Baltimore Diary

Why Are You Sitting There?

C.J. Cregg: Twenty-five years ago half of all 18 to 24 year olds voted. Today it's 25%. 18 to 24 year olds represent 33% of the population but only account for 7% of the voters. Think government isn't about you? How many of you have student loans to pay? How many have credit card debt? How many want clean air and clean water and civil liberties? How many want jobs? How many want kids? How many want their kids to go to good schools and walk on safe streets? Decisions are made by those who show up. You gotta rock the vote!

—The West Wing, "College Kids" (10/2/02)

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Spit out your doughnut!

No, no...that's too harsh. Doughnuts don't deserve that kind of treatment. Finish the doughnut.

All done? Good. Now get out there and vote.

Look at C.J.'s line (above) again: decisions are made by those who show up. If you don't participate in the process, if you don't vote, then when things don't go the way you like, you'll find that your license to bitch about it has expired.

If you're in the 10th, I may see you at the polls. I'll be spending some time at most of them.

Terry Hickey's Scoring Points

Danny Concannon: You keep glancing over here like you're afraid I'm going to steal something.
Mrs. Landingham: No. I'm just not used to having members of the print media in here.
Danny Concannon: I'll try not to get ink on the furniture.
Mrs. Landingham: Aw, Danny. And I was just about to offer you a cookie.
Danny Concannon: And now?
Mrs. Landingham: No.

—The West Wing, "The White House Pro-Am" (3/22/2000)

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These YouTube clips aren't from Wednesday night; they're from about a week earlier. Unfortunately (for me), nobody was taping the candidate forum that I moderated. But they were recording the one that took place at the Pratt Library in Brooklyn. Many of the arguments, however, aren't much different and I think they give a pretty good overview of his attitudes and why Terry Hickey would make for a good City Council member.

One of these videos has inserts from Reisinger that weren't recorded in Brooklyn. I'm not sure where those parts came from; clearly it's another forum of some kind.

And, I should have mentioned on Thursday, Ed Reisinger wasn't at the forum in Morrell Park. Let me say that again: Ed Reisinger skipped the candidate forum in his own neighborhood. He's either misread the level of support he has in that area, or he's that fatuous. Or both.

(I'll wait a moment while his supporters who are reading this go look that word up.)

This first clip is Hickey's opening remarks. I should mention that the camera angle seems to change from time to time because there were two cameras there. Why they're so shaky I don't know; as far as I remember they were both on tripods.

(If you can't see the above clip, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivougeBnxuo )

This one is a compilation of comments from Hickey, Donnie Fair and Reisinger. The guy at the beginning of the video was kind of funny in that his question went on longer than most of the candidates' answers. Fortunately for you we only get a few seconds of him here. Incidentally, if you're curious, I'm in the opening shot with my back to the camera. I appear to be next to the girl in the white T-shirt, but in fact she's a row ahead of me:

(If you can't see the above video, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FJgvXZXNGw )

This one is Hickey's closing comments at the forum. The last few seconds come from his opening remarks.

(If you can't see the above video, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoCUNajGDfE )

And here's some late-breaking news: In addition to the endorsement that came from the City Paper a few days ago, I've heard that the Baltimore Sun has announced its endorsement of Terry Hickey for the 10th District Council seat as well. (UPDATE: Here's the link.)

More to come, folks. Election Day will be pretty exciting in the 10th.

Funny You Should Ask, Geisha

Simon Baines: They can't evict you on Christmas! Then you'd be ho-ho-homeless!

—Go (1999)

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Today was my day in Rent Court.

I'd been there once before, when I was a renter and my roommate and I paid the rent a couple of days (as in, TWO days) late. Regional Management (Boo!) jumps on that sort of thing like a starving dog jumps on raw meat. So we had to go and demonstrate that we'd already paid. So I knew it was a lot of "Be There On Time So You Can Sit Around Waiting," therefore that wasn't much of a surprise. Plus, this time I'm on the side of the angels so there's no anxiety here.

