“her reward is in heaven”

OBVIOUSLY THIS DEBATE is infuriating and I’ve had about twenty snappy comebacks that I’ve wanted to say but had to keep listening. But here’s one thing:

Sarah Palin just referred to Joe Biden’s wife, who is a professor–a teacher–complimenting her on being a teacher……..ohmygod i’m gonna shoot the screen she asked you what your achilles heel is not what the whatever the hell you’re talking about….anyway, Palin said blah blah blah your wife a teacher for thirty years “and her reward is in heaven” then went on to talk about education and No Child Left Behind and so on.

First of all, keep your heaven to yourself, lady. I prefer to think about this world, here and now.

Second of all, that’s the most insulting thing I think I’ve ever heard said to or about a teacher. I’ve written in this space before about how important I think education is, and yes I’m a “West Wing” sucker and believe that teachers should be getting paid CEO money. So I think it’s horrifying for someone to say, sure, please, be a teacher, take my children through the most important time of their lives, make or break their and indeed our whole society’s future, but, well, we don’t really feel like that’s worth more than lower-middle-class money and a pension we’ll probably blow on Wall Street, and if you’re lucky you might get some Social Security. But guess what? When you die, your reward will be waiting. You can wait ’till then, right?

“Socialization of risk; Privatization of reward”

I heard that phrase from Steve Fraser, an author who was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today. It struck one of those, “oh, of course!” chords with me. For once I’m glad someone was able to shorten something huge and complicated down to a simple phrase and at the same time validate everything I’m feeling.

Today I started being not so sure about this bailout–oh, wait, I’m sorry, someone’s feelings are getting hurt–rescue package. Would I vote for it? Don’t know, and I’m definitely taking the don’t-have-eight-years-of-economics-school way out.

But this guy on Fresh Air was kind of rejuvenating, talking about how we’re at a point where he thinks people are going to really force a change in the way our financial system is run. The point of the show was kind of a historical look at Wall Street and ended up basically showing/discussing:
1929 Wall Street crashes
Reagan administration brings in overwhelming deregulation
(resulting in our current mess).

So I got frustrated, and hopeful, and worried, and then I remembered that I have senators, and sent them this email:

This is a tense and crucial time, so I appreciate your service to the people of Maryland.

I’m writing to express my hope that regardless of the passage of this bill you continue to address the problems that assault our economy. I am only a young man who wants to work, earn money, and save money for my future. I have no problem with other people investing their money in ways I would never consider, but it becomes offensive when these investments turn sour and “trickle down” to someone like me. Having paid attention these last few weeks, I believe that deregulation is at the heart of this crisis. I believe it is time to grab control of our country’s financial system once again. To do this, I think that all risky, speculative, high-stakes investments that boil down to nothing more than betting should be curtailed. It’s hard not to feel like what’s happening now is the direct result of 25 years of Wall Street inventing more and more new, complex, and opaque ways to twist money into more money–watching the index numbers go up and up while behind them the number of things Americans have of value to the world went down and down. Our leaders and representatives were complicit in this.

We are at a unique place in history that allows us as a society to redefine what we value. I think the best course right now, the one that will give us all the strong economy we want, is to invest not in intangibles–not using money to invest in money, or concepts of money–but in American production. Rather than keeping money, be it private or public, in a circular Wall Street system, why not require investment banks to dedicate money toward industries that also have a stake in our country’s future? Try to drive our high-tech industry higher, clean up our environment, encourage a new system to organize our health care. If we’re all going to end up with our money on the line when things fall apart, I want to know that we were investing in something worthwhile.

From your website, I get the impression that you intend to vote for the bailout package going before the Senate tonight. As a layperson whose main economic education has occurred in the last month, I can only trust that you have evaluated the situation more intensely than I. But please keep my views in mind.

the end. i encourage all of you to think about how you want our economy to be run, where you think money should go, what you think people on Wall Street should be allowed to do with it, and then tell your congresspeople and senators. then cross your fingers, y’all.

ravens 20, steelers 23 (OT)

LET’S FORGET FOR A SECOND that right now I’d like to pick up Ben Roethlisberger, hold him upside down and drop his helmet repeatedly into Hines Ward’s grinning little face until he breaks a few teeth and a nose and gets a crippling hamstring injury in the process and remember:
WE GOT SCREWED.

