Everything you ever wanted to know about Baltimore’s cultural, class and racial divides can be found in these competing homemade, DIY Baltimore Orioles Anthems.

Here’s “Oh, Oh, Orioles” By Warning Track Power.

ANNNNND, Here’s “Black and Orange” by D Boi (a remix of Wiz Khalifa’s Black and Gold song)

i had no idea
i’m still really sorry about the beach
i HAVE to stop drunk dialing people
i don’t ever want to travel with Kevin’s friends again tho
they are all hot messes
i guess like me

-Anonymous

One in an occasional series about doing sophisticated man-shit related to guns, whiskey, cigars, barbershop shaves, guitars and what have you.

Whyte & Mackay Master Blender Richard Paterson is devoted to blended whiskey, which, in the single malt circles, is apparently sacrilege.

Like a high-end QVC sales personality though, he has his pitch for the blends down, complete with his own eye-popping demonstrations and catchphrases.

He flings whiskey to the floor for the sake of the pallet. He shows you the proper, upright way to sniff whiskey. He builds you a blend to fit your personality, using as many as 50 different ryes and malts.

He even has zinger lines: If you drink the whisky too quickly, he’ll slap you. And if he sees you holding a whisky tasting glass the wrong way, he’ll kill you.

Regardless of malt vs. blended, the man does his job, making me want to try Whyte and Mackay and take a trip to his distillery. Check out his full bore blended whiskey salesman ship technique in his two-part tasting demonstration, or in his blending demonstration, in the three videos below.

Now if you walk up in the club with a bad chick, and she’s looking at me then I’m going to hit it. Man, jacking for chicks, I tried to quit, but I’m a player homie, so I had to hit it.

While you were buying her drinks in the club, acting like your in love, stunting like you’re all thug, we was switching numbers. She looking at you when I walked by, but you turned your head, she winked her eye. I can’t help if she’s checking for a platinum type of guy.

She’s calling me daddy, and I’m calling her mommy. She’s calling you Kelly, when you’re name is Tommy.

I don’t know what ya’ll be thinking when you bring them around me. Let me remind you that I am the king of R&B. Do you know what that means? That means if you love your chick, don’t bring her to the VIP, because I might leave with your chick.

Just keeping it real. It’s a player’s feel. Don’t take your bitch to the club when you just met her. Because I’m a flirt.

Written By: R. Kelly

“What your momma name you? You can call me what you like.” Every skinny’s a mystery, gotta make it hard some how. “Sit your narrow ass down hot shot, I’ll solve yours right now.”

“Got a girlfriend don’t you boy?” Nervous hands can’t lie. Married men don’t ask how much, single one’s ain’t buying. One day you’ve got everything. Next day it’s all broke. “Let Miss Trixie sit up front. Let her wipe your nose.”

…..

Working for the money like you got eight hands, flat on your back under a mean old man, just thinking happy thoughts and breathing in. Between your momma’s drive and daddy’s belt it don’t take smarts to learn how to tune out what hurts more than helps.

Pretty girls from the smallest towns get remembered like storms and droughts that old men talk about for years to come. I guess that’s why they give us names. So a few old me can say they saw us rain when we were young.

…..

“Which one’s the birthday boy?” she said. “I ain’t got all night. What your momma name you? You can call me what you like.”

Author: Mike Cooley, DBT

Charm City. The Land of Pleasant Living. The Greatest City in America. A place that asks us to believe.

Lies. All lies.Here in the land north of the park of Blob, east of Oella, west of the hinterlands of Chesaco, and south of Ebenezer, the followers of Lord Baltimore live in anything but their Lord’s grace.

Charm? A simulacrum of a mostly white Baltimore gone by and trumped up by kitsch-loving, mostly white newspaper columnists, most of whom didn’t grow up here. Pleasant living? Save that shit for wistful memories of the clean, crab-heavy, skipjack-era Chesapeake. (Besides, they don’t brew Natty Boh here no more, hon.)

What, then, makes us so great, possibly even The Best?

We’re tough, asshole, that’s what.

For, just as the denizens of Biblical Egypt had to deal with God’s wrath and the 10 plagues He rained upon them in the book of Exodus, so have the geographic descendants of the Calverts been supremely tested by the testy gods.

