The Streets of Baltimore

I went out for lunch today and noticed some strange people on the streets of Baltimore.

First, at the corner of Franklin and Cathedral, I walked by a guy whose entire forehead was tattooed. He was not a member of KISS. He was not a Maori warrior. I mean, how weird is that? How many people have their face tattooed? The only ones I can think of are the homeless rummies from BUMFIGHTS. Or maybe ex-cons with prison tats. Or ex-cons who might end up doing bumfights, like Mike Tyson. Maybe this dude was a former sideshow employee of the Jim Rose Circus, though he looked a far cry from the head-to-toe ink of The Enigma.

Crossing Cathedral Street, I noticed one of the area's several Screaming Men. This one was the guy who walks into upcoming traffic and curses at the drivers to "Get out of my way!"

After these two encounters, I paid little attention to the Muslim lady talking loudly to herself and gesticulating wildly on Mulberry Street.

Then, as I made my way down Park Avenue toward the Big Lot store, I heard two punks taunting me. "Hey pretty boy, going to a fashion show?" I don't think they meant it as a compliment and I was ready to shout back, "Sorry fellas, I'm straight!" but thought better of it. (After all, who would believe me? I look like a cross between Carson Kressley and Martina Navratilova!) I tried to reassure myself that it was just a left-handed compliment to my Old Navy pin-striped pants and Burgundy dress shirt. Looking around as I stepped into the safety of the store, I noticed they were wearing The (very unfashionable) Uniform: XXL white undershirt, baggy relaxed-fit jeans, and Timbs. I will have to remind myself that slovenly = masculine as far as street fashion goes.

BALTIMORE, BY GEORGE!

Speaking of the streets of Baltimore, I was listening to the Creative Alliance's Megan Hamilton (pictured left) on WTMD the other day driving in to work and I could have sworn I heard her say something about Gram Parsons learning how to play "The Streets of Baltimore" from Charm City cineaste George "Orpheum Cinema" Figgs. WTMD had just played Nora Jones and The Little Willies version of the song originally penned by Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard, which has been covered by many artists over the years, even (rather unexpectedly) Coldplay. Gram Parson's classic version appeared on his debut solo album, 1973's GP.

A few days after hearing Megan talk about George Figgs, I ran into George (pictured right) at the library. When I asked him about the GF-GP connection, he said it was true. Gram Parsons learned to play "The Streets of Baltimore" by hearing George Figgs' version when both were in Boston in 1971. Color me impressed! Gypsy George is a true bohemian soul who has partaken in every one of the fine arts, from film and theater to painting and music. He even used to be Jesus Christ (one of his many roles in John Waters' films; he played JC in 1970's Multiple Maniacs) Back in the 60s and early 70s, George was a hippie troubadour playing the coffeehouse scene in New York and Boston. Gram, of course, was no stranger to Boston, having briefly attended Harvard University during his International Submarine Band days. It was while he was in Boston that George appeared on WGTB's "Soundstage" and apparently Gram Parsons heard his version of the song and supposedly even came to see him perform it. (George confessed that he actually learned the song by listening to Bobby Bare's version of it!)

Hearing this story made me think back to Dylan's folkie days in New York City. George Figgs was hanging around the same Village scene those days, as well, when everybody knew everybody else and played the same songs. Some played them better than others. Or got credited for versions they learned from someone else. Like Dylan famously pissing off Dave Van Ronk by recording Ronk's version of "House of the Rising Sun" before Van Ronk got around to recording it. Or Dylan likewise recording "Baby Let Me Follow You Down," a song he learned from Eric von Schmidt (who Dylan credited, at least). Add another to this list of famous students trumping their forgotten teachers: George Figgs.

Related Links:

Facial Tattoos article
Ta Moko: Maori Tattoos (Wikipedia)
Baltimore Screamers
George Figgs' IMDB bio
George Figgs' IMDB filmography

Eat to the Meat Beat

Burger King's Manwich

Have you seen Burger King's commercial for its new Texas Double Whopper sandwich? It's called "Manthem" and it's hi-larious, a testoterone-injected anthem that skewers Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" for the Spike TV and Man Show set. Don't get me wrong - I'm one of those guys who eats quiche and "chick food" myself because I'm vain and like to maintain my girlish figure. But I like cleverness in any form, and this is a very clever ad. It's promotes excess and stereotypes and stupidity - the very essence of Supersize Me Americana today. But while it basks in it, like a pig slopping around in a trough, it also laughs at itself. I couldn't help but join in.

Manthem Anthem: Eat Like a Man

Thanks to Steve Brandon for transcribing the lyrics on his great blog, I Wanna eat a Nut of Laerma!:

I am man, hear me roar,
In numbers too big to ignore,
And I'm way too hungry to settle for chick food!
'Cause my stomach's starting to growl,
And I'm going on the prowl,
For a Texas Double Whopper!
"Man that's good!"
Oh, yes, I'm a guy!
I'll admit I've been fed quiche!
Wave tofu bye-bye!
Now it's for Whopper beef I reach.
will eat this meat
(Eat this meat)
'Till my innie turns into an outie!
I am starved!
I am incorrigible!
And I'm eating scarf (?) a burger beef bacon jalapeno good thing down!
Yeah!
I am hungry!
(I am hungry)
I am incorrigible!
I AM MAN!