As usual, the refs were against us on this one. Fortunately, at least the Steelers were playing as violently and pissed off as the Ravens, so most of the penalties evened out. But on one crucial play in the first half, I think it was the first quarter, when Mason caught the ball in the end-zone and it was ruled out of bounds, we got screwed. We went on to take a field goal that tied the game and the rest is now history. If that had been a touchdown, it’s the Ravens’ ballgame.

SCREWED LEVEL: MAJORLY.

UPDATE: The announcers mentioned something interesting toward the beginning–there should’ve been some penalties for McGahee’s injury last week. They showed a video that I don’t think I saw last week, and sure enough if the Browns’ man doesn’t deliberately reach into McGahee’s helmet and try to injure him.

R.I.P., Paul Newman.

IT’S ALWAYS STRANGE when a celebrity dies. I’m never sure, if the celebrity entered into my realm of liking, whether it’s appropriate to feel anything. You know, I’ve never met the person. Take Bernie Mac: at the time it happened, I was distracted or something, didn’t really digest it. But every once in a while when I remember he’s no longer with us, doing his thing, I feel pretty down. I mean, the man was good.

So Paul Newman died yesterday of cancer, and I’m feeling one of those rare actual reactions to a celebrity dying. I was pretty shaken when Kubrick died, and this David Foster Wallace suicide was a slap upside the head. e was especially, well, I think the word is pissed, at that. The only consolation I’m able to give myself there is something along the lines of: if a person’s mind can be that big, and that sympathetic to humanity, to write the way he did, then along with all of the capabilities to recognize the beauty and pleasure of this life must come just as powerful capabilities–even when you wish you’d not have them–to recognize how massive and painful and hated life as a human being can be.
As the mother of a cabby on StoryCorp once said, “Be a dummy. Dummies never worry.”

So, to get back to the point: Here’s to Paul Newman. I will go so far as to say he was a great man, who is deserving of our thoughts. At the grocery store, I can’t help but silence my inner cynic/skeptic; we almost always take the Newman’s Own brand, and every time I have little “wow” of admiration in my head for such a large, ongoing act of goodness. In college, I knew a girl who’d gone to one of Newman’s; one summer she sent me a letter with the Hole in The Wall Gang Camp stamp on it.

Just last week I saw “Twilight,” his 1998 movie with Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, and several other great talents for the first time. It kind of blew me away. He’s in every scene, a used-up detective muddling his way through a mess, quietly holding the movie together.

If you’ve never seen his work, which is pretty unlikely, go check one out. i still have many to get through. “Cool Hand Luke” is a good place to start. Can’t miss with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

regulators [this is where the Warren G quote would be, but I don't think I ever actually heard that song, just saw its title next to Warren G many, many times when I was 14]

I got my best dose of the current economic crisis yesterday afternoon on my drive home while listening to Fresh Air on NPR. She had Michael Greenburger, a law professor and all-around multiple-economics-title guy champion on the show to talk about the bailout of AIG, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and so on.
Here’s the link, which may change after today depending on the NPR site works.
Also great in learning some Wall Street arcana/basics was this past weekend’s This American Life, specifically chapter 2 about the current head of the SEC being the equivalent of a broomstick and a burlap bag with a scowl drawn on it when it comes to actually doing or saying things.

This is what I’m thinking here, and this so far is the extent to which my brain has been able to muddle through this otherwise foreign-to-me economic muck to form a few coherent thoughts (this is about the same as if I were to try to make a speech in Russian, a language which I was never anywhere close to being fluent in ten years ago):

Some regulation might help.

Before this week, my one personally-developed thought about the economy, and about traditional Republican thinking was this (circa spring 2008):
If it’s supposed to be a free market, why don’t you just let the mutherfuckers fail? Ford? GM? All these airlines? Bear Stearns? You have all this faith in the free market, the Darwinianism of it, how the strongest companies will survive, the innovative products that really are desirable to the public will sell–yet you bail out what’s not working anymore!
It’s easy for me to see: American auto-makers aren’t making the type of cars I want to buy, so I’m not buying them, so…they’re failing. I want to buy a small, light vehicle that gets amazing gas mileage and is cheap. Therefore I bought a Civic four years ago, and would probably buy a Yaris if I had to buy one now. I don’t want your cars. Even if I had to buy a truck, say, for work, I would go with a Toyota because I think Toyota knows what it’s doing with cars. Etcetera.

