10. 10 Years (Thursday 7:30pm Rams Head Live); 10,000 Maniacs (Wednesday & Thursday 8pm Rams Head on Stage); Korn (Tuesday 8pm Fillmore Silver Spring), Kelly Rowland & The Dream (Sunday 8pm Fillmore Silver Spring); Macy Gray (Thursday 7:30pm Birchmere); SWV (Friday 8pm Howard Theatre); Lonestar (Wednesday 8pm Strathmore); Trey Anastasio (Wednesday 8pm Kennedy Center); Shooter Jennings (Thursday 8pm State Theatre); Kenny Chesney/Eric Church/Eli Young Band (Saturday 5pm FedEx Field); Delfest feat. Del McCoury Band, Old Crow Medicine Show, Jerry Douglas, Carolina Chocolate Drops (Thursday-Sunday Allegany County Fairgrounds); Daft Punk “Random Access Memories”, Darius Rucker “True Believers” and 30 Seconds to Mars “LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS” available in stores/on iTunes (Tuesday)

As far as country music goes, Eric Church ain’t too bad.

There’s so much I’d like to see at Delfest. I hope you know how great Jerry Douglas is.

Or how great Carolina Chocolate Drops are.

Lot of people who want to prove how cool they are have been trashing Darius’ version of “Wagon Wheel.” Not among that group of people, the band that first turned Bob Dylan’s half song into a full song.

9. Greg Proops (Tuesday 8pm DC Improv), Godfrey (Thursday-Sunday DC Improv); Chris Hardwick (Saturday 6pm 9:30 Club); “The Hangover Part III“, “Epic” and “Fast & Furious 6” out in theaters (Friday); “Parker” available on Blu-Ray/DVD (Tuesday); Brew At The Zoo (Saturday & Sunday Maryland Zoo in Baltimore); “Arrested Development Season 4” debuts (Sunday 3am Netflix)

It’s kinda hard to remember just how great “The Hangover” ever was at this point. I THINK I’ll end up seeing the new one, but I’m not promising.

Also, you’ll be watching this video until 3am Sunday…

(Continued on Page 2…)

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10. Shinedown/P.O.D./Three Days Grace (Tuesday 7pm 1st Mariner Arena); Dirty Heads/Shiny Toy Guns (Wednesday 8pm Rams Head Live), Wale (Thursday 9pm Rams Head Live); Imagine Dragons (Friday 8pm Fillmore Silver Spring); Matisyahu (Tuesday 8pm Rams Head on Stage); Matchbox Twenty (Monday 8pm Modell Performing Arts Center at The Lyric); Robert Randolph Presents: The Slide Brothers available in stores/on iTunes (Tuesday)

Shinedown is that band you’ve always liked but never fully admitted to it…

I could listen to Wale’s first full record on repeat for like a week straight.

Imagine Dragons not only does one of your favorite songs but also MY favorite song from Madden 13…

I will sign up for ANY amount of more Robert Randolph.

9. Joel McHale (Sunday 7:30pm Towson Center); Eddie Griffin (Friday & Saturday Magooby’s Joke House); “Argo” available on Blu-Ray/DVD (Tuesday); “Snitch” out in theaters (Friday); Baltimore Winter Wine Celebration (Friday-Monday); “The Gathering” (Saturday 3pm The Castle at Keswick Hampden)

I saw Joel McHale after Preakness a few years ago. He was LEGITIMATELY funny. Also there’s this.

(Continued on Page 2…)

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The very topic of the IRL and Baltimore Grand Prix has become quite the hot button of civic debate – as it should be, considering the cost, investment and inconvenience everyone who uses the city on a regular basis encountered in the lead-up for a weekend that went surprisingly well by almost anyone’s measurement, especially for an inaugural event with this kind of infrastructure issues and engineering necessities to pull off this whole extravaganza was impressive.

I’ve attended more Super Bowls, Final Fours, etc. than I can count and I can say that what Baltimore did over the last six weeks was “Super Bowl worthy” as far as building a fence around a city and getting the event done with flair and executed with pride.

As usual, this will be a lengthy missive. I don’t have a show to use four hours to give my perspective more color and flavor so I’ll take this space to do it today.

Let me say this from the outset: my perspective is different from almost any of you because I live in the neighborhood directly affected by the race and my business is a direct recipient of any local sports spirit. I know many of the residents and merchants in our area. I was involved in the very early stages of the race when organizers approached me looking for support and then later blatantly lied to me regarding WNST’s involvement.