As I mentioned earlier, on the day that I filed for the eviction I got a call from the tenants' daughter, who was living with them. She wanted to meet with me. So GF and I went down to Morrell Park to find out what was going on.

It turned out that her parents had cleaned out their stuff and bailed out of the house, leaving her there. They didn't even tell her that they were doing this; they did it on the sly while she was at work. They did, however, leave a check for the July rent, half of which, she told me, came from her.

So the parents, my tenants, are in a state of Whereabouts Unknown, and the daughter, who isn't on the lease but is in the house, is left in the lurch. She and her boyfriend do want to stay, however, and even enlisted an adult friend (someone—ahem—closer to my age) to vouch for them. I wasn't sure how this was all going to work out because we're all in the woods from a legal standpoint. But I figure I'll take the July check, keep the security deposit and call it August, and get the judge to vacate the original lease so I can start over with them. I contact my attorney friend and he says that judges tend to like any solution that doesn't involve calling in the Sheriff, but we'd still have to get the court's OK to do this.

In the interim, the check bounces because they'd put a stop payment on it. Even the daughter is pissed because she's out her half of that money. In fact, she's out twice because she'd paid them for July and August.

Flash-forward to today.

I'm in the rent court and, watching the other cases going up, realize that the judge doesn't really want to hear the whole thing. So when I get called up, I tell the judge that the tenants appear to have abandoned the property. He asks me, "Have you reclaimed the property?" I tell him no, that I was waiting for the court to give me permission. He says, "Go ahead, then." And we're done.

So I don't know. Maybe I'm stupid to allow the daughter to stay, but at the same time I've been the broke kid who needs a little compassion from a relative stranger. But she also knows that she's on thin ice because of what happened earlier, so I think she's going to be more careful about doing stuff in a timely fashion. Worse comes to worst, I'm back in court again and the house-renting experiment is over.

VFW Post 3217-Mortem

Ralph Malph: I still got it.

—Happy Days, (numerous episodes, 1974-1984)

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The turnout for tonight's Candidate Forum was pretty good. I don't know if it was specifically better than last night's, which I heard was rather poor, but there were a bunch of people who I don't usually see at a Morrell Park Community Meeting, and they weren't wearing campaign T-shirts.

The candidate turnout was rather poor overall. We had all three of the challengers for the 10th District seat come, but not the incumbent. And Michael Sarbanes was the only one from the City Council President race to show up, which worked out well for him in the end.

There was a one-hour meet-and-greet before the forum, during which I was kind of sweating the attendance. During that hour, however, a bunch of bodies came into the VFW hall. At 7:40 by the VFW's clock (which runs 10 minutes fast so the bar closes on time), we got started.

A bunch of people had submitted questions, which I managed to sort into a few general categories, and I asked the candidates the questions. This prevented the forum from turning into a session of playing "Gotcha" and also kept the questions themselves from getting too inflammatory. One in particular I had to edit heavily before it could be asked. So often at these things you get that one guy who has that whole "Hey you kids get off my lawn" attitude and it takes him fifteen minutes to get to the point where the question—if there is one somewhere in all the ranting—is asked.  So we eliminated that. I went through a rotation system of letting different candidates go first, and they all acquitted themselves pretty well. When they were through, I let Sarbanes go for about 20 minutes and then he took a few questions directly from the floor, one of which was a woman who acted like she'd just seen god and was newly converted, and another one was a "Hey you kids" guy.

It's weird, but when I'm doing something like that I'm often a conduit and not really concentrating on the content of what's going on; I'm just worried about whether the sound is good, whether everyone can be heard, whether I'm speaking clearly, whether I can read the next card, that sort of thing. In the end, I wound up not really remembering much of what was said.

I went through that a lot in my Radio Days back in college: I'd prepare a news broadcast, read the thing and not have much idea of what I'd said. Or, I'd run the board for another person's show and afterward have no idea what they'd discussed. So at the end of this evening I wasn't too surprised that I had to listen to other people's assessments of the forum.

