Nacho Libre - Reviewed by the Five Paragraph Bitter Film Critic

It's hard to be bitter about a movie if, after watching it, you're not bitter. Perplexed. Bewildered...I don't know. Definitely not bitter, but not joyous. For the purposes of this review, I am the Five Paragraph Confused Film Critic.

Nacho Libre is a movie that simply refuses to be classified. It's fussy, like a toddler fussing about eating brussel sprouts. It's not a Napoleon Dynamite clone, though you can definitely tell that both films come from the demented mind of Jared Hess. It's not a Rocky clone, though it has elements from Sly Stallone's classic film. It might have a smidge of Rushmore and even a dab of the old spaghetti westerns.

The film follows Nacho (Jack Black), a friar who works as a cook at a Mexican orphanage, and his adventures in local wrestling. He teams up with Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez), a 110-pound, dripping wet street youth with a disdain for orphans and religion, to form a highly-unlikely wrestling tag team. Nacho uses the money to buy better food for the orphans, and sharper clothes, all the better to woo the endearing Sister Encarnacion (Ana de La Reguera). Shame those pesky vows of celibacy get in the way of a budding romance.

Much like Jim Carrey in the 1990s, Jack Black is the 2000s wild comedy guy. He will do anything for a laugh, from wearing children's sized sweatpants to flinging himself around in ridiculous poses. He sings, he talks like Ricardo Montalban, he gets his ass beat by midgets. He shows off his wildly untoned body off at any time. He ain't Brad Pitt in Fight Club, but more like Meatloaf in Fight Club. He is the star of the movie, with Jimenez playing a great supporting role, but the rest of the cast basically looks stupified and tries to stay out of Black's way. He is Nacho, and it's hard to imagine any actor other than Will Ferrell or an Ace Ventura-era Jim Carrey pull this roll off. (And don't mention Chris Farley, because, while he would have been fine, he's, well...um...dead).

Nacho Libre is exactly like Napoleon Dynamite in one way - you either laughed hysterically at it, or you scratched your head and wondered if you're suddenly too old for teen movies. Similarly, you're either a Jack Black fan, or you're not. Unwittingly, you will find yourself saying one of the lines from the film, or talking like Nacho. The film shows a Mexico that is dusty, dirty, pretty, poor, and where most people are funny-looking. The movie *IS* entertaining, but I can't tell if it's good. It is wildly unique, and for that, Hess and Black deserve credit, but, this might be one of those films that require a substance addiction to really enjoy.

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6 out of 12 Whammies! I was entertained (1 Whammy!), I laughed many times (2), I got a kick out of the Mexican orphans (3), the soundtrack was fun (4), I like Jack Black (5) and the nun was hot (6). I didn't give Whammies! for Jack Black being a little TOO Jack Black (1), the "too weirdness" of it all (2), the dust and dirt everywhere on the screen made me want to take a bath (3), rather mean depiction of Mexicans (4), rather mean description of Catholics (5), rather strained story (6) and the guilt I felt for looking at a hot nun (7). The Five Paragraph Bitter Film Critic went to Catholic school for too long to avoid that guilt. Nuns ain't supposed to be hot.
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A Blue Line Wegman's?

Courtesy of the fine Washington Post, this article about upscale developmentin Prince George's County, Maryland, contains good news for all foodies in the District, Annapolis and Alexandria.

In May, the county signed a deal with the high-end Wegmans Food Markets to anchor the Woodmore Towne Centre in Landover, a billion-dollar project that will include homes and more than 750,000 square feet of shopping space and is expected to open in summer 2008.

This would be the closest Wegman's to DC and a short distance from the Largo Town Center Metro stop. Currently, there are two Wegman's in Northern Virginia, one in Fairfax and the other near Dulles. A lease has been signed for a Wegman's in Gambrills, in Anne Arundel County, but with no firm opening date. The newest Wegman's in the region is in Baltimore County's Hunt Valley. When it opened in 2005, people were actually camped outside of it to be the first inside, like a campout for U2 tickets!

Why such excitement? Would only bored suburbanites go bonkers over a bloody grocery store? Hardly. Wegman's is a New York-based chain of megamarkets that caters to people who truly love their food. They have all the trappings of a regular market - bonus club cards, bulk food section, shopping carts - but they do it in a store about the size of a Smithsonian, with a friendly, knowledgeable staff. With all that space, they have the room to include pretty much anything you need for a gourmet meal made from scratch, or made by real chefs that can easily be passed off as your own. A fantastic butcher shop, fresh seafood, a great wine selection (Virginia stores only, at this point), a jaw-dropping prepared food section, deli, a cafe', coffee shop, pizza parlor, pasta bar, olive bar, sushi bar, kitchen equipment, stemware, bakery, cheese shop, organic market, regional and international food sections, cooking classes, and a produce area that could inspire poetry...PLUS they have a little choo-choo train that runs around the dairy section. This ain't your grandma's supermarket, unless your granny was Julia Child.

My alter-ego, the Five Paragraph Bitter Food Critic, will be doing reviews of the major chain markets in the area, plus some of the neighborhood markets and specialty stores. Without giving away too much from the reviews, the FPBFC is a big fan of Wegman's, and will be a bigger fan of one that's Metro-accessible.

Capital Q - Reviewed By the Five Paragraph Bitter Food Critic

Apparently the Five Paragraph Bitter Food Critic is prone to the powers of suggestion. Just as a mere reference to Mary Prankster makes me crave a Baltimore crabcake, the picture of the gooey, sauce-soaked ribs from the Chicago RibFest pointed me towards some local barbecue. Capital Q in the not-terribly-Chinese-anymore Chinatown has received all sorts of glowing press for the quality of its meats, most notably on Al Roker's Food Network show. Since Al knows BBQ like Bo knows football, I was eager to sample owner Nick Fontana's Austin, Texas-inspired chow. I have eaten at the `Q once before, but it was right before closing time before a holiday - I'm not going to dare judge any place in that kind of circumstance. I may be bitter, but I am fair.

And while I am no Chev Yaneev with advanced culinary training and the cool poofy hat, I am a barbecue junkie and a good man to have in a smoke pit. I've worked for a few barbecue places and steakhouses, and, like Al Roker, I too have traveled the country eating at barbecue places. I worked as a radio deejay and comedian for a while, and nothing beats roadside barbecue stands on the way to the next gig. Unlike Roker, though, I exercised, and didn't wuss out and get the gastric bypass surgery.

So, a sunny Monday afternoon with barbecue and margaritas seemed like a great way to start a week, and the 3 meat platter at Capital Q was practically throwing itself at me like a drunk girl at Rumours. 3 meats, 2 sides...fair enough. I selected the ribs, the turkey and brisket, along with corn and mashed potatoes. Seventeen bucks is a little high, but, it's cheaper than airfare to Texas.

I shoulda checked Southwest.com for a round-trip to San Antonio instead. The brisket was tasty, but incredibly overcooked. Brisket should not be gray, but more medium-rare with a noticeable smoke ring. The Q's brisket lacked that distinctive mark of true Texas barbecue. However overcooked, it was good, and the Q's sauce really made this meat shine. There were two turkey breasts available for the meat cutter to chop my selection from, and instead of the juicy, fresh bird, he chose the dried-out end piece that looked like it sat around under a heat lamp since last week's lunch rush. This turkey had nothing in common with the exemplary smoked bird served at Rudy's BBQ throughout Texas and Oklahoma.

The kicker, though, was the rib. And I don't mean like the kicker at a casino or on a football team, but the kick-in-the-a$$. The meat cutter took a third of a rack of ribs in his tongs, and sliced off *one rib.* ONE mutha-farkin' rib. It's like Chris Rock and Isaac Hayes in "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka" but in reverse! The cutter then sliced off the rib's side trim (the fatty part of the rack removed from most restaurants) from the back of the rib rack and plopped that on my plate. There is more meat on Nicole Ritchie than on a rib trim, and I had to work to get more than two bites out of the charred, substandard cut. Apparently the Texas Hospitality displayed through the generous portions found at places like Coopers, Stubb's and The Salt Lick didn't make it to this side of the Mississippi.
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6 out of 17 Whammies! A Whammy! was awarded for each Cuervo margarita I drank, the killer potatoes, the really good sauce and the flavorful brisket. The Q lost Whammies! because of the high price, lousy cuts of meat and the fact that I damned near had to quote Chris Rock - "How much for an order of ribs? About how many ribs do you get with that?" I won't be going back to the Q again - though I wish I had asked if they had change for a hundred...
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The Conversion is Complete

So, I finally decided to stop paying lip service to XM and actually pony up the dough and become a subscriber. I have been touting the company's product for a couple of years now, basically praising vicariously through snippets gleaned from listening to other people's XM radios. When my mom bought her new car last year, and it came with a free three month subscription to XM, I was hooked. There's simply no comparison to the the musical choice on a satellite service compared to regular terrestrial radio, and, between XM and Sirius, XM has better music choices. Plus, they're a local company that hired a few of my old radio pals. They seemed like the logical choice.

After a week of listening to all sorts of indie rock on XMU, post club electronica on Chill, great modern rock on the Verge, Fred and Ethel (I love the names of the stations!), unedited comedy on the laugh channels, sports talk and the complete and utter lack of annoying commercials, XM decided to *REALLY* impress me last night. Driving back to Northern Virginia from Southern Maryland, I took a break from XMU to catch a traffic report on WTOP, 103.5 FM in DC. "A traffic report on a Sunday night at 10pm?" Welcome to the harsh driving reality of DC - with the new Wilson Bridge opening for business and a multi-billion dollar reconstruction of the Beltway and 395 about 5 miles from my rental, middle of the night weekend traffic jams are to be expected. WTOP does "Traffic and Weather Together on the Eights" - every ten minutes, 24 hours a day, you can get an updated traffic report.

If the traffic was light, I wanted to check out the new bridge. I pay taxes; that sucker is 1/7,534,835th mine, I figure. I want my share.

The young lady mentioned a small accident in Northern Virginia, a couple of road closures in the District, and one accident in Montgomery County. No mention of anything on the Beltway. I stuck through WTOP to catch 10 minutes of news as well, get caught up on the world. I caught a second traffic report. Everything seemed smooth.

