Baltimore Diary

The Jinx Strikes Again

[In the hospital waiting area]
Father Dougal McGuire: Who would have thought being hit by lightning would land you in hospital?
Father Ted Crilly: What? What are you talking about? Of course it can land you in hospital.
Father Dougal: Well it's not usually serious, is it, Ted? I mean, I was hit by lightning a few times and I never had to go to hospital.
Father Ted: Yes Dougal, but you're different from most people. All that happened to you was that balloons kept sticking to you.

—Father Ted, "Entertaining Father Stone" (4/28/95)

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It's getting to be a family tradition, one which I first chronicled here. I go to Florida, someone in my family goes to the hospital.

On Sunday, my brother hosted Easter dinner with the family. Nineteen invited guests showed up, along with three (welcome) surprises. Literally minutes before dinner, my uncle (whom I hadn't seen in years) was on the patio petting the cat, when the cat suddenly turned and bit him. Odd behavior for that cat to say the least. My uncle started washing it out at the sink, someone got the peroxide, etc., but my aunt overrode all this, noting that he's diabetic and has a heart condition for which he takes Coumadin, and besides, it was kind of nasty-looking anyway. So, off to the Emergency Room. Dinner was a little maudlin, to say the least, but we had a pleasant time nonetheless. By the time they got back (and they were relatively fast), several people had departed and it was easier to engage in a little more chitchat with everyone. Basically he's okay, keep it clean and call the doctor if he starts rolling around in the catnip. Heh.

Of course, the second part of this is the visit from Animal Control, which happened yesterday. They took a look at the cat, said to keep him indoors for 45 days, and they may come at irregular intervals to look again.

The curse continues!

That Went Quickly

Daniel Webster: Oh, come, come now. Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler.

—The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

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It was a week ago Monday that I met with the real estate agent to give her a key and the last of the paperwork that put the Morrell Park house on the market. She told me that there'd be a sign out front about three days later, and someone would come along to take a photo for the website listing.

Today, we were just about to leave for Florida for spring break when the phone rings. It's Marlene, the agent. She received an offer on the house. Can we come by to look it over? Sure, why not. It's on the way south.

So we get to Long & Foster down in Elkridge, where Marlene's office is located, and she outlines the deal. Since I'm still relatively inexperienced with this, I need some of it explained to me. GF is actually overselling me on the deal because she's so anxious to see it gone, but between Marlene and another woman in her office whose name escapes me, I see that it's not an awful deal. But the "walking away" money isn't quite what I expected. On the other hand, there's an awful lot of damage to deal with at that house, and since I was selling it "as-is", and the guy is getting a 203K loan to renovate, I could close the deal without having to do another thing to it. I make a counteroffer and Marlene calls the guy's broker. He's pretty sure his person will go for it, so assuming he does, the house is sold.

In the meantime, GF and I have been working on refinancing the Parkville place to get us out of an adjustable-rate mortgage. That deal is on the cusp of closing and my original mortgage company will be getting a payoff shortly after I return from Florida.

So at this point I'm partway to Florida, sitting in a Super 8 Motel somewhere in North Carolina, with no mortgage payments in my future until June 1^st. Looks like we're getting the GOOD seats to the Tampa Bay Lightning game this week.

More Like It

Jimmy Rabbitte: Elvis is not soul.
Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr.: [defensively] Elvis is God.
Jimmy Rabbitte: I never pictured God with a fat gut and corset singing "My Way" at Caesar's Palace.

—The Commitments (1991)

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This past weekend I went back up to Long Island to see the fruits of Daughter's labor on a play she'd been doing at her high school. Since Daughter is usually on Tech Crew, we're going up to see a play performed by a bunch of strange teenagers who are standing in front of my kid's artwork. Move outta the way, dammit!

The play that the high schoolers put on was All Shook Up, which is a jukebox musical that combines Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the music of Elvis Presley. Now, since this is usually the part where I start bitching about how the kids were in over their heads, etc., let me say off the bat that this was definitely NOT the case.

This group did a fantastic job on the play. It was remarkably clear that these youngsters worked their hearts out, and all the hard work paid off. With only a few exceptions, the kids did everything on this play. Contrast that with the other youth theater group that Daughter works with during the summer, where nearly everything is done by the adults in a misguided effort to make everything look slick and professional, and the kids are just so much cattle moving about between the hi-def cameras (so you can buy the DVD, natch) and the rented scenery.

Now, ponder this: the summer group is a motivated bunch of kids. They're there during Summer Vacation. They want to be there; presumably they want to do a good job. But they're given either very little direction, or very poor direction, or I don't know what. But their enthusiasm and desire to succeed is so overshadowed by the lack of attention given to them that they look lackluster and the high-end production values (the program is printed by Playbill Magazine, for godsake) only makes the whole thing worse.

