If yer thinkin' o goin' ta Baltymore this weekend...Aargh...

From Moorea Marketing...

Unfortunately I have to attend a grand opening party for the new Gordon Biersch in Rockville for my gig with the Mid Atlantic Brewing News...otherwise this sounds like a blast...

Embrace Your Inner Pirate

Annual Fells Point Privateer Day and Pyrate Invasion

Baltimore, MD – April 25, 2007 – The third annual Privateer Day and Baltimore Pyrate Invasion will be taking over the streets and taverns of Fells Point in Baltimore on April 28, 2007 brought to you by Fells Point Development Corp. and Clipper City Brewing Company. Privateer Day will feature family-oriented activities and will occur from 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. in Broadway Square.

Visitors are encouraged to dress as a privateer, pirate, sailor, wench, merchant, homemaker, or whoever they think they would have been 200 years ago to participate in the pirate costume contest beginning at 5:00 p.m. Privateer Day will feature family fun for the young and the young at heart including live music, demonstrations, walking tours, story telling, treasure hunts, face painting, and Pirate Cruises ($15.00) aboard Clipper City Tall Ship at 1:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.

Hundreds of pirates will invade Fells Point at 4:30 p.m. at Broadway Pier with guns and cannons blazing leading up to a staged sword fight sequence. The official Pyrate Invasion Pub-Crawl ($5.00 registration fee) will occur from 6:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. featuring drink and food specials at participating bars including Kooper’s Tavern, Slainte, The Admirals Cup, John Steven’s Ltd., Ale Mary’s, Woody’s Rum Shack, Shuckers, Max’s, Lulu’s, Duda’s, Dog House Bar (aboard the Clipper City Tall Ship), Cat’s Eye Pub, Waterfront Hotel, Whistling Oyster, Greene Turtle and Fletcher’s. There will also be a Pyrate Party Cruise later that night (9:00 p.m. - midnight) aboard Clipper City. Tickets are $20.00 or $35.00 including beer & rum punch for the 3-hour cruise.

Be sure to pre-register for the Pub-Crawl and Clipper City Cruises at BaltimorePyrateInvasion.com or ClipperCity.com. Space is limited, so sign up quick! So get your best pirate costume out of your closet and join the invasion if you dare, we guarantee you’ll get hooked!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you MOM

This weekend My Organic Market in the Westview Promenade will be holding a grand opening celebration.

Also, zombie fans should call the Hagerstown 10 for details on whether or not the locally shot Deadlands will continue through next week.

This weekend there will also be a run in Frederick to benefit the women of the Congo. I was intending to take part, but was getting involved way too late. Rather than a registration fee, they are asking participants to raise money through pledges, ala the March of Dimes Walk-a-Thon. I will post more details regarding this cause tonight.

Caught my first Keys game last night with the family - a few quick things...

The field looks to be in better shape than I have seen it in the three previous years I have been here. This is the first season that they are offering Barley & Hops beers at the stadium in addition to the traditional Brewer's alley offerings. And this year's Maryland Brewer's Festival will be held there on Mother's Day weekend. If you haven't been (for a game, or to the festival), I highly recommend the experience.

Shake baby, shake baby 1, 2, 3, 4...

I know that in Towson the Bel-Loc Diner's milk shakes were named Best of Baltimore by the Baltimore City Paper in 2005, but you don't have to travel that far for a pretty damn good shake (and I'm not talking about Ben & Jerry's or Coldstone). For a proper shake that's going to take you back to when you were young, try the shakes served over at Beef n' Buns in Paradise on East Patrick Street. Not only will it remind most anybody over 30 of the shakes they got when young and the old soda fountains could still be found in your local pharmacy (I know they're still out there, but it seems that it's a rarity at this point), but the large tattooed man who took my order knew the proper names of my favorite type of shake - a black and white, also called an old fashioned.

The black and white is a vanilla shake with chocolate syrup and is very refreshing on a hot summer's day. Also, I highly recommend the pulled pork sandwich - it's excellent.