As I pulled from MD Route 4 to 495, I looked at four lanes of parking lot. Nobody on the Beltway was moving towards Virginia. Fortunately, the 4/495 interchange is a cloverleaf, and upon seeing the several mile backup, I could simply drive around the cloverleaf to get back to MD 4 and head into DC on Pennsylvania Avenue. 103.5's third traffic report once again did not mention what looked to be a Really Big Delay on the biggest road in the region.

I decided to see what XM was playing again, and saw the full time Weather/Traffic station for Washington. I gave it a chance - the announcer mentioned that there was a delay on the Beltway from Pennsylvania Avenue (where I was) all the way around to the Wilson Bridge - basically, a ten+ mile backup. Average speed, about 5mph.

I would have gotten home sometime around the next Presidential Administration.

One of terrestrial radio's selling points is "locality." They sell it to advertisers, convince potential listeners on the idea that they present the local viewpoint, get local shoppers to hear your message, to expose your locality to the world.

Yet, the ultimate local news station was trumped by the cold, souless satelitte broadcaster...noting ironically that the XM studios are 10 miles closer to the traffic backup than WTOPs.

TECHIE NOTE - I bought the Tao XM2Go portable on sale at Target. It stores 5 hours of XM programming, and can be used to receive live programming in the car, home, or while walking around. It's a bit bigger than an iPod, but also comes with a slightly cumbersome external antenna. It has a built-in FM transmitter to make for a wireless connection to your car or home stereo.

For the price point, I'm not mad about the device, but I'm thinking I should have gone with the new Pioneer Inno which stores a gig of mp3s AND is a live XM receiver AND is a lot smaller. It's a couple hundred dollars more than the Tao, but probably would have been the smarter buy.

Still...I can't complain when I've head better music with one week of XM than I have on commercial radio all year.

Over the Hedge - Reviewed by the Five Paragraph Bitter Film Critic

The Five Paragraph Bitter Film Critic will start with a confession - I have a soft spot for adult movies disguised as kid's movies. Now, I'm not saying I love adult jokes thrown into an otherwise pure family fare, like the playful flirting between the winking parents on "Dennis the Menace" or one of Charles Grodin's scowls in "Beethoven." That's esay, cheap humor and a couple of token laughs for the adults forced to watch most children's dreck isn't enough to keep me enthralled. I'm talking about movies that you can freely admit you like as a solidly-in-your-30s adult. You know, like "Shrek."

This is where "Over the Hedge" fills a solid void - this is a fine movie with plenty of thought-provoking adult themes and cute cuddly widdle animals and sight gags to keep the kids distracted. This is also a movie that pretty much openly attacks the ridiculousness of most its viewing audience - suburbanites.

The plot is easy enough for the kids to understand, and with plenty of layers of subtext to keep the adults glued. RJ the crafty raccoon (voiced by Bruce Willis) has destroyed the food and goodies stash of a mean old bear Vincent (voiced by Nick Nolte), and needs to replace the stash, or get crushed. RJ heads towards a new suburban development that will be instantly familar to anybody living within a 50 mile radius of any major city. The `burb, chock full of American excess, has been built next to a small patch of woods where a group of animals, like Verne the Turtle (Garry Shandling) and Hammy the Squirrel (Steve Carrel) have been hibernating all winter. They wake up to find a massive hedge (a type of plant unknown to them before the winter's nap) blocking most of their forest, severely cutting into their ability to forage for the next winter. Enter RJ, armed with a golf bag full of fishing poles, boomerangs, expertise on the human species and opposable thumbs. He shows the interspecies family how to navigate through suburbia's pitfalls, such as garden gnomes, roller bladers, SUVs, and home owners' associations hellbent on preserving their property values.

The movie manages to be cute, entertaining, funny, educational AND thought-provoking, without ever really getting boring or heavy-handed. It's a deft balancing job, but the Dreamworks crew manages to pull it off. The soundtrack is made mostly of Ben Folds songs, and he's a hipper Randy Newman. The voice casting was nearly a grand slam, with great vocal performances by Shandling, Carell, William Shatner, Catherine O' Hara, Allison Janney, Thomas Hayden Church, Wanda Sykes and Eugene Levy. Only a sub-par effort by Willis (who peaked at voice work in "Guess Who's Talking Now) mars the voice work. It's obvious the producers wanted to have another big name voice RJ, as both Jim Carrey and Bill Murray were considered for the role. Shame, too. There are dozens of voice actors who would have done a better job than Willis, and cheaper, too.

But that's not a major concern. What sets "Over the Hedge" apart is the keen, laser-guided attack on American culture, especially of those who seek comfort in living in planned communities with cul-de-sacs and manicured lawns. The movie targets our obsession with junk food, our desire for large vehicles, our craving for entertainment and the overinflated sense of self-importance more than a few of us carry. The depiction of the stereotypical suburban power mom is so spot-on that many of the stereotypical suburban power moms in the audience may miss their own on-screen skewering. You've got to love a movie willing to bite, chomp and gnaw on the hand that feeds it.

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9 out of 11 Whammies! Over the Hedge would earn a perfect Whammy! score if not for Bruce Willis' phoned-in performance and the fact that no actual suburbanites were harmed in the making of this film.
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Jane Says They're Throwing HFS Under the Bridge

From the J. Freedom Du Lac music chat on The Washington Post's site, from Wednesday, 5-31-2006 available here

I'm a fan of JFDL's columns in the Post, but his chats really crack me up. He's pretty much a hoot. He also posed a great question - if you could program radio for a day, what band or artist would you ban from your airwaves?

Of course, current singer-songwriter/critics' target James Blunt, bubble-gum pop princesses who grew up to be barefoot and preggers, and the artist formerly known as vital, Rod Stewart, got plenty of vitrol. However, one surprising band, the sort of White Stripes-esque critical darlings of their era, Jane's Addiction made the list. All courtesy of my old haunt, WHFS...

Radio King for a Day: Jane's Addiction, no question. I don't need to hear anything about "been caught stealing" ever again in my entire life. This is probably a Rob Tim problem, as WHFS used to play that song (in many different remixes) every single day, and WRNR, where RT now works, plays it frequently too.

J. Freedom du Lac: Rob, you've been called out.



Radio King for a Day nailed it. WHFS played this song, conservatively speaking, about 25 times a day when it first came out, and then roughly5 times a day in the year following. It achieved "recurring" status at that point, which earned it about 3 to 7 spins a week in the years that followed.

Even though WHFS is now a 1/2 rock, 1/2 talk station, they still play this song damned near every day. Now that Rob Timm is over at WRNR, that station plays far too much Jane's Addiction, too. However, the correct person to blame is Bob Waugh...he's the old music director/APD at WHFS and I think he has similar duties at WRNR.

HFS: They killed "Jane Says" too. They played the original everyday and it only got worse when that damn steel drum Tahitian version came out.

J. Freedom du Lac: Hey, easy there - some of my best friends are steel drummers.


This song was overplayed when it came out. The steel drum version did not help things.

Here's the thing - it's not a horrible song. Now, Perry Farrell's voice can be hit-or-miss, but he's just whiny enough in this song. The problem is that WHFS played this song AT THE WORST TIME POSSIBLE - dead smack in the middle of the morning show. Morning radio is supposed to be light, peppy, wake-yer-ass-up kind of stuff. Playing a six-minute whiny tropical dirge does NOT wake people up...and it also dragged the air talent's energy level down to near sloth-like levels. WHFS used to do it guaranteed once a week; WRNR is following suit.

God bless new methods of getting music to people, `cause it seems radio ain't got a damned clue.

I don't drink...wine - A Rant by the Five Paragraph Bitter Food Critic

That line was spoken by Bela Lugosi in Dracula and became a catch phrase in most of the Dracula films that followed. It's a complex line for four little words. We, the hip audience, know what Dracula drinks, but the poor unsuspecting victims had to wonder what kind of person doesn't drink wine. My mother is one of those people - not the blood-sucking undead vampire, but the non-wine drinking type. She doesn't really drink anything alcoholic other than a random margarita or a Baileys-and-coffee. She's not a prude, but, well, she's definitely not her son. My blood type has a 2001 vintage. My doctor doesn't have a phlebotomist and needles for me, but a sommelier and a corkscrew.

On Mother's Day, we went to Al Tiramisu for an early dinner. The food was fine and the desserts were excellent, but the servers were stunned - aghast, actually - that we didn't order wine, to the point that they asked us at least six times. The first time they asked, Mom politely declined. They asked again...and again...and again, and you get the point. We were only there for two hours! There was a distinct attitude that we were somehow a lower-tipping table because we declined to look at their wine list.

Now, I'm only singling out Al Tiramisu because this was recent. Every other time there I've imbibed and had a blast. They're certainly not the only place attempting to shove wine down our collective throat. It makes sense for places to sell wine. A bottle of wine pads the check, it's seldom returned, and most folks tip properly on the higher total. Given the mark-up - usually 100 to 400 percent - the restaurant owners and servers love selling wine!

Sure, wine can make a good meal great, and it's an obvious, vital part of Italian cuisine. But when the offer is declined, please, dear restaurants, accept it, and move on. It's like a break-up - sure, you can mope a bit about the lost opportunity, but let it go. Put an ad on Match. Be mature about it. Nobody likes a stalker.

The city will nail drivers on DUI even if they're not legally drunk. Tourists visit here from temperate Salt Lake as much as wine-soaked Sonoma. Some people simply don't like to drink, or don't want to offend a dining partner who doesn't drink. People have their reasons; please respect them. A desperate sales approach in a restaurant isn't dining, but is akin to walking past those obnoxious mall kiosks, begging shoppers to try their hand creams, cell phones and jiggly colored pens.

X-Men 3 - Reviewed by the Five Paragraph Bitter Film Critic

For me, the surest sign of summer isn't just the kids running around the mall instead of the schools, or the gentle spring being pushed aside by the bullies of Rising Temperatures and oppressive Humidity. Nay, it's when movies come out with more special effects credits than actors.

Or, more to the point, more script writers than actors, extra, SFX and craft services combined. As we all learned in elementary school, too many chefs spoil the soup, and, as I learned in the restaurant business, the head chef can spoil all the sous chefs. And director Brett Ratner ain't showin' up on Iron Chef America anytime soon.