Back to the high school group. Not all of these kids are going to be theater/drama majors when they get out of school. Some of them will, certainly. Some of them are working on a play to get a sense of belonging to something. Some of them are there because a friend talked them into it. Some of them are there because their girl/boyfriend is participating. Whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is that you've got a pretty mixed bag of students here, and they all did a fabulous job. In fact, the first half of the play was absolutely plagued with sound problems (Daughter later told me that the mikes were brand new and the sound person was still getting used to the system), and nobody really cared. They overcame the troubled technical issue and gave us a good play anyway.

The summer play this year, incidentally, will be Once Upon a Mattress, which is a 1959 musical based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Princess and the Pea". I'll say this: at least they finally learned not to overreach with the plays. Whether they'll take the kids into some consideration this time around? I'll let you know in August.

The Gestalt of Things

Prosecutor: What about that tattoo on your chest? Doesn't it say "Die Bart Die"?
Sideshow Bob: No, that's German...
[unveils tattoo]
Sideshow Bob: ...for "The Bart, The".
Parole Board Member: No one who speaks German could be an evil man.

—The Simpsons, "Cape Feare" (10/7/93)

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Last week, at the Board of Education meeting, Dr. Alonso unveiled his plan for streamlining things at North Avenue and various related offices which aren't located there. He also discussed changes to the way that principals will run their schools, essentially giving them more autonomy with hiring and budget. You can find the details of most of that information here. All of this is pending Board of Ed approval at their next meeting, and then the City Council also has to approve it a couple of days later.

The next day there was a meeting of all Central Office Special Education staff at North Avenue, called by Idalyn Hauss. I wasn't specifically supposed to go—technically I don't rank quite that high—but my boss was supposed to be out for the week and I was covering his meetings. He got wind of the meeting and decided to come back early. I, now having a gap in my schedule, decided to attend anyway. As it happens, I wasn't the only person there who wasn't supposed to be, but more on that anon.

I'd never seen all of BCPSS' Special Ed people in one place before. I hadn't realized how many there were. There were about a hundred people in that room, probably more. Who knew!

The first thing that Ms. Hauss said was that it was going to take some time to get used to the gestalt of the new organization. We were told that the structure for the reorganization was going to be in place for at least two years. We were also told that of the hundreds of positions that were getting cut, only 36 of them were in Special Education. My feeling is, had there not been a Consent Decree, that would have been a much larger number. Not all of those 36 positions were currently staffed, so it didn't mean that 36 people were being reassigned. However, once Board approval comes through, she said she'd speak to the affected people individually.

And this is the heart of it: the key is not to fire people but to reassign them back into schools. Naturally, this could entail a pay cut, so the people involved have to decide whether they want to remain or not. The bottom line, we were told, is that there's a lot of churning, a lot of upheaval, a lot of change. If you want to be "safe" and away from all that, working in a school is where you want to be. If you like a little excitement in your life, try Central Office.

Another thing that struck me as important is that the position of Educational Specialist is being "zeroed out". This means that, basically, all of the current Ed Specialists have to re-apply for their jobs. If you've read my particular brand of tripe long enough, you'll recall that this is the job that I'd applied for and didn't get. I'm not so upset about being passed over, just now. But it also means that I have a new shot at it. This fact is important because, as Idalyn Hauss explained, all of the IEP Team Associates' jobs were safe for now, although this year the principals get to choose their own ITAs. I'm pretty good at my job, otherwise I wouldn't be the Lead ITA for my area, so I'm not worried about that part. There are plenty of principals who would like me to work in their school. But...

I raised my hand. Ms. Hauss spotted me, acknowledged me, then asked, "What are you doing here?" I wasn't getting into the whole thing so I simply said that I thought I was covering for my boss, who was sitting right next to me. Then I asked about the Lead ITAs and where they fit into this whole scheme.

The truth was, I already knew the answer when I asked. I just wanted to see what she'd say. There was a pause, then she said only that the ITAs would still be around. In short, the Leads don't fit into the current model.

Without sounding too much like I'm scrambling to keep my job, let me tell you why this isn't necessarily a good thing. Lead ITAs work longer hours than regular ITAs. They have a caseload, so they still have a foot in the school and a good handle on what's going on there. They're treated like Area Office staff, even though they have no more on-paper authority than the Kindergarten teacher down the hall. But as a result of this, they probably have a better handle on what's going on in the schools than anyone else, because everyone talks to them: principals, ITAs, teachers, support staff, you name it. Lead ITAs get a lot of information and, if they have half a brain, can genuinely see the bigger picture in a school.

