Baltimore Diary

One Lives Up to Hype, One Doesn't

Xander Harris: You are looking at the new local distributor for Boost Bars. "The natural food bar that provides a nutritional energy boost for active, health-conscience people." Want one?
Willow Rosenberg: No. Thanks. Those things usually taste... kind of tasteless. And then leave a bad after-tastelessness.

—Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "The I in Team" (2/8/00)

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A couple of nights ago, GF and I went with another couple for an evening of Dinner and a Movie. Dinner was at Pazo, down in the Fells Point area. Pazo took the City Paper's Best of Baltimore award in 2005 for Best New Restaurant, but frankly I think the writers were taken in by the décor, the overall trendiness of the place (where to be SEEN, baby!), and the Truly Hot Shit reputation of the owners.

Make no mistake; there's a lot to like about this place. I'm relatively new to the Tapas thing, but I definitely enjoyed everything we had, which included a kind of smoked ham with pears; veal & pork empanadas with salsa verde on the side; shrimp with garlic; a fried calamari dish; sautéed broccoli; and some potato croquettes.

We also ordered entrées. One thing that's cool about this place is that you can order half-portions of the entrées, if you've been picking at the tapas all evening, and we took this option. GF and the woman from the other couple (I'll call her S) both ordered something listed on the menu as Saffon "Gnocchi": one with the eggplant and the other with the lamb sauce. Unfortunately nobody really noticed the scare quotes around the word "Gnocchi" until it hit the table. S's "gnocchi" was underdone. Not so much that it was crunchy but enough that it still had that doughy taste. Between that and the fact that it wasn't actually gnocchi, she decided to send it back and order something else. Her alternate selection was a Bistek Catalonia, which is a "hanger" steak (skirt? I'm not familiar with that term) with a romescu sauce and tiny red potatoes. Medium rare, please.

Meanwhile, S's husband had ordered a Marcona Almond Crusted Merluza and I had a pork confit cannelloni. The Merluza (a white fish) wasn't bad but it was rather sparse-looking on the plate. Also, by the time it got to the table we wondered what the straw-colored food to one side was. We really couldn't identify it as either the wilted Swiss chard or the parsnip purée, so we're still at a loss.

GF, who is trying to cut her carb intake a little, started fishing the vegetables out of her "gnocchi" (which was completely cooked). This started a little bit of worry in our waitress because of the other problem. The single cannelloni was a bit sparse, and the hanger steak?

The hanger steak was--I swear to god--absolutely flavorless. The only thing you tasted when you took a bite was the bit of char on the outside. Otherwise there was no flavor at all to that meat. In addition, they'd put the Tiny Red Potatoes directly into the grill, so they wound up way overdone. But at this point she figured that sending back a second meal would be tacky. 

At the end of the meal, S ordered a slice of Chocolate Espresso Cake. I had a pear gelato. Our dates shared with us. The manager sent over some dessert wines gratis because of the gnocchi thing. I have to say this: the red wine they chose had an absolutely synergistic effect on the espresso cake. It was amazing how good they tasted together.

So as far as Pazo, stick to the tapas and you'll be OK. And for crying out loud, don't order one of their specialty drinks and then freak when you get the check. They're pricey.

For the movie, we trundled on over to the Charles Theater to join in their Alfred Hitchcock retrospective. This particular night they were showing Rebecca, one of his earlier films and, I think, his first produced in the USA. It's definitely his first with David O. Selznick. It's a great film with Lawrence Olivier, Judith Anderson (before she became a Dame), and Joan Fontaine. This film is done now, but there are still plenty of others left. If you're a Hitchcock fan, you should get down there soon! Don't forget to put lots of butter-flavored grease on your popcorn.

Lightning In A Bottle!

Murray: When you're in a band, you don't get with your bandmate's girlfriend - past or present.
Jemaine: Yes, well thanks for that.
Murray: You get a love triangle - you know? Fleetwood Mac situation.
[beat]
Murray: Well there, there was four of them, so...more of a love square. But you know, no one gets on.
Jemaine: Okay, I see.
Murray: Mind you, they did make some of their best music back then.
Bret: Rumours.
Murray: No, that's all true.

