halcyon days, I'll give thanks for the teaching job I have, and revile the temptation to forsake it.

In the mid '90s, the last gasp of local hometown companies was reaching its last death rattle. All of the smaller cities--like Frederick, Lynchburg, Fredericksburg, Williamsburg and the like--had seen their little local banks and department stores eaten up by the big city firms. Now, even the big city companies were being swallowed by national conglomerates. Richmond's old Central Fidelity Bank and her two great department stores were gone. Washington had lost her beloved crusty old Riggs National Bank and was about to lose Woodward and Lothrop, one of the best department stores on earth. Baltimore had already lost all of her big stores and the banks were going fast. In 1996, the bank that kept me in beer money went, as well.

Requiescat in Pace, Bank of Baltimore! Born in 1818, "Baltimore Savings," as everyone called it, was created by a group of civic-minded wealthy Baltimoreans. Heretofore, banks were for the wealthy; the little people just sewed coins into mattresses. This bank was intended for the Little People. You could--from 1818 until its dying day--open an account with practically nothing. In fairer days, the Bank sent employees to City and County schools to teach kids about saving money and to open kid-sized savings accounts. Even now, I occasionally run into people who actually paid for their college educations from money saved through a Bank of Baltimore account established in grade school. The Bank flourished through the 19th century; after the Great Fire it built an impressive home for itself at Baltimore and Charles (then called Sun Square for the newspaper that occupied the opposite corner) which stands today--for rent.

I'm sad to say that, today, I have my accounts with a huge conglomerate bank. All of the old locals are gone, except for tiny little neighborhood concerns that have precisely one office. I don't think that any of those gigantic corporations will ever bother with things like schoolroom savings accounts.

I digress as always. The bank was broken up and sold off for parts (ironically, this was masterminded by a man who spent a lot of time claiming to be a Real Baltimorean and a Friend of the Working Man, who then went on to establish another bank). We were sold first to Foist FI-Delity of Newik, New Joisey. This was actually the way that their employees would answer the phone. While my department survived that sale, we didn't survive the next, when Foist FIdelity was eaten by First Union, headquartered in Charlotte. (No accent is required here. Since almost no one in Charlotte is actually from North Carolina, no accent occurs there.)

Thus began the long--and recurring--saga in my life: temping for Hopkins.

The first temp gig I took at the World's Foremost Medical Institution was in the world of psychology. This was highly entertaining. My actual work involved, primarily, typing and organizing the rather exhaustive studies performed by a doctor who had spent several years studying emotional problems in teenagers. I never did meet the doctor herself; she was on sabbatical. Instead, I reported to her administrative assistant--who, herself, possessed a doctoral degree, but had been relegated to working as an assistant. This was actually a refreshing assignment. After the world of banking, I was once again surrounded by academe; and it was a guilty pleasure to see that even someone with a degree rather more advanced than mine could still be stuck doing admin work. Also, I got to see firsthand how completely clueless academia can be.

Those who teach, or do social work, are the ones in the trenches. We see what really happens in the lives of those with whom we work. Those who study from afar, on the other hand, use data as a crutch in the same way that I use cigarettes. Data and cigs both keep you mollified and put off reality for at least five minutes.

As I collated data and typed research reports, I grew to understand that the doctor masterminding these studies (note--at this point, my classroom experience was a good six years in the future) had NO IDEA of what was really happening in the "disadvantaged communities" that she ostensibly researched. She clearly had an excellent grasp of psychology and sociology, but without practical experience, her studies--to my mind--were useless. Without firsthand knowledge of your subjects' lives, how can you decide what they need? what they lack? what they have?

Most of these thoughts are retrospective. At the time, I found her research interesting, and actually, I still do. Now that I've spent seven years working with those who would have been potential subjects, though, I think that I probably have a better grasp on the issues that face them.

Anyone who is interested--I mean, truly interested--in studying and rectifying the problems that face teenagers should be required to teach in a high school for a year. The old maxim is that you can't know someone until you've walked a mile in his shoes. While you can't BE a teenager again, you CAN live in the world of the teenager, at least part-time. No amount of data collection will give you the information that any teacher has at his fingertips.

2009-09-10T23:47:00.002-04:00

Since I finally joined the world of the digital camera, I've become much more interested in taking pictures. I grew up in the era of the Instamatic. Everyone took pictures of everything. Looking back over the photo albums in the family's living room, I've discovered that my parents took a picture every time anybody farted. They took pictures on vacation; they took pictures at home. They took pictures of every first day of school, pictures of me opening every last present at Christmas, and pictures of table settings. Certainly, though, they weren't alone; when I visit the family homes of other friends, I see the same thing. The problem with the Instamatics (and the Brownies before them) was that, until you got the prints back, you didn't know which pictures were actually good and which ones sucked. A lot of them sucked. Parents would let kids take pictures, which resulted in a lot of photos of knees, because kids take pictures from a lower level. They also include a lot of pictures of the pets, because kids are more interested in the pets than the adults. Oh--wait, I still do that.

Once I got the digital, though, I decided that I should start recording things that have some interest to me, and not just pictures of parties (though there are plenty of those as well). I wanted to document the places I know and the things I love, so I started taking pictures all over Maryland and Virginia. I even tried to be all arty, so I did a series of doorways in North Baltimore, and a series of creepy faces in Baltimore architecture. (Baltimore apparently really dug that Victorian concept that architecture should frighten people; there are monstrous faces peering out of the stones of a LOT of buildings in this town.)

I also thought that I should document the surviving homes of famous Baltimoreans. Let's face it--the city is pretty damned run down now, but over the years it has been the home of quite a few important figures. Not too many big movie stars, but numerous literary lights, captains of industry, and medical marvels have called the town home. Therefore, I set out to take pictures of some of the houses. I'm not finished, yet, by any means, but I'm pleased with my progress so far.

In all likelihood, Baltimore's lasting claim to literary fame is E. A. Poe. In a way, this is sad. He wasn't really a Baltimorean; he was born in Boston and grew up in Richmond. He did live in Baltimore sporadically as an adult, and here met his unfortunate if rather poetic end. But: we can also count H.L. Mencken as ours, and he really was--born, raised, and died in Baltimore, the man was one of the great essayists and journalists of the 20th century. Sadly, he's mostly forgotten now, and when he IS remembered, it's always with a disclaimer that he was Not a Nice Person. Of course he wasn't, but in 2009, one must be a Nice Person, Politically Correct, and Aware in order to be lionized. Gertrude Stein, as well, thought that there was some THERE in Baltimore; she had several family connections to the place and lived here for some time--in fact, attended the Hopkins, too. (HER house has been rotting away up in Reservoir Hill for decades, but she'd probably rather enjoy the idea.) The city can also claim Christopher Morley, who penned some very witty novels back in the '30s and '40s. Although Baltimore doesn't normally claim him, Fitzgerald loved to claim Baltimore. He only lived here for a few years, but did have some Maryland family, and he wanted to make sure that everyone knew it. Raised in a decidedly middle-class world in the Midwest, ancient Baltimore provided a touchstone to an aristocratic world that some of his characters possessed while the author himself did not.

I was also careful to take a couple of pictures of the elegant St. Paul street house that was once home to F. van Wyck Mason. Have you ever heard of him?

Frankly, I hadn't either--or, thought I hadn't. When I discovered that he'd lived in and around the city for many years, I struggled to remember why on earth I knew the name. When it finally came to me, I wasn't sure whether to be impressed or appalled. You see, the only one of his books I'd ever read was "The Barbarian," which I'd bought years ago for the lurid cover art. The cover in question depicts a stunning blonde in Carthaginian costume (I had to read the stupid thing to know that she was a Carthaginian) with her foot on the neck of a very large, very muscular and entirely naked dude. What book can possibly live up to the promise of that cover? As it turned out, this one didn't.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found a copy of another van Wyck Mason novel. This one--"Rivers of Glory"--was a hardback book, and didn't appear to be of the Sinful Shocker variety. Hmm...maybe the guy DID write real books, too! I looked him up online and found that, in fact, he was quite the prolific author, and specialized in historical fiction (with naked musclemen?). So, I delved into "Rivers of Glory."

Aha. It really is another Sinful Shocker. The first few chapters introduce the principal characters, Andrew Warren and Minga Allen. As each character is presented, their physical attributes are made quite clear: Andrew's long, muscular legs and broad, hairy chest; Minga's supple, slim form. In the first chapter, Andrew takes advantage of the chambermaid who sees him naked on the bed. Minga is shortly raped by two Hessians along the Hudson, shortly after she has (willingly) boinked a British officer. When the pair hook up about a third of the way into the book, they don't go all the way--after all, the reader can gather that they're ultimately going to be a love match, so they can't do it--but they both spend some time contemplating the other's physical charms. Minga is en route to the home of her aunt in Jamaica (the island, not the section of Queens) because she thinks she might be pregnant courtesy of either the Brit or the Braunschweigers. Once she gets there, she learns that her aunt is an unrepentant ho. Aunt Adelina is having an affair with a big muscular octoroon and, possibly, also with her mulatto maid. The octoroon guy is also her estate manager. She kills him because he's trying to blackmail her (but only because he's in love with her and doesn't want to let her get away)--and, even as Adelina prepares to plunge an Arab knife into the man's chest, van Wyck Mason takes another chance to describe the smooth expanses of his muscular chest and shoulders.

I haven't even finished this thing yet. I can't wait for the description when Andrew and Minga finally get it on. The book was written during the second World War and was undoubtedly supposed to be a patriotic effort; its Revolutionary setting was probably supposed to instill homegrown pride in its American readers. I wonder how many men ever read this book all the way through? It's a great example of pseudo-highbrow pseudo-porn. The story is fairly trite and predictable. The true art of this novel--and "The Barbarians" as well--is getting the reader turned on without ever using a dirty word. Forget the story; the ladies back home during the War felt patriotic because the book made them dream of their men overseas.

Never mind Poe and his silly labyrinthine descriptions of unnecessary details. F. van Wyck Mason, though a native of the North, was in spirit an author of the Old South. He fills your mind with thoughts of heaving bosoms and rigid loins, but they're so encased in "yellow lawn, with dainty scarlet ribbons" and "scarlet shirt open to his belt" that you'll never know you're reading something naughty.

2009-08-19T00:13:00.002-04:00

As promised, here's the brief saga of the Jesus Insurance Company.

Don't get me wrong, people. I am not your average hipster boi who believes that Organized Religion is the opiate of the masses, an evil plot to control the world, or anything else. I am a devout Catholic. Okay, maybe I don't go to Mass when I'm hung over, but still... That said, I have no problem with other religions as long as they leave me well enough alone and don't try to convert me. As my mother once told a pair of "missionaries"--who apparently believed that already-Christian (mostly Lutheran, Catholic and Methodist) Walkersville, Maryland needed conversion--"If I really gave a rat's ass, don't you think I'd be at my own church right now?"

So imagine my horror when, on a temp assignment, I was confronted with an insurance company that was, apparently, CEO'd by the Fundamentalist Protestant version of Christ Himself.

Mind you, this was a temp job, but I did sort of need work, so when I saw the Mission Statement in the lobby (why on earth does every modern company need a Mission Statement?) and noticed that it involved several references to God, I very nearly disappeared in a puff of Catholic incense smoke. I mean, seriously: lots of companies are run by Catholics, but we don't have freakin' crucifixes and statues of the Blessed Virgin in the lobbies.

I survived the place for two weeks. They had morning prayer meetings. I shit you not. It wasn't mandatory--I don't think they could have gotten away with that, legally--but it was fairly clear that anyone who wanted to get ahead in the company was going to show up and "testify" and talk about how he (note that I don't include the feminine pronoun; I'm pretty sure that women weren't supposed to WANT to get ahead in this little world) had discovered the power of Jesus and how Jesus had become his personal savior.

This is one thing that bugs me about fundamentalism: the insistent use of that phrase "...accepted Jesus as your personal Savior." Here is why it bugs me. The whole concept of Christianity is that Christ is supposed to be everybody's Savior. It's not all about you. This "personal Savior" thing freaks me out. I have a personal toothbrush. I have a personal cell phone. I have personal lubricant for personal reasons that will remain personal, unless you happen to be the one getting very personal with me, in which case, one of us will use a personal birth control device. So, when Joe the Fundamentalist asks me if I've "accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior," my usual answer is along the lines of "No, I haven't. I didn't have to him as such, because He already was, and He's not MINE, He's the Savior of us all." (Except, I'm tempted to say, assholes like you who want to pre-empt His entire philosophy to make yourselves feel like the cool kids on the block.)

Diatribe over. So, here I am, toiling away in The Lord's Own Li'l Insurance Company. Small problem...or, rather, one overwhelming problem. Nobody in this place seems to have the SLIGHTEST FREAKING IDEA of what they're doing. My job, nominally, is to review claims, look for discrepancies, and if one exists, trot over to the document storage room to find the paper file and try to reconcile the discrepancy. Except that: nearly every file on the computer system has some kind of discrepancy, and invariably, there is no paper trail sufficient to clarify anything whatsoever.

This means that what I actually end up doing is a)alphabetizing the files in the system, which seems to have never occurred to anyone, and then b) for each batch of 50 or so, finding the corresponding paper files, bringing them back to the desk, and then c)fruitlessly searching for something that will clarify the problem. For each batch of farbed-up files, I am able to find approximately ONE paper document that helps out. In other words, the whole process could be solved by just saying "Yeah, this whole thing is hosed. Y'all need to just start over."

Except that of course I can't do that, because I'm a temp and I'm an English major, not an Insurance Professional. That, and I'm not a member of the Reformed Church of the Redeemed of the Evangelistic Saints of the Lord, or whatever it is.

Actually, most of the people with whom I interacted were not at all of the creepy "I'm going to convert you or kill you trying" type. That was obviously just a function of the company's owners; most of these folks just needed a job like anyone else. The inherent problem was really that they didn't seem to know what they were doing themselves and therefore really didn't know how to explain to me what I was supposed to do.

After two weeks, I was done. This job, in my view, was like an already-inferior cut of meat that had been left on the grill for three hours and was burnt into charcoal. It was unpalatable, at best. So, I called my *other* temp agency and told them that I needed something, anything, else. They had a new job for me within five minutes. It offered better pay, and it was actually in the city. (Did I mention that the Evangelical Insurance Concern, Ltd. was twenty miles into the suburbs?) Natch, I took the new post.

I told my supervisor at the insurance company that I'd been offered another job and needed to start the next day. She was fine with it, and told me that if I wanted, I didn't really have to come back that afternoon. She also congratulated me on the new job (I didn't mention that it was really just another temp job) and hung out with me to smoke a cigarette.

Here's the best part: After clearing out of the place, I discovered to no small horror that I'D FUCKING LOCKED MY KEYS IN THE CAR THAT MORNING. Thankfully, this place was close to the very last stop on the city's public transit line. Unthankfully, about the time that I started walking towards the station, the mother of all cloudbursts opened up.

Right as I was getting on the train, the temp agency that set the job up in the first place called, and were they ever pissed. The temp coordinator lambasted me because "You knew how much they needed you, and you left in the middle of the day!" I reminded her that the supervisor herself had told me it would be cool to leave, that I wasn't under contractual obligation, and that for God's sake...oh, wait, poor choice of words here...no one actually knew what the hell he was doing in the place, and so it was clear that they didn't need me that badly. I also pointed out that the company's overt display of religion made me rather uncomfortable and recommended that the agency brief any future temps before sending them to this company. After I made the (wet) trek on Baltimore's light rail to get back to the city, I was able to bribe a friend to haul me back out to get my car, and the chapter closed.

In the long run, everything was fine. The next temp job(s) were with Johns Hopkins. I made a lot of good friends and some good professional contacts (I was already working towards a teaching job), and spent a few pleasant months there. Needless to say, the old temp agency didn't offer me a lot of jobs after this little drama.

The two weeks left me with a few questions that remain unanswered: How can a company in 2001 (that was the time frame) get away with such overwhelming religious jingoism? At least, I *am* Christian; what would a Buddhist or Moslem have had to endure in that environment? How can a company continue to function, when it clearly has absolutely no idea what it's really doing? How is it possible, in a world where almost everything is documented in carbon-copy triplicate AND on labyrinthine computer records, to have NO information about 95% of one's transactions?

And, as you might expect: Why was I still temping?

Next in the series: The pleasures and vicissitudes of temping at Hopkins.

2009-08-10T00:57:00.003-04:00

As the last couple of weeks of summer trickle down to nothing, and I stare hatefully at the calendar, I invariably start to think "I hate this job."

I hate this job mostly because it's a job, period, and I don't particularly like working. If anyone was meant to be a dilettante, I'm the guy. I do like teaching because-- oh, wait, if you're waiting to hear how much I love children, or how I'm trying to make a difference in the world, skip this part. I loathe children, and as far as I'm concerned, other than a few neighborhoods Baltimore is pretty much irreparably broken and can't be fixed without a well-placed warhead or six. I do, however, love the English language. The job is never boring, and I really really love having the summer off.

When I contemplate this hideous return-to-work thing, though, I'm also forced to contemplate some of the other jobs I've had over the years. Invariably, some dippy co-worker will tell me that I need to write a book. I do, but I'm too lazy, so I thought it might be amusing to start relaying some of the experiences on here. Thus, here begins a brief series:

THE SAGA OF THE CHRONICALLY UNDEREMPLOYED.

You see, the United States has painted itself into a very dangerous corner. At one point in our history, everything balanced out. Some people worked the farm, some went to college and did "professional" stuff, some people worked in factories, some fixed toilets, some robbed banks. Whatever. There was a niche for pretty much everyone that fit in with levels of ability.

Those days took a hike around the same time that the first Datsun cars started showing up on the roads, and now we're in deep trouble.

See, almost everyone now has a bachelor's degree. This seems all happy and egalitarian, but what it has really done is to render the degree meaningless. I've met people with bachelor's degrees whom I strongly suspect need help tying their shoes. Plumbers routinely make more than college grads. Why? Well, you see, now most people believe that plumbing work is "below" them, so they go to college...so there are no more plumbers...but LOTS of college grads...who end up doing crappy low-paying jobs...while the guys they look down upon, all three of them in the state, get paid considerably more to install faucets.

In other words, there just aren't enough High-Power Executive positions going around for all of the people who think that they should be filling them. This leads to a lot of underemployed people, and a lot of bitterness. It also leads to having a damned hard time finding a job at all.

Since I graduated from college, I've been through an annoying little parade of crappy jobs. The worst part of the crappy job market is that interviewers will invariably say "But you have a degree from (insert prestigious college here). Why are you applying for this job?"

What you want to say: "You stupid bitch, because my rent is three months behind and I'm fighting with the cat over the last bit of kibble. It's take this shitty little job or die in the gutter."
What you are supposed to say: "I understand this is entry-level, but I'm looking for some new opportunities, and this job seems like a great way to explore some different paths!!!"

In my treatment of crappy jobs, I should probably address my favorite form first.

No matter how bad the economy gets, there's always a sick receptionist, so you can always temp.

Temping can be among the most satisfying of jobs, because it really isn't a job. I've done plenty of it. Oh, yes, there's work, but rarely does it involve any actual labor or thought process, and you get paid for it. Sometimes it does lead to a real job, and it's possible to make some good connections. I've made some very good friends through temp work.

Baltimore is a great city to test the temping waters for one major reason: This town is full of really, incredibly, mind-numbingly STUPID people. The mere ability to type vaults you light years ahead of most others in the regional temp pool. File six lousy pieces of paper between 8AM and noon, and people will be so impressed that they'll buy you lunch.

Some of my favorite temping highlights:
--a credit-card company in the suburbs. This place was the dregs of Planet Temp, and it seemed to be even worse for its real employees. You had to scan in with your ID; if you didn't have it, you didn't get in to report for work. One guy got canned for letting someone else borrow his ID to scan in. The company's whole business model was the issuing of credit cards to people who really shouldn't have had credit cards. I ended up working for a week in their human resources department. This was creepy. Everyone in there had a degree, but I knew that the mung in the breakroom fridge could outmaneuver them. Each cube had a set of binders with impressive titles, but each binder had about six pieces of paper inside. The function of the HR workers seemed to be limited to finding the most ghetto-ass people in Baltimore to work for the company, and then summarily firing them before having to pay out any discernible benefits. My job was to file and type. They were all seriously freaked out when I produced the typed versions of three letters within fifteen minutes. They'd expected that to take all day. Also, a mockingbird in the parking lot hated me, and attacked me no matter where I parked.
--The swanky downtown advertising agency. This one was kind of fun, because I always thought the ad game seemed interesting. It can be. Unfortunately, I was filling in for the receptionist. My job for three days was to occupy a beautiful granite desk in a sleek lobby with leather furniture. And I do mean occupy--not much else. If people came in, I'd simply announce them to the person they wanted to see, who'd come out to meet them. If the phone rang, I transferred the call. Also, it became clear that they usually had hot chicks as receptionists. A lot of people were quite surprised to see a guy at the desk. One of the nice things was that, since I occasionally had to broadcast calls over a PA system, everyone complimented my voice. A couple of people even mentioned that I should try doing some ad work. (In retrospect, I'm not sure why I didn't follow up on the idea.) One of the other cool things was that it was in the World Trade Center, which is the world's tallest pentagonal building. It's Super Seventies at its weirdest, but it makes for trippy corridors.
--The chemical shipping company way down in one of the industrial sections. This was only a few days' stint, but it was kind of fun. Everyone there was genuinely pleasant. I had to report to a woman whose name was...really...Ginger Rogers. I also got to hang out in one of the offices on an industrial floor, which meant that I had to wear hard hat and protective gear to get to the computer. The whole place was full of old-fashioned blue collar Baltimore types, and it was the closest I ever got to being surrounded by normal people while temping.

Coming Soon: Who needs insurance if you've Accepted Jesus as Your Personal Savior?

2009-07-14T02:49:00.006-04:00

I have taken to walking even more strenuously, of late. As you know, I prefer walking to driving. Driving gets on my nerves. As far as I am concerned, city streets were meant to be traversed by walkers, occasional horses and gigantic Packard limousines. I like horses very much when they are running in circles at Pimlico, but when they are walking up Charles street they just turn into big poop machines. And, I do like gigantic Packards, but I like them much better when I am riding in them, preferably chaufeurred by a very large German, and since this has not happened in recent memory, I am perfectly happy to do without the Packards, as well.
Also, I need to lose a lot of weight, and how! It's one thing to have a few extra pounds in your twenties or thirties, but I am going to hit forty in a few months, and do not wish to do so looking like the stunt double for Jabba. At least Jabba got to have Princess Leia in weird bondage gear; at this point I'll be lucky if Darlene from Highlandtown lets me buy her a Clover Club cocktail. (No offense, Darlene, I'll take ya over to Eichenkranz next week. Bring Jeff, huh?)
Well, anyway, I've been doing more walking than usual, and it's nice to see that even rootbound Baltimore is going in big for recycling. Now, you see, I thought that we always did, but not in so many words.
Baltimore people, as you know by now if you've read my blatt before, are really really cheap. I have been known to rinse off tinfoil to reuse it. Even though tea, hot or iced, is a major part of our culture, we re-use the teabags. This is how I can get away with looking like I'm 35, because I drink and smoke and SHOULD look like I'm 60, but am actally 39. Tea leaves smeared on the face do more than the masseurs of Bedford and Berkeley can ever hope to do.
As I've wandered through the alleys of Proper North Baltimore, I've observed a number of things. I'm happy to see that even the most prosperous citizens of the Maryland Metropolis are now putting out special recycling bins. I was, however, even more pleased to see that many people show evidence of doing things that I considered normal, but had long since gone to seed.
--a guy in Calvert street sifting cat poop out of litter, to add to compost
--a couple further up Calvert stretching a Persian rug out on a line to beat it clean, instead of sending it out
--several gardens bereft of their usual flowers (though, damnit, those are always pretty gardens) in favor of vegetables
--a lady in Guilford--yes, Guilford! and a lady, not her maid-- hanging wash out to dry
--another lady in St. Paul street hauling long-forgotten Mason jars out of the garage.

This last made me stop, because I like canning things. I had to ask her if she planned to throw them out, but no: she told me that she was going to use them again. Her mother had stored them forty years ago and they'd been long forgotten--until now, and the daughter intended to use them and put up food for winter.
Ooops. This unleashed an hour long conversation. We discussed the best Maryland produce and the best times to put it up; the preferred methods (I don't care what anyone says, oven-canning is fine, but the old kettle method is the best, and the best ways to keep canned goods. We also agreed that though the farmers' Market in Waverly is very nice, there are some things that simply must be bought downtown, at our City's great Lexington Market. There are times when even a Baltimorean cannot scrimp. Then, of course, our true colors came out, when we discussed preserves. You know, you don't really need to use the pectin stuff that you get at the drugstore.... it costs more. If you cook your preserve down long enough, and have the right sugar measure, it will be just fine, and taste better too.
Now, the problem for me is that I have a kitchen full of fresh peaches(for preserves), fermenting peaches (for peach pickle) and brining cucumbers (for cucumber pickle). The other table space is devoted to sanitized and drying jars and lids (and an ashtray).
Isn't it nice to think that, for all of the gangland murders we have, there are still people making peach pickles and debating canning processes in the city's alleyways?

2009-03-24T22:57:00.004-04:00

This post, ladies and gentlemen, is simply an exercise to prove that I would have been a DAMNED good copywriter for the Times-Dispatch in 1923.

Richmonders!

Perhaps you have heard its plaintive strains from your neighbor's windows.

Perhaps you were there when the COLUMBIA records were played for demonstration at the WALTER MOSES COMPANY.

Perhaps, a few years ago, you discovered it through sheet music, and wondered...when you might hear it performed?

Richmonders, "Perhaps" is no longer. "Perhaps" is TO-DAY and ALL THIS WEEK-END.
For it is this Week-End that the
COLONIAL

is proud to present to You, our Loyal Patrons and Fellow Richmonders...

Alexandre Luiguini's
Ballet Egyptien.

Of course, we all know our City's Broad Street, but--imagine, if you will... the change in moods, as you step from the central City's bustle...into, first, the cool and majestic marble of the Colonial's reception room. Imagine, if you will... as an exotic Girl of the Harem, or a dashing Arab Cavalier guides you to your seat.
Imagine... as, instead of the COLONIAL you have known for two years now, you see before you a world of ancient wonder. A dreamland of the Orient--brought to Richmond.

You are, of course, familiar with the COLONIAL'S famed marble lobbies, its soaring ramps, its gracious tea-garden. BUT--neighbors, are you prepared to see our City's premiere Theatre, decked as though for the wedding of a Pharaoh of Egypt?

THIS WILL BE YOURS---RICHMONDERS!!!! THIS WEEKEND ONLY AT THE COLONIAL.

FOR THIS WEEKEND---
AN EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT---
ESPECIALLY FOR THE COLONIAL ----

THE ORCHESTRA OF THE AUSTRIAN IMPERIAL OPERA
PERFORMS...........

BALLET EGYPTIEN.

2009-02-12T04:04:00.002-03:00

I came to a rather unpleasant realization, about two weeks ago. It dawned on me, while I was absorbing the usual Friday night cocktail or seven, that twenty years have now passed since Hutzler's closed.

Those who are too young to remember, or not familiar with Baltimore, may not know of Hutzler's. Many of my younger friends and colleagues do not remember the grand department stores of their own cities, much less Baltimore's; and Hutzler's was the last to go, albeit the grandest of them all.

My friends, it WAS wonderful. It was big, and it was on Howard street. There were..hmm, I think, five different buildings, all somehow and mysteriously connected together. There were eight floors, and an elegant restaurant all the way up, and a lunch counter (the Quixie) in the basement. There was a pet supply department, a Stamp and Coin department, a Silver department that was easily the size of Allentown, and the store had all the requisite supplies for Boy and Girl scouts. Its Toy department was a thing of wonder; it provided me with my childhood toy trains and countless stuffed animals.

And now it has been gone for twenty years. When I went to college in Williamsburg, I never really intended to come back to Maryland. (Ah, the blindness of youth...) I loved Richmond so much better (and still do); and wasn't Miller and Rhoads every bit as nice as Hutzler's?

Actually, it was. Miller and Rhoads was a bit smaller, but even THAT much more elegant. Its seven-story bulk on Grace street was not so towering as the Hutzler edifice, but it was ever so much more gracious. The gentle sweep of the glass marquees over the doorways bespoke a class of people that, in Baltimore, only shopped in the elite boutiques of Charles street, and rarely bothered themselves with Howard.

Alas, it was not to be: Miller and Rhoads only lasted a year longer than did Hutzler's. I ended up working for its competitor across Sixth street--Thalhimers'--but it too was winding down its clock, and died in '92. The wonderful era of stylish downtown Anycity was done.

And now Miller and Rhoads lives again, in an otherworldly fashion. I should be excited by this. I am always pleased when anything nice happens in downtown Richmond. Seeing the reopening of the beautiful National Theatre was like a feather in my own cap; though I'd had nothing to do with it, I did work to preserve the theatre years ago, and it just plain makes me happy to see something good in my favorite city.

Why is it, then, that I'm feeling a bit "tetched" about the new Hotel and Condominiums opening this weekend in the commercial palace that was once Miller and Rhoads? Nothing, to me, is more important than to see Broad and Grace streets alive and fashionable again. For too long have I heard even native Richmonders talk about the horror that is Broad street. I have cringed when hearing people say, "Grace street? Ugh." And well do I remember--though it IS distant past now--when I had to have an M&R attache help me carry all of my bags to my waiting Buick.

