Spanking DC

I’m going to be trying something completely new here at DCistGoHome; I’m going to be moderately polite - although with a big caveat. On DCist’s Weekend Picks last friday, Sommer Mathis wrote:

Of course, the non-DAM! show of the night is clearly Baltimore's Spank Rock, who'll be bringing their old school hip-hop beats with an electronic twist to Black Cat.

First, I’d like to acknowledge that she structured this perfectly within the bounds of what is acceptable on the pages of DCist. There is no cultural icon theft. There is no attempt to lay claim to a Baltimorean institution as being somehow reflective of DC in anyway. There is no bullshit treating Baltimore as a DC suburb. The delineation of our two completely separate cities is made clear.

Sommer, you’re growing. I’m proud of you. *HUGS*

Hell, I’m feeling so damn warm and fuzzy about this that I won’t even delve too deeply into the fact that there is absolutely nothing “old school” about Spank Rock’s beats. In fact, the beats aren’t even hip hop - although sometimes they’re loosely based on, or rooted in, Baltimore Club - but Baltimore Club and “old school” hip hop not the same thing. There is a shit load of hip hop influence in Spank Rock’s sound, but not in the beats. They’re rough, they thump, they knuckle heads, but they aren’t “old school,” unless by old school you’re talking about Motown R&B.

Unfortunately, I will have to delve a little more deeply into the fact that Spank Rock isn’t actually Baltimore’s. Emcee, Naeem Juwan, or Spank Rock proper, is working out of Philly. Producer, Alex Epton, or XXXchange (the other half of Spank Rock), likewise, is a Brooklyn figure. It isn’t until you get down to the turntables of C. Rockswell and Ronnie Darko that you’ll find a Baltimore address, and at this point you’ve arguably left Spank Rock and entered the realm of the Baltimore Bass Connection. BBC and Spank Rock are not the same thing. True, everyone involved, with the exception of Philly’s Amanda Blank, have Baltimore roots; and they represent Baltimore in a big way (arguably a little too heavy handidly for some tastes) and are on a mission export their variant of the Baltimore sound to the world stage; but they were founded in and built up from the undergrounds of Philadelphia and Brooklyn, not Baltimore, by Baltimorean expats. As Naeem said in this Radio Free Chicago interview:

It's interesting to me how most music journalists don't care to pay attention. If you listen to our music, it's obvious that our sound has many influences, Baltimore club is one of them, but to be called a Baltimore club artist, because our sound is unique, Club is becoming more popular, and we're from Baltimore is just lazy. There are only two songs that have the club sound on our album.

So you see, Spank Rock isn’t actually a Baltimore outfit, or living in Baltimore, or even playing true Baltimore Club music (full confession from me: I actually adore Spank Rock and the BBC, while genuine B-more Club makes my ears bleed), they’re reping Baltimore for the significant/relevant portions of the Mid-Atlantic; namely, Baltimore, Philly, Jersey and New York. They’re blowing up. Baltimore Club is blowing up. There is a tie, but they are not the same thing. Nor are they the same thing as the Baltimore Bass Connection - which in itself isn’t producing genuine Baltimore Club music, but a geek-kid variant to a largely white audience.

Confused yet? Of course you are. It would be confusing to anybody. Being from DC, you are especially disinclined to be able to sort any of this out. Perhaps people writing for Phillyist or Gothamist can explain this all to you. It isn’t that I even minded this post at all; except, you know, everything you said was actually wrong and all - as though Baltimore and everything related or derived from Baltimore is beyond your understanding... or something.

As Emcee Rabbit of the BBC (and former Washingtonian. She went Injun in the Baltimorean Wilderness) said of the Black Cat show last weekend, “DC watch yourself.” See? It isn’t just me. Just about everyone in this whole damn city feels exactly as I do. Oh, I’m just kidding. In this one post, you and I are buds. *HUGS!* But seriously, watch yourself.