If you're looking for the full lunch counter in a pharmacy experience, head on up to Patterson's Drug Store located at 134 South Queen Street in Martinsburg, WV. They don't necessarily remember the old terms (which I suspect may even be regional), but it is a pure slice of nostalgia for anyone that used to eat at places like this when they were young.

Martinsburg is less than an hour away, is home to Mountaineer Brewing (which is owned by Barley & Hops) which I believe holds tours, and a couple of small shops and restaurants to pass the time in. If you do head up that way, keep in mind that the town is working on revitalization efforts and does not currently offer a whole lot for a day trip, but is within an easy 20 to 25 minute drive to Hagerstown and Shepherdstown.

Imponderable for the week...

Riddle me this....

If the Lone Ranger was indeed "lone," defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as follows; • adjective 1 having no companions; solitary. 2 lacking the support of others: a lone voice. 3 literary unfrequented and remote - then how do you explain the sidekick? Imaginary friend, maybe?

Discuss...

Brraaaaiiiinsssss....

Are you a zombie fan?

Have you spent your life wondering, "why have all the great zombie films taken place in Pittsburgh, and the mid-west"? (To which I would normally answer, "have you been there?" But I'm going someplace with this).

Have you wondered why it seems no one has shot a zombie film in the shadow of our nation's capitol? Why it hasn't been done in the shadow of the part-time homes of our nation's most powerful politicians (make your own connections)?

Well wonder no more. Head up to Hagerstown and catch Deadlands: The Rising this weekend at the Hagerstown 10. The locally shot Deadlands was made by Gaithersburg based Gary Ugarek for $11,000.00. According to the movie's Web site -

The first showing begins at 6:00pm Friday April 20th 2007, and shows continue at 8:30pm and 11:00pm as well.

Gary will be at the theater for the 8:30 and 11:00 shows to introduce the film and explain how this zombie splatter fest was made ona meager $11,000.00 US Dollars.

Sounds like a helluva a time for the low-budget horror fan.

Remember this Sunday is Earth Day, so keep an eye out for your local festivals, and a couple of soon to happen items coming in May - The Frederick Marathon, The Shepherdstown Film Festival, the 2007 Maryland Brewer's Festival (at Harry Grove Stadium).

This weekend our hometown Keys are just down the road playing the Potomac Nationals in Northern Virginia and begin a seven game homestand on Monday that starts with the Red Sox affiliate Wilmington Blue Rocks for four games followed by three against the Nationals.

Up in Hagerstown the Mets affiliate Suns wrap up a home series tonight against the Cleveland Indian affiliate Lake County Captains starting at 6:35 tonight.

Welcome to my nightmare....

Grindhouse effective homage appeals to limited tastes

I am, admittedly, a big fan of horror films. I have a thing for zombie and vampire films in particular, but have never been a big fan of the films like Saw, The Last House on the Left, and Hostel. I understand the point of the whole man-doing-horrible-things-to-man horror thing, but never saw the need for it...it's why I have the world news. That's not to say I won't watch them, I just don't see them as being on par with the greats of the genre - The Shining, Alien, The Exorcist, Psycho...(yes, I am a film snob).

I like the films that build up tension to a proper scare, prefer them to the ones that rely on the shock value of blood and guts to evoke a feeling of horror and revulsion - it strikes me as a lazy way of crafting a horror film. In recent years I have been impressed by the remake of Dawn of the Dead, and films like The Ring, and 28 Days Later.

This was something different though from all of the above (though it certainly had elements of much of the above), and it piqued my curiosity.

The joint production of Grindhouse, the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature that pays homage to the low-budget B-horror films of the 1970's was a mixed bag. Tarantino and Rodriguez were hell-bent on re-creating the 1970's drive-in experience by emulating the low-budget horror films, complete with trailers of non-existent films (although Rodriguez has decided to create one of the films), that populated those road-side theaters.