Shouldn't I be happy to see the old store building brought back to life? Yes, yes, I should. I'm glad that it wasn't destroyed, as was the Thalhimers building (and yes, the M&R building WAS much more beautiful). But--if we need another downtown hotel (we do), wouldn't it have made better sense to funnel attention towards the gigantic, beautiful and still-neglected Hotel John Marshall? Couldn't we, perhaps, have held on to the M&R building as a potential retail facility?

It's done, though, now; and there's clearly not a damned thing I can do but to applaud it and come home for its opening. Sadly, they say that not much of the interior remains, but then department store interiors do not lend themselves to hotels. I won't stay there--if I go home, I stay with friends or at THE Hotel--but I'll surely visit, if for no other reason than to pretend that I am still shopping for a new necktie. I'll probably even wear that tie that everyone hates, but of which I was so proud twenty years ago--it did come from the "Better Men's" department, right at the doors near Sixth and Grace.

I have heard that the new hotel intends to recreate some of the famous dishes from the Miller and Rhoads Tea Room. It won't be quite the same, of course--the Tea Room was up on the fifth floor, and there will be no Eddie Weaver at the Hammond Organ ("Valencia?" You're not old enough to know that song!"). And the city's Busy Corner just won't be the same without the two grand stores, either--but perhaps, I should take what I can get.

I wish that future generations--oh, hell, even the generation just behind mine--could still have the joy and fun of Broad, Sixth and Grace when it was still "something doing." Meanwhile, I'm going to be very pleased to eat a Missouri Club sandwich for the first time in twenty years.

2008-12-19T03:39:00.002-03:00

You can try to escape your childhood, but it will always haunt you. Whatever weirdness transpired when you were a toddler will be with you forever. I know this for a variety of reasons, and one of them came last night, like some freaky plush-stuffed banshee.

To this day, I don't like car antennas, because my mother was one of those moms who chanted "You'll put your eye out!" about pretty much everything, and our '71 Buick had a big antenna, and every time I had to walk past it in the garage, I envisioned it reaching out to spear my eyeball. My friend C., who is a large and scary jarhead, hates fireworks. Even though he's seen action overseas, he still doesn't like fireworks because when he was a little kid in New Orleans, he was frightened by the fireworks at that City's World's Fair. The booms shook his house and he thought monsters were attacking.

Some childhood memories are beautiful, of course. I still treasure memories of downtown Baltimore at Christmastime. (Please note that I am NOT going into a diatribe regarding the current dilapidated state of what was once a very impressive and beautiful city.) I also have good memories of various toys and games. I am a bit shocked, but pleasantly amused, that people are paying ungodly amounts of money for the lunchbox that I threw around in 1977. (Does anyone else remember Lunchbox Fights?)

Here's another one: the M&M Legend. I learned this evening that two of my most esteemed friends DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT THE M&M COLORS!!!! I thought that everyone, at least, knew that "the green ones make you horny." Crap, people, that's why the green M&M in the ads is a hot M&M babe! Back in the mid '90s they even sold a bag full of "the green ones." I know this wasn't just local; the marketing makes it clear and I have friends from all over the nation who know of the lore. FYI: green=horny, yellow=gay, brown=bad luck, orange=good luck, red=cancer, tan=diarrhea. (Blue didn't exist yet, when I first heard the canonical legend. I can only assume that it makes you frigid, which means that I probably ate too many green and yellow ones, and not enough blue.)

The childhood touchstone that came screaming back, with full nightmare potential last night, was:

MONCHICHI.

I thought that this fucking horrible thing had died in about 1980, but here it was again at Safeway.

Monchichi is not exactly a high tech toy. It is, in fact, a fuzzy little monkey doll. The main reason that I remember the silly thing at all is that its ads back in the late '70s had a very catchy jingle that went "Monchichi, Monchichi! Oh, so soft and cuddle-ly!" They are extremely ugly monkey dolls, with nothing endearing about them at all. They do, however, have a rather pornographic mouth, built so that their thumbs can be inserted. Blech.

The '70s revelled in the ugly. Many of the toys produced WERE cute, and WERE amusing, but for every one of those, there were ten tacky or just abysmal offerings. I'm pretty sure that every afternoon on channel 45, WBFF, the Monchichi commercial was followed by a commercial for "Dancerella." This was a little battery-op ballerina. Had she been offered in 1928, she might have been dainty and charming. Unfortunately, she was given to us by the mid-70s. Barbie's stats may be unrealistic; Dancerella's were TOO realistic. If she were brought to life, she'd be 4'10" and 220 lbs. Her pudgy self was brought to life when you spun the crown on her head. The commercial warbled, in Drevierteltakt, "Dancerella, Dancerella, dancing ballet! She begins to spin when violins begin to play!" Glurg!

The more I consider the horror of '70s toys, the more I understand why I liked my toy soldiers. They were just what I was supposed to be when I grew up. (This does not adequately explain why I idiotically refused an Army career and ended up being an English teacher. Too bad that no one ever gave me a little box of chalk and red pens.)

As much as Monchichi sucks, I'm almost glad to see it back again. Sure, it connects my childhood to the modern world, but perhaps it also means that there lives yet a world in which one can still like and love fuzzy--if ugly--toy monkeys. Maybe Dancerella helped some fat little girls to believe that they could be ballerinas--and, frankly, it takes some muscle to be a ballerina.

And what about my toy soldiers? Well, I still have them of course! And this year, I decided that the manger scene should be in the middle of a fierce battle. My soldiers are now storming the battlements of the Emerson Tower while the Blessed Mother awaits Christ's birth, and a Thalhimer Brothers truck is waiting to deliver either baby clothes or ballistic missiles.

Merry Christmas, y'all!

2008-12-14T03:10:00.001-03:00

Oh, dear Lord, save me from crappy songs about Your birthday.

I just heard that hideous Christmas Shoes song again, and I very nearly swerved off the interstate to vomit. What an absolutely horrible song!

Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of this thing is that everyone on earth seems to think it’s the most wonderful and edifying song ever written. If that’s the case, it goes a long way to explain why this planet is seriously screwed.

In the event that you’ve been living under a rock that, fortunately for you, has no radio, the Christmas Shoe song is sung by a guy who, it seems, was at a department store (at Christmastime, of course) when he noticed a boy at the cash register. The boy is attempting to buy a pair of ladies’ shoes, which are “just the right size” for his mother. (Yeah, right, the kid’s probably a budding drag queen.) And, of course, he doesn’t have enough money. Turns out that the kid’s mother is about to “go see Jesus” and he wants her to look nice when she goes to heaven. He needs these shoes now because Daddy says there isn’t much time. The heartless clerk tells the kid to pay up or move on. Our hero, the singer, ponies up five bucks so the kid can buy these shoes. Inspired, the singer goes on to point out that he realizes the boy was sent there so that he, the crooner, will understand the true meaning of Christmas.

This piece of crap is just plain wrong on almost every level.

This kid’s mom is dying–the implication is that she’s going to croak this very night–and he’s out shopping? What’s up with this? And why is he shopping unsupervised? Maybe Dad is just waiting for Mom to kick it, and he wants to get rid of the kid so he can run off with the hot nurse in the ICU ward, so he sends him out to become milk-carton bait.

Is Jesus really so concerned with the outward appearance of potential new residents of Pearly Gates Lane? So, after a life of sacrifice and pain, Mom shows up in Heaven and St. Peter says “Damn, bitch, your shoes are UGLY. What are you thinking showing up in heaven wearing that shit?”

The part that really slays me is that the kid was sent to inspire the author to understand the meaning of Christmas. “Hard luck, kid! You’re poor and your mom is dying. Wow, that must really suck, but hey, your sacrifices haven’t been in vain, because now I get what Christmas is all about! Thanks for having a shitty childhood; now I get the whole deal!!!” I’m not sure how I would feel about being put through all of this just to help some jerk in the shoe department of Woodward and Lothrop understand Christmas.

And, so, what IS Christmas all about? Well, it seems to me that if you listen to the song, you will understand that Christmas is all about abandoning a dying loved one, contributing to crass commercialism, and buying a fashionable pair of shoes, since God doesn’t care about your soul or your faith or anything, as long as you’ve got hot kicks. This is certainly NOT the idea of Christmas–or of God–that I want to hold dear.

Oh, yes, and the song teaches us one more important thing: If you whine enough about your problems, and you have a good enough story, some dumbass will fork over the money you want and all will be well, at least until you want a nice new hat to go with the shoes.

I realize that most of our canonical Christmas songs are outdated, since–other than hymns–the vast majority of them came out in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. The ‘80s gave us “Feliz Navidad,” which really just makes me think of hirsute Mexican singers, and the ‘60s gave it a shot with the thankfully-forgotten “Christmas on the Moon,” but most of the stuff IS pretty elderly. Then again, there’s a reason we still play it–it was good. If we need some new material, can’t we make it a little better than the drippy sentiment and the extremely flawed “lesson” of the Christmas Shoes?

2008-09-14T23:54:00.000-04:00

This Saturday was a mixed bag of things. I worked a race in the morning–for those who’ve not heard, friends A-Squared and I are obsessed with these Amazing Race style things. We run in them, and we now manage them as well. The afternoon and evening was occupied by a funeral for a friend’s mother.

While the funeral ended up as the day’s dominant feature, it’s also a rather depressing one, and I don’t find it particularly fashionable to blog about funerals. The etiquette of funerals, perhaps–oh, I’d better not get started on that, or y’all will never be able to shut me up about it, and the next thing we all know I’ll have rambled on for two thousand words about the socially correct form of cake to bring the bereaved family. By the way, what’s up with Northern and Western people who don’t know to bring food to the family? Don’t they know that a) no one in the family wants to cook at a time like that and b) this gives everyone else a good opportunity to show off prizewinning fried chicken, biscuits and Lady Baltimore cake?

Though the funeral had emotional impact, the race was Saturday’s blogriffic moment. This was no mere race. It took place in that impossible city, Washington.

Now, I understand that Washington is the nation’s capital. At least, it’s the Yankee capital. MY capital is still Richmond, on both state and national levels, but you know this already.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that having spent four years in Williamsburg, I’d be used to tourists? I seem to have lost my W&M street cred, though, because the tourist antics of this morning shocked, awed and amused me to no meager extent.

My mission was to sit in the Great Hall of the Smithsonian Castle, awaiting those who’d embarked upon the race. They had to solve a clue to find me, and then I was to hand them a scroll with another clue. The racers themselves were ept. (If there’s such a thing as “inept,” there must also be “ept,” no? I reserve the right, as an English teacher, to create new words as I go.)

I’d not been in the Castle but forty minutes when the group of Germans arrived. All of you should by now realize that I idolize the German people. They’re frighteningly intelligent; they have a work ethic that makes the Puritans look like woolgatherers, and they are usually rather attractive. I love the German language, and German music. What I do not love is their fashion sense. German women tend to look good, particularly North German women. They can wear flour sacks and still look hot. German men, though, seem to rely on their blue eyes and chiseled visages in the hope that no one will notice the for God’s sake awful clothes they’ve put on. In this group, every last one of them was hot, but while the women wore smart dresses, the men were all wearing weird shirts and extremely goofy shoes. Maybe this is considered the appropriate German attire for visiting what they correctly assume to be a barbarian capital.

No sooner had the Germans moved on when my vision was happily invaded by a very, very hot Theta Delt brother. This dude had a chest the size of the old Capitol Theatre on F street and calves that would make the Diskobolos green with envy. He also caught me in the act of staring at his legs. Evidently, it didn’t bother him though, because he grinned. This can mean one of several things: a) he’s diggin’ me, b) he’s used to 30-something dudes checking him out, c) his girlfriend isn’t putting out, or d) he’s from the Midwest and just thought I was being friendly.

I didn’t have time to find out what the Theta Delt wanted, though, because that somewhat muscly interlude was interrupted by the Spaz Parade. If you’re easily offended by political incorrectness, you might want to skip the next paragraph. Just as I was thinking to myself: Boxers, briefs, jockstrap, or nothing? A new busload arrived at the Castle. This was a busload of retarded children.

As a teacher, I am familiar with levels of retardation. Many people with learning difficulties, and many with reduced abilities (see, I’m trying to be PC) can benefit immensely from trips to museums. This was not a group composed of this sort of child. These were severely retarded kids. These were not Rain Men in the making. They were, to be blunt, retarded kids of the rocking and drooling variety. I believe that severely retarded children may benefit from some things that museums have to offer. However, their teachers chose to take them to an informational movie being screened in the Castle, and a few exhibits that rely mostly on written text. Why on earth would any good teacher take these kids to exhibits that, more than likely, they couldn’t possibly comprehend? Surely, there are more appropriate things for them to visit. Kids who can’t read–and probably will never be able to read–won’t get a damned thing out of the walls filled with text. They could, though, enjoy some of the more visually-oriented exhibits in the other museums. How about Natural History, where they can see the elephant, or touch a live tarantula? Or Air and Space, where they could see the lunar landing craft? I have a sneaking suspicion that this tour group was from somewhere far away and that the teachers really just wanted to see the place for themselves. “Screw the kids, let’s get ourselves a free weekend in Washington.” Ask a Baltimorean; it’s not really that exciting.

Interjection #1: When, oh when, will shoe fashions become normal again? Whoever invented “Crocs” should be shot at dawn, preferably with small bullets that don’t kill immediately but cause a lot of pain. I don’t care how Goddamned comfortable they are, they look foolish. Worse are mandals. (Man Sandals, that is.) Most men have ugly feet. No matter how nice the Theta Delt dude’s legs were, I can pretty much guarantee that I don’t want to see his feet. Guys have calluses and hairy toes. Also, leather mandals produce stank. Just wear Chucks, damnit.

Then came the Greek Chorus of middle-aged ladies. These were clearly nice respectable middle-class ladies from somewhere in the upper South; I’m guessing somewhere in Southwestern Virginia, based on accents. Somehow, this stratus of womanhood has forgotten itself. These are probably the women who were brought up to believe that no lady goes shopping in downtown Richmond without a hat and gloves, but in the last thirty years, they’ve transmogrified into weird beings who can’t leave the house unless they’re wearing poofy tracksuits and baseball caps. Miss Fluvanna County of 1958 has given up her crinolines for a sequinned nylon jacket. Weep, Virginia!

Beyond the be-sequinned jackets, these women favor T-shirts (I’m not sure that my grandmother knew what a T-shirt was) with cats on them. Let me point out at this time that I am a cat person. I am a creepy cat person. I like cats a LOT more than I like people. When my grandmother died, I was upset for a few hours. When my cat died, I didn’t eat for five days and seriously considered Dran-O as a good cocktail option. A stray kitten arouses every ounce of gushing paternal instinct I possess; a stray child makes me want to stomp on the Buick’s accelerator pedal. Never, but never, will I understand the T-shirts with cats on them. I suspect that these women do not actually like cats, but want to be thought of as cutesy and tender. If they really liked cats, they’d look like me; they’d wear a perfectly normal outfit that is covered in cat hair.

Interjection #2: Big scary white trash guys from western Pennsylvania with full-sleeve tats are hot. So are beautiful women who are dating hopelessly nerdy men.

Probably the best show of the day involved me directly. Remember, if you will, that I was stationed in the Castle as part of an event. I didn’t really have to do anything, but I had to remain at my post with a “treasure chest” full of coded scrolls and little plastic “gold” coins. Apparently, this is a concept that is lost in translation to a good number of cultures, especially cultures that are not used to the full breadth of weirdness that can occur in the United States. Wait, though, I’ll get around to that in a minute or two. First, here’s my take on the day, and what the varied tourists must have thought:

German men: “Dieses Mann unmoglich ist. Warum er arbeitet nicht? Aber, er hat schoene Schuhe.”
German women: “Ich will er ficke.” (I wish.)
Theta Delt dude: “Shit, I wonder if that dude’s into me?” (I wish.)
Group of retarded kids: “Where fuzzy bunny?”
Retarded kids’ teachers: “Can’t believe we got the county to pay for this trip. Once we get all these droolers locked down we can party in DC! Woohoo!”
Ladies from Roanoke: “I wonder what that nice boy in the William and Mary shirt is doin’? He’s just been sittin there an sittin there. I jus know he’s pinin away for someone. Don’t you all think so? I wonder who his people are. They should be lookin after him an not lettin him sit around in a awful drafty ol buildin like this. “
Dude from Western Pennsylvania: “Fuck, I need me a beer.”
Confused Filipino Family: ....

.....oh, wait! This is the best part. As I sat with my treasure chest and “gold” coins and scrolls, a rather large Filipino family approached. Sadly, we had a bit of a language barrier. Their English was awful, but it was considerably better than my Spanish, and while I do know enough Spanish to ask for basic food and plumbing, I don’t know a damned word of Tagalog. This family, which consisted of harried-looking parents, many children, and a grandmother who looked thoroughly annoyed, walked up to me and clustered around the table where I had been happily reading and drinking Washington-priced coffee.

“When, ah, show start?” Oh, I think. He wants to know when the movie starts. (In the Castle, there’s an orientation film that shows you all about the wonders of the Smithsonian.)
“You can go in anytime. Right there!”
“No movie. You, when you show?” (The last time anyone said this kind of thing to me, it was a drunk Marine, and the answer was “Now, right now!” But this was not a drunk Marine, and therefore this would not be an appropriate answer.)
“No, I’m not part of the Smithsonian. I’m part of a treasure hunt.”
“(blank silence)”
“(realizing that Filipino Dad has no idea what I mean) I don’t work here! There (pointing) is the movie.”
“But you have, ah... (points to prop treasure chest)”
At this point, the kids are getting interested. They start to chatter in a language I don’t even recognize, and point to the “gold” coins. And then one of the kids says, excitedly:
“Pirate of Carribean!!!”
Oh, sweet Jesus. Disney has infected the entire WORLD. And now this poor group of Filipino tourists thinks that I’m not only a Smithsonian employee, but a Disney actor as well. In the long run, I probably ended up sounding way too patronizing, but somehow managed to explain that I was not really an exhibit. I also gave the kids a plastic “gold” coin each and, in a flurry of diplomacy, mustered enough Spanish to say “Bienvenido a Washington!”

That is probably the only time in recorded history that, in any language at all, a Baltimorean has ever uttered those words.

2008-07-29T01:04:00.002-04:00

As you all know, I'm forever coming up with some harebrained scheme to get myself a few extra dollars. Mow lawns, take in washing, and what-have-you. This time, I think I might have something.

I'm going to open a school. No, not a real one; I already teach English for a living (more or less) and between the City and the Catholic Church I figure that actual education here is pretty well wrapped up.

I am going to open Theodosia Gibbs' School of How to Be Baltimorean.

(I am naming this for my great-grandmother, who was less than beautiful, but who lived in an imposing house on Mount Royal Avenue and who was nothing if she was not incessantly proper.)

We have way too many people moving in to this city who are not from here. I do sort of mind that they're not from here. If they're Richmonders or from some other and equally respectable part of Virginia or Maryland, that's one thing, but all too often we are plagued with newcomers who are from someplace that Theodosia herself would certainly have called "unmoglich," which technically means "impossible" but in her view meant "impossible for me to accept or even possibly acknowledge."

Our first course will be a lexicon of Baltimorean speech. It is quite common for newcomers to ape our pronunciation. Lesson #1: You probably can't say it the way we do, so quit trying. Lesson #2: If you still insist, we'll teach you. Repeat after me. I will send tapes home so that you can practice saying things like PO-lice, HanOVER street, Droodle Park, and Ass-Kwith street without sounding idiotic. You will also need to learn such expressions as "carfare," "make market," "the Viaduct" and "down the ocean."

The second, and of course more labor-intensive course of study will focus on Baltimoreanism In The Home. This will be a several-week course, as various topics are rather complex:
101: Housekeeping. Students will learn the vital importance of silver. While care of the silver will be studied, students will focus primarily on recognition of which patterns are known as "that's a good one" and which are known as "they just don't make silver the way they used to." China will also be addressed. One day will be set aside for laundry studies: how to launder by hand (students must provide own glass washboard for good linens) including use of bluing and Fels-Naptha. One day will also address housecleaning in full Prussian mode; however, as this is something that only occurs twice annually, it will not be included on the final examination.

102: Linens and How To Use Them. Second only to the sacred combination of Good Silver and Good China is the knowledge of Good Linens. Students will be instructed in the importance of damask and lace (a refresher lesson on hand-laundering these will be included). Addtionally, correct lengths of tablecloths for specific functions, napkin size and folding, and monogramming will be covered.

103: Cheapness At Home. How to be a good Thrifty Baltimorean. Budgets for the household--how to live on tuna when needed while still throwing lovely dinner parties.

104: Survival of Summer in Baltimore. Students will learn how to change drapes and rugs for the seasons, how to survive without air-conditioning, and the appropriate booze to serve at summer functions. Maps to Rehoboth and the mountain resorts will also be provided.

Intermediate Courses
201: The Guest List. Students will differentiate between First Society, Second Society, Third Society and People Whom You Have Met in a Bar and Banged, but Whom Are Not Acceptable At A Party. Use of the Blue Book will be covered.

202: Shopping and its finer points. This course is a "field trip" course; students will venture to the various City Markets, learning the best and worst points of each, and will learn how to discern between vendors and how to bargain for prices. Small shops will also be covered, as well as understanding of the now-lost department stores. It is to be understood that there are no longer any department stores of repute in this or any American city.

203: Outdoors in Baltimore. In this course, students will learn how to clean white marble steps, how to plant, spot and care for prize roses, and how to eliminate rats. An extension course will be offered to address garden parties and protocol thereof.

204: Gossip in Baltimore. How NOT to become a victim; how to be a graceful victim, and how to use gossip to your advantage. Correct use of the underhanded barb and the backhanded compliment will be stressed. Students will learn how to appear as a Lovely Person while surreptitiously destroying reputations.

205: Stationery Is Your Friend. Students will learn how to find Down's Stationers, socially acceptable methods of addressing correspondence, how to form invitations, and how to use calling cards.

Advanced Courses

301: The Season. Students will learn the major social events and how to either worm their way into them or avoid them. They will also learn to differentiate between pseudo-social charity events and actual parties of note. Social calendar management will be encouraged, as well as the ability to jockey for one's own "Day" during the Season. Brief coverage of "the Little Season" will be included with a study of horse racing.

302: The Blue Book and the Social Register. The difference between the two, how to be included or excluded, and how these differ from other cities' equivalents. This course will include in-depth examination of addresses and how to respond to them--what is and is not a good address, as well as delineations between such things as "what a lovely place to live," "such a nice neighborhood, my grandparents lived there," "this is still a good address even if there is a crack house on the block," "this was once a good address but is not now," "NO ONE lives there," "this is an impossible address even if the houses cost two million," and "is that in Baltimore?"

303: The Dinner Party. As this is the most important thing that a Baltimorean can possibly do, the Dinner Party course is the most intensive. Students will learn: Whom to invite and how to do so, correct menu planning, setting the table correctly, where to seat guests according to social importance, before- and after-dinner amusements, and how to keep costs down.

304: Drinking. Important bar etiquette for a variety of establishments, and instruction on important drinks at home. Further instruction will include How to Be a Polite/Annoying Drunk and How to Deal With Inebriates at Your Home.

We hope that you, as a prospective new Citizen of the Maryland Metropolis, will consider a course of study at Theodosia Gibbs' School of How to be Baltimorean. While we really don't want newcomers, we do want you to fit in, even if we do not make you feel welcome at all. Graduates of the School will receive one ticket to the Opera, last year's copy of the Blue Book, a monthly pass for city car lines, and a one-way train ticket to somewhere else.

2008-06-26T02:01:00.002-04:00

This is going to be a very happy post. I know this, because I'm playing a very happy little record. My Grandfather's little portable Victrola Model 50 is now blatting out "Where the Lanterns Glow." I love this song. It has no meaning whatsoever; it makes no effort for greater thought, nor does it ask the listener to contemplate his worldview.

I also love this song because it was one of Grandad's favorites too. It was "der Allerletzte" when he was seventeen, or so. Just about the time that he was given this little record player that I have now. Every time that I wind this Victrola, I wonder about the earlier D. Gibbs -- I'm pretty sure that he took this thing up to Carlin's Park, and out to Braddock Heights and Pen Mar.

In June, it gets right hot in Baltimore. You know, I was going to devote this entry to summer food, but now that I'm listening to Donald Gibbs' portable Victrola, I'm more interested in the ways that one might escape city heat.

Did you all know that the first purpose of the City's streetcar system was to get everyone to Druid Hill Park? To this day, car line #1 connects the center City with Druid Hill.

When you live in a rowhouse city, it is important to have beautiful green spaces. (See, how modern I am! "Green Spaces," indeed.)

In fact, Baltimore boasts one of the most beautiful Park plans of all American cities. We have--as I believe it is called-- The Necklace of Green around Baltimore's Crown.

That, in effect, is: Patterson Park, connected by Broadway to Clifton Park, which connects via the Alameda to 33rd Street Boulevard, to Wyman Park, to Druid Hill, then down Gwynns Falls Parkway through Leakin Park and southerly to Carroll Park. Now, that I'm thinking about taking some of my friends for a picnic lunch in one of our city's beautiful parks, I can hear my Grandfather's voice ringing clear over his own Victrola:

"Aw, sweet Jesus!!! What're you carryin' on about THAT shit for? Thought I trained you right. Ladies don't LIKE anything they have to think about too much. Fer Chrissakes get two car tickets and take her down to Bay Shore. There's a big dance hall! If you can't get em there you can't get em anywhere!"

When I left the City to go to college, my father--a very polite and proper, but very boring--gentleman, instructed me in the ways of our family's College. He was a bit annoyed by the idea, but he also handed over the banged-up hip flask that his father had taken to Williamsburg.

No one will ever accuse Donald Gibbs of propriety. He was a lot of fun, though. From what I've heard, the nice ladies -- perhaps some who weren't so nice-- of Proper Baltimore in the mid '20s would agree.

When he gave the Victrola to me, Grandad had already taught me how to dance. My father was far too dreary for such things. When my father should have been teaching me how to shave, my grandfather already had, and was busily teaching me how to take shots of rye whiskey, and to make a good Maryland julep.

Thus--no matter what happens, no matter what horrid thing might befall--in my heart, I will always hear my grandfather telling my father

"Sweet Jesus, John--shut up and have a good time won't you?"

2008-06-19T01:07:00.002-04:00

Certain parties who shall remain nameless, but who live in the North side of Richmond, have unfailingly reminded me that I do have a blog, and that I am supposed to be maintaining it. Oh, FINE. I have no excuse. I'm not really DOING anything right now, right?
Exactly. I'm not doing much of anything. Damnit, when you're a teacher, isn't that supposed to be one of the perks? A couple of months' worth of doing absolutely nothing?
I'm sort of doing something. I'm listening to Radio Dismuke, an online sort of thing that plays all of the '20s and '30s stuff I love. Tonight, they're evidently channeling my brainwaves, because they're playing loads of German stuff.
I'll just start with saying that this was, overall, a pretty damned good year. My kids were great. Annoying, occasionally, but that's the job of the teenager. After the horror that was last year at Parkville, my return to Parkville was the teacher equivalent of coming back stateside after a tour in the desert. I don't intend to demean our soldiers with that statement, of course--just that, Parkville was MY version of the worst that one could face on the job.
Then again: as the year faded, I fielded a couple of telephone calls from some of my old Parkville students. Take this, Evil Department Head Girl! These kids still felt that they had learned something from my class, had enjoyed it, and wanted me back. A couple of them wanted some advice on projects. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you Cecil County trash.
*bleep* Rant concluded.
This week, our first out o' skool, has been more productive than it is usually. I am reorganizing the china and silver. I am also reorganizing the kitchen--which has never been known for its organization, in any case.
I also have a leg up on my canning for the summer. Last week, we said goodbye to one of our Math teachers. Anne has been a great addition to Carver; she arrived during my unfortunate year away. She is brilliant AND is an excellent teacher--the two do not always go hand-in-hand. So, at the send-off party, we had watermelons--well, it IS summer! I snagged all of the rinds and have made watermelon rind pickle. I can't wait until the Hanover tomatoes come into season down home. I'll never forget the time that I hauled three big brown bags of them up to Baltimore on the train. The conductor gave me a right funny look until I explained that these were HANOVER tomatoes. He was surely a Richmonder, because he laughed and said "You sure need all those you can get!" (I was polite and handed over six of them.)
Tomorrow's missions: Mulch roses, finish papering trunk room, begin painting of outside trim. Oh, fart. I'd much rather catch the matinee at the Byrd!

2008-05-02T00:21:00.002-04:00

As all of you know, I am not a particularly original person. I tend to draw inspiration for these musings (oh, what a lovely Victorian-era word) from someone else's idea.
Further, as you all also know, I am not an especially environmentally-conscious person. The destruction of West Virginia mountainsides bothers me not in the least, as long as the coal produced keeps the industries of Baltimore and Richmond perking along happily and thereby increasing the value of my stockholdings in said industries. (I have, by the way, invested heavily in coal concerns lately. I figure that the oil-based economy is already on its way downhill.)
In my own way, though, I'm rather "green." (Conveniently, it's also my favorite color.) When L. over at Capital City Desk posted her Earth Day blog, I was appalled by the pie chart that she had found showing the distribution of...well, stuff in landfills.
It seems that a vast majority of the crap we throw away is stuff that can be recycled. When I think about my own kitchen trash can, I am immediately appalled.
There is a vast array of crap that I discard that really shouldn't even be there at all.
I have on my shelf of cookbooks a lovely tome published by none other than the sainted Thalhimer Brothers department store in 1932. While the recipes are fairly bland, some of the household hints are pretty good. Printed at the height of the Depression, this cookbook was evidently geared towards women who had previously had servants to do all of the work, thought only of the kitchen as that weird room they'd never seen, and were now forced to do all of this on their own. Most of the recipes include the direction "Light the gas stove." Umm, yeah, if you don't do that, the food doesn't cook. But--in 1932, some of the previously-privileged ladies might not have known that.
Among its helpful hints is a treatise on garbage. One of its suggestions is this terribly ingenuous contraption--a trash can that is buried in the back of one's yard and has a lid operated by a foot-pedal. Gets the trash out of the house, keeps it sealed and away from rats--so modern! I've actually seen one of these things in action, up in Bridgeport, Conn. It's great, but: it's tiny. It has a capacity of about two gallons. And it was meant to hold a week's worth of garbage.
In 1932, we were busily polluting the atmosphere with coal smoke and raw chemical waste, but at the same time, families were only producing two gallons of garbage per week. In 2008, as a single man, I fill a 20 gallon trash can at least once per week. What's wrong with this picture?
What's wrong is that we have created a throwaway culture. In 1932, we didn't buy Coca-Cola in two-litre plastic bottles. We either got it at a soda fountain, or bought it in glass bottles that were returned and reused. Food didn't come in plastic containers; it came fresh from markets and was prepared within a day or two of purchase. New household items didn't come wrapped in acres of shrinkwrap or plastic boxing. If things were wrapped at all, they were wrapped in paper or cardboard, both at least biodegradable.
I have always prided myself in my fairly traditional ways; I do still buy food at the markets and use fresh, rather than prepackaged, food. I make gallons of iced tea rather than buy dozens of canned sodas, and I don't really use much of anything that comes in blister packs. Yet, I manage to produce a huge can's worth of trash.
Then, I consider some of the sideline effects. Why do I use a can of spray starch? Because using real starch in an automatic washer is a pain in the ass. Why do I use an automatic washer, instead of a washboard or a wringer washer? Because it's a pain in the ass, and I don't have that much time on my hands. How did people do it? Oh, yes, they had domestic help. Why are there so many people wandering the streets of Baltimore without work? Oh, yes. They represent the class of people who were once employed as domestic servants...but aren't now because no one can afford them... so they're unemployed... so we now buy spray starch...so we dump aerosol into the atmosphere and the spent cans into the ground...
Just a bit more to consider, as I prepare for tomorrow's classes. I know that in my first-period class, I will hear an endless crinkle of officially-forbidden plastic bags, as my kids consume their "breakfast" of cheese curls and potato chips from plastic bags and a nourishing Pepsi. Go and grab an empty Utz bag, squeeze it for about five minutes, and you will hear the sound of my morning classes. My students are poisoning the environment. Clearly, though, I am as well, given the amount of trash that I produce. Now...cheese curls and Pepsi for breakfast? Well, that's the subject of another rant.

2008-03-27T00:28:00.002-04:00

After a lovely weekend spent in the only place that I actually like, I was somewhat taken aback to see an article in that city's paper, today. According to the Times-Dispatch, "our downtown is notoriously pedestrian-unfriendly."

This is news to me, because as long as I've been alive, I've enjoyed walking around downtown Richmond. As a matter of fact, I spent most of the weekend's daytime hours by myself, just walking around the city. Generally, when I think of places that are "pedestrian-unfriendly" I think of those endless suburbs that now surround every city, where there are no sidewalks. Why would anyone WALK anywhere? OMG, you could like serial get blisters, and it's like HOT!!! This is emphatically not true in downtown Richmond where, while I *did* get blisters from walking in new shoes and it *does* get hot, there are sidewalks and a friendly, non-threatening street grid pattern. There are also pretty buildings to see.

Admittedly, there aren't as many interesting little shops downtown as there were years ago, and the two great department stores are closed. One--my former employer--has been torn down. (I needed about six gin and tonics to recover from that unpleasant sight.) Yet, I don't understand the idea that downtown is unfriendly to pedestrians. If anything, it's unfriendly to drivers; the network of one-way streets tends to confuse people, and finding a parking place isn't always easy.

Having just made that statement, I intend to refute it: A)finding a parking place is really easy now that the big stores are gone. There's nobody down there anymore, so parking is plentiful, and even when they WERE there, we have plenty of parking decks--notably, a really cool '30s parking deck with bas-reliefs of wheels and wing-ed car radiators. Richmond loves bas-relief. B)One-way streets are idiotically simple. When you have a basic grid pattern of streets, as Richmond does, the one-ways alternate. It's not rocket science, folks: If you want to go THAT way but the street goes THIS way, simply go around the block, PARK, and walk to the store. Sheesh.

It does break my heart to see downtown so deserted, but then I took great delight when a couple of years ago one of my Baltimore friends visited Richmond. He'd never seen the Queen of the James. After I'd spent a couple of hours pointing out the highlights of our faded downtown, I took him to see Cary street. Even the ungodly Washington paper has called it the "mile of style." My friend took one look at the fashionable shops and restaurants all clustered at the feet of the Byrd Theatre and said "Downtown Richmond isn't dead. It just moved two miles west."

2008-03-18T23:55:00.002-04:00

Today, while we were contemplating another atrocity in the world of high school--a big fight broke out in which one student ripped a locker door off and beat another student with it--my colleagues and I discussed the perpetually bizarre world that is children's television.
While I loathe the live stage and favor the Silver Screen, where people don't clomp around self-importantly and where everyone is by necessity hot, I question the ability of those behind the camera (or really, those who pay for the camera) to really have any idea of what children want.
As a child, I was evidently already behind the times. I was born in late 1969--I made it into the Soaring Sixties by one month. Nonetheless, my brain must have come into being in about 1904 and sat around in a storage box somewhere. When all of the kids my age were peeing themselves over Sesame Street (admittedly, in 1973 most of us were peeing ourselves occasionally, anyhow) I had no use for it. The puppets didn't LOOK like anything; they were a little smart-assy for me even then, and they tried to teach me things that I already knew. I could count, I knew letters of the alphabet, and despite their best Smiley Face Generation efforts, I already knew when I did or did not hate someone. My dislike of Sesame Street has carried forth and is now manifest in my vision of art. I like art that involves flowers and naked people, preferably all in one painting, and I like them to actually LOOK like flowers and naked people and not like morning-after-puke on canvas. A typical conversation between me and an artsy friend:

Dan: This is idiotic. Please tell me that the Baltimore Museum didn't seriously PAY for this.
Artsy Friend: This is very significant, even if you don't like it. It has color harmonies.
D: It can have the Spanish Crown Jewels for all I care. It looks like cat puke. I know this because my cat puked on the parlor rug this morning and it's remarkably similar.
AF: You just don't understand art.
D: Evidently not, if art is cat puke. So, what about that? It's a piece of roofing copper that someone took a leak on.
AF: I feel sorry for you, you just don't have an open mind.
D: I feel sorry for you, because you can't read. That's exactly what it is. Some asshole peed on a sheet of roofing copper. The little sign SAYS that's what it is.
AF: Not all art has to be flowers and naked people.
D: It does if my tax dollars are paying for it.
AF: I'm just sorry you don't understand it.
D: I'm sorry that you have translated piss into art. Wait, here, I'm going to make art!!! (hocks a loogie into a Taco Bell napkin) Voila! Je suis artiste!!!
AF: That's just disgusting.
D: Whereas pissing on something is the ultimate form of self expression.
....etc., ad nauseam.

So, yeah, I didn't exactly dig Sesame Street. I did like Captain Kangaroo. It was unbearably cute, but then I was four, for Christ's sake. I liked the silly moose and the silent but irascible bunny. I'm kind of sad that I don't really remember when Captain Kangaroo stopped existing, either for me or for everyone. He just sort of faded out of my existence.

And of course every city had local kids' shows; I loved Captain Chesapeake and his friends Mondy the Sea Monster and Andro Claws the Lion. Imagine my surprise when a few years later I started getting interested in '20s music and... wait, that record is Captain Chesapeake's theme song!!! He'd used one of the minor hits of '23, "Stumbling," for his show.

If my artsy friend feels sorry for me that I don't appreciate artistically applied piss, I feel sorry for the kids of the present that they don't get to see anything as guileless as the Captains. They're either fed with streams of politically-correct oog, or things that are even more mindless than the things I saw nearly forty years ago. One of the freakiest shows must be "Boombah," in which every one of the amorphous blobs has a name that rhymes with "Boombah." It's the visual equivalent of several tabs of acid and one too many Xanax.

The two kids' shows that I must admit to liking are "Thomas the Tank Engine" and "Bob the Builder." As a tiny little Baltimorean I loved everything that involved railroads. My parents took me on train trips to nearby Washington and to visit relatives in the South and the Midwest. Most of these left from the Pennsylvania station, but Dad also made sure that I saw the ancient Camden Station and Mount Royal station, and took me to watch the freight yards of the mighty B&O, Pennsylvania and Western Maryland lines. I've always been a frustrated construction worker, too, and still think it's really cool to watch new buildings going up--especially when they're accompanied by frantic headlines: "Baltimore's New World Trade Center--Our City's Newest Skyscraper--Will Be World's Tallest Five-Sided Building!" (If you can't be the best, at least be weird.) Thomas and Bob appeal to my nostalgic and practical sensibilities.

But then, there are the Teletubbies. I think that they're probably passe now, with the drooler set. I wanted to hate them; God knows I wanted to hate them. Yet there's something entrancing about that horrid show. The sun with a live baby's face...the vacuum cleaner that takes care of the Teletubbies...the ten-foot tall live rabbits... No, it has nothing to do with Tinky Winky. He isn't gay because he isn't even real. If he were, he surely looks nothing like my ideal man. I prefer dudes who aren't pear-shaped and who don't carry purses, much less who have a TV in their abs.

You know what's freaky, though? When you're surfing daytime TV, you flip across the Teletubbies, and you laugh and feel all superior, reminding yourself of Captain Kangaroo, or "Kukla, Fran and Ollie." Then you realize that twenty minutes have elapsed and you're still glued to the fargin' Teletubbies.

2008-02-15T04:06:00.002-03:00

Cheers! to St. Valentine; he's managed to get the entire world entranced with an idea that has nothing to do with much of anything on a religious bent at all.

I hate to be the one to destroy illusions--I'm rather fond of them myself--but I wonder how many people celebrate Valentine's Day, who have no idea of the Saint who started the business? I've noticed that fundamentalist "Christian" girls and boys are quite happy to send flowers and chocolates on the 14th of February. BAD! BAD! You're going to hell, you little shits, because.... THIS IS A CATHOLIC HOLIDAY!!!

Oh, now, really, I won't be TOO awful about it. Unlike our fundamentalist friends, I welcome anybody who'd like to celebrate the feast days of our holy Saints. I'll be delighted to show our great Cathedral to all of you, here in Baltimore; and my Parish church as well. Even so: The Prots spend an awful lot of time informing us about our path to Hell, which involves our belief in saints--yet, when it comes to Valentine's Day-- there they are, sending flowers. Dumbasses.

The great equalizer, on my planet, comes in the form of chocolate. There is only one place I know in which all colors, races and creeds can meet happily ,and that is the Lexington Market.

Have you never been to the Market? Well, then, you've never been to Baltimore, really. I always make a point of this to those who visit me here. The Market is the essence of the City herself, and if you don't like it, you don't like Baltimore. If you've not seen it, you've not seen the City.

Now, usually, I'd spend this time to tell you about the wonderful bakery that you can get, or the availability of esoteric fish, or the sandwiches we all love--but, this is Valentine's day, and we want nothing but sweets.

This is the time of Rheb's candies. If you do not know Rheb's, you are not, and can never pretend to be, a Baltimorean. I've heard far too many idiots who've tried to fake our accent, and even more who have attempted to cook in our way. Can you imagine, trying to tell us that the nice people at Faidley's don't make a real crabcake?

We still have a local confectioner. Louis Rheb u. Familie do it up right. I, personally, am obsessed with Rheb's orange creams. They are WAY better than sex. The coconut kisses are a little better than sex, but not so much as the orange creams.

Now, I am not as mean as I would like for people to believe. I am easily swayed by friendly offerings. A couple of my students brought me an offering in the form of cake... which is always good, but...

Orange creams, people. Bring them. Now.

2007-12-20T02:26:00.000-03:00

The Great Christmas Elephant is beeping frantically as it backs up, preparing to sit on my face. The Christmas Elephant does not care that I have not finished shopping. It does not know, or understand, that I have not had time to go downtown at all; it is blind to the idea that I've been so dreadfully busy that I haven't even consulted my Rheb's Candy lists to see who has died, or whose taste has changed. It marches on oblivious.

I am trying to throw a monkey wrench into the Christmas Elephant's stride. I have decided that this year, though I actually have enough in the way of liquid assets to really go shopping, I am going to--once again--make all of the Christmas presents.

This, in itself, presents another problem. While I certainly haven't the time to go downtown or--God forbid--the suburban malls, I haven't really the time either to fart around the house in the making of presents. Yes, X is supposed to get a set of pillowcases with her initials embroidered into a spray of roses. Yes, Y is supposed to get a postcard of his hometown framed in dried roses from my garden. Christmas Elephant, you fail to provide the time needed for these things! And, naturally, on top of the "special" things, I've committed myself to giving the gift of comestibles.

I figure that edible presents are among the best. Everyone likes candy, don't they? Cookies are always nice, and a couple of jars of homemade preserves and relishes imply that I took special time to prepare them Just For You. Under normal circumstances, I didn't really--I put up gallons of these things every year--but this year, I'm refusing to pull a jar of pickles out of the basement. No, you little fartlings, you're all getting something that I've especially preserved and packed and baked and cured for you. And you'd better bloody well like it, too, because I've got to do all of it in the next five days and either deliver it or get it to the post office.

Why? Because I like you! And, as one of my long-suffering friends pointed out, I could earn a million a year and I'd still do my own pickling and canning and baking. I'm just that much of a skinflint, and besides, I'd rather burn in hell than let my friends eat questionable pickle relish that didn't involve a good Southern Maryland cucumber.

2007-12-03T02:52:00.000-03:00

Friend B is a native--one of the few--of Washington, DC. Once upon a time, people really did come from that city; they spent their lives there and probably had a nice time in what was then a pretty and impressive, though not very big, and rather sleepy Southern city. It was pestilent, of course. The Potomac is still more or less tidal, there; and it tends to develop backwashes that are smelly at best and bacteria-laden at worst. Even so, Washington was once a nice city. It had very little to do, though, with most of Maryland--the state that surrounds it--and even less to do with Virginia to the South. When B. was "comin' up," as we say, in the '50s, Washington had just started to develop suburban sprawl. So, no surprise, really, that he wasn't much aware of the rest of Maryland--except for the motor trips and antiquing ventures that his mother insisted upon. This led him, as a child, up through the hinterlands that are Maryland's Western counties.

Although Washington's sprawl has encroached upon once-beautiful Frederick and Baltimore's has inundated the rather less-scenic Carroll, the Western counties are still pretty much...umm...how to put this politely? Oh, I can't. They're buttfuckEgypt. The countryside is lovely, though, and some of the towns are most picturesque. When, today, B. and I decided to vacate the city for the afternoon, the quaint charms of Western Maryland (and adjoining parts of Pennsylvania) called. Taneytown, Emmitsburg, and such--little towns whose days have passed, but for pretty old houses and a pace of life that time itself has forgotten.

Now, it seems that when B. and the family cruised through Western Maryland in the Mercury station wagon in search of the detritus of former eras, he and his brothers were amused by the name of the river that flows through Frederick County. The Monocacy is a pretty, unnavigable, and slow river. Its name must have seemed quite odd to city children (I'll try to refrain from pointing out that "Potomac" is also an Indian name...oops, just did...) and so, whenever they traversed the Monocacy--which one inevitably does several times when travelling around Frederick--they made up an "Indian chant." As they all grew up, this became a personal totem, as well. If you forget to do the Indian chant, you won't find good crap at the antique shops and flea markets.

B. is not as conversant with the northern sections of Frederick and Carroll as am I; so evidently did not remember that he'd cross the Monocacy, and forgot about the chant. He didn't find anything cool whatsoever. I scored; though-- a groovy '20s vacuum for $15, a bound set of "Scribner's Radio Music Library," an ice-cream freezer (beware: all of you will be conscripted to help operate the thing at the beach next year), and various other crap.

Despite my few finds, I was mostly appalled by the absolute garbage available in antique shops these days. Some of the places we scoured were those I remembered from my high-school days as troves of fairly good-quality items, interesting ephemera, and amusing crap. Now, they're just full of... CRAP.

I think that Antiques Roadshow and ebay have joined forces to decimate the old methods of antiquing, as surely as the malls killed the downtown department stores. Easily nine-tenths of what I saw today was best described as landfill. The shops where, twenty years ago, I saw Dresden porcelain, good crystal, good silver, and significant furniture now harbor such ungodly things as '80s lunchboxes, Coca-Cola "collectibles" all of six years old, those awful hoopskirted dolls made to hide a roll of toilet paper, and those unchristly glass candy dishes shaped like a brooding chicken. LOTS of them.

I'm unsure, though, about the real horror here: is it that this hangover-puke of our culture is flooding the antique shops? Or, that somebody actually bought this shit when it was new?
Those tacky "snack sets" with coffee cups and plates decorated in icky peeling decals... worse, that somebody might buy them now, when they could at least be considered kitschy and funny, or that somebody actually parted with hard-earned money to buy them fifty years ago? Then, there's the category of Just Plain Disturbing. B. called my attention to the cookie jar/Urn of Unholy Sacrifice shaped like the head of an elf. Its Mona-Lisa smile and almond eyes fix you with eerie certainty. Its jaunty orange ceramic cap promises madness. It is... a vision of hell in your kitchen. I want it. But: a) I already have two cookie jars, b) the cats would probably break it, and c)the $55 price tag was just ludicrous.

Just to offset the GLAH produced by most of the day's finds, though, were two things: A big scrapbook assembled by a Gettysburg College co-ed, that featured everything from her high school graduation programme and her Gettysburg acceptance letter through her sorority bids and dance invitations right up to her Gettysburg College graduation programme. Damn. I wish I'd done that at W&M.

Also: for a mere $3000.00, a dime-operated mechanical horse. "Ride SANDY! 10c. " I remember SANDY. He stood outside the dimestore in Frederick. I'm pretty sure this was the same one, though I can't bet on it as I'm sure there were hundreds of the things. By the time I knew the one in Frederick, I was far too old to ride a ten-cent mechanical horse in front of a dime store, but I could tell that there was something sweet and innocent and happy about such a thing. He still had his original paint and a nice leather saddle. There aren't any dime stores left, and even if there were, they wouldn't have "Sandy" or his ilk. They're just lawsuits waiting to happen. But isn't it nice to remember when happiness was nothing more complicated than a ten-cent horse ride and a chocolate soda at Woolworth's in drowsy old Frederick, Maryland?

2007-10-22T02:48:00.000-03:00

As the school year progresses, I find it harder to stop for bloggin'. Even so, my trip from der Paulusstrasse over towards CarVoHi is rather different now. Can it be that tired and dogged old Baltimore is changing? Well, it must, after all. Somehow, these once lovely neighborhoods turned into filth and horror--can they now turn around?

It seems that they can, if ever so slowly. If the blocks right around Carver High are still crumbling, some of the blocks between my house and the school are coming back.

Wait. Hold that thought. '80s people, you'll understand this-- REWIND. The blocks around Carver aren't ALL crumbling. Some of them are awful--boarded up, and rotting. But then, some of them are well-kept, with pretty impatiens and chrysanthemums in pots out front. See, there's Baltimore for you; just when you think the damned city is dead and gone, a clean-swept porch with pots full of beautiful flowers jumps up to tell you that you're wrong.

The drive to school is mostly different because of the new "improvements" on Fulton Avenue. Mind you, those who designed Fulton Avenue 150 years ago would be somewhat taken aback; but anybody who knows the Baltimore of the last fifty years will be charmed by the "new" changes. This big, wide boulevard was intended to have a wide median full of pretty trees and flowers. They've been gone for half a century, but they're coming back now!

I'm not sure what to make of all this. I have heard many voices in the world of Balto-Education decry the expenditure: shouldn't the city spend its money in the schools? In this case, I can't agree. Money spent on the beautification of the city--especially in run-down neighborhoods--is well spent. This is the philosophy that gave us Druid Hill Park in the first place; the ideals that brought Central Park to New York and Fairmount Park to Philadelphia. (By the way, Druid Hill ranks with those two as one of the first serious city parks in the nation.)
If we can make our city a more beautiful place to live, the horrors of poverty and crime will.... well, they'll not be negated, but they can be lessened. This was the train of thought behind the park movement of the nineteenth century. Did it work? Not entirely, but it certainly wasn't a bad idea. Surely, a lot of people still cherish memories of Druid Hill Park. I know that I do. I know that many of my students would benefit immensely from time spent in that beautiful Park.
Mind you all, too: I always have a sideline in mind. I'm now thinking---we are after all a vocational and technical school! Hmm-- maybe we could get Carver kids to take care of the City's parks! What a great double-edged sword! our kids could train in a profitable trade, and the City could reap the benefits as well...
And, just maybe, if I'm really nice to the carpentry teacher, the lovely old Music Pavilion could be rebuilt as well.

2007-09-14T00:08:00.000-04:00

In the event that you haven't heard by now, I'm back at good old Carver High. My experiment with Baltimore County proved to be less than fruitful. While I can deal with fifteen-year-old assholes, fifty-year-old assholes are something else. One is supposed to grow out of that. I had met with adversity in the workplace before, but never had I encountered such open and direct hostility as I did at Parkville High School. In any case, I've moved on--or, more appropriately, as I always do--backwards, where I generally belong.

In the wake of the sixth anniversary of 9/11, I've been thinking about the idea of "the loss of innocence." This is rather apt as well; it's a concept that the city's newly-written 11th grade curriculum includes as a unit focus. Newly written, I wish to point out, by my friends and esteemed colleagues Tonya (TLust) and Hassan (Big KC).

For English majors, the concept of the loss of innocence is right up there with using electric lights. It has become such a standard of literary genres that it is frequently ignored. Yet, it is a mainstay of our culture. Isn't there some time in all of our lives at which the scales fall from our eyes, when we realize that there is no Santa Claus (despite Maureen O'Hara's best efforts) and that there were really about sixteen different dogs who played Lassie? Sure, we all have a loss of innocence.

Over the last ninety-odd years, our collective innocence as citizens of the United States has been bashed to pieces over and over again. We managed to hold onto shreds of it, beaming and smiling with idealism, but I wonder if 9/11 didn't put our innocence into the attic for good.

Other leading nations had dealt with this sort of thing for years. In the year 1848, revolutions swept through most of Europe. Most were summarily crushed, but the established order was badly shaken. It held out for almost another century until the cataclysms of the two Great Wars wiped it out for good. Over here, though, we sailored on happily secure--in our beliefs, our trust in ourselves, and --to no small extent-- our isolation from all of the other bickering powers.

In the interest of recalling the pretty innocence we once enjoyed, I'd like for you to listen to the selection I've attached below. This is a happy little song from 1920. When I play it at home on the Grafonola, it's usually performed by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra as a spazzy foxtrot. This version is from Deutschland, about 1934, performed by the Comedian Harmonists. I think that the Harmonists really "got" this song: it's fun as a spazzy foxtrot, but there is something very wistful and lovely about it that Paul Whiteman clearly didn't want to express. Even though the artists are German, to me this rendition of "Whispering" evokes most poignantly the lovely and innocent world that was the United States in 1920. This is the era of porch swings and tea dances, the time of masquerade parties and white linen dresses. These are glory days of the Colonial Theatre and its Tea Garden and long, languid summer afternoons on Rehoboth's boardwalk; streetcars trundling up Charles Street Avenue Boulevard, and crepe myrtles all in bloom; the time when my grandfather was trying to acclimate his awkward Yankee bride to Proper Baltimore. In my garden now is one ancient rosebush--I like to think that it must have been planted in that stodgy and proper, but much more sweet and innocent time. (I do love paired adjectives.) Browse through your photographs of old Broad street, and Monument Avenue, and Charles street, and Druid Hill Park while you listen to this song. Let's take a quick walk through a time when everything seemed perfectly and permanently assured. Over the next ninety years, it will all come crashing down over our heads, but for now, it is 1921, and you are sitting in the lounge of a lovely movie palace in a pretty, genteel old city in Virginia...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahLAXYZf61c

2007-08-04T03:05:00.000-04:00

A Bulletin Exclusive for Faithful COLONIAL Patrons!

The Management of the Colonial Theatre

--Richmond's Theatre Beautiful--

Thanks You for your many years of friendship and Patronage.

It is for YOU that we have created the most beautiful Theatre in the South, and for YOU that we have secured the most spectacular Pictures, the finest Artists, the most renowned Musicians.

YOU, the people of Richmond, have made our City great in both history and future.

The COLONIAL has been committed, since its opening day, to the greatness of

THE CITY OF RICHMOND

and her people.

SIC ITUR AD ASTRA!

We regret that the destruction of the theatre has resulted in a brief interruption of our normal programme. However, until further notice, the COLONIAL's usual superior productions will be presented through a consortium of the BYRD theatre, the PARKWAY theatre in Baltimore, and salon receptions at the Jackson Apartments.

Hey y'all.... Cinematour has some groovy new pics posted of the Loew's, the National, and the Empire. Sadly, no Colonial interiors. (The management is keeping those for itself.)

http://www.cinematour.com/theatres/us/VA/5.html

2007-08-04T02:18:00.000-04:00

A few weeks past, I embarked upon a long and interesting road trip. No mere road trip, this: Alex, Anji and I set forth upon the Great America Race. This will make sense to anyone who has watched The Amazing Race on television. Otherwise, it will need explanation. Sadly, I am not willing to go into the complex world that is our vision of racing, so you're on your own. Well, almost. Go to www.ravenchase.com and have a look for yourself. If you think you're up for the challenge, I'll post a code at the bottom of this entry. You'll need to know the name of my favorite song, which shouldn't be difficult for most of you; you've heard it over and over and over and over ad infinitum--or ad nauseam as the case may be.

Somewhere along the line, I'll get around to posting about Nashville. I'd never seen that lovely city before and it was a real treat to visit there for the first time. It was especially lovely to see Lee and Carolyn, my dear old friends from Richmond whom I'd not seen for seven years. I will also get around to posting about Atlanta, the one Southern city I'd always hated but to which I've now warmed considerably. And, perhaps, I'll devote several posts to beautiful Savannah--one of the very few cities which I have always considered socially acceptable, but the one that has always inexplicably taken a back seat in my mental Packard. (Anyone who can list my socially-acceptable cities wins either a big red velvet cake or mayonnaise server from the Marlborough.)

I would like, however, to dedicate this post to one of my favorite cities on earth--the Crescent City, the naughty Belle of the Delta. However you call her--Nouvelle-Orleans, New Orleans, Nawlins, Norleeins--she is the most charming and magical city I have ever had the pleasure to visit. And New Orleans IS a city of pleasure and happiness.

Which is why I was so horrified to see the city now.

Two years after the horrible hurricane that flooded and battered the city, things are still far from right, and yet the rest of the country has moved on. Evidently, destruction and heartbreak are only worthwhile as long as they sell newspapers (or television time). The United States is no longer interested in the plight of its most bewitchingly wonderful city because it no longer commands prime air time.

We came into the Big Easy via Interstate 10. The eastern suburbs of the city are levelled. In any other case, I would probably be happy to see the boarded-up Wal STAR Marts and Burger Tyrants. I know that I'd love to see the ugly, tacky malls ruined and shuttered, if they were anywhere else. But they weren't shuttered because everyone had come to their senses and went back downtown--they were shuttered because they, just like downtown, had been flooded and ruined. We drove past ugly '70s and '80s apartments that were abandoned, boarded and burned. Should be a victory for taste, right? But--no, they were a pitiful testimony to what had happened to the city.

As we drove further into New Orleans itself, I think that we all held a vague belief that the old city would not have suffered as badly as had its modern satellites. After all, the old cities were well built. I know that if a big storm hits Baltimore, my house will survive battered but intact when many newer structures might be swept away. Of course it was bad; we do read the papers. But could anything really wipe away this tough old town that had weathered both French and Spanish crowns, American takeover, English assault in 1815 , Yankee attack and occupation in 1865, and God alone knows how many previous hurricanes?

It didn't help, I suppose, that a nasty thunderstorm hit just as we were driving into the city proper. All of us in the car felt a jolt of terror in seeing the crashing sheets of rain, but they passed. As they did, we left the interstate and before we knew it, we were on Esplanade Avenue.

Which should make everything seem nice and normal. We were supposed to hook up with the rest of the racers on Dauphine street, but the route we took left us pointed in the wrong direction. We had to circle a bit. From the first glances, the Vieux Carre looks quite allright--but then, when we drove around on Rampart, we saw a hastily-painted sign, still nailed into a window:

TWO DOGS
ONE DEAD

All four of us had a small meltdown. I can't begin to imagine what went on the minds of the other three people in the car; I can speak only for myself. I thought wildly of that city I love so well, its wonderful people, the good times I've seen there. I thought of my family, my beloved cats. I thought of Richmond and Baltimore and then thought of them underwater. I wanted to go back two years and commandeer the entire Bay oyster fleet, James River barges, and the German Navy to help get people and animals to safety, and send thirty extra trains of the "Crescent" at full steam down to help.

