Franz West Exhibit at the BMA

Natalie and I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art to see the Franz West Exhibit. It's a big deal for the museum. I liked it, Natalie hated it (too weird and ugly). My favorite piece was the room light that hung from the ceiling. It was a black, hollow, amoeba-shaped thing with red fluorescent lights mounted inside it. I liked his collages too. Natalie did like the quilts that are part of the museum's usual display. I'll have to find a museum that specializes in that sort of thing for her. There's a textile museum in DC. Maybe we'll check that out.

Click on the links below for more on the exhibit.

To Build A House You Start With The Roof (City Paper)
The Thing Itself (City Paper)

Natalie and "Dorit"

Me with "The Swimmer"

Donald Fagen Defends Steely Dan To Friends

Steely Dan Does Not Suck!

The Hulk Smash

Got a couple of movies out this week I was really looking forward to seeing - The Incredible Hulk and Hellboy II.

The Incredible Hulk - borderline stinker. I thought the other Hulk movie, even with it's weak ending, was much better. When I see a super hero movie, what I'm really interested in is their personal relationships, especially the romantic ones. Give me a break.


Hellboy II - a good one. Not as good as the first one, but still fun. I liked the gas guy.

The Timmyhead Rating System

A Stinker

Borderline Stinker

Pretty Good

Good

Most Excellent

Movie Night - The November Chronicles

We hit the library for some movies Monday.

The Invasion was OK, Matthew liked it. As usual, the ending was weak, sappy even. If you want to see a great version of this story, check out "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" from 1978 or the original from the greatest year ever - 1956! Nobody ever mentions the 3rd of the 4 versions of this same story - Body Snatchers from 1993. That version is set on an Army base and stars Jennifer Tilly. That's all I remember about it.



The Strangers - Now this is a good one. Matthew, Tommy and I really liked it a lot. It's pretty gruesome but more terror than torture. The sound really adds to the creepiness. It has a good ending too, a rarity these days.

Weekend at the Museums (And A Bar)

Natalie and I got ourselves some culture this weekend.

Saturday we went to the Walters Art Museum to check out the jewelry exhibit, "Bedazzled". Cool stuff. The pictures you see of the jewelry don't do it justice. You have to see it in person. Later on, we went out Mom and Dad's for Mike's 51st birthday party. Even Tommy and Matthew blessed us with their presence.

Sunday we headed downtown to the open house at the American Visionary Arts Museum. A weird thing happened on the way there. We got a late start, so it was a little bit before 1:00 PM by the time we got down to Baltimore and St.Paul street. The Ravens were in town and the pre-game show was on the radio. The announcer said there was going to be a fly-by of 4 F-10s in a few minutes and just as he said that, they came roaring across the Inner Harbor, heading towards the stadium. The current exhibit at the museum is "The Marriage of Art, Science and Philosophy". We should have stopped in the sculpture barn for the free food as soon as we got there. By the time we got back there, after going through the main building, most of the food was gone. We did get a bagel and a bottled water. They have a great gift shop there with all kinds of unusual stuff. It's like a dollar store on acid. After the museum, we stopped at a bar called "Little Havana". We really liked it. It's a Fells Point kind of place, right on the harbor. The beer selection was good and the food was great. We split a Cuban Sandwich and an order of chimmy changas. Even the side dishes were good. Mine came with plantains and rice with beans. We ate every crumb.

Click on the picture of the pencils carvings to go to a City Paper article on the AVAM's show "The Marriage of Art, Science and Philosophy".



Below is a slide show of some of the jewelry in the Walter's Bedazzled show.

God Bless Them

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

Streetcar Museum and Chelsea's 1st Birthday

Busy weekend...