That's one of the numerous problems with X-Men 3 - The Last Stand. The direction is obviously a step-down from the masterful tales of Bryan Singer in the first two X-Men installments. The music is *way* too loud and *way* too dramatic *way* too early - by the time of the epic battle scene at the end, the audience is spent because we were bludgeoned early with pathos and bombast. The pacing is suspect, and a true dramatic scene involving the beloved Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), was truncated to be as moving as a coffee commercial.

For the most part, the actors rise above their lot. Ian McKellan as Magneto is brilliant, the casting of Kelsey Grammer as Beast is genius, and Hugh Jackman once again carries the movie as Wolverine, but all of the cast is hamstrung by dialogue straight from a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. When even the most diehard X-Fans laugh at Wolvie's "we stand together....we're X-Men!" line, you know this film won't sit well with the comic geek boys and the girls who tolerate them. I heard better dialogue (well, not by much) in Robot Jox.

Still, it is an entertaining movie. The special effects are fantastic, and there is a lot more hot mutant-on-mutant action - Iceman versus Pyro, Shadowcat versus Juggernaut and a whole bunch of pierced and tatted dudes and dudettes who looked like they were in that rave scene in the third Matrix movie versus a bunch of good guys dressed in black leather. However, with the exception of a jaw-dropping final scene after the credits have rolled (stick to the end, fanboys), the overall direction is flawed enough to make you forget that occasionally, summer movies can be good, like the first X-Men movies.

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16 out of 24 Whammies! This movie would have earned 10 Whammies! for the chance to see Halle Berry (that saved Swordfish, if you ask me) in black leather and Famke Janssen in a cami. However, a Whammy! was added for casting Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut, Dr. McSteamy Eric Dane as Multiple Man, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, and another Whammy! for the line destined to replace "I wish I knew how to quit you" in "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" 2 Whammies! were added for the killer ending scene. However, the movie missed Whammies! for each time I heard a young kid laugh at supposedly serious dialogue and the incredibly sloppy credits - watch them roll, and say aloud "Hey, that person wasn't in the movie!" Might they appear in the DVD?
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Angelina's - Reviewed By The Five Paragraph Bitter Food Critic.

All this Mary Prankster talk inspired me to grab some friends and run up to the Land Of Pleasant Living and eat a genuine Maryland-style crabcake. Much like the beloved-yet-retired Mlle. Prankster, we ignored the
Blue Skies Over Dundalk last night and headed straight to the Hamilton neighborhood to Angelina's. Angelina's has been on the short list of top crabcake joints in the region for years. The place has won Best Crabcake Awards from many of the Baltimore-area critics, and in Charm City, that's more important than a lobbyist's Blackberry.

Long-time owner Robert Bufano sold the restaurant in 2005, and the new owners swore that they would maintain Angelina's high standards. They definitely maintained Angelina's high prices. Crabcakes are seldom cheap, usually about $14 for a sandwich and $25 or so for a two-8oz cake platter. That's the going rate for the crabcakes found at G&M, Gunning's, Olive Grove and Timbuktu near BWI Airport, the current gold standards for Baltimore crabcakes. Angelina's charges "market price" of $22 for the sandwich, $30 for a two 5 oz. cake platter, and $40 for two 8 oz. cake platters.

That's a damned expensive market. Like, that market makes Wegman's, Balducci's and the Gucci Giant in Potomac look like a bargain. But in the search of le crabcake parfait, no price is too high.

I was more wrong than Jessica Simpson at a spelling bee. The $29 Steak and Cake Combo seemed the best deal - an 8oz filet, a 5oz crabcake, and a couple of side items. For that kind of money, I was expecting a transcendent marriage of delicate crab, Old Bay and non-intrusive, yet unique filler. What I got was a dried-out piece of fishnet that happened to have some crab and boiled carrots in it. It had all the taste and consistency of a musty dish sponge. The filet, while cooked to the proper requested temperature of medium-rare, was barely above room temperature and had no discernible taste. The side items of wild rice and green beans were lousy, at best, and tasted like they just emerged from a can or boil-in-bag. The only saving grace of the meals was the above-average Maryland Crab Soup, but $4 soup ain't savin' no $29 meal in Balmer, hon.

All of us who schlepped up to Baltimore from the District had the same complaints. The service, while friendly enough, was slower than a little kid trying to tell a long story. It took over an hour to get our entrees, and 30 minutes to get soup. We were the only diners in the restaurant, save for two lone women in search of a late snack. I wish I could say it was just a bad night at the restaurant, but the empty dining room, lousy food and an outdated website hawking their mail-order crabcake business more than the restaurant itself, indicates that Angelina's best days are behind them.

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10 Whammies! out of 355. 3 Whammies! were awarded to the 3 cups of good Maryland Crab Soup, and 7 Whammies! were awarded to my courageous friends who survived this crap. The 355 potential Whammies! represent our bill, not including gas, tolls and the overall general feeling we shoulda gone to the Old Ebbitt Grill.
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NEWS ALERT - Rapper Boasts that He Sucks!

From the New York Daily News - Thanks Lloyd Grove!

If Kevin Federline really wants to be a rapper, maybe he should start writing his own rhymes.
Rapper William (Ya Boy) Crawford claims it was he, not Federline, who wrote two of K-Fed's much-hyped rap singles: "F- the Media" and "America's Most Hated" - which goes: "Kevin Federline, I come tight with every rhyme, I built a kingdom down the street from Pepperdine."

During a recent appearance on the popular San Francisco radio show "Strawberry in the Morning," Crawford took credit for both songs - which Mr. Britney Spears has proudly touted as his own.

"Yep, both of those. Yep," Crawford insisted.
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Bragging about writing raps for Kevin Federline... you just admitted to the world that you suck. That's like bragging that you were Charlie Sheen's marriage counselor or Tara Reid's plastic surgeon. Or AA Sponsor.
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But he distanced himself from Federline's first single, an ode to female posteriors called "Popozao." Sample lyric: "Toy all your thing on me, baby."

"I didn't have nothing to with that, dog," Crawford said.
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Apparently, even rappers begging for attention have a base modicum of taste.

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Yesterday, Federline's spokeswoman, Marilyn Lopez, tried to put Crawford's revelations in context: "This is not true that Ya Boy has put Kevin under his wing. They do, however, collaborate together."

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As I close my eyes to imagine this unholy pairing, I am struck with the disturbing scene in Boogie Nights where Dirk Diggler tried to launch a singing career based on his awful singing voice and lousy songwriting. Painful to watch, painful to listen to, and definitely so painful as to be hilarious.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go take my journalism classes from Jayson Blair.

tomorrow's news today!

In response to an article found here:

Washington, May 3 - Congressman Ric Keller spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives today condemning Mexican President Vincente Fox for legalizing drugs.

"Mr. Speaker, Vicente Fox, the President of Mexico, is at it again," Keller stated. "Yesterday, he said that he would sign an irresponsible law legalizing the possession of drugs."

"How much is OK?" Keller continued. "Two ecstasy pills, four joints, four lines of cocaine, and twenty-five milligrams of heroin are now all allowed, according to Vicente Fox."

To follow in the footsteps of such great psychics as Jeanne Dixon, Carnac, Dionne Warwick and Phil Mickelson (he predicted the preseason Super Bowl wins of the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots at 99-to-1 odds and 125-to-1 odds), I present to you a new feature here at Obpopcultref:

Tomorrow's news, TODAY!!

In a stunning turn of events, Mexican activists are calling on the government headed by Vincente Fox to close its borders with the United States to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into Mexico.

"Build a wall, string some barbed wire, do something" exclaimed Miguel Valentino, a shopkeeper in Juarez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. "Sure, they come into my store, but they just stare at my stuffed lizards and bottles of Patron. They never buy nothing!"

In the month since Mexico relaxed laws detailing the amounts drugs that can be possessed and used within the country, Americans looking for a quick high are heading south of the border in droves.

In the Baja California city of La Paz, the streets are teeming with all sorts of Americans, from Midwestern college kids to inner city gang members to senior citizens looking for a quick treatment for their glaucoma. If the street signs weren't written in Spanish, La Paz could be mistaken for any U.S. city.

Any U.S. city with mariajuana growing in people's lawns and heroin flowing through the sewers, that is.

"All these damned American stoners come down here, they take our drugs from hard-working Mexican people" explained Pablo Argilagos, a gas station attendant in La Paz.

The sudden boom in "opportunistic narcotic tourism" has been a boon to most of the Mexican border cities, as groups of Americans cross the border for a quick fix, and then go back to their homes in the States.

"My taverna has never been busier!" enthused Maria DeSantos, owner of El Perro Americano El Dormir Cafe Y Aljamiento. "I just wish Senor Fox had legalized the drugs earlier!"

Mexico's shocking revision of draconian drug laws has also stopped the flow of illegal immigration to America from such countries as Honduras and El Salvador.

"Why should I go to America now?" asked Monte' Elvista of El Mozote in El Salvador, through a translator. "There are tons of jobs in Mexico now. I just started working at a hash bar in Cabo San Lucas, I get paid well, and I get to take home leftovers."

"The only problem are the damned American college kids," continued Elvista. "Them and their damned Dave Matthews Band music. I don't even speak English and even I know fish isn't spelled p-h-i-s-h. On my dead mamma's soul, songs aren't supposed to last twenty minutes."

In a related story, President George W. Bush and former President Bill Clinton have formed a blue-ribbon bi-partisan investigative panel consisting of themselves to investigate the Mexican drug situation.

"We'll look under every rock with these tiny little mirrors and we'll bring plenty of rolled-up dollar bills to reach into tiny cracks, and we'll sniff those drugs out," said Bush in a hastily-called press conference on the runway in front of Air Force One. "Former President Clinton and I have a duty to protect American citizens from Mexico's actions. It's what we need to do, and we're gonna do what needs to be done, even if we're not sure how much we gotta do now. We know we gotta do it, and it's gotta get done, though."

"Like the song on my iPod says, we're gonna party like it's 1999 or the summer of `69, or it's the dawn of the age of Aquarius, or whatever," said President Bush. "I just hope I remember how to deal with the shakes. Shakes are bad. Nobody wins when you shake. Unless you;re shaking hands with somebody. Then they think you're friendly."

Former President Clinton was unavailable for comment, but was seen wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, tanning lotion, and screaming "I'm gonna find the Weapons of Grass Destruction, Dubya!" as he boarded Air Force One.

