blamblamblamblam

Blah, Preakness. You all know what I’m going to say, but it’ll have to wait a day. A bunch of people just got blown away outside my bedroom window a few hours ago; and surprisingly, I’m a little shaken up about it. It turns out I’m a much bigger pussy than I thought. I’ve never heard gun shots that close before, and jesus christ ARE THEY LOUD. Also... bodies... and wounded.... yeesh.

Go ahead, yuk it up, unintentional poverty displacers. Baltimore is a dump. Der. I’ve never contested that. Nobody has ever contested that. You’re still the biggest assholes in America, and nobody outside the Beltway has ever contested that. Try to price douchbaggery out into P.G. county.

The good news is, as it turns out, hitting the floor happens to be a gut instinct of mine. That might come in handy in the future.

Anyway, I have a long day tomorrow, and by the look and sounds of things, the detectives are probably going to be out there for hours. I doubt I would have been able to sleep anyway.

I’ll be back on Thursday with my vitriol, piss and vinegar. My position has not changed. As long as there is a DCist expressing uninformed and presumptuous hubris, there will be a dcistgohome barking back like a pit dog... presuming, of course, that I don’t catch a stray. But Wednesday is going to be a me day.

Year II, Part II, Same Smug Self Satisfied B.S. from DCist

For the second year in a row, Virgin Fest has opted to hold their eastern United States mega-concert at Pimlico in the northwest corner in Baltimore. For the second year in a row, DCist is beaming with pride over this for what they consider *their* Virgin Festival. And for the second year in a row, Amanda Mattos, in a post laughably titled “Virgin Fest is Comin' to Town,” has dealt with this difficult and incorrect claim by uncomfortably and clumsily neglecting to mention the Pimlico is actually in Baltimore, a city D.C. generally never wants anything to do with unless it serves their characteristic sense of arrogant self entitlement.

Last year we were all lathered up about getting a mega-fest of our very own (or at least, within reasonable stomping-ground distance)

That’s funny, DCist never fails to mention geographic or municipal locations in their reporting of matters within their own metropolitan geography, whether it is inside D.C., or in Fairfax, or Rockville or whatever. But for the second year in a row, DCist has opted to neglect mentioning that Pimlico is not in fact in D.C.

I wonder why?

Oh yeah. They actually know they have no business claiming Baltimore as belonging to them. They actually know that Baltimore has an independent economy. They actually know Baltimore has an independent media market, and an independent culture, and an independent everything else. They actually know the two cities have nothing to do with one another. This works out wonderfully when they want another major metropolitan city to piss on; but dammit, this isn’t going to stop them when they want to congratulate themselves and rah rah about their own imaginary awesomeness. Nothing is going to stop a Washingtonian when they see an opportunity to pat themselves on the back.

Amanda Mattos, here is the deal with Virgin choosing Pimlico to be their eastern United States venue:

1) The festival must be located somewhere within the eastern seaboard Megapolis... somewhat close to the population centers of real cities like New York and Philadelphia. [Options: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C.]
2) The festival must not be prohibitively distant from the American Southeast. [Options: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C.]
3) Optimally, the festival should be located within the Megapolis closest to the densely populated Ohio Valley. [Options: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C.]
4) The festival must be located in a metropolitan area that has the infrastructure to handle such a large population influx. [Options: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C.]

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = Pimlico.

Virgin could not give a rat’s ass what city adds up in the equation. All they care about is the equation itself. Not only does this festival have nothing to do with D.C., it really doesn’t have anything to do with Baltimore either, other than being the metropolitan area that most optimally fulfilled all of the above criteria.

Yay! Criteria! Woo!!!

If you’ll notice, nobody in Baltimore is patting themselves on their back over this. Would you like to know why? It’s because it is not in our nature to falsely congratulate ourselves over nothing. But, oh, is it in yours in spades. You do it when you have an argument, and you find a way to do it when you have no argument.

This, of course, is the latter.

