Beef Jergy

Well another Baltimore institution has closed its doors for good. The last Little Tavern has closed. For those unfamiliar, let me tell you what you’ve been missing. Little Tavern was a wonderful place where you could get a sackful of mini-burger goodness. Others had White Castle, we had Little Tavern. And after tasting both, LT was my clear winner. I remember the excitement back in college when a trip to happy hour at the Bill Bateman’s Restaurant down the street started selling ‘Billy Burgers’. There were obviously influeced with their single pickle and Thousand Island dressing. My friend J and I would get dozens of them. *sigh*.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of going to the Hippodrome in downtown Baltimore to see a show with my daughter. One of her favorite shows was being performed live on stage. Its a CG cartoon called The Backyardigans and honestly isn’t horrible compared to some of the other things I’ve been subjected to on the tv (ie. The Wonder Pets). I was preparing myself for the worst in terms of audience. I knew it was going to be loud and crazy. I knew in some respects the parents would be worse. But I tried to drown them all out and figured I could at least attempt to lose myself in the show. I was curious how they were going to pull it off. But I assumed the actors would look something like this:

I mean how else could they do it? Sure I could think of other ways, but these tickets weren’t cheap and we were in a nice theater. So imagine face when the curtain rose and I saw this:

It was like seeing Nathan Lane in a giant blue penguin suit. My god.

I don’t think there is much more to say than that. But my daughter seemed to enjoy it. It was nice going downtown. The theater is right near an old club I played at a couple of times called The Vault. I was excited to point that fact out to the youngest Jergy but she seemed unimpressed.

Apologies for those who jump on their computers first thing on Friday just to be disappointed because Jergy has forgotten AGAIN to post a new Friday Fun Moment. I’ll try and make this one count.

It was a close competition between this and the Diff’rent Strokes episode were Dudley gets molested. Even though the other might be funnier, I went with this one. If you need a further SCTV fix check out the blantant racism that is The Tim Ishimuni Show.

I just finished reading a book about evil vines. It called The Ruins and was just released as a feature film a couple of weeks ago. I was kinda disappointed when I read the summary of the film and found out they changed around a good bit of the character fates. Oh well.

Anyway the reason I’m excited to be done is that will allow me to get knee deep in The Watchmen. I was never much of a comic guy. Even as a kid I didn’t much care for comic books. I thought they were okay, but I don’t think I ever bought one in my entire life.

My friend J is very much a comic guy. His collection is substantial and he takes great care to keep them in good condition. But what makes him tolerable as opposed to other ‘collectors of things’ is that he honestly enjoys them. He pulls them out and reads them all the time. With more and more cinema turning to the comic book for story ideas, I thought I’d give them another chance. There were comic that dealt with areas and topic beyond the typical superhero and we actually geared towards the adult reader. I always knew this but deep down I guess I always couldn’t shake the comic stigma.

So last time I was visiting my friend, he supplied me with the trade of the Watchmen as well as a few other things he thought I might enjoy. As we were perusing his bookshelf we came across some old books for our youth that made me smile. Books that I would constantly borrow from the library and get immersed in immediately. Books that answered the age old question…….

any children’s book that includes a bottle of brandy and a corpse on the front cover has my attention right away.

I will refer to it always as the party cave because I find the term Man Cave to be, um, icky. So I’ve been trying to find some posters that would fit. The ultimate theme would be movies since a good portion of the basement is devoted to the home theater. However I don’t want it to look like a dorm room. I really like lobby style posters and of course would insist on everything being in frames, but I still feel like my wife isn’t into it. Even though from the moment we moved in to our house all of my posters and such remained packed away and I was told to hold on to them until the basement was done. Once it was done, I was told it would be mine. Damn, I wish I had that on tape.

Anyway, my tastes have changed somewhat. I still would love to see a gallery of my favorite films in frames somewhere in the basement. The stairway has already been hinted at as being a good place for it.

I do like this local artist that does some pretty cool stuff. His name is Robert McClintock. The problem with going with real art is that it is much expensive. As an anniversary gift to each other we purchased his print of the place we got married.

Well the TV is still sitting on the carpet. My fears had come true. My uncle-in-law installed some PVC pipe behind the wall when he was building the basement to allow the running of wires without have to cut holes and fish things through. Well seems I have too many wires. Sigh. Story of my life. So he said he’s going to have to come back another time and cut another hole to run the wires I have. The entire evening wasn’t a complete loss. We did run the speaker wire I got across the ceiling in order to wire the back surround speakers. I am pretty excited to have an actual surround sound system. But it looks like I’m going to have to wait a bit longer to have it how I want it.