Now that I understand a little more (and yes, I understand why AIG got propped up by the gov, I’m thankful I was able to buy gas yesterday afternoon at a normal price without waiting in line), after the two pieces I heard on the radio, I’m thinking a little regulation might do Wall Street some good. And I’m going to go so far as to say it should be regulation by people who disagree with Republican’s God is Greed Greed is Great Great is God theories and Christopher Cox’s playing Free Cell in the back of his head while tetsifying before Congress. People like, say, the Democrats? [And here I'll insert my "Step in the Right Direction" slogan that represents my real thinking that no way is Wall Street or Congress or the EPA or the DOD or any other institution ever going to be what I'd love them to be, but I'm damn well ready for them to stop being what the Man wants them to be.]

The only reason I’m writing about this is that I feel I have a little insight. We all know human nature to some extent, but I can squeeze the career title headings, squint my eyes just so, and think I have an Opinion:

As a Third Party Inspector, I can kinda shove myself in with the Quality Control or Quality Assurance people, and why don’t we just lump in Regulators, too? So here’s my thing (I know, I keep saying I’m getting to it): regulation of Wall Street, and our country’s financial systems, is necessary because people will do what they can get away with. People will do whatever they can to quickly and at the least expense to their wallets and muscles get the job done, to achieve their goals. Most often, when you boil it all down, the goal is going to be making money. It’s true for the way a contractor digs a hole, lays a pipe, and fills it back up with soil (like the work I observe and test), and it’s true for the people on Wall Street who have no purpose but to make money. The contractors do a service in exchange for money. Some people on Wall Street don’t; they simply service money for money. And that proximity, over time, gives them the skills to work that money, to sculpt it and finesse it and do tricks with it. In the same way a rodman can set up some rebar in a slick kind of way that looks pretty good until you start really measuring and see that what they’ve done isn’t up to snuff, one man could do some naked short-selling or a financial giant could take on some billions of dollars worth of unpaid mortgages that are never going to be paid. The result is the same–you lose the strength of your material, whether it’s a dollar or a wall made of steel and concrete. The difference is, I’m there to watch that wall, and no one’s there to watch Wall Street.

People will do whatever you let them do. With no eyes to watch, with no one to tell them, “Nope, not allowed,” they’ll just go ahead with it. Not everyone, of course. A lot of people have strong consciences. But you never know what will play influence: something as strong as monetary greed or as simple as It’s 5:30 on Friday and I just want this to be done so I can go home.

 

Last thing: Michael Greenburger talks about the federal deficit in some horrifying ways in that Fresh Air interview. Basically, the money the government is putting up to save these giants (our money) is considered special, not counted as part of the deficit. If it was, the deficit (if my math-while-driving worked) would be more like 10 trillion dollars, not 5.5.

weekend rundown

HAD A GOOD TIME this past weekend. I’m coming to realize that one of my favorite things about our new place in Hampden is…well, the neighborhood itself, especially the restaurants. Which sounds kind of obvious, but maybe I’m thinking like this: my impression of a neighborhood when searching for a new place was maybe dictated by how much that neighborhood would insinuate into my life, where now I’m finding that I like to insinuate myself into my neighborhood. In other words, I was looking for a nice, safe, cheap place to live where we wouldn’t be bothered, and found that plus it’s place that I like to go into and experience.

I enjoy the idea that we can decide on the spur of the moment to go out to eat, and chances are better that we’ll be walking than they are we’ll be driving. On the weekend, this home-y neighborhood feel kind of sucks me in and has prevented me from going out to see my friends (which involves other factors, of course, like having to work on Saturday).

Working on Saturday usually “ruins” my weekend, and usually I don’t realize it until Sunday night. For a long time it was, “no big deal, I gotta go in on Saturday, it’ll be painless or it won’t but it’ll end eventually,” and then by Sunday night I would realize how short the weekend felt. I guess this past Saturday and Sunday I packed in enough to feel full.

