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It was through Facebook that I learned that Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie had a contest and I decided to enter it. It’s been 15 years since I last entered a Peeps diorama contest and I had an idea.
I admit that part of the reason why I decided to enter that contest was due to ego. I was born in Baltimore and I lived there until I was five when my parents decided to move to Glen Burnie. I spent 14 miserable years there because the kids in school decided that I was mentally retarded and they made my life into a living hell from elementary school to high school. (Click here if you want to know what I was dealing with.)
I spent my freshman year of college at Anne Arundel Community College where many of my high school classmates also went. I realized something. The students who went to high school with me continued to look down on me like I was this lowlife inferior who should’ve been aborted. But the students who went to different high schools in different towns treated me like I was actually a human being. After a year at that school I transferred to the University of Maryland at College Park where nobody knew me from high school. They treated me like I was a human being.
After college graduation I moved back to Glen Burnie for ten months before I married my college sweetheart and I permanently moved away from Glen Burnie. I ended up living closer to Washington, DC where I made lots of new friends and I was treated like a real human being.
I only attended one high school reunion. It was the five-year reunion. I was newly married and wanted to show my hateful former classmates how lucky I was to snag this awesome person who works for NASA and he deals with satellites. I talked him into attending with me, which was a big mistake because he didn’t attend my high school, he didn’t know anyone there, and he was bored. I regret taking him to my reunion. On top of that, many of my former classmates who were there that night didn’t care about my fabulous new husband and they still looked down on me like I was mentally retarded (despite having a bachelor’s degree). I haven’t attended any further high school reunions since then.
When I found out that there was this Peeps diorama contest I decided to enter it like I was this conquering hometown hero who wanted to shove this diorama in my former classmates’ faces. I was hoping that my former school enemies (many of whom–which I learned at my five-year high school reunion–continued to live in either Glen Burnie or the nearby towns of Severn and Millersville) would see my diorama on display.
I even had an idea for this diorama. It was based on Tucker Carlson’s infamous interview with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, where it basically was little more than a glorified two-hour history lesson where Putin went back thousands of years to justify his invasion of Ukraine. (In case you’re wondering, I have only seen brief excerpts from that interview and I read articles about it online. I just can’t bring myself to sit for a two-hour interview with a murderous dictator justifying his atrocious behavior with his interpretation of historical events.)
Here is what I created, which I titled Peeper Carlson Interviews Vladimir Peepin. I used a shoebox, which I painted the walls using acrylic paint. I used white scrapbooking paper for the columns and plaid scrapbooking paper for the carpeting. I used tiny pieces of non-dryable putty to hold everything in place in the diorama, which was important since I was taking it to and from Glen Burnie.
Here are a couple of closeups of Peeper Carlson. I made Peeper Carlson using a yellow bunny Peep since yellow is traditionally a color for cowardice (I read that Tucker Carlson didn’t challenge Vladimir Putin on anything he said throughout that interview). I also used scraps of felt (for his suit) and fur (for his hair). As for the chairs in this diorama, I purchased a pair of Barbie-sized chairs from the Dollar Tree. I used the white scrapbooking paper to create a speech balloon that said, “Mr. Peepin, why did you decide to invade Ukraine?”
Here’s the closeup of the tiny table that was placed between the two. I made it from a tiny carton of Hershey’s Whoppers Robin Eggs Minis. I emptied the carton of the contents, cut the carton in half, continued to cut the side panels to form the legs, and painted it white with acrylic paint.
For Vladimir Peepin I used a Peeps blue bunny with scraps of felt. (Blue is one of the colors used in the Russian flag.) Since the real-life Vladimir Putin is close to being bald, I didn’t have to deal with fake fur scraps. He’s sitting in one of the Barbie-sized chairs I purchased at the Dollar Tree. I used the white scrapbooking paper to create a speech balloon that said, “It all started in the year 862 when Prince Rurik of Scandinavia was invited to rule over the Rus in Novgorod…”
That diorama was the most minimalist diorama I’ve ever made. I only needed two Peeps and, for the background, I only tried to suggest that the interview was done in a fancy room. (If you look at the stills from that interview, much of the room was dimmed in order to keep the focal point on the two talking heads.) I didn’t want to overthink it too much because I learned about that competition just two weeks before the deadline for submitting my diorama. In addition, the grand prize for the winner in each category was $50 and I didn’t want to put in hundreds of hours of work for only $50. ( And there was no guarantee that I would win.)