—The Flight of the Conchords, "Sally" (6/17/07)

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A meme I got from Yellojkt for creating your very own rock and roll album. I thought it would yield rather boring results but I was pleasantly surprised, so I'm sharing it:

First, you get your band name by visiting a random page on Wikipedia. When I clicked on the link, it took me to the page for the Council of Notables. Is that just THE best name ever for a rock band? You bet it is.

Next, you have to come up with a title for your album. This is done by going to this random quotation page. Go to the last quotation on that page and grab the last four words of the quotation. In my case, the full quotation was:

Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. (Han Suyin)

So my album title is:  Hurt, But it Cures, which is just enigmatic enough to be a cool album title coming from a band. It's more Radiohead than The Beatles, if you get what I mean. Anyway, I like it.

Finally, what good album doesn't have cover art on it? To get the artwork, you go to a random Flickr page and choose the THIRD picture. My photo came from a guy named Octave Z. The Flickr title is "Day 24/365" but the file name is "spaceball." I think it was part of a photo-a-day experiment. I love the shallow focus field in my image and again I think it's tough to beat, given the trend laid down by the other two elements of my album. Anyway, I had to crop it a little to make it fit a square image, which is a shame, but I think it still works. Add some text elements using a program called GIMP, and away we go:

GIMP, by the way, is a freebie, open-source program that you can use to manipulate images. From a user-friendly standpoint, it's no worse than Photoshop, which means it takes a little getting used to some of the elements but it's not as tough to get the hang of it, in my opinion. You can get it here.

So this was a fun little project, which of course has GF rolling her eyes so hard that our neighbors could hear them rattling about in her head, but it may inspire me to jerk around with other pictures just for the fun of it.

The Eyes Have It

Donna Moss: Josh, this was delievered by messenger.
Josh Lyman: What is it?
Donna: It's... wait, wait, no, damn. My X-ray vision is failing me today.
Josh: Gimme that!

—The West Wing, "The Leadership Breakfast" (1/10/01)

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That's not my eye over there but it's the same color. Nice, yes? I rather like my eye color. My favorite part is the way they seem to change color from time to time. Sometimes they're more like brown, other times they're definitely leaning toward green.

Daughter doesn't have my eye color, which is sad. On the bright side, she does have this steel blue that she seems to have gotten from my grandmother. A quick Google image search doesn't turn up much, so I'll have to take a digital pic of her and blow up the eye, sometime. Anyway. 

A couple of weeks ago I went to get my eyes checked as part of the biannual thing. And, it's official: I get to wear glasses on a full-time basis. Not that I wasn't doing that anyway.

I'm abnormally rough on my glasses. I push them up on my forehead, then grab them by the lenses to bring them back down, then wonder why I can't see. What's a few fingerprints, anyway? I've dropped them, lost them, chipped them...the only thing I haven't done with my current pair was bend them out of shape, and that's because I sprung for frames that are made of some space-age polymer. I don't think you CAN bend them enough that they'd remain misshapen. But I do have these glasses with the scratched lenses and the chip from when they fell off my face at the Pig Roast last May...it's just sad.

So, since I'm such an irresponsible glasses-wearer, I asked the doctor if I could get contacts. Last time he was resistant because I wasn't supposed to be wearing them all the time. This time? No problem. He ordered a starter kit for me (freebie) and, if all was well, I could order a more permanent set.

For the uninitated: when you buy glasses, you wait a week or so and they call you in. You go, they put them on you and make sure they fit, and send you on your way. With contacts, when it's your first time, you have to go in and be trained in the ways of sticking stuff in your eye. And that was the first question she had for me: "Are you comfortable putting your finger in your eye?"

"Sure," I said. "I do it lots of times. Occasionally on purpose."