In the end, the people with whom I spoke were pretty impressed with Michael Sarbanes, so he may have won a few important converts tonight. But the big winner, based on the chatter I heard, was Terry Hickey.

Nobody had anything bad to say about the other candidates; they agreed that everyone sounded earnest and honest and dedicated etc., but apparently Hickey's got his message down and they liked what they heard. They couldn't put their finger on what didn't come through on Pruette's part, perhaps a lack of experience with the community-type stuff. And Fair, to some, came off as though he didn't really know what he was saying, as though his ideas weren't necessarily based in reality.

When you hear comments like that, you wish you paid better attention. The only answer I really paid attention to was the one where someone asked him about a recent article in the Baltimore Sun in which it's stated that Fair isn't in it to win; he was there to offer an alternative. He said something about having been misquoted and taken out of context; that the alternative was to Hickey and Pruette. I don't know if I'm buying it. Also, after the forum he told me that he hadn't seen the article at all. I don't know if I'm buying that, either. I know his campaign manager saw it because she and I traded a few emails about it.

So anyway, everyone did a pretty good job, and I'm going to take the time to thank the folks at Bakery Express for supplying the doughnuts, to Dunkin' Donuts on Washington Blvd. for the coffee, to the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland for lending us microphones and cables, and to the VFW, Post 3217 for providing the venue.

And I'm also going to thank the several people who said nice things about the job I did moderating. So, thanks! It was a nice touch to my week.

Candidate Forum

Paul Begala: Let me get this straight. If the indictment is - if the indictment is - and I have seen you say this - that...
Jon Stewart: Yes.
Begala: And that Crossfire reduces everything, as I said in the intro, to left, right, black, white.
Stewart: Yes.
Begala: Well, it's because, see, we're a debate show.
Stewart: No, no, no, no, that would be great.
Begala: It's like saying The Weather Channel reduces everything to a storm front.
Stewart: I would love to see a debate show.
Begala: We're 30 minutes in a 24-hour day where we have each side on, as best we can get them, and have them fight it out.
Stewart: No, no, no, no, that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that's like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition.

—Crossfire (10/15/04)

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For those who are interested:

The Morrell Park Community Association has partnered up with the VFW to present a Candidates' Forum this evening at the VFW Hall on Washington Blvd in Morrell Park. (Click the map to embiggen it.) 

Candidates for the offices of Mayor, City Council President and 10th Councilmanic District have been invited, and most of them are expected to attend.

There will be a "Meet-and-greet" beginning at 6:30, and the forum itself will start an hour later. The Forum will be moderated by Yours Truly. And it's about time I got something out of my undergraduate degree. Free refreshments will be served, and the VFW's cash bar will be operating, although per VFW rules you won't be permitted to bring your drinks into the forum area.

Hope to see you there!

Kentucky Fried Money Orders

Chandler: I'm gonna be moving out, so you are gonna be in charge of paying the rent.
Joey: Right! And when is that deal?
Chandler: First of the month.
Joey: And that's every month?
Chandler: No, just the months you actually want to live here.

--Friends, "The One on the Last Night" (11/4/99)

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I've been having some trouble with the people renting my Morrell Park house. (Because it's important that I make the distinction that it's the Morrell Park house I'm renting out, I'm so goddamn rich. Heh.) Anyway, they've been late on the rent for awhile. June's rent was a month late, and as of last week July and August hadn't been paid. So on the advice of an attorney (who usually specializes in the tenant's end of things), I composed a letter outlining the history of my attempts to collect rent and giving them ten business days to get things straightened out. Last Friday was Day 10, and I heard nothing. So on Monday I went to Rent Court to get a date for an eviction.

