Maryland

Another fun fact: The current Baltimore mayor, Martin O'Malley, fronts a Celtic-rock band in his spare time (he's got spare time?).

I grew up in Rockville, Maryland, one of the Washington, DC bedroom suburbs; this region is a lot drabber than the rest of the state.

The weather in this area is, to my mind, the worst of all possible worlds. The summers tend to be hot, hazy and humid, yet not so hot that we don't stop dressing and working as if we were in London. And as for the winters, while it can get very cold and windy, it never snows very much. Therefore we are expected to show up for work on time even though a classic nor'eastern is sleeting down on us. And yes, we do not know how to drive in weather of that nature. Midwesterners and New Englanders rightfully pick on us accordingly.

In the far western regions of the state you're in the Appalachian mountains; I haven't been there so I don't know if it still lives up to the image of something out of the movie "Deliverance."

[1] One of Baltimore's nicknames; another is "The City That Breeds," in the wake of a lame mayoral campaign to promote the place as "The City That Reads."

In the far western regions of the state you're in the Appalachian mountains; I haven't been there so I don't know if it still lives up to the image of something out of the movie "Deliverance."

Hey now. We do read and write, mostly. Though I hear that if you go down by the banks of the Potomac in some parts it is, in fact, kinda sorta like that. I guess there are plenty of rednecks, but they are in on the joke. What really stinks is the lack of decent paying jobs, and the drug problems..

A friend (western MD native) of my dad's was about to send her daughter off to college, and the kid's roommate called up from Rockville and wanted to know if she'd teach her how to tip cows! I said, uh, if you need someone to teach you how to tip cows, are you sure it's a good idea to go to college?

John Waters has been making trouble in these precincts for years. From the scatological to the homicidal, he's been churning out films that seem to come from a parallel universe to the one where good taste resides. (That parallel universe, by the way, had its Big Bang origins right around Broadway - the real Broadway, the one that crosses Eastern Avenue, near where the wig store used to be.) He made Hairspray the film way back in 1988, but it's the stage version, in which he also had a hand, that has put Charm City on the map.

And that's why John Waters is The Sun's Marylander of the Year.

We know what you're thinking. Have we forgotten Pink Flamingos? And Odorama? Do we approve of Serial Mom? Or Pecker? And what about that pencil-thin mustache?

Here's our answer: You don't have to love them all to appreciate the singular mind behind them.

Let's face it. We live in a society that's not altogether completely 100 percent healthy in every possible way. That's what John Waters is all about. Life is full of things that are a little bent or a little out of whack or that just generally need to be trued up a tad. We try to ignore them; Mr. Waters makes his art out of them.

fuck Duke

Midieval England meets NASCAR!

it's so true.

You do know that jousting is already the official state sport, right?

Also, Duke sucks.

o Maryland, my Maryland.. you are not Delaware or New Jersey!

The Crabbing Life of Smith Island, Md.

Church Point, St. Mary's City, MD. On the other side of the St. Mary's River is Pagan Point.

yup. find me a state with a cooler sport. you can't do it.

also, speaking of smith island, the cake that bears its name is unfathomably delicious.

and YES the oranges band!

fatti maschii parole femine motherfuckers!

Then I got a job in Rockville, married someone from Mount Airy, hung out in College Park, spent some time in Cumberland and Annapolis and Aberdeen, and it started to grow on me.

Last Sunday, we drove up to Baltimore and went to the went to the American Visionary Art Museum, which is always interesting, and Sound Garden, which is the world's greatest record store. I take back everything negative I ever said about Maryland. It is the shizznit.

By the way, the tune to "Maryland, My Maryland" is the same as "O Tannenbaum," and the bells of the chapel at the University of Maryland (where I was married, incidentally) play it on the hour. It was always quite weird to be walking across the campus in mid-April and hear "O christmas tree, O christmas tree." Bonus factoid: the lyrics are weird violent and spookily racist, too.

II
Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State! to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!

III
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust, -
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!

IV
Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,
With Watson's blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland! My Maryland!

V
Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own heroic throng,
Stalking with Liberty along,
And chaunt thy dauntless slogan song,
Maryland! My Maryland!

VI
Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain -
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again,
Maryland! My Maryland!