But congratulations on yet again having “a mega-fest of [your] very own.”

Smoking

I have no specific blast of DCist for this particular post, but rather the pronounced, hypocritical and contradictory idiocy of one of its commenters.

DCist imbedded this admittedly hilarious clip from the daily show last night where Stewart and Aasif Mandvi take a scripted jab at Baltimore and our notorious violent reputation:



This caused IMGoph to respond with this comment:

"Washington DC is violent, but they're not finding 30-50 corpses in the street every day"

"well of course not, it's not Baltimore"

stick that in your pipe and smoke it, dcistgohome guy!!! :)

IMGoph, I do not live under the delusion that Baltimore is a paradise, and I’m more than willing to laugh along with others when they take their jabs at Baltimore, as long as those others are not Washingtonians. Self delusion is not one of our flaws. My issue with Washingtonians, and DCist in particular, is that they choose to cherry pick what they perceive a Baltimorean positives and try to claim them as their own or somehow reflective of their culture to compensate for that which they know to be their own shortcomings, namely, the fact that D.C. is a cultureless, rootless, colorless imaginary city. Of course, it is an absurd claim, as it is a universally accepted fact that our cultures share no ties.

On a vaguely related note, it just so happens that Jon Stewart has a particular wild hair up his butt about Baltimore and frequently chooses to make us the butt of his jokes, although I’ve never heard him crack on Detroit or even Camden, New Jersey, which is odd, seeing how he the product of a privileged background in central Jersey. I remember how, prior to the Ravens/Giants Super Bowl, he sent a film crew down to Baltimore to mock our city as weak, effeminate and insignificant. Oddly enough, I have no memory of him retracting after we handed the Giants their ass in that game. I also remember a couple of years ago, when Ice Cube was on the show to promote a horrible movie that was largely filmed in Baltimore, and Stewart used the opportunity to attack Baltimore as being a “dump”... to ICE CUBE... who is from Compton! To Ice Cube’s credit, he didn’t take the bait. It has always been my suspicion that Stewart has some relatives in Baltimore that he despises, or worse, is a Yankees fan. Nothing in this world is more pathetic than being a Yankees fan. Any New Yorker that has an ounce of character roots for the Mets.

But I digress... Jon Stewart is intelligent and talented, DCist is not. Jon Stewart is also a New Yorker, and lets face it, if New York wants to look down their noses as lesser cities, they pretty much have the right. Washington does not. Washington is nothing more than the Canberra of the Northern Hemisphere with an unjustified high opinion of itself. You are not real, and EVERYTHING you have is federally subsidized. Have the feds agreed to pay to rebuild Eastern Market yet? That’s right, even that last remnant that your city had to pretend that you had one degree of something remotely resembling authenticity is dependent on the charity of the American tax payer.

Up here, though, we have it hard. Unlike you, we have to make our own way. American steel is largely dead. Midwestern grains and exports are now mostly routed through the St. Lawrence Seaway instead of our ports. We’re left to diversify our own economy and fight an uphill battle. Meanwhile, you can just sit on your asses and wait for the needs of the federal government to grow, causing more money to pour in while you pat yourselves on the back as though you’ve done something special.

By your perception, you would think that I would be ashamed to be associated with cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Gary and Buffalo, but I’m not. I’m proud of associations with those cities that are left to fight their own fights. What makes me feel shame is being associated with a weak, subsidized, self congradulatory fake city like D.C. for no better reason than we’re close to you. You try to claim us as belonging to you when it suits your needs, and then piss on us for being poorer and more violent what that suits your needs? Well... lets just say you all don’t have the character it takes to be a Yankees fan.

But you know what the funny part is? Even though D.C. has every advantage in the Universe, even though the money pours in hand over fist, you’re still pretty much a dump too. We’re poor. What’s your excuse?

Just remember what Aasif Mandvi said on the Daily Show last night, D.C. isn’t Baltimore. If you don’t want to be associated with our problems, then stop trying to pretend that we’re associated when it suits your needs. That’s been my point to DCist from the first. So, IMGoph, you can stick it in your pipe and smoke that.

