http://www.citypaper.com/columns The Baltimore City Paper's weekly screeds. en-us Copyright 2008 Baltimore City Paper http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15711 If the Republicans decide to use military experience as a way to attack Barack Obama this fall, nobody should be surprised. If there's been one common misperception about Democrats since the end of the Vietnam War, it's that Democrats tend to be "anti-military." Rush Limbaugh and his ilk were more ... Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15710 I almost wrote a column about Willie Tyler and Lester. That's right, you almost got 800 words on the classic black ventriloquist act that regaled dozens of talk shows and sitcoms during the 1970s and early '80s. I almost wrote a whole column on the team because, like a great many of us, my entire l ... Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15688 Can this season's news coverage get any dumber? Remember that in just about every newsroom in America there are people called "editors." These "editors" make decisions about what you see, read, and hear. And the decisions these people are making--and almost exclusively at the highest levels of thei ... Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15687 Wow, I just got back from vacation, and boy is my brain empty! Hiyo! Emptier than ever! Arrooo! An infinitely paradoxical increase of post-vacation vacancy in my room to let! Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-ooo!!! Usually I have at least a vague idea about how to stack up the 900 words it takes to fill my column- ... Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15667 This Flavor Flav thing gets to me so much because of 1987. I was 16 years old, and my best friends had come over to pick me up for a night of teenaged antics and shenanigans. My boy Mark's parents had bought him a brand-new Volkswagen Golf when he turned 16, and he, along with Leon and Brent, scoop ... Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15654 One of my favorite H.L. Mencken aphorisms states, "Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." As a nation founded by Puritans and criminals, we always seem to be trying to butt into someone else's happiness. And more often than not, it's the religious half doing the pus ... Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15626 That's right, baby, totally on the Vacation right now, man. If you are enjoying (OK, let's just say "reading") this special Vacation Edition of the "Mr. Wrong" any time from Wednesday, April 23, in the Year of Our Lord 2008, to Wednesday, April 30, Two Double-Nought Ocho, then I am vacant, man, eve ... Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15612 Back in 1990 or'91, I recall interviewing Maryland Lt. Gov. Mickey Steinberg by telephone, as part of my job as a radio reporter on WBAL-AM. The purpose of the interview was to get an answer to one question: After Steinberg had signed onto a tax proposal that Gov. William Donald Schaefer didn't lik ... Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15599 In a sign of things to come, we actually didn't find out my daughter's gender until, literally, hours before she was born because, well, she just wasn't cooperating. In every sonogram we took, she was always facing backward so that we didn't know for sure whether she was going to be a boy or a girl ... Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15582 Perhaps it's just as well that right when the coroner finished prying the gun from Charlton Heston's cold, dead hands the issue of guns comes up in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Unfortunately, it also comes right around today, one year after Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people in ... Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15566 I'm a positive person. I always have lots of helpful suggestions all the time for all kinds of people, places, and things, but I mostly just say them in my head, like when I'm at the supermarket in the aisle where they have all the canned macaroni, I'm all like . . . Hey, Chef Boyardee, man, look, ... Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=15557 Picture the scene: It's earlymorning in Northern California. Two grim-faced men in suits knock on the door of a house, and a scholarly-looking man answers. In a matter of minutes, the men show the man golden badges of the U.S. Marshals Service, and he is loaded into a minivan in handcuffs. In less ... Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST