Crazy Fun Things to do in Federal Hill

I've lived down here in South Baltimore for 3 years now, so I'd consider myself pretty adjusted to the average Friday/Saturday night in the neighborhood.  Perhaps it's more like a building up a resistance to a drug, for some reason the same ol' hit of Cross Street just doesn't do what it used to.

It was with that in mind that I assumed a Federal Hill scavenger hunt would be just like any other party.  Perhaps a scavenger hunt is going to have the same mean fun level as a normal party but a much higher variance, because I was very, very wrong.  It was probably one of the most fun nights of my life.  Sure, I enjoy drinking as much as the next guy (although, in all honesty, possibly not as much as the next guy in this neighborhood), but this party also combined two of my favorite things to do while drinking:

1. Doing things - especially active, unusual, exciting things
2. Competing at things - especially pointless, fun, team-oriented things

Yeah, scavenger hunt was pretty much the ideal party activity for me.

It also helped that it was superbly planned and organized.  Everyone met up at one house, had a couple drinks, then we scavenged, then post-party at another house.  The lists were even laminated!  There were like 6 or 7 teams of 5 to 7 people, so there were a lot of people running all over Federal Hill looking for viryta or Chartreuse (from my favorite bar - Idlehour) or someone walking two dogs.  The best part was how welcoming everyone was in at all the bars.  By the second half of the hunt, we'd show up in a bar with our laminated list looking to sing karaoke and people would be like "Oh, you're with the scavenger hunt!"

Of course, what really makes or breaks the hunt is list.  The guys did a fantastic job with the Federal Hill Scavenger Hunt List.  Check it out and see what you think.  We had from about 9:20 PM until midnight to gather photographs of as many of those items/actions/places as possible.

My team actually won with 860 points.  It was a little unfair, 6 of the 7 people on our team are at least casual runners - so we used speed to our advantage.  I was definitely in a flat-out sprint to make it to the second house on time after deciding to go for those last 10 points at 11:55 PM.

My favorite picture of the night:

Human pyramid (worth 20 points) and picture with "The J&P guy" (Pete) (worth 10 points) in a single picture.  There's also some random dude spotting us.  And by "spotting" I clearly mean "hoping to get a chance to fondle that girl's ass."

So word from the wise: if you're like me and you enjoy "doing things" and "competing at things" while having a couple drinks - attend the next scavenger hunt you get invited to.

Oh, and wear practical shoes (definitely saw at least one girl in heels for this... that team was unable to compete with our teams' highly appropriate footwear).

Do Something Productive for the Community

No time for any insightful analysis this morning, just wanted to post about an upcoming event:

Friends of Baltimore Parks and Middle Branch Shoreline Day

If you're from the South Baltimore/Federal Hill area, you've seen Middle Branch Park.  It's south across the Hanover Street Bridge from Port Covington.  Anyway, it's actually a very nice park, but has a tendency to get a lot of trash piling up on the shore.  There's a clean-up day schedule for next Sunday, May 3rd.  I wish I could attend, but I'll be out of town that day.  Anyway, just hoping to spread the word and maybe get some people involved.

This is NOT Journalism

Over the past year I've been asking myself a question - Has CNN.com always been this depressingly terrible or is this a recent development?  First off, all of their articles are apparently written for third-graders by middle-school students.  Secondly, entertainment "news" takes up a distressing portion of their "Top Stories."  They have also started the annoying habit of giving you the top three or four "Story Highlights" whenever you click on a story.  Apparently if you don't have the time or reading comprehension skills to finish their three paragraphs (which usually add up to like 8 sentences), you can read the PowerPoint version of the story.

Occasionally, when nothing at the New York Times or the Washington Post catches my eye I may become sickly curious about what drivel CNN is broadcasting.  Today, I feel they have reached a new low with the story Review: John Oliver gets laughs out of 'Terrifying Times'.  It's a review of some stand-up comedy performed by a Daily Show "correspondent."  It is also possibly the most poorly-written review I've ever seen.