Working on that diorama was cheap and stress-free. I had an empty shoebox available and I already had much of the material I used in that diorama. The only purchases I needed to make were the Peeps, the scrapbooking paper (for the carpet, speech ballons, and white columns), the Hershey’s Whoppers Robin Eggs Minis (for the tiny table), the two Barbie-sized chairs, and the non-dryable putty. I probably spent no more than $10 on this diorama.
I dropped it off at Marley Station Mall and the diorama contest was opened to the general public a few days later. The contest ran the entire weekend. Since that mall was a half-an-hour’s drive from where I live, I decided to not show up until the last day on Sunday because in one trip I could see my diorama on display, see the competition, check out the other things they had in that same room, and pick up my diorama and any prizes that I may have won.
Basically people were encouraged to pay at least $1 for voting for their favorite dioramas. (The proceeds from that sale went to pay off the steep medical bills of two local women who were dealing catastrophic health conditions.) I didn’t win the contest. I didn’t run into any of my former classmates when I was there and I don’t know if any of my former classmates had attended the other two days of that contest.
I shot photos of the contest area itself, including the competition but I’m going to upload those at a later date.
It turned out that I entered the same diorama in two different contests. One of them was held virtually so I could have my diorama in two simultaneous contests.
Here’s some background. There was a time when The Washington Post used to sponsor an annual Peeps diorama contest. I participated in two of the previous contests. One was for Peep Floyd, which was my parody of the band Pink Floyd. I did this diorama in 2008 and it didn’t win or even make honorable mention.
You can learn more about the technical specs of Peep Floyd here.
The other was for Pop Star Peepney Pursued by the Peeperazzi and it was a parody of the intense media scruitny that surrounded Britney Spears from late 2006-early 2008. I entered it in the 2009 competition but that one also failed to win any awards or honorable mention.
You can read about the technical specs behind Pop Star Peepney Pursued by the Peeperazzi right here.
I decided to quit participating in any further contests because I learned that this contest was getting hundreds of entries each year and I grew tired of spending a huge amount of time busting my butt to come up with something cool only for it to literally get lost in the shuffle of so many other dioramas.
A few years later I didn’t regret my decision at all. I was in a since-closed local bookstore when I saw that The Washington Post had released a 2013 calendar based on the winning entries of previous contests. We were required to electronically sign a .pdf release sayng that we had to abide by all of the rules or else we couldn’t participate in the contest. I remembered that one of the rules that all contest entrants must agree to (or else they couldn’t participate in the contest) stated that the Post had the legal rights to your submission without expecting compensation. That rule enabled the Post to create that calendar without having to financially compensate the original artists whose works made the existence of such a calendar possible. It led me to write this essay about the 2013 Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest calendar urging people to think twice before entering that contest. That post became my most-read post for the next few years. In fact it would suddenly become in my top five read posts each year in the spring from the time that the Post announced a new contest to Easter Sunday (when the contest winners were announced).
As far as I can tell, 2013 was the only year that the Post attempted to make a calendar based on its contest. I never saw any other spinoff products based on those contest entries.
The Washington Post decided to end the contest in 2017 but the free weekly alternative The Washington City Paper decided to step up and take over running the contest. This year I did a Google search to see if there was still a Peeps diorama contest only to discover that The City Paper continued to run the contest until 2019. In 2020 there was no contest mainly because of the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But starting in 2021 The Washington Post decided to resume running the Peeps diorama contest once again and they’ve been running it every year since. For this year’s entry people had the option of submitting it via TikTok. I decided to enter Peeper Carlson Interviews Vladimir Peepin for the heck of it using a video that I made and uploaded on TikTok. At least I didn’t have to electronically sign a .pdf release form before submitting so it looks like the Post is actually running the contest for fun without trying to make a buck off it at a later date.
It turned out that, once again, I didn’t win or even make honorable mention. Here’s the list of those who won the contest. If you prefer video, you can watch it here.
Would I do another Peeps diorama contest? Only if I have an idea about the theme and if I have the time and money needed to put it together. I’m not going to create a Peeps diorama just for the sake of creating a Peeps diorama because that could lead to something mediocre. I have to have an idea and the needed materials before I even begin to work on it or I just won’t do it because I will have a total lack of passion.
I’m participating in a Peeps diorama contest so if you’re in the Baltimore-DC area and you’re looking for something fun to do this weekend, come on by. The contest is being held at:
Marley Station Mall
7900 Ritchie Highway
Glen Burnie, Maryland 21061
Once you arrive at the mall, enter through the doors that are located to the RIGHT of Gold’s Gym. (If you enter through the correct doors, you’ll be at the Center Court where the Easter Bunny’s area and Curmudgeon Books are located.) When you enter the mall, turn right and the contest area will be found in the fourth store on your right, next to Finish Line. The hours are:
Friday, March 22: 5-8 p.m.