But, like all good intentions, this is in hindsight. Since I had not the presence of mind, nor the wherewithal, to be in New Orleans two years ago, I can only rejoice in her resilience, and be very happy that the Hotel Monteleone hasn't changed one iota.

2007-07-11T00:18:00.001-04:00

Thunderstorms are really cool. No, not just because they boom and crash and scare the bejesus out of the cats (who are normally not afraid of storms, but nearly wet themselves and went flying this afternoon when a big bolt hit somewhere in the block). They are also literally cool; the one that hit Baltimore today brought the temperature down a good twenty degrees. This was a very good thing because the temperature was hovering around 100. I didn't even have the energy to complain about the heat.

Sadly, thunderstorms are not always cool in all ways. This one brought down an ancient landmark of West Baltimore, the gigantic and impressive edifice that was once St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church and which had served for the past fifty years as First Mount Olive Baptist. Always a monumentally-scaled building, it was built of brick but had been Formstoned somewhere along the line. The Formstoning had been pretty well done though; it was convincing enough to make most people think the church was actually built of stone. Its steeple was one of the city's highest, or at least it was until about three o'clock this afternoon, when lightning struck it, set it ablaze and destroyed most of the 140-year-old church. First Mount Olive was one of the few remaining aspects of West Baltimore that actually worked--a grand historic church still in use and attended by thousands. This is one of those things that makes me wonder if God doesn't drop acid once in a while--why let this get destroyed? There are plenty of things in West Baltimore that really should be burned to the ground.

Please note, also, my reference to "West Baltimore." It has lately become fashionable to refer to the old shopping district and the innermost residential sections as the "West Side." We do not have East and West Sides. Those are in New York. Richmond has East and West Ends. Here, the compass points outside the downtown section are just East Baltimore, West Baltimore, North Baltimore and South Baltimore. Please get it right. It's bad enough having to explain to people who just moved here that, no matter what their real estate agents told them, their house at Fleet and Grundy is decidedly in Highlandtown and not in Canton, much less that the East Side is two hundred and fifty miles to the northeast.

2007-06-22T00:36:00.000-04:00

Oh, gaaahhh.

Here we go again. The City of Baltimore has now deemed it not only advisable, but necessary, to blow $800,000.00 for a Case Study. (Observe my fluency in Corporate Psychobabble, won't you?) This Case Study is meant to soothe the worried brows of City Council about the yet-again proposed trolleys connecting the waterfront with Johns Hopkins, the Art Museum and the prettier and snobbier neighborhoods of North Baltimore.

Of course, my first reaction was: "Why do we need to study this? There were streetcars on those same streets from 1870 until 1965."

Imagine my horror when I read of the purpose of the Case Study.

You see, I could understand that a Case Study might be vaguely, if bureaucratically, useful if one were to study the Impact upon the Neighborhoods and the People. Or--God save me from starting sentences with prepositions--even their impact upon traffic.

Oh, no, my children. The Case Study is going to decide if the newly-proposed streetcars will interfere with existing power and telephone lines, and if they will be able to scale the hilly topography of downtown Baltimore.

Oh. My. God.

Electric streetcars first hit the scene in Richmond, but the first truly viable electric streetcar system was Baltimore's. (I am very pleased that my home cities share the glory.) Somehow, without case studies, Baltimore's streetcar system was able to traverse the hills of downtown in 1885. If the technology of that long-ago era could handle it, how could our modern version fail? And the utility lines? For Calvert's sake, people! those utility lines were installed when the old streetcars were still plying the streets! This really shouldn't be a difficult question.

Now, here's the thing: Baltimore is, more or less, built in a giant bowl. Its hills all slope down toward the waterfront. Some streets are very steep and therefore didn't have streetcars. (That's why San Francisco has cable cars; their operating system allows them to be pulled up the city's ramrod-steep hills.) Our cars were routed wisely to allow for both heavily-travelled routes and gentle grades. They were also studiously routed away from the houses of the lordly aristocracy on Charles street where it passes through Washington and Mount Vernon Places. (Notably, modern buses--which are much noisier--are routed directly up Charles street.)

In the grand scheme of the City's budget, $800K is a flash in the pan. Honestly, though--one quick look into 1950 will demonstrate that the Case Study is pointless. The two "problem questions" aren't problems at all. If the City wants so badly to blow that much money, it could better do so supplying more chalk and textbooks.

Or maybe the money could be spent on giving every last man, woman and child a lemon stick on the Fourth. That would make me very happy.

2007-06-01T02:02:00.000-04:00

I'll try this again. Blogspot seems to have eaten the last attempt. (In the meantime, I took the "What kind of cake are you?" survey posted at Capital City Desk. Unsurprisingly, I'm a Red Velvet cake. Do visit CCD and find out for yourselves--bonus prizes for anyone who turns out to be Lady Baltimore or Prince of Wales cakes.)

Status of the house: in flux. The weather is getting hot, but since I am once again operating on a non-functional ankle, I haven't been able to change the rugs and curtains yet, so it feels even hotter. On the bright side, I have been able to do some organizing of sheet music and records, thus re-discovering a few things I hadn't played since last summer. I am currently drinking a l'Anglaise -- i.e., warm -- because my "new" 1938 refrigerator hasn't yet made ice. It does so much more quickly than my 1994 model did, but putting water in the ice trays is still up to me, which means that ice is still a somewhat erratically available commodity. If the ice in this household were to be traded on the open market, fortunes would be made and broken every few hours.

And now back to what I'd attempted to post last week.

Most modern Americans, I think, believe that rules apply to everyone but themselves. Again, reference Capital City Desk. The lovely hostess of that blog is a librarian in suburban Richmond. Now, if there is anyplace on earth where I expect to find decorum, it's Richmond; although I will allow some slack for the suburbs. It has been my observation that people in the crappiest neighborhoods of Baltimore are much more polite than the denizens of the city's suburbs. I've been physically shoved out of the way by "ladies" at Towson Town Center, but gangsta boiz in Edmondson Village have let me go ahead of them at the local 7-11. Go figure.

CCD's hostess was simply doing librarian duty in asking a patron to discontinue his loud cell-phone conversation. Now, I realize that I am a walking anachronism, but didn't we ALL grow up understanding that one is not supposed to talk loudly--if at all--in a library? The patron then told the person on the other end of the line that he had to hang up because "she's yelling at me." Once again, CCD proves herself of finer mettle than mine; my instinct would be to tell the stupid SOB that if he wanted to hear yelling, I got that, but in the meantime, DO try to have an iota of courtesy for people who don't give a good Goddamn about your phone call.

Let me, at this point, insert a personal observation about Richmond. I'm sure I've mentioned this previously. The nastiest thing that one might say about a Richmonder is that he is rude. Politesse is an ingrained notion in that city. To say to a Richmonder "I think you're very rude" is a much more grievous insult than to say "I think your mother is a two-bit whore from Hopewell who blows sailors for cigarette money."

Therefore, the library patron's behavior saddens me. It seems that even in Richmond, the pattern of courtesy has changed. The patron wasn't too concerned about his own rudeness, but evidently believed that L. was being rude to him--never mind that the transgression was his. The rules didn't apply to him.

The week's poor behavior was not exclusive to Virginia. My parents went to a big outdoor breakfast at Fort Detrick, in Frederick. The event was open to active duty men and veterans, wives and families. While the 'rents were in line for the standard mess hall stuff dear to the hearts of military people and absolutely no one else, a woman marched up to the front of the line and said, "My kids need to go ahead because they've just been in a marathon and they're hungry."

I'm very proud of my mother because she didn't tell the woman to go jump in a lake. I'd have been rather less pleasant about it. Really now--no one made your kids enter the marathon; no one made you come here rather than go to a faster place. Yet, your kids take preference over men who've faced enemy fire? Oh, sure, lady. Go right ahead. You might even have said "Excuse me, might my kids jump ahead? They're very hungry." But no--the rules don't apply to you.

Several months ago I was shopping at the local supermarket and had (I always count) fourteen items, so I could get into the express lane (fifteen items, if you please). I was walking towards the checkout. A middle-aged woman then actually ran, with her cart, to get into the line ahead of me. Just to rub it in, she tossed me a defiant look and said "I'm in a hurry." I was very proud of myself, at the moment, for not saying "You fat-ass ugly bitch, maybe I'm in a hurry, too." Incidentally, she had seventeen items (I always count).

When people deride rules of courtesy and etiquette as silly and outdated, they forget that the point of the rules is to make life more pleasant and bearable for everyone. The point behind the existence of lemon forks, for instance, is to prevent fellow diners from getting squirted when you squeeze a lemon. The lemon fork is not there to stymie you, or make you uncomfortable, but to ensure the comfort of your immediate neighbor. Yes, it gives me a chance to add one more piece to my panoply of shiny objects, but--like "quiet in the library" and "wait your turn in line" --it contributes to general well-being.

2007-05-05T02:33:00.000-04:00

I find myself once again in my favorite city--in the sacred climes of Richmond-on-the-James. The very air in this city smells better than it does elsewhere. I blog unto thee now from the dining room of friends A-squared. It's one of those pretty houses built in 1926 that looks a little bit Merrie England and a little bit Valencia Theatre. If they croak, I hope that they leave me the house because I can just see myself living in this joint and having endless cocktail parties. I've already decided where I'd put the VivaTonal Grafonola (which I brought up from Richmond in the first place, so it would really only be going home).

The trip down was rather uneventful, by Amtrak standards. As you all probably know by now, I loathe a long distance drive. There is a reason that God gave us railroads. I don't even really like driving at all; I like big Buicks and LaSalles, but I like to be driven rather than doing the driving myself. (Naturlich, I think very lowly of Caddies and Packards--they are too showy, and nice people do not make a visible point of their bank accounts.)

Good-night for now. I am basking in the light of a beautiful Richmond moon, good whiskey, good smokes and good friends!

I was mildly appalled by the train itself. I have lived through a few eras of Amtrak, and I have vague memories of a time when the mighty Southern Railroad still ran independent passenger service with its fashionable "Crescent." Well do I remember the funky Amtrak cars of the late 60s and early 70s--a favored color combination was turquoise and purple. Most of my travel has involved the mid-70s "earthtone" cars. Amtrak has finally started to rid itself of them, though, and now has modern coaches with beige and blue livery. They are no fun whatsoever and simply look cheap.

What does NOT look cheap is the Main Street Station in Richmond, which now looks arguably better than it did the day it opened in 1901. It is the fitting entry for its gracious city. Tonight marked the first time that I was able to alight there. How lovely--to step off of a train and see that towering station, the gigantic clock tower, the lights of my beautiful city behind it!

For years I fantasized--what might it be, to take a train into the old Station? It closed in 1974, when downtown Richmond started to die. For years I hoped that it would reopen and for years I hoped that I could be on the first train when it reopened.

2007-04-30T01:13:00.000-04:00

Crime is only crime, apparently, when it happens in a big city.

Last week a guy got murdered at the McDonald's on the corner of Calvert and Lombard in downtown Baltimore.

Crime in Baltimore is nothing new. Actually, I think the city is probably safer now than it was in 1907, but the milieu is different. If one lived on Charles or St. Paul in 1907, the likelihood of ever encountering something dangerous was almost nonexistent; whereas living near the waterfront in the rough-and-tumble sections brought you up against something nasty almost every day. These days, crime isn't as respectful of social boundaries; it is entirely possible to get mugged even in the hallowed lanes of Guilford.

I was not surprised at all by the murder at a downtown McDonald's. I would have been--but, as it turned out, the murderer knew the murderee. They had, in fact, walked in together; a fight broke out between them, and one knifed the other. End of story--at least for the one.

The paper interviewed a few "people on the street," as is its wont. One woman stated that she was "going to go back to the County to work" because "the city is just ridiculous."

In the same week, though, a clerk at a Columbia, Maryland 7-11 was murdered. The perps didn't know her; she just happened to be the clerk on duty when they decided to rob the place. A couple of years ago an English teacher at St. Paul's School (one of Baltimore's snootiest) was gunned down at the stylish mall in Towson because he "disrespected" one of the sacks of shit who was trying to rob him at the time. These were both suburban locations, the ostensibly "safe" world.

And yet, "the city is just ridiculous."

I feel much safer in the city, really. I am more likely to know the people whom I see on the streets in my neighborhood. Most of my suburb-dwelling friends do not know the people who live near them; I know almost all of my neighbors. I know who does and does not belong on this block; my suburban friends don't even know their next-door neighbors by sight. In the city, there are always people milling around; in the 'burbs, there's a deathly quiet on the streets while everyone sticks glued to their TV in the air-conditioned dead zone. If I were to get into a fight outside, seventeen people would open their windows to see what's going on. In Cockeysville, I could have my throat slashed and nobody would notice.

What is it about the suburban areas that makes people so sure of their safety? Is it simply the idea of rowhouses? When, years ago, I visited Cleveland, my hosts reminded me that the area was pretty rough. I couldn't believe it, because it was a neighborhood full of big freestanding Victorian houses with gigantic porches and big lawns. On my planet, rough neighborhoods involve treeless streets of ancient rowhouses. (For that matter, a lot of NICE neighborhoods do, too.) But, I simply couldn't compute the idea of a neighborhood like that being a "bad" area.

I think, really, that there's now an overwhelming belief that any "city" neighborhood must be automatically dangerous. If it's inside a big city, it must be evil; and that includes Baltimore's Guilford, Richmond's Monument Avenue, Norfolk's Ghent, Washington's Connecticut Avenue.

Crime is no longer confined, though, to officially "bad" areas. I feel much safer in a neighborhood in which I'm well known than I would in a place where nameless, faceless people ply the six-lane highways between their homes and the video store one-half-mile distant. And, if I must get my throat slashed, I'd rather die in front of the Byrd Theatre than in the Pampers aisle of a 7-11.

2007-04-16T01:30:00.000-04:00

Some recent notes on drinking, fashionable and otherwise...

Over the past few months, I've been in the Friday habit of joining some of the other Parkville High School English faculty for drinks at the fine establishment known as The Firehouse, on Joppa road. The Firehouse is a bar of the old school.

For practical purposes, I hate to hear anything described as "old school," because it seems to imply that the speaker finds the subject laughably old fashioned and not necessarily good. However, rest assured that if anything is outdated, I probably like it, and it's probably better than whatever crappy little fusion joint it was that you like totally discovered in Olde Towne Alexandriae last week.

I like the Firehouse because it is full of nice normal people who simply want good drinks and bar food. I have ordered a few various cocktails there and nobody has ever batted an eyelid. Janet, the waitress who usually takes care of us, sees me coming and knows to get the bourbon-and-CocaCola right away. Also, the name of the place is not incidental; it's full of big firemen.

Thus, I was a bit surprised when my friend Christine ordered a "vodka and orange juice." I looked at her, attempting to scrape my jaw off of the floor, and asked her if that wasn't the drink known to mankind as a Screwdriver.

"Yeah," she said, with her best Long Island attitude, "but do you know how hard it is to find someone who knows what the hell you want if you ask for a screwdriver?"

I am. In fact, I recounted the incident that spawned the birth of this blog nearly five years ago. I am now contemplating the development of a new scientific theorem: the Inverse Relationship between Fashion and Cocktails. My theorem will be based upon observations gleaned primarily from public establishments, but also from private entertainment.

Case #1. The Firehouse--see above. Further, Kelly's Bar in East Baltimore; also the Quest in East Baltimore. In all of these establishments, I am a well-known fixture. None of them are considered fashionable; nor are they in stylish parts of the city. However, I have been able to obtain Manhattans, Gin Rickeys, Bronxes and Old Fashioneds in all of the above.

Case #2. The Hotel Belvedere. This is one of Baltimore's most storied and hallowed locations, and after 104 years remains THE place to see and be seen. I am also reasonably well known here. It does have a signature Manhattan, which is nectar of the immortality-enabled. Yet, with the exception of Holly--one of the bar managers and a fine lady--most of the staff remains ignorant of many basic cocktails. One, a few months ago, didn't even know the difference between Bourbon and Scotch. Worse, though it is one of the premier boozing establishments in Maryland, there is no Rye on the bar.

Case #3. Private parties, take one. Now, mind you, I'm used to fraternity parties with a couple of hundred people in attendance. Mass quantities of beer are just fine but honestly, folks, I'm way over 21 now and as a career lush, I can't get drunk on beer anymore. I just fill up and feel bloated and annoyed. Beer is something to be consumed with dinner. Tasty, yes; inebriating, no. Yet, there are a bloody lot of people out there who believe that it's just fine to have twenty people over and serve nothing but beer. Crap, y'all, the war is over--splurge and get some whiskey and gin, too!

Case #4. Private parties, take two: Reservoir Hill. Last night, I went to a small dinner party over in Reservoir Hill. The hosts had it right (as they always do) and had bourbon, scotch and gin readily available, with wine for dinner. You see, a full bar isn't even necessary really: those three liquids take care of the cocktail needs for 90% of the population.

Case studies 1 and 4 involve bars in unfashionable areas and parties at the homes of older people. Studies 2 and 3 involve fashionable places and younger people. Thus, I suppose that if I were to fit this idea into the T-proofs that my high school Geometry teacher loved so well, the statement would be "Traditional environments spawn good drinks" and the proofs would lie in the case studies.

It's become common for random causes to have a retrofitted bus cruising the city for various purposes: the Neuter Scooter for pets, the MammoVan for...well, for boobs. I think I should find an old bus myself and establish a wheeled cocktail lounge. BoozCrooz could make the world safe for the well-mixed cocktail.

2007-03-27T00:05:00.000-04:00

All too clearly, I remember my high school auditorium. It was an unlovely thing created in 1976 with all of the goofy Day-Glo (TM) optimism of the era. Its walls were white-painted cinderblock, but its seats were alternating shades of orange, blue, and yellow. It had carpets of almost-Royal blue, and the two rear sections, which flanked the lighting/projection booth, could be shut off with giant folding doors to form "lecture halls," in the vague hope that any Frederick County high school teacher might decide to actually deliver an old-fashioned Lecture.

I received my Maryland High School Diploma on that stage--in the livid blue academic gown favored for Walkersville boys. I was also a star of the Glade Valley stage (well, there wasn't much competition) and trod the boards in stellar productions of Arsenic and Old Lace, Cheaper by the Dozen, Gypsy, and other hoary shows dusted off and deemed acceptable for the rural audience.

I also once sat in one of the vividly-hued seats and watched as two coffins were laid out on the stage.

It was, as I recall, a Friday evening. On any other Friday, the Walkersville kids would have all been "cruising the circuit" in Frederick; some of the more adventurous would be hanging out with the "bad" kids in the parking lot at the McDonalds on West Patrick street. Most would have wandered to one of the Frederick movie houses, and the really cool kids would have been at a beer bash in a field off of one of the back roads. (The Glade Valley, in 1985, was mostly back roads.)

Except for the slight inconvenience that two of our more popular 10th-grade students had, a couple of days before, died in a hideous and fiery car accident on Dublin road, just west of the town of Walkersville. The driver had just gotten his license a few days before. Twenty-two years later, I'm not sure if there was alcohol involved; the car and its occupants were so completely incinerated that there was no conclusive evidence one way or the other. Naturally, rumors abounded--many were graphic, some were damning. Either way, we had lost two friends and star football players.

Would the nightmare have played out differently, had the deceased not been popular athletes? Probably--when, a year later, another of my friends died in a car accident, there was very little public uproar and a very quiet Rosary and funeral that emphatically did NOT involve the high school auditorium. She was a very quiet young lady herself, had never been popular or--God save me for saying so--even vaguely pretty, so she was laid to rest without a carnival of mourning. Thankfully, out of human decency, Walkersville High did bring out the black crepe with which it has always hung its front doors whenever a student or faculty member dies.

These memories have come crashing back because of the discovery today, in Frederick, of a suicide and his four dead children. The school system has frantically pulled "grief counselors" into place. I am appalled.

People who are not Southern are usually confused by our habit of creating a "cult of death." When someone dies in the South, it is a big deal. Since the family is assumed to be in the pangs of grief, friends or distant relatives take over the proceedings; a funeral wreath is ordered with black crepe for the front door of the house. Those houses that still have a mechanical doorbell have the bell muffled. Clocks in the household are ceremoniously stopped at the hour of parting. I recall that, as a child, I found a clock in my grandfather's attic. It had been stopped at the hour of his mother's death in 1917 and had never run again; since I liked it so well it was cleaned up and presented to me yet--in 1978--as the clock was wound for the first time in sixty years, we prayed for my great-grandmother's repose.

The cult of death is not limited to the immediate family. If a Southern person dies, every friend, neighbor, business associate, rival, church member, passing friend, and possibly even the local streetcar conductor comes to call at the house and must bring food (since, naturally, the bereaved are so bereaved that they cannot manage to even feed themselves). When many years ago one of my Richmond friends died suddenly and unexpectedly, my first instinct was to march into the kitchen and start baking. One of my roommates--a Northerner, bless her soul--was shocked, believing that I was heartlessly thinking of my own dinner. I simply explained that "they will need food at a time like this and they're going to have to receive guests--they'll want ham biscuits." And thus, after years of turning out so-so biscuits, I made the lightest and flakiest biscuits that I've ever made.

Although people from the rest of the world find the Southern death cult a bit morbid and frightening, I think it takes a back seat in that regard to the more recent form of death obsession. The Southern death cult makes a big deal over a demise, but Southerners remain conscious of the inevitability of death. After all, only one thing in life is certain--its end. We mourn, we bake our butts off, we wear black crepe and black armbands--but death is certain.

The more recent approach, I believe, is ultimately more hurtful to the living. The black crepe and funeral wreaths might seem maudlin (they are), and I'm sure that the psychosocial set might perceive them as damaging to young minds, but they acknowledge the reality of death. The current philosophy seems bent on "counseling" those who have lost a parent, a sibling, a loved one, a friend, a neighbor, even the aforementioned streetcar conductor.

How foolish! Death is, regrettably but necessarily, an inevitable part of, and end to, life. The Southern death cult may make it rather more of a silent-movie spectacle than necessary, but death is still treated as an end. There is no counselling necessary; all of the necessary grief is spelled out in those endless ham biscuits and yard after yard of black crepe. By turning death into something that requires counselling and Conversation and analysis, we only make our own grip on reality more fragile.

Sadly, I can only look back at the two coffins onstage in Walkersville High's ugly auditorium, and wonder if the foolishness didn't start there. Might it not have been better if those two young men had been sent off from a quiet funeral, like anybody else? We may have, in fact, been more scarred by seeing those coffins onstage in an auditorium generally used for happy occasions. If something about death must be beaten to death--it should be the dough for good Maryland biscuits to bring to the family. Grief is natural, because death is natural. The more it is analyzed, the more it becomes unmanageable.

While the death of those four children in Frederick is shocking, I cannot help but think it will frighten their classmates even more to have "grief counselors" lurking in the hallways. We have coddled our children in far too many ways and for far too long. Stick with the ham biscuits and black crepe and let children understand that finality is, in fact, final.

2007-02-28T00:20:00.000-04:00

In the realm of social propriety, one is allowed certain lapses of time and judgement. One of the most forgiving rules is that of the wedding gift. You see, there have evolved so many different concepts of "correctness" around wedding gifts that almost anything goes. Nice Southern people believe that wedding gifts should be something beautiful; practical Northerners think they should be something useful. In many cases both beautiful and useful things are inherited or, in modern days, already owned since both parties have lived independently for several years. Tradition dictates that the gift should be sent, well before the Big Day, to the bride's parents' home. This has long since ceased to be even amusing, much less practical, since it is likely now that the bride's parents live in Richmond, the groom's parents in New Orleans, and the couple themselves in Savannah. One rule has held fast, thankfully: that one has a year after the wedding day to decently offer a present to the happy pair. I have invoked this repeatedly for a variety of reasons--either I don't have any idea what to get them, or the bride's pattern was discontinued in 1928, or I was completely broke when they got married, or there aren't any damned department stores left. In at least one case, I owe people a wedding present who are now pushing their tenth anniversary. (These people know that I'll get around to it; but as they're neither sticklers for convention nor silverholics, they're probably less bothered than I am.)

Convention is not so kind regarding correspondence. One must be prompt with it. I bemoan the death of RSVP -- everyone puts that little tag line on invitations, but no one feels compelled to actually respond. (If you don't, and you get to the party and there's not enough food for you, it's your fault, not the host's!) The minute you hear of a death, be it from a family member or the newspaper, hie yourself to your writing desk and send a note--please, not a sympathy card; they're trite and Hallmark makes enough money from Mother's Day. And thank-you notes? Gone the way of the dodo, it seems. I do still know a few nice people who actually write out their bread-and-butter notes before the party happens, so that they can drop them in the mailbox on the way home. If there is one thing that my mother drove home with a double-barrelled Manhattan, it was the need to send a thank-you note every time somebody did so much as tip his hat to me.

Thus, I am appalled at my own recent discrepancy, because I did not send a thank-you note to someone who gave me a very nice gift indeed. This person will hopefully read this (she does, periodically) , recognize my fault and hopefully forgive the gaffe.

The gift in question was a little checkbook cover. I had been griping for some time about checkbook covers; I wanted one of those nice leather ones with gilt edges that would look very official and important on my desk. This one was better.

It features old postcard views of Richmond. Now, every time I pay the bills or even dash off a twelve-dollar check to the grocery store, I can see pictures of my favorite city in her heyday. Here are the famous Broad Street theatres; and there the beautiful Hotel Richmond--as much as I love the Hotel Jefferson, the Richmond is my not-so-secret favorite. And right there on the front of the book is Richmond's Fashion Center--none other than Thalhimer Bros., the big department store that I once loved so well and (and which, for an all too short time, wrote me a paycheck). I wish that I were writing checks to Thalhimers, even now.

So, Lisa, my apologies for not writing the thank-you note. Every time I sit down to my desk I will be able to see pictures of the lovely city that I would like to call home--and will think of the wonderful people who live there, too.

2007-02-20T01:37:00.000-03:00

It will, of course, surprise none of you to know that I am one of the last smokers standing in this section of Baltimore--or, at least, one of the last under sixty. Proper Baltimore, along with proper everywhere else, gave up smoking back in the early nineties, when the hand-wringers got full cultural control of the nation. Everyone in East Baltimore still smokes like the proverbial chimney, which may go a long way to explain why I like that crusty, Formstone-clad section of the world.

I will not be too surprised if Maryland decides to go smoke-free. That will make all of its liberal huggybears very happy, and they will feel that they've done SO MUCH to make the world a SAFE, SANE place--as they fire up their smog-vomiting SUVs to drive seventy-three miles to work.

I am, however, increasingly annoyed by the self-righteous letter-writers, who smugly inform us that one day soon they will be able to enjoy bars without having to COUGH and SMELL SMOKE. Evidently, it has not occurred to them that bars and smoke go hand in hand. Perhaps they dream of a day in the happy nineteenth century when one could go to a bar and enjoy a cup of tea without the horrors of smoke. I wonder if they've ever bothered to truly consider the era; the average bar of the nineteenth century contained horrors that made the errant Camel look like a lollipop. And then, by the twentieth century, when bars became places that decent people might want to patronize, smoking was firmly in.

One of my colleagues--who is a marathon runner, but who periodically enjoys a cigarette--points out that bars should be thankful for the overwhelming smell of smoke, because one of the things it overwhelms is the stench of stale beer and, even more horrific, beer breath.

I won't worry about the ban too much. The huggybears will be able to have smoke-free bars around the harbor, and can pat themselves on the back before they drive back to their air-conditioned suburban nightmares. Probably the only venue that I will really lose will be the Hotel Belvedere. I'm fairly content that I'll still be able to smoke in East Baltimore's bars whether it's legal or not. It will be awfully hard for the cops to enforce anything since they'll be among the first ones lighting up--right along with the teachers.

2007-02-18T05:08:00.000-03:00

I don't quite feel up to hacking up my own post tonight...er, this morning, and so--since I'm already happily dreaming of a nice little porch-front rowhouse "Somewhere West of Boulevard" (with apologies to the Jordan Motor Car Company), I'll just repost part of LK's recent blog.

This is done in the way of thumbing my nose to all who like to deride Richmond. Also, I'd like to take credit for the previous paragraph, which must be one of the most punctuation-heavy that I've ever composed.

And now to our correspondent in Mulberry street:

Style's cover story for the February 7th issue is on the problems of aging suburbia.Many post 1950 houses were built for speed, not longevity. Run-down and inexpensive homes attract a high number of people who don't give a damn, and what used to be thought of as "urban blight" sets in, in neighborhoods with 1/4 acre lots and curving roads and cul-de-sacs that make routine police patrolling more challenging.Meanwhile, the cost of fairly sturdy, often attractive city homes goes up and up. Style cites a recent Brookings Institution study of 100 metropolitan areas. Of Richmond, one of the areas studied, a co-author of the study (Elizabeth Kneebone) noted "'it's the only metropolitan area in the study where the poverty trends in the city and the counties moved in opposite directions.'" The number of poor people in Richmond went down; the number living in poverty in the counties went up.The rest of the article considers the service needs of poor people and the readiness of local governments to ensure that the health, safety, and education needs of all area residents are met.

2007-02-08T01:24:00.000-03:00

Fifty years after minstrel shows and their ilk were made illegal, racial stereotypes persist in the United States. They probably always will; as long as there's the slightest bit of physical dissimilarity between two life forms, one will deride the other for one reason or another.

