To order a copy of
Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore!
send $3
(check, money order, stamps, or cash) to:

Willam P. Tandy
c/o Eight-Stone Press
PO Box 11064
Baltimore, MD
21212 USA
wpt@eightstonepress.com
www.myspace.com/eightstonepress

HAVE PICTURE, WILL LAST LONGER

Take it from me, Baltimore - take what you can, when you can get it.

Nowhere in my recent memory has this axiom been better demonstrated than during a recent drive down Broadway [Ed. Note: Fells Point, for those of you who instinctively take every mention of, say, Brooklyn to imply NYC], when I noticed a full-size RV, not dissimilar to those used as mobile headquarters by the police department, parallel-parked directly in front of the climate-controlled, still-ONLY-$9-to-get-in Apex Adult Cinema.

But this effort to exercise some measure of mobile authority over the seventh installment of Big Ass She-Male Road Trip had nothing to do with the police department. No. That much was clearly spelled out by the words stenciled on the side of the rig:

BALTIMORE CITY HEALTH DEPARTMENT

Instinct mandating that no such thing should go without record, I immediately reached for the camera that wasn't there. Consequently, I have no tangible image with which to dispel any shadow of a doubt from your collective minds of the scene hitherto described (after all, the Baltimore City Department of Transportation must have some vested interest, no matter how small, in seeing that those big ass she-males arrive safely at their destination).

So I suppose, for sake of argument, you'll just have to take my word for it. I accept full guilt in not having better prepared myself beforehand; indeed, I should have by that time learned my lesson….

*****

I was milling about The Sun's website a few weeks prior when I stumbled upon a short article from the AP wire about a couple of kids beating the piss out of former-Pogue and world-class drunkard Shane MacGowan in a London pub. Curiosity getting the better of me, I decided to scope out www.shanemacgowan.com - "the official website for that man of many words and few teeth" - for more information.

But when I got there the cupboard was bare; the news was far too fresh, and the site had obviously not been updated for a while. The online petition featured prominently on the homepage, however, suggested that the dated content was not necessarily due to any shortcoming of the webmaster; rather, it cited, among other things, a lack of (credible) information from MacGowan's people, urging the singer to fire his manager, clean up his act and get the show on the road.

With regard to a man whose chemical abuse alone has rendered him a perennial death-pool favorite, this came as no surprise. Nor did the roughly 3,000 people from all over the world who had stood up to be counted. No. One thing, however, did catch my eye - one name in particular: No. 6, to be exact, superseded by but five names that boasted their respective owners' blood membership in Clan MacGowan:

Martin O'Malley, Mayor of Baltimore, Maryland

Indeed, it seemed plausible. Regularly turning out MacGowan covers with his ceilidh rock band, O'Malley's March, it's no mystery that the Mayor of Baltimore is a fan. And www.shanemacgowan.com was obviously playing that card, referring to O'Malley as a "prominent US politician" in a sidebar detailing Just How High Up This Thing Went.

Well, hot damn! I thought. Prime fodder for a column! I spent the next week mulling over my approach: how exactly to break the news that the Mayor was flexing his black muscle-shirt might to convince the staggering, slurring ex-Pogue to fire his manager.

But when I returned to the site to gather more details, Martin O'Malley was conspicuously absent. No name. No sidebar.

Not a mention.

And the No. 6 slot was now occupied by Danny Heatley, drummer for MacGowan's current band, the Popes.

So just what the hell happened to the Mayor of Baltimore? Well, a search of "Shane MacGowan" and "Martin O'Malley" on Google News turned up two hits: the first being the original AP story of the beating, the second an unflatteringly accurate photo of present-day MacGowan on www.hotpress.com, accompanied by the following statement:

The Mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley has issued a statement to hotpress.com
stating that the "Martin O'Malley" whom allegedly signed the ongoing online petition regarding Shane MacGowan's business relationship with Joey Cashman
is NOT Martin O'Malley the Mayor of Baltimore.

And so the mystery deepens: Is there a rogue O'Malley impersonator haunting cyberspace? Or did the Mayor of Baltimore - perhaps under adverse circumstances - in fact sign the petition, only to recant the Next Day? Could it have been a ploy by Ehrlich's people to paint O'Malley as being more concerned with a foundering folk-punk's salvation than the city's ailing [insert social program] system?

Or was it something much more sinister?

Hotpress.com may or may not hold the answer - only those willing to pony up the subscription rate of 20 Euro (about $24.21 USD at press time) "to access this nugget" will ever know for sure…

As for the rest, well…you'll just have to take my word for it.