It took me over ten minutes to get the first lens in correctly, but I managed it. The process involves holding one eye wide open and basically pulling my upper eyelid outward and then down over the lens. I was told that it would feel as though I had a foreign object in my eye. (What! My lenses aren't made in America? Snerk.) In fact, it felt to me as though I had a stray eyelash bugging me. The left eye didn't take quite as long but it still wasn't easy at first. Then I had to take them out again for her benefit, to show that I could do it.

For today, I was told to wear them for four hours .Naturally, as that mark passed I wasn't in a position to take them out, so they were in for nearly five. I took them out around 8:30 and my left eyeball is still a little sore. Tomorrow they should be in for five hours (maybe I can go six, since I already did five?), and so on until I can wear them all the time, except when I'm sleeping at night.

So here I am, one with the Contact Lens Nation. So far, so good.

One Hand Doesn't Wash The Other

Senator Pat Geary: I despise the way you pose yourself. You and your whole fucking family.
Michael Corleone: We're both part of the same hypocrisy, Senator, but never think it applies to my family.

—The Godfather, Part II (1974)

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Baltimore Sun: Dixon endorses Barack Obama

WBAL-TV: Dixon to Support Obama

Examiner: Dixon Will Endorse Obama

Have you seen any of these articles?

Want to know the curious part? I remember attending a political rally on August 4th, during which a letter was read to the assembled crowd. That letter was from Senator Hillary Clinton, endorsing (among others) Sheila Dixon for Mayor of Baltimore City.

Well...Integrity isn't everything. On the other hand, if you don't have integrity, you don't have much else.   

Disastrous Fun

Bleedin' Gums Murphy: Then there was the time I guest-starred on "The Cosby Show".
[Flashback to a Cosby Show episode]
Cliff Huxtable: Kids, this is your Grandpa Murphy.
Rudy Huxtable: But we've got three grandpas already.
Cliff Huxtable: This one's the famous jazz musician.
Rudy Huxtable: Ah, they all are.
Cliff Huxtable: Oh,oh-oh! You see, the kids these days, they listen to the rap music, which gives them the brain damage. With the hippin' and the hoppin' and the bippin' and the boppin', they don't know what the jazz is all about. Y'see, jazz is like Jello pudding... no, that's not it. Jazz is like Kodak film... no, that's not right neither. I've got it, jazz is like the new Coke - it'll be around forever.
[Back in the present]
Bleedin' Gums Murphy: Sigh.

—The Simpsons, "'Round Springfield" (4/30/95)

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This evening, GF and I were at our neighbors' house for dinner. The husband, B, seemed to be a little out of sorts, so his wife suggested that he and I go out for a little while to have a few drinks. Hey! You don't have to ask me twice. Him, either. So he changed his shirt, I changed my shoes, and we met back at my house to head out somewhere.

Except...I couldn't find my wallet. Which was odd, because I got home relatively late, so I hadn't been all over the house. There were only a few places it could have been, and it didn't appear to be in any of them. I went out to the car and looked through my bookbag, the trunk, under the front seat...nothing.

GF suggested I take her ATM card and just get cash from the joint account and be done with it. So I got her card and got in his car.

"Maybe I left it on my desk?" I mused. "Do you mind if we see if maybe a custodian is still floating around Lake Clifton?" He didn't mind, so we headed down Harford Road toward the Lake Clifton campus, where my office is located.

Before we got there, he spotted a drive-through ATM for the bank where he keeps his account, so he pulled in and got some money, then we were on our way. B likes to test the limits of his cars, so we were doing some fun maneuvers at interesting rates of speed. "I don't usually get to do this, because usually I've got the kids," he explained.

We got to the school and, it being very close to 9:00 and looking more or less deserted, it didn't look good. Just before we were about to give up on getting into the building, I spotted the silhouette of a custodian. Better still, it was one of the building's custodians whom I know. (This is a BIG school, so I don't know all of the maintenance people.) I explained the situation to her and she agreed to let me in and walked me up to the office. No dice.