Probably the most charming and least-detrimental stereotype that I have ever encountered, in a city with omnipresent racial tension, is double-sided and is more amusing than hurtful.

White people are all marauding, cold-loving Vikings. Black people are all heat-natured jungle dwellers.

You can tell this in Baltimore because of the way they dress. Any time the races come together, which in this town is pretty much daily, you will hear someone say "Black/White people just don't know how to dress for the weather!"

Now, this is often uttered in reference to me, as I have a tendency to wear shorts all year. This habit is partially born of comfort--I just like shorts--and partially because I am aging badly but still have nice legs and want to show off the only body part that hasn't gone South on me. Common knowledge in the black community: it doesn't matter how cold it is, white folks are still going to wear shorts and flipflops. Conversely, some of my black friends/neighbors/students start bundling up when it drops down to sixty degrees. Common knowledge in the white community: it doesn't matter how warm it is, black folks are still going to have a coat on. You can even tell what part of white Baltimore a guy is from; if he's a snooty North Balto boy, he'll wear a heavy coat with shorts. From Dundalk--long underwear, jeans and boots; but a tank top and nothing else. Last winter I showed up at a local bar with my friend Jeff, who is from Dundalk. Naturally, I wore shorts and he had a t-shirt on. Someone pointed out that, between the two of us, we had enough clothes on for one person.

I'm starting to think that there is something to this global warming silliness just because people evidently wear a lot less clothing now than they did a century ago. The accoutrements involved in stepping outside the house in 1907 were considerably more complex. Was it just that much colder, or didn't people mind the hot, scratchy wool so much?

If that's the case, this last week has been tailor-made for 1907. About time--we have real winter! Amazingly, I remembered to order heating oil.

2007-01-24T00:57:00.000-03:00

Time to air the dirty laundry. Not literally, people--for once I'm somewhat caught up on the laundry and there's no need to dry or clean anything, much to the chagrin of the neighbors from elsewhere who still can't figure out the whole concept of hanging laundry out to dry.

Nay, I must admit to something far more unpleasant than little white boxer-briefs on a clothesline. Truth of the matter is, I like Martha Stewart.

There's just something about her that speaks to me. I think it's the combination of ancient housekeeping ritual with the "I'm better than you are" attitude. So Baltimorean, and so very Richmond.

I perused a copy of her self-promotional rag lately. "Martha Stewart LIVING" is a very strange animal, indeed. Martha's ideas are a combination of the sort of things I consider common knowledge and the sort of things that no one in his right mind would ever do. I mean, really--who's ever going to take the time to actually cut out and make heart-shaped boxes for Valentine's Day candy? Unless, of course, one lives in some benighted city that no longer has its own wonderful confectioner to take care of the matter. Even so, I can't see anyone that I know sitting down to spend several hours constructing the stupid candy boxes. On the other hand, Martha also tells us how to make biscuits. Biscuits are the most basic of skills. Superlative biscuits are one thing, but the creation of useful, everyday biscuits is about as difficult as, oh, say, breathing.

But Martha knows her audience. She realizes that the days of women (and the occasional man) at home, doing housework simply as a fact of life, are long gone. Though I might consider biscuit baking second nature, there are millions of people who are mildly frightened by even Pillsbury biscuits-in-a-can. (Actually, they kind of frighten me, too--they taste weird and that creepy FOOMP when you open the can freaks me out.)

So the audience for "LIVING" gets a double whammy. They can learn to do things "just like Grandma," the sorts of things that were once second nature to everyone but are now nearly forgotten. And they can learn to do goofy stuff that they would never actually do, but which sounds really cool, and might get tried out for the one dinner party they have annually.

And then I turned to the page that showed Martha's basement. I pray to God, Wotan, and Clara Bow that this is not truly a picture of the woman's basement, because it scared me half to death.
It was so freakishly clean and so insanely organized that I could picture even the most meticulous German housewife reeling in shock.

Now, let me put this into perspective. Most of you who read this space know perfectly well that I am approximately as well-organized as a brain-damaged chicken. However, there is a certain deranged logic to my household; I know where most of the important things are. There is the occasional frantic burst as I realize that I cannot find something desperately needed, but for the most part, I can find the coasters, the ashtrays, the record I want to hear, and the appropriate silver to serve whatever glop is going on the table. (There may be another frantic burst of terror if I have forgotten to make ice.) My counterpoint is the rather more typical North Baltimore household, which operates under a Prussian system of order and precision. I've noticed, however, that those people are just as often stymied as I am when it comes to finding a specific item. Their system of organization breaks down under pressure. Mine, which is no system at all, is unfazed by pressure and therefore is every bit as effective.

Every household I know, whether organized on the mad confusion model or the Imperial Navy model, shares a common closeted skeleton: a basement that looks like mayhem. Nobody ever has to see the basement. Most people, even in the house itself, do not bother to visit the basement. Therefore, it becomes a repository for: all the crap that you do not really want but cannot bear to throw away; those items used for precisely one week every year; whatever items are not in season (my summer rugs and summer curtains are down there right now), tools, paint, and cleaning apparati. When I look at any Baltimore basement I am always reminded of the scene in the "Addams Family" movie, in which Morticia looks through a storage space full of ancient wardrobe bags: "Cousin Knick-Knack's Summer Wardrobe...Cousin Knick-Knack's Winter Wardrobe...Cousin Knick-Knack..."

How can anyone's basement be so...sterile? I admire the thought of a well-organized storage space. It must be wonderful to be able to say "Oh, yes. It's time to put away the winter rugs; you'll find the mothballs in Bin 84-C and the Varnolene for the floors on Shelf 23." I do find it more endearing and normal, however, to hear a voice from the basement yelling "Where the hell is the gray porch paint? Say, did you know Aunt Vesta's old summer hats are still on top of the furnace?"

2007-01-09T02:29:00.000-03:00

Once again, you believed that I'd died, and you were happily sending Mass cards to my family. Or, at least, the few of you who are Catholic were; or those Protestants who know enough to do so. I'm not dead, though. (Sorry, all, I did make a valiant effort, but when I tried to jump off the roof of the Lord Baltimore, I was distracted by a cocktail party. )

Today, while reading the blog o' my sometime-inspirator, sometime-irritant, James Lileks, I hit on a familiar strain. People need newspapers.

The common idea today is that the Big City Daily is gone. Apparently, in the minds of most Americans, there are only two big cities--New York and Los Angeles.

This is clearly ridiculous.

New York may be the nation's largest city, but it is also the nation's most provincial city. It has no concept of anything but itself. It is so convinced of its monumental significance that it cannot conceive of anything in the United States beside itself, and it considers London, Berlin, Vienna and Paris as no more than places in the dim memory of its foul grocers. While I am quite sure that everyone in Topeka has heard of New York, I can guarantee that less than ten per cent of New York City's vast population has any idea that Topeka exists, and even fewer could tell you where it exists.

Los Angeles, though I have--thankfully--never seen the benighted place, has, by the admission of some of its own children, no city at all, but does have seven million people inhabiting a conglomeration of suburbs. I do want to see the town, though, for the sake of the beautiful picture palaces that do still exist there--New York has managed to obliterate most of its screen dreamlands.

There are still quite a few other major cities in the United States, though most of them are shadows of their former selves. Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis--all of them are staggering on in decay, but are nonetheless BIG cities. For those who question the status of, say, St. Louis as a big city, I say to you: spend a couple of years in a town of four hundred people and see what you think then. I have. You'd be surprised how quickly even Hagerstown looks metropolitan.

The argument against the city daily paper is this: We don't need them because we can all get the New York Times delivered to our doors. We can get BBC online and on cable. And, God help us, we can usually get the Washington Post, should we want that nasty pinko rag anywhere near our doorsteps. (Washington and its paper are most significant for their sad delusion that they are, actually, in a class with the rest of the world's capitals.) We can, if we are of a German bent, get Berliner-Zeitung, or Der Standard, online.

Der Standard, however interesting its articles may be, does not provide any information whatsoever about the fire on Greenmount Avenue last night. Nor does it provide any information about the elections in Allegany County. (I don't particularly care about Allegany County myself, but it does have some impact on the rest of the state whether I care about it or not.) Der Standard does not have the obituaries of the lordly Calverts and Weiskittels, or even of the cafeteria ladies at Forest Park High School. It has absolutely no interest in the potential destruction of the once-lovely Fulton Theatre, because it doesn't know anything about Baltimore except its geographic location and its economic connections to Austria.

Thus I sniff at those who find themselves superior because they very publicly claim to NOT read the Sun, or the Times-Dispatch, or the Virginian-Pilot. You may have a good grasp of what's happening in the rest of the world, but do you know what's happening in your own backyard? I do take pride in reading some of the European papers online--but only after scouring the papers of my home states. What good is it to know what's playing at the Burgtheater in Vienna if you don't know what movie is showing at the Byrd?

2006-12-05T01:47:00.000-03:00

In the grand scheme of both the social season and the Christmas holiday season, it must really stink to be a postman. Not only does the beleaguered postal officer have to deliver acres of nauseating sentiment written in illegible green and red ink, but he must also deliver junk mail and circulars that must eat up several counties' worth of Maine's forest.

Mind you, it's not easy on the rest of us, either. I haven't even begun to hear the threatening backup-alarm beeps issued by the Great Christmas Elephant (see a previous Decembrish blog), though it's probably already planning to poop on me. (The Christmas Elephant just does that.)
I have not made one stinkin' cookie. I haven't started the stupid fruitcakes. I should already have done so, since several of them need to go overseas.

I have managed to accomplish about one quarter of one of the tasks of the Season. I have addressed the envelopes for most of the Neujahrsnacht invitations. This is not such a small task; I need to consult the address-books and make sure that they've been updated, depending on who has married, died, divorced, remarried, moved twenty-seven times in the last year, or some combination of the forementioned. (I was somewhat surprised to learn that at least one acquaintance had both died and moved.) The truly irritating part of the invitation-writing, though, is not the addressing of envelopes, but the endless writing of the same damned thing over and over for the invitation cards.

I know that it garners a lot of cash for the nice people at Crane's, but I really can't approve of the preprinted invitations that require nothing of the sender but the insertion of time, date and address. Really, now! A proper invitation is written by hand. It's already exhausting to fill in the blanks on one of the pre-engraved sorts; one might as well go ahead and write the whole thing out, and be correct. Thus, I'll be doing so this week. You may all expect your invitations within the next ten days, or so, depending upon my level of workload and irritation.

Despite the bother of writing party invitations, they do have the distinct advantage of immutability. The correct form for writing an invitation has never, and will never, change. The greatest worry is whether to use white or ecru card stock. (I have waffled on this issue for about twenty years now and have yet to reach a concrete decision.)

About four years ago, I gave up on the idea of writing happy little personal messages in each Christmas card that I sent. I realized that my card recipients fell into two distinct categories: those with whom I maintained a constant correspondence, and those with whom I spoke only a few times a year. I then figured that the members of the first category didn't need a personal message, since they talked with me fairly regularly anyway. The next leap of faith was a bit more cavalier, but every bit as useful; I decided that the people who didn't talk with me regularly were probably not terribly concerned with the intimate details of my life. Therefore, I now just sign the cards with a nice little "Frohe Weinachten: D. P. Gibbs." The first year that I did so, I heard about it. I didn't know that so many people were really interested in my (I thought) uninteresting, uninspired Christmas greeting, but evidently they were; some felt insulted or believed that they had somehow given offense. I think that by now I have made it clear to all that, though I may love them dearly, I don't particularly enjoy concocting Yuletide pap.

Yet, the card-sending tradition is dear to me. I do love sending them, if not writing the slushy message within. I love getting cards and, yes, the slushy messages, and the pictures of relentlessly-growing children. (How did this happen? Children who had not even been thought of when I graduated from college are now contemplating their own William and Mary application essays.)

Thus it is with heavy heart that I shop for cards this year. I can no longer find a single damned Christmas card that I like. In years past, I delighted in sending cards that had some meaning for me, and usually some to my friends and family. The Maryland Historical Society used to have beautiful cards printed with scenes of Old Baltimore at Christmas. The Archdiocese sold lovely views of the Cathedral's high altar decorated for the Holy Day. I could always find some pretty cards showing Monument Avenue in the snow or a winter scene on Richmond's beautiful Church Hill. Naturally, William and Mary cards were a perennial favorite; there was always a card showing the Old Main Building, a.k.a. the Wren Building, dressed for a Colonial Christmas, and surely a snowy picture of the famous Crim Dell bridge.

These are all gone now. The world of Wal-Mart and made-in-China has obviated the production of such niceties. We no longer live in the world where Miller and Rhoads, or Hutzler's catered to civic pride. Richmonders and Baltimoreans are no longer interested in sending Christmas cards that hark to a more gracious era of their cities, and the William and Mary bookstore is now run by a company that wouldn't know Crim Dell if they fell into it, duck poop and all.

The death of the great department stores spelled the end of Christmas to me, for the most part; but the post-script is written on mass-produced cards. Perhaps I fancied myself more important because I sent Christmas greetings with a picture from one of my beloved cities. Perhaps the card really only counted as mine if it featured Capitol Square or Mount Vernon Place. I only know that it doesn't seem as warm and happy to sign "Frohe Weihnachten" to a card picturing cookie-cutter angels that might as well have come from Minneapolis as from Grove Avenue.

It is some small comfort that certain traditions have not yet died. Within the next two weeks, I will be standing in line for several boxes of Rheb's candy that I will pick out myself, according to lists I have jealously guarded for years. Soon, I will get around to Christmas Baking Hell, and there will be a lot of our men overseas who will enjoy it. And, on Christmas night itself, I know that it won't really be Christmas unless the organist is three sheets to the wind.

2006-11-13T02:32:00.000-03:00

Don't get pissy with me, people. I just don't have the time, right now, to do a lot o' bloggin'.

I'm very happy with the new school, except for one gigantic and glaring problem: my department head is psycho. Really and truly psycho. I have never encountered such saccharine sweetness and overt hostility from the same person within an eight-hour time frame. At the same time, I'm trying to provide the best English lessons possible for an audience of students who can truly appreciate and understand my efforts.

With that, and my undying love for the dead Austrian Empire, in mind, I've been farting around with the idea of teaching English abroad. Of course, Wien is the Imperial Capital, the City Ethereal, but everybody in Wien speaks about seven languages anyway. They don't need English teachers in Wien.

They might, though, in Ungarland. Also, Hungarian dudes are way hot. So, I've been scoping the idea. Hell, I love paprika and I've always wanted to learn the csardas. What do I find? This little disclaimer that is supposed to frighten like OMG Americans who like totally don't get the Hungarian ways of education, behavior and Angul-speaking:

"One thing you may notice in Hungary when you are applying for a teaching position is that many school administrators who speak English employ a very formalized and stilted style of speech. To the ears of younger North Americans, this may sound funny, or even pretentious. But it has little to do with personal choice. Most of these people studied English from older, often outdated British textbooks. And because Hungarian itself contains highly formalized structures, many English-speaking Hungarians who do not have the chance to use their English on a day-to-day basis with native speakers of English end up sounding very formal because they seem to naturally seek out what they believe to be higher forms of English."

Naturally, the first thing I noticed was that the disclaimer itself starts a sentence with "and:" a mistake that will lose you five points immediately in my class. Clearly, the Hungarians are my kind of people. I love everything stilted and formal. If only I can get passports for the cats...

2006-09-17T23:05:00.000-04:00

I'm just back from a reasonably pleasant afternoon with the parental units. We motored up to Pen Mar Park, in Western Maryland.

Pen Mar was one of those little mountain resorts that peppered the more vertically vigorous topography of western Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Its heyday was already dead before the second World War, but while the hotels and dance halls faded away, the spectacular scenery did not. We were therefore able to spend a pleasant afternoon looking over the Cumberland Valley and eating ice-cream.

Sadly, I ended up coming back to the city and embarking upon a rather unpleasant disagreement with one of my best friends.

This friend, it seems, is not alone in being frustrated with my consistently depressed and negative views about the city. I should, apparently, enthuse over the city's bright future.

It's very hard, though, and this is a prime example of why:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.rochambeau17sep17,0,2310034.story?coll=bal-local-headlines

Honestly, I was never particularly enamored of the Rochambeau. It was a pretty apartment hotel; never anything exciting. I never walked down the north face of Cathedral Hill thinking "Gee, I'd really love to live in the Rochambeau someday." It was never one of the buildings that I pictured when I scanned my mind for images that just said "Baltimore."

Yet it was a part of the fabric of the city I knew and, like so many other things, it's now gone forever.

And, yes, my blood does still run with water from the Jones Falls. Yes, I want to live in Richmond; but my ideas of behavior, food, silver and decor were all spawned not on the James, but the Patapsco.

Where, though, is the Baltimore I knew? With the destruction of every building like the Rochambeau, real Baltimore is vaporizing. Perhaps even more telling than the Rochambeau's death are the deaths of thousands of perfectly good old rowhouses all over the city. Newcomers, you see, don't get rowhouses. They don't want to live in them, don't understand them and don't want to. They want condos. They want "townhouses," built with parking-lots in front and garages built into the first floor. Nice, in theory--but if they want that, they can have it in countless suburban milieus. Why ruin our city to do it?

A quote lifted from the above-referenced article:

"Patti Sue Nolan drove in from Lutherville with her husband, Terry, and her two children. 'They're not going to have any more of these,' she said, gazing at the Rochambeau. 'You knock it down, you don't get it back.' " (The Sun, 9/17/06)

Exactly, folks. You'll never get it back. This is the problem that makes me really not want to live here anymore. The same problem is already making me question if, even, I want to go back to Richmond. Everything that was beautiful about these cities is going away rapidly, and no one seems to mind. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? No one ever believed that the rowhouses just north of the Hopkins medical campus were beautiful. They were plain, respectable middle-class houses. But--weren't they beautiful, really? Hadn't they been well-kept for years, until recent blight took them? Even in their decline, didn't they still have smart and trim marble steps and fresh-painted Italianate cornices? And, when you looked at them, didn't you just know that you were in Baltimore?

The Archdiocese has planned a "prayer garden" for the site of the Rochambeau, and a less-Catholic, less-Baltimorean concept I cannot imagine. Hopkins has envisioned some sort of wondrous complex to replace those Madison street houses--I'm sure it will be quite cutting-edge, but not very Baltimorean at all. Richmond is happily in the process of destroying its storied old Hotel Murphy. I'm not sure what is going to occupy that once-stylish corner, but I guarantee that I won't like it, and further that it will look about as much like Richmond as would a Soviet-era platz in Magdeburg.

Perhaps for too long we have entrusted our cities to planners who have the pedigree of several degrees (is that reverse alliteration?). People left the cities back in the '60s and '70s for a variety of reasons, but they're not going to come back just to see something that they could easily have in a modern office park or mall. The thing that makes every city viable is its own individuality--its native architecture, its specific buildings, its institutions. Nobody is going to go into downtown Richmond to a big concrete-and-glass shopping palace when they can have the same thing without going downtown.

I realize that, for the most part, I'm preaching to the choir. My--what, six?--faithful readers probably feel precisely the way that I do.

Yet, I'll throw this out for all of those who don't like my endless negative aura: If it hurts you to hear me denigrating the current state of civic affairs, just think how it must hurt to watch the two cities of whose granite, and marble, and very dirt your life is composed, willingly transform themselves into nothingness.

2006-09-13T23:38:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, even I need to break free of the ironclad restrictions of upper-South society. There are times when communication via calling-card does not adequately fill the evening's leaner hours. So, when I discovered that a few people I know had ventured into the weird little universe that is MySpace, I tagged along for a joyride.

It had not dawned on me, when I created my MySpace (I hate saying that -- it sounds redundant even if it isn't), that the stupid thing exists primarily as a communication tool for teenagers, and secondarily as a hookup line for the desperate.

Fortunately, thus far I have avoided the teenagers, though I fully expect that any day now one of my students will stumble upon my profile and send me some message to the effect of "OMG, Mr Gibbs, were you like totally wasted when you posted that comment! I'm gonna tell!" (To which I will reply: "Like, Whatev!!!!") I have not been able to avoid the desperate, and I've gotten "add friend" requests from every kind of mutant under the sun. Or, more likely, under Jupiter's third moon. When I first started to receive these unsolicited freakshows, I simply denied them; now I've resorted to sending messages back to the desperate ones to ask just why they think that they've anything in common with me. You're a fifty-five year old five-time divorcee/high school dropout from Dothan, Alabama. You like NASCAR, Coors Lite and truck drivers. I'm thirty-six, a badly-aging fraternity boy from Baltimore who likes Marines and pretty sorority girls, whiskey and old movies. Where do you really see a future in this relationship?

2006-09-11T00:21:00.000-04:00

I've copied this little list of "four things" from Bill. It makes me realize that, no matter how hard I try to portray myself as a cosmopolitan type, I'm about as parochial as they come.

My world -- with an occasional foray into Pan-Germania -- is entirely comprised of four states. Maryland is my home; Virginia is my adopted home. Delaware is my vacation home and also dear because of its isolationist nature, and its not-so-secret Southern leanings. Pennsylvania is really "der Pennsilvanienraum," home of happy German food and Musik.

This evening, I paid a social visit at a small cocktail gathering. There were only about eight in attendance, and most of us were Baltimoreans. Yet, I found my mind wandering when the conversation moved towards the beauties of Maine's coast, and travels to Ireland.

I cannot imagine why I would ever want to visit Maine, or Ireland. Maine is scary and Northern. I have been informed by reliable sources that they kill and eat Southerners up there. Ireland? Well, it seems pretty, and it's all Catholic, which is good. It also appears to be treeless, and if I want to eat boiled beef and potatoes, I can do that quite well without ever leaving my own house. If I travel again to Europa, I'd much prefer to visit the perpetually-electric Berlin, Barock-Wien and the distinctly tree-enabled Bad Ischl. Besides, Austria is every bit as Catholic as Ireland, without the creepy guilt thing that most Americans associate with Catholicism, but from which I've never suffered (being more Austrian and Italian than Irish).

And, once again, as I peruse the list of "four things" about myself, I find myself looking back to the Falls of the James River:

Four jobs I’ve had
1. Collections rep, Thalhimer Bros.
2. Secretary, Johns Hopkins University (the most self-important institution on the East Coast)
3. Retail Account Rep/data monkey, T. Rowe Price and Associates
4. English teacher, Baltimore City and now Baltimore County, Maryland

Four movies I could watch over and over
1. It
2. Footlight Parade
3. Show Boat
4. Gone With the Wind

Four places I have lived
1. Baltimore
2. Williamsburg
3. Richmond
4. Walkersville, Md.

Four TV shows I love to watch
1. Cheers
2. M*A*S*H*
3. Friends
4. Gilmore Girls
(cut me some slack, here, people. I don't have cable and I like cheesy stuff.)

Four places I’ve been on vacation
1. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia

Screw the other two. If it's not Maryland Avenue or the Hotel Cavalier, I'm not particularly interested. Insularity is one of my art forms.

Four websites I visit daily
1. Baltimore Sunpapers
2. Richmond Times-Dispatch
3. Allentown Morning Call
4. Berliner-Zeitung

Four of my favorite foods
1. Crab cakes
2. Rheb's orange creams
3. spoonbread
4. Smithfield ham

Four places I would rather be right now
1. balcony at the Byrd Theatre, Richmond
2. lobby of Loew's Theatre, Richmond
3. dance floor of the Hotel Cavalier Beach Club, Virginia Beach
4. porch at 14 Maryland Ave., Rehoboth Beach

Four blogs I’ll tag
1. Pam
2. Bill
3. Lisa
4. Casey

2006-08-11T03:40:00.000-04:00

My friends are sadists.

I know this because almost all of them have elected to remind me of the great fun available in dancing at the beach.

And I have sprained my ankle.

I managed to do this, somehow, one week ago, and it hasn't fully healed. Now, I am normally one of these people who believes that one should pummel through adversity. You can complain about an injury all you want, but it's not going away and I have observed that really nobody is going to sympathize with you enough to really do much good. You're better advised to slog through, teach a full load of classes with that shattered spine, and then milk it for all it's worth. I am also the poster child of 1865 Richmond and 1945 Berlin: yea, though the bombs fall around us, I will wind up the record player and dance.

But it's my rotten luck that, one week before heading off for the beach, I take one false pace down my own front steps, and end up with an ankle that rather unpleasantly resembles a grapefruit. I'm all about grapefruit!!! Really! If you put grapefruit pieces in an ice tray, pour gin over them and freeze for a few hours, you've got a party on your hands. Having an ankle that looks like a grapefruit is something else entirely.

You see, one is not allowed to be infirm at the beach. The beach is the realm of white linen shorts and madras, the confirmed home of seersucker suits and panama hats. In years past, I begged off going to Mass at the beach because I didn't have a nice hat to wear--which I couldn't wear if I'd had it--because men do not wear hats inside any building at all, much less a Catholic church--but I needed to have a hat to wear as far as the front door of St. Edmund's--well, you get the idea. The beach is also the realm of showing off what you've got. I'll probably never get up the nerve to wear the tiny orange bathing-suit that I bought during the winter, but I want to at least have the option.

The beach is also a place for dancing and general good spirits. I'm going to be stuck with general good spirits, because my ankle is so hopelessly grapefruitish that I can't dance very effectively. I'm going to have to limp around too in the tiny orange bathing suit, which irritates me to no end. When one is used to being the frantic life of the party, it's not much fun to sit around working jigsaw puzzles.

Now that I think of it, though, in about 1989 I'd sprained my right knee, and somehow still went to a fraternity dance. I wrapped the recalcitrant joint so tightly that my toes turned purple, took a stiff drink and danced all night.

Seventeen years can't dampen the spirit--when I get to Rehoboth on Saturday, I'll still tear the house down.

2006-07-31T01:27:00.000-04:00

Every time I wander through Western Maryland, I see any number of guys my own age. Some of them are, in fact, guys I knew in high school. Most of them are a well along in their journey down Male Pattern Baldness Highway. A lot of them have beer guts. (I know, I know. I do too, but I'm talking Olympian-scale beer guts.) Invariably they've married their high school girlfriend and have several children. The more rednecky guys work for their more successful friends' contracting business. The once-popular guys are mired in some mid-level sales job and are generally divorced. All of them have a defeated look about them. While I'm busy laughing about our Junior Prom--themed "Almost Paradise," I'll have you know--they're probably thinking that it was the best time of their lives. And I think: There but for the grace of God go I. (Of course, when I look at guys I knew in college who seemed like complete drunken idiots and who are now junior partners in big Richmond and Norfolk law firms, I think: Yeah, God, thanks for the kick in the butt.) I feel bad for these dudes, but their bleak lives make me feel a hell of a lot better about myself.

So when I see a city that makes poor beat-down old Baltimore look good, I feel bad for the place, but it makes me feel a hell of a lot better about my hometown.

A few days ago I saw a PBS special about Judy Garland. I never got the appeal of the late '50s and '60s androgynous-costume-wearing, torch-song singing Judy Garland. My much more prosaic taste is more in line with all of the dopey happy movie musicals she made, so I stopped paying attention to the show right after it spotlighted one of my favorite musical pictures: "Meet Me In St. Louis."

In 1942, St. Louis probably still was the epitome of a nice, prosperous, big but charming American city. Things have changed--have they ever.

I frequently point out, when bemoaning the collapse of Baltimore as I once knew it, that during my lifetime Baltimore has lost about 300,000 inhabitants--significantly more than the entire population of Richmond. Imagine Richmond itself just plain vaporizing and you'll have an idea how Baltimore has shrunk. From being the nation's sixth largest city in my childhood it has sunk to about the nineteenth.

And then tonight, while I was aimlessly surfing some websites that cover neato abandoned buildings, I discovered this incredible site: www.builtstlouis.net

Wow.

St. Louis in the 1890's was the nation's fourth largest city. It is now barely hanging on at number 48. From being a city about the same size as Baltimore, it has lost about the entire population of Washington to become about the size of Richmond. The city itself now claims only 300,000 inhabitants. Now, imagine the entire city of Washington just vaporizing, and that tells you what's happened to St. Louis.

Have a look at the site and compare it to your own city. The vast stretches of abandoned houses and empty fields where city blocks once stood are breathtaking. The scope of the houses is unbelievable, too. The 1942 movie depicts St. Louis as the ideal of everything that was nice about living in the United States in 1904. The city, as it stands (more or less stands, that is) now, depicts everything that could possibly go wrong with living in the United States in 2006. (I also noted that, while Hollywood decided that St. Louis was full of big rambling wood-frame houses, clapboard houses are really quite rare in that city.) Compared to Baltimore's more staid architecture--Baltimorean stinginess strikes again--St. Louis was full of ornate and fanciful houses in every imaginable revival style. Pressed and patterned brick seems to have been a civic obsession. Walking the streets of the city in 1900 must have been the fulfillment of the American dream, with the beautiful and well appointed houses seated amidst tree-lined streets and lush gardens. A century later, thousands of the houses are just plain gone; many of the remaining ones are notable more for their missing roofs and collapsing bay windows than for their unique styles.

Everything has gone wrong there. The city's manufacturing base is dead. Its river port--the original purpose of the city's existence--is a nonentity as river traffic is a shadow of its former self. Its status as a rail hub has been obliterated by air and automobile traffic and changed patterns of rail freight. Its banking and trade have been swallowed by national conglomerates. With the bulk of its economy wiped out, there just isn't much need for people to live in St. Louis anymore. Those who do--the metropolitan area does still lay claim to a population of nearly two million--have long since fled the city for the vast array of suburbs, a pattern all too common across the nation, but one particularly destructive in this case. Even though I've seen the same patterns in Baltimore, the effects haven't been as devastating. In the space of about forty years, St. Louis has gone from being an important city with an impressive and bustling downtown and endless miles of beautiful residential streets to a vacant and shattered ruin.