Rent Court is in the courthouse on Fayette Street, so I parked in the garage on Gay Street and walked over. As I went in, I had to empty my pockets so my stuff could be run through the X-Ray machine. The guard looked in the tub and asked if I had any change, since it could set off the metal detector. I had none and walked through.

Neither I, nor the guard, nor the metal detector ever noticed my glasses perched atop my head.

Got my stuff together and went down the stairs to the clerk's window. I was second in line and we waited several minutes before someone finally got to us. I explained what was going on and I was handed a form, fill in all these spaces please and press down hard with your pen.

Pen? Damn. I took the form outside and walked a couple of blocks to a convenience store and bought a pen and a bottle of soda. Back to the courthouse and emptying my pockets again, this time including change. Glasses still made it through the detector.

I sat down and filled out the form, then brought it up to the clerk. She reviewed it, had me fill out a blank space I'd skipped, then told me to take it to the cashier's window.

The fee for an eviction comes in two parts. Part of the fee goes to the court, and another part goes directly to the city. The cashier asked me first for the city portion, which is five dollars, check or money order only.

"I can't pay cash?"

"Not for this fee, no."

I can't believe I'm going to leave the building again. "Where can I get a money order around here?"

"There's a place around the corner," she told me. Go out the front of the building, then around to the left, and turn right. There's a fried chicken place. You can get them in there."

"Fried chicken, right." This, she found kind of funny.

Out of the building again and off to my first stroll along that section of East Baltimore Street that they call The Block. Sure enough, there's a fried chicken place. I go inside and it turns out that there are at least four businesses in there. The chicken place, another place that sells cellphones and other gizmos, then there's a booth that sells only lottery tickets, and all the way in the back is a liquor store. This is where I get the money orders.

Back to the courthouse for the third time. By now I've figured out the bit with the glasses and don't even worry about them when I go through the detector. This is pretty much how Don Lucchesi bought it, as I recall, the deadly glasses routine. But, whatever. Back to the cashier's window, where of course there's a line now. I finally pay my fees and have a court date.

But here's the weird part. About an hour after I got home I got a phone call from the renters' daughter. It turns out that her parents abandoned the place, leaving her pretty much in the lurch. She wants to stay in the house, however. Stay tuned, this could get interesting.   

Making Digital Tracks

Goober Pyle: You know that's not as stupid as it looks, readin' a day-old paper. I do it myself sometimes - kinda gives you a sense of power, don't it? I mean knowing how everything's gonna come out.

—The Andy Griffith Show, "Goober Goes to an Auto Show" (2/5/68)

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As the race heats up in Baltimore's 10th District, I've noticed my hit count going up as well. Through a few tools I'm able to tell how people got here. I've noticed that several people are entering the candidates' names followed by "Baltimore" or "10th District" or some variant thereof, into various search engines.  Why anyone wants to know what I think of a particular candidate is beyond me, but all right.

The cool thing about the Internet is that if you put something out there, chances are someone's going to find it. Some things come up quickly and easily in a Google (or whatever) search, but other things do not. This is often referred to as the Hidden Web, or the Invisible Web. Stuff on these sites is usually archived material, or material that you need to log in to access, or non-HTML pages, or something else. It takes some deep searching to find this stuff, but it's there. And this, to me, is the more interesting material.

At any rate, I was looking at a list of search terms that led to this page and began to realize, Hey. I don't have to be the one GENERATING the material all the time. I can just be a conduit for other people's stuff. So what I did was backtrack through other people's searches on the 10th District candidates to see what else they might have found.

Let's start with the incumbent, Ed Reisinger. The first thing you get when you look him up in Google is the link to his page on the City Council website. Nice photo, that. I'd say that it looks like his high school graduation picture, but according to a questionnaire he submitted to the Baltimore Sun, probably not so much. There's also an Ed Reisinger website that's out of date, short on information (a lot of "coming soon") and rather poorly designed (e.g. photos forced into shapes they weren't meant to have).