The films are what they are - Rodriguez has created a pseudo-zombie film which goes a bit more over the top at times than it needed to, but overall Planet Terror is an entertaining piece of film-making. Tarantino, on the other hand, has given us a snoozefest in Death Proof where the most likable character is Kurt Russell's homicidal maniac.

Like the same films of the 70's, little is truly scary. Planet Terror does provide some tension as well as a few laughs, as do the previews for Machete, and Werewolf Women of the SS. Death Proof offers a lot of dialog that is intended to allow the viewer to bond with the film's victims but only succeeds in making the viewer wonder how long it's going to take for the women to die.

Death Proof regularly improves when Kurt Russell is on the screen (when's the last time you heard that about a Kurt Russell movie?), and devolves into a borefest when he's off of it.

While they did an effective job of creating the experience, complete with "lost reels," footage that "melts in the heat of the projector," and scratches on the film, they have also created films that have an inherent flaw.

With a large cast that includes Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell, Rose MaGowan, and Rosario Dawson, Grindhouse lists a $50 million production budget (not including marketing). This is fairly steep for a sub-genre where a movie that does well makes between $20 million and $40 million. In spite of a history of that, producer Harvey Weinstein still expected (on the basis of the names involved, I assume) to see a first weekend return in the mid 20's rather than the $12 million Easter weekend opening realized by the movie.

Yes, I did enjoy the first of the two films - but I think the appeal here is limited and I'm surprised that a movie exec like Weinstein hasn't figured that out.

C'mon, Baby don't you wanna go...

Sorry, last week was a busy week in the Smith household. Easter weekend was spent at the parents house in Williamsburg, VA - typically an increasingly more difficult weekend trip as traffic woes worsen between Washington and Richmond (yet for some reason traffic was reasonably light - especially considering it was a holiday weekend). The last half of the week was spent on a business trip to Chicago (for you blues fans out there, yes the title of this entry is a reference to the old Robert Johnson song "Sweet Home Chicago" covered so well by the Blues Brothers).

Chicago was rainy, snowy and cold for two of the three days we (my wife and I) were there and we were largely chained to the neighborhood in which the convention which took place in a neighborhood I believe is called the Near North. We made it into The Loop a couple of times, but never got to see the neighborhoods that make Chicago...well...Chicago.

The area in which we were stuck, a stretch called The Magnificent Mile, was reminiscent of mid-town Manhattan along 5th Avenue. While it was nice to get into a big city again, and to go someplace I hadn't been, I really prefer to go to someplace that's unfamiliar - and this neighborhood felt all too familiar to me (although I would recommend that anyone going to Chicago venture to the Nordstrom's on the Magnificent mile for a visit to Vosges Haut Chocolates - some of the best chocolate I have ever had).

We did see the IAC, an excellent art museum which most people my age might have initially been exposed to in the movie Ferris Beuller's Day Off, and got some good wandering in on the one sunny day which happened to be the day we departed. On that final day we had lunch at Harry Caray's, right next to the Chicago House of Blues. It was one of the two truly excellent meals that we had - if you're heading that way, I recommend the house specialty; Chicken Vesuvio (warning, it is cooked in peanut oil for those of you with severe allergies). The chicken Marsala is also excellent.

The other place we ate that was good...the only chain, though we weren't previously familiar with it, was an Italian restaurant called Buca di Beppo. The food was very good (and I hold a pretty high standard on my Italian food - my mother's family is Italian...grandfather came through Ellis Island) and served family style. The platters seem expensive until you realize that the $17.00 dish you're ordering is intended to feed two. I recommend the gnocchi (small potato dumplings/pasta).

Overall I was disappointed, however, I do realize I was there on limited time and covered only a very limited area. I failed to make it to Wrigley Field as I had hoped, and didn't make it to any of the Blues bars/clubs. I do plan to go back, possibly next year for the annual Chicago Blues Festival and get more into the neighborhoods that give Chicago its sense of self.

The photos you see here were taken by my wife, Kelly.

Coming soon, my review of Grindhouse...