Saturday, March 23: 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
Sunday, March 24: noon-5 p.m.
You will get a chance to vote for your favorite dioramas. My entry is titled Peeper Carlson Interviews Vladimir Peepin and, yes, it’s based on Tucker Carlson’s infamous interview with Vladimir Putin.
The winners of the Peep-les Choice Award will be announced at 4 p.m. on Sunday.
I was at Crabtowne USA in Glen Burnie, Maryland last month. That’s the seafood restaurant that has a side room full of pinball machines and vintage video arcade games from the 1970s-1990s. When I was there I noticed that they’ve installed a new pinball machine. This one is based on the Foo Fighters.
I’m old enough to remember when the Foo Fighters released their first album and it got noticed because Dave Grohl formed it soon after Nirvana disbanded in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. If someone had told me back in 1995 that one day there would be a pinball machine based on the band, I would’ve laughed. But now such a pinball machine now exists.
I didn’t get a chance to play it. After I took that picture other people were playing it. That particular pinball machine was pretty popular.
This year I decided to go back to the German-American Festival that’s held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. I had decided to do what I’ve done other years: Take my car to the North Linthicum light rail station, then take the Baltimore Light Rail all the the way to the stop at the fairgrounds. I know it’s a little bit longer than driving directly to the fairgrounds but I like taking the light rail because I could use less gas, spend less time behind the steering wheel, and have less stress and relax because I wouldn’t have to deal with the crazy drivers on the Baltimore Beltway as much.
The day I attempted to go it was raining and I thought it would be easier to ride the light rail than to deal with the crazy drivers in the rainstorm. (I could do a separate rant on the appalling amount of people I’ve seen who don’t exercise much caution in inclement weather, which is insane. They seem to forget what they’ve learned in Driver’s Ed about how one is more likely to end up in an accident in inclement weather if the driver doesn’t slow down when it’s raining or snowing.)
So I arrived to the light rail station and waited. And waited. And waited. No light rail train arrived. Other would-be passengers also arrived, with most of them heading to Camden Yards so they could see the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. We waited for nearly an hour as the electronic signs at the station announced that there were slight delays due to track maintenance issues but a train would arrive soon. As time grew longer and no train arrived, some people decided to leave and just drive into the city.
I eventually grew tired of waiting and decided to leave the light rail station. I was just not in the mood to drive on the Baltimore Beltway to Timonium due to the rain so I decided to just head out to nearby Glen Burnie for the heck of it. I grew up in that town and it would be the first time I set foot in it this year.
I was famished because I had originally planned on eating lunch at the festival. I went to Crabtowne USA and ate a crab cake sandwich.
After lunch I stopped by Crabtowne USA’s famed video arcade room, which has mostly vintage video games from the 1970s-1990s. (I once devoted an episode of my online travel series to Crabtowne USA.) I noticed that they had got a new pinball machine that was based on the popular Disney+ streaming series Star Wars: The Mandalorian.
Here’s a closeup of that series’ cutest character, who’s known alternatively as Baby Yoda, The Child, and Grogu.
I played a few other pinball machines and video games until I began to run out of quarters. I decided to go to Ann’s Dari-Creme to get some ice cream only to discover that each year that place closes down for 10 days around the Fourth of July holiday in order to give their employees some time off. I think it’s a pretty nice thing they do for their employees even if it’s an inconvenience from my point of view due to the fact that I don’t get to Glen Burnie that often because of the 30-minute drive from my home.
I still had a hunkering for ice cream so I decided to go to Bruster’s Ice Cream instead. It had stopped raining but it was still too wet outside to sit on one of the benches so I ended up eating my ice cream in the car. Across the street from Bruster’s Ice Cream is the Arundel Christian Church, which is in the former location of the old Harundale Cinema where I used to go to the movies with my mother and grandmother as a child. (I originally wrote about my memories of that cinema back in 2016.) I noticed that the church looked different since the last time I visited Bruster’s but I wasn’t 100 percent sure if the church had looked different than before. I took a photo of that church and compared it to a previous photo I shot and I found that there are some differences between the two. Here is the photo of the church that I shot in 2016.
Here is a more recent photo of that same church building that I shot in 2022.
The outside of the church had apparently undergone a full remodeling. I can’t really comment on whether they had also remodeled the inside because I haven’t been inside of that building since the old days when it was the Harundale Mall. But it’s obvious that the outside is radically different. One thing is for certain: All of the external vestiges of that building’s former incarnation as a movie theater are now completely gone.