VII
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek
From hill to hill, from creek to creek -
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland! My Maryland!

VIII
Thou wilt not yield the vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland! My Maryland!

IX
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb -
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

zack, who is the sassiest boy? im drawing a blank

Sassiest Boy = the Spiv, Ian Svenonius, from Nation of Ulysses, the Make-Up, Weird War, etc.

waldorf. good god, definitely waldorf.

and for the love of god, why does one of the good charlotte guys get to date hilary duff. im complained about this on many boards (my god, shes perfect)

college park during breaks is heaven on earth. honestly, i dont even mind the hordes of students all the time. i just moved from there, and i will admit, i needed a change of scenery, but i feel sort of certain that ill move back there sometime. maybe (when my ship comes in) ill buy the block where cdepot and atomic are, and develop it with some delicious restaurants, a bona fide club where WMUC can have shows all the time, and a water park. im not going to lie; the pizza hut might have to go.

-- n/a (nu...), September 8th, 2005.

college park is unicorn-free.

it doesnt help that i live on college ave and rhode island (frat boy central)

and UMD is fairly huge, but there really is nothing to it. boring, uninspired campus.

Annapolis can eat me.

-- dar1a g (dar1a_...), September 8th, 2005 10:48 PM.

i stayed there for a week in middle school, or was it nearby Fox Island? some sort of field trip for the nerdy a.p. kids. lousy food and lodging, but overall strangely fun time. walking in the marshes in huge galoshes was cool. i never would have remembered that had you not mentioned it!

the Arm of the Unknown Soldier at the Antietam Battlefield Museum in Sharpsburg, MD.

In a back room, up on the wall in its own pine display box, is the arm. It is displayed lengthwise, underneath several carbines similarly positioned. John Ray, who runs the place, purchased the museum thirty years ago without knowing that it had this grisly relic.

Though the tapered fingers make the arm look feminine, a pathologist claimed that it belonged to a 19-year-old boy. He couldn't tell whether it was Union or Confederate arm, but others speculate that, with its nice manicure, it more-than-likely belonged to a Southerner.

Raggedly ripped just below the elbow, the arm is clearly the museum's main attraction, even though John Ray continues to add bugles and spent shells to his collection. "Ten years ago, I was offered $10,000 for the arm, and I said, 'No.' Other museums have this other stuff, but nobody has an arm."

f. scott fitzgeralds grave in "downtown" rockville

its an odd feeling, that graveyard, a circle of serenity in the middle of such much suburban haze.

i stayed there for a week in middle school, or was it nearby Fox Island? some sort of field trip for the nerdy a.p. kids. lousy food and lodging, but overall strangely fun time. walking in the marshes in huge galoshes was cool. i never would have remembered that had you not mentioned it!

Chesapeake Bay Foundation runs those field trips.. I've been on them too. If the weather isn't bad, it's the best thing ever.

The Ottobar = CLASSIC
Ocean City = DUD

Tombot you've only been to the shitty parts of Maryland! Rent one car and take more day trips. I don't know the Eastern Shore all that well, most of it seemed weirdly isolated because you can only get out by driving the Bay Bridge or all the way north to near Annapolis.

Garrett County is slowly being taken over by retired Washingtonians, but it sure is pretty.

also, the $5 chinatown bus from nyc -> baltimore !!!! i really want to see the baltimore museum of industry and it may warrant a road trip.

UMD is big, yeah. when i was there it took me a little while to figger it out, but it clicks eventually. it's really an awesome campus when the students aren't there, as is CP in general (as pete and jd have noted).

umm, what is there to say? the imperial grand dragon of the KKK lives in thurmont (or at least he used to, i think) its the only county that has consistently voted republican since LBJ passed the civil rights act. my freinds used to live in a former slave mansion where a murder took place (the rent was very low because of this). the county fair is a huge draw for major country acts like toby keith and tim mcgraw.

yet, these things are being destroyed by an attempt to make it montgomery county, all post mini malls and desperate housewife pretensions. we have 5 wal marts in a 15 mile radius. on top of that, gang activity is at an all time high and we are beginning to look more like PG county.

you can't go home again, and im not sure if thats a good thing or not.

meaning you have black people now?