Watch What You Eat

As Steve Brandon points out, the ad's imagery is "designed solely to titillate men in a very Man Show kind of way, with cheerleaders, karate, flexing, (male) underwear burning, dumptruck pulling, nouvelle cuisine tiny portion size-dissing, and minivan tossing, among other things."

See for yourself. Watch the Texas Double Whopper commercial here on YouTube: Manthem

Blog Bonding

Though I found the Burger King ad funny, I have to agree with group blog Shakespeare's Sister's take on it's underlying message. Like me, they saw this commercial back-to-back with a similarly themed "manly man" T.G.I.F. commercial. Following is the post from the Shakespeare's Sister Blog site (winner, incidentally, of the 2006 Koufax Award for "Best Group Blog"):

Be a Man: Eat Shit!

Last night, I saw these two commercials almost back-to-back…

TGI Friday’s: Four guys sit at a booth together. When their food is delivered, guy #1 stabs his steak and holds it up and growls, “Meat!” Guys #2 and #3 follow in kind. Stab. “Meat!” Guy #4 stabs a piece of broccoli and holds it up, saying, “Vegetable medley!” The other three guys all look at each other, then look at him with an expression that would best be translated as, “What are you—some kind of fag?!” Guy #4 sheepishly drops his broccoli, stabs a sausage and holds it up, saying, “Sausage!” They all cheer triumphantly. Guy #4 is a fag no more. You know, because he’s about to eat some sausage.

Burger King: A guy and a girl sit at a table together. The guy throws down his fork and jumps up into a song-and-dance routine, braying about how he’s not going to eat “chick food” anymore. He sings and dances his way to Burger King to get a ginormous burger, joined by other men who are all doing the same. The refrain of this song is “I am man, hear me roar, I’m incorrigible, I eat meat.” Spray-painted signs declaring “I Am Man” are unfurled off of overpasses. An Asian man in a business suit collapses onto the sidewalk, hungrily tearing into a Double Whopper. “I’ve eaten quiche, but I won’t anymore,” the men’s chorus sings. The men riot and toss a mini-van off a bridge, which lands in the back of a dump truck being towed by an old man clad in leather, who’s being led forward by a woman bearing a burger on a silver tray, just out of his reach. “I am man! I eat meat!”

I love the message here. It’s manly to eat meat—but not just any old meat; specifically the heart-stopping, artery-clogging beef served up by fast food and chain restaurants. It’s girly to eat vegetables and be healthy. Trying to save men from heart disease is just another part of the radical feminist agenda to “feminize” society. Damn women—if it weren’t for the mothers, girlfriends, and wives who try to get them to eat healthy, men would never have to subjected to the horror of broccoli! Damn henpecked hubbies and faggots—real men stuff their faces full of shit to prove how manly they are! Stunning.

Coincidentally, just yesterday I read this about one of the manliest men of them all, Dick “Quick Draw” Cheney:

The extent of his atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries, which, if it extends beyond the heart to the brain, can cause hard-to-recognize changes in cognition) is unknown. Bypass surgery itself has long been associated with subtle changes in neurological function. At age 65, Cheney is easily 30 or more pounds overweight, seems to have slacked off on what was once a more rigorous diet, and appears to suffer from recurrent bouts of gout. At a roundtable lunch with reporters a couple of years ago, two who were present say, he cut his buffalo steak in bite-size pieces the moment it arrived, then proceeded to salt each side of each piece.

Cool. Nothing quite says “manly” like recurring gout.

Related Links:

Burger King's Manthem Video
YouTube Burger King Ad Parody (Disturbing!)
Be a Man: Eat Shit (Shakespeare's Sister - 2006 Koufax Winner for "Best Group Blog")
I Wanna Eat a Nut of Laerma! (Steve Brandon's Blog)

Rich Literature, Sour Grapes

Last night, after falling into a food coma from over-eating a (delicious) Korean seafood pancake from Towson's best-kept secret (and most deceptively-named) Korean restaurant Tokyo Express, I attempted to revive myself by walking down to the St. Pius Community Carnival on York Road with my girlfriend. I hate carnivals, but there was nothing else to do - it was halftime during the Wizards-Cavaliers game and the Wizards hadn't lost, heartbreakingly, in overtime yet. And Amy likes carnivals. Even ones like this, where all the kids on the rides have cell phones and alternate their screams with checking for new messages.