One of the most disturbing things I found, however, was an article in the City Paper from October of 2004, shortly after the last primary but before the general election. It doesn't bug me that Reisinger reportedly had a blood alcohol level of .068—he was in a bar, after all—it was his repeated denial of having more than one beer. Ed's about my size, maybe a little bigger. One beer just ain't gonna get that job done. But the article goes on to quote him as saying he "doesn't have a lot of faith in Baltimore City juries". And in my eyes, that's a metric boatload of "Wow." There's also a couple of pieces here and there about his attempts to get the property tax rate lowered, and a recent piece in the Sun about a bridge on Fort Avenue that quotes Reisinger. My impression from this piece is that the Sun isn't too thrilled with him, given the way the quote was placed near the end of the piece and reported thus:

"Am I worried about it? Yeah, yeah," says City Councilman Edward L. Reisinger. "You got school buses going over there to get to Fort McHenry and to school, you got employees of Tide Point coming and going. I mean, that bridge is used, a lot."

It wouldn't have killed anyone to cut the extra "yeah" and either paraphrase or quote him with a couple more verbs. But I admit I'm a bit of a grammar snob, so maybe that's just me. Incidentally, the online edition doesn't have the extra emphasis on the word "lot", however it was there in the print edition, which is why I put it back in there.

I'll take the challengers alphabetically.

Donnie Fair also has kind of an odd photo on his website. Donnie wears glasses and looks good in them; I don't know why he took 'em off. I'm also not sure I get the picture of the Key Bridge on the webpage. Did the bridge move into the 10th? Why not use the Hanover Street Bridge? I think Hanover Street has a great-looking bridge. The rest of the website looks pretty nice and clean, although again it's light on information (again, a lot of "I'll have more to say about that soon" stuff). Donnie appears to be playing the "outsider" card, which works exactly once when it works at all.

Apparently, Donnie did NOT reply to the Baltimore Sun's questionnaire, so I can't link to it. There are, however, some links to an article in the Examiner that appeared a couple of weeks ago. The article was about the 10th District being one of the "races to watch", but the article itself doesn't mention him. Instead, the comments following the article (they're listed in reverse chronological order) are all anonymous (with two exceptions) and written by supporters of both Donnie Fair and Terry Hickey. Reisinger's supporters are nowhere to be found in this one. The article itself kind of rides the fence but doesn't commit to anybody. A fun little mudslinging contest, that.

Donnie did make it into this Examiner article, along with the other challengers.

Donnie Fair made it into the City Paper a couple of years back, as well. I'd be curious to know if the plan ever made it to fruition, with or without him.

Here are a couple of interesting things that Donnie posted to the Web

He contributes to a forum called bonnevilleamerica.com, which is for enthusiasts of a specific kind of motorcycle . Among the comments he posts (you have to search deep to find these) are:

  I sometimes find myself riding in Washington, DC, the land of flaming retarded drivers.

And, in another post, responding to a question about "loud pipes" on his bike:

Q: What clued you in to them being too loud, the car alarms going off?

A: I'm 1/2 of a baffle away from straigh [sic] pipes (no reducer either). Living in the 'hood such as I do and taking the occasional ride through the ghetto, my personal best is 3 alarms in one afternoon. Sweet!

Nice, that. He mentions the "ghetto" in another post, too.

This is an interesting comment he made a couple of years back. Scroll to the last item. As near as I can figure, Donnie's letter was lifted from the Baltimore Sun and reproduced at this website, but I can't be sure.

One more thing about Donnie Fair before I move on: I have it from an Informed Source (thanks, Edna Source) that the current crop of candidates are doing a bunch of their campaigning based on lists of people who voted in the last primary. Donnie Fair's name appears to be absent from that list. Oops.