Saturday, Natalie and I drove up to Taneytown with Leslie and Carol for Chelsea's 1st birthday party. Chelsea is Natalie's grandniece, Melissa's daughter. The party was at Pam's house. It was fun, we had a good time. On the way back we stopped at Baugher's Restaurant to get some local apples. First we stopped at Baugher's Orchard but the place was packed. I think they were having a chili cook-off. There was a live band and all kinds of stuff going on but we couldn't find a place to park, so we left and stopped at the restaurant closer to Baltimore. It's a combination restaurant/produce stand. We bought a big pumpkin and a bunch of different kinds of apples - Red & Golden Delicious, Staymans, Empire, Jonagold, Liberty, Ida Red, Mutsu, an old-style kind of Golden Delicious and others. We got 10 pounds all together and they won't last a week. They were great.

Sunday there was free admission to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, part of Free Fall Baltimore. I went by myself, Natalie wasn't interested and Tommy and Matthew are too cool for everything. I really liked it. I rode on two streetcars but missed riding the open car which looked really cool. Oddly enough, a lot of the them had destination signs that said Overlea and Gardenville. They must have known I was coming. The museum is on Falls Road, between Pennsylvania Station and Hampden and is right across the street from the Jones Falls. After I checked out the main museum building and rode the streetcars, I walked north on Falls Road to one of the museums workshops, past a huge cable car pulley. Baltimore once had cable cars, so did a lot of cities, but only one city still has them - San Francisco. By the side of the workshop was a burned-out railroad car. I crossed the street and walked back to the museum on the Jones Falls Bike path. It was nice until I hit a stretch of water with a heavy smell of raw sewage. Ah, that's the Baltimore I know.


Photos from the Baltimore Streetcar Museum Website and the Web.

Movie Night

Matthew and I watched a couple of movies tonight, Number 23 anad Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. Number 23 was good. I don't know why I've put off seeing it, I probably listened to what some idiot critic said. AVP Requiem was good too, better than I thought it would be. The ending was weak, a complaint I have about a lot of movies, but it started off with a bang, arms getting melted off and all. I wonder if there's an uncut version.

Yard Sale A Go-Go '08

We've been hitting yard sales over the last few Saturdays. If I still had a digital camera, I would have taken pictures of all the crap - I mean good stuff, we got. Last Saturday ,Natalie, Matthew and I hit a few in the immediate neighborhood. We also went to a flea market at Bel-Garden BiRite. I bought:

• A Sony Boom Box - $1.00 ( A little dual cassette in very good condition. Sound is just OK but it's alright as a replacement for the one we had in the bedroom that broke).
  
• 2-Quart Rival Crockpot, new in box, never used - $3.00
• A carafe that matches the one we have (Made In West Germany) - $1.00
• Package of Card Stock - $4.00
• Ice Cream Scoop - Free

The weekend of Tom's Birthday we went to flea markets at Putty Hill and St.John's Church. I bought:

• DVDs American Psycho and Independence Day - $3.00
  
• VHS tapes - Species 1 & 2, Lord of Illusion - .50 each
  
• CDs - Oasis "What's The Story Morning Glory" and Butthole Surfers "Electric Larryland" - $1.00 each
  
• Scrapbooking book and 1/2 dozen Scrapbooking Magazines - .50
  
• Package of 8x8 Scrapbooking paper with 350 punch outs - $3.00
  
• Box of watercolor paint
• Green Orioles Hat

I actually made out pretty good at yard sales and flea markets this year. I didn't get a lot of useless stuff. Some of the best bargains:

• A brand new Epson Scanner, unopened, for $2.00
• An old style Mr.Coffee that was obviously hardly used, for .50 (1/2 price off it's $1 sticker)
• A computer tool kit that was missing a part that I already had - $1.00
  
• A whole brown paper bag of stuff at a church flea market - $1.00
• An adjustable arm lamp with a magnifying lens - $1.00
  
• Lots of other stuff that I can't remember offhand (And that's not counting what Natalie and Matthew bought).
  

Hampdenfest 2008

Natalie and I went to Hampdenfest today. If you like live music, this is the street fair for you. There are 3 stages of bands playing all day. If you don't like the band on one stage, you can walk a 1/2 block over to the next one and check out that band. We got there just as the festiveal was starting, around 11:00 AM. I wanted to see the Jennifers and they were scheduled to start at 11:00 but they were late and didn't start till almost noon. They didn't play anything from the CD I have, Colours From The Future, but they were still great. I don't know if they were playing new stuff or what.

