Remember Jerry Breen, the 46-year-old graphic artist who was arrested and fined $70 for eating an Egg McMuffin on a Metro train? We haven't heard the last of him. He's still fighting this thing, and wants his money back. (Breen was also fined $100 for not appearing in court to answer the original eating-on-a-train charge, plus $20 in court costs.) He goes to District Court for trial Nov. 22. The courthouse is located on Wabash Avenue, right near a Metro stop. So, Jerry, a little advice: If you plan on taking the train, don't leave the house without a good breakfast.
Right here on Eastern Avenue
What is duende? "To say that it is merely charisma or panache or flair is rather to demean it," wrote the late jazz critic George Frazier. "For while it is certainly all those things, it is the nth power of them. It is chemistry." Duende is soul, class and style. It is that certain something. It is a spirit that animates not only artistic and athletic talent but genius. Muhammad Ali had it. Aretha Franklin, Nat King Cole, Ted Williams, Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Michael Jordan, Ingrid Bergman, Miles Davis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- all have had it. Duende is what Frank Robinson had striking out, and Harmon Killebrew did not have hitting a home run. The spirit was encountered long ago in Andalusian road houses. Duende is what Federico Garcia Lorca called the "energetic instinct," that which no flamenco dancer could be without. I love duende, adore the concept, have had many arguments over who among the stars has it (DeNiro) and who doesn't (Pacino). I've been told I must see a flamenco dancer, enraptured and swept away, to truly appreciate duende. Now, we have a chance. Each Saturday night at Rio Madrid, formerly Rio Lisboa, the flamenco starts at 7, then again at 9. Tony Lloret, who runs the Eastern Avenue restaurant, is a native of southern Spain and knows about duende. He believes the spirit has appeared in his dancer at times. "The people," he says, "they love it." We'll come for dinner and the dancer, and we'll have our duende detectors fully charged.
Thank you, Madame
The following essay is one of many answering my request for frivolous intellectualizing about "Aliens Go Bowling in Utah and Find True Love," Martha Drew Gatewood's obstinately senseless work of art discovered during a burrito at Mencken's Cultured Pearl Cafe. It's from a Madame Helene D'Artois, and it might be the best of all submitted. I recommend reading it aloud, and doing so in the foppish voice of a pretentious salon-crowd interloper. You know the type.
"In this work, Ms. Gatewood literally nails down, screws together and staples over a total theory. Each panel of this triadic board conveys message and medium. Panel No. 1 has a subtly colored representational sense of trees, stream and two flying saucers signifying spirituality. Panel No. 2 is earthly reality, utilizing a Fair Lanes bowling badge and "We Will" pin to show the effort and will imposed on the concrete objects of life. Panel No. 3's focal point is a decorative image of two hearts superimposed on Utah, proclaiming the union of spiritual and earthly reality and, artistically, the union of representational art and interpretational art by use of ordinary objects. The result is love, and a synthesis of artistic insights. The bottle openers in Panels No. 1 and No. 2 hint that one must be open to the process, and the mousetrap beneath the two hearts suggests that love conquers all, even death. The springs joining the panels are forceful reminders of the balance necessary to achieve meaningful synthesis. Although ordinary objects abound, the artist has placed them symmetrically, emphasizing the underlying desire for order in process and in life." I think I'll buy Madame D'Artois a burrito.
Get away, you pests
The city is setting up another battle line against the invasion of the zebra mussels. Those European mollusks, known for reproducing so rapidly that they clog up municipal water supplies, have spread to the Mississippi River and to the upper Susquehanna, and might eventually reach Maryland. Utilities and municipalities throughout the East, including Baltimore, have spent millions to protect water supplies from the shellfish, which arrived in the United States from the Black Sea in 1988 in the ballast of ships. Over the next several months, Baltimore's Department of Public Works will be taking further steps to protect the Liberty, Loch Raven, Conowingo and Prettyboy reservoirs. Four zebra mussel control facilities will be constructed. Three of them -- at Loch Raven, Liberty and Conowingo -- will inject controlled doses of the chemical compound potassium permanganate (brand name Cairox: "The Oxidant of Choice"), which is used in water and waste-water treatment to control taste, odor, algae and pests. It's hoped the chemical will prevent the zebra mussels from colonizing the pipes and blocking the flow of water to filtration plants. At Prettyboy, the mussels will be controlled by heating water in the dam's valve chambers. Earlier this year, the city required fishermen who like to use live bait in the reservoirs to use state-certified zebra mussel-free bait. (Apparently these little suckers can attach themselves to minnows and crayfish, too.) Sounds like a lot of fuss, but consider the alternative should these mussels get into the pipes: The Roto-Rooter Bill From Hell.
Contact This Just In at The Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md. 21278, or phone 332-6166.