They’re Trying to Steal Our Pretend Serial Killers

Special ‘Kiss our asses, D.C.’ Halloween edition.

In a post bizarrishly and incorrectly titled “Virginia is for Lovers, D.C. is for Cannibals," Matt Sedlar stated:

”For example, D.C. was the stomping grounds for Hollywood's most famous cannibal, Hannibal Lecter.”

From the Wikipedia biography for the Hannibal Lecter character:

Lecter established a psychiatric practice in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1970s. He became a leading figure in Baltimore society and indulged his extravagant tastes, which he financed by influencing some of his patients to bequeath him large sums of money in their wills. He became world-renowned as a brilliant psychiatrist, but he himself apparently had nothing but disdain for psychology; he would later criticize it as "puerile" and "on level with phrenology," and comment that most psychology departments were filled with "ham radio enthusiasts and other personality-deficient buffs."
Lecter killed at least nine people before his capture, becoming known in the Baltimore area as "The Chesapeake Ripper". Only three of his victims survived, including Graham, an FBI profiler who was Lecter's captor and who figures largely in the plot of Red Dragon. Another one of these, Mason Verger, figures largely in the plot of Hannibal.
Only two of his 9 victims are known by name in the books: Benjamin Raspail and Mason Verger. Verger was the son of a very wealthy and influential family who controlled a meat-packing empire. Verger went through psychiatric counseling with Lecter after being convicted of child molestation. Lecter drugged Verger and suggested he try cutting off his own face. Verger complied and, again at Lecter's suggestion, ate it and then was convinced that he fed it to the dogs, so that pieces could not be found when their stomachs were pumped. Lecter then broke Verger's neck and left him to die. Verger survived, but was left hideously disfigured and forever confined to a life support machine.
Raspail was Lecter's ninth and final (known) victim before his incarceration. Raspail was a not-so-talented flautist with the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra, and it is believed that Lecter killed Raspail because his musicianship, or lack thereof, spoiled his enjoyment of the orchestra's concerts. Raspail's body would be discovered sitting in a church pew with his thymus and pancreas missing, and his heart pierced. It is believed Lecter served these organs at a dinner party he held for the orchestra's board of directors. Raspail claimed to have killed a man whose head was found years later in Raspail's rented storage garage in Baltimore, but Lecter suspected him of covering up for his former lover, Jame Gumb, who would later be involved in Lecter's life as the serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill".
Raspail's role is inconsistent in the Hannibal films. In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling finds the head in the storage shed much like the events in the novel describe. Perhaps in an effort to condense the number of characters, the film actually labels this as Raspail's head (referring to a moth as "just like the one that was found in Raspail's head an hour ago"). Hannibal tells Clarice that Benjamin Raspail was a former patient of his, and began to fear his lover. He tells her "I did not kill him, I assure you" and goes on to describe it as a "fledgling killer's" first attempt at transformation". Later, this description would indicate that he was killed by Buffalo Bill, as would the moth found in his mouth. However, the Hannibal screenplay seems to ignore the changes made in Ted Tally's "Silence of the Lambs" screenplay and reflects the events of the books, contradicting the previous film in the process. The murder of the victim identified as Raspail in "Hannibal" is portrayed in the opening scene of Tally's "Red Dragon" script but the flautist goes unnamed. Keeping the flautist unnamed avoids a contradiction between "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Red Dragon" as long as the inconsistency in "Hannibal" (which was written by Steven Zaillian and David Mamet as opposed to Tally) is ignored. Furthermore, the unnamed flautist in "Red Dragon" is depicted as completely bald whereas Raspail has shaggy, curly hair in "The Silence of the Lambs".
The novels also mention a few details about Lecter's other victims. One, who initially survived, was taken to a private mental hospital in Denver, Colorado. Others include a bow hunter, a census taker whose liver he famously ate with "fava beans and a big Amarone" (in the movie, the wine he had for this particular meal was "a nice Chianti"), and a Princeton student whom he buried. Lecter was given sodium amytal by the FBI in the hopes of learning where he buried the student; he gave them a recipe for potato chip dip. He committed his last three known murders within nine days.
Lecter was caught in March or April of 1975 by FBI Special Investigator Will Graham. Graham was investigating a series of murders in the Baltimore area committed by a serial killer, and had turned to Lecter for professional advice. When Graham questioned Lecter at his psychiatric practice, he noticed some antique medical books in his office. Upon seeing these, Graham knew Lecter was the killer he sought; the sixth victim had been killed in his workshop and laced to a pegboard in a manner reminiscent of the Wound Man, an illustration used in many early medical books. Graham left to call the police, but while he was on the phone Lecter attacked him with a linoleum knife and nearly disembowled him.
The courts found Lecter insane. Thus, he was spared prison and sent to the Baltimore State Forensic Hospital (later the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.)

