At our monthly breakfast gathering at the big round table by the kitchen at Jimmy's, the Fells Point diner, someone remarked that Ron Matz, the affable WJZ-TV reporter who frequently reports from there, looked dapper as a pallbearer in a black wool topcoat and dark suit.
"I'm practicing for my next job, after I retire," Mr. Matz said. "I'm going to be a greeter at Sol Levinson."
Someone went a step further and suggested that Mr. Matz, a longtime Baltimore broadcaster, might finally make his fortune in retirement by anchoring live cablecasts of funerals from the Sol Levinson & Bros. chapel on Reisterstown Road.
"People would pay for that," said Howard Greenblatt, and his friends at the big round table agreed: A "funeral channel" could be a profitable enterprise.
Certainly, televised services for celebrities and public figures get big ratings. CNN had an average of 5 million viewers over the three hours that it carried the funeral service of Whitney Houston.
But, on a strictly local level, there's no telling what the rest of us might be willing to pay to have our going-home services available on regional cable, with Mr. Matz and others providing elegiac commentary. In fact, one could see a whole network of "funeral channel" franchises about the country. Judging from the interest in daily obituaries — long among the best-read stories in newspapers — the ratings for the funeral services of the locally famous, or not so famous, would likely draw lots of eyes, something greatly desired by advertisers.
Mr. Matz appeared to be amused, perhaps even intrigued, by the "funeral channel" concept, then departed for another assignment.
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This is the sort of whimsical scheming that sometimes occurs at our monthly gatherings for breakfast. At the February meeting, which took place on Fat Tuesday, the scheming involved the breakfast itself.
When it was suggested that I order Jimmy's Breakfast Bowl — eggs, a pork product and cheese piled on a bed of home fries and served in a soup bowl — I asked Nick Filipidis, the owner, if he could "Greekatize" the dish for me.
That is, I wanted to see if he might serve it with gyro meat, that tasty blend of beef and lamb, instead of pork. Mr. Filipidis took up the challenge, and the first-ever "Athenian Breakfast Bowl" arrived within minutes, as ordered — with the gyro, tomatoes, onions and feta served with eggs and home fries. I'm not sure it will become a menu fixture, so you might have to ask for it. See Nick, the guy at the end of the counter, near the big round table by the kitchen.
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Uptown, on Charles Street, there's quite a different breakfast being served by two young men who decided to get into the small, happy diner business in recent months. Jack and Zach call their place Jack and Zach's, and it's located in the basement of the old Woman's Industrial Exchange. (The last eatery in that space was Sofi's Crepes, before its move to Belvedere Square.) Jack and Zach make their own sausage, veggie patties, pickled vegetables and potato chips, using as much regional meat and produce as they can find. They also make their own ice cream and meringues. You have to appreciate the sensibilities of the enterprise: use of fresh, local and organic products, plus dedication to making their own sausage, the kind of micro-manufacturing we can use in this country.
The Sunday breakfast omelet, made with arugula and curry sausage, was quite good. A friend had straight-up bacon and eggs, and he was pleased with that; another had eggs over easy with breakfast sausage made on the premises, and he enjoyed his meal as well.
The free reading material on Jack and Zach's counter — it's the kind of place where you'd want to read during a slow breakfast or lunch — included magazines and a paperback copy of Hemingway's "Men Without Women," a collection of short stories. One of the stories, "The Killers," opens with two guys walking into a lunchroom.
"What's yours?" George, the man at the counter, asks them.
"I don't know," one of the men says. "What do you want to eat, Al?"
"I don't know," says Al. "I don't know what I want to eat."
I recommend the sausage at Jack & Zach's, or the Athenian Breakfast Bowl at Jimmy's.
Dan Rodricks' column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Follow him on Twitter at DanRodricks and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/dan.rodricks.