Friday night I came home around 6 after an 11-hr day to find e and Circulation E at the door. Actually, I think e kind of yelped in fright/surprise because they didn’t expect me to be standing there a few inches from their faces. Circulation E is a friend of e’s from work, who–wait for it–works in circulation at the same branch as e. She’s a cool, brassy (in a fun way) girl who e sometimes gives a ride home to. We were all starving, and went in search of dinner.
In Hampden, my favorite joints or at least joints of the moment are Rocket to Venus and Golden West. I always suggest and am up for Holy Frijoles, but e doesn’t ever really take Mexican as an elective at Food College. I usually also throw out the idea of going to Grill Art, having heard about a good grilled cheese there. And the Avenue has at least a handful of other restaurants that we haven’t been to and always forget to try. So it’s usually one of the first two, which we thought reached their peak during Super Prom week, but apparently those visits just made us more enamored of the places.

This night, we headed out the door into the rain that was causing me to have to work the next day toward the ATM on the Avenue. e really wanted to go to Rocket to Venus, and I could tell by her tone that her stomach was gnashing its little teeth. I was happy to try the chicken salad thing with massive tortilla chips that she’d gotten last time. We walked the four or five blocks, mildly looking for a black-fronted bar somewhere on Chestnut. At a shop-front close to Rocket to Venus, two guys lounged mildly. One said hi to us. We got to Rocket to Venus, CircE made the joke about asking to sit outside (since there are always people sitting outside, but in the rain the tables were not out) that I was about to make. Inside, place was…bangin’. The big table to our right actually had Reserved signs on it, and a booth in the back had at least ten extra people overflowing out and around it. This was at six-thirty. The hostess told us forty-five minutes, I turned around to tell my companions, turned back around, and the hostess was gone. Just as well, because we were leaving anyway.

So we made our uncertain way back up Chestnut, where not five minutes after the first time, the guy in the store-front said hi to us again. We were not really sure where we were going but knowing we couldn’t make it 45 minutes without food. This worked to my advantage (as no doubt did the rain that was now heavy enough for CircE to get out a tiny pink umbrella that we passed around), as I was able to use e’s ravenousness (not to be confused with her ravishingness) to get her into Holy Frijoles. They got Stellas (I think), I got Diet Coke. I got the chicken fajitas, after almost getting the 3-taco platter. e got the 3-taco platter, after almost getting something else because she thought I was going to get the 3-taco platter. CircE got bean and cheese quesadillas since, having gone to Holy Frijoles numerous times, she knew it was a normal-sized meal that one might actually finish in one sitting (unlike ours).
The food was wonderful, our appetites did not destroy us. I do have a problem that pops up all the time at home of not being able to close my burritos or fajitas; I without fail overstuff. A whole bunch of cheese (cheese is important), some chicken…okay, maybe a little more chicken, some salsa, about 2 tbsp, maybe a little more, yes, a few beans, definitely need some more beans because we never finish the beans before they go bad, some more cheese for good meltyness, put it in the microwave, top with lettuce, and…shit. Where are those toothpicks? God forbid we make rice for the burritos, as well.
So of course with normal-sized tortillas at Holy Frijoles, and me making my own fajitas, I had trouble fitting everything in. Luckily I anticipated this, and left a my chicken for a nice fiesta salad on my return from work the next day.

On the walk home, during which it was raining harder than before, the man from the store-front, walking his dog, said hi to us.

The next day after working and then working more on something I wasn’t told would be going on that got me all muddy and sweaty, and after eating my siesta salad and probably a hot dog and maybe an apple or something, e and I went to Hampdenfest to meet Concerned Citizen (another old work friend of e’s–her nom de guerre being an respresentation of her penchant for critical analysis of any restaurant or public service she partakes of, and her unhesitancy to voice or broadcast the news of sub-par performance by such services, not being a representation of her generally fun (”FUN!”) demeanor, sense of humor, and ability to make me feel like I am an awesome person) and her boyfriend PropMaster B. We caught up with them at the western Brewer’s Art booth, which provided us with Beacon Ale (their follow-up to the dear departed Pale Ale) as we stood under a tree between near Golden West’s glass-front and snack stand where they appeared to be deep-frying Fritos.