Mexican President Vincente Fox said he would be happy to have the two American dignitaries in his Mexico City palace as long as they "don't harsh my mellow."

Why is it called "Urban Thai" if it's in the suburbs?

That question dogged my mind the first time I saw this restaurant while driving through inappropriately named suburb of Crystal City last year. It's located on 23rd Street on the Restaurant Row, surrounded by bar and grills, diners and restaurants dedicated to other foreign cusines. Urban Thai has carved out a niche providing delicious, affordable food in a surprisingly attractive dining space. Usually, when one thinks of Asian food in the `burbs, the first thoughts are of Fortune, the dim sum palace at Seven Corners, or one of the fine Vietnamese places like Pho 75 in Falls Church or the previously-reviewed Eden Center. Urban Thai isn't as big as those places, but might be as good.

Last Saturday night, I took a couple of friends to the UT for dinner, and we started off with Thai version of crack, Lemongrass-Ginger Iced Tea. It's a sweet tea, infused with those two flavors, and as refreshing as a Thai Iced Tea, but not as filling. We settled on two appetizers, the Chicken Satay skewers and the Crab Dip. I grew up in Baltimore, where hearty, creamy crab dips are as plentiful as tourists in the summer. Urban Thai does their version differently - it's made with mangoes and what looked like some avacodoes, with fresh backfin crab on top. It's prepared beautifully, served in a big martini glass with wedges of fried spring roll wrap. It looks like a fun beach cocktail, and draws admiring stares from across the 20-table restaurant. The Satay was delicious with a good peanut sauce, but that crab dip stole the show.

Dinner was just as fantastic, with one of us selecting the Red Curry Duck, a spicy dish with coconut milk and pineapples, another choosing the Bourbon Grilled Chicken and sticky rice, and with me trying the BBQ Pork, a series of grilled pork tenders served with a pepper-and-scallion-filled translucent barebque sauce. That sauce may not pass muster at a Texas rib joint, but it's just as good, and doesn't have the sugary taste found in most American sauces. UT indicates the relative hotness of their meals with their cicular logo, ergo, more logo = more heat. However, I've had their three-logo Drunken Noodle with chicken, and didn't find it to be too hot at all. However, if you ask the server, they'll be glad to spice your dish enough to induce tears.

Urban Thai has all the essential Thai dishes - Pad Thai, Prik King, Pad See Eew, Kra Pow - and a group of specialities, like a spicy Crispy Duck and Panang Grilled Shrimp that never fail to impress. Their noodles are wide, not too doughy, with just the right consistency. The servings are just the right size - big and filling enough to let you know you ate, but not too big as to be imposing or nap-inducing. The vegetarian menu is full of fine options, too. The Grilled Salmon and Mango salad, mixed with the ginger honey vinagrette, or the Green Curry Veggie stuffed full of tofu, bamboo, basil and eggplant, are real meals, not just a dish without red meat. Meat eaters will love the Ginger Beef Broccoli and the Kao Mon Gai Tod, a battered chicken breast served with garlic-and-ginger rice and a spicy soy sauce, is fantastic. They also offer a sweet soy sauce that they'll be glad to bring out by request, and it goes well with their milder dishes.

Urban Thai has a full bar, with a selection of low-to-mid-priced wines. It offers a decent array of mixed drinks, including all sorts of things ending with -tini, and starting with mart- and lychee-. Watching my mom get half-crocked from an Urban Thai mango daquiri may be my highlight of 2006. I wish I could tell you about their desserts but I've never had room for any.

Urban Thai is open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner at 561 S. 23rd Street in Crystal City. They accept credit cards, can split and seperate checks, and the restaurant has a handful of seats outside in a covered patio. Take out and some delivery is available. Most dishes are around 7 dollars for lunch and 12 for dinner.

Just be careful with the Lemongrass Ginger Iced Tea. There's no known 12-step program for overcoming that addiction.

so you say you wanna new ballpark...

The DC City Council reached an agreement with Major League Baseball ot build a baseball-only stadium for $535 million. Renowned stadium design firm HOK of Kansas City designed the park, and, according to the artist's renderings, it's...um...it's no Camden Yards. It's certainly no PNC Bank Park in Pittsburgh, currently the prettiest stadium in baseball.

And...for 535 million bucks, I'm not sure if it's even decrepit old RFK.

ESPN.com's Tuesday Morning Quarterback chimes in with this story that masquarades as a sports business story.

Take Me Out of This Ballpark
Recently the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission unveiled the design of the Washington Nationals' new baseball park, and the announcement made yours truly glad he does not reside in the District of Columbia. Local taxpayers will be on the hook for $535 million in bonds to support this potential white elephant. Not only is there a strong chance the stadium will flop in the marketplace -- more on that in a moment -- the price tag seems likely to include substantial graft. Consider that Citizens Bank Park in nearby Philadelphia, the Phillies' new home, opened in 2004 and was built for $346 million, only $174 million of it foisted upon local taxpayers. Citizens Bank Park is larger than the planned Washington Nationals park, sits on similar downtown land bought at similar downtown prices, yet cost taxpayers only about a third as much. Recently opened Gillette Field, financed mainly at Patriots owner Robert Kraft's expense, came in at $325 million and is substantially larger than the planned Nats ballpark. The just-announced new Yankee Stadium is projected to cost $800 million, but will be larger than the Washington ballpark and will sit on 22 acres of the most expensive land in North America. Yet taxpayers are contributing about $300 million to the Yankee Stadium project, less than the bill to be handed to taxpayers for the smaller Washington facility.

All yours, D.C. baseball fans, for $535 million -- and don't forget the cost overruns!It's easy to be careless with other people's money, especially with the money of taxpayers, who cannot demand refunds or sue for breach of contract. Gillette Field was built using private funds under market discipline; the Washington stadium will be built at taxpayer expense with no fiscal discipline. Surely that's a reason the price is so high. But another reason may be that some portion of the price is likely to be stolen by cronies of the District's top-heavy, inept government. Indeed, the D.C. Council seemed determined to push the stadium cost well above the price of comparable facilities, in order to assure there was plenty in the pot to steal. George W. Bush, the most baseball-obsessed president since William Howard Taft, has allowed this tax-subsidized pocket-picking directly under his nose, while making no attempt to pressure his pals in the corporate suites of Major League Baseball into building the stadium the free-market way. Maybe the naming rights should be sold to Halliburton. ... Welcome to Halliburton Field, where hot dogs are $6,000 and all overhead costs are billed to the defense budget.


Why might the Washington ballpark lack customers? First, it's situated at one of the worst traffic choke points in the nation's capital -- and that's now, before stadium traffic. Many stadia are hard to get in and out of. Experience shows that customers will bear traffic gridlock for football games, which happen only a few times a year, but won't frequent the much-more-regular MLB games unless access is convenient, and the Nats' field is being plunked down at one of the hardest-to-reach spots on the East Coast. Second, the high $535 million price will include a ridiculously low 1,225 parking places, some of which will be reserved for D.C. government officials. That's one parking space for every 34 seats. The new Yankee Stadium will have decked garages with 10,000 parking spaces, one space for every 5.3 seats. The Arizona Cardinals' new stadium, rising in Glendale, Ariz., will have 14,000 dedicated parking spaces for 63,000 seats, one space per 4.5 seats. No matter how good the Nats might be, suburbanites, who are the core demographic for all professional sports, might come to the new ballpark once, discover traffic is backed up and there's nowhere to park, and never return. When the ballpark project zeroes out the D.C. government's bond rating, please, congressional committees, don't say you weren't warned.


Now, I'm not sure what President Bush has to do with the new Nationals' stadium. He'll probably be out of the White House by the time the building is completed, and, if my memory of the DC City Council and MLB's battles serves me correct, the White House had *nothing* to do with this scenario at all. I don't see what point blasting the President has to do with this story. It clouds the real point of this message - this is a White Elephant waiting to happen. How the hell are people going to get there?

The main roads near the new stadium are I-395, I-295 and South Capitol Street. It'll be a couple of blocks away from the Navy Yard Metro station. I-395 is a parking lot every weekday from 4pm until 6:30pm, and not much better than that at 3 and 7. South Capitol takes a massive amount of traffic because it's a quick-ish way for Maryland-bound commuters to avoid the Pennsylvania Avenue interchange to connect to 295. See, in its infinite wisdom, The Powers That Be never bothered to connect 395 fully with 295. If you want to reach northbound 295, and make a quick exit out of DC towards Annapolis and Baltimore, you have to sit on the Souza Bridge on Penn Ave...and I do mean sit. It literally takes 30 minutes to go 1.5 miles most days. So, poor South Cap takes it on the chin. It'll usually take about 10 minutes to go 1.5 miles on South Cap to 295 - a much better proposition. Still, it'll take a car about 30 to 60 minutes to travel the 3.3 miles from my office to the new stadium.

And then...I'll need to find a parking spot.

For half-a-billion dollars, is it too much to ask for parking (like I could possibly drive there anyway?) or a better transportation situation?

The more I look at the neighborhood, and the transportation mess, the less I like the location of this stadium.

from the "8 Years Too Late" Department

Cindy Margolis to pose for 'Playboy'

from the USAToday

Cindy Margolis, known as the "Most Downloaded Woman" on the Internet, is following up her win on Celebrity Cooking Showdown with a career first — posing nude for Playboy.

The mother of three told The Associated Press that she finally agreed to pose for the magazine when they called on her 40th birthday.

"Thank goodness for Desperate Housewives. You're not dead just because you are married and have children," the actress and model said Monday, on the phone from her Los Angeles home.

After turning down offers to pose for the magazine in the past, Margolis said she accepted this time because she felt posing nude at the age of 40 is empowering.----------------------------------

Once upon a time, say, the Clinton Administration, I would have been overjoyed to hear this news. Her pin-up photos from a younger, gentler time of Internet smut served as a wonderful respite from the masses of silicone-stretched chests and collagen-abused lips. She showed some skin - a little less than the average Sports' Illustrated Swinsuit Issue, a little more than the JC Penney catalog - but always with a certain "girl-next-door" charm that only a charmed few have in their neighborhoods.

She was the Most Downloaded Woman in history, according to her website's bio. She had a TV show and appeared on all the talk shows. She was Brooke Burke before Brooke Burke.