-Best of Baltimore, City Paper, 2002

A luxury I have pined for but have never partaken in is the old-timey barbershop straight razor shave. They always appear so soothing, but I could never justify the expense ($25 for the simple shave at the local shop.)Then, our friends at Groupon offered up a straight razor shave and shoe shine from Baltimore’s Quintessential Gentleman, a high-end men’s barbershop, for $22. Enticed, I read further:

The 45-minute Quintessential shave starts with a serving of silky pre-shave oil and a hot lather, preparing the beard for the blade. Then, with precision and sensitivity, your barber will finely tune your finish using a super-sharp straight-razor baton. This process is repeated—the first time follows the grain of growth and the second time goes against it— ensuring a skin surface as smooth as a baby’s butter stash. Premium after-shave and an ice-cold towel help soothe the freshly shaven skin and seal the pores, and then the whole service is finished with an extended face massage.

Cash. Ching. Purchased.

Those poetic (almost, dare I say, erotic?) lines triggered a hunt for sweet barbershop shaves on Youtube. I watched, mesmerized, as video after video of men enjoying professional shaves rolled through. The pre-shave oils. Hot towels. Shaving cream. Badger brushes. With the grain, against the grain. Fine straight blades.

Each clip lead to another, and I realized I’d spent a few hours on YouTube in search of the perfect shave.

Now, this is not an entirely new concept. Women post pro makeup tips on the YouTubes all the time. And, surprisingly, there is a market for this type of voyeurism.

So, I submit, I have inside me the inklings of a Barbershop shave fetish. I watch the videos. I’ve already started researching razor/brush kits. I want to know what type of oil/cream package is right for me. And I have a date with a professional in my pocket now.

To subside me, I will post a new video of a sweet barbershop shave. Today, we head to New Orleans, for a shave and beer at the Magazine Street Barbershop. Unique to this technique: No badger brush, and a fine one-blade safety razor.

And it begins.

Josh likes Goldfish crackers. Really, who doesn’t? They are apparently a great snack on the Grand Canyon hiking trails.

That looks like fun. But did you know Josh likes to travel and eat Goldfish crackers all…over…the WORLD?

Ah, gay Pariee. Though France is a land of brie and the baguette, Josh had to bring his favorite snack to the Eiffel Tower.

Onward to India, and a stop at the famed Taj Mahal. Watch out for that camel Josh, they spit!

Did you know the ancient Druids sacrificed Goldfish crackers at Stonehenge for the summer solstice?

Where in the world will Josh King turn up next? Stay tuned…

“All these things I do, They’re waiting for you.” -Bradley Nowell, Sublime, Garden Grove

Sublime reformed in 2009.

I learned this news recently. It disturbs me.

They’re actually called Sublime with Rome now, a distinction forced by Bradley Nowell’s family, who filed a lawsuit in late 2009 insisting former original Sublime members, bass player Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh, not use the original band name. After a bit of lawyerly bickering, the suit was dismissed in 2010. Sublime with Rome was the compromise.

Rome Ramirez, a 22-year old mound of a kid from NorCal, is the new vocalist. Sublime with Rome is touring this summer, making a stop at Pier VI Pavilion in Baltimore July 18.

This is what they’ll be bringing to the table at a concert hall near you.

So. Yeah.

Clearly, this cat Rome has good intentions. His voice is decent and he knows his Sublime, and he has the blessings of arguably the most talented white boy rhythm duo since The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea and Chad Smith. Who can argue?

But its all just so much karaoke to me, with Rome the host at the interstate Holiday Inn, pulling the top hits from a familiar, but special, song-book…

It is summer, 2000. High school graduation is behind me, and its my teenage magic hour, that three month window of freedom before I hot the MetroJet to Tulane University. I worked, at a neighborhood restaurant, Mamie’s, making $60 in tips. Most of my friends worked waiting jobs, and after we’d clock out at 10:30 or so we’d drive over to 28th St. liquors in Remington and by gallon jugs of Bacardi and Jose Quervo and cases of Corona, then find an open house to celebrate until 4 a.m.

