A place for stealth fans of 'tween romance

November 21, 2008

Twilight might well become a blockbuster, but it's unlikely to be a hit at the Senator Theatre unless lots of grown-ups are closet Stephanie Meyer fans.

Recent columns

• Alonso buys 2-bedroom home in Fells Point

  November 19, 2008

  Andres Alonso is busy fixing Baltimore schools. Don't expect him to prop up the city's ailing real estate market, too, even though he just bought a house in Fells Point.

• He's cold, he's hungry, he's determined

  November 16, 2008

  Funding has dried up for the drug recovery program I Can't We Can. The group's offices are going unheated. And you know things are really dire when Anthony McCarthy starts denying himself food.

• The man who knew so much is off the air

  November 14, 2008

  Daren Muhammad has been kicked off the WOLB airwaves and, wouldn't you know it, there's a conspiracy there.

• Those delicate Jesuit sensibilities

  November 12, 2008

  An economics professor from Loyola University in New Orleans traveled to Baltimore's Loyola last week to give a lecture, and everybody's been apologizing ever since.

• Maybe it's tacky, but kind of glorious

  November 9, 2008

  Michael Phelps, you've won another medal.

• With a little work, she can look real bad

  November 7, 2008

  Molly Shattuck left the hubby, kids and credit cards in Roland Park to spend a week waiting tables and ringing up groceries in a poor Pennsylvania coal mining town. For the new reality TV show Secret Millionaire, the wife of Constellation Energy Group CEO Mayo Shattuck lived incognito and on minimum wage as she looked for someone who could best use a bit of her wealth.

• Baltimore's mayor is no line-jumper

  November 5, 2008

  Mayor Sheila Dixon had a long wait at her polling place yesterday, but not as long as it could have been.

• No hair, no waistline, no time, no news

  November 2, 2008

  Del. J.B. Jennings, a Baltimore County Republican who joined the Maryland Air National Guard last summer, just got back from 6 1/2 weeks of boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. How was it?

• Put it this way: She's certainly no Annabel Lee

  October 31, 2008

  Baltimore, city of little pretense and lousy baseball, had occasion to look down its nose at Philadelphia just a day after the Phillies won the World Series.

• First, you learn to scrub out the pots

  October 29, 2008

  Chef Rock Harper told a roomful of aspiring chefs - no doubt a few of them aspiring celebrity chefs - not to expect instant success.

• Don't fear lint, but don't wear any plaid

  October 26, 2008

  To "Paper or plastic?" and "Obama or McCain?" add yet another wrenching personal choice: "White napkin or black?"

• If they deliver it to you, don't pay for it

  October 24, 2008

  Pope John Paul II still gets around.

• Do you see that pin? Guess who gave it

  October 22, 2008

  So there's John P. Coale, the big-time-Democratic-fundraiser-turned-McCaniac, in the spin room after last week's presidential debate.

• Developers start to dig the way of the NIMBY

  October 19, 2008

  So this is what it feels like to be on the other side of the bulldozer.

• Wig Man goes Hollywood. Via Philly.

  October 17, 2008

  The Maryland guy who campaigned for U.S. Senate two years ago wearing a white Colonial-style periwig has found another venue for offbeat political expression.

• Philly horns in on our turf – again

  October 12, 2008

  Bad enough that Philly has been trying to claim Edgar Allan Poe. Now The City of Brotherly Love seems to be making a play for The Wire.

• Our Poe? We'd rather he not be in Philadelphia

  October 10, 2008

  That would-be grave robber from Philly is at it again, trying to get his cheese-steak-y paws on Edgar Allan Poe.

• Phelpstival host appreciated the love

  October 8, 2008

  Access Hollywood host Billy Bush schlepped all the way from L.A. to Baltimore to host the Phelpstivities at Fort McHenry, but he didn't spend the night in town. He stayed instead at the Ritz in Georgetown.

• The artist paints, and he also multiplies

  October 5, 2008

  What makes an artist assemble 193,000 toothpicks?" PeteHilsee, spokesman for the American Visionary Art Museum, mused the other day.

• Running things was simpler in City Hall

  October 3, 2008

  In an article titled "Stat Governor," the latest issue of Governing magazine ponders this: "Martin O'Malley ran Baltimore by the numbers. Can he make it work for all of Maryland?"

• Just get them to the church on time

  October 1, 2008

  Florist? Check. Photographer? Check. Police traffic coordinator? Double check.

• Don't get your shorts in a bunch — visibly

  September 28, 2008

  The ladies who lunch at Petit Louis in Roland Park know enough to keep their undies to themselves. Same goes for the Harbor East crowd forking over hundreds for dinner at Charleston and the oenophiles tasting wines at nearby Cinghiale.