I have to say, being at HampdenFest that day made me feel for the first time in a certain way…maybe “like part of a scene,” maybe “less like a nobody,” maybe “like I’m starting to put down roots,” maybe “like Baltimore really is a small town.” Maybe some parts of all of them. It just had to do with the number of people I saw that I not only sorta recognized but actually knew something about, even if I wasn’t friends with them. I have my ten or so friends here, very close friends whom I love dearly, but it’s been awhile, like since college or maybe LA, since I knew people plus I knew who more and more extensions of social groups were, names and faces and little bits of trivia. For instance, the guy deep-frying things at Golden West and e say hi when they see each other. Another old work guy came around to say hi. I saw a guy I was friends with at Fandango. I saw the girl who had served us at Holy Frijoles hanging out in front of Golden West. Part of it had to do with the fact that Concernd Citizen and PropMaster B know almost every single person in the entire world. They knew the falafel vendors and pretty much every third person who walked down the street. And of course there was the street-festival gathering part of it. We couldn’t walk more than twenty feet without one of the four of us stopping for five minutes to talk to someone. e and I saw Gary of Gary B and the Notions [new record next month! Release show in the next month too! I wish I had a better memory of what he told us!] and talked for awhile about the Notions, Person Parcel, and Your Imaginary Friend.

After that the four of us bushed out at our place where it was not so incredibly hotnhumid. When our guests left for a party across the street, we finished off “The Incredibles,” which was better than the attention that I had given the first act.

On Sunday, after my usual almost-going-to-brunch feeling, we got some gorceries, watched foo-ball, actually left to the house to see a movie (”Burn After Reading,” which was quite ridiculous and good), and I even got some laundry done. I went ot bed feeling not at all like an anxious five-yr-old who doesn’t want to go to bed, which sometimes happens to me (considering that my bedtime is also that of a five-yr-old).

all of my suspicions confirmed

Wonkette has this post from overnight. It really validates what I was thinking during the Republican National Convention. As I watched all those people standing there chanting like preschoolers (I swear, people at a fucking Flaming Lips concert don’t give up the chanting/singing along that easy), all I could think was, “What are these people like? I mean, are they drunk? What’s the explanation for this behavior? Are they just all complete, ignorant, massive assholes who don’t actually think anything through?”

Yes.

Enough Is Enough

There, I said it. I used a slogan. Or at least, I used what I hope will become a slogan. If the gist hasn’t been gotten yet: I’m angry again. I have a few hours here and there at work, and today I spent them catching up on news of the Presidential race, mostly from wonkette, which led to the huffington post, dailykos, and so on. So I ended up angry again. I’ll just boil down the ridiculous bullshit about lipstick and pit bulls (which are, or at least in the light Sarah Palin wants to paint them in, vicious, violent, and other characteristics I’d prefer not to have in office, lipstick or no) and kindergarteners and wolves and the Bridge to Nowhere and the hypocrisy of Palin and her family–see Dan Savage’s weekly column for a great point here (I would love someone to ask Sarah Palin if her daughter made the decision to keep her baby, decision implying that she had a choice, something Palin is gunning to take away from every woman and girl in this country)– and every other crazy thing coming out of the McCain campaign by saying that it’s all irrelevant, it’s inconsequential,  and I’ll dish over it in person with my friends so I can hear the laughs and stop feeling seriously like I’m going to throw up.

The nausea is being caused by a feeling of powerlessness that I get from reading all this nonsense and know that I can’t affect it in any way. Even my vote is probably not going to do much, considering that MD is (thankfully) predominantly Democratic and will likely have its electoral votes go to Obama in November. If only the press could concentrate, I think. If only I could be somehow more politically active, or just add one check mark in the columns labeled with the issues and policies I support. I have a blog, it is accessible by the public, so here’s my voice.

Why I’m voting for Barack Obama, against John McCain, for the Democratic Party, against the Republican Party:
[please note that the world will never be how I'd like it to be, that some of this is settling, that this election has actually made me forget my dislike of the two-party system that once had me an inch away from voting for Kevin Zeese for the senate seat that Ben Cardin currently holds--mostly because of a man named Michael Steele, for whom a suitable nickname has not yet been invented. Also, readers, forgive my bland writing; I can only sustain my anger for a few hours, and most of my good turns of phrase went down the brain-tubes back at work...]