I have the original feasibility plan sitting on my desk so I’m not an armchair quarterback on this one. I’ve seen it all unfold and these observations are sometimes a tad incongruent because I’m really on the fence about this event and what the goals will be moving forward now that the circus has left town and most of the folks who came to the event seemed to greatly enjoy the experience.

I know this much: many merchants were quietly angry on Friday before the race unfolded and many are still angry because the event was selective in who it benefited. I walked around. I chatted with many of them. The construction project around the city was very real and very costly to many businesses. There were nights when it took hours to traverse the engineering and traffic issues. Most businesses in the city did LESS business throughout the month of August because of the race and even a three-day shot in the arm didn’t offset the losses.

That said, I realize most of you don’t care about the local inconvenience and, quite frankly neither do I when it comes to what is good for the city, but it will be interesting to see if the critics and cynics and many angered local people will be able to embrace this event.

For those of you who have read any of my work, you know my stance on the Orioles’ sick demise is more about the civic bloodletting not only of spirit of Baltimore and the intangible pain of last place – but my beef with Peter Angelos is really about how the Orioles’ atrophy has wrecked the economics of downtown on spring and summer nights.

So when it comes to traffic around my crib, I’d love nothing more than to see major traffic jams 81 nights a year downtown because it would lower my property taxes and raise the quality and standard of my life in Baltimore as a city resident if the baseball team could ever get new ownership and rise from the ashes of this civic abyss.

So to my view there are three headlines that can (and will) be written and addressed here:

1.    Grand Prix declared major success by Mayor Rawlings-Blake, IRL people (that means owners), WJZ (and anyone else who profited off of it and would next year and into the future) and people who attended who had fun!

2.    Great weather and interested crowds create a can’t-miss event every year in Baltimore on Labor Day weekend

3.    Someone needs to do a real study on this because I’m not so sure this was a huge win for Baltimore even though it was kinda neat and fun and loud

Let’s start with No. 1 – those who are declaring a political victory.

No one got maimed. Lots of people came downtown. The weather was stunning for the most part. The event was a massive, massive undertaking and it came off with very few flaws outside of the actual transportation issues that are inevitable when you shut down a major metropolitan’s hub for traffic and commerce and literally use the streets as part of the event.

Everyone around Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake bunkered down in an effort to pull off this event, which would have been a political suicide

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The government builds infrastructure (see Camden Yards sports complex) and it lures commerce into the basin of the city where folks who don’t live in Baltimore actually come to our city and spend money and enjoy themselves enough to want to come or at least tell their friends that the Charm City is actually “charming.”

So, while The Wire and Homocide: Life On The Streets always seems to show the darker, seedier side of Baltimore, these sporting events are allegedly “state sponsored” as a way of creating public relations, marketing and the long tail of telling the story of Baltimore.

I attended the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix last Labor Day weekend. I wrote an extensive analysis of 2011′s events here and reposted this morning at WNST.net.

As I said last year, we have a baseball team here in Baltimore that should be the leader to draw 150,000 downtown on summer (and fall) weekends.

The Orioles had a stadium built with your money 25 years ago. It was built to be the Taj Mahal of our city and served that purpose until the greediest man in the state got control of the baseball team and has turned into a source of civic despair over the past 15 years. It’s so bad that now that the team is winning most folks are yawning into September and the commerce the team drives on any given night for any average business owner in Baltimore is completely negligible.

The dirty little secret that the bought-off media in Baltimore won’t tell you is that Peter Angelos doesn’t care if you buy a ticket or not. He’s making $100 million in profit off of your TV money.

As for the Baltimore Grand Prix and this civic idea to fill hotels and the Inner Harbor, they actually need you to show up and spend money this weekend. This is the second year that my neighborhood has been ripped apart for six weeks in an attempt to draw the same 150,000 people downtown that the baseball team was supposed to draw by being competitive. Yesterday, the Orioles used the Grand Prix as an excuse for why no one came to see a baseball team that is 14 games over .500 as we head to New York for a Labor Day weekend show.

There are plenty of hotel rooms left for the weekend all over the city. That doesn’t happen on a “big” weekend in any major city.

No one in my neighborhood got a “vote” on the issue.  It’s six weeks of destruction for my neighbors and anyone who accesses downtown on a daily basis. It’s the second year. And they’re still trying to give tickets away and get someone, anyone to care about IRL or Grand Prix racing. If the city didn’t allow the Orioles to be destroyed, they could get the same 150,000 people downtown this weekend for baseball games.