(apologies, everyone else...)

but to take it back to fredneck (i love that slang), it sort of reminds me of the controversy surrounding Morrissey after he released "national front disco" and the whole madstock fiasco. (i know this is obscure, but bear with me)

im not a rush limbaugh style amurrrrican by any means. but that said, a certain type of backwards and racist person in frederick is slowly being replaced by something even more sinister. MS-13 is no joke, nor are the other gangs in the greater frederick area. my freind is a teacher at Frederick High, and she lost her best girl pupil last year when she was attacked and gang raped ON FILM by a group of kids as part of a gang ritual. things like that just didn't happen in frederick ten years ago. i get really scared sometimes that my county is going to hell fast, but then i think, should i care? i mean, the Larry the Cable guy types i went to high school never really liked me, and i never really liked them.

i dunno, theres more to this, but i have to go to work.

the bmi is pretty cool as is the nearby visionary art museum

i went to high school across the street from f. scott fitzgerald's grave and never ever visited it.

richard montgomery? the bldg between those two locations w/ the big eagle statue used to be quite the skate hangout. i got ticketed there once.

other local slang: Montgomery College a.k.a. "M.K." a.k.a. "Harvard on the Pike" heheh. in fact, it's one of the best (if not the top) community colleges in u.s.

—East River Pipe

what does any of that have to do with PGC?

i don't want that in fredneck

right, it certainly ISN'T hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens, nearly 2/3 of them black (unlike 90% white Frederick County), with a high school graduation rate and median household income above the state average, in sum representing the leading majority-black suburban area in the United States, and also home to a number of major federal and military facilities and one of the country's leading public research institutions (that also apparently takes in some dumbfuck undergraduates).

i know most of PG county is exactly what you are saying, most people i have met while living down here are people i would be proud to consider freinds. what i am talking about is by far the minority, but it still exists, and you can't deny that. im not trying to say that PG is some horrible county on the verge of martial law. if you live here too, i apologize, but im not going to pretend that some of the horribly shitty things that happen here don't happen, and im not going to say that it would be a good thing if frederick were to become PG. the virtues of my home county have almost nothing to do with race, it has much more to do with it being mostly rural and devoid of crime.

i had no idea cheney's bunker was there. where is it, ft detrick?

and mostly rual does have nothing to do with race. everywhere i go down here there is traffic and haze. i kinda like country life, those backwood roads i grew up driving on. i swear, thats really all there is to it. and more and more those roads and areas are being destroyed by suburban development. its quiet at night there, as opposed to the constant hum of cars or sirens or whatever you have here.

http://www.ase.org/images/lib/statebulletin/Governor%20Ehrlich.jpg

Delayed fast-food order fodder for comptroller
Schaefer serves up tirade on non-English speakers during board meeting
By Michael Dresser and David Nitkin
Sun Staff
Originally published May 6, 2004
Perturbed by his difficulty ordering food at a local McDonald's restaurant, Comptroller William Donald Schaefer unleashed a tirade against Maryland residents who don't speak English yesterday - prompting criticism that his comments showed a lack of tolerance for other cultures.

The former governor aired his complaints about non-English speakers at a meeting of the state Board of Public Works, on which he serves. Schaefer frequently uses the board as a forum to express his often-controversial views, whether or not they have anything to do with board business.

He said his comments were prompted by a recent visit to McDonald's during which the woman taking his order didn't speak English. The language barrier, he said, delayed the transaction.

"I don't want to adjust to another language. This is the United States. I think they ought to adjust to us," the comptroller complained. "The people who come here should become part of American [sic], become Americanized and speak the language."

Schaefer also vented his ire at McDonald's for distributing bags with "every language on there except English." He said he wouldn't return to that McDonald's anytime soon but did not specify which restaurant he had patronized.

McDonald's Corp. did not immediately respond yesterday to a call to its Illinois headquarters. The company is in the midst of a global advertising campaign around its "I'm lovin' it" tag line, and some restaurant bags and cups feature the slogan in many languages.

The head of a group that advocates for the rights of immigrants called Schaefer's comments "unacceptable for a politician" and said the comptroller should be held to the same rules as others who hold public office.

Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA of Maryland, said Schaefer's remarks show "a lack of tolerance and a lack of respect for different cultures and languages."

Torres said Schaefer doesn't understand the obstacles immigrants face.