I know Rolling Stone magazine isn’t on the ‘cutting edge’ of the music scene anymore. But anytime my fair city is mentioned for something other than murder is exciting.

This is from their Best of Rock 2008 issue.

Best Scene
Baltimore

*Darkroom Productions’ Juan Donovan and Jamal Roberts sparked the city’s rap scene with their Wire-inspired Hamsterdam mixtapes and later licensed music for the show. Deep Flow Studios owner Amotion hosts a rap show on public TV.

*Electronic party-starter Dan Deacon founded the Wham City collective, staging eclectic rock shows, art installations and theater with bizarre names like Shoot Her! A Jurassic Park Play.

*Dream-rock duo Beach House buy organs at local thrift shops.

*Proprietors/residents of Floristree, the unlicensed space where Deacon and others play.

*Double Dagger, one of many edgy acts hatched at the Mary-land Institute College of Art.

*Record mecca Sound Garden hosts B-more acts and has deep punk and metal collections.

*Normal’s is crammed with esoteric books and music; avant-garde artists play the adjacent venue, Red Room.

*Golden West Cafe is the late-night post-show hangout.

*Headbangers at Talking Head, named after native son David Byrne’s band (Frank Zappa and Tori Amos are also locals).

Here is a bunch of ‘unreleased’ Atari games.

The list did make me chuckle.

Ok I guess thats enough mourning for Don Geronimo.

Hello friends. Sorry I’ve been gone for longer than anticipated. Things have picked up a bit at work. We have made one more giant step towards basement completion and one more step toward owning a house entirely furnished by Ikea.

But, its comfortable and affordable. Plus the entire fabric can be removed and machine washed. Hooray. (Damn, I’m old)

And tonight I finally hang my new TV on the wall. Lets cross the fingers to make sure it all goes as planned. hope to have pictures up soon.

Other than that its a pretty short list:

*My daughter returned from a weekend trip to LA with my mother-in-law…..alive. So I guess I can’t ask more than that

*I just started playing Rock Band. Brilliant.

*I’m a little more than 3/4 of the way through reading ‘The Ruins’. Its about evil vines. Creepy.

I just read some very sad news.

Don Geronimo Retires

They’ve been talking about for some time now and the time has come…

Meanwhile, Don will return on Friday, April 11 to host a farewell show and thank his legions of listeners for their continued support over the years.

If you are from the Baltimore/D.C. area you should be familiar with Don and Mike. It is a show I listened to on the drive home from work many times and will miss greatly. There was something about this show that always kept me coming back for more. Maybe Opie and Anthony were funnier, maybe you were more of a Stern fan or even Rush Limbaugh. But what D&M had were locale. They had a decent syndication across the country but they always remained DC Metro guys. In the end thats may have hurt them, but for me it was what kept me listening.

There has been talk of their retirement for years. It was known their contract was up in September of ‘08 and that Don may walk away. After a personal tragedy Don rethought it and moved his retirement up to the end of May and announced it as such earlier this year.

Then out of nowhere rumors spread of the show being over sooner rather than later. They were supposed to return from Spring Break last week, and when “Best ofs” ran instead the rumors began. Today it was confirmed. Don is retiring now and the final show will be Friday.

There is a bit of anger here. And it is directed towards 105.7 WHFS who broadcasts the Don and Mike Show (or DID broadcast it). They must have known about this so they had a new lineup all set to start. However they chose to start it TODAY and not next week. So I will not get to listen to their final show on my ride home on Friday. What a nice send-off. Jerks.

UPDATE: Confirmed: Balto’s 105.7 Will Run Geronimo Finale – 4/7 – CBS Radio’s suits in Baltimore will pre-empt Ed Norris in his new afternoon drive slot on Friday to air the final live Don and Mike show, via WHFS (105.7 FM). Norris is scheduled to move from middays to afternoons on Wednesday. “We are planning to run the final Don and Mike show on Friday as our way of saying ‘thank you’ to a true radio icon, Don Geronimo,” says CBS Radio’s Baltimore Vice President Of Programming Dave LaBrozzi in a Monday afternoon e-mail to a listener. DCRTV reported last week that Don Geronimo moved up his retirement date from late May to 4/11. The show, which is based at the DC area’s WJFK-FM (106.7), is running classic bits today through Thursday…..