It starts with the Story Highlights:

• AP: "Daily Show" correspondent John Oliver's "Terrifying Times" hilarious
• Oliver: Wind-farming a bust - "Wind has been horrifically overfarmed"
• Best way to emotionalize news: Score it to power ballads, says Oliver

Seriously.  Someone read the review, determined that if you took nothing else away from this review, you would want to learn those three things.  Let's deconstruct those bullet points:

1. This is a clutch bullet point here.  Someone's been doing their PowerPoint.  Count the facts that you can learn from that: 1) We didn't do independent journalism, but we subscribe to the AP Wire.  2) This is somehow linked to the "Daily Show," that show is popular and will inspire positive feelings in most people.  3) The subject of this article is John Oliver.  4) He has a show/movie/book called "Terrifying Times."  5) The show/movie/book is funny.
2. Oh shit!  We put every single fact into the first bullet.  How about we just take one of his jokes and make it a bullet?  Now, let's rephrase it to take away the timing and comedic value...
3. Well, we already ruined the best punch line in bullet #2, but there's a 3 bullet minimum... did he say anything else funny?

Now that we're past that insult to our intelligence, let's take a look at why it's so insulting that Frazier Moore has a job writing reviews, much less for a national wire service.  The article is just terrible.  It's so bad, I don't think I've made it all the way through yet.  Why not?  I got to the part where it just devolved into quoting Oliver over and over.  Here's the thing, half of stand-up comedy is delivery and timing - a transcript is unlikely to work as well.  So when Moore starts paraphrasing the jokes you can imagine how that affects the quality of the article.

This is not a review of a stand-up routine, this is a summary, and a shitty one at that.  I mean, I edited my high school newspaper.  If someone had brought me this and told me it was their review, I wouldn't have been that surprised.  We were a really small school, the journalism teacher was too burned out from teaching to care, and we took anyone we could get to write anything for the paper.  I would have had to accept the article, rewrite the entire thing, and publish it under the writer's byline.  I would, however, expect that most high school newspapers are able to produce more analysis in their reviews.

Perhaps Moore thought that by pointing out that Oliver is generally on target with his humor counts as analysis.  Perhaps Moore thought "Hey, people don't want thoughtful analysis, they want to know what the jokes were so that when their co-workers are discussing it tomorrow they won't miss the pop culture reference."  That's probably pretty likely I suppose, the general tone of CNN.com is that there is nothing worse that being mildly out of touch with pop culture (the thinking man's solution to this problem is The Onion AV Club's "The Hater" blog - stay in touch with pop culture by reminding yourself of your superiority to pop culture).

Now it would be pretty easy to look up some more of Frazier Moore's work, according to Wikipedia he has been the AP's TV critic since 1992, but I'm going to admit that I'm too lazy to do that (yes, Frazier Moore has a Wikipedia article - he pretty much must have written that himself, right?  No one's like "Hey, you know what would make a good Wikipedia article?  A short bio of the AP's TV critic!").  Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt, everyone phones one in once in awhile.  Perhaps he literally phoned that one in, but he was using a Verizon cell phone and all his insightful analysis was lost when the call was dropped.

Anyway, it just offends me that someone can write that poorly and still be employed as a professional writer.  I suppose being a TV critic is a tough job.  I mean, the man's probably watched a lot of bullshit in the 16 years, perhaps he's started to believe that television has succeeded and America really is that dumb.  Perhaps he's right.  That's probably what scares me more than anything - not that CNN is so terrible, but that they aren't losing money.  Why isn't capitalism working?!?  Someone has to be able to do this better!

Next time on "I Hate CNN" - Lou Dobbs is a Terrible, Terrible, Populist Moron.

An anecdote

The other day I had one of those experiences that makes you say "wow, this is a semi-interesting anecdote that, if spun the right way, really illuminates the modern human experience."  When this happens to a free-lance journalist, the Bat-phone starts ringing at Slate.com.  When this happens to me, I post about it on my blog.

The other day I got a pretty scary voicemail on my cell phone from BGE.  "The account linked to this phone number will be denied service unless payment is made immediately."  Now, I was pretty certain that I hadn't accidentally forgotten to pay the gas and electric bill for the last few months, but that isn't the kind of message you ignore.

So I call the phone number that they mention in the message, enter my account number, and learn that my bill has been paid in full (just as I thought).  Nonetheless, that voicemail was a mystery and I'd rather not have my electricity accidentally turned off and have to explain to my roommates why all their food is rotting in the fridge.