There's a certain peace in knowing that it's not there, specifically. At least you've eliminated it. Especially with a three-day weekend ahead; you don't want that "maybe" hanging over your head. I threw in the towel at that point and we headed for another ATM to get money for me.

B stopped his car at a gas station on Greenmount and 33rd Street. I told him that I was going to just walk up to the ATM at the Bank of Americawhile he filled up. "Be careful," he told me. Hey, it's Baltimore: what can happen? As it turned out, I could forget the PIN for GF's card, but a quick phone call solved that one. I got in the car and off we went.

We didn't have a destination in mind, and since I'm not really familiar with the drinking establishments at the north end of town, I wasn't much help. However, I did remember seeing a place called Holiday House which I'd heard positive things about. So we headed up there and went inside. The sign out front promised a band called "Rain Dogs". 

Holiday House, it turns out, is almost nice enough to be called a "dive bar". We each got a beer and we sat at a table, sipping beer and listening to the Rain Dogs. This band is a bunch of guys who have about ten years or so on me, and it wasn't clear to me why they were playing here, or anywhere. It's not as though they were bad—in fact they weren't bad at all—but their demeanor was such that they expected to be treated as just so much background noise. So they'd play, for instance, the old Delbert McClinton song, "Givin' it Up For Your Love" and barely react to the smattering of applause they received. Then they'd just launch into the next mid-1970s number. We finished our drinks and got out.

B then suggested that we go to a place called The Haven, which he described as a Jazz club. I agreed, and off we went. When we got there, I felt kind of dumb. The Haven (actually, it's called the New Haven Lounge but the sign out front just reads "The Haven") is located in the Northwood Shopping Center. Between the McDonald's and the pharmacy in there, I've been in that plaza a hundred times, and I never knew this place was there. Before we went in, though, B started checking himself: he couldn't find the money he'd gotten from the ATM earlier. Mentally he retraced his steps and deduced that it must have fallen out of his jacket pocket at the Holiday House. He took this with a gentle good humor, though: "Oh well. Let me just go to the ATM over there."

The first ATM wasn't working right; the touch screen wasn't reacting correctly. The one next to it took his card but then never gave him the "enter your PIN" screen. After an interminable period, it finally spit his card back out. "Never mind," I said. "I've got fifty bucks, and we both have credit cards on us. We'll be OK."

We went in and of course there's a cover charge tonight (they don't do one every night, as I understand it). We order drinks and hit a table.

It's clear that this place is way different from the last one. People are here specifically to enjoy the live music. They're watching the band, which is a combo of guitar, drums, sax and organ. And I'm not talking cheesy little Yamaha electronic keyboard; this is a full-size, wooden-case, no-fooling-around jobbie. There was very little chatter going on in the audience; they were all paying attention to the music. They applauded after each solo and when the songs were over. And where the other band, once upon a time, would have been desperate for attention and is now grateful for it, this band (whose name I didn't catch, dammit) couldn't give a goddamn if anyone else was in the room. They sounded, and looked, as though they'd been freed by the music. They were fun to watch and fun to listen to.

So in the end, B lost his money and I lost my wallet, but we both had us some fun and got out for awhile.

And, of course, despite the (at least) ten-minute search before we left, I found my wallet in the house no more than thirty seconds after I arrived back home, I kid you not.

A Fine Line, Methinks

Carmela Soprano: He's a good man. He's a good father.
Dr. Krakower: You tell me he's a depressed criminal, prone to anger, serially unfaithful. Is that your definition of a good man?... You must trust your initial impulse and consider leaving him. You'll never be able to feel good about yourself. You'll never be able to quell the feelings of guilt and shame that you talked about, so long as you're his accomplice.
Carmela: You're wrong about the accomplice part, though.
Dr. Krakower: You sure?
Carmela: All I did was make sure he's got clean clothes in his closet and dinner on his table.
Dr. Krakower: So "enable" would be a more accurate job description for what you do than "accomplice". My apologies.