I may not like carnivals, but I do like books and I remembered that years ago I got a great set of medical atrocities and gruesome disease books (profusely illustrated!) there that still shock visitors to Casa Warner to this day, so I made my way into the Used Book room inside the main St. Pius School building, hoping to find some more scores. There wasn't much there, and Amy quickly pointed out that all the books representing the "Religion" section were for one religion: Catholicism (hardly surprisng for a place that has a life-size statue of St. Pius X in the main lobby!). Anyway, while there we overheard the following conversation between a Carnival staff clerk and a book-browsing customer:

Clerk: "Are you looking for anything on particular? What kinds of books do you like?"

Customer: "Oh, I like rich literature. You know, like The DaVinci Code. You know the one they made a movie out of?."

A real bibliophile, I thought. One into rich literature. Like that obscure only to People Living In Caves #1 Bestseller The DaVinci Code. Way to not jump on the bandwagon, populist nitwit lady! I love Middle Class Suburban pretension. No, really.

The lady had Tom Clancy and John Grisham titles in her book pile. The classics, indeed.

"Yeah, that's rich literature!" I thought to myself. "Only if she's going by book sales and author incomes." But then maybe literature is now measured by the same standards as blockbuster movies, which garner more gravitas for their opening weekend ticket sales than whether they're actually good movies.

PARK AND CHIDE

And speaking of Middle Class Suburban Pretention, the next night as we went up to Trader Joe's in Towson, we found out that our favorite parking spot - The Only Free Parking Lot Left in Towson, the municipality known for parking meters and parking tickets, was no longer. I'm talking about the lot behind the Towson Circle building (also known as the the Barnes & Noble building - or the old Hutzler's for any of you relics who can remember that far back), the lot off Virginia Avenue between Shealey Avenue and Joppa Road. I noticed a sign saying "$5.00 Parking" and two attendants standing next to a closed gate. "Is this because of today's Towson Spring Festival?" I asked the parking attendant. "No," he replied, "It's for the new restaurant across the street there."

STATUTORY GRAPE

That would be the new upscale wine bar VIN - which, in true wine snob spirit, is pretentiously pronounced "Vine." (Why not just spell it "VINE"? I guess for the same reason people name mundane little stores "Shoppe" - they think it looks classier.) I mispronouced it, of course, thinking it stood for Vehicle Identification Number, until the attendant corrected me (come to think of it, why isn't there a bar called VIN in Glen Burnie near the Motor Vehicle Administration?). And from the look of the place as we walked by it - everyone inside was middle-aged and dressed like our parents - it lived up to its pretensions. I mean, this is Towson, College Town, with the Recher Theater across the street, with skateboarding punks and idle teens hanging outside the Towson Commons just a block away.

But according to a an article in the Baltimore Business Journal (March 31, 2006), that's the point. Putting a wine bar in the last remaining retail space in Towson Circle is an attempt to create a new restaurant concept in College Town and appeal to the well-heeled Towsonites in their late 20s and 30s, a demographic that might otherwise hang out at The Grand Cru in Belvedere Square or at Kali's Court in Fells Point. In fact, VIN represents a partnership between the former executive chef of Kali's Court and the Cordish Co., a Baltimore developer, who poured close to $3 million into the "new concept" wine bar. The move completes the makeover of the $35 million redevelopment of Towson Circle (begun in 2001 on the site of the former Hutzler's department store) led by Cordish and Heritage Properties Inc. of Towson. Like Cyndi Lauper sang, money changes everything. Freakin' elitist wine snob corporate whores! I want my Free Parking lot back! Even the capitalist board game Monopoly has a Free Parking space!

Of course, as the parking attendant explained, you can park there for free if you're a patron of one of the businesses in the Towson Circle building (Trader Joe's, the gym, the furniture and mattress stores whose names escape me), but you still have to get a receipt from them. That doesn't sound too bad on the surface, but it's still a hassle and it also means that when those businesses aren't open, ya gotta pay. Like if you wanted to go to a show at the Recher Theater or walk across the street to the Towson Mall (which is usually a parking nightmare, much like the lower level parking outside of Trader Joe's), you're screwed.

And why the change? For a new restaurant with attitude, one that wants to corner the market on available parking by ensuring that its exclusive clientele get preferred spots. Well, here's hoping they go under, like so many other ill-conceived Towson restaurants before them (anyone remember the short-lived Gadgets, the Warner Brothers family restaurant in the old Towson Mall?). Wine bars are just the latest "Next Big Thing" libations fad like microbreweries and martini bars in the 90s. Don't be fooled by the buzzwords VIN uses to describe itself like "upscale," "high end" and "posh eatery." This is a place for snobs to hobnob, the elite to meet and greet, and for Towson Toffs to toast and boff.

I knew there were no free lunches in life. And now there is no free parking in Towson. A stupid clinging VIN(E) has taken over my little Garden of Parking Paradise. VIN, where the Snob Set dins and forks over the fins, is a sin. (Apologies to Ogden Nash.) And here's a poke at you, you're gonna choke on it, too. (Apologies to Pete Townshend.)

Related Links:
Vin Comes to Towson Circle (Baltimore Business Journal article)