There have been numerous times when I've been able to use this information to help my boss. He's gotten all pissed off at certain people and I have to put the brakes on: "Wait a minute. She's not getting this done because the principal this and the special education teacher that and the parent the other thing. This person is going crazy because she desperately wants to get the job done and she isn't getting the support she needs." More than once, this has led to his writing a memo to remind principals that thus-and-such needs to be taken care of.

And the beauty part of all this insight is that it doesn't cost the city an extra dime. I work longer hours, do more intensive and varied work, and I don't get paid any extra for it. So in my head, losing the Leads? Bad, bad idea.

Ah well...plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Paradigm Shift

Lieutenant Worf: Ever since you gave Alexander that music program, he's been playing it all night. Every night!
Commander William T. Riker: I just wanted to broaden his horizons. Besides, he likes it.
Worf: It is screeching, pounding dissonance. It is not music.
Riker: Worf, It's better than music... it's jazz.

—Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Phantasms" (10/23/93)

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Back in 1988-90 I worked in retail, in a now-defunct music chain you may remember called Record World. They had "sister" outlets called Square Circle and The Wall; those were all the same company. At any rate, at the time I worked there, the store was roughly 40% vinyl, 40% cassettes and the remaining 20% were these new Compact Disk jobbies.

It was actually a pretty exciting time to be in the business, because that was the period where everything turned around. By the time I left, the vinyl was relegated to cutout bins and 12" singles (dance mixes, etc.). It seemed like every couple of weeks I was taking space from the LPs and handing it over to the CDs.

Nowadays the trend is shifting again: the artists have gotten tired of the labels dictating to them and (in their eyes) keeping most of the money that they've earned, so they're turning to a different way of distributing their music: directly to the consumer, usually through the Internet. Some of them are making it all available via download only; other artists are giving us options.

Radiohead, for instance, made its most recent album, "In Rainbows", available only as a download a few months back, on a "pay what you wish" basis. You could pay nothing; you could pay a hundred bucks if you wanted to. They didn't really (appear to) care one way or the other. The notion was that there would be enough paying people to offset the freeloaders, and it seems there was. Estimates at the time of release suggest that the band made an average of $5 per download, which added up to six million dollars in the first twenty-four hours. Nearly all of that went directly to the band. I presume there were overhead costs such as bandwidth and administrative issues, but you get the idea. It wasn't until several weeks later that "In Rainbows" was available at the store level on a CD. Radiohead thus pretty effectively demonstrated that you don't necessarily need a big label to make some sales. Now, granted, Radiohead has a pretty big presence already despite not getting a ton of airplay, but the model can work at the grassroots level. Many artists are building the local following via MySpace. It may not lead to huge sales at this point, but from what I've read, it's ensuring better attendance wherever they play.

This month, Nine Inch Nails (a/k/a Trent Reznor and whoever's backing him up these days; he's like a modern-day Steely Dan) did much the same thing. His newest collection of instrumental tracks is called "Ghosts I-IV" and it's currently available only through his website. People get a choice of downloads: You can get the first nine tracks (out of 36) for free; you can download the whole thing for $5, which includes a 40-page PDF and some other digital goodies; you can order a 2-CD set for $10, although the CD doesn't ship until next month (you're allowed to download it, though); or you can spend up to $300 on one of a few deluxe packages. I think for the 300 bucks, Trent himself better send a tall blonde out to give you some serious sexual favors. I'm a fan, but I'm not that big of a fan. (What, I can't be a fan of Nine Inch Nails? Indeed I am, although I think he looked much better with the longer hair.)

At any rate, it appears to be a successful marketing scheme, since I wanted to write this post last night after downloading the freebies. However, the website was apparently so slammed that I didn't stand a chance of even getting to the homepage. I tried for over an hour to connect and it just wasn't happening. Things went more smoothly this morning, and the download (82MB, and there are a few goodies in that as well) was pretty efficient. The music is very atmospheric. It's not the thrash-y stuff that TR puts out, but certain sounds and hooks make you recognize it immediately as Nine Inch Nails' music.

I'm still the sort who likes to have the tangible object in my hands, so I'll be ordering the CD set. But I'll also take the associated download and enjoy it in the interim.

UPDATE: I just looked back at the site and it appears that the $300 set is already sold out. So maybe there are sexual favors involved...

Getting Into a Bad Food Habit

Dr. Pomatter: I want to talk to you, somewhere outside of here. Maybe we can have a coffee or something?
Jenna: I can't have coffee, it's on the bad food list you gave to me. What kind of doctor are you?