—The Sopranos, "Second Opinion" (4/8/01)

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A friend of mine was telling me a little bit about the dynamics in her family. She's met my family and thinks that our willingness to yell at each other (when necessary) is a little on the weird side. My argument is that it's a reasonably healthy way to go, because at least you know where everyone stands and there's none of that weirdness where everyone tapdances around everyone else and nobody says anything because of how someone will react. You know what? They're going to react anyway, so get it over with.

But something she said struck me, and I've been pondering it for a couple of days, now. She said that "We complain about each other all the time, but we're also very supportive of one another.  I know that I can call any member of my family at any time and they'll come a running."

This was a paraphrase. The idea behind what she'd said was that, even though they bitch about one another, there's also a whole support system going on there should someone who is outside the family do some sort of injury to one of them. The specific phrasing ran along the lines of "my family, right or wrong" and intimated that anything that happens, happens TO them. There is no fault in this family, no responsibility. There are no errors here. There are only outside influences which are going to somehow disturb the family dynamic or some such. I got the feeling that even people who marry into this family remain forever on the fringes, somehow.

(For a "throwaway" conversation that took place a day ago, I thought about it way too much.)

But with this sort of attitude, what happens when a family member does go wrong? How do they handle the one whose activity goes criminal? The alcoholic? The one who doesn't react appropriately to frustration or failure? The drug abuser? The one who refuses to grow up? The one who sleeps around? The bipolar one? 

When does "support" stop being support and become a form of codependence? Where does the distinction get made? And who decides? What if someone in that family unit decides that this is, indeed, an unhealthy situation and tries to break out? Do they become the "black sheep" of the family? Do they wind up with the ties cut off?

It's a curious thought, isn't it.

An Unholy Mess

Cindy Mackenzie: Wow... this is one trashed lab. All it's missing is a big hole in the wall shaped like the Hulk.

—Veronica Mars, "Show Me The Monkey" (1/21/07)

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It appears that the people renting my house have finally abandoned the place before the Sheriff could do the job of evicting them. I'm still not positive that this is the case, but it certainly looks that way.

The bad news is that, looking through the windows, etc., it's pretty clear that the place is a huge mess. It's going to take literally days of work to bring it back up to the point where coyotes aren't going to pass the place by as being too messy.

At this point I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I still like the idea of renting the house—lord only knows why—but I'm thinking maybe I should just get someone to manage it for me, for a cut of the rent, and let someone else deal with the hassles. Does anyone have experience with management companies?

Marching In Place

Casey McCall: And Tanana, who obviously can't see the end zone marker under the virgin snow, breaks into his touchdown dance on the ten-yard line, only to be given a geography lesson by linebacker Marvin Watkins. That's an incredibly embarrassing moment for any professional athlete, so, when we come back, we're gonna show it to you a couple of more times, if only so that I can keep saying "virgin snow."

—Sports Night, "Intellectual Property" (10/13/98)

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The reorganization in Baltimore City Schools is going to be both more and less complex than I thought.

The Elementary and K-8 schools are indeed going to be brought together under a single umbrella, but from a Special Education standpoint (I'm not sure about anything else) they will still be monitored by one of four coordinators. The coordinator for any given school could change, however, because:

If you remember a post or two ago (I'm not linking; scroll down, lazy-ass), I noted that the schools were divided into four areas which had nothing to do with where they were located. Well, it turns out that we're going back to the geographic areas. In addition, a fifth area, which was reserved for schools that were repeatedly having difficulty meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress (as defined by No Child Left Behind), is getting folded back into this group. This means that there will be 108 schools to monitor, not 93 as I thought. And each coordinator will get one-fourth of this group, or 27 schools each. This is more schools than I'm working with now, but not the most I've had. (That would be 29.) How those seven areas are going to be divided among four people is beyond me. The way I (and my boss) originally thought it would happen is, on second glance, not going to work, so they're going to have to come up with something.

And there are still rumors of big changes happening at North Avenue, ranging anywhere from re-deployment of staff to layoffs to the elimination of entire departments. Suddenly I'm glad that I was passed over for promotion last year. 