In college, I studied the cities and architecture of the ancient world, and I always wondered what some of those ancient people might think, if they somehow woke up in the present and saw what had happened to their cities. An ancient Roman might be mystified by the bustle and notorious awful driving of his descendants, but more than cars and trains, he would probably be horrified by the sight of the all-important Forum lying in ruin. There are St. Louisans who can see that change within their natural lives, no time-travel required.

For me, the most poignant aspect of my tour through the website was the realization that I really wanted to live in St. Louis--that is, the St. Louis of a century ago. With almost every picture of a crumbling house, I started to picture myself living in it.

No. One crumbling house is enough for a lifetime.

2006-07-29T04:12:00.000-04:00

Day: Second, in my brief re-entry to temp world.
Time: Middle of the goddamned night, because I downed about three hundred cups of coffee today and thus won't sleep until Wednesday.

Today's temp assignment was much like yesterday's, except that it was a lot less interesting. Sort of. It was another one of these seminar thingies, but it lasted all day. This meant that I spent an hour in the morning running around like the iconic beheaded chicken, another half-hour in the afternoon playing Efficient Secretary Boy, and the intervening seven hours drinking coffee, sneaking smoke breaks and staring at walls.

I finally finished "Forever Amber," about which I blogged about a year ago before dumping it as hopeless. It still is--has been since 1946--but I was in the mood for a read of the heaving-bosom variety. I also spent a good bit of time talking to the various guys who work catering and security and today's hotel, the Wyndham.

The Wyndham is sort of point-counterpoint to the Tremont. The Tremont is a giant, ugly block of a building with no redeeming or interesting features in its 36 stories. (To give you an idea of the thing, picture a beige shoebox on end. Baltimore's landmark skyscraper, the Baltimore Trust building, is technically only 32 stories, but towers a good two hundred feet above the Tremont.) The Wyndham, on the other hand, has had about seven different names since I've been alive. It started life as Baltimore's first Hilton hotel. It has since been a Hyatt and a couple of other things before its current trademark-hotel-du-jour. It was built in the early '70s and was obviously designed with that era's misguided idea of what might make a landmark structure. It has two towers, which only connect on the first three floors. It has some seven hundred rooms, but no grace or style whatsoever. Even so, it's a couple of notches above the Tremont--excepting that Masonic temple bit that I mentioned yesterday, and which will be addressed in a separate post to follow.

Since today's seminar was ensconced in a meeting room just off the main lobby of the Wyndham (wait, they haven't changed the name since this afternoon, have they?) I got to watch the foot-traffic parade as I sat at my station, alternately falling asleep and following Amber's endlessly coital exploits.

There is one significant thing that kept the day entertaining. This weekend, the City of Baltimore is playing host to a Firemen's convention, and a good chunk of them are staying at the Wyndham (it's not the Radisson, now, is it? oh, no! That's what they're calling the old Hotel Lord Baltimore this week.)

There are firemen from all over the country holed up in that hotel. I saw guys with shirts from Elizabeth City (NC, I assume), Ronkonkoma (which I believe is somewhere in New Jersey), Oklahoma City, Seattle, our own Hagerstown, and the rather unfortunately-named Hicksville (not sure which state is claiming that one) in addition to the better-known Philadelphia and New York City.

Before I say anything else, I want to state that I have nothing against firemen. These guys are the salt of the earth; their daily jobs require a significant amount of risk and the work they do ensures the safety of us all. I admire these men (and women, though it seems they're a distinct minority) because they have, bluntly, bigger balls than I do. They think nothing of entering a building consumed in flame to rescue people they don't know. I would make an effort to rescue my own cats and silver service, but that's about the extent of my bravery.

When it gets down to personality, though, firemen are the little boys who never quite grew up. All little boys want to be firemen. Real firemen are the men who never grew out of wanting to be one. And, when you get several thousand of them in the same place, it's like being in a city full of fourth graders. (Several of them are big, muscly, tattooed fourth graders, but fourth-graders nonetheless.)

Most of Middle America is terrorized by the idea of a hotel full of college fraternity boys, but as your friendly neighborhood Sig Ep, let me tell you, we ain't got shit on the firemen. These dudes hadn't even had a chance to get wasted yet and they were already trashing the hotel, stealing potted palms and booby-trapping the elevators. A lot of them had their girlfriends and wives along for the ride, most of whom walked around with an air of annoyed resignation.

I understand that on Sunday there is to be a parade of antique and modern fire equipment downtown somewhere. I think I should go to see it. Then, I can revert to fourth-grade too--and if I'm lucky one of the guys from Ronkonkoma will let me ride on the back of the truck.

2006-07-28T00:40:00.000-04:00

One of my students at Carver High was absolutely appalled that I didn't get paid weekly and furthermore that I didn't get paid in cash. (He was trying to beg a couple of dollars at the time which, mean old bastard that I am, I certainly didn't give him.) You see, in the planet of black ghetto West Baltimore, even those with vaguely legitimate jobs are paid weekly in cash, because nobody there has a checking account and wouldn't trust a bank in any case. Life functions with cash only--which, I sometimes think, isn't a bad policy after all.

Poor DJ would be even more horrified to learn that I don't get paid at all during the summer, but it's an occupational hazard. My dear old pal WK, the child of two teachers, remembers that as a little girl she learned very early on not to ask for anything during August, since the summer savings was nearly depleted by then.

My summer savings, which wasn't much this year, is already depleted and so I have turned to my old standard of living: temp work.

You know, in some ways, I love temping. The pay is marginal, but so is the work. The vast majority of temp jobs allow you to sit around on your ass doing absolutely nothing, because all the company really needs is a warm body to fill a chair while the real person is sick, or until they fill the recently-vacated post. Thus, you can usually bring some mindless summer reading, or cater to your little English-major heart and read one of the more tedious hallmarks of literature that you were supposed to read sophomore year, but for which you actually bought the Cliffs Notes because you'd spent the entire week getting bombed. Or, as I did today, you can indulge in your English-major specialty: working crosswords in pen.

Temping also allows a few Personal Victory Moments. As a temp with more than three operating brain cells, you can go the extra mile, produce first-rate work for a job that really only requires two brain cells, and thus earn the unending awe of the people for whom you're briefly working. I elected that strategy today: I hadn't temped for a while, so I figured I'd impress the hell out of them, which could get me a couple of extra assignments. Then again, I'd like to spend a couple of weekdays at the beach, so... well, we'll see where the next week leads. If all else fails, you can utter the timeless phrase, "I don't know. I'm just the temp." While this makes you look idiotic, it also absolves you from any actual responsibility.

You see, people do not expect anything from temps. This is because a majority of the temp work force is amazingly stupid. In the past, I've wowed clients because--get this--I could type. Crimony! You're an office temp, you're supposed to be able to type. Sheesh, with computer keyboards, even the trusty hunt-and-peck system will get you 40 words per minute. Since I learned to type in approximately 1907 on a manual Olympia typewriter, I can type almost 80 words per minute on a computer keyboard. Back in the dark days when I periodically temped for a living, I repeatedly won the temp-o'-the-month award. I figured this was mostly the result of showing up every day and not actually drooling on the computer.

Today's assignment was of a sort that I'd never handled before. I had to "manage" a seminar at one of the big downtown hotels. This was kind of cool. I like big downtown hotels; there's a bit of a charge that comes from the elegance and bustle of those places. In my next life, I think it would be really cool to be the manager of the Lord Baltimore or the Jefferson or something. Then I can be just like that pissily imperious guy with the heart of gold in "Pretty Woman," and Julia Roberts will want to date me, and... Oh, never mind. So anyway, here I am at the Tremont. All I have to do is make sure the conference room is set up properly (more on this later), check in all the registered attendees, take their payment if they haven't already, record the session, and sit around for four hours until they're done. Then I pack up all the crap, FedEx it to the company running the seminar, and leave.

This is not difficult. During my September-to-May existence, I plan daily lessons that are designed to keep thirty ninth-graders quiet for an hour. I frequently do this approximately five minutes before the class starts, and I can pull it off. I am used to fudging attendance records so that the school's administration doesn't look bad. So, really, ticking off eighteen people on a list and pushing the "record" button just ain't too stressful. All the same, when I called in to the seminar programmers to report the necessary information, they were floored. The chick with whom I spoke said--I quote directly: "Wow. You must have managed a lot of these seminars before." "Er, no," I replied. "Actually this is the first time I've done it." Moment of silence. "No way. Usually I have to walk the temps through everything on the phone the first time. I hope we can get you back again." "Well," I said, "that would be fine, but I'm only available during the summers, you see..." This continued for a few minutes, but once again I realized: there are a lot of really dumb people out there.

Most of the day required that I do nothing more but sit at a registration table in the rather imposing hallway and look either decorative or menacing. Maybe it's the crosswords-in-pen; perhaps the USMC high-n-tight haircut, but I evidently do both. The Tremont includes a vast array of meeting rooms, and several of them were in use today. (Oddly, one of the most ornate had been allocated to a conference on treatment of blindness which seemed to involve several blind participants--what a pity that these folks couldn't see the gorgeous trappings that surrounded them.)

There I was, sitting at the table outside my seminar, with scores of people drifting past. Public behavior is a funny thing. People will yuk it up as long as they're with their friends, but the presence of an authority figure shuts them right up. I was no more an authority figure than was the empty chair beside me, but apparently all of these people thought that I was, because their conversations died when they saw me.

Most amusing was the pair of cute blonde twenty-somethings that strolled down the hallway. These two were attending a conference on historic preservation, which makes the following scenario all the more appalling. While the Tremont itself is a hideously ugly '60s hotel, it has lately encompassed a beautiful old Masonic temple for its meeting/ballrooms. This place is tricked out in more marble, silver and crystal than you can imagine, and all restored to an inch of its 97-year-old life. So, preservation types should revere it, no? No. The blonde babes, who would probably wet themselves if somebody lit a cigarette in an 18th century tobacco warehouse (I'm going for irony here, work with me) were chatting and were about to deposit their empty plastic water bottles into a potted palm tree. Until, that is, they realized that I was looking at them, at which time they retrieved the bottles and scuttled to the elevator. Hmm...butch Marine haircut strikes again.

If I weren't such a stickler about the way one behaves in public, I would've said "Hey, it's cool. I'm just a temp."

2006-07-20T23:38:00.000-04:00

And yet another era has ended. I returned to the city on Saturday, after a grueling week at the beach. How can a beach trip be grueling, you ask? Try it with one parent in the midst of an Alzheimer's haze and the other parent completely rattled from dealing with it. Add a handful of relatives from the hinterland, and you have the recipe for hell.

When I got back to town it was sweltering. I couldn't get the house aired out to save my life, and the cats refused to get up to go to their food dishes, because they were sleeping on the nice cool marble mantelpieces and didn't want to leave them. Sheesh, THEY don't need to lose weight; I do. Perhaps I should have employed the same tactic.

Now, I must admit that I've been so lazy this summer that I never even got around to changing the rugs, which makes the house at least seem ten degrees hotter. All of that wool and velvet just looks heavy and makes you feel warm, which is just dandy in February. This is not February.

But then, my summer bedroom doesn't have wool and velvet, because it is a summer bedroom and never gets used in the wool-and-velvet season. And it was roasting.

So after three days of sweating my spleen out through my pores, I went to Wal-Mart and bought an air conditioner. I have spent the last twenty years of my life hating air conditioning in houses. I'd usually rather sweat than sit in stale, recycled air, no matter how cool it might be. On those few days a year that I really want air conditioning, I just go to the movies.

I went to the movies about five times and it wasn't working out for me. I bought a damned air conditioner.

Some of you may be aware of my previous air conditioning drama. When I was a child I spent a lot of the summer with sniffles, because our Timonium house was the first my mother had ever inhabited that happened to have central air, and so she kept it cranked down to about -20. We saved electricity, though, because it was so goddamned cold in the house that we didn't have to use the refrigerator. The milk and eggs could just sit on the kitchen counter and still stay fresh.

After happily living through several AC-free years (going to the movies in Richmond was always a good option, since the fabulous Byrd Theatre is not only air-conditioned but breathtakingly beautiful), I moved into my current lair.

Many of you will recall that when I moved into this place, it was chock full of random old crap. Some of this was useful crap; most was not. Among the things that I believed, then, might be useful was a small air conditioner.

Now, I should have realized, based on my previous experience with the house I'd just bought, that there would be something wrong with the little air conditioner. For one thing, it was way too small for any room in the house. For another, someone had effected a repair on its plastic grille that involved duct tape. If I make a repair with duct tape, that's one thing, but I have also learned over the years that if someone else makes a repair with duct tape, it's probably bad news.

Undaunted, I hauled the little air conditioner down to the master bedroom and plugged it in. Lo and behold, it worked.

Sort of worked.

This was an air conditioner meant for a room that measures approximately 10 x 12. I had just put it in a room that measures 18 x 20, and it was decidedly overwhelmed. Also, its dehumidying abilities were impaired (possibly by the duct tape?). So, it couldn't quite cool down the whole room, and rather than being hot and sticky, the room was almost-cool and clammy. Not necessarily an improvement, so the hapless air conditioner had to go. Even then, it continued to thwart me. While trying to take it out of the window: a)the window's sash cord broke, causing the window to fall which b)made me try to catch the window but c) I missed so d)I ended up smashing my hand through the glass while e)the air conditioner fell inwards and landed on my foot while f) a flower box on the outer windowsill fell down onto the sidewalk. All I got for that effort in air conditioning was a broken window, a slashed-up wrist, a very sore foot and a terrorized neighbor who had been walking down the street when a box of geraniums landed two feet in front of her. I then vowed: No more AC.

Until Tuesday, at least, when I'd spent a few miserable days and hied myself to Wal-Mart. I am now air-conditioning-enabled.

Except that every time I turn the thing on, I can see little dollar signs flying out the window, thinking how much it's costing me to run the stupid thing. And I've already found the air in the now-air-conditioned bedroom to be rather stale. And the cats don't like the noise it makes, and I don't like being unable to hear the outside, and I'm having bizarre dreams that I'm sure are caused by the white noise from the air conditioner.

Just my style. You can lead me to the modern age, but you can't make me plug it in.

2006-07-01T03:15:00.000-04:00

I've been surprised, over the past couple of days, to read the scathing reviews of the movie version of "The Devil Wears Prada."

I intend to see the movie, although I haven't yet. It surprises me, though, that the reviewers universally also pan the book. Now, it wasn't the best book that I've ever read, but it hit home repeatedly.

An article in the Sun involved interviews with real, live secretaries...oops, assistants, in New York fashion publishing. They all seemed disgusted with the book. OF COURSE an assistant should expect to be sent out in the rain to get Starbucks for twelve. OF COURSE she should be expected to go back if the coffee got cold. OF COURSE she should expect to have to babysit for her boss, and WHY would she think that would merit any extra pay or (gasp) appreciation?

I've got news for you, world. The whole damned country is not some scatterbrained idiot trying so desperately to break into New York's ticky-tacky world of fashion (and yes, it IS ticky-tacky--get over your credit card selves and LOOK at that crap they're foisting on you) .

I worked for someone, once, who was the "lite" version of Miranda, the devil/editrix of the title. (hoo, boy, I bet she'd wet her politically-correct didies, too, if she caught me using a feminine form, there...) And, you know what? I finally got fed up with her crap, her self-serving idiocy, her smarmy asininity, and QUIT. Which is what any self-respecting person would do, really; in reading the book I only marvelled that the heroine sucked up and dealt with the crap for as long as she did.

Sadly, it's a good picture of corporate America. Too many overqualified people have been produced for too few jobs and, especially in either fashion or publishing, it's a cutthroat world. Therefore, the low men on the totem pole have to suck up and deal with the demeaning, idiotic crap that they're given, if only to stay employed. Too few people are willing to tell the Mirandas of the world that, indeed, they're nasty, mean-spirited bitches who've fucked their way to the top and really have about as much talent as the average dust bunny. (I personally expect one of the dust bunnies under my bed to graduate summa cum laude from Harvard, which also tells you precisely what I think of that school.)

"The Devil Wears Prada" was, indeed, a sensationalist little novel, but it hit too close to home for most reviwers' comfort. When one has already willingly given up any modicum of self-worth to fetch coffee (and what the FUCK was wrong with the coffee in the office?) three times in a row in pouring rain, it hurts to see someone else demeaning that precise activity.

You know, I can see myself in Miranda's shoes, but I'd like to think I'd have a different perspective, though I'd keep the meanness:

DG: We need coffee, Assistant. Would you set up coffee service for twelve? I'll give you a hand in a minute.
Assistant: Oh, YES!!! I'll run to Starbucks right away.
DG: Er, is the office percolator broken?
Assistant: No, I just assumed...
DG: Precisely, which is why you belong in New York and not in Baltimore. We have perfectly good coffee here, or have you not figured that out yet?
Assistant: But what will you do for cream and sugar? You'll want pure cane sugar and cream from cows fed on orthoponic...
DG: What are you, blind? there's a pint of milk in the fridge and Domino sugar in that funny little silver thing, which you obviously do not recognize as a sugar bowl.
Assistant: But bagels...?
DG: (exasperated sigh...) What's your name...Andy, or whoever you are? HOW long have you been working for me, and you do not understand that I do not EAT bagels? If you insist upon making work for yourself, why don't you telephone Hoehn's for some doughnuts?
Assistant (overheard on 'phone): He wants doughnuts, STAT!
DG: Dear God, you WERE brought up in a barn. Give me that...
..... I'm so sorry, I hate to telephone you with such late notice, but if you could have your delivery boy get me a couple of dozen--no, no, plain sugar is fine--I'd be most obliged!
Assistant: But...
DG to Personnel: NEVER again send me someone who isn't from Highlandtown.

2006-06-27T00:03:00.000-04:00

I think we're all in trouble. From my vantage point, it seems that God has finally caught up with Noah, and realized that He got snowed. Noah wasn't supposed to get to build an Ark at all. Or, maybe he was, but he was only supposed to put the animals on it and then get washed away himself. Either way, God has decided that the East Coast needs to be thoroughly cleansed.

It has been raining more or less incessantly for three days, and it's most irritating. Although my basement remains above the water table, there are definite signs of mildew down there that have never existed before. Walking through the house is like a tour in a velvet-furnished aquarium. I fully expect to see the cats wearing little snorkels. Those houses that have air conditioning are suffering from strained electric power, as the a/c labors desperately to dehumidify.

Out in the garden? far from respite, it's even worse out there; the clothes I hung out to dry (naturally, right before the deluge) are still there and of course have no chance to dry. If I run the dryer, that will only increase heat in the basement and encourage the uninvited mildew. The roses are, to their eternal credit, throwing off a nice second showing of blooms, but I'm figuring on a nasty crop of blackspot from the insane moisture in the air. A neighbor's nifty li'l digital weather station showed 91% humidity today. To top it all off, last night when I turned in, my bedsheets were actually damp. This isn't just summer weather, this is the Second Coming of the Flood.

Yet, I'm forced to giggle at my friends who have moved here from Somewhere Else. Specifically, I'm laughing at the expense of my friends from California and the Southwest. I do love my people, but those folks are always telling us Easterners how much bigger, better and badder their world is. (In all fairness, we've been doing the same to them since the day that we shipped all of our undesirables out there to settle the place.)

Whenever I complain of the heat, the Westerners immediately point out that in San Diego, Phoenix et al, the summer temperatures routinely hit 110.

Groovy. You don't have humidity out there either, now do you? A day like the past three we've had here sends all of them fleeing for the nearest air-conditioned picture palace, if not the ticket counter for Southwest Airlines. I can't say that I blame them.

To every seven-hundred-mile-long raincloud though, there is a silver lining. This is mine: While Baltimore and Richmond sweat it out, and the Eastern shore is washing away, Washington is filling up with its own sewage. Many of the Federal buildings closed today because their basements were, um, wet.

For over a century now, Baltimoreans all, from the grimy dockworkers of Highlandtown to the dainty ladies of Guilford, have wiped the sweat from their brows and thanked God that despite all they do not live in the cesspool that is Washington. The Patapsco stinks every summer, but it doesn't invade our basements usually, while the Potomac seems to have a mission to spread pestilence through the Nation's Capital, and the mosquitoes that swarm in Washington give the Air Force itself a run for its money. God is looking out for us in one way or another, I suppose; there may be mildew forming on my forehead, but at least I'm not floating on a sea of runoff water and poop.

2006-06-20T23:48:00.000-04:00

Since I'm still in the early-summer stage of I Do Not Want to do Anything, I accomplished absolutely nothing today. I did make it to the gym, but that has more to do with the ridiculous little orange bathing suit I got over the winter (which I will probably never really wear, being inherently prudish) than it does with any real motivation.

And, since it was a pretty day and not oppressively humid, I decided to take a nice long walk. Very little new under the sun of North Baltimore; the early crop of roses has petered out and only the perpetual-bloomers are still doing their thing. Wildflowers are doing nicely. Oh, and the Borg--er, I mean JHU--has finally gotten around to tearing down a row of pretty '20s rowhouses on St. Paul street to allow construction of some ugly, under-designed new megalith.

I swear, I don't get that university. Even W&M and UVa, which have plenty of reason to do so, never act so consistently and overwhelmingly impressed with themselves as does Hopkins. And, certainly not in this part of the country is there any other university so hell-bent on taking over its host city. I suppose it's a symbiotic sort of parasite; without Hopkins, Baltimore would lose a hell of a lot of jobs. That aside, the university seems bent on molding the city to its will. It appears that the place has a yen for the ugly. When it was founded it inhabited a clutch of spectacularly ugly buildings (even by Victorian standards) downtown; when it moved up to North Charles street it promptly constructed a clutch of singularly forgettable and nondescript neo-Georgian edifices, and ever since has been gobbling up space with never-ending bland institutional architecture.

Enough of that business. Hopkins has absolutely no interest in my opinion and is hardly going to go out and build something pretty just because I think that it should. Which was more or less my opinion when, after surveying the ruin of a block of houses I rather liked, I decided that it was time for a cup of coffee.

I've been dismayed lately by the number of Starbucks that are cropping up around Baltimore. I don't particularly have anything against Starbucks; though I'm amused at its fad/obsession place in the culture du jour. It's just that, really, we already had some very nice coffee places of our own and I don't see why we need Starbucks. Foremost among the local coffee contenders is Donna's. Thus: I stopped at Donna's, where I uncharacteristically opted for one of those creamy sugary icy coffee thingies that do not resemble real coffee in the slightest, but which are rather tasty nonetheless.

While one of the counter folk was creating my whatever-the-hell-it-was, a fortyish man walked in and ordered a regular old coffee. Since pouring a cup of coffee takes considerably less time to prepare than the frothy creations, he had his coffee before I had my thingy, so I got to witness the rather bizarre follow-up.

Once he had his coffee, he went to the cream/sugar/napkin area, surveyed it briefly, then walked back to the counter. "Do you have any Splenda(TM)?" he asked. The girl at the counter said that no, unfortunately they didn't. "Are you sure?" he asked. At this point, I thought No, dude, she's not sure. She only works here. She's just saying that to annoy you.

So, Spenda-man decides that if he can't have the yellow packets of the gods, he doesn't want the coffee, and demands a refund. I wanted to see how this played out, but by this time my sugary mess was ready and I didn't want to stare.

I think that some people aren't happy unless they're making somebody else miserable. I mean, come on. You're already drinking supercharged coffee, which probably isn't the best thing for you anyway. You have two other options of chemically enhanced sweetness, which are--like Splenda--probably a lot worse for you than real live sugar. (For the record, Donna's has pure cane sugar in addition to the refined stuff.) Besides, if you're hell-bent on having the least common of the three standard non-sugar sweeteners, don't you think you might check on its availability before ordering? And, having already ordered and put the counter staff to the trouble to fill your order, couldn't you accept the harsh reality of the situation, heart-rending though it must be, and suck up and deal with Equal? Really now, demanding your money back over an issue like Splenda is a bit much.

And I'm sure that guy is now sitting at home making a blog entry lambasting Donna's and the provincial Baltimoreans for their insensitivity towards the non-Splenda-enabled.

2006-06-14T01:14:00.000-04:00

Not with a bang, but a whimper...

That's usually how the school year ends for teachers, I've found. Once the kids are out of the building, it just turns into a gigantic unlovely edifice (oh, yes, there are some beautiful school buildings out there, but I've not taught in any of them yet).

It's nothing but dusty books being reshelved, grimy ick being removed from lockers, and chalk dust being swept out of rooms.

Today, I spent about twenty minutes boxing up the material that actually belongs to me and not to the school, an hour searching for the administrators who needed to sign off on a silly little checkout list, and two hours wandering in disbelief.

I'm really and truly leaving Carver.

The school is losing a lot of very good teachers. I don't know that I may count myself among them, but an awful lot of good people are fleeing. The City's new curriculum is miserable, and shows no signs of improvement. I'll address "How Can We Do This To Our Kids?" another time. This is about me, damnit.

I spent most of the day thinking of August, 2003, when I first wandered into the once-hallowed and now-roach-infested halls of George Washington Carver Vocational and Technical High School. It was my first teaching job. I had a very dim idea, really, of what I was doing. Oh, sure, I knew my BritLit, and I can conjugate verbs twenty ways for Sunday. I'd never stood in front of thirty kids while doing so, though, so I was a bit daunted.

In three years, I'd come to love and hate Carver. I hated what had happened to the once-proud school--really, to the once-proud City of Baltimore. I loved the feeling of family that we had. I loved the whiskey sours in the lounge on the day before Christmas break, and I loved the amazing fried chicken that the school's Tea Room turned out weekly. I hated the fact that my ninth graders didn't know the meaning of the word "noun" (and no, I'm not being facetious), but I loved it when a kid said "I liked that story. It reminds me of my grandma." I really loved when one of the kids in my drama class, after I'd held forth on the movie palaces of Baltimore, came in and told me that her grandmother was ecstatic about my lesson. Grandmother, it seems, remembered going to pictures at the Regent and the Royal, and remembered a time when she wasn't allowed into the Century or the Hippodrome.

You know, for all of my nostalgia for the Baltimore in the days before my own birth, I'm forced to wonder now and then what the city would have meant to me had I not been allowed into certain places. The Hipp is my favorite picture palace, but what if I'd never been allowed into it? How would it have felt if Hochschild's didn't let me try on a bathing suit? Maybe my view of the city would be a little bit different.

But this is not about segregation or movies or stores; it's about me and my last day at Carver. I'm damned glad to be shut of the place, but it will always loom large in my mental book of memories. Apparently, my list of things I loved does outweigh the list of things I hated. It's time for me to move on, but I'm pretty elephantine in my memories. Cheers, and thanks, to Carver High, her students, alumni and faculty, for a great three years.

2006-06-13T01:04:00.000-04:00

Although most ad campaigns change pretty regularly over the years, or even months, some have persisted ad infinitum, or ad nauseam, depending upon your perspective and tolerance. Locally, the Naron Candy people have been using the same jingle for their Mary Sue candies since Christ was a corporal. There's no one who grew up in Baltimore who doesn't know that "Mary Sue Easter Eggs, They're the Best Easter Eggs" goes to the tune of "Poor Little Buttercup" from The Pirates of Penzance. I loathe Gilbert and Sullivan, but I do love Mary Sue coconut eggs, so I'm willing to bite the bullet. Or the egg, as it were.

As far as I know, the nice people at Peter Paul Candy are still using the old "sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't" shtick to promote their Almond Joy and Mounds bars. I love both, and I hate change, so I'm all about the repetition of one jingle for forty years.

Thanks to Pam (over at MotherReader), who spoke recently on chronic lateness, I've decided to adopt a new motto: Sometimes I'm late, sometimes I'm not.

There are times at which I believe in being insanely early. Though I'm known to favor a wake-up time somewhere after ten o'clock, if the day's work involves travel I want to be on the road as soon as possible. This annoys my usual travel companions to no end. Despite the considerable improvements in Maryland's roads, I apparently harbor a subconscious belief that it still takes twelve hours, two streetcars, one Bay steamer and one railroad to get me to the ocean. Thus, it is vital that I leave the city before six in the morning. I don't mind operating on two hours of sleep if needed, but damnit, I will leave town early.

I also believe in being on time, reasonably, for dinner parties. Naturally, there's going to be a buffer in there when the host serves cocktails and all, but you can probably assume that he wants to serve food at some specific time, and it's a bit rude to show up an hour late.

I do not believe in being "on time" for non-dinner parties. I despise being the first person to arrive. It is no fun to sit there while the host rummages around getting ready; and it is even less fun to have no chance to make an Arrival. If anyone really expects me to arrive at the time specified by the invitation, they'd telephone me and ask for help setting up. I can do that.

I believe in being on time, sort of, for work. As a teacher, I generally need to be a bit early to set up my blackboards, make dittos, etc. On the other hand, my previous careers didn't involve any early morning setup, so there wasn't much reason to be early. Yet, employers seem to expect it. Um, if you're not planning to pay me overtime, don't expect me to show up half an hour ahead of time. So, precisely on time will be just fine.

I do not believe in being on time for meetings. Meetings, in ANY professional setting, are worthless annoyances, and if you arrive early or even on time, you can guarantee being the first one there and that you will have to cut bagels or some sort of foolishness.

2006-06-08T00:04:00.000-04:00

My time at Carver High is winding down, and not just for the summer.