WRONG, cock breathed cultural icon thieves!

Must you pretend that Baltimore is your stomping grounds? Get your own pretend serial killer, assholes.

Update: Matt Sedler’s bullshit defence for saying D.C. was Hannibal Lecter’s “stomping grounds:”

That really doesn't change the fact that the movies were filmed in parts of D.C. For example, Lecter plays phone tag with Clarese Starling at Union Station in Hannibal.

But it does effect whether or not D.C. was the stomping ground of the character Hannibal Lecter. *One* scene set in a train station does not stomping ground of a cultural icon make, especially in a series of novels/films. And yes, all the scenes involving the FBI headquarters were set in D.C., unlike all the movies where the FBI headquarters is set in Albuquerque.

I would have considered letting this one go where it not for the title “D.C. is for Cannibals.”

Does Torontoist claim a character as a home town icon every time a movie is filmed there? Does Baltimore do this every time Baltimore serves as a stand in for Washington? No.

Giggle My Grundel

Red Bull has been hosting these Flugtag competitions in cities all over the country for at least a few years, but if you've never been to one before, it's worth heading to Baltimore this weekend to catch the silliness of it all. Teams from all over the world will be bringing their homemade, human-powered flying machines to a 25-foot ramp above Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and jumping off. If you go, make sure to take some photos and tag with DCist on Flickr so we can giggle along with you.

Sommer Mathis
DCist
Out and About: Weekend picks
October 20, 2006

So let me get this straight; to show me up, you’re sending your minions of Flickr obsessed DCist ass kissers, who add the “DCist” tag to their photos, hoping their images will be graced on the pages of your obnoxious f**king blog, for your obnoxious f**king readers, in your obnoxious f**king city, to Baltimore, to watch some retards jump into the harbor wearing goofy outfits to promote some national dreck soda in a national touring “competition,” and you’re encouraging them to take pictures, and add the DCist tag - again, to show me up - and you think you’re the ones who are going to be giggling?

Simple Rules

Maybe (in the minds of some people[a link to dcistgohome]) it's verboten for DCist to hype anything coming from our neighbors to the north, but Baltimore indie-rock-folk-pop outfit Private Eleanor are worth checking out. They'll be at The Red and The Black with The Fake Accents and fellow Marylanders Airport Blvd. $8.

Har-de-dar. Dumbasses, of course you’re well within your realm of influence/jurisdiction/whatever to list and/or promote events that occur at bars or venues in DC or its metropolitan area. Whether a band or an artist that happens to be performing in or around DC is actually from Baltimore is completely immaterial. It is immaterial, obviously, because such a performer does not reflect either negatively or positively on the Washington community at large. What would have been unacceptable would be for you to have stated or inferred that such a band was local to the DC area or to have written something along the lines of one of our area’s acts or otherwise delusionally smug and self-congratulatory. In this instance, you were only smug, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re golden. Smugness, on the part of a Washingtonian, is to be expected.