Quick divergence - anyone else hate how hard it is to get ahold of BGE when you want to talk to a person?  First you have to wait until normal business hours, then you have to find the secret number on the BGE website.

Step 1 - Do not visit the page headlined "Contact Us."  That just leads you to one of those web forms that allows BGE to conveniently ignore you.  Seriously, there should be a special kind of purgatory (yes, just purgatory, this isn't that big of a sin) dedicated to companies that don't publish a phone number at all, just a web form for questions.  Have you ever been looking for information, run into one of those web forms and though "Hey!  This will make my life easier!  Instead of finding the information I need right now or talking to someone with that information, I can send a message into a black hole of accountability!"

Step 2 - Click on the "Customer Service" heading instead.

Step 3 - Careful!  You can try the 410-685-0123 number, but when I did it just rang for awhile and then went to someone's voicemail.  Yeah, like someone saying "Hey this is , leave a message and I'll get back to you."  No way to know if that's actually BGE.

Step 4 - Try calling 800-685-0123; after convincing the computer that you didn't accidentally call that number instead of the automated bill-payment-by-phone or balance-inquiry-by-phone number, you can be put on hold and eventually talk to a real person.

Is it me or was that too hard?  Here's my rule of thumb, if a company says that they're dedicated to customer service, but it takes me >5 minutes to get a representative on the line, they're full of shit.  Open challenge to all companies: I want to go from Google to talking to one of your representatives in 5 minutes or less.  This isn't rocket science, it's hiring a bunch of people to answer phones.

Ok, back to the story:  So it turns out that the account that was about to be shut off wasn't mine, but it was linked to my phone number.  Apparently whoever had signed up for the account had done it years ago, before  giving up the phone number that I now have on my cell phone.  This led me to think, what do I really know about this person who used to have my phone number:

• Their name is Wade or Wayne or something that starts with a W (based on the wrong number calls I got for a surprisingly long time.  I think I got a couple within the last six months).
• They have lived in the same location for at least 5.5 years (that's how long I've had this phone number).
• Based on the speech pattern of the people who inadvertently reached me, they are a lower-income, probably African-American, Baltimore native.  This is based on my aggregate impression over many wrong numbers.
• The are about to get their gas and electric shut off for non-payment.
• They aren't going to get a phone call to warn them.

There's an odd asymmetry in this relationship, I know a few things minor details about this guy's life but have no way to contact him.  He knows nothing about me, but can very easily reach me - he knows my phone number after all.

Advances in Medical Science

As any dedicated reader of this blog knows, I often use this blog as a vehicle to promote products that have made a significant contribution to society (see this post for example).  This is such an instance.

Humans have been getting and coping with blisters for literally millions of years, but only recently have I discovered the ultimate blister treatment.  I couldn't have done this without my medical-student roommate (who is like 99% of a doctor; I mean, he's already matched to his residency so it's pretty much just a formality now, right?).  My roommate introduced me to:

Band-Aid brand "Advanced Healing Blister"

Now aside from the deficiencies in product naming ("Advanced Healing Blister" sounds like a blister that is in the final healing stages, not an advanced treatment for healing blisters), this is a fantastic product.  Eureka!  Further, in-depth, research has taught me that these are "Advanced Healing Blister Cushions."  Still not a very good product name... maybe that's why I've never heard of them, I just can't imagine an marketing jingle based on that phrase.

Anyway, let me contrast this treatment with historical blister treatment:

In the past, when you got a blister, you'd pop it, put some Neosporin on it, and put a regular band-aid on it.  After a couple hundred yards of vigorous walking the band-aid comes off and sticks to your sock.  Your foot continues to hurt... a lot if you're wearing the same shoes that caused the blister.

With this product?  You pop the blister, stick one of these bad boys on it, and you're good to go.  I ran 10 miles with one of these cushions over a blister, it not only stayed in place, but the blister didn't hurt or get worse!!  It's this kind of innovation (or, since I don't know who invented these cushions, this kind of large corporate theft of a small company's idea) that made this country great in the first place!  Thank you corporate America for allowing me to run without pain.

These adhesive cushion things cost more than your average Band-Aids, but they work infinitely better.  If you're any sort of athlete or just someone who has uncomfortable shoes, you owe it to yourself to stock up on these "Advanced Healing Blister Cushions" immediately.