Next up is Terry Hickey. Hickey's got the best website of the three, but one thing that it does (actually I think Donnie Fair's site does this too) is, when you click on the "Contact Us" link, it automatically launches your default email handler. Now, I have a few email addresses, as many people do (and should). I have my "A" list address, but I also have a couple of "spam collector" addresses in Hotmail and Yahoo. This is the address I'm going to use in most cases when it's not a relative or close friend. With these sites, I don't get a choice. This also means that, when I'm on my work laptop, say, I'd be giving out my work email. That's not going to piss off the guys in IT very much. So my alternative is to say "Screw it, I'm not writing to you at all."

(Of course, I can parse out the email address from the automatically-opened window, but that's not the point. The point is that the website is being presumptuous.)

Anyway.

Hickey's responses to the Sun questionnaire are quite detailed, far more so than Reisinger's (which is presented as a series of bullet points). They may, in fact, be too detailed. I don't know how many people have that kind of attention span, but you can't say he doesn't have his act together.

There are a lot of links on Google to various organizations that Hickey either started or is involved in, and of course there are the Examiner articles I noted above. There's also a City Paper review of a play called The Mineola Twins which gives a Terry Hickey a pretty good review, but I have no idea whether it's the same Terry Hickey. Another review has photos in it, and the bottom photo does kind of look like him, so who knows. As a Long Islander, I have to appreciate any play that's about a town on Long Island. (Plus, Hickey's a Native New Yorker, but he's from upstate so it doesn't count.)

I chased down a whole bunch of posts on a home theater forum that I thought was him, but I was mistaken. That was irritating, but I can't hold it against him. But the bottom line is that I couldn't find anything from Hickey that gave me pause, despite there being a LOT of stuff out there.

The last Democrat on the ballot is Hunter Pruette. He doesn't appear to have a website, or really much of an online presence at all. There's a blog that endorses him, and he's mentioned in the Examiner article. Oh, and he did submit a response to the Sun's questionnaire. But that's about it. Other than that, Pruette's the Invisible Man.

Finally, we have the Republican candidate. His name is Duane Shelton, and according to the City Paper, he's the chair of the city's Republican Committee. This is the same Duane Shelton who ran for Mayor a few years back, and garnered about 400 votes. And that's about it, (no questionnaire for the Sun) so he's pretty invisible too.

So there you have it, the online footprints of the candidates revealed. If you have something else you found, feel free to share it with me. This was a fun exercise AND led to probably my longest post ever.

Stuffing the Mail (ballot) Box

A. J. MacInerney: The President doesn't answer to you Louis!
Lewis Rothschild: Oh, yes he does A.J. I'm a citizen, this is my President. And in this country it is not only permissible to question our leaders it's our responsibility!

--The American President (1995)

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I heard rather a disturbing story this week. It's second-hand, so I don't know if it's true, but the person who told me is pretty reliable.

Everyone agrees that the outcome of the election in the 10th District is going to depend on voter turnout. As a result, at least two of the candidates have people among their volunteers who are authorized to register people to vote. The candidate talks to someone, discovers that they're not registered, and calls the guy over to register them. More voters is always a good thing, so this isn't the disturbing part.

What IS disturbing is that, according to my reliable source (Ms. Edna Source, of 1609 Harman Avenue), one of the candidates has been registering people AND giving them an absentee ballot besides, so that they'll simply mail in their vote right away. Now, this doesn't sound correct, given that the City can't send out an absentee ballot without a written, signed request from the voter. So this candidate may simply be handing out the request forms for the absentee ballots. If he's handing out actual ballots, he could be in for some legal trouble.

As I said, however, this comes from Ms. Source, who was told by one of the potential voters involved. Do with it what you will. But I genuinely hoped that the race would be a little cleaner than it's been so far, anyway. 

Political Animals

Deputy Pell: You got no right to be here. This is a political meeting.
Ward: Doesn't smell that way to me, Deputy.
Deputy Pell: It's a damn political meeting, Hoover Boy.
Ward: Oh, it looks like a political meeting, but smells more like Klan to me... with or without the Halloween costumes.

