Tom Chalkley's feature considers Frederick Douglass' legacy in Baltimore, where ambivalence about the city's slave-trade legacy continues. The piece includes insights from a man who calls himself Frederick Douglass IV, who, it later came to light, falsely portrayed himself as the famous abolitionist's great-great-grandson. In Mobtown Beat, Brennen Jensen showcases AIDS-prevention group Positive Voices, Positive Choices, and Charles Cohen reports that a state-funded program providing lawyers for ... [MORE]

Last October, an article in The Baltimore Sun exposed deep flaws in the little-known Baltimore City Foundation, a nonprofit formed nearly 30 years ago to raise money for city programs for the poor. The Sun found that the foundation controlled large sums of money with little oversight and wrote checks at the behest of city employees, no questions asked. But the money was sometimes spent in highly questionable ways. Some of the more scandalous investments included the trappings for former Mayor Sh ... [MORE]

State Auditors released an interesting audit of the Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission (MPBC) today, finding that the corporation spent a couple million dollars with a fund-raising company without seeking competitive bids or clearing the contract through the Board of Public Works, as required by law. The auditors also noted ties between some MPBC personnel who awarded the contract and the vendor itself, and said they were referring the matter to the state Attorney General's criminal divisio ... [MORE]

cinecritic.biz

French filmmaker François Ozon was a bit of a busybody during the early to mid-2000s, thanks in large part to the range of his movies and the excellent female performances powering them: Charlotte Rampling in 2000's meditative drama Under the Sand; an entire cast of French screen royalty for 2002's murder-mystery musical comic melodrama 8 Women; Ludivine Sagnier and Rampling again in 2003's Hitchcockian thriller Swimming Pool. Since, though, Ozon's movies have been receiving much more limit ... [MORE]

The long-awaited autopsy on Lehman Bros. is out. Big news: The bank hid liabilities off its balance sheet! Everyone is shocked, shocked. The amazing thing is the mundanity of Lehman's methods: Repos. This was inside-the-box thinking even 10 years ago, when the bank apparently started using them. As the New York Times explains: Repos, short for repurchase agreements, are a standard practice on Wall Street, representing short-term loans that provide sometimes crucial financing. In them, firms e ... [MORE]

A reader pointed us to this death notice for John Elder, the former city-employed engineer whose troubles with the law and association with building collapses City Paper chronicled. Elder died March 3. His last couple of years were tough. Besides two investigations by the state Board for Professional Engineers, Elder suffered the death of his adopted son, Timothy, in November 2008. Last year he had his own health problems, including a blood infection that kept him in the hospital for seven weeks ... [MORE]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Obama plans to nominate Sarah Bloom Raskin, who has headed the Maryland Department of Financial Regulation since 2007, for an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. ... [MORE]

When New Yorker film writer Richard Brody made up his list of the best films of the '00s for his blog last December, he put Baltimore filmmaker Matthew Porterfield in the company of the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Wes Anderson, and Catherine Breillat by including Porterfield's 2006 Baltimore-shot independent feature Hamilton among his favorites. Now Brody is enthusing about Porterfield's new movie Putty Hill, a docu-drama shot here this past summer that recently screened in New York, calling it "e ... [MORE]

One totally hairless gold man is supporting another hairless gold man entirely with his neck. No joke: Atop a platform placed front and center on the Meyerhoff stage, two male acrobats clad in goldish trunks and tinted with golden body paint, slowly move through a series of poses that this writer couldn't pull off after about 1,000 hours of Bikram yoga and 10,000 crunches. One man moves into a one-hand stand, his supporting palm spread across the other man's head. One man moves from a hand press ... [MORE]

That was fast. It seems like just yesterday we were clicking Facebook petitions asking Google to add bike routes to its maps, which previously included directions for walking, driving, and public transit only. Yesterday the internet behemoth announced that, due in large part to "public support," a bike-route feature has been added. You can use Google Maps to look at bike lanes, designated bike routes, and preferred bike routes, and you can also use Google to plot bike routes around your cityR ... [MORE]

City Paper Digi-Cam

Reina Williams is one of the more unique musicians working in Baltimore these days, someone who straddles a few different genres. As a hip-hop producer, she's made beats for brash young rappers like Lil D, and recently won the producer competition No Guts No Glory at 5 Seasons two months in a row. As a solo artist, she's a singer/songwriter who gigs around town with an acoustic guitar, and plays every other Thursday night at Joe Squared. This past Thursday, she pulled double duty, doing her usua ... [MORE]

The Maryland Democratic Party has finally discovered one of last century's sincerest forms of satire, culture jamming. ... [MORE]