Last year the organizers said there were 125,000 people. They also told their vendors and the city that they’d pay the bill.

I looked out my window this morning and the event has been greatly “downsized” for 2012 in a lot of apparent ways. They know they’re not drawing anywhere near the six figures of last year.

Ask the vendors who didn’t sell any beer and the businesses that lost money all over the city because people feared the traffic that never happened. I live here. No one is buying me off with a lucrative partnership to lie

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10. Rascal Flatts/Little Big Town (Sunday 5:30pm Merriweather Post Pavilion); Jimmy Buffett (Saturday 8pm Jiffy Lube Live), UPROAR Festival feat. Shinedown/Godsmack/Staind/Papa Roach/P.O.D. (Sunday 1pm Jiffy Lube Live); Okkervil River (Wednesday 8pm Rams Head Live); Sponge (Friday 7pm Recher Theatre); Hugh Laurie with the Copper Bottom Band (Monday 8pm Rams Head on Stage); Steve Vai (Tuesday 8pm Howard Theatre); Charlie Daniels Band (Thursday 7:30pm Rams Head Center Stage); Alanis Morissette “Havoc and Bright Lights” available in stores/on iTunes (Tuesday)

I don’t care much for Rascal Flatts, but I can’t hide my love for Little Big Town. They’re excellent. Their series of covers on YouTube is about as it gets for country music…

I’ll be at JLL Saturday night…anyone else? I plan to bring marshmallows. For throwing. That’s still a thing, right?

I haven’t always been a Shinedown fan, but I enjoy their new song more than you’d expect…

Same for P.O.D….please don’t tell anyone…

9. Maryland State Fair (Tuesday-Monday Timonium Fairgrounds); Maryland Renaissance Festival (Friday-Monday Revel Grove); “Lawless” out in theaters (Wednesday); Finesse Mitchell (Thursday-Saturday Baltimore Comedy Factory); Jake Johannsen (Wednesday-Sunday DC Improv)

I’ll be at the fair Monday. No promises regarding whether I’ll be wearing trousers. I’ll DEFINITELY be enjoying one of these…

Yeah, that’s a fried Oreo. Or really, it’s America.

The post Top 10 Baseball Distractions appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

10. BSO presents “The Music of Michael Jackson” (Thursday 6:30pm Pier Six Pavilion), BSO presents “The Music of Led Zeppelin” (Friday 6:30pm Pier Six Pavilion); Vans Warped Tour feat. Taking Back Sunday, All Time Low, Yellowcard (Tuesday 11am Merriweather Post Pavilion), Santana & The Allman Brothers (Monday 5pm Merriweather Post Pavilion); Flo Rida/Cee Lo Green (Wednesday 7pm Verizon Center), Rod Stewart & Stevie Nicks (Friday 7:30pm Verizon Center); 311/Slightly Stoopid (Saturday 6:30pm Jiffy Lube Live), Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival feat. Motorhead, Slipknot, Slayer (Sunday 1:30pm Jiffy Lube Live); Summerland feat. Everclear, Gin Blossoms, Sugar Ray, Lit (Wednesday 7pm Wolf Trap); Fuel/Filter (Tuesday 7pm Rams Head Live), Aaron Lewis (Wednesday 7pm Rams Head Live), SOJA (Thursday 8pm Rams Head Live), The Dan Band (Friday 8pm Rams Head Live); Dick Dale (Thursday 8pm Rams Head on Stage), Toad The Wet Sprocket (Monday 6pm & 9pm Rams Head on Stage); Kenny Loggins (Thursday 7:30pm Birchmere); Passion Pit “Gossamer” available in stores/on iTunes (Tuesday)

Let’s just go All 90′s here. I once jumped live on stage with Art Alexakis at an Everclear show at 1st Mariner Arena (it might have been Baltimore Arena then).

And yet I’d be equally excited to see the Gin Blossoms…

You’ve definitely found yourself humming a FUEL song at some point in your life…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QMfK9hzgA

I have no shtick tonight. I enjoy Filter music. That’s what I’ve got.

9. “The Watch” out in theaters (Friday); Baltimore Summer Restaurant Week (Friday-Monday throughout Charm City); Otakon (Friday-Sunday Baltimore Convention Center); Brian Regan & Dennis Regan (Thursday DC Improv), Rob Schneider (Friday-Sunday DC Improv)

I could post some pictures of food porn in honor of Baltimore Summer Restaurant Week, but I had a feeling you wanted to see some pictures of scantily clad Otakon-goers…

I’ll require a thank you card.

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