That July, my parents took a vacation to Bermuda, and in their absence I hosted a five-day house party for my friends. This did not occur with out my usual reservations, and I made sure to prepare for worst-case scenarios. I locked away family photos, cordoned off rooms, kept the good family liquors out of reach.

We had our own circle of usual suspects. The boys from Curley, Ben and Joey, and the girls from Western —Celeste, Melanie, Marilyn, Sally. There were the neighborhood folks, Ang and Matt,  Steve, Josh King, and the gang from Mt. Washington, Barb, Sonia, plus a slew of cameo appearances by friends and friends of friends. For five straight days we drank rum and took jello shots off various exposed body parts and made out in the back alleys and passed out, entwined, the hangovers tickling our brains.

And we danced —to Eminem and Dr. Dre and Heart and Lynyrd Skynyrd. But, for most of our parties, we danced to Sublime. For the bulk of our time, Bradley Nowell served as the feisty lyrical satyr, bashing about our own peculiar bacchanalia.

Nowell died at the age of 28 of a heroin overdose. This, if you know his history or watch one of his concert videos, is not shocking news. The Long Beach Cali native sweat kinetic energy that he could probably only ever shut off with mountainous piles of drugs that would make Scareface blush.

His OD happened just weeks before the release of Sublime’s self titled album, a 1996 LP that would top out at No. 13 on the Billboard charts. This, I maintain, is a pivotal moment in music history. If Nowell lives, the album still goes platinum. Sublime joins fellow Cali band No Doubt on their rise through the pop charts (hinted at in the famous “Saw Red” duet with Nowell and Gwen Stefani). Before long he’s singing hooks with L.B.C. rapper Snoop Dogg, playing stadium events like the once beloved HFSestival in D.C., and refocusing pop music to the SoCal world with its dub and reggae and dance hall and punk rock and surf rock, all which were hinted at on the self-titled album. If Nowell lives, maybe N.Sync and Brittany Spears and their ilk never see the light of day.

Instead, his death left a void in hardcore fans who wanted to learn more about Nowell’s world, the world defined in his lyrics; nights strumming guitar on the Pacific Ocean, drunken existentialism Lou Dog inside the van and the pain of heroin addiction. All these things I do, I’m waiting for you and etc.

Casual fans who know the self-titled album love to sing “What I Got” at a high drunken wail in late evening summer hazes, preferably near the beach. This is fine. But True Fans know every beat and syllable to ’40 oz to Freedom’ (an album that hit me like a freight train the first time I listened to it) and Robbin’ the Hood and Stand by Your Van and Secondhand Smoke and Bradley Nowell and Friends. These were in constant loop on my family’s CD player that summer.

I imagine most fans feel like I do, wishing they could take Doc Brown’s Delorean back in time to 1994 and catch Nowell live in concert. For my fix, I’ve always left it to the old Sublime concert videos and the occasional dollar in the jukebox. In college, during the heydays of Ebay and before the birth of Youtube.com, I bought a six-hour VHS compilation of Bradley Nowell concerts and interviews from a California collector. You can’t replicate Nowell. His energy was too precious and unique and beautiful to try to rekindle.

That void continued to live though, and tribute bands stepped up to fill it. One famous Mid-Atlantic group is Badfish, who sell out decent-sized venues like Ram’s Head Live playing nothing but Sublime’s original songs and famous covers.

I can hear the words, and the bassline and the reggae rhythm on the guitar. It’s there. The solo is the same from the Sublime self title. And the kids, they sing along happily. If not authentic, it’s at least cathartic.

But the heart of Sublime isn’t there. Its been dead since 1996, echoing faintly in a handful of recordings and grainy video clips.

Maybe I’ll go to that summer concert at Pier VI with Sublime with Rome. I dunno yet, I haven’t decided. I can drink rum & cokes and sing along dutifully, maybe find some pot and travel backward 10 years to a sweaty summer house party with a bunch of teenager who couldn’t see the future past our libidos. It would be good to revisit that.

But it won’t be real. Even then, back in 2000, it was only a projection of our own dreams and insecurities. All these things we do, indeed.

And today? Yes, that is Eric on bass, and Bud on drums. I got a dalmatian, and I can still get high. But the rest, its a mirage, one that continues to dissipate in the haze of summer’s past.