Now, I'm normally pretty psyched to see naked women, especially hot ones. However, Cindy Margolis's explanation of "empowerment" is pathetic, and more transparent than a spring roll. She's still a pretty woman, but she's not the fresh-faced, sun-kissed blonde with just a hint of something naughty in her eyes - she's a 40-ish woman with over-shaped eyebrows and a bad nose job.

But she's realizing something now - the Internet made her a star, and then forgot her just as quickly. Margolis' photos were everywhere in the mid-1990s, and Photoshop experts everywhere examined her photos for Seinfeldian nipple slips the way conspiracy theorists study the Zapruder film. However, with the rise of "amateur" porn, any kid with a decent digital camera and a hot, but easily-duped girlfriend, can make a fortune online selling photos that definitely show what Margolis withheld for so long.

Perhaps...too long?

Playboy will pay her a truckload of money so she can show her body to the masses, yet Maxim will sell more issues with a half-clothed Katherine Heigl from Grey's Anatomy, or what TVGuide can do with Evangeline Lilly from Lost.

She's still hot, but she's got no heat.

Playboy will crank up their publicity machine, and remind the world of just who this Cindy Margolis person is anyway, and, in the end, will be the reminders of former pop star Tiffany, who, like Margolis, waited and waded a few too many years in a pool of obscurity before shedding her clothes before the camera. The result - a heavily-airbrushed photo of a not terribly interesting subject.

-------------------###-----------------

Magic Black Smoke

Death Notice-

"The Device"

Toshiba A65-S1070 notebook computer.

Bought - February 12, 2005

Died - April 15, 2006

Cause of Death - Loss of Magic Black Smoke.

I write here today to celebrate the life and times of The Device. He lived his life in the way few laptops can - doing absolutely nothing of significance. He was a lovely computer - deep blue, with silver and black highlights.

He is survived by his 40GB hard drive, currently trying to find a new life as an external hard drive for a desktop PC.

The Archduke of Austria Killed the Satirical Song Reference

Last night, my friend Sami from Baltimore County drug me to DAR Constitution Hall to see Franz Ferdinand
and Death Cab for Cutie. I had a good enough time - Franz Ferdinand has certainly evolved from a bunch of
sharp-dressed, stationary fashion models to stylish rockers with flair and a sense of drama.

Death Cab, however good and touching their songs may be, has no business following Franz Ferdinand. The
Scottish boys rocked the house with their guitar-based dance pop, both retro and modern at the same time.
By the time Death Cab got up to stage, the crowd at DAR was dancing in the aisles.

And Death Cab promptly started with a piano-based downer of a tune.

I don't hate DC4QT, and rather liked their show. I was surprised at how many of their songs I recognized
and enjoyed. But putting them on after FF would be like being a porn star who's gotta tag a chick after
she just shot a film with John Holmes.

Really, who wants to bat after Babe Ruth?

DC4QT tried to rock out a bit, but it's not in their nature rage against the machine. They're best
enjoyed with a mellower act - Sigur Ros, John Mayer, Tori Amos, perhaps - than sharp snotty Scots with
guitars.

Still, a fine show, and, thanks to the dads and old grey haired dude with the goatee, I totally wasn't
the oldest guy there. The OC quotient wasn't as bad as I'd feared.

How to ruin a diet

So, you say you just wanted a coffee and a small baked good from your friendly local coffee shop...




Serving Size (g) 128

Servings per Item 1

Calories 420

Fat Calories 140

Total Fat (g) 16

Saturated Fat (g) 7

Trans Fat (g) 1

Cholesterol (mg) 40

Sodium (mg) 250

Total Carbohydrates (g) 63

Fiber (g) 1

Sugars (g) 23

Protein (g) 6

Vitamin A 10% RDA

Vitamin C 0% RDA

Calcium 15% RDA

Iron 15% RDA

and then follow that up with a:

Medium Campfire Mocha 16 Fluid Oz.


Serving Size (g) 519

Calories 600

Fat Calories 160

Total Fat (g) 18

Saturated Fat (g) 10

Trans Fat (g) 0

Cholesterol (mg) 60

Sodium (mg) 230

Total Carbohydrates (g) 97

Fiber (g) 0

Sugars (g) 89

Protein (g) 13

Vitamin A 20% RDA

Vitamin C 0% RDA

Calcium 30% RDA

Iron 20% RDA



Congratulations. You just drank a large vanilla malt from Dairy Queen.

I wish I wrote this...or thought of this

From : http://datelinehollywood.com/archives/2006/01/03/lost-episode-to-feature-back-story-of-vincent-the-dog/

Click HERE

‘LOST’ EPISODE TO FEATURE BACK STORY OF VINCENT THE DOG
Critics say producers stalling to reveal island mysteries

Hollywood – Fan websites of ABC’s “Lost” drama are abuzz with word that an upcoming episode will focus on Vincent the dog and will include flashbacks with a detailed back story. While enthusiastic fans are suddenly speculating that the dog may be the key to solving the central mysteries on the show, critics say the upcoming flashbacks for Vincent proves that the show’s producers are struggling with storylines and are stalling to give viewers answers.

Since the first episode, the producers have been using flashbacks to create richer characters, new mysteries and revelations. Each major character has had a flashback scene, partially explaining their pasts. Since “Lost” became such a ratings hit, the producers had to suddenly slow down the pace of the show and not reveal the mysteries with the originally intended timeframes.

“When they came up with the show, it was in the same vein of Fox’s ‘24’ with the answers being revealed at the end of the season,” said TV critic Chesley Martin of the Hartford Journal-Bulletin. “But now they’ve realized they can keep this show going for five years or more. What’s happening now is that they need to keep coming up with other storylines. They’re obviously grasping at straws, and that’s why you’ll be seeing these flashbacks for the dog.”

Fans on the website www.hurleysnumbers.net believe Vincent the dog may hold the answers to the crucial secrets of the island.

“I never thought about the dog. I just thought he was a dog who took a dump once and a while and did nothing else,” wrote Sayidrules23 on a thread. “But it’s starting to make sense now. The dog was there all along, and we didn’t realize his significance until now. What if this was all in Vincent’s imagination?”

According to the fan website www.OceanicAir.org, the upcoming episode will feature three flashbacks for Vincent, all of them will be in black and white as it is believed that dogs see life without color. One of the flashbacks will show Vincent having a brief affair with one of the wild boars on the island. The other flashback will show Vincent as a puppy living in the Arctic with a group of researchers.

“There’s a connection there because of those polar bears that have turned up on the island,” wrote Ekomatters1. “Look to the dog for the answers.”

There’s also speculation about the dog being mentioned in the “Orientation” film shown in an earlier episode this season.

“There were jarring jump cuts in that film,” wrote Ekomatters1. “The character Desmond spliced the broken movie back together after watching it too many times. Those missing pieces will become very important because they will talk about a dog, about the chosen one.”

While speculation runs rampant about Vincent the dog, Dateline Hollywood has obtained new information about the hatch on the show. According to an insider, the idea of the hatch wasn’t created until halfway through the season.

“The hatch was the idea of writer/supervising producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach,” revealed the insider. “Jorge Garcia (Hurley) was supposed to lose like 40 pounds during the filming of the show because of being on the island without proper food, but that guy just got bigger and bigger. So Javier came up with the idea of a hatch filled with food to explain Hurley’s weight in the second season. Then all of these other things developed from the hatch idea. It was brilliant.”

Hurley will also play a central role in one of the flashbacks of Vincent the dog. According to the insider, the flashback will relive a moment early on during the first season when the airline food runs out on the island and Hurley contemplates eating the dog. But as he prepares to catch Vincent, he discovers that the character Jin already has the dog over a barbecue pit. The dog manages to escape both hungry survivors.

_____________________________

This absolutely made my day...mainly because I got depressed at My Death Space, a site that shows deceased people who have Myspace.com pages. The most famous may be Taylor Behl, the young Northern Virginia who was killed last year in Richmond. Her story made national headlines, and served as a cruel reminder to choose your friends in this world wisely. Also, the recent shooting in Seattle has added a couple of Myspace profiles to this slightly morbid, slightly touching site.

The one who registered with me - Dave Seeber, a 21 year old kid from Virginia who went to one of my old schools, Virginia Wesleyan College. Like me, he wrote for the Marlin Chronicle, the campus newspaper, and his bearded picture on his Myspace profile reminds me of another fellow VWCer, Pete Fitzgerald, a.k.a. Artiste. He was burly, bearded fellow who had his choice of football scholarships coming out of high school. He instead chose VWC, a small Division III with no football outside of intramurals. He wanted to draw, paint, sculpt and make art, not run two-a-days, lift weights for ten hours a week, and be considered a dumb jock. Dave's visage reminds me a lot of Artiste - same smile, same beard, same clothing style. As I always liked, and even admired Artiste, seeing the similarities of Dave Seeber made both happy at the good memory, and sad to learn he'd taken his own life. There's no doubt that Dave and I would have known each other at the small school, had I been a decade and change younger.

After reading through all the pages of deaths, seeing everything from suicide, car accidents and soldiers dying in Iraq, it is nice to see these recently-deceased still have a slice of themselves that remains exactly as they left it - playing a favorite tune, showing funny pictures and videos, their blogs whose words will be studied by the living remainder to search for clues in their loved one's passing.

Then, the comments - from friends both in person and via the internet. It's a shame most of them don't find out how much they're loved until after they're dead.

Still, to see these people still alive, most of them so young and filled with promise, bravado or depression, does serve as an effective memorial, and provide a snapshot of the living that a cold gravestone can not.

No Whammies, No Whammies, STOP!

This, for some reason, has just bummed me the hell out. Peter Tomarken was always one of my favorite game show hosts, and the show "Press Your Luck" holds up very well. He was never trendy, but always stylish. Fun, slightly naughty, but always a great host.

----------------------------------

from The Baltimore Sun

A former TV game show host and his wife were killed Monday morning when their small plane crashed into Santa Monica Bay shortly after takeoff on a volunteer flight for a medical charity, authorities said.

Divers called off a search for a third person late Monday after authorities concluded only two people were on board.

The bodies of Peter Tomarken, 63, host of the hit 1980s game show "Press Your Luck," and his wife, Kathleen Abigail Tomarken, 41, were identified by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.