Again With the Incorrectly Placed Photo of the Day?

Apparently, The Skipping Hippy has once again gotten into his car and made a day trip to Baltimore to take photos of our city and submit them to the DCist Flickr Pool, and DCist has once again opted to feature one of the photos on a site that is supposedly about D.C. or at least its suburbs.

This time, DCist did not feature a photo of Hampden and inform its readers that said photo was “near” Baltimore. Instead, it was a photo of the promotional Polish Sausage adorning the rooftop of the Polock Johnny’s on Washington Boulevard, except the poster, EK Eckert, neglected to mention Polock Johnny, as obviously she has never heard of the establishment and has absolutely no familiarity with the history.

But who cares, right? Why would DCist bother to familiarize itself with Baltimore’s cultural history. It isn’t like Baltimore has anything to do with its city. But then again, why would DCist feature a photo of Baltimore on a site about D.C. if the cultural context from which it is derived is irrelevant to them? I can almost see the little hamster wheel in her head spin when she saw the photo attached to their Flickr Pool, "’OMG, WTF?,’ something culturally distinctive, kitschy and with character... it’s time to temporarily condescendingly pretend to appropriate Baltimore to compensate for the fact that D.C. is an imaginary, cultureless, featureless and colorless wasteland.”

The picture inspired several comments, two of note:

Why does DCist post photos from Baltimore? Baltimore is not worthy of being on DCist.
[4] Posted by: KStreetLawyer | May 9, 2007 7:01 PM

and...

for reals, bmore is certainly worthy of being on dcist. the weirdest city in america, in my opinion, we gotta show it some love.
[6] Posted by: sarahlucy | May 9, 2007 7:31 PM

“KStreetLawyer.” I absolutely love that this commenter opted to sign in this manner, as if to say, “I’m fucking SOMEBODY. This city revolves around my ass, the world revolves around this city and consequently, my ass is the center of the fucking Universe!” KStreetLawyer, for better or for worse, you are the quintessential Washingtonian. To some degree or another, every Washingtonian, whether a lobbyist, lawyer, pizza delevery person, bicycle messenger, homeless person or Ist blogger, views the world through the same smoke of delusion as you do. You represent your city perfectly. Lemme guess, when you meet a stranger, the first thing that goes through you head is “How is this person going to prove that they are worthy of my attention?” Well, you’re not alone. Every Washingtonian does that.

KStreetLawer, to your credit, at least you’re not deluding yourself into believing that you’re being charitable and inclusive, unlike sarahlucy. Ms. Lucy, Baltimore may or may not be the “weirdest city in america.” We certainly take more pride than any other major American city for our inherent weirdness; but how exactly does our weirdness qualify us for either inclusion or association with D.C., a city with as much flavor as boiled water stew? Perhaps we only think we have more color than any other city because we are the only city that is geographically juxtaposed against the only city in America that has absolutely no culture or character of its own (again, I’m speaking specifically about the white people in D.C., which, judging from the pages of DCist, is 95% of the city. But what do I know about D.C. from all the way up here in Baltimore? Perhaps DCist just isn’t representative of its city as a whole). Although it is your opinion that you have got to show us some love, I can assure you that you don’t have to show us anything, as in our opinion, D.C. isn’t worthy of eating the polish sausage bits out of our shit.

Now, this is Elizabeth Eckert’s first foray into the cultural imperialism of our institutions, so I opted to go soft on her. Hell, I didn’t even take to obvious route and invite her to take a trip up to Baltimore to eat our collective Polish sausages, or our Hebrew frankfurters, or our German liverwurst, or our Italian sausages (either hot or sweet), or our juicy Greek Gyros, or our giant lake trout subs. But I can assure her, after the first offense, I start to get mean. I recommend that she, like the rest of DCist, would be better off concentrating on correctly representing their own city before they incorrectly and unjustifiably try to represent ours.