I C U B C P S S

Nicky Santoro: Peek-a-boo, you fucks, you!

—Casino (1995)

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Despite my needling Sara Neufeld about her article the other day, I do have to admit that her linking to this site produced more traffic than I've seen in awhile. I got triple the usual number of hits. Not that you'd know it based on the comment section, but who am I to complain. Anyway, thanks to Sara for that little boost.

I, like so many others who have this ugly little habit of blogging, have a habit of looking at my stats. At this point it's kind of a morbid curiosity, to see what kind of sick minds are doing weird searches. I don't get the stuff that Yellojkt has, with the naked teen idols, but I do get some stuff. (BTW Yello: your attempt to poison my well hasn't worked. Sorry.)

(Oh, and Confidential to the person looking to do Special Education work from home: email me if you want that URL.)

In addition to search terms, I'm also able to track back my visitors. For instance, I know that one person came here from France. Another couple of hits came from America Online users. And, in the last two days, no fewer than twenty-one hits came from the Baltimore City Public School System's IP address.

That's pretty curious, if only because Typepad-generated webpages are blocked by BCPSS' filtering software. BCPSS employees shouldn't be able to see it. So either there are computers out there that aren't subject to the blocking software, or (more likely) BCPSS has a proxy server that they're using to get past the blocking software. In either case, it's interesting that there are people who actually have the time and inclination to read this bit of drivel.

Anyway, for the sake of those people at BCPSS who are peeking in today, I took the liberty of delaying the appearance of this post until just before noon. This way the pixels will still be fresh when you read them over your lunch. Because I know you're not reading this on work time, no sir-ree.   

Same As The Old Boss--In My Case, Anyway

[Maya is the only one in costume at the office]
Maya Gallo: That memo about dressing up, I'm the only one who got it, aren't I?
Dennis Finch: By the way, you got another letter from corporate. Next week is Topless Tuesdays.

—Just Shoot Me, "The Mask" (10/27/98)

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So here's the news I've been foreshadowing the past couple of days. A press release was sent via email to BCPSS employees around 5:30 pm yesterday (nice timing, that), indicating that, per Board approval--which happened later that evening--Irma Johnson was named Executive Director of Elementary/Elementary Middle Schools.

The other move they made was appointing Michael Sarbanes as "Executive Director of Partnerships, Communication and Community Engagement". I met him during his mayoral campaign, and GF actually did a little campaign work for him, but the fact is that the Sun, in putting his appointment first in the newspaper story (and Sara? You need more verbs in the third paragraph. I'm just saying.), missed the bigger picture.

The Elementary and Elementary/Middle Schools in Baltimore City are currently broken into four groups of 20-25 schools each, known as "Areas". The areas were geographic in nature up until about 2001, then they were split based on mysterious criteria. Last year, they were reorganized so that Areas 1 and 4 were strictly Elementary, while Areas 2 and 3 were all K-8 schools. Irma Johnson was the Area Academic Officer for Area 1 (and my boss' boss, therefore my boss as well). Now she's the director of ALL 93 SCHOOLS in Areas 1 through 4.

The upshot of this is that, ultimately, all of the schools with Elementary or Middle students (with the exception of the Middle-only schools) now come under her jurisdiction. This means that the areas themselves will wind up getting rearranged into one big area. Since Ms. Johnson works with my boss, and my boss works with me, all of our boats have floated a little bit higher organizationally. Good news in that, but it also means that without some serious coordination, we're also going to be working much harder. Fortunately, my boss is the sort of guy who excels at that sort of thing.

At some point between now and the end of the year (I presume), offices are going to have to be moved about to consolidate all the areas into a single location. Since Areas 1 and 4 are already together, the likelihood is that 2 and 3 will come to where we are (at the Lake Clifton campus). Frankly, I think all four areas should commandeer a corner of the Professional Development Center on Northern Parkway, where we can tailor a space to some very specific needs.

Any way you look at it, there are big changes ahead. It sounds crazy but I'm rather looking forward to it.