The plane was on its way to San Diego to ferry a medical patient to the UCLA Medical Center, said Doug Griffith, a spokesman for Angel Flight West, a nonprofit which provides free air transportation for needy patients.

Tomarken, the pilot, was a volunteer for the group. The FAA said the plane was registered to him.

The third person authorities initially believed was on board may have been the patient, said Coast Guard spokesman Tony Migliorini.

"We believe the third person was the person they were going to pick up," he said. "When they filed the flight plan, they said three persons were to be on board. That's why we had to presume they had three and did the search."

The plane apparently had engine trouble and was headed back to Santa Monica Airport, located about two miles inland, but went down in about 19 feet of water about a half-mile southwest of the Santa Monica pier, authorities said.

Luis Garr said he didn't hear the engine but heard the splash as the plane "kind of landed into the water."

"It's a big splash, a huge splash. ... Then it started going down," Garr said. "The wings were still floating so I was, `Get out! Get out!' because the door was still available to get out and nobody came out. So the plane kept going down, down, down."

Tomarken's death was first reported by "Entertainment Tonight."

"Press Your Luck" was known for contestants shouting the slogan "Big bucks! No whammies!"

Tomarken's agent, Fred Wostbrock, said his client's first game show was "Hit Man!," which ran 13 weeks on NBC, followed by the four-year hit "Press Your Luck" on CBS. He also was on "Bargain Hunters," "Wipe-Out" and "Paranoia."

"He was always a fun guy to be around, and he just loved the genre of game shows," Wostbrock said.

--------------------------------

I've come to wish you an unhappy birthday

I turned 33 yesterday. There was much rejoicing.

Why do we rejoice? Has anybody ever just gotten joiced right the first time?

Your Birthday - to the tune of The Love Boat:

You, your days flying by
Getting old. You're going to die.
Death, life's sole guarantee.
Gonna crock, it's true for you and me.

Your Birthday! You escaped from you mother's womb
Your Birthday! Another step towards the tomb
You can try to out run it,
but you'll fail, it's true.
and Life...it's slipping away
To a grave...and you'll turn to gooo!.
Yes Death!! It's Death! ! (hey-ah!)

Your birthday!
You escaped from your mother's womb;
Your birthday!
Another step towards to the tomb!
You can try to out run it,
but you'll fail, it's true.
and Life...it's sliping away
to a grave...where you'll turn to goo!
It's Death! It's Death! It's
Death!
Your Birthday! You're Birthday!

Why America doesn't care about the Olympics

1) It was much more dramatic when the US' AMATEUR athletes competed against the world. Our college basketball players were better than the world's pro players. Now, it's almost all pros against pros, and a lot of the drama is gone. The Dream Team was amazing to watch that first year, and then got lousier every Olympics afterwards.

The Miracle on Ice was amazing because those were college kids who beat the Best Team on the Planet. It'd be like Des Moines' Polk High beating the Patriots in football, or Uganda's 14-and-under development team beating Man U in the other football.

Without that potential for drama, it's simply not compelling.

2) 20 years ago, they were the only things on TV. Not the case anymore. The fact that American Idol beat the living hell out of the Olympics says a lot. Either people love Simon Cowell, or hate Dick Buttons.

3) Tape delay - when we were younger, we had the Lake Placid, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Calgary games all in our relative time zones. When the Games are in Australia, Greece, Norway, Italy...it's harder to watch. We want instant access to our broadcasts, not tape delays.

4) The Olympics are every 2 years now. There's not that four year hype buildup. I was actually shocked the Olympics were this year. Coulda swore we just had one.

5) Ice skating was always a big television draw in the old days. Now, skating's on regular broadcasts more often, and less unique. Hell, celebrities skate now.

If you have a loose definition for the term "celebrity."

6) Women's Gymnasts - Please, let's call it what the event is - Pint-Sized 12 Year-Old Girls with Pushy Parents. These girls aren't women yet, PERIOD! End of discussion. Put in an age limit before we start getting dancing embryos in frilly skirts.

7) There's no enemy anymore. When we were kids, it was the West vs. the East. NATO vs. the Eastern Bloc. USA vs. USSR. US vs. Them. The Miracle on Ice.

Now, the veil's been lifted, and we've seen the enemy, and they look like us. It's hard to get amped up over a US vs. Latvia match-up. Even in our current war(s), the Afghani and Iraqi people aren't REALLY our enemy, so, in a way, the competitive level for the bigger nations simply isn't there. "Wow, we beat Togo...wow?"

8) They're predictable. The Nigerian will win the long-distance running, the Americans and Aussies will win the swimming, the Brits win the equestrian, the skinny dude will win the cycling, the Canadians or Russians will win the hockey, the Germans will win most of the shooting events, and the Europeans will snag the skiing medals, and the American and Canadians will get the snowboarding medals. There, I'm 90% accurate and I saved you hours of TV time. Go read a book to celebrate.

9) Hate to break this to the world, but MOST OF THESE SPORTS SUCK!!!!!!! ESPN 8, The Ocho, wouldn't broadcast half this crap. If the biathalon were on TV every week, it'd be lower rated than "Love Monkey." The only reason people watch the luge, bobsled and ski jumping events is because somebody might wipe out spectacularly. And women's figure skating is only viewed by women and lonely, horny men.

If those girls had to put on proper clothing, the ratings would drop like a fat bungee jumper.

Flopsweat!

When I was a baby deejay, my radio station hired a new overnight guy. He was a chubby stupid kid with a lousy voice - about the only guy willing to stay up all night in Ocean City making 8 bucks an hour.

He came on the air after my show, and I tried to loosen him up, because I could tell he was a bundle of nerves. We had MAYBE 100 listeners at overnight, maybe 150, so, he had no need to be nervous, but nervous he was. I was a little peeved he showed up five minutes before his shift, but, hey, I don't pay the checks.

ME: Alright, my time is just about done this evening, but please continue to listen to the X because we have a very talented young man hitting the airwaves tonight. So, Dude (not knowing what his radio name is, I improvised), talk to me. What's your name?

DUDE: Uh.... uh...

ME: Damn, I've stumped him already. How'd those SATs work out for you, negative -200 on the English. What's your name?

HIM: Uh... (he does this for 30 seconds)

ME: Wow...you are a man truly with a gift of speech. You guys working all night at Togo's Pizza are in for a treat tonight (look at me giving a shout-out to the advertisers!!!), so, everybody, enjoy this night with Mystery Man deejay. This is (some crappy alt-rock song from 1995) on X 106 point 9

ME: (turns off mic) : Dude, you are aware that one of the vital things of being a deejay is the ability to speak into a microphone, right?

DUDE: (eyes roll back into head) Um...uh...

DUDE is passed out. On falling, he hits the CD cart machine, knocking it four or five songs in advance. His milkshake pours all over a stack of discs. ME has to get back on the air, quick.

ME: (flipping on mic) That sound is brought to you by Dude, who is simply passed out (ME starts cracking up) I mean, striaght up, this guy was standing next to me 20 seconds ago...and ...he he he... he wiped out ON the desk, and the floor. I wish I had a camera, this is brilliant...(ME really cracks up) Hehehehehehahahahahah!!! This station hired a mute deejay....good Lord...(getting serious) is he even alive? Dude is OUT, and his damned milkshake spilled everywhere. He just nailed the new Supergrass disc...covered in McDonald's milkshake...this is great...this guy...Dude! DUDE!! Wake up! (ME pauses) Oh well, I guess I'm doing overnight shift tonight, call me on the request line at..."

DUDE: ungggh

ME : Dude's coming to!

DUDE: uh...

ME : You alright? You just passed out.

DUDE: ungggh.. my...ouch...

ME: (cues a CD) here's (some other crappy 1995 alt-rock song) and I'll see if Dude's ok.

OFF MIC -
Me: Damn, man. That looked painful.
DUDE: I'm Johnny.
Me: Hey Johnny. First night as a deejay?
DUDE: Yeah.
Me: you need some water, chips? something?
DUDE: Nah, I'm cool.
Me: you ok to go on?
DUDE: I don't know. Little dizzy.
Me: (realizing I'm going to be pulling an all-nighter) How about I hang out with you for a bit `til I know you're OK?
DUDE: Yeah
Me: So, you know how to follow a playlist?
DUDE: No
Me: HUH?!?!?!?
DUDE: What's that?
Me: A list of songs that you need to play. Computer over there shoots it out for us.
DUDE: I don't get to play what I want?
Me: No!
DUDE: Damn
Me: You know how to use a board?
Dude: this thing you're using?
Me: Yeah
Dude: No
Me: DAMN!
Dude: Sorry...
Me: It's ok, I'll teach you. Now, first off, what's your radio name?
Dude : Huh?
Me: GAH!!! You need a radio name.
Dude: Well, what should I be?
Me: Well, what's your name?
Dude: Johnny (somethin or another)
Me : (looks at the milkshake debris and the fact he needs protection...) Condom.
Dude: What?
Me: Johnny Condom. That's your name.
Johnny Condom: Cool.

For the next hour or two, I show him how the control board works, how to read a play list, how to front sell, how to back sell, how to read our weather and news machine. By 2am, I figure he's good to run solo. We start off with just him talking, and I'll run the board.

Johnny Condom : (says nothing)
ME: (whispering) speak...
Johnny Condom : Uh, hi. I'm Johnny Condom. (pauses...then comes a complete halt)
ME: talk more...
Johnny Condom: OK... (stops again)
ME: who played that song?
Johnny Condom: That was Nirvana?
ME: Good! What song was it?
Johnny Condom: I don't know
ME: Read the sheet
Johnny Condom: Oh.
ME: Well, what song was it? Tell the nice audience
Johnny Condom: Uh, it was the one Bowie did
ME: Good enough.

The rest of the evening went a lot like that.

Needless to say, when the morning show guys showed up at 5:30, they weren't shocked to see me still there. Both had listened to this audio trainwreck on the way in to work, and the ironic thing was that one of the morning show guys was also the INCREDIBLY cheap station owner...the guy who hired Johnny Condom.

JJ (aka cheap statio owner) : He's not ready for prime-time, is he?
ME: Nope. He's pretty awful.
JJ: I'm not paying you for the past six hours.
ME: Whatever.

Johnny Condom's radio career lasted three weeks. Other highlights included him breaking the stool in the studio - which I sat on the next night and damned near killed myself in the process - and saying "Oh F*ck!" on the air.