The rest of the fair was fun. Typical stuff - Art & Crafts stands, Community Action stands, Food stands. One thing we really like is the good beer, Brewer's Art Resurrection Ale and Beacon Ale for $4.00 a cup, pretty reasonable for a festival. The Resurrection Ale is better. Hampden is an interesting place with a lot of characters. While I was sitting on a wall watching the Jennifers, there were a bunch of kids skateboarding on the 7-11 parking lot right behind me and nobody said boo to them. Skateboarding to live music - not bad. There's sex shop off the avenue, Sugar, and they had some interesting people walking through the crowd. I liked the girl in the skimpy outfit on stilts. I guess somewhere in the world that's somebody's fantasy.

Later on that afternoon, we saw Susan Alcorn and The Tritons play. Susan Alcorn did a solo act. She plays pedal steel guitar and I really enjoyed it but Natalie thought it was a little mellow and laid back for a place like that. The Tritons are a surf music band and they were really good. We left around 3:00.
Photo of The Tritons by Chrissy Abbott. Photo of The Jennifers by Tim Heaney.

Photobooths

Click the picture below to read an article in The Smithsonian Magazine about the book "American Photobooth".

1,000,000 Records

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

It's True!

I'm Jimmy Buffet! Click my picture below to learn the horrible truth.

Artscape Collage

Missed It By That Much

Big night at the Bengies. Mike, Matthew, Jeff, Jeremy, Dan, Jim, Mary, Jayden and I went to see "Kung Fu Panda", "Batman: The Dark Knight", and "Get Smart". The place was packed, they even had people in the last row by the entrance. The movies were OK. Kung Fu Panda was funnier than I thought it would be. Batman started out good but lost steam towards the end but Heath Ledger was great as the Joker. Get Smart was pretty funny. I spotted a couple of actors from the original series in cameo roles.

Artscape 2008

Natalie and I went to went to Artscape twice this weekend. Friday night we got there late, but managed to catch some of Joan Jett and Roberta Flack. We heard Joan Jett do about six or seven songs and she was really good. Even Natalie liked her. She did "I Love Rock and Roll", "I Hate Myself for Loving You", "Crimson and Clover", the theme song from "That Girl", "Naked" and a couple of others before we left to go see Roberta Flack.


Roberta Flack played on the main stage, which is at the bottom of a hill. It was packed. We ended up standing inside a metal sculpture just trying to catch a glimpse of her. Natalie was disappointed. It sounded like light jazz to me. We wondered around checking out some of the booths till the place started closing up and then went home. If you want to avoid the crowds, Friday afternoon would be a good time to go to Artscape.

Saturday we got there about 12:30. Somebody was playing acoustic guitar on the main stage and we went to check it out. A couple were getting married there. Don't know what that was all about - did they originally meet at Artscape or what? We caught the parade of art cars as they drove down Mount Royal Avenue. The art cars are always cool. We saw a fashion show put on by the Fabulous Four. I saw that on the program and thought it was a Beatles tribute band. Natalie and I both liked it -there was even a Janet Jackson moment. Heading over towards Charles Street, we stopped to watch some demonstrations of pottery and jewelry making, calligraphy, drum making and, my personal favorite, belly dancing.


