Baltimore Media Roundup 4/28: Rainy Day Music

"i bet if we locked a bunch of monkeys in a room, chained to typewriters, we could come up with better crap than this..."

I'm confused. Why was this article in the Sun today? I've read it, and re-read it, and not only is it incomplete, but what's the time peg? Let me explain.

This article, which is about 3,000 words at my best guestimate, is a sort of L.A. Confidential-meets-Catch Me If You Can- style detective chase story about a con woman named Cynthia McKay who has stolen some un-tallied, but no doubt huge amount of money from a bunch of local non-profits, churches, and individuals. She's a creepy-looking, "seductive," identity thief. But according to the article, most of it happened in 2002/2003. Then, weirdly, I looked at the photo slideshow online, and it said something about McKay's arrest, along with her son, for the murder, in February 2006, of some guy who isn't even mentioned in the article.

A good read, but what's the deal? I feel like at least a page of explanation, where they finally explain to me why I'm reading an article about a con-woman who was caught in 2003, and who is suspected to have murdered her cop husband, 5 years later, except that maybe a year ago she was accused of another murder. And I think sun.com removed the comments thread on the article, making things even more unclear.

The other day, City Paper got all snarky on the Examiner, calling them out for just having discovered the internet, like, a few days ago. And they're right, the Ex is basically running for the brewpub-patronizing, Macbook-owning, yuppy-populated hills ever since b started chewing into its advertising portfolio (which was, admittedly, just a response to when the Ex started chewing into the Sun's advertising portfolio), but they didn't discuss the content of the blogs at all.

So we decided to take a look at a few of the new blogs and see what's to be seen.

* Cara Ober's take on art in the city is more like a listing, with a few photos, of art-related events. Not much substance yet, but she's a pretty accomplished writer, so I'm not worried about it. She's also kinda cute, from the look of her pic.
* Some guy called Mark Burlet, who claims to be a "drunken intellectual" and who allegedly enjoys drinking "not in a 'get me another Pabst and a shot of Jack, woman, and where the hell is my dinner' kinda way, but more in a 'let's come together with friends to celebrate the beautiful weather and/or special occasion' kinda way," is writing about alcohol in another blog. So okay, Mark, we get it, you're safe, and you're not going to make me your subservient wife, but what about the writing? He describes Brewer's Art Proletary Ale, which I enjoyed last night, actually, twice, as such: "The 'beer of the people', so they say... dark and mouth-watering, like Baltimore in April. (What does that even mean?)" Indeed, Mark, what does it mean?
* Phil Macek, Home and Garden Examiner, peddles a very gay backyard fire-pit, and offers nuggets of enthusiastic wisdom like, "Enjoy your home, your garden, and your friends!" Thanks Phil!
* Nina Guise-Gerrity, a famous "ethicist," apparently, posed this scintillating question on April 22: "Should households receive tax credits for taking conservation measure that lower electric bills, water usage, and meet state compliance measures to make their houses ‘greener’?". Then she didn't answer it, just sort of let it sit for the last week, with no explanatory links, comments, or follow-ups. We like to think that Nina Guise-Gerrity is like 90 years old and fell asleep on her keyboard, woke up disoriented to find that the notion of "computer" and "internet," like the rest of the stone-age Examiner staff, had disappeared down the winding, Alzheimers-riddled toilet pipe of her mind.
* Brenda Carl's media blog is the best we saw today, but only if you consider "media" limited to TV and radio. Who listens to non-public radio, anyway? What's that you say? Real people? Like, people outside of my college-educated, elitist, gun-fearing, Obama-loving social circle? Okay, maybe you're right, but Brenda also pointed me towards Marc Steiner's new Center for Emerging Media website, which I had been meaning to check out, and on which you can listen to archived stories of crack-heads gibbering about life in the gutter, on his show "Just Words," which won that lovable commie a Peabody award this year.
* Andy Belt, the Ex's "music man through and through," who is also an "insider," despite the fact that he doesn't get out of Towson much, seems to have just discovered "today’s world of high speed internet, fast food, fast cars and other indicia of instant gratification," in which "local musicians now can enter a recording studio and leave in a few hours with a finished demo burned on CD" WOW! THAT FAST?? THEY CAN RECORD A WHOLE DEMO IN A FEW HOURS?? SIGN ME UP OMG!!!. Then again, he's only posted 3 times. Maybe the insider tips are coming.
* And our favorite discovery of the day, is that Greg Smith, who used to be a reporter for the Northeast Booster and sat across from us when we were a reporter at Patuxent's north Bomo County weekly, the North County News, is now blogging about the Eastern Shore and its many coming crafts fairs (He says: "While brighter weather amplifies the anticipation of summer for all beach business owners and beach residents alike there are some upcoming events in the surrounding Delmarva area that may make the waiting period less like pulling teeth." What?). Smith was a pretty nice guy, but he had a big crush on Luke Broadwater and his muscles, and under his shirt, curious enough, Greg had a tattoo of the Examiner's logo, in the middle of his chest, as an homage to the publication that printed his first intern clips. So I'm guessing Greg is somewhere in the third ring of heaven, right now, writer for his alma mater. Or maybe he's just on the Eastern Shore.

In other, non-Ex related news, Lorraine Mirabella has been collecting some really good string, it seems, and she beat me to this trend story, which is really good. Just a good primer for what is going on in Baltimore development right now, and the projects that really matter. Kudos to her.

WJZ has an exclusive (I think?) on WDS moving into a fogies' home (which I wrote about a little while back, see here).

Aaaaaaand Coconut Lime has a delicious recipe for turkey with mole (who woulda thought?) that I will never have the time, nor access to fancy chiles, to make. But a person can dream, right?