Other instances where it is acceptable for DCist to make reference to Baltimore or its institutions:

• Anything that occurs in Baltimore that is of vital or crucial importance in regards to Maryland politics. For instance, when either Ehrlich or O’Malley exploit Baltimore and our reputation in either of their campaigns for governor, I feel you are well within your rights to address such matters. You have approximately three million people within your media market area to which such matters are important. I am not completely unfair. I am sure there are instances when LAist addresses such matters that occur in the San Francisco area, and visa versa... and Austin and Houston as well. Use their practices as guidelines. As long as you attach some sort of “our neighbors to the north” amendment, you will never receive any bitching from my end.



• Peter Angelos hating. You have every reason in the world to have a giant hate-on hard-on for Peter Angelos. So do we. Our reasons just happen to be different. Feel free to rhetorically piss in his mouth as often as you like.



• These are give-yous on my part: Howard County and those parts of Anne Arundel County including Annapolis and parts south. If you are likely to find anymore than one Redskins or Nationals fan out of hundred people in an area that is considered a shared suburb of our metropolitan areas, I say you can have them. Any area that is likely to support one such person out of a hundred is dead to me anyway.

Otherwise, just do us both a favor and stay the f**k out.

Bitch, Whine, Repeat....

It’s funny how when matters such as crime statistics arise, DCist could not possibly disassociate itself from Baltimore fast enough; such is when the Editor-In-Chief, Sommer Mathis, wrote this on September 19:

We [DC] had 195 murders in 2005, which comes to 35.4 per 100,000 citizens. That's actually down from 198 in 2004, but still higher per capita than all the states.

But how about cities like Detroit, New Orleans and Baltimore; traditional contenders for the "America's Murder Capital" moniker? Their crime rates are another story.

Yet, when they’re covering positives or see something in Baltimore that they would like to be associated with, they could not possibly lay claim to Baltimore any faster. Such as yesterday, when DCist wrote this about some band at the Ottobar or something*:

So, where you place yourself in the Landau/Rock 'n' Roll Future spectrum, then, might directly correlate to how much you like the Hold Steady. Last night at Ottobar in Baltimore, the fanboy and the critic in me kept coming back to those words and asking myself if it really could get any better than this.

Hmmm. I suppose we’re only “another story” sometimes. At least they went to the trouble of actually acknowledging that the Ottobar isn’t actually in DC, unlike their coverage of the Virgin Festival in Pimlico**. I suppose this exhibits some growth on their part.

Why does DCist do this? Well, the answer is obvious. Washingtonians love nothing more than pretending that they’re something they’re not. What they’re pretending to be in this instance is a Global City. Of course, it is impossible to pretend to be such a thing with their numbers. But if they pretend that Baltimore is in the Washington metropolitan area, then suddenly they’re representative of a market of 8.6 million people... unless, of course they’re talking about negatives associated with Baltimore... then all of a sudden they’re talking about a totally different place that they have nothing to do with. Never mind that they don’t represent anything to this city or our metropolitan area other than exemplifying everything that we despise.

Well, DCist, Washington, everything that is associated (which, incidentally, Baltimore is not), you should have gone with your original instinct. You have got to figure out your own city before you try to lay claim to this one. Trust me, it isn’t easy. Twenty years, thirty years... people spend they’re entire lives trying to understand this city, and in the end even the experts fall short. There are simply too many variables. You gotta live in and look at the ugly long and hard before the beauty reveals itself to you. Not that I think you’re interested, but I can assure you that you won’t be able to do it from DC. So don’t bother trying to eat your cake in have it too. If you don’t want our bad, you can’t have our good. Baltimore is too much of a mouth full for you. If you want to pretend to be a Global City, that’s on you. Don’t involve us in your delusion. We know what we are. The question is, do you know what you are?

* Completely don't give a shit about some show at the Ottobar, but that isn't the point.
** Again, not that I care at all about some worthless touring music festival