• Come back, kid, when you can show ID

  September 26, 2008

  With Michael Phelps' face plastered on the cover of Sports Illustrated and boxes of Frosted Flakes, you've got to wonder: Did he lose the chance to live a normal life when he won all that Olympic glory?

• Ken Harris never stopped trying

  September 24, 2008

  It only looked like Ken Harris loved being on TV.

• 'We did so' 'You did not' 'We did too' 'Uh, oops'

  September 21, 2008

  Baltimore's top two elected leaders, usually all chummy in public, duked it out the other day over:

• 'Oviestyle,' a mullet by any other name

  September 19, 2008

  Alexander Ovechkin, one of the greatest hockey players in the game today, and certainly the best paid, decided to get spruced up the day he signed a 13-year, $124 million deal with the Washington Capitals. He swung by Hair Cuttery for a $14 cut.

• For once, the big guns get run out in Baltimore

  September 17, 2008

  True-blue Maryland is about to see something unexpected this close to Election Day: someone actually on a presidential ballot. Two of them.

• Cool as a cucumber, he popped the question

  September 14, 2008

  Well, now we know the whole locavore thing really has arrived. An aspiring groom opted against the old fancy-schmancy restaurant setting and popped the question a couple of Sundays ago at the Baltimore farmers' market.

• Really, isn't everyone a winner in this race?

  September 12, 2008

  City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake might be Baltimore's mayor-in-waiting, but there was no waiting yesterday.

• Get out! Low-profile celebrity's a big tipper

  September 10, 2008

  The man who on TV gave us the re-gifter, double-dipper, anti-dentite, low-talker and bad breaker-upper proves to be something else entirely in real life: a great tipper.

• It's not business, Barack, just personal

  September 7, 2008

  There's Audacity of Hope," John Coale was saying, "and then there's just audacity."

• Building children's vocabularies — doggedly

  September 3, 2008

  A dog named Martha is talking - and talking and talking - on PBS, thanks to some errant alphabet soup and a University of Maryland professor.

• William Donald Schaefer slept here

  August 31, 2008

  Fells Point is about to lose a celebrity, somebody famous for jumping into a pool.

• If you talk the 9/11 talk, you better know the 9/11 facts

  August 29, 2008

  With Rudy Giuliani at his side the other day in Denver, former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele declared that Barack Obama lacked the homeland security cred to be president. While he was at it, Steele showed off his own loose grasp of the subject.

• Voters may have to tune in to more minstrelsy

  August 27, 2008

  Turns out Maryland is big enough for more than one guitar-strumming Democrat.

• If you live near Michael Phelps, don't answer the phone

  August 24, 2008

  How's this for gold-medal motivation? On July 31, just days before he headed to Beijing, Michael Phelps shelled out $36,538.46 for property taxes on his $1.7 million Fells Point townhouse.

• A tiny peek into Dixon's closet

  June 20, 2008

  Even before prosecutors started sniffing around for Sheila Dixon's fur coats, her people were worried.

• Not blowing in the wind

  May 9, 2008

  Seen the wind turbines atop the Inner Harbor's Power Plant? Must admit I'd missed them until someone sent me the link to a video posted on the official city tourism Web site.

• Maybe it's for the XXX Games

  February 17, 2008

  Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff aren't just showing off their swimming in Missouri. They're showing off their new Speedo LZR Racer swimsuits. And that means they're showing off their birthday suits, too.

• Art imitates life imitates art

  January 25, 2008

  Felicia Pearson did time for murder, then went on to play a hitman named "Snoop" on The Wire. Now she finds herself caught up in another real-life killing - this time as a witness.

• Fake newsroom, real anger

  January 6, 2008

  Forget what you've heard about the fifth and final season of The Wire, which begins tonight on HBO. Officially, what some critics have called the greatest show in the history of TV wraps up with a meditation on the evils of corporate newspaper ownership. But really, it's all about revenge.

• Halloween goes all tasteful

  October 31, 2007

  Martin O'Malley's critics say he's a spender. Can't prove it by the Halloween decorations at the governor's mansion.

• They gasp at the doorway

  September 23, 2007

  Awoman born to antiques dealers and steeped in classical music has the hippest office in town, backstage at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

• It's a free press when you own it

  March 18, 2007

  From the pecan cabinetry to the flagstone patio, no detail about the Roland Park charmer featured in The Examiner's real estate section goes unnoticed, but for this: The guy trying to sell the place, Examiner Publisher Michael Phelps.

• Ain't the urn cool!

  September 30, 2005

  Chuck Thompson wasn't just a Hall of Fame sports announcer. He also was a husband, the kind who parked himself on a shopping mall bench while his wife roamed the stores. So his final resting place -- in the courtyard of a revamped shopping mall -- could not be more fitting.