—Mississippi Burning (1988)

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Saturday night there was an event in Morrell Park that was billed as an "Olde Tyme Political Rally". The website of the Morrell Park/St. Paul's Improvement Association publicized it thus (and I reproduce it here, unedited):

"Come out to a Free old Tyme Politicial Rally and meet those that are running in the September Election. Find out their views, Who will support our projects Like The Rec Center, Indoor Pool, Pavillion,Bringing our School back to top status. This will be an important night for alll of Morrell Park. Know who supports us before you VOTE !!!!!"

Given the spelling and grammar above, I'm not so sure that "Olde Tyme" (which doesn't appear above but does, in other places) was spelled that way on purpose. Anyway. Since I still own property in the 10th, I'm naturally interested in what's going on down there, so I sent an email requesting two passes (it was a free but ticketed event), one for me and one for GF.

I didn't get a reply to my email, but admittedly I sent it kind of late. So, since I was in the neighborhood anyway, I figured I'd swing by. Either they'd let me in or they wouldn't. I wasn't going to take it personally either way. The guy at the door (Hi, S) took pity on me and gave me a ticket, noting that it's good to have friends in high places. Later on, the guy organizing the event apologized for not responding to my email.

As I got there, there was a group of people representing Terry Hickey, in addition to the candidate himself. They were stuck in the doorway; I was told later that Hickey was given a set of rules that he had to agree to before being granted entry (no flyers beyond a certain point, etc.). This was supposedly done for all of the political candidates who weren't endorsed by the association. Well...it's their party, they can make the rules, I guess.

After I got in, they were about ready to start, so I took a seat at a back table, alone. Hickey's table was next to me. In front of me was a table full of Ed Reisinger's supporters. Beyond that was a table with Reisinger's father and what looked like several of his fellow American Legionnaires. Reisinger himself perched at a point roughly between the two tables. Behind me, at the kitchen pass-through, some people stood, including a woman who was quite drunk. As people got up to speak, she'd mutter something at them that, if I could have deciphered it, would likely have been rather rude. I know at least one time the door guard walked over to her and had a word with her companion.

The purpose of the event was for the association to announce their endorsements for several Baltimore City election candidates, all of whom got up to address the crowd. Again, since the point was to give these folks a little bit of a forum and get their supporters pumped, it was no-harm, no-foul that Hickey, Sarbanes and (later) Jill Carter weren't given an opportunity to speak to the room. (I don't know if any other unendorsed candidates were there; I know I didn't see Donnie Fair.) This didn't stop them from doing some circulating when the formalities broke up and the food was served, and nobody gave them a hard time about it.

While the food was served (or, more accurately, when the buffet opened), the drunk woman got some food and plunked down next to me. Apparently she was peeved that this event was keeping her from doing something or other. "This is MY legion hall, not theirs," she said a couple of times. Then she complained about the small child who was at Reisinger's table. "Leave 'em at home, this is no place for little kids." If only she'd done the stereotypical thing and gone face-down in her food, my evening would have been complete. Of course, I wasn't really helping matters by replying, "Damn right" and such every time she spouted.

The door guard urged me to eat but I, not knowing they were serving food, had just eaten. I settled for some bottled water instead. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get one with the Sheila Dixon logo on it. Just plain ol' Deer Park water. Ah, well.

So in general, it was a pretty positive event (if a little on the self-congratulatory side) and everyone played nice. I'm frankly not especially clear on what was achieved, since there was a lot of "preaching to the choir" in this instance, but I guess sometimes folks need that bit of a boost.

For the Person Who Came Here Asking

Michael Vaughn: You asked me some questions. I told you I'd answer them if you helped me. You did help me. And I thank you for that.

--Alias, "The Counteragent" (11/17/02)

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The founder of Polock Johnny's was named John F. Kafka. (I think the "F" was for Francis but I'm not positive.)

Incidentally, the food is cheaper if you get it at Lexington Market. I'm just sayin'.

Feel free to repay me with a box of PJ's sausages.