—Waitress (2007)

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It seems as though I write about dining out a lot, lately. It's not really the case (this is my fifth post in 2008 that has anything to do with food), but it just feels that way.

On Thursday night I got home from work kind of late and not especially in the mood to make dinner, so I suggested that we just get some kind of takeout. GF's suggestion was that we walk up to Angelina's. I'd been there once before about five years ago, and remembered it as a pretty positive experience: good food, good service; the worst thing you could say was that the place was pretty crowded. But they were accommodating and my dining partner and I had a decent time.

Well, as the saying goes, that was then and this is now.

The restaurant went through a change of ownership in mid-2005, and may have done so again a few months back. I'm not especially clear on this; I remember seeing "Public Auction" signs and such not long ago. At any rate, the only thing that's improved is the décor. Everything else has taken a nosedive.

We walked in and the place was nearly empty. We were greeted by a young lady who asked us "how many?" and then asked us if we had a reservation. You couldn't get a good checker game going on but this chick was worried about reservations. Um, no. We didn't know we needed them. She asked us if a booth was okay, and we were fine with that.

A "booth" turned out to be one of the circular banquettes in the corner of the room. Three of us at a table for six, and they never took away the extra setups. It took forever to get service and the food wasn't especially good, although I'll give them points for the mussels appetizer I got: about two dozen of them in a butter/garlic sauce, and they weren't bad. But the bread looked like a sub roll that had been cut up (and had started to go stale, besides); my penne with meat sauce was too sweet for a meat sauce; GF's chicken, described as having a marsala-based sauce with mozzarella on top and linguine below, was kind of flavorless, and our garlic bread was little more than the same bread that was already on the table, but the slices were toasted and tasted as though perhaps someone had walked past it with a clove of garlic.

The sad fact is, we could have walked in the other direction, to Valentino's, and gotten a better meal for half the price. Angelina's has fallen far, and its only saving grace is that the prior owners sold the crabcake concession to a different company, so it's not these guys who are doing that end of the business. But overall it's kind of a shame. 

Blast From the Past (Now With More Radio!)

Bill McNeal: Why, back in the old days of radio, they had nothing but jungle drums beating the morning weather and traffic reports. But did they complain?

—Newsradio, "Twins" (3/12/97)

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During the move to Parkville, just over a year ago, I came across a plastic box. It was squarish, with rounded corners, about 12 inches by 12 inches by maybe 2 inches deep. Inside were two reels of audio tape. The box was a mailer, so that tape could be transported safely through the US Mail.

Now, I'd been carrying these reels around for nearly twenty years without knowing what was on them, since I no longer had access to a reel-to-reel tape deck. But it's a chunk of my past, and you know how we hang on to these things.

When I was in college I was a Communications major, and I therefore spent a lot of time at the school's radio station, WBAU. I mean, a LOT of time. (If you read the Wikipedia article, you'll understand why I don't contribute to the Alumni Association.) I figured, but wasn't sure, that these tapes were some work I'd done. I wasn't positive, however. I could have been toting around anything. I really had no idea.

So last year, I realized that I had a friend who could check out the tapes for me, since she works at the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland, which coincidentally is practically around the corner from my house, now. She agreed to help me out and took the tapes, commenting that she'd never seen something like the mailer before.

It took several months, but she finally came through. Lo and behold, one of the tapes still had viable audio on it. It's about 14 minutes of me, and my co-host at the time, cutting promos for an oldies show we did together. There are a few odd music clips which I think I was going to put together into a montage, then several takes of three different promos. The last thing on the tape is the opening "bed" that we used at the beginning of the show. I did a new opening about every six to eight months; this was one of the last I made. So it's about 30 seconds of montage, followed by another 30 seconds during which we'd do our "Hello"s, and a stinger ending. For editing that I did with a razor blade and what was basically scotch tape--involving the actual cutting of tape--it wasn't bad.

If you actually take the time to listen, you'll see that I was a bit of a nut about doing multiple takes. There were some bits that I recorded (not on this) where I did maybe thirty takes and then used Number 17 as the one that was "good enough". Sometimes it took me hours to do a 60-second piece.

If you comment, be kind. Remember this was around 1985 or so. My voice isn't so reedy nowadays. Oh, and there's one small F-bomb that gets dropped. Enjoy, if you dare. (Note: it starts very quietly; you'll have to wait for a bit before you hear anything.)

I have to admit that I'm especially proud of writing the phrase "the music that made the Sixties what they are today." Talk about your semantically null phrases.