–First of all, look at the campaigns. They reflect the candidates. Senator Obama continually talks about uniting people, bringing America together. He talks about the interests of the people. As cheesy as it is for me to quote it, his website even encourages the selflessness that any good society requires, asking you to believe in your ability to bring change to Washington. On the other hand, Senator McCain’s campaign has turned nasty, stooping to the dirty politics that he’s always (or claimed he’s always) eschewed.
And while Senator Obama’s campaign pulls the discussion toward real issues, the Republicans throw up distractions like their Vice Presidential candidate, phony claims of sexism, and so on. The “Truth Squad” was apparently only meant to identify the truth so they could then avoid it at all costs.

–A is for Abortion.
I support a woman’s right to choose. To the extent that I’m putting this issue first. The idea that someone can tell you what to do or not do with your body, man or woman, is abhorrent to me. Barack Obama’s language in this area is not as strong as I’d like, but I think it’s as good as it’s gonna get right now. We got a man who supports Roe v. Wade running against a man who thinks it should be overturned. Going with the former. I do give Obama points for being up-front and honest on this issue; in fact, I think if sensed hesitancy, it would really upset me. But the man says, no, I didn’t vote to support it, I voted against abolishing it because I don’t think it’s anyone’s business to be legislating in that area. Also, this whole “present” voting thing that sounds so simple and weird has at least one storybehind it at ontheissues.com

–H is for Health Care:
I believe that every person should have easy, affordable health care. I’m a “Sicko” fan. I watched it only a couple months after being diagnosed with Type I Diabetes and it was almost too difficult to get through. For the rest of my life, I will need near-constant help from medical professionals. I need medicine to stay alive. Right now and forevermore I am attached to a $6000 dollar insulin pump (that I paid $800 for). I pay a fairly small amount for medical supplies and doctors, because I am lucky enough to be employed by a company that provides me with health insurance. However, if I were poor, less educated, unemployed, self-employed, or even just me 4 years ago–if I didn’t have health insurance and the resources that came with it–I would be overtaxing hospital emergency rooms, saddled with debt, experiencing complications, or worse. If this country had a universal health insurance system like that of some of our European allies, I wouldn’t have to worry. This disease would not scare me. The health care plans John McCain and the Republican Party (I don’t kid myself, I know it’s more than just them) cannot truly serve the needs of the people until the put the interests of the people before the interests of this country’s private health insurance corporations. I know it might not be all it seems, but just the name Barack Obama and the word “universal” near one another are enough for me.

S is for Social Security:
The thought of privatizing Social Security makes me as queasy as thinking about Wal-Mart, Enron, McDonald’s, and the rest. And given the way our country’s private banking firms are collapsing all around us, I’m thinking more along the lines of burying my savings in the backyard than anything else.

I is for Iraq (it’s also for Iran):
Barack Obama wants to end the war in Iraq. I think, and have thought from the beginning, that this war is ridiculous. That is, it would be ridiculous if it weren’t so appalling and wrong. I’m of the mind that we can support our troops that are over there and at the same time criticize the men and women in power who are responsible for them being there. (To get angry, I recommend the documentaries “No End in Sight” and “Gunner Palace,” which was referred to me by an Iraq veteran who was in and out of the titular palace on a weekly basis as being the best portrait that he’d seen of what it was like to be there at that point.)
As far as Iran, I just want to keep hearing Diplomacy, Diplomacy, Diplomacy. I don’t care if we’re “in talks” for the rest of my life; it’s better than being at war.

E is for Education:
More than anything else, I think education is the answer to problems. It’s the answer to poverty, crime, drugs, teenage pregnancies, etc., etc. If kids and young adults can get the education they need from adults who are passionate, we can improve society a thousandfold. So it dismays me that in researching writing this, the website Obama-McCain Comparison (which may be highly biased for all I know) actually says they “found it difficult to pinpoint” McCain’s education stance, and just copied his website to let you try to figure it out.