It was really hot on Saturday. By 3:00 o'clock we were both already wiped out. Luckily it was time for the BSO's free concert in air-conditioned Meyerhoff Symphony hall. That was a real nice break from the heat. The conductor was BSO/Peabody Conducting Fellow, Joseph Young. Here's a partial set list of what they played:

• Mozart - Marriage Of Figaro Overture
• Mendelssohn
• Rossini - Barber of Seville Overture
• Beethoven
• Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight Of The Bumble Bee

After the BSO concert, we headed back to Charles Street. This is the new section of Artscape. There was a Midway set up on the bridge over I-83, filled with all kinds of weird stuff, like a Freak Show and an Alien Space ship. The Freak Show was just Barbie Dolls and stuff like that but it still got to people. A couple of bands played, mostly just guitar and drums. And lots of audience participation. The Sensorama was creepy - little black boxes you stuck you hand into. The one full of warm water made me cringe for some reason. The Charles Theater didn't seem to be involved with Artscape at all, which was disappointing. I thought they'd take the place of "Shorts In A Tent" from last years show. We didn't make it the XXX show on North Avenue. By this time we had both had it, so we headed south on Charles Street to Brewer's Art for some liquid refreshment. We planned on going back on Sunday but since it was going to be another 95 degree day, we decided to go out Mom & Dads for a swim instead.

Click for Photobucket Album Of Artscape 2008 Photos

Baltimore Municipal Band Concert

Natalie and I went to see the Baltimore Municipal Band at Burdick park tonight. It was great, as usual. They always play some interesting stuff. I could do without the sing-along portion of the show but I guess that must be a tradition. They had some technical problems with the PA that pretty much drowned out the band while they were playing "West Side Story" but they finally got things sorted out and finished the show, although it was shortened. This is one of two concerts by the band this year. They used to do a lot more than that. The other one is at Northside Baptist Church, over where we used to live on Cedarcroft. Mitchell and Cheryl got married there.

Set List:

• Pride of Baltimore March (Written by the Band Director, George Gaylor)
• Holst "Music for Band In F"
• West Side Story
• Three Italian Songs - La Strada, Venice in Summer, Anna Macora (Sung by Joe DiFranco)
• Respighi's Pines of Rome "Pines of the Apian Way"
• From Camelot "If ever I would Leave You" (Sung by Joe DiFranco)
• Souza "Hands Across The Sea"
• Plus the sing-along songs and of course, God Bless America

Orioles vs. Kansas City Royals

Fifteen of us packed into two cars today and went down to Camden Yards to see the Orioles play the Kansas City Royals. They won, 7 - 5. Jean and her crew were up from North Carolina and they wanted to see a game while they were here. Dad treated everybody to the tickets and even went to the game himself. We all got George Sherrill t-shirts except Alex and his cousin - you had to be fifteen to get one. We almost lost a few people after the game was over. Jocelyn was missing until somebody spotted her down at the Orioles dugout trying to talk to Brian Roberts (or was it Nick Markakis?). Little Mitchell also disappeared but we found him back at the cars on the other side of Raven's stadium.

Game pictures courtesy of The Sunpapers







WMAR Game Summary

Hernandez, O's top Royals
Ramon Hernandez finished 2-for-4 with two runs batted in, as the Baltimore Orioles held on to beat Kansas City, 7-5, in the second contest of a four-game series with the Royals.

Radhames Liz (3-0) picked up the win after giving up three runs on seven hits in six innings of work for Baltimore, which snapped a two-game slide. The Orioles have won five of Liz's six outings since he was called up in early June.

"I thought Liz probably had the best command since he's been with us," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said. "I thought he showed his breaking pitch and his changeup early in the game, which was a real plus for him. I thought he was wobbling there in the fifth. In the sixth I think he was up against the ropes and he was done."

Aubrey Huff went 2-for-4, while Brian Roberts hit a solo homer for the Orioles. Brandon Fahey had a double and RBI in place of shortstop Alex Cintron, who was placed on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday with a strained left hamstring. Cintron suffered the injury in Monday's matchup.

Luke Hochevar (5-6) gave up six runs on six hits in six frames to take the loss, his first since a May 29 outing against Minnesota. Kansas City had won six consecutive games on the road, but has now lost three of four overall.

"He's still got to command the bounding ground ball to right field and the line drive to left," Royals manager Trey Hillman said. "He has to locate better, no doubt."

Alex Gordon finished with a double and homer, while Mark Teahen also homered and drove in two to power Kansas City's offense.

