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Monday, Jan. 20, 2003 - 2:32 p.m.

At the Maryland Club

"Is this 'Moondance'?" Casey asked, for the fourth time, as the band played at the Maryland Club in Baltimore. A stuffed and mounted bear loomed in the corner, propped on his hind legs, a top hat on his head.

"Every song sounds like 'Moondance.'"

They all did, really, because the band � consisting of a trumpeteer, sax player, guitarist, female vocalist and keyboardist/male vocalist � had a way of making all its songs sound like "Moondance." There might have been a drummer. Was there a drummer?

"Is this 'Moondance'?" Casey would ask, and it would take a moment for myself or Melissa or Kerri to answer, because we had to listen to the song over the noise of the conversation to answer.

"No, it's 'Fly Me To The Moon.'"

"Oh! This is 'Moondance.'"

"No, I think it's 'Margaritaville.'"

But "Moondance" did come around, sometime after 11 p.m. at the Maryland Club, adorned with heads of game mounted on the walls. Deer, elk, moose, bear. Located in downtown Baltimore, it certainly wasn't a golf club. There wasn't a patch of grass for blocks.

"It must be a hunting club," I offered, "because back in the day, when the club probably began, this was likely the outskirts of the city."

Indeed, we were a mile or so north of the Inner Harbor, and Penn Station was a few blocks away. Then a photo on the wall confirmed it: The Maryland Hunt Club, 1895. It was a group photo of about a hundred people all posed outside the building, with some leaning out of upstairs windows, a few scattered about the lawn, but most standing orderly on risers and the porch. A list with an outline of all the people and corresponding numbers identified most of the members, including one general's wife (presumably) who was by herself in a second-floor window. A few were listed as "unidentified," and I wondered aloud if that was worse than No. 42, standing with the edge of the photo to his left and a pillar of the porch to his right � he was identified as "Servant." It was an old list, too, typed out years ago, though the frame has been hanging in a hallway away from direct sunlight and hasn't yellowed or faded. But it's certainly been a while since anyone used a typewriter for such a task.

It was a wedding reception at the Maryland Club, an institution that our cab driver couldn't find without our help. The gray-haired black attendant in the foyer looked like he's held the job as doorman for years. Even if it weren't a wedding reception, I probably would've been required to wear a jacket and tie in order to enter. I wonder if it was orginially an estate, or if it had been built as the headquarters of the Maryland Hunt Club.

College friends of Casey's, Cindi and Graham, held their wedding reception at the Maryland Club. The hotel was farther north, across the street from the Johns Hopkins University football stadium, and the church was still more to the north, and we passed beneath a pedestrian walkway emblazoned with LOYOLA UNIVERSITY in gold lettering. Baltimore's educational triangle.

At the church, a Catholic institution, the priest was sucinct in his homily, and the service went quickly enough, which is never guaranteed with Catholic services. But Father Henry had himself a sidekick, an assistant priest with a hood on his frock and a weird, disheveled, Kevin Arnold haircut. Throughout the service, Father Henry would � arbitrarily, it seemed � gesture toward his assistant, who would then speak, as if he'd been turned on. And throughout the service, we couldn't help but think about the recent sex scandals in the Catholic church. But we weren't struck down on the spot, nor when we left, nor at the Maryland Club, so I suppose we were forgiven.

Leaving Baltimore yesterday, Casey spotted Tambor's Fifties Diner, so I pulled a U-turn and we ate at "A 50s theme diner with Indian flair." The cheese fries and root beer floats were certainly up to par.

Back home, watching the Golden Globes last night, I marked off the winners on the sheet I'd filled out for the office pool. Three bucks to guess at which movies and actors would win in 24 different categories. I hit a measly five of them correctly, and two of them were gimmies � Chicago for best picture (musical or comedy) and Jennifer Aniston for best actress in a TV series (musical or comedy). So I correctly and insightfully nailed The Hours for best picture (drama), Jack Nicholson for best actor (drama) and Kim Cattrall for best supporting actress (series, miniseries, made for TV movie, snuff film, film school short, beer commercial). I filled out the sheet on Thursday afternoon, 24 hours before the deadline to turn it in, and I hadn't even seen any of the movies � or half the TV shows, for that matter. I knew little beyond Friends, The Sopranos, Will & Grace, Sex and the City, The West Wing, Six Feet Under and The Simpsons. I probably should've figured Chicago would win more, and had I seen it before I filled out my sheet (Casey and I watched it Friday night), I probably would've gone with either Renee Zellweger or Richard Gere, if not both. But Jim just brought his sheet over to check his results, and he had six of them, having gone the geek way � he got his results from a computer program that randomly generated numbers (Jim having assigned the five best picture nominees numbers from 1-5, and doing that for each category). So a computer randomly generated a sheet that was one pick better than mine, and didn't even have the thought processes to think, "Well, The Shield has garnered rave reviews, and Michael Chiklis won the Emmy, so let's go with those two." No, the computer managed to pick them all by itself. I wasn't thinking, either, when I selected Allison Janney for best actress (drama) over Edie Falco. I bet Edie won it on the last two episodes of the season alone.

I knew nothing of the miniseries and made-for-TV movies, but why didn't I pick Donald Sutherland? Or Albert Finney? And what was I thinking with "Lose Yourself" as best original song? I sat here at my desk, pondering Eminem's "Lose Yourself" vs. U2's "The Hands That Built America," and somehow, after actual conscious thought, I still came up with "Lose Yourself."

Maybe in the Oscar pool I'll get six right.

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