A Weekend BBQ

This weekend is BBQ, but not the American, slow-cooked BBQ you're used to. This time it's Philippine style pork BBQ, Korean style Kalbi ribs and Caribbean-style chicken at the Baltimore International Festival this Saturday being held at Poly-Western High School.

Along with teams of BBQ competitors, there will be over 60 vendors and 40 futbol (soccer) games with teams representing a wide-variety of countries.

And yours truly will be the head judge for the BBQ competition, along with Karen Parks (FOX45 Weekend Anchor, Jessica Starr (Fox45 Meterologist), Spike Gjerde (Chef, Woodberry Kitchen), Sam Holmes (Pitmaster, OnoGrill), and Sony Florendo (local restauranteur and cookbook writer)

Click here for Baltimore Sun article.

ph: Do The Demolition

Tunes for the boombox.

Luckily, there's not too much demolition to do in the new project hampden space, mainly a partition wall. In order to do this, I've brought along my trusty Panasonic boombox cassette deck.

Yes, cassette tape. That old trusty servant from days past that archived happy times, sad times and everything in-between with various mix tapes of music and straight recordings of vinyl albums. All the tapes above are circa 1987 and a glimpse back to a time before iTunes and the quick ease of burning a CD.

In fact, burning a CD just isn't the same. Sure, you're selecting some tunes to give to your friend (or hopeful girlfriend), but the act of creating a mix tape was serious commitment. While a 45 minute CD takes just minutes to assemble and burn, a ninety minute mix tape took nearly two hours. Two hours of selecting the tunes, setting up the turntable, adjusting the levels and then recording the songs real time one by one. A cassette tape was a Labor of Love and I've always found it nigh impossible to throw my old collection away - especially with such classics as Xymox and Strawberry Switchblade on offer.

For the day's demolition, I just grabbed a handful of cassettes from a box in the garage. Ah, nostalgia. To be young again and fighting the world...


I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside.