Here we have Beth Meyer, bless her. She's a 30-year-old volunteer with the Baltimore Health Department who works with young mothers. She loves the city. She loves people. She's idealistic and enthusiastic. Her cup runneth over with the spirit of Christmas. So ablaze she is with charitable zeal that, the other day in Harborplace, she decided to do a good deed for people she did not know. She fed eight Light Street parking meters -- one quarter in each -- that were about to expire. And the cars belonged to strangers.
"Why? I guess I did it with the hope that someday someone would do it for me," she says.
Too bad Beth ran into a parking control agent who didn't appreciate her zeal. He started writing tickets for expired meters -- including one in a spot marked for the handicapped -- even though Beth had just fed them.
"Is that your car?" he asked when she protested.
"No," Beth said. "None of these is my car."
"It's illegal to feed parking meters for cars that aren't yours."
Beth couldn't believe this. In the Christmas season, she couldn't understand why a guy would insist on going by the book. She told the parking agent she didn't care for his policy or his attitude. Then, Beth says, he threatened to have her arrested. Then he told her to go away.
"I freaked," she says. "I was on my way to buy my boyfriend a gift when I saw the meters, right near Phillips. This was about 10:30 Monday morning. The meters were going to expire so I thought I'd do a good deed. This guy was definitely not one of Santa's helpers. What if I was a tourist from out of town and had run into Mr. I'm-Important-I-Write-Parking-Tickets?You know? The other day while I was driving, some guy cut me off and got real nasty with me. What is wrong with people? Hey, call me idealistic, but, hello! It's Christmas!"
Beth was discouraged. So she went for a jog through South Baltimore. She turned the corner at West and William. An old woman spotted her. She waved. "And you know what she yelled? She yelled, 'Merry Christmas, Hon.' Saved the day."
Boffo, Mr. Stein
The new WMAR television ads promoting the TV station's switch to ABC, feature a nebbishy guy who could have been your high school chemistry teacher, except he was probably doing something else at the time. Ben Stein, who must be one of the hardest working men in show biz, has been an author, a trial attorney for the Federal Trade Commission, a Nixon speech writer, a Wall Street Journal columnist, a screenwriter,an expert on securities fraud, a free-lance writer, a diarist in the American Spectator and a character actor. (He's also the son of famous economist Herbert Stein.) You might have seen Ben Stein before, probably playing a teacher -- as he does in the clever Channel 2 ads -- on "The Wonder Years" and, earlier, in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." He also has appeared in national commercials. In the WMAR spots, which evoke those deliciously bad instructional films schools used to make us watch in driver's ed, Stein looks and sounds like Mr. Science 1961, a tweedy geek who sniffed too much ditto fluid. He's perfect in the role. The ads are great, Network Switch 101. They were produced by the W. B. Doner team of John Parlato, Phil Schneider, Jon Guidera and Claire Hartman.
Bye, bye, Barney
Could this mark the end of civilization as we knew it?
Rae Miller Heneson, volunteer doyenne at Sinai Hospital, was caring for a 4-year-old girl the other day, trying to brighten her stay. Rae offered to show the girl a video that might be more pleasing than the usual afternoon TV fare.
"I'm going to play a 'Barney' tape," Rae said gently.
"Oh, no," crowed the little girl. "Ricki Lake! Ricki Lake! Ricki Lake!"
The face of anger
The scene: 29th Street at Sisson, near the bridge and entrance ramps to the Jones Falls Expressway. It's rush hour. Cars stop at the traffic light. A boy, maybe 10 years old, in a winter coat and stocking hat, is standing on the side of the street. At first he looks to be pouting, then he looks angry. Then, as the cars move, he spits at them.
"This boy," says a man who drove through this, "just looked mad at the world, mad at who-knows-what? His eyes were just full of rage, a kind of masculine, adult rage. And he kept spitting at cars, at people driving out of the city at the end of the day. I'll never forget that kid's face. He made a lot of people angry, I'm sure. He made me very sad."
Groucho and Co.
The following excerpt from a 1933 script for a Marx Brothers radio show lists Chico's Emanuel Ravelli as the moderator of a political debate, Groucho's Waldorf Flywheel as a quack lawyer running for judge, and an unnamed actor as a sitting judge seeking re-election.
Judge: I was born in this city. I studied law here. I married here. And I do not hesitate to say that in all my 48 years, man and boy, judge and layman. . . .
Groucho: Just a minute. If this guy's gonna talk only about himself, I'm going home.
Judge: Please, Mr. Flywheel. . . Ladies and gentlemen, my candidacy is being fought by men who are dishonest, grafting and meretricious!
Chico: Tank you, judge, and I wish you the same.
Judge: You wish me what?
K? Chico: A meretricious. A meretricious and a happy new year!