Feed: Insane Baltimore - AggScore: 45.4

Sane Baltimore

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Last year my wife had to go to Delaware for work. I joined, because going to Delaware sounded exotic. Anyway, Delaware is as boring as its 55 MPH speed limit. It's isolated within its own despair. It doesn't make sense. To me. And then we drove back to Baltimore, and as soon as the Welcome sign greeted us, things started to make sense again.

Last week we went to New Jersey and the same thing happened. Now that sigh of relief as we headed south wasn't something I could ignore anymore. And sure, Baltimore has its many many problems, and sure, I still think I will one day enjoy living in a warmer, weather-free state, but I have to admit that Baltimore is not THAT insane!

To me, it means I'll be lying if I continue writing on a blog called Insane Baltimore. I started this blog a while ago, thinking I lived on the borderline between quirky and sad. Baltimore is still quirky and sad, but it's also a lot of other things. Drugs on the corner, punks outside Red Emma's, misguided tourists in Cafe Hon, foreign students in the Charles Street Chipotle, bored cops in the harbor, winners and losers . . . This city is happening. It's a living organism of good and bad and ugly. What it's not, though, is insane.

I will continue giving my unsolicited 2 cents on Twitter (as _Baltimored_), but this blog will end.

Thanks to everyone who commented here. I enjoyed reading your angry comments and your supporting comments. I enjoyed arguing with you and I enjoyed admitting my mistakes.

Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Sorry for being a smartypants, but is the Baltimore City Fire Department trying to make me throw away my smoke detector?

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James Taylor Somehow Made It Into This Post

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• I have to say, although I didn't go to any of the Grand Prix stuff this year, I'm not a hater. In fact, judging by my Facebook/Twitter feeds, looks like as soon as the first day's crazy traffic jam ended, Baltimore has embraced this thing. Good.
• I'm listening to Sirius, and James Taylor's "Your Smiling Face" comes up. I'm not turning it off. Actually it's kind of fun, at least until the "La la, yea yea" part at the end. Just PLEASE don't tell my 20-Something rebellious self. He would be very disappointed.
• Apparently there are some kind of elections here soon. Just tell me how it ends.
• And like every year, I get depressed around this time. Which might explain the James Taylor thing. I mean, wasn't the only reason we didn't choose to live in a warmer place the fact that California had earthquakes? I love Baltimore, and I even love the fall here, but winter... I know it's coming... The other day I got in the car and started the AC, and the AC just said, "Oh, you're good." It's coming... Last year wasn't even that bad, but I still have PTSD from the 2009/10 snow mountains.

Just a Bunch of Clouds

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How is it that when I went to Giant a couple of days before the storm, I couldn't even find water, but now people look at their sandbags and complain this was all a scam. Politicians--from Obama to local government spokespeople--hyped this thing to make themselves look better! I knew it!

How dared O'Malley go on TV and harass us by asking us to stay indoors? And Obama, who controls the media, made meteorologists across the nation pretend this was a big deal, just to show people he was a strong leader! But we all knew, didn't we? We all knew this Texas-sized cloud was going to drop a little bit of rain and then move on up.

Now look, I'm not saying you should't complain about the dumb news channels sending the lowest on the totem pole outside to tell us it's raining. These people deserve to be mocked. But please stop with the HYPE talk. This storm could have flooded our city. Tornadoes could have sent Grand Prix stands flying around downtown Baltimore. Irene could have killed a lot of people. It could have cost billions to repair. It could have been disastrous.

The people who now pretend they knew all along this was nothing, the people who show their disappointment, and the people who use the word hype to describe this potential monster: You're not fooling anyone. I saw you at the supermarket. Enjoy your water.

Angry Birds: Baltimore

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Being the band-wagoner that I am, of course I had to try Angry Birds, and now I'm sold. Maybe it's a hatred of pigs or maybe it's a love of suicidal birds. Maybe it's the dumb challenge of getting the dumb stars. Maybe it's the need to destroy, which is something I knew I had while playing Rampage for the first time, about 70 years ago.


This bird game is slowly taking over my other gaming obsession, titled, "Create Words You Don't Know and Yell At the Phone For Not Accepting Common Words."


So here I am, walking around, looking at buildings and thinking about their soft spots. A lot of points to be had at the MICA building, for example. All this broken glass, you know, 500 points for each window...

The big loser here are the magazines I've subscribed to and the books I've started. And Western Civilization in general, I guess.

Baltimore Magazine's Best Of Baltimore

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Baltimore Magazine has published a Top 10 best-of list. I have a blog and I have a keyboard, so I get to have my take.


Adam Meister
Love him or hate him, at least you've got to admit you either love him or hate him, which is a pretty good place to be if you see yourself as a crusading citizen journalist. I've criticized him before when he wrote a pretty hateful column about Hampden and about the people who go to the public pool there. The column seemed under researched and disrespectful. Doesn't matter. Whether you think he's an amateur hack or the savior of journalistic integrity, you must respect the fact that his rabble-rouser status is justified.

Top Ten Blogs
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Never mind. I put the blame squarely on alien evil forces and the fact that I'm sure a Top 11 List would have included this blog.

Now, I've read some of the blogs that did get into the list. The Comics Curmudgeon is smart and funny, but it's a smart and funny blog written by a Baltimorean, rather than being specifically about Baltimore. The same is true for other blogs on the list. One of my favorites, though, The City That Breeds, did make the list, so all is forgiven. Actually, whether this is a reader's poll or an editorial decision, having only a Top 10 list of Baltimore blogs is not enough. There are many great bloggers around, writing about diverse subjects, with diverse voices and opinions. And yet I appreciate the magazine giving The Sun's David Zurawik a place on the Top 10 Blogs for his TV column. Zurawik's achievement gives hope to ant-human hybrids everywhere.


There are other lists on the site, and rumor has it there are even more in the print version, whatever that is, but that's probably enough for now. Just worth mentioning that Denise Whiting gets a couple of semi-positive paragraphs. She will probably end up gluing those to the windows of her HON businesses to show the suckers who give her their money that she's not THAT evil. Really.

And Luke Scott gets a mention. Someone do him a favor and either read him the article or give him a set of these:

The Zen and Art of Foursquaring

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Is there something beyond getting discounts when it comes to Foursquare and other check-in apps?

I was looking at the new Google Plus app and noticed I could see public updates from people near me. This was exciting. There aren't that many people using Google Plus, and here was someone writing a funny update a block away from me! I wasn't going to track him down and introduce myself, with a, "So, Google Plus, eh?" but I did feel a certain bond with this person.

I've never tried Foursquare, and I've often tried to understand it. Asking around, the answer has always been, "Discounts." But is that it? Is a small discount worth making all of your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and Google Plus circlers(?) annoyed? Can't you hear the collective screams of "Who cares?" coming from everyone you know? Can we all chip in and give you some cash to avoid telling us about your location and your badges?

Unless there's something else. Maybe I stand in a non-moving line at Giant and when I check my phone I see someone checked in at that supermarket, which may make me feel I'm not just standing around in the most depressing place on earth. I see people tweet about being at CVS. They just write that they're at CVS. They're not adding that they wish they had never been born, but that's the assumption one must make.

So maybe next time you go to CVS, instead of whining about the neon lights that make you welcome death, you'll look at your phone and see who else is there. And maybe you'll use that visit to save a couple of bucks too. Why not.

Is that it? Did I get it? Do people check in to save a little bit of money but also to turn virtual connection into real ones? Are people trying to merge social media with the real world?

The Story of Baltimore

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It's expected--almost mandatory, that I write about the July 4th shooting of the 4-year-old kid near the Harbor. It's a problem, though. If it's mandatory to write sensationalist posts about Baltimore violence and it's not mandatory to write about the things that make this city, well, actually pretty sane, then the violent image of the city is what's left. As a person who writes a blog that may be read by even one person, I feel it's my responsibility to avoid doing that.