E is also for energy
My thoughts and wishes surely run far ahead of my reality on energy. e recommended a great book to me years ago called Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, and I finally read it in May. In it, I found that many of my deep-seeded feelings about being a person on Earth were put into words. There is a part of me that thinks that even though it would mean my death, extreme measures would be best not only for our planet as an whole, but the human race, as well.
That said, I don’t believe that a moderated, smooth switch to purely clean energy will occur in my lifetime any more than I believe the world is going to all of a sudden stop using oil. But I think that Barack Obama’s policies are the better direction than John McCain’s, which again are vague and flip-flopping.

the zodiac will be the whamziac

FOR THOSE OF YOU LOOKING for info on the Club Charles/Zodiac situation (and according to my “most popular searches” feature here on wordpress, some of you are), here’s not at all breaking news:

Everyone’s favorite Baltimore weirdo clique performance art group–and home to the throne of reigning local catchphrase Dan Deacon [pronounced "DanDeaconDanDeacon"]–Wham City is going to be leasing the space next to Club Charles known until recently as The Zodiac restaurant. The Baltimore City Paper, which I cannot express my love for enough, had a short article about it in yesterday’s issue.

While I and my aging hipster friends may on the surface have little but scorn for Wham City and the Double Decker D–a discussion and rushed analysis that rears its head for 70 seconds every fortnight that I will attempt to reduce to bullet-points here:

• Dan Deacon sucks
• Yeah, I can’t stand Dan Deacon
• C-train and others wonder why the hatred
• Baltimore hates everything
• Baltimore hates the idea of Baltimore achieving national and/or mainstream success
• God, Dan Deacon fucking sucks, all those Wham City kids eat shit
• No, it’s because his music is fucking terrible.

personally, I think it’s because by the time someone like double d-cups hits the nation, we’ve already had our shot at it and weren’t too impressed. or it’s in some sort of pared-down unrecognizable form, like…uh, i’ll finish that sentence when i think of another baltimore export–

So to complete that sentence I started before the bullets up there:

–this is a good thing. The whole Station North Arts District is a good thing, I think. I used to think of it as a marketing masquerade, but things seem to be happening down there. We went to the Wind-Up Space last a week ago and it was very, very nice. A little unobtrusive music, a little early-20th century film reels playing on the screen, a nice, friendly bartender. All sandwiched between a burned-out building and an abandoned Family Dollar store on North Ave.
So I think the Wham City kids can do some good with this space. As long as Club Charles doesn’t turn into Brewer’s Art (in terms of crowd and clientèle), i’m happy.

Tuesday Afternoon Quarterbacking (Ravens 17, Bengals 10)

“TUUUUUUUESDAY AAAAAAAFTERNOOOOOON!” Ah, the Moody Blues. When I was in marching band in high school, we played that song as one of our whatever we called it, showcases or something. If you think listening to the Moody Blues is trippy, try playing them on a saxophone while marching backwards, forwards, sideways and diagonals in pretty patterns while dressed in a heavy wool uniform. White, white, white! In hindsight, that may have been the whitest thing I’ve ever done. That would be a good QOW–What’s the Whitest Thing You’ve Ever Done?

So the Ravens beat the Bengals on Sunday, which surprised many and delighted…also many. Joseph Flacco the Triumphant looked nothing like the guy who from those preseason games I barely paid attention to (even the one I was at, albeit probably farther from the field than my living room is). Much rejoicing occurred, many chants of “Flacco! Flacco! Flacco!” were heard, joyously laden with Bawlmer accents, hon.
But we still got shafted a couple of times.
Here they are:

• 1.5 minutes into the 3rd quarter: The Ravens recovered a bobbled pass, returning it for some significant yardage. Marvin “Mr. 2000″ Lewis challenged and the call was overturned. No great tragedy, in the end, but you never know when these things will make a difference. I’d say it’s a low-level grievance. Still, though, I think he had control of that ball.
  (Samari Rolle’s celebration-throw was pretty dumb, though. We would’ve deserved that penalty.)
• 2:53 left in the 3rd quarter: One of our guys tries to stop Carson Palmer’s last-ditch attempt to rush for a first down and gets blocked in the back. No penalty is called.

Grievance Level Overall: LOW