Great Exudations

As we approach the end of our 4-year tenure in Baltimore, I am reminded of how the storied charms of the so-called Charm City remain so well-hidden. The COVID epidemic hit smaller cities hard and with less bounce-back than larger ones. As such, there is a general malaise that permeates this city in its visuals, the dilapidated infrastructure (well before the Key Bridge collapse), the smell, the crime and drug problem, the cartoonish civic dysfunction, and the overall menacing vibe. A sulfuric miasma of pessimism fills your nostrils, that if not equivalent to 70’s NYC is at least proportionate. It’s loud. It’s dirty. The “squeegee kids” (average age about 40) are a major irritation. And the drivers in the entire region are downright reckless. Dodging the ubiquitous ruts and potholes with people passing on the right (or right shoulder!) at 80mph surely takes years off your life. Things were much better here during my first stint in the 90’s, and my best city memories live there.

Not to say there isn’t still potential here. As the NE Corridor megalopolis gradually coalesces, it’s only a matter of time until Baltimore is rediscovered and surges in value. There are a few downtown cranes to offer a glimmer of hope to speculators. I wouldn’t be surprised if Newsweek calls it the comeback story of the century in 10 years. There are pockets of genuine quality — the odd restaurant, art gallery and shop — but too few to fully redeem it. And people are surlier than I remember, although that might be a universal.

Baltimore, we are pulling for you. But we are also pulling up stakes.

“At short intervals one hears news that the movies are about to be uplifted. Does it ever actually happen? It does not. The movies today, if the accounts of those who frequent them are to be believed, are as bad as they have ever been, and in more than one way they grow worse. Has the threat of censorship purged them of their old frank carnality? Perhaps. But in place of it there is only imbecility.”

— HL mencken in the chicago daily tribune on july 3, 1927

“There are, to be sure, films of a better sort, but how many? Certainly not enough to give any color to the general run. In that general run one finds only fodder for half-wits… The best movie ever heard of, put beside the worst play by Bernard Shaw or the worst novel by Cabell, become sheer idiocy.”

— hl mencken in the chicago daily tribune on july 3, 1927

“The movie business, starting out a generation ago on a shoe-string, quickly plunged, like all new enterprises, into an era of wildcatting… The result was a saturnalia of speculation and roguery. Patents were worth nothing to the wildcatters; copyrights were worth nothing; contracts were worth nothing. To take the word of a movie man, in those gay days, was like believing the oath of a prohibition agent… The trade today, so its leaders boast, is as sound as the steel business, and even has its code of honor…”

— hl mencken in the chicago daily tribune on july 3, 1927

“… But the bookkeeper of an opera house, alas, is seldom competent to select its repertory or to rehearse its caterwaulers. The movies, today, suffer from that profound and inconvenient fact. The men who organized them as an industry now attempt to operate them as an art… And hence their vigorous, paralyzing policing of the authors, scenario writers, directors, and actors who are their slaves. The ideas of these gentry alarm them, as they would a Baptist evangelist or a policeman. They prefer their own.”

— hl mencken in the chicago daily tribune on july 3, 1927

“Soon or late the artist must get his chance. He is halted today by a delusion borrowed from his enemy — that movies are possible only on a grand scale, that they must inflame the morons or have no being at all. This is nonsense… Someday someone with an authentic movie mind will make a cheap and simple picture that will arrest the notice of the civilized minority as it was arrested by the early plays of Eugene O’Neill. When that day comes the movies will split into two halves, just as the theater has split. There will be huge, banal, maudlin, idiotic movies for the mob, and no doubt the present movie magnates will continue to produce them. And there will be movies made by artists, and for people who can read and write.”

— hl mencken in the chicago daily tribune on july 3, 1927

In residency, we had an attending who was fond of saying, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” He was right, of course. What I didn’t know then was that he was quoting Stephen Covey‘s bestselling self-help book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989), which I still haven’t read (hence remaining highly ineffective). And I assume that notion is also true of main drains…

The ampersand has enjoyed a recent renaissance in the foody world. In Denver, you have Stoic & Genuine or Mercantile & Provision. In Chicago, The Girl & the Goat, Maple & Ash, Soul & Smoke, Longman & Eagle, Owen & Engine (closed), etc. These are in the old tradition of English pubs that was referenced in the Beatles song “Cry Baby Cry,” in which John Lennon sang about the “local bird and bee.” The Canadian chain restaurant Elephant & Castle plays on this same theme. And it got me thinking: what are other possible fun and interesting pub names?… Well, for one,

The Boot & Bottle

The Lick & Spittle

The Rack & Ruin

The Gawk & Shove

The Donkey & Snake (yes, a reference to the film “Couples Retreat” from 2009)

The Pluck & Shuck (featuring various poultry and mollusk offerings)

The Pig & Gristle

The Twig & Thistle (yes…)

The Shit & Shinola (The Sit & Shit is a subsidiary of paid, high-end toilets/bidets/showers for the US highway system that is currently in development)

The Puerile & Inappropriate (where you’ll find me, most days)

Other ideas? Taking callers now….

Albums by Fuck Yeah, Dinosaurs! include:

Jurassic Drunks (2018) featuring songs “TerrorDactyl,” “Raptors on Acid” and “These Are the People I Want To See (Eaten By the Dinosaurs)”

65 Million Beers Ago (2020) featuring songs “Jiggly Jello,” “Life, Uh, Finds a Way” and “Bactrim”

Albums by Ferrett include:

Glamdemic (2024) featuring songs “It’s Not Hard To Let Go,” “Hat Trick,” “Drinking Beers” and “Amber Alert”