Tomorrow will be the last day of final exams. Friday is exam makeup day. Tuesday is officially the last day of school, not that we'll have any kids since exams will have been finished. And, after a few maudlin moments and some of my typically-lousy picture taking, I'll shake off the dust of the city school system for good.

I'm moving to the County.

When most people in Baltimore say that, they mean that they're shifting their residential zip code into the vast reaches of Baltimore County, or possibly Anne Arundel, Carroll or Howard. Since nothing short of an Act of Congress could get me to live outside city limits (barring, of course, a move back to Richmond in which case I'd still live within that city's limits), I refer to my employment.

Come September, I'll be teaching in one of the older suburban high schools. Am I selling out? Well, just maybe. I'm leaving eighty-one years of history behind; I suppose that I'm abandoning a school that needs me, too. I love the city and I'm glad to have had a chance to work at Carver.

But: After three years, I don't think I can take any more kids who, at eighteen, use "in" when they mean "and." I know that I can't take school administrators who say "He have..." And, I certainly can't take a "curriculum specialist" who, at the esteemed age of twenty-six, has no teaching experience but who feels qualified to select reading material for the children of a city that he's never really seen. I'm not sure what to make of a person who is ostensibly an expert in the English language, yet believes that this sentence is correct: "We need to give the kids stuff they can get into." The same person created a city-wide final examination that includes a reading selection involving "pimps and hos."

If the grass is greener in Baltimore County, it's probably only because there are more lawns out there. When I embarked upon my teaching career, with the City, I held no illusions that involved saving the world; thus, I cherish no new illusions about the Promised Land of Suburbia. (In this case, the suburban enclave is rather ancient; most of the houses were built between 1920 and 1960.) I know that I won't save the world--but, just as it was in the city, there might be that one kid who will "get into" Shakespeare. If I can do that, I'll feel that I've really done something.

Unfortunately, for the students of Baltimore City, the current operating powers won't allow Shakespeare in the classroom.

2006-05-26T00:38:00.000-04:00

Almost every city now has zoning regulations, and Baltimore is no exception. You can build a supermarket in this block, but not in that block. This is mixed-use office and residential; that is zoned for commercial use.

In some ways, Baltimore pioneered (I think I just verbed a noun, there) the concept of zoning, but it was on a private scale. The next neighborhood up the street from this one was laid out and developed by a private company. Since it was intended to be a fairly schnitzy, exclusive neighborhood, "Peabody Heights" did not allow any structures that were not residential. Even apartment houses were verboten.

Of course, within a few years, people realized that they were stuck with walking several long blocks for such basic amenities as barbershops and drugstores, so the restrictions were eased a bit. To this day, though, Charles Village (the hip new name given to old Peabody Heights in the '60s) is remarkably free of corner stores and their ilk. It's still a pain in the ass to run around the corner for a Coke, because you have to run around several corners.

Citywide zoning happened in the '20s, and it was met with vitriol. Oddly enough, the first real zoning battle took place in my own neighborhood.

It seems that, in 1926, somebody decided that a movie theatre would be a nice addition to the 2400 block of St. Paul street. The houses in that block were never the most fashionable and were a bit past their prime. Besides, 25th street seemed a promising commercial district. Surely the nice--and wealthy--people of North Baltimore would be happy to have a tidy little picture palace of their own.

Yeah, right. Baltimoreans might as well have invented the phrase "not in my backyard," and the idea of a plebeian movie palace--even a small one--that just anybody might attend--in the lordly clime of St. Paul street was just too much for the Nice North Baltimore people, and they revolted, demanding that the city not allow such a travesty. Those who liked the idea replied in kind, accusing the pro-zoning people of being communists, or worse, Germans (remember, the First Great War was only eight years in the past--never mind that at least half of the Nice North Baltimoreans are German).

And zoning continues to plague us into the present. It's a wonderful idea in theory, but the practice often fails to live up to the theory's promise.

Case in point: The city is now trying desperately to revive the old North Avenue shopping and theatre district. An admirable goal: I love North Avenue. It has two pretty movie palaces and one spacy late '30s theatre, a couple of beautiful old banking houses, a really impressive Baptist church and a wide variety of other early 20th century buildings. It's one of Baltimore's widest streets and, if it weren't seedy and scary, could have the feel of a Parisian boulevard.

Unfortunately, the city government feels that the way to make North Avenue nice again is to attack everything it can find, root it out and start over. If there is one concept of public policy I truly cannot abide, it is that of eminent domain. Lately, the city has decided that it absolutely needs to claim a dowdy old place called the Magnet Bar on Charles street. Without the securing and destruction of this bar--which is very tired but isn't bothering anybody--the entire redevelopment plan is apparently doomed to failure. Now, personally, I don't see how one eighteen-foot-wide rowhouse with a bar in the first floor (particularly an inoffensive bar that caters to nonagenarian tipplers) is going to halt any grand plans, but then I obviously do not share the Grand Vision of the City. The human hair and nail palaces on North Avenue don't seem to be a problem, but God save us from the Magnet Bar!!!

Here's MY redevelopment plan. Leave the poor Magnet alone. Turn the tiny old Waldorf and Chateau Hotels into "boutique" hotels, get the Parkway and the Aurora cranking out pictures again, and sucker Target into building a store on the big empty lot between St. Paul and Calvert. Since the old North Avenue Market isn't likely to make a comeback, use its groovy '20s Spanish facade as the entrance for the New Valencia Theatre: 6500 seats, the largest movie palace ever built, with a new Kimball organ built for it expressly. The spectacular atmospheric theatre will feature architectural elements brought from Valencia itself, three large ballrooms that can also be used for convention trade, a casual tapas restaurant and a more formal seafood restaurant, and a roof garden with enough room for 200 couples to dance at any one time. The roof garden will be decorated with--what else? orange trees. The Grand Lobby will resemble the courtyard of the Alhambra Palace, while the upper lobbies--reached by staircases hung with antique Spanish tapestry--will take their design from the old Palace in Toledo. Since the entire theatre and its ballrooms will be so massive, it will bring in convention business and Broadway shows as well as the regular movie trade. The amount of business it generates will create a need for additional hotel space, restaurants and other amenities.

See, if only they'd let that poor little movie house open its doors in 1926...but I know my town, and I know what would have happened. It would have raked in the bucks for its first twenty years, tried a stint as an art cinema in the early 60s, degenerated into porn in the 70s, and would now be a boarded carcass of a building with only myself to champion its tenuous hold on existence. Maybe I'd better go down to the Magnet soon and join the old drunks for a couple of beers--I have a feeling that the place is soon to join the list of "once upon a time."

2006-05-24T00:40:00.000-04:00

A double post, here, to make up for lost time...this one will piggyback on the Capital City Desk (which see), as I've been wont to do of late.

In a recent post there, Lisa mentioned that the younger set now eschews email as a communicative device in favor of more circumscribed connections...i.e., blogs, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc. Email, it seems, is too bogged down with spam. (Not SPAM spam, of course, but netspam. If it were SPAMspam, it would be tasty and full of delightful chemical-laden recipes and I would reproduce them here for your dining pleasure.)

Another Capital City Desk reader pointed out that real mail (now derisively known as snail mail) is more full of its own version of spam than email could ever hope. The correspondent stated that "for every piece of mail I actually read there are three that I throw out immediately." If that's all the snail-spam she gets, I congratulate her. The junk mail I receive on a daily basis must be enough to kill a patch of rainforest the size of South Carolina.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was still in college, communication by mail was still pretty important. At the W&M of the late '80s, there still weren't phones in every room and while a lot of people had some form of computer, the Net was still infantile at best and email didn't really exist. If you got word from home, it usually came by mail. If you did need to contact somebody quickly, though, there were plenty of phones around that you could use.

Lisa pointed out that she does tend to receive some occasional "real" mail: mostly from family and friends, myself included, who like to send postcards on vacation.

I am, and have always been, obsessed with postcards. I love the cheery, happy views they offer of places that are not always cheery and happy themselves. To me, they were always something reserved for vacationers--whenever people went on a trip, they sent postcards to everyone back home. To this day, I send a plethora (I love that word) of postcards whenever I travel, despite the facts that (a) I rarely travel anyplace new and (b) most of the people to whom I send postcards have either (b') been there themselves or (b'') seen my postcard views two hundred times. What new views of Rehoboth can possibly be offered up? Crimony, the whole blinkin' town has barely changed for forty years, and the Atlantic Ocean has looked the same for a very long time. However, I do send the occasional "pin-up" postcard of the Beach Patrol to some people, and the beef-and-cheesecake does change every year.

Postcards were once an extremely important form of communication. Now resigned to a small part of the Postal Service's job (which appears to be mostly consumed with credit card offers, these days), postcards once offered a viable form of human contact. They were cheaper to mail than a letter and allowed you to get a quick point across. In an era when most big-city neighborhoods had two mail deliveries daily, they were also fairly efficient.

Over the years, I have collected acres of postcards. Many of the newer ones were sent to me at some time, but I've also amassed a fair collection of older ones as well. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most big institutions--hotels, department stores, theatres--had postcards readily available for customers. I have one card of about 1910 showing Stewart's department store in Baltimore. The message reads "Meet me in the music department tomorrow." Evidently, a postcard was an efficient missive. The recipient would have received the card on the same day it was mailed from downtown, in time to make plans for lunch on the next day.

Naturally, postcards even at the turn of the last century were considered a tourist item as well, and the resulting cliches were formed rather early. I was browsing through my collection earlier tonight and found one card of the Munsey Building in downtown Baltimore. It was mailed to someone in Duncansville, Penn'a. , which is not too far from Altoona. (The Munsey Building, by the way, is one of Baltimore's older and more boring skyscrapers. It was conceived by the famous firm of McKim, Mead and White. That firm was one of the most renowned architectural concerns of its time, but given their contributions to Baltimore, I've never been able to establish exactly why.) The printed blurb on the back of the card rattles on about the building and its amenities. The written message? "this is a grand place wish you were here"
Hmm...well, certainly to someone in Duncansville, the Baltimore of 1916 must have been rather impressive.

Just to illustrate, though, the workaday nature of the postcard once upon I time, I present this gem. It is written clumsily in pencil, on the back of a card I bought specifically because it illustrates one of my favorite theatres of all time (the now-beautifully-restored HIPPODROME). It is addressed to Mrs. Uriah Fritz of Linwood, Maryland (that's in Carroll county). This is a card written not as an invitation nor as a souvenir. It reads, verbatim:

Dear Sister you can get your butter and Uriah shirts done to you can get them Some winter time. how are you all we have colds with love Mildred

Hmm. So much for the Hipp's aspirations as a First-Class Theatre de Luxe.

2006-05-24T00:24:00.000-04:00

Usually, it takes me a day or so to recover from the annual orgy that is the Preakness, but this year it took two extra days because I got sick in the process. Not sick as in too much julep, too much rich food, yak in the bushes sick, but sick as in sore throat and imploding sinuses sick. I spent most of Sunday a complete zombie, sickness combined with hangover, and somehow staggered into school on Monday.

I took Tuesday off.

While this year's Preakness party was not one of the larger for which I've had the delight to act as host, it had some interesting combinations.

There were a lot of old friends present; most of whom had attended all of my previous Preakness Day parties. There was, however, one old friend who'd just moved back to the country and hadn't been my guest for nearly fifteen years. John and his beautiful bride Saori were the hit of the evening (what did you expect from a Sig Ep?).

Of course quite a few newer friends were in attendance as well. I've encountered a whole new group of extremely interesting people since I changed careers, and they were well-represented on Saturday.

I had a few people who had never before encountered a mint julep and were intrigued with the idea, and particularly the ritual involved in the making thereof. They were all taken somewhat aback when they found themselves rather drunk after three of them.

The "auslander" were all surprised to learn that Baltimore is quite as obsessed with our Preakness as Louisville is with her Derby.

Since I don't impose a dress code for the party, it was all over the place. Some ladies wore pretty summer dresses; I forsook fashion for my standard-issue shorts.

I also realized, after an inordinate number of juleps and other things (a few beers before the party started and bourbon-and-cokes afterwards) that this was the tenth anniversary of this party. My first Preakness party was in 1996. I remember this because it coincided with the fifth anniversary of my graduation day. I wish now that I'd remembered that before the party, so that I could have reminded a few people of the significance, but...oh, well, there are better things to do with my time.

We seem, however, to have established a new tradition. Last year, after the party, a select few of us trooped up to the roof. This year, quite a few made it up there (after my small meltdown when it was discovered that one of the cats had gone missing--I believed that he'd escaped when some people went up to the roof, but as it turns out, he wormed into the basement when I went down to grab a couple of extra bottles of wine). This, clearly, is the new tradition of Preakness Day: those who are still able to get to the roof at midnight must do so!

As for "Barbaro" and his rather tragic race: I do feel rather bad for the horse, but--assuming a recovery--he may never race again, but he can look forward to a long life of being put out to stud. There are worse fates than spending the rest of your life doing nothing but getting laid.

2006-05-19T00:02:00.000-04:00

Lisa, our faithful correspondent at the Capital City Desk, recently posted about a library patron who seemed inordinately fascinated with her official library nametag, which actually does feature her name.

The patron was evidently enthralled with the idea of knowing her first name and, rather disturbingly, wanted to use it.

Ever since I graduated from the College of Knowledge and entered the (sort of) working world, I have been distressed by the fascination with using first names (or, as they were once called, Christian names).

I have to give props (see! modern lingo! chalk one up for me!) to the black communities of Baltimore and Richmond, which manage to observe some proprieties that the white world has long since forsaken. If you show up to Mass at the Cathedral itself, you will see people wearing jeans. Over at St. Edward's, or St. Cecilia's--parishes which were once mostly white but are now predominantly black--the congregation appears for Mass in appropriate attire. The gentlemen wear suits and the ladies wear beautiful dresses and always wear hats. My own parish, St. Alphonsus, is sufficiently antediluvian that the ladies do remember to cover their heads for Mass, but that's about it. And, a few years ago, I temped for a few weeks at the Harbor Bank of Baltimore. What a refreshing interlude: Harbor Bank is the crown jewel of the black business community in Baltimore. All of the employees are unfailingly polite and everyone uses a courtesy title. Even as a mere temp, I was always addressed as "Mr. Gibbs."

Now, as a teacher, most of the people I encounter during the course of a day call me "Mr. Gibbs," but then they're all under eighteen.

On my rapidly-disintegrating planet, one is addressed by the family name until invited to do otherwise. Naturally, I introduce myself as "Daniel Gibbs," but I'm always horrified when someone immediately calls me "Dan." That's my "familiar" name. The only people who are allowed to use it are those who are members of my family, close friends of long standing, or someone who has...er, for the lack of more modest explication, enjoyed an extended visit in my bedroom.

American culture is obsessed with friendliness, which is sometimes nice. I understand that European formality, or the Southern litany of family connections, might grate on the nerves of the uninitiated. All the same, I take issue with anyone who feels that his acquaintance of less than fifteen minutes justifies the uninvited use of my first name at all, much less my nickname. Most of you who are reading this are of course authorized to use "Dan," "Pulse," or "Giblet," but the rest of society is not--until I invite them to do so.

I'm always reminded of an old German joke about the newlywed couple: the hotel clerk refuses to give them a room together because he hears them calling each other "Sie" instead of "Du".
The German language, you see, has a formal form of "you." One only uses the "du" form for family, close friends and...well, see above.

If most Americans know one Austrian operetta, it is probably "Die Fledermaus," which is often performed around New Years Eve. There's an entire aria about the proper-name issue, "Du und Du," in which two people--newly embarking upon a somewhat illicit affair--invite each other to use the familiar form. If only this sort of reserve were still in fashion!

Some years ago as an employee of the crusty old Savings Bank of Baltimore, I answered the telephone to a rather miffed customer who immediately demanded to know my name. Being a good little banker, I gave him my full name, whereupon he said "Well, Dan, this is Dr. Johnson."
"In that case, Dr. Johnson, this is Mr. Gibbs."

Case closed.

2006-05-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Oh, my. Anniversary gifts certainly have changed over the years--and this is by no means a bad thing.

I've never quite gotten over the change in society's mindset when it comes to appropriate gifts for a significant other while courting. When I was comin' up, as it were, everyone knew that no respectable man would ever give his respectable sweetie anything except candy and flowers until they'd reached an "understanding," which was OldSouthSpeak for "engaged, but he hasn't bought a ring yet."

Really, in the Proper Old South, an engagement didn't even need to be marked with a diamond ring; Nice People felt that an "engagement gift" of some significance was quite enough. My mother, who never cared for diamonds particularly and doesn't look good in them, had a lovely triple strand of pearls for an engagement present. The Northern set might call my father a cheapskate, but my mother's friends (and WAAC mates) cooed over his sensitivity--he knew how well she loved pearls and how good they looked on her. Besides, that choker probably cost more than a good number of the cheapo diamonds then being sold on the outskirts of FayetteNam, NC, where my parents met. (Oh, and naturally, he sent up to Baltimore to have them especially strung for her. This is the guy who wanted his wife to take an eight-hour train ride so his kid would be born in Baltimore.)

Reading over my friends' blogs of late, I learn that anniversary presents have been renewed with interest. My dear friends Bill and Pam are embarking on another year of wedded bliss (eep--this must be, what, twelve years now? Note previous comments on weddings and photographs and getting older...) Bill gave Pam an engraved iPod.

Now. I am all about tradition. I don't want any potential suitors to ever give me anything but flowers and candy (red roses, and orange creams from Rheb's, if there are any USMC officers paying attention), but traditional anniversary gifts were obviously set up in the Dark Ages and should have stayed there.

The appropriate first anniversary gift is one made of paper. OK, whatever, you still need lots of stationery when you're newly married. The second is cotton. Fine, too, you can never have too many sheets and towels for random guests. The third, though, is leather. WHAT? Happy anniversary, dear, here's a new saddle? I suppose, for the kinkier among us... but, we then move on to linen, which is again useful.

Personally, I have enough bedsheets and linens to last for the next three generations, and as for paper, I am quite capable of going downtown to buy my own stationery. I prefer to do so myself because I do not trust anybody, including my mother, to ever pick out exactly what I want or to get the damned engraving right. Where leather is concerned, I don't see that I need any, or at least not that anybody needs to know about. In the declining possibility of my eventual marriage, I'd rather that my spouse/friends would give things like iPods. I'd probably have a fine time figuring out how the thing worked, but once I did, it would be infinitely more useful than a random leather doohickey.

And, Bill had the sense to have Pam's iPod engraved. I didn't even know you could do that with such things. Engraving, in my head, is reserved for silver and stationery--although I've seen a few old and very expensive pianos and gramophones that had a monogram, so I suppose it's the same general idea. An engraving just makes something special and wonderful, even if it's just paper.

My last present from a recently departed friend was a place setting in my silver pattern, which is of course long discontinued. He'd managed to find pieces with a "G" engraved (properly on the back of the handle). In very Scarlett-ish mode, I forgot to be scandalized by the extravagance of the present because I was so enthralled with its shiny repousse roses. Now that I've admitted that, it will be rather more difficult to enforce the standard of "flowers and candy only!"

2006-04-21T00:02:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a very old college with a very good football team. The college was small and known mostly to Virginians and history majors, but its football team was called--for several years following the second World War--the Terror of Dixie.

That college, naturally, is William and Mary, and its football team is still reasonably good, though I don't think that we've been able to lay claim to the title of "Terror of Dixie" for quite a few years now. One thing you should know, if you ever intend to bet on college sports that don't involve a giant Midwestern school, is that if W&M is winning in the first quarter, they WILL lose the game. The Tribe's best defense is a panicked rally sometime in the second half.

I therefore take it as a good omen for future races that, in my first race of the season, my horse came in dead last.

Pimlico's Season opened today and I hightailed it to the track the minute that school let out. Opening Day is always on a weekday and so the melange of humanity is interesting to say the least. The Clubhouse dining room is full of those who do not have to have jobs, but the trackside seats and grandstand have a different set. Every little old lady in Maryland is there happily placing her two-dollar bets. There are a few Young Exec types who manage to invent a late afternoon meeting to escape the Redwood street offices, but mostly the grandstand crowd is given in vast numbers to those who don't hold a nine-to-fiver.

Construction workers generally work by the hour anyway and so they can get off early enough for the 1 PM opening race. (Unfortunately, few of them bother to shower before heading out Park Heights avenue...) City cops and firemen, and their brethren from surrounding counties, must draw lots in advance to get the day's shift off. They're all there en masse. Shortly after three o'clock, the teachers start showing up.

Baseball may be the American pastime, but it is only racing that seems to appeal to Marylanders across the board. While chugging beer and waiting for the 8th (on the turf), I observed two English teachers from Patterson High, the heir to about one-third of Frederick County, and a guy who was obsessively picking up discarded tickets, trying to find an accidentally-lost winner.

I watched and bet on four races and only one brought me any return whatsoever, and that was fairly dismal. Let's hope that the W&M paradigm holds fast: if it does, I should be doing pretty well by Preakness Day, and the last day of racing season should allow me to retire within the year.

2006-04-11T00:24:00.000-04:00

Isn't it always exciting to discover someone whose birthday falls within one or two days of your own, or especially on your own? I think it is, and even more so if that person was born in the same year, and really exciting if you were born in the same city. Several years ago I met a girl who was born a day before I was, in the same city--and since metropolitan Greenville has but one hospital, we were surely there at the same time.

I do not know why this is so surprising. Even taking the population of Baltimore into consideration, there are a mere 365 days in the year, eight hundred thousand in the city, and nearly two million in the metropolis. Natch, there are more people born at other times of the year than others, so a plain division doesn't truly work, but my calculator tells me that in a metropolitan area of this size, chances are that somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty thousand other people were born on the same day of the year that I was.

And so, the idea of a momentous occasion taking place on my birthday should really come as no surprise whatsoever, but it's always interesting.

For eons now, I've entertained the idea of having my portrait painted. I am an extremely vain being. In my day, I could actually turn some heads; now I still can, but the heads in question tend to be a little bit more whiskey-enriched these days. If I get someone to paint the picture, I'll have to have editing rights to make sure that the portrait shows a dashing young man about town in evening clothes, and not something resembling a bratwurst stuffed into black wool and white pique.

Barring the idea of a portrait, for now--if you can actually find a portraitist worth a damn, these days, it's frightfully expensive--I thought that I might take the rather more proletarian route of a nice studio portrait. Now, there were several nice studios in Baltimore once upon a time, but they've long followed Hutzler's (but not Hauswalds! see previous post) into the grave. Richmond is still possessed of the wonderful old Dementi Studio and it is there that I'll have my soft-focus, sepia toned picture made. The good people at Dementi have made crusty Grace Street dowagers beautiful for ninety years, so they'll surely do a good job of me. No one will recognize me, but the picture will look handsome even if I don't.

In a perfect world I would live in Richmond anyway, and I'd have simply telephoned Dementi and set up an appointment, but it's not a perfect world and I don't, but the imperfect world does offer the 'net, so I found their site. Of course they can do exactly what I want. They also have some pictures from their archive online. I like few things more than views of my favorite city so I spent some happy minutes looking at pictures of Richmond "way back when." There's a picture of Miller and Rhoads in the '20s, before the top two floors were added...an ethereal picture of the Hotel Jefferson, towers rising above the linden trees... a picture of Broad street with about three hundred people busily shopping. And what's this? The thumbnail was titled "Richmond's Last Streetcar."

Well, I couldn't resist that. I'm quite proud of the fact that my two favorite cities made streetcars happen. Richmond had the first electric streetcars in the world and Baltimore had the first fully electrified streetcar system. Both have sadly lost this most effective and useful form of transit. So, I clicked.

Guess when Richmond's last streetcar ran? Precisely twenty years before I was born. I do have a tendency to be late for things, but twenty years late is a bit ridiculous, don't you think? Here's the link to the picture:

http://www.dementi.com/50imageshtml/last-street-car-run-in-richmond.shtml

That picture, if you're not an habitue of Richmond, is on Main street in front of the Post Office. And very clearly dated: November 29, 1949.

It's often said that I'll be late for my own funeral. Unfortunately, I missed the funeral of GRTC by twenty years--to the date.

2006-04-10T01:28:00.000-04:00

The first couple of days of Spring Break are over and I have to start being a productive life form for a while. This house looks like a war zone. I haven't cleaned in eons, even by my own lackadaisical standards. I believe firmly that no respectable Southern person ever has a really clean house. The "nice people" of the South regard excessive cleanliness as a creepy Northern trait. If one has no bloodline, one makes up for it in Lysol. Thus, I see absolutely nothing wrong with four inches of cat hair and dust blanketing the whole house, as long as the silver is impeccably polished. Unfortunately, my own argument is getting the better of me. Not only are there six inches of cat hair on every square inch of red velvet sofa, the silver is looking absolutely leprotic.

Knowing that Monday means a frenzy of attempted housekeeping, I spent today doing as little useful activity as possible. First of all, I blew off going to Mass, which is probably not scoring any brownie points with God. Blowing off Sunday Mass is bad enough, but on Palm Sunday it's probably landing me some serious extra time in Purgatory. I then proceeded to fart around for the rest of the day and drive around aimlessly with Steve and Amy.

At some point in the day's wandering, after checking out bookstores, test-driving overpriced cushy mattresses and funky stuff at Sunny's Surplus (they actually have surplus MREs, so I'm thinking I need to have an Armed Forces dinner party soon), we needed some cold drinks and ducked into a Royal Farms store. If you are not from the Mid-Atlantic region you're probably not familiar with this chain. It's a big improvement on 7-Eleven, and it has better hot dogs.

Like all convenience stores, Royal Farms peddles some basic food items for those who discover that they need such things at weird hours of the night. And what, to my wondering eyes should appear, but...

Hauswald's bread. Two days after I waxed sentimental about the old bakery chain, I was confronted with a giant display of the stuff. They haven't changed the wrapper one iota in thirty years. I didn't buy any today (I don't happen to need any bread at the moment), but I may just change my shopping habits to allow the time-honored old brand back into the house. Maybe if I keep haunting the Royal Farms baked-goods aisle, I'll even find some "Let's Streak" cookies.

2006-04-09T03:21:00.000-04:00

I love my friends.

Oh, I know, everybody does; if you didn't, they wouldn't be your friends, ja?

But, browsing through some old photos, I marvel at how much we've changed--and how much we remain the same--and how much we still love each others' company.

I found a picture from Jen and Stew's wedding. There we all are, except the bride and groom. It is an inevitable fact of weddings that no one ever gets to actually hang out with the bridal pair. They're so busy greeting everybody that they never really get to visit with anybody. This is, I believe, a necessary evil.

What I do remember about Jen and Stew's wedding is that Jennifer had never looked more beautfiul and radiant (and she is a rather lovely woman), and that Stewart (who I'd always known as a quiet and reserved gentleman) was suddenly the man of the hour. The hochzeitspaar (remember your German, now!) danced beautifully and, to their eternal credit, have continued to dance well and often in an era when social dancing is no longer fashionable. I think I owe Jen several drinks; last summer when we all went to Glen Echo Park for an afternoon, she did a yeoman's duty dancing with Stewart, Mike, Kirk and me. Dancing with me is no fun if you don't like wild Charlestons, but Jen is a good sport and put up with it all.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. In the photograph I found, here we all were in fine form and dressed for our friends' wedding. Here is Alex, looking very suave (he always lends the California dash to our otherwise stodgy Virginia affairs). Beside him is Anji--now his wife and, I'm proud to say, my ex-girlfriend, beautiful as always and full of vivacity. I'm in the middle of the photo. After all, I do like to be the center of attention. I seem, in the picture, to be herding my flock around me, just the way I like it! Bill and Pam are there too, still almost newlyweds themselves, the perfect image of the young and happily married couple. Oh, and there's Whitney--I know she'll hate the term "bubbly," but she just is that and it shows so well in the picture. Beside us are Mike (with usual goofy smile--sorry, Mike!) and Catherine, who'd just lately entered the group and had not yet become Frau Dolinska. Mike is looking rather bubbly himself and Catherine is--as always--poised and elegant, probably not yet sure what to make of these idiots to whom she'll soon be attached.

This is a great picture. Here we all are, about ten years ago, all of us happy and full of life. I treasure this photograph. Everybody in it has suffered pain and heartache since the camera captured us. All of us have known joy as well. There have been births and deaths. Some have moved to different climes. We've drifted apart a little bit, but not too much. We still gather once in a while and the aura is the same as always. These people in that photograph are the ones who I know will surround me always, in spirit if not in person. There may be no more Hotel Chamberlin and no more Delta Gamma Golden Anchor Ball; no Sig Ep Sweetheart Dance or Confederate Ball at the Jefferson, but my people will be with me forever.

I know that this is a rather maudlin post, but I know that most of the people reading it are among those aforementioned, so I know you'll forgive the weepy sentiment. When I kick it for good, I'm not sure if I'll end up in Green Mount (with my family) or Hollywood (overseeing my beloved Richmond), but I do know that I want everbody to see that one photograph from Jen and Stew's wedding.

Damn, we were all hot and we knew how to have a good time.

2006-04-02T22:13:00.000-04:00

Aha. The blog seems to have returned to existence; it got lost in cyberspace for a while. Damn, that was close.

2006-03-28T00:48:00.000-04:00

While farting around in blogworld, I surfed onto Fringe Element Enthusiast's blog (shockoecreek.blogspot.com), and was thus inspired. (I haven't figured out how to link to other blogs yet. Actually, I sort of have, but it's more work than I'd like to do right now and I find it much easier to simply type the link out and let you work for yourselves. Come on now, it's not as though you're busy--you're wasting time already by reading this, aren't you?)