God Bless Johnny Condom

Does an empty museum dream of exhibits? - Reviewed by the Five Paragraph Bitter Museum Critic

I'm branching out, people. Why limit myself to reviewing movies when my bitterness is much, much deeper.

The National Building Museum is a wonderful piece of old brick architecture in the middle of concrete-and-marble Washington, D.C. Soaring ceilings, high marble columns in the grand hall, great sight lines...it's truly something to see.

However, there's next to nothing in the museum as far as displays and exhibits. Some fascinating pictures of the changing of Washington from a quiet government town to a major city, a couple of displays of the Jewish influence in DC...and that's about it. I don't get it - more than half the space is wide-open. I mean, nada. Nuthin'. Zippy. There is thousands of square feet of available display space. They closed a display so they could put another one in the same place...while an identically-sized space across the hall is wide-open.

This place is emptier than the Young Republicans' booth at Wellesley College. I've gotten more substance in a Jessica Simpson music video (on mute, of course), and, after touring the Museum, feel a new-found sympathy for Nick Lachey.

Needless to say, the NBM, while pretty, is now the weakest Smithsonian I've seen.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 out of 7 Whammies! - and that's because the Museum looks cool and has a killer gift shop. Five Whammies! were deducted because they have five empty exhibit halls and can be thoroughly scanned in five minutes.

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Chaney's Got a Gun - courtesy of Aerosmith

Cheney's Got a Gun
Cheney's Got a Gun
He's proving he's really dumb
He's shootin' at everyone

What did his buddy do?
To get shot in the head by you?
They said when Cheney was a' shootin'
He would be shootin' at some game
But his man, he had it comin' now that Cheneys got a gun
His lawyer ain't ever gonna be the same.

Chaney's got a gun
Chaney's got a gun
His hunting day just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Tell me now it's untrue.
What did his lawyer do?
He got shot by Dick Chene
The man has got to be insane
They say the buckshot that he took to the midsection and the face
put that 78 year old man in the pain

Run away, run away from the Cheney yeah, yeah yeah yeah
Run away run away from the Cheney yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Cheney's got a gun
Cheney's got a gun
His hunting day'd just begun
Now everybody is on the run
What did that lawyer do?
To make Cheney fire through?
He had to go quail hunting and put a bullet in his brain
He said 'cause I ain't no quail' but Cheney was a'shootin'
His face ain't never gonna be the same.

Run away, run away from the Cheney yeah, yeah
yeah yeah yeah
Run away run away from the Cheney yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Cheney's got a gun
Cheney's got a gun
Cheney's got a gun
Everybody is on the run

Cheney's Got a Gun

Proposed Slogans for the Dick Chaney Annual Quail Shoot...



"Giving Shotguns to Nearsighted Senile Politicians Since 1994!"

"For a Different Kind of Facial"

"Where Hot Lead Meets the Chest"

"Quail Shooting Optional"

"Confusing Grown Men for 5 Pound Birds since 2006!"

"I'm Dick Cheney and I'll Shoot Who I Want, Bucko"

"Ability to Aim Not Neccessary!"


Twisted Tune en route...

The Longest Yard - Reviewed by the Five Paragraph Bitter Film Critic

This movie made me look at my home theater, in all of its Dolby 5.1 splendor, and think it was absolutely all bought in vain. For by watching the remake of The Longest Yard at my place, it would be like the Louvre displaying children's fridge art, or the Met doing a retrospective on "Can You Draw Skippy?" It's an understatement to call this the worst movie I've seen since "Day After Tomorrow." This movie isn't even close. The movie has more problems than the self-help section of Border's.

Allow me to explain - Adam Sandler plays Paul Crewe, the role made famous by Burt Reynolds in the original. Crewe is supposed to be the quinessential sexy bad boy that all the ladies love, which was easy for Reynolds to pull off. Sandler, however, has the sex appeal of week-old McDonald's food. He has next-to-no athletic ability - hell, I look more like a NFL quarterback than he does - and really seems to be sleepwalking through this movie. He turns Crewe into a slack drunkard with zero charisma and a bad attitude to boot, and while he's funny when carted off to prison, that's about it. The only reason Crewe Part Deux becomes likable is because the people who run the prison are even worse.

I'm stunned that Texas prisons have Guard football leagues, and I'm stunned that the warden (played by Babe's owner, James Cromwell)would hire former college and NFL players to be in this league. And, oh, they're naughty prison guards, too! They beat the prisoners! They're racists! They take steroids! The warden will use anybody for his political future! But, such stereotypes aren't meant to be realistic, only to push the paper-thin plot past holes the size of Tony Siragusa.

The only delightful thing in this movie is to see the massive amount of cameos and stunt-castings. Former NFL players Bill Romanowski, Michael Irvin, Brian Bosworth, and Terry Crews all get plenty of screentime, and former NFL lineman and pro wrestler Goldberg actually gives a strong performance. I guess all that acting in wrestling paid off. Also, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kevin Nash, Nelly, Dan Patrick, Red McCombs, Jay Glazer, Peter King, Chris Berman and anybody else without a shred of dignity was in it.

Please, do not see this movie unless you hate yourself or are Mrs. Adam Sandler.

*******************************************************************************
2 out of 17 Whammies! The only saving graces were Goldberg's surprising ability to act and all the cameos. I subtracted 15 Whammies for each time I said aloud "I can't believe I'm watching this shit." Once again, Chris Rock can't find a decent movie to save his scrawny ass.
*******************************************************************************

A Garfield of Mass Destruction

The global protests over the political cartoons in Europe which have angered many Muslims have become deadly again, with four people dying in Afghanistan today. Combine this with the torching of the Danish embassy in Iran, riots in Lebanon, and protests amongst the Islamic communities in Europe, and this thing has gone from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Let's put it this way - four people in Afghanistan have died over a cartoon. Now, in reality, they got out of hand and disobeyed police orders. But I have never seen anybody in America take to the streets over a particularly racy "Family Circus" where Jeffy and "Not Me" catch the neighbor's wife in an amourous pose with Daddy. Nobody in England has taken to arms and attacked Parliament because "Get Fuzzy" was a tad too naughty one day, and the ink blurred the view of the Page 3 girls.

The outrage over these cartoons does prove one vital thing - the West is losing the war for the Hearts, Minds and Wallets of the Islamic World.

When it appeared that NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries would fight each other in a never-ending game of weapons collections, along came the calvary in the form of Levis, McDonalds and video games. The Soviets weren't souless monsters - they just needed a good shopping mall. The Western culture won the war the B2 Bomber couldn't.

When it appeared Japan and the US would fight it out for global economic dominance, it wasn't a well-played interest rate deduction by the Fed or brilliant moves by Wall Street that swung the balance in the US' favor. It was the pervasiveness of the American culture to allow its icons to burn so brightly in the Japanese mindset that their investors didn't mind paying well-above-market value for high-profile properties. When the real estate market collapsed a couple of years later, the Japanese firms were left paying incredible loans for devalued properties.

What's happening in Islam is that this religion has managed to fight tooth-and-nail to keep from being even slightly assimilated by the Western culture. Ideas like freedom of the press and relative indifference towards religion have not taken hold like it has in the West. When shows like Family Guy can draw God in bed with a woman, or Drawn Together can show God in a "glory hole" - two strong images that were meant to offend Christian conservatives - gather nary a peep of complaint, that indicates most Westerners don't get too bothered about cartoon images. However, dare show a drawn image of the Prophet, and it's time to riot!

What's more offensive? A cartoon of a blasphemous image, in which the Family Guy, Drawn Together, and political cartoons in question all are , or the fact that people have died in these subsequent protests?

Do these protests prove the very predujices many Westerners feel towards Muslims, or is this yet another demonstration that Henry Kissinger's assertion that there will never be peace in the Middle East is true?

Why I love my hometown

I wish I could film this...from the Baltimore Sun...
----------------

Police are looking for a jogger who kicked a toy poodle so hard that it landed on the other side of an Edgewater street, leaving it paralyzed.

The 9-year-old, 4 1/2 -pound poodle named Jacquelyn was at a veterinary hospital in Annapolis yesterday, paralyzed from the neck down. It is unclear whether the paralysis is from structural damage or traumatic shock.

Witnesses told Anne Arundel County police that the jogger kicked the dog three times after it ran up to him barking and nipping at his heels just before 9 a.m.

Janice Tippett, the poodle's owner, told The Capital newspaper, "This guy is so bad. She did not deserve that. Neither me or her ever hurt anybody."

Tippett said she had opened the garage door to her townhouse just as the man jogged by and Jacquelyn ran out, barking.

Tippett said the man shoved Jacquelyn with his foot as the dog came up on his heels. Then he turned and kicked the animal and "stopped and did it again."
----------

Ah, yes, I can see it now...soft camera focus on a small town on the water, right at golden light, small haze coming from the water, Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown" fades up...

I'm almost 33, live in Northern Virginia and have a sensible career with a sensible Defense contractor. My mother just moved from Edgewater last month, so I have little-to-no-reason to return, but stories like this show me that no matter how much the town has changed, it'll never change.

Nearly 400 years ago, as the English settled in Maryland, they set up a trading post and settlement on the shores of the South River, and named it Seaport. It was quickly changed to London Town, and the small settlement grew quickly. The only surviving structure, the London Town Publik House, was a place of commerce, a place of lodging, dining, drinking and a home of ill repute, if a sailor played his cards right. As England poured more resources into the region, they built roads for land-based commerce. Tobacco was so easily grown in the area, and England was making wads of cash from the area. But, the settlement of Annapolis was only five miles north, and while smaller than London Town, and with a shallower harbor, was slightly closer to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Through a political debate both in the colony and in Parliament, the new road was built to Annapolis, not London Town, and a new harbor was dredged in the colony's new capital. London Town fell out of favor as a trading post, and the small bustling community disintegrated.

London Town became buried by the wilderness as Annapolis grew into a real city. It essentially remained barren for years, except with the Publik House serving as a warehouse, a whorehouse, an orphan's asylum and a hulking remnant of what once was. There are other Lost English Towns of the Chesapeake, and, if some Spanish texts are to be believed, a couple of former Spanish outposts buried between the Potomac and the Chesapeake. None of them had a structure like the Publik House, which, for some reason, withstood decades of abuse, neglect, misuse and Maryland's notoriously fickle weather in one piece.