"Our Latino and immigrant communities are working very hard to improve their English. We have a big waiting list because we don't have enough space or funding to provide additional English classes," Torres said. He added that Maryland ranks behind West Virginia in its funding of language education for adults.

The comptroller's comments were not appropriate for a public meeting, said Del. Susan C. Lee, a Montgomery County Democrat who is one of two Asian-Americans in the General Assembly.

"I think every immigrant group that comes here is trying to learn English the best they can. They know that in order to succeed you have to learn English. I know that is how my grandparents felt," said Lee, who is of Chinese descent.

In his remarks, which lasted about two minutes at the opening of the meeting, Schaefer said he had a similar experience yesterday morning at the same fast-food chain.

"I went today, the same thing, only there was a lady from a different country," he said. "And one of our, one of our American citizens [was assisting her]. I gave my order to the new girl. Nice little girl. She was very accommodating. The little girl beside her had to take the order. People are wondering, 'What the heck is this?'"

Fellow board members Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, sitting in for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp listened to Schaefer without commenting.

i really dont care who is comfortable or not, because that isnt what i was fucking talking about. gabb, if you want the place you live to be nothing but parking lots, fast food, and congestion, then i guess you are different than me. but dont bring race into this or try to make me into something im not. if you can't see past color, its not my problem. dick.

and now, back to how great maryland is........(sorry zack)

i grew up across from a cornfield. it was rural and boring and shitty cos so many of the people were redneck shitheads

that said, i dont want to have to deal with MS-13 instead.

I'm from Alabama, albeit not rural Alabama, and not Birmingham old-money-new-money-no-money Alabama either, but the degree of discomfort I often felt dealing with Maryland's bizarro race lines was pretty fuckin' high. It gets to the point where you can start to get really sketched-out anytime you get lost or go somewhere new, because you realize that no matter where you end up, being a white liberal is going to land you in the minority basically 100% of the time.

So obviously the answer for me was to move to Arlington VA, where they have scientifically eradicated blacks and hispanics altogether by ensuring that there is NOTHING INTERESTING TO DO.

Every day I miss Columbia Heights' hanguk bodegas, mixed-clientele hip-hop nights and espanol billboards. All for a stupid tax break.

I'm from Columbia, which i know is hardly representative of typical MD (for those unfamiliar with the town, it's a "planned community" conceived in some sorta utopian post-hippie "free to be you and me" dream that's now fairly yuppified and mostly known for its unfathomably huge mall), but jeez louise, the state you're describing sounds pretty different from the one I grew up/live in.

Anyway, to get back to how awesome Maryland is:

ihttp://ticketing.ramsheadtavern.com/uplimage/o'malley%20(2).jpg

http://www.showbizireland.com/images/stars2/gigs-9-mayorbaltimore.jpg

Yeah, north Arlington, office buildings, condos and metro stops. Whitebread as it gets.

The Ram's Head is a great place to meet off-duty NSA enlisted folks, if that's what you're into.

Northern Virginia almost can be divided into discrete ethnic sectors:

Arlington, gentrified Alexandria = yuppie white
Alexandria (nongentrified parts) = black
Falls Church = Hispanic and Vietnamese, with Rt. 7 as the de facto border
Annandale = Korean

White persons: 68.9% (vs. 72.3% statewide and 75.1% nationwide)

Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin: 18.6% (versus 4.7% statewide and 12.5% nationwide)

I grant you Black or African American persons: 9.3% (vs. 19.6% statewide and 12.3% nationwide), but still.

cumberland was quite nice, in a faintly faded touristy kind of way, though it is strange, the way it is located in a dip

what are the nicest places in the eastern and chesapeake bays, to go to?

http://news.yahoo.com/death-maryland-boy-pushed-swing-three-days-ruled-212805331.html

this story is bizarre and extremely sad

People's Republic of Montgomery County, here I come!

NP: REM, "Don't Go Back to Rockville"

Are other ILXors currently in the Old Line State?

I was! Now I’m a filthy Virginian

I’m in Baltimore County!

Grew up in that very same republic and spent my teen years very eager to get out. Did so for about 10 years but I’m back in DC now. It’s not so bad.

After many years in Northern Vrginia, the wife and I are in Montgomery County, Maryland