The Orioles led by one entering the home third, and used a two-out rally to surge ahead. Nick Markakis led off with a single, and after a Huff ground out, Kevin Millar reached base. Luke Scott then grounded into a fielder's choice and Melvin Mora walked to load the bases with two down.

Hernandez then stroked a single to left to drive in Markakis and Scott, and on the throw Mora and Hernandez advanced to scoring position. An Adam Jones single to right drove them in, putting Baltimore up 6-1.

Teahen's leadoff shot to center in the fifth got one run back for the Royals, and his sacrifice fly in the sixth brought Gordon home to bring the club within 6-3.

Roberts' leadoff homer in the seventh, off Jimmy Gobble, restored Baltimore's four-run lead. The Royals, though, staged a potential ninth-inning comeback.

Dennis Sarfate began the inning for the Orioles and walked Ross Gload before getting Miguel Olivo to fly out. Then Joey Gathright walked, bringing Sarfate's stay to a close as George Sherrill entered.

Sherrill had blown two saves in a row, including Monday's game against the Royals. He initially got Mike Aviles to ground out, but that advanced the runners to scoring position. Mark Grudzielanek's single to right plated Gload and Gathright to bring Kansas City within two.

But Sherrill struck out Gordon to end the game, and nail down his 27th save in the process.

"I would have preferred to stay away from Sherrill. I said earlier if it was a save situation I wouldn't be reluctant to put him in," Trembley said. "If you got a guy down there that's a closer on this team and it's a save situation, he's going to get him."

Kansas City jumped out to the early lead when Gordon crushed a two-out solo homer to right in the first inning. Huff's RBI single in the home half, followed by Fahey's RBI double in the second put Baltimore on top, 2-1.

Game Notes

To replace Cintron on the roster, Baltimore selected the contract of shortstop Freddie Bynum from Triple-A Norfolk. Tuesday, the Orioles also transferred reliever Danys Baez from the 15-day disabled list to the 60-day DL in order to make room for Bynum on the 40-man roster. Baez is still recovering from elbow surgery performed last September...The Royals left seven runners on base, while Baltimore stranded four...The Orioles' Daniel Cabrera (5-4) and the Royals' Gil Meche (6-8) are expected to start Wednesday's game.

Prom Night

Matthew Graduates From Parkville Middle School

Matthew graduated from Parkville Middle School today. We could only get two tickets for the ceremony so only Natalie and I went. It was nice. We sat in the first row up in the balcony. Matthew was over to our right, Nelson and Jeremy were sitting right in front of us. And since Matthew was graduating from something it was incredibley hot - in the upper 90's, just like when he graduated from Elmwood. We went to Kobe's Japanese Steak House for dinner. The food was really good and so was the show. I really liked the onion ring volcano. Matthew also got Halo 3 for his graduation.

Poolside Fun

I'm Sorry

Natalie Turns 50!

We had a 50th birthday party for Natalie and her twin sister Leslie today. I think everybody had a good time, once they got here. The weather was terrible - thunderstorms, tornado watches. A lot of people lost power. We were actually lucky because it stopped raining while the party was going on and started again when it was over. I made hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and we got a bushel of crabs from Waterman's Pride up on Belair Rd. The crabs were really good. Natalie's sister Carol brought the birthday cake.

Click here for 50th Birthday Party Photos Online

Bengies - First Show Of 2008

Matthew, Jeremy and I went to our first show of the year at the Bengies today. The line-up was Speed Racer, Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull and Iron Man. Pretty action-packed, much better than what they had for the all-night show last week. Veggie Tales? Give me a break! And this was an all-night show too, we didn't get in the car to leave until 3:50.
All three movie were good but my favorite was Speed Racer. Matthew said something about people who have seizures should not watch this movie and he was right. Lots of quick cuts and flashing colors. Iron Man was good too. The new Indiana Jones was the weakest of the bunch and that ending - they all lived happily ever after - was really sappy.

Natalie's Mom