In the late 1800s, with London Town long forgotten and a burgeoning middle class developing in Baltimore and DC, a trip to the beach became a wonderful vacation idea. Places near London Town began to attract weekend and holiday visitors, like nearby Beverly Beach and Shoreham Beach. Large grandstands and concert halls were built along the shores of the Chesapeake and the South River, both on the Annapolis side to the north and the south of Beverly and Shoreham. Anne Arundel County's large waterfront areas, from the Patapsco to the North, the Severn and South Rivers in the middle, and the West River in the South (hey, I didn't name the damned bodies of water, and how the hell you get a West River south of the South River is beyond me) became the getaway places of choice.

Anne Arundel County was a playground for the urban citizens of the nearby cities. Media outlets like the Washington Star and the Washington Post began buying real estate on the peninsula between the South and the West Rivers, enticing would-be subscribers a couple of lots of property in exchange for subscriptions to their papers. The idea worked, and in 1920s, lots of weekend and summer beach cottages were erected. What was once London Town became Woodland Beach. The area between Beverly Beach and Shoreham Beach eventually became known as Mayo and Selby, and the whole thing was called Edgewater by the various governments and the Post Office.

When the Depression hit, many folks couldn't afford their cottages, and so they remained abandoned. Poor folks looking for shelter found it in these cottages, and there was always some work to be found shucking oysters, catching crabs, or working on boats. The communities founded by the newspapers didn't die, but they certainly didn't thrive.

So, Edgewater became pretty blue collar, pretty seedy. Definitely polluted. After the War, industries in both cities dumped their waste materials either in or near the South River. What, were the poor people gonna complain? Hell, would they even notice?

As the seafood industry quietly died, the town's demographics swtiched from nautical to construction workers, auto mechanics, and rednecks. I was born there in 1973, during the height of it's trashiness. Shows like Archie Bunker, Roseanne, Married With Children - those could have easily been set in Edgewater. Just there would have been less racial diversity. I was in kindergarten with a black kid. The black kid. Not just for kindergarten, or even the elementary school. For the whole town.

"My Name is Earl" *SHOULD* have been set in Edgewater. Every one of my neighbors had the glorious Earl Hickey 'stache - including half the women. Tattoos may be hip to the point of becoming cliche' now, but in the straightlaced Cosby Show '80s, tattoos were almost Satanic. Not in good ole' Edgewater, though - Harley drivin' men were more inked out than an NBA point guard and even the chicks had "Budweiser" tats. On their boobs. And exposed them often in public.

And maybe I've watched too much "Earl" - a redneck, white trash criminal decides to right himself through karma - but the thought of karma is simply too delicious for me to pass on. This is a long post - basically an essay - but bear with me, and don't punt the dogma yet.

My family owned a small grocery store in Edgewater. Coming from the hills of Western Pennsylvania, they were just grateful to live in a town that didn't get 20 feet of snow a year. Sure, there were occasional biker gang shoot outs down the street, guys walking in the store with pythons around their necks, and folks smelling like they bathed in Pabst Blue Ribbon. All part of the joys of getting out of Pennsylvania, I guess.

I figured out pretty quickly that I had little in common with Edgewater, when I found I had pretty much zippy skills in auto repair, firefighting or motor skills. I tried to hod rod my Big Wheel with disasterous results. Remember how those things had the plastic lever, like a parking brake, that could allow you to skid out? Well, on a dare from some much bigger and older kids in the neighborhood, I took a box of those 4th of July snapping fireworks, sparklers, a book of matches, and was going to be like my hero, Evel Kinevel, and skid out in a blaze of glory. I pedalled as hard as I could to a tall hill, lit my sparklers and hauled ass down the hill. The sparklers ignited my shirt. The idea was that the SPARKLERS would be on fire, not ME! I freaked out, trying to thow the shirt off me...all while under the power of gravity. I lost control of my Big Wheel while throwing the shirt off, and tumbled down the hill like that Agony of Defeat ski jumper in the old Wide World of Sports intro, except I was ablaze. The snappers fell out of my pockets, sounding like small arms fire as I rolled down the hill. Once I got done tumbling, which felt like 300 feet of agony, I looked at my ruined Big Wheel, my scorched shirt, felt a series of cuts up and down my arms, legs, and head, and the group of 10 or so older kids laughing like they had just seen a nutshot compilation on America's Funniest Home Videos, and I did what any self-respecting six-year old would do - I bawled. Luckily, Grandma was the first to find me, and planted the seed in mom's head that MAYBE I should go to private school in Annapolis. Perhaps Edgewater's public schools weren't for me.

Looking back, it was more like a 20 foot fall, and not steep of a hill. But when you're six, that was a mountain, and the people who lived on top weren't unemployed, but Zeus and Apollo themselves...you know, had I known about Greek mythology then.

Edgewater began to change around 1990, when the South River Colony development was planned. It was a developer's wet dream - great highway and waterway access, and a bunch of dumb poor rednecks sitting in dilapidated shacks. It was no contest. The developers and their slick lawyers managed to avoid most on Anne Arundel County's growth requirements by signing a contract with Edgewater's form of local council, the London Town Property Owners Association. In exchange for tapping into Edgewater's already shoddy sewer and storm drain system, South River Colony would create a sign saying "Welcome to Londontown!"

To give this perspective, this is akin to the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees, but NOT getting enough money to put on "No No Nanette," quite the popular musical. Or, how about when the Cowboys totally suckered the Vikings into trading them the 1990s for Herschel Walker. The Cowboys won three Super Bowls in the wake of that trade and the Vikings...well, they'll always have Lake Minnetonka.

O.K. - a non-sports analogy - trading sewer and storm drain rights for a sign is like going to a car dealership with a 1967 Ford Mustang, garage-kept, 1800 miles on the odometer, pristine condition, and trading it straight up for Scion because you want to try out XM radio.

Or, let's put it in dollar amounts - a MINIMUM of 2.6 million dollars in infrastructure, labor and engineering for a $10,000 sign. And some mums to plant around it.

The LTPOA got played like a wholesome, virginal doe-eyed sweet girl hanging out with the football team's star quarterback in some not-quite-rated-x-bastardization of a John Hughes' movie. There's no Jake Ryan for you, Molly Ringwald, only a massive hangover and 20 years of regrets. Edgewater had a chance for a Flush at the Turn, but lost it at the River.

What really provides the extra kick-in-the-crotch is that the vast majority of the older areas - Woodland, Shoreham and Beverly Beaches - are all on well water, with that water fed from a corrupted, tainted aquifer. There are SO MANY chemicals living in the standard drinking water of this area it's like a who's who of carcinigens. Cadmium? Check. Mercury? Check. That exact same stuff that Evin Brockovich fought against? Check. However, SRC - well, my goodness, isn't this great? You get to have nice, pristine public water piped all the way down from Annapolis. 99.999% pure water. Your water doesn't turn purple or brown, or set off a Geiger counter.

So, this poodle's tale of "whoa" happened in that high-end development, South River Colony. This poodle gets kicked like a keg of Schlitz at a frat party, and makes the Baltimore Sun. The poodle's owner describes how hard it is to provide physical therapy to its little legs and back. I'm sure it was traumatic for her to see her dog go airborne like that beret-catching mutt in European Vacation doing a base jump off the Eiffel Tower.

However, when I was 13, and decided that I wanted to be a professional cyclist, I was riding my bike on a training run through Edgewater pre-South River Colony, when it was just construction workers, mechanics and KKK members, I had an unchained, unfenced Rottweiler mix chase me almost a mile and a 1/2, according to my bike computer, along Shore Drive, down several other streets, weaving through neighborhoods like a furry heatseaker missle. I had one of those long tire pumps that fastened underneath the bike's top tube, and I reached down and swung it at the dog. He was getting dangerously closer to getting my bike, or even me. In one of my manic flails, I actually connected to the side of his head. Bad idea - that only pissed him off more. I was on the roads, and he was cutting through yards. Not fair. Damn dog was tracking me like those bullets Gene Simmons' fired at Tom Selleck in "Runaway," you know, back when Kirstie Alley was still hot? Anyway, as I tried to make a 120 degree turn back on to Shore Drive at about 22 mph, I hit some gravel and wiped out, spinning me away from the bike. The dog caught up to the wreckage and started *eating* my bike. He attacked my rear wheel like a fat kid attacks a fantasy role playing game. He ripped the tire from the rim, and bit through the spokes of the still-spinning wheel. Me, being the brave sub-100 pounder that I was, didn't confront the dog and instead ran like a French infantry unit up a hill and into some older guy's yard. He heard the commotion, and was poking his head out the door to see a bloodied skinny kid wearing cycling shorts - not exactly common in a blue collar town in 1986 - a damaged helmet and a Rottie mutt eating a racing bike outside his front yard. He goes "What in the hell happened to you, kid?"

Breathing heavily, and probably in a bit of shock, I said "I was riding my bike home from a training run when this dog ran out of the woods on Shore Drive over by Mayo Road and started chasing me and wouldn't stop eventhough I was riding as fast as I could and I went around Laurel Road and tried to double back on Shore to lose him when I wiped out and now he's eating my bike and call the cops..." when the guy broke me off and said "You should have pedalled faster, kid." He went back inside and slammed the door.

After a few minutes, the dog got sick of ruining my bike, satisfied he'd made his kill,and ran off back towards the woods. I looked at the wreckage of my bike - luckily, it was a fairly cheap bike, a step above a department store special, but I knew I'd get yelled at by my folks. I also knew they'd never believe that I couldn't outpace a dog, but Cujo-FloJo back there was a different breed. I picked up the pieces of my destroyed rear wheel, some still covered in dog saliva, and walked the remaining mile or so back home.

I eventually told my mom what happened that day, about how I was chased by a crazy mutt, and her words of solace? "You should have gone faster."

So, Ms. Tippett, I'm sorry your dog got treated like an extra point, but it's about time some dogs in Edgewater got some karmic retribution.

And that South River Colony got some, too. Maybe fighting for your slightly less fortunate neighbors - now less redneck than they used to be, and more young professionals with families, looking for somemthing resembling affordable housing as you sit in your golf course McMansions, to get the public water they DESERVE more than your carpet-bagging selves....that'd be a start.

- me