The Wire is a work of fiction based on a composite of real people events and institutions, exaggerated to fit the writer's view of a dog-eat-dog world in general. It doesn't mean it's all real, or that if in general it show an accurate portrayal of the desperation and violence in the city, it's intended to be a complete picture of the world, of David Simon's world-view, or of Baltimore.

There are many possible reasons for the violence in Baltimore, like a culture of All-or-Nothing, combined with mistrust of police, a large number of drug addicts that feed the violent system the war on drugs has created, and a systematic lack of concern for human life. However, while the shooting of a child may be a horrible thing, it shouldn't pull us away from the reality: most of us live in a--more or less--universe parallel to the violent one. A random shooting of a child near the city's main tourist area is horrific, but it's not the story of Baltimore.

I'm a Contrarian. Hear Me Blog!

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Sure, I could have done something constructive when I had a couple of minutes to myself today, but instead I read The Sun's John McIntyre's grammatically correct blog. I'll paraphrase, for the sake of the less-pretentious:

Yes, there were less people at Honfest this year, but compared to the noise made by the haters and the media coverage of their hatred, this drop in attendance was not substantial. 

For his sake, and for those who wonder what kind of people go on Facebook to say bad things about Whiting but then don't even bother to hold anti-Whiting signs at Honfest, here's the story.

I had gone to Honfest for the last 8 years. The whole HON thing was manufactured BS, but I didn't care. I lived in Hampden and there was a street festival a block away, which gave me the opportunity to walk around and meet my neighbors. The fact that it was all about an egomaniac's dream didn't matter, because there was beer and karaoke. Then I had kids, which made Honfest even better, because a street festival is more fun with kids. It's simple math.

This year's (apparently) 40,000 visitors to Honfest shared the same world view I had held until a few months ago: Street Festival = Fun. They didn't care or didn't know or didn't care to know about the economical politics behind the festival, and they can't be faulted for that. I did not go to protest the festival, because these people deserved better than to be in the middle of the egomaniac's feud with her community, and because I believe people who go to have fun should be allowed to have fun. My angry disapproving face wouldn't have made it more fun. That's all.

John McIntyre's agenda in belittling the anti-HON people doesn't come from a sense of justice or from a love of overpriced diners in general or of Café Hon in particular. McIntyre is a contrarian. He lives to displease. He's looking for lashes to launch the backlashes. He wants to be relevant, so he looks for issues, finds out what the popular opinion is, and goes out against it. He's a hero in his own mind, which is cute.

Of course, what McIntyre would really like to be is THAT guy. You know, the original contrarian. So now it's not that cute anymore, is it? It's a bit tragic, actually.

Hunfest

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A few months ago, an article came out in the Sun, revealing the fact that Denise Whiting of Café Hon has trademark the word Hon. I wouldn't say there were riots in the streets, but people were upset. I also don't need to repeat everything I wrote in my previous Café Hon posts, because we've been there, done that, and it was time to move on.

Some people insisted Whiting had to be stopped by a popular movement. Unfortunately, every time they organized a protest in front of one of her pink lairs, temperatures went down below freezing. It was a tough winter, which benefited the target of angry, but not incredibly dedicated protesters. Myself included. It was just too damn cold, and it wasn't like I ever set foot in that shit hole anyway.

So she won by default, letting us all know in the process that we were wrong to judge her. She was the victim. Here was a community member, targeted by evil characters who were taking away her years of work to steal her manufactured Hon character.

We moved on with our lives. Let the dumb tourists who think Hampden is quaint buy her damn flamingos. Let them take photos. Let them visit the ever expanding soulless Honfest. At least that way we know these people won't bother us in Golden West by complaining about the waiters' tattoos.

But she just had to send that letter, didn't she... She had to warn her neighbors not to sell "Hon-related" merchandise. She had to show everyone who's boss. She had to "protect her interests" by stepping over the community that allows her this ego trip.

I'm not going to tell people not to go, because I assume local businesses hope, even if begrudgingly, that pedestrian traffic will support them. But I know I'm staying home. I live around here, so I will buy locally another day. If you're not sure what you should do, let me give you the scenery: pink wigs, glasses, trademarks, drunks, police, flamingos, balloons, generators. And Denise Whiting standing by the gate, avoiding eye contact with the people she takes advantage of again and again. Have fun!

Triple Letter, Double Word!

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Damn thunderstorms. My dogs don't like those. It's 1am and they're pacing downstairs. There'll be some Swifter-wetting done tomorrow morning.

83 is a dangerous road. So many accidents. Another one today. Friends of mine used to have an apartment overlooking that curve under the train station. They used to sit there by the window, watching accidents and chain-smoking with the dedication of elderly women in a bingo hall. That was back at the time when people used to smoke cigarettes.

Ooh, Roseanne is on! That's what's great about Netflix Instant. Roseanne is always on.

Got a 60-point word on Words With Friends. In your face, teachers who said I'd amount to nothing!

Here's how the world is divided: People who have tried and loved Subway pizza, and those who hate it without even trying. There are people in the world without a Subway less than a mile away, I suppose, but I bet even they have an opinion.

I joined the gym. But I guess you could tell already. What do you call that machine where you walk while holding sticks? Pedophile? Parenthesis? Pedometer? Let me check...Oh yea, Elliptical. I was close.

Happy Father's Day!

When is Father's Day, anyway?

A Brooklyn Story (about Federal Hill)

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A week ago, I went downtown to Federal Hill with the family. Sure is a nice view from up there. You can't help but think how nice it would be to live in Baltimore. Look at all these boats! Look, you can see the stadium! And that skyline is unique, isn't it? Look at all these families having fun, eating Rita's at the harbor. Oh My God! These people are playing volleyball!!! Let's move to Baltimore!

Then we go back home, to our dreary, overpriced, slanted row houses, and plan our way out.

Reminds me of the day my wife and I left Brooklyn. We were there for two years, and by the time we moved, we hated it. We hated everything about it. Sure, we hated New York even more, but Brooklyn was not that much better. It was like, if New York was the class-bully, Brooklyn was his little wannabe sidekick that would stay away from you if New York weren't around, but would spit on your face and kick you while you were down as long as it knew you weren't getting back up. On the way out of the city, though, finally free, we turned the radio on and heard about this new exhibition in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Don't remember what it was, just that it sounded really cool. Apparently, there was also a street festival in the area. It was just by the beautiful Prospect Park, too. Really--we both thought at the same time--Brooklyn had it all!

Every time I look at the skyline, or go to a street festival, or eat a good thin pizza, I think about that last day in Brooklyn, when for a moment we forgot the things that bothered us and saw only the positive.

Happy Passover, Baltimore!

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IKEA

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When my neighbor sees me get out of my car with IKEA boxes, he knows he needs to clear his schedule for the evening. Seriously, it's not just me being dumb. Here's one point: every shopping trip to IKEA ends up as three visits. We look at stuff and regret not coming with two cars. Then, I go back to get the large boxes. And then I go back to return broken or moldy stuff, or to request missing screws.

Then come the buyer's remorse and the wood chip cuts.

I've never been to IKEA without regretting it later, not even when I went to White Marsh for a call-center job interview a few years ago. I tried as much as I could to pretend to be interested in square minimalism, but the elderly HR lady had her own agenda. She took her shoes off and stretched her legs in front of me, then she began a conversation about my life in my twenties. When that ended, she condescendingly said, "Well, looks like you've lived an interesting life. We're looking for someone who could SELL, SELL, SELL!!!"

Then she relaxed, put her shoes on, got up, and offered me a limp, dead hand. "We'll be in touch."

The funny thing is that the one thing I regret about blowing that interview was not being able to eat the IKEA cafeteria food for free.

And maybe if I advanced in the company, I would have had enough money to buy real furniture.