The Maryland Legislature here is in full panic mode trying to finish up in a week. The big issues: slot machines (nope), come to think of it, that's about it. This session hasn't done squat really because Governor Bob Ehrlich (Repub.) and this Democrat majority body don't see eye to eye on much if anything. This legislature is willing to wait for the next election and the next Democrat Governor.
Ehrlich is only in office because the Dems tried to stuff Kathleen Kennedy Townsend down our throats. She was a weak candidate and blew it in a majority Democratic state.

My station has a full time bureau here in Annapolis, but I filled in for a couple of days while our guys covered a homicidal maniac on the Eastern Shore. Most photogs hate this gig. The guys here from other stations because of the shooting, were bemoaning their fate to me. ANNAPOLIS?! Please God NO!!
Actually if you don't have to leave the building, it's a pretty sweet gig. But it is boring. Lots of talking heads, legislature shots and file footage. Your legs fall asleep covering the debates. Sometimes the whole body goes and you do that twitching thing.

Maryland Public Television covers this thing in detail bringing in a complete production team. I'm sure they are all bored silly but they do a good job. The camera guys inside the big room though are just barely holding on. You can almost hear them thinking: "Please stop!...Let me get to my break before I roll over on the gentlelady from Harford County."
At the break we rush to the hallway for sound bites. The one good thing...you can almost always get a meal period before editing your stories and cranking out the live shots from the gallery. Then you run smack into rush hour traffic trying to get home.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore ended up with another dead dolphin. I swear the track record for this place and its marine life is lousy. This dolphin was brought here from Florida where it already established a rep as a bad playmate having killed others.
In Baltimore though, he got his. After getting sick he was finally executed by lethal injection. I think I saw the other dolphins doing a "good riddance" dance. Or maybe they were just squealing and saying: "For pity's sake, please get me out of this circular cage before I get sick and die too."

This is Russ M. from WJZ-TV in Baltimore at a construction site the Gov. was about to bless. Russ is pretty damn cool. He's the only photog I know whose other gig is jazz guitarist and singer. A laid back southerner just doing his time in TV Land until he can get his ass out and do what he really wants. I always like seeing Russ at a scene. I know I'll have some pleasant and intelligent conversation.

This is Anatoly Karpov, chess Grandmaster and former world champion who scared away Bobby Fischer from defending his title.
Karpov was in Baltimore at the Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County which has won the national collegiate chess championship five times.
So how did a relatively small college in Maryland end up as the prime force in college chess?
Their players are almost all immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. Baltimore in fact has more Russian Jewish immigrants than any other city including New York.
The libraries here have complete sections in Russian and where I live I hear Russian being spoken everywhere. Out my back door is a school field where the kids play soccer and all I hear being yelled is in Russian. My mom taught me never to make fun of people speaking English with an accent because they know one more language than I do.

This is Bob Sagett, former big-time TV star (Full House, Funniest Videos) who is now doing standup comedy again and was in Baltimore to plug his gig.
He seemed like a decent guy and was genuinely pleased when I told him my daughter loves Full House. I think that show sucks but hey, it's not aimed at me. So I sucked up and went the adoring fan route. Although I get the feeling even this guy gags when he watches the lameosity (is that a word?) of this TV drivel.