Joe Strummer (aka John Graham Mellor) died Sunday, of a heart attack, at 50. His first and greatest band, the Clash, was the band of my teenage years, and for me it was the Only Band That Matters; the Clash took “punk” and redefined its boundaries, subverting pop standards and other musical forms and bending them to their will. Ironically, on Saturday night, my conversation with a neighbor turned to the Clash and their collaboration with Alan Ginsberg (“Do the worm on the Acropolis/Slam-dance cosmopolis/enlighten the populous”).
Archive for 2002
Dec
11
2002
Glazed and confused
It's raining ice here in Mobtown; the main roads seem ok, but it's a skating rink elsewhere. The kids have the day off from school, and it's a good day to hunker in the bunker.
Dec
10
2002
Last night, my wife Paula's grandfather passed away after a long illness. Keep him and the Hnasko family in your thoughts and prayers today. Thanks.
Dec
10
2002
Last night, my wife Paula’s
Last night, my wife Paula’s grandfather passed away after a long illness. Keep him and the Hnasko family in your thoughts and prayers today. Thanks.
Dec
09
2002
The other kind of Radio
I'm going on Baltimore's Marc Steiner Show (on WYPR) tomorrow to talk about consumer gadgets. This ought to be entertaining; I haven't talked about consumer electronics since the last time I wrote for the Baltimore Sun (how long ago was that? Hint: it was about a 3Com consumer Internet appliance)…
Anyway, if you're in earshot, and want to hear me listen to how great I sound on radio (heh), tune in. It should be streamed live by WYPR and by the Baltimore Sun website as well.
Dec
06
2002
Rationalization
IBM is acquiring Rational Software. I guess if you can't make good tools, you buy them. Okay, that's a little catty, I admit; Visual Age doesn't suck *that* bad, and adding Rational's tools will help a lot with IBM's target market–institutionalized, methodology-driven, architectural software development.
Nov
18
2002
I went out for my irregular lunchtime bike ride today, and got an extra adrenaline boost for my final mile.
I joke with friends about city bike riding, calling it “urban assault.” But today, it got a little too urban and a little too close to
Because of Baltimore's odd socio-geography, some of the prettiest spots in the city are smack dab right up against some of the worst. Take Druid Hill Park–it's home to the Baltimore Zoo, the city Conservatory greenhouses, a large resevoir, the city parks headquarters, public tennis facilities, a frisbee golf course…and a quarter-mile from its northwest boundary are alleys that support a robust drug trade. In fact, a few nights ago, a policeman was shot in a struggle for his gun (and saved by his badge, which took the bullet for him).
That fact was somewhere in the back of my conciousness as I struggled uphill near the Zoo entrance and was passed by a fast-moving police cruiser. It wasn't an unusual sight, so I kept on pedaling. As I crested the hill , I saw the car was stopped ahead of me, and the officer who had been driving it was standing in the road, talking to a black man sitting on the curb.
As I got closer, I saw that the policeman had his sidearm drawn and aimed at the head of the man on the curb, and was barking a warning. I pedaled past, 12 feet from the suspect and five from the officer. “Now lay down on the ground and keep your hands in front of you…”
A few feet further, and pedaling a bit faster, I saw a line of cruisers and plainclothes cars coming uplill toward me. One, two….seven cruisers. Further downhill, another patrolman and a K-9 unit were searching through the brush.
The last mile home was my fastest in a while.
As it turns out, the guy is a suspect in the police shooting.