Fringe Enthusiast discovered a pack of Spongebob Squarepants cookies which were trademarked by someplace in the wide and faceless Midwest but which, upon careful inspection, were labelled "Product of China." This, in itself, has always amused me. It seems inevitable that Chinese-manufactured items are labelled in two languages: PRODUCT OF CHINA / PRODUIT DE CHINE.

Um, English and French? OK, sure, two of the most influential culture/languages on Earth, but still. No one else buys this stuff? If you buy something from IKEA, the directions are mostly pictograms anyway, but whatever actual wording exists is in approximately ten languages, usually in this descending order: Swedish, German, English, French, Danish, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese. I usually like trying to follow directions in one of the languages that I do understand but which isn't my first, just to see how it turns out. So far, thanks to the rudimentary directions and the pictograms, I haven't had any collapsing furniture, but one day those Swedes are going to mess with my head and throw in directions in some obscure German dialect just to see if I'm paying attention.

So anyway, cookies.

The children of the past started every fairy tale with "Once Upon a Time," but in the wake of Star Wars, my people have supplanted that with "Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

So, long, long ago, in a galaxy...well, a couple of miles off, there was a bakery. Actually, there were several bakeries. In the long long ago that was my '70s childhood, most sizable cities still had a lot of local bakeries. I didn't know a single soul who ate Wonder Bread, because we all ate bread from the local places. Some people ate Schmidt's, some ate Koester's; we ate Hauswald's. If you didn't go to one of the actual bakery stores, the local supermarkets--even the local branches of nationwide chains--stocked the local stuff. You could go to a Giant store, and there would be about six loaves of Wonder Bread and ninety-three loaves of Schmidt's and Hauswald's.

But, since Hauswald had a store near our house, my mother simply included a bakery trip in the shopping run. We only ever bought bread there: nice Baltimoreans do not, as a rule, think much of cakes from a store. Breadmaking is labor-intensive and less showy, so it's fine to buy it, especially if it's only going to be used for the kids' school lunch.

I can distinctly remember that even stodgy Hauswald's cranked out a few baked goods to cash in on the popular culture of the day. (Keep in mind, this is 1975.) I remember specifically wanting one cookie, one sunny day in that distant year.

There were a few Scooby-Doo cookies, some Superman cookies. I wanted the one that was big and round and frosted in pink and yellow icing. It featured a slightly exaggerated figure in a running pose (my fellow Ancient Civilisation nerds would recognize it as "knielaufschema.")

It also had a legend surrounding the figure: "Let's Streak!"

Of course, I had no idea, at five or six, what this meant.

In retrospect, it's rather hard to believe that Hauswald would have even made Superman cookies, much less something so, er, alternative. They did, though, and perhaps more astonishing, my mother got one of them for me. It took a few more years before I learned what streaking had been.

Most of the traditional bakeries are long gone. Hauswald still exists, but it seems to produce only for institutional use now; its neighborhood stores have joined Hutzler's department store and the Century Theatre in the special heaven reserved for much-loved but much-outdated civic institutions. I think Schmidt's is gasping along, and Koester's went the way of the dodo before I hit high school. There are about four old-fashioned small, one-location bakeries in town (if you visit Baltimore, be sure to come in August to buy some peach cake from Hoehn's).

Isn't it sad that even our silly, spur-of-the-moment popular culture, even when it filters down to silly cookies, is farmed out now? There are no local bakeries left to do it, no local dime stores hawking cheapo candy shaped like Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is the realm of vast industrial China, now.

But then: the bakeries that live on don't mind cashing in where they can, usually on sheet cakes for kid's parties. You can go to Muhly's and get a cake with a creepy screen print of Spongebob. And then again: I was shopping at the market a couple of weeks ago and noticed a special-order cake being boxed up at Muhly's. It was evidently for a bachelorette party, and the bakery staff was trying desperately to keep it under wraps while they boxed it up. It had been beautifully iced with acres of sugar garlands and roses, and I know that the cake underneath was luscious and tasty--but it was surmounted by a very large, artistic and realistic, iced and decorated, uncircumcised dick.

I'll bet the Chinese don't do THAT.

2006-03-24T02:14:00.000-04:00

RICHMOND IST ANGETRETE!

oh, nuts, there I go again shrieking panic in German. Hey, I do that once in a while, you should be used to it, by now.

You are probably also used to my belief that the City on the James is the loveliest and happiest city in the world. It is, and if you don't agree with me, you can just f*** off. Part of what makes Richmond wonderful is its lovely architecture. Naturally, the capital of the oldest and most genteel state in the Confederacy...er, Union...would be impressive, but Richmond is not an especially large city. It is, however, a gracious city of pretty houses and quiet charm. Its downtown area was never the most impressive in the country, but it was possessed of a slew of very well-done buildings that complimented the serene Capitol Square and continued the theme of grace and beauty.

There is a Main Street, which encompasses the financial district, but it is by no means the main street of the city. That honor has gone to Broad Street for the last century and a half. Despite Grace street and its--well, gracious--stores, churches and homes, the grandeur of Franklin street and the big banking houses of Main street, it is Broad street that has my heart. I love Broad street's bustle and neon lights. I loved the big movie houses, when they were still around. I loved the traffic, and I loved the fact that even though the streetcars were gone, their right-of-way had been replaced by a median lined with crepe myrtles, which are surely the most beautiful tree in the world.

And yet, the Commonwealth wants to do away with one of the last bits of old Broad. Worse, it wants to kill part of Capitol Square itself in the deal. The lovely Hotel Richmond, which faces Jefferson's Capitol building, and the Hotel Murphy, at 8th and Broad, are endangered. These are beautiful hotel buildings typical of the ebullient turn-of-the-last-century. There is nothing left in Baltimore that can compare; only one or two in Philadelphia, and one or two poor imitations in Washington. Norfolk had one competitor, but it was destroyed years ago. We must save the two old hotels, or Richmond runs the risk of becoming just another mid-sized city. Our city's character has already been compromised, but the loss of these buildings is another nail in a coffin that's perilously near burial.

Here is a copy of the letter that I just emailed to the Mayor, the former Governor Wilder:

Dear Mayor Wilder:
As a native Baltimorean, but a onetime resident of Richmond, I applaud your support of the preservation of the Hotel Murphy and the Hotel Richmond.
I hope to move back to Richmond at some point. My days there were wonderful and I find the city among the most beautiful and pleasant I have ever seen. The city's spectacular historic buildings represent a large part of my love for Richmond.
The destruction of many of Broad Street's commercial buildings--e.g., Thalhimers (my onetime employer), the Colonial Theatre, Murphy's, and Woolworth's (which also had historic significance as part of the civil rights movement) has greatly diminished the character of downtown Richmond. Yet, there is still a wealth of beautiful and significant structures. The Murphy and the Richmond are high on that list. The Murphy is one of the last buildings that represents the character of Broad Street as it was years ago; the Richmond is an integral aspect of Capitol Square. A well-planned and sensitive restoration and redevelopment of these buildings would add a much-needed impetus to the rebirth of downtown Richmond. Their loss, on the other hand, would remove not only two beautiful buildings, but part of the city's character and charm. If they are destroyed, the city takes one more step to becoming just another generic place.
As a case in point, Baltimore destroyed the lovely old Southern Hotel a few years ago. At the same time, planners clamored for a new hotel downtown. That beautiful hotel could have been reclaimed and could have been the centerpiece of new and productive development. Yet, it was destroyed, and a parking lot occupies its footprint. Richmond could benefit from adaptive reuse of the Murphy and Richmond as hotels, as office space, or as educational facilities.
I implore you, as a former--and hopefully a future--resident of Richmond, to continue working to preserve the old hotel buildings. They are part of the fabric of the city and could only serve to benefit the City and its people.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Gibbs

2006-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00

Well, now. You're probably all properly shocked, or at least I hope you are, after that last little fountain of bile. They deserve it though, so don't be so surprised. Nothing is nastier than a Southerner whose sense of decency has been compromised. If that had been MY Marine's funeral they'd invaded, the shrieking Austrian War Eagles would be unleashed but... there I go again.

I'd really intended to post something nice and pleasant tonight involving shiny objects, which is as you know my favorite topic...more or less. I suppose my favorite topic would be some mutant combination of silver and movie houses and dance music and Vienna....perhaps a large, stylish movie theatre in Vienna that has a Teegarten with pretty silver from Baltimore. Yeah, unlikely, eh?

Ahh, March, and I'm dying for the warm weather. I like to try one day-trip to the ocean in March because there's usually that burst of heat--which hit us midweek this year and did nobody a lick of good.

I am lately very pleased with myself for some new acquisitions. Specifically, I have obtained a sizable new silver service. (Oh, fine, it's plate, but don't get snippy with me when I'm talking about something nice, will you?) This service has been specifically designated as the Beach Service.

I grew up taking vacations at Rehoboth Beach and Virginia Beach, both in their day the preserve of very snooty people from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. My mother never had any interest in cooking at the beach. She would always have dinner once or twice, during our stay, for a few family friends who happened to be "down the ocean" at the same time, but for the most part figured that vacation applied to housework as well, and so we "dined out" most of the time.

We always knew some people at both resorts who wanted nothing to do with beach restaurants. I was always perfectly happy with the Avenue or the Seawood at Rehoboth, and the wonderful old Neptune at Virginia Beach, and certainly my mother believed that if someone else did the dishes it had to be a good meal. Yet, there were always those lordly types who felt that if one entertained grandly in Baltimore, one must do the same at the beach. They maintained an entire set of silver that was kept in mahogany boxes and used for a few weeks every year--hauled down to water's edge specifically for use at the beach. It wouldn't do, really, to give up fashion just because the family wasn't in town.

I am very happy to have joined the ranks of those who have a beach service. My friend Robert was trying to unload some pieces of a goofy 40's silverplate pattern to which he'd fallen heir, somehow; so I adopted them and added via Ebay. (I've got to stay away from that.)

I now possess service for twelve in "Queen Bess." Sure, it's a not-so-great pattern that nobody on earth really wants anymore (nobody wants those 40s patterns), but damnit, I have a beach service.

Naturally there will be those who attempt to make snide comments about using simple plate instead of sterling silver. Never try to out-snob a born snob. I can simply turn and say "Well, dear, you didn't really think I'd bring all of the sterling down from the city, did you? It's rather nouveau-riche to use sterling at the ocean, don't you think?"

Probably in a couple of years I'll end up finding a box of sterling for twelve in some unfashionable pattern and I'll have to recant. "You wouldn't expect me to use the city service at the beach, would you?"

2006-03-23T00:17:00.000-04:00

Hurrah for the Maryland Free State! Generally, Maryland's government gets on my nerves. I have often proposed that we ditch "Fatti Maschi, Parole Femine" as our State motto and adopt "Oh, but..." instead. Every time I have any dealing with State government, I think I've paid the right fees and filled out the right papers only to encounter a miniature factotum who spouts off something along the lines of "Oh, but you need to fill out this form, take it to Office 17, and pay the processing fee." Office 17 then says "Oh, but first you have to file a form with Office 642 and pay the tax, and when you get your release, take it to Office 49." Office 642 then says....ad nauseam.

The Free State has finally done something that has my wholehearted approval, and in this case it really strikes home, too. Reference this article in The Sun:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-protests0322,0,1097123.story?coll=bal-local-headlines

Some time back, a young Marine from Carroll county was killed in action. The cretins of the Westboro Baptist Church (known more widely as the "God Hates Fags" set) turned up to demonstrate at this poor guy's funeral.

I am about to embark on the most vile, epithet and profanity-laden prose that has, or hopefully will ever, decorate this space. If you are easily offended, you may wish to disappear now.

I'm not sure what the deceased serviceman's beliefs were regarding Kansas Baptists, homosexuality, or much of anything, as I never met the gentleman. In this case, I don't much care. He was a man who died in the service of his country and, undoubtedly, was loved by his friends and family.

I cannot fathom anything more appalling and hurtful than attending the funeral of a family member or beloved friend only to discover a bunch of shitkicking, uneducated ASSWIPES from Buttfuckegypt, Kansas, spouting their hatred and idiocy. These people did not know Lance Cpl. Snyder. They didn't, and don't care about him or his family. They have an agenda, and it is an agenda of hate. Somewhere in their code of Christianity and righteousness--which bears no resemblance to the Christianity in which I was raised (yes, you sacks of shit, Catholics are Christian, and we were before you cocksnots ever got wind of the idea) it is acceptable to travel to a different state, to a community who has just lost a native son, to a family who has lost a treasured member, and hold up signs that say "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."

The invasion of a family's grief and mourning to further ANY agenda is inexcusable. Much as I loathe the actions of these people, if one of them croaks, I wouldn't dream of showing up with a sign that said "About Fuckin' Time." I'll thank God privately for offing one of them, but I wouldn't invade their mourning. The idea that they would add to the pain and confusion that this good Maryland family must feel is criminal beyond belief.

Here's the vile part. I'll leave this as an open message to the "Reverend" Phelps and his crew. If any person like this were to sully the funeral of one of my family, or a friend--whether that person is a coal miner from West Virginia, a Marine killed in battle, or simply some innocent whose passing they lit upon, I'm afraid that I would have to eschew my beliefs in propriety. I would, as a matter of fact, find a large blunt object and beat a couple of them senseless. I'd also, just to get my point across, kick their balls into an unrecognizable pulp, slit their hideous, sludge-spewing throats, take a shit down the blood-gushing hole and if I still had enough energy, piss on the severed head.

I am used to the fact that my religious, political and social beliefs don't match those of a large segment of the population. I "agree to disagree" with most of my friends. The fact that the Snyder family did NOT hack these cretins into pieces only bespeaks the family's own gentility and goodness. I am afraid that I have nowhere near the piety of that stricken family. I would be glad to help "remove" the Westboro monsters if they were to show up in this neck of the woods again, but I figure that added brouhaha would only increase the pain of grieving families. If they intrude on MINE, though, a couple of 'em will croak, and it won't be pretty. Oh, yes, I know that they'll only believe their murdered, beshitted member is martyred, but I'll have the satisfaction of dispatching that person, and I know what real martyrdom is. I'll pay some time in purgatory, but any of those syphilitic sores of humanity who die are already on the express train to Hell.

I am very happy that Maryland, which--not surprisingly, has a more level head than I--has decided to deal with such vermin in a legal fashion which succintly and (we hope) effectively tells demonic rabble not to fuck with us.

Thank you for your patience. We will now resume the regularly scheduled broadcast of politeness, elegance and dissertations upon correct usage of silverware.

2006-03-21T01:02:00.000-04:00

I personally believe that the Lenten season, while of great religious significance, came to be even more significant as a social outlet over the last couple of centuries. On a religious level, you're supposed to consider Lent as a cleansing time before Easter, the most important holiday in the Christian calendar.

Don't think that I'm about to spout off a Catholic diatribe. I'm perfectly capable of doing so, but, Gentle Reader, if you're not Catholic already, it's not my business to convert you. Your paganism is not my problem.

My problem, as it has been for all Fashionable people for thirty-odd decades now, is that one needs a break in the social whirl, and Lent is there for you.

In the great cities of Europe, it is hot in the summertime. Once the great cities of the United States were established, heat became an even bigger problem. If you think it's hot on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, try Norfolk out for size. Thus, the great cities do not entertain in the summer, and the Social Season was born. As everyone knows, the Season runs from sometime in the late fall until the beginning of Lent. Lent means that, for ostensibly religious reasons, you can't really entertain on a serious scale for forty days. It's a nice breather. After a few months of drinking and dancing yourself silly, you need some down time.

After Easter, there's the Little Season, which lasts about six weeks until it gets stinkin' hot again and nobody wants to wear evening clothes.

Thus, there are a couple of breaks in the calendar--Lent, and the early Fall--when you can take time out and not have to worry about anything social.

This is the time of the spa resort.

Now, there are very few left in the States, though Europeans still love their spa cures. The most famous in the U.S. were Saratoga, which is a shadow of its former self, and the Virginia springs (the Hot and the White) which are like all good Southern traditions still steaming ahead at full speed whether they're stylish anymore or not. The White and its famous Greenbrier Hotel still cater to the First Society of Richmond, Baltimore and Philadelphia, and the remnants of the C&O will still get you there if you want to go.

Mind you, I would love to go to the Greenbrier, and stay in one of the cottages on "Baltimore Row" or "Richmond Row", but chances are that I couldn't even afford to stay in the main hotel itself, never mind one of these spartan cottages, reserved for those whose bloodlines make me look like a chimney sweep.

I prefer the somewhat homelier resort of Berkeley Springs. You see, I can do this with a measure of snootery and a measure of thrift. Berkeley was the first big spa resort in the American colonies and as such played host to all of Virginia and Maryland's old families. When I soak my fat little butt in Berkeley's waters, chances are that I'm soaking within a few feet of a spot where George Washington took the waters once and, because Berkeley has been out of fashion since the 1850s, it doesn't cost me very much either.

I'm quite fond of the old spa resorts and I've never quite figured out why they went out of fashion, since they're still quite popular in Europe. The hot mineral springs really do wonders for you. While I personally believe that their curative powers are great, that's up to conjecture. Perhaps it's mostly in the mind--but isn't that curative in itself?

The Viennese believe that one must take the waters right before the Social Season so that you can slim down, firm up and be otherwise in perfect shape to show off your new outfits during the Season. I think they have the right idea. Besides, what better vacation than a few days out in a country town soaking in hot water and being pampered?

Berkeley's lovely old Country Inn finally died last year but, thankfully, was quickly reborn and fitted out in the latest style. Its website is here: http://www.theinnandspa.com/

As I've long bemoaned the death of these pretty old resorts, I've been long heartbroken by the ruin of another famous spa, the Bedford Springs in Pennsylvania, which closed in 1993 and has been rotting for thirteen years. Guess what! It's been lately purchased and is in the process of reopening. They project a date sometime in 2007. I want to be one of the opening night guests. This will, of course, necessitate the purchase of some new "resort wear," but that's just another excuse to send off to Germany for new things. Now, all I have to do is find out who's running the place, and see if I can influence their music selections for the ballroom in the big old hotel. If I do my job, I'll be able to hear "Valencia" on opening night.

2006-03-09T23:57:00.000-04:00

Things are forever happening when I'm not looking. I have always liked to think of myself as a perceptive man, but somehow buildings are torn down, people die, decades of my life evaporate, and empires crumble and are built anew as I amble blissfully through my daily routine. Clearly not the sharp-witted monitor of urbanity that I would be, I am evidently a misty-eyed ingenu (don't try to catch me in a misspelling: ingenue is the feminine form in French) dancing his romantic way through the lilac-heavy bowers of Dreamland whilst Civilisation collapses on all sides. Somehow the most significant events of daily life evade me. I pride myself on reading, almost daily, the major papers from three of the most important States and those of mighty Germany and Austria as well, yet I invariably learn of earthshattering events only when an allusion is made to them in the operetta review columns. Things just plain happen when I'm not looking, and evidently I'm usually not looking.

As Gentle Reader may have noted from the previous entry, I am in the recovery phase of a particularly nasty 'flu. What a hateful little disease. Not so little, I suppose, considering that it laid much of the United States to waste in 1918; but it seems like a puny sort of disease. It's not as though you have cholera or the Black Plague. I did, though, have a temperature of 104 at one point. Please reference my statements regarding Nyquil from the most recent post. I am making this statement for two reasons. Primarily, I do not wish to be sued by the Nyquil people, who probably spend something approaching my annual salary on powdered coffee creamer. Trifle though it might seem to the Nyquil boys, it keeps me in bourbon, so I'd better not screw with it. They can do without powdered chemical ooo for their coffee, but I can't do without a house.

Also, several nice people have pointed out that my delusions of the past illness are more likely results of the fever, not Nyquil.

Damn.

Here I was thinking that I'd found some freakadelic way to be all alternative and stuff without actually having to talk to alternative type people, and it turns out I was just baking myself without any alternative stuff at all.

Leave it to me. Even when I try to be alternative, I'm the boiling cauldron of the establishment.

Cool.

Back to the point...Now, I came down with this particular ick on Sunday and bore it through Tuesday. Wednesday was a recovery day. Today, I simply did not feel like going to school and so I did not.

Today was also a very convenient day to NOT be in school, because it was breathtakingly beautiful. The sun shone in the morning. By ten o'clock there was the promise of very warm weather. By noon, the cats were acting spazzy in the way that cats do when spring is around the corner, and I opened up the windows. Really opened them, I mean; I frequently open the bedroom window in sub-freezing temperatures because all good Baltimore German people know that cold night air is invigorating and good for you and combats the poisons generated by a closed house with central heat. By one o'clock, I had aired the entire house and hung two beds' worth of linen out to dry. By two, I was annoyed with housework and decided to set off on a nice long walk.

Since I was still officially "sick" I figured that it wouldn't do to walk the main thoroughfares. It would be just my rotten luck that out of a million-odd people, I would pass somebody who might realize that I was malingering. I was overdue for an alley walk anyway, and I had some library books to return. I thus meandered up Hargrove street, pausing to talk to one of the local stray cats and the big scary dog who lives two blocks up. The big scary dog is actually scary in visage only. He is terrified of air, but everyone is afraid of him and he banks on that. I admired the well-tended gardens behind the big St. Paul street and Calvert street houses. I bumped into my former colleague, Mr. R., in front of the Chinese carryout, and then decided to get a late lunch at Eddie's Grocery.

Now, the rowhouse section of Proper North Baltimore does not have lawns. Some sections therein do have little front garden patches. The rear gardens are always lovely but they are also always fenced or walled. So, it was only when I broke out of the rowhouses at 33rd Street Boulevard that I discovered something.

For once in my life, a season changed while I was looking. The House of Saxe-Coburg u. Gotha might collapse while my eyes are averted (come, now, Konigin Elisabeth, we know your real last name), but Spring came to Maryland today while I watched. All along Greenway and Charles street there are pretty crocus in full bloom. I know they weren't there over the last weekend. When I passed Northway a maid was busily airing out some heavy winter curtains for what I'm sure was the last time this season before they'll be put away for good, and a few blocks later, lacrosse practice was in full swing at Loyola.

After all these years I've actually seen the dawn of a season as it happens. Now, I'm sure that we'll have another nasty cold snap, because Maryland just does that to you. Also, whether I've witnessed the birth of spring or no, I can't confirm the event because I have not been downtown for several days. Every good Marylander knows that Spring has not officially arrived until the crocuses bloom in front of the Archbishop's Residence .

2006-03-07T15:23:00.000-04:00

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water... or, in this case, back in the air...

I managed to make it this far through the winter (which officially only has two weeks left to live) without an episode of the Throw-Up disease. And, blissfully I still haven't really had it. I do, however, have its close friend, the Everything Hurts Disease. Even the Throw-Up disease isn't too bad because you get to stay home and when you're not barfing, you can read and watch TV and eat lots of Jell-O. (This last is only useful if you like Jell-O.) The Everything Hurts disease does not allow you these pleasures because reading and watching TV make some part of your body hurt. You try to sleep but that hurts and you get really bored staying awake with nothing to do.

I think that this is some form of the flu. I've had a couple of little flu-like bouts earlier this year but not enough to really keep me immobilized. This one is the clincher. It's like the Sick Gods looked down from their disease-ridden thrones and said "Oh, crap, winter's almost over and we forgot to get Dan sick this time around. Let's make it a really good one to make up for lost time."
Allright, you bastards, you got me and I'm really good and sick. My freaking fingertips hurt from typing!!!!

Observations from my bed of agony (are you getting the impression that I'm a terrible patient?)

a) Daytime TV is not as amusing at 36 as it was at 9.

b) Nyquil does very strange things to your brain. It has made me hallucinate and obsess over really esoteric stuff. It doesn't necessarily put all of you to sleep, but it sure makes the common sense part of your brain take a hike for a while. This shit is better than acid and it's legal.

c) I am going to get a pet bird and name it Enza.

I had a little bird
Its name was Enza
I opened up a window
And in-flu-Enza.

--schoolyard wisdom circa 1918

2006-03-05T01:54:00.000-04:00

It's done. The new concrete alley is poured and hardened (if that comment were taken out of context, it would sound pornographic, wouldn't it?) and now Hargrove street is modern.

It should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that I hate it. I'm well known to friends, enemies and readers of this space for my complete inability to adapt to anything that hasn't existed since Christ was a corporal. (Thanks, Blake, for that analogy. Now that you're up there I hope Christ is kicking your ass for that comment.) I have plenty of reasons for hating this stupid repaved alley.

First and foremost, the repaving project farbed up my garage. While ripping up the old brick pavement the crew managed to damage the concrete ramp into the garage, which they had to replace seeing as it's my property and all. They did, and actually they made a nice job of it, except that they also blobbed concrete too high up so that the garage doors wouldn't open, or at least wouldn't until I attacked the concrete with a sledgehammer. (This was really a bit of fun. Score: Dan 1, City of Baltimore 0.)

Then, of course, there's the traffic issue. In most old cities, the natives know how to circumvent traffic jams and other unpleasantness by skirting through the alleys at odd intervals. Nobody did this on my block of Hargrove, though, because it was still brick-paved. It was lumpy and uneven and you couldn't take it at more than five miles per hour, unless you wanted your car's undercarriage ripped out. Now it's fresh white concrete and it's been reopened for two days and the whole planet has discovered it. There are already cars zooming through, doing forty. In the bad old days, you'd hear a car try to take it doing forty every few months, and then you'd hear the grinding crash of the oil pan ripping off. Or, I mean, you'd hear that with a big American or German car. If anybody tried it in a little Japanese econobox, you'd hear one grinding crunch as the smallmobile bottomed out and was swallowed by one of the sunken parts of the brickwork. I remember looking up in a tipsy haze from my garden one summer evening, only to see the sunset glinting off the grille of a Honda as it disappeared forever beneath the Earth's upper crust. Since this area of the city is well known for underground rivers, I didn't fear for the Honda's inhabitants. I'm sure they had a pretty wild ride through subterranean waterways and were then spat out into the Basin (or, as they say these days, the Inner Harbor) , somewhat stinky for their time underground but having beaten traffic on the Jones Falls Expressway by fifteen minutes.

While I surely won't miss the hideous WHONK of the Buick's undercarriage hitting the brick as I drove (gingerly, I'd thought) down the alley, I think I will always miss those bricks. Tatty though Hargrove street may have been, it had a warmth that can only come from our beloved red brick. No amount of progress, speed and convenience can ever replace it.

2006-02-28T01:31:00.000-04:00

I am thinking very much about tablecloths right now. As my devotees--all ten of you-- have read, I've lately become dryer-enabled. (I feel so modern and fashionable using that sort of language, though my inner grammarian just shat himself. Why must we now create adjectives by combining a noun and a passive verb form?) Anyway, I have discovered that good linens do not fend well in a dryer. Their edges get all curly and you still end up having to starch the bejesus out of them and iron them, which was part of what the dryer was supposed to cure.

Oh well. In my endless search for proper linens I have been forced to turn to ebay.

Ebay is a wonderful invention. It is that much more wonderful for its origins, which I understand are traced to its inventor's girlfriend, who collected PEZ dispensers. Anybody who collects PEZ dispensers is pretty much OK in my book. I even have the prized OLD Halloween skull dispenser. If anybody has the PEZ gun, which could actually fire the PEZ at your mouth or at hapless bystanders, that person may advance to the front of the line, but be aware that I will probably hit on that person.

But I do not intend to speak of PEZ, nor really of ebay itself. I am forced to shop for linens on ebay because there are no nice department stores left in the United States. I'm fairly sure that I could shop happily for gigantic damask tablecloths at KaDeWe in Berlin, or for random lace doohickies (yes, that is the official term, as far as I'm concerned) at Galeries-Lafayette in Paris.

I am not in Paris nor Berlin, and Hutzler's and Thalhimers are both long gone, so I've got to troll ebay for all of this crap. Also fine, but the folk who sell crap on ebay are apparently confused about having dinner for anyone but themselves.

Since when is a 94" long tablecloth "huge?" Crimony. That's just long enough to serve six people, and even then the cloth won't hang all the way to the floor. It barely hangs down six inches, which means it's a luncheon cloth. Have any of these people ever entertained? If so, are they in Alaska somewhere, and are entertaining only small friendly forest animals who are not familiar with dinner etiquette? Sheesh. I have personally observed that small friendly animals aren't too good with handling soup spoons either, so it probably doesn't matter whether you let them eat on a damask cloth or not. (Large animals tend to be less friendly and pay no attention to the tablecloth, simply eating their host and having done with the whole ordeal.)

I did find one reasonably-sized cloth down in Williamsburg at one of the interminable outlet stores. Perhaps this is my best option. It is 150" long, and does have a lovely and unusual paisley pattern woven into the damask. Also, it is not real damask but has some unnatural fiber and will therefore hold up in the dryer without curling or doing something else weird. It also does not look very good because it can't be really and truly starched and ironed or it will melt.

My top three reasons for a time machine that will take me back to 1925: a) I will be able to watch Clara Bow movies at the Colonial in Richmond. b)If I play my cards right I can get a date with Reed Howes, the Arrow Collar Boy and a real live Marine. c) I can go to O' Neill's on Charles street, order two thousand dollars worth of linen, and have it put in a bank vault so that I can use it when I get back to the future.

And, having received my fifty-odd tablecloths, I will be able to entertain myself endlessly by taking care of them, and freak out my ausland neighbors hanging them outside.