I also stopped at Curmudgeon Books for the first time since it held that haute couture fashion show last year. I didn’t take any photos of the store on this trip but I purchased a couple of books. I really like that book store because it seems like the owner is trying to model it after the now-defunct Borders Books. The only major difference is that, unlike Borders, Curmudgeon doesn’t have a cafe that serves coffee, tea, and snacks. Otherwise Curmudgeon Books is a really nice bookstore. I should make an effort to go there more often, especially since it is a locally-owned bookstore that’s not part of a corporate chain of stores.
Finding a decent real-life bookstore in my area has gotten harder. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of the last bookstore in my town, Books-A-Million, last year. Amazon has done a number of the bookstores over the past 20-30 years.
Last year I learned that someone had opened an independent bookstore in my hometown of Glen Burnie. I was largely unhappy when I grew up in Glen Burnie and I left that town as soon as I possibly could. But now there is a bookstore. I visited it last December and found that it was a small yet nice bookstore called Curmudgeon Books.
Last month Curmudgeon Books decided to move to a larger space in Marley Station Mall and it was holding a grand opening celebration. I checked it out and found it to be a very nice store. It reminds me of the now-defunct B. Dalton and Walden Books. Here’s a photo of a life-sized statue of Wonder Woman.
As part of the festivities, there was a fashion show where the clothes were made from unusual materials (such as book pages).
The windows of Curmudgeon Books had some of these outfits on display in its windows.
There were also models who wore some of these outfits while photographers shot their pictures.
This white outfit in the next few photographs was so elaborate that the model required two people to help him/her walk.
So I’ve been doing something pretty creative involving video and four of my American Girl dolls and it’s a music video about racism. I’ve uploaded the video on to TikTok and YouTube.
A TikTok user known as Alex Engelberg had uploaded the original sound with this video showing the four singers singing about racism in a barbershop quartet style. That song took off and so many other users had used that same sound for their videos. I decided to put my own spin on this short song by using my American Girl dolls.
I took Addy Walker and Melody Ellison with me to Baltimore (along with a 1/6 scale Volks Dollfie Plus that I customized as an angel) when I visited my parents’ grave in Baltimore along with visiting the nearby places that my mother and her family use to go to when she was growing up in the Mount Clare neighborhood back in the 1940s and 1950s. Once I was done with visiting these places I went back to my mom’s old neighborhood on South Stricker Street where I went on a decrepit side street with boarded up townhouses and briefly filmed Addy and Melody then drove out of the city.
The following day I went to the Pasadena Toy Expo and I packed Julie Albright and Courtney Moore. Once I was done with visiting that expo I drove to the neighborhood in Glen Burnie where I grew up. I originally planned on shooting footage outside of the home I grew up in but the next door neighbor was either throwing some kind of a family get-together in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic or working on some kind of a major home improvement project. There were cars parked on that street and people walking to and from the next door neighbor’s home. Instead I drove further down the street until I found a random home and convenient street parking so I shot footage featuring Julie and Courtney.
For the grand finale I went to a covered picnic table at Buddy Attick Park in Greenbelt where I filmed all four of them without any kind of incident.
I spent the bulk of the day in the area where I grew up on November 7 starting with checking out the Pasadena Toy Expo. Then I made a brief stop at Crabtowne USA where I played a few video arcade games and even made a video that turned out to be the latest episode of my new series The Baltimore and Washington, DC Area That Tourists Rarely See.
The weather was relatively warm (it was in the low 70’s) for early November so I decided to end my day in the Glen Burnie-Millersville area by going to Anne’s Dari-Creme, where I purchased a chocolate milk shake and french fries topped with chili. (I drank the milkshake while I was still there. I ate a few of the chili-topped french fries but I ultimately took the bulk of it home where I ate it for dinner the following night.) Anne’s Dari-Creme is currently celebrating its 70th anniversary this year.
I also saw a sign that designates Anne’s as an Instagram Hotspot.
There are a few different things this year due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Anne’s has taken out the stools so dine-in is no longer an option. (I never ate inside because it’s so small and there were few stools. It was simply easier for me to consume the food either at one of the outdoor picnic tables or inside of my car.) They’ve also put up a tent where people are expected to line up under while keeping six feet apart. And masks are also required while inside.
I decided to shoot some footage on the spur of the moment and that was later turned into another episode in my ongoing The Baltimore and Washington, DC Area That Tourists Rarely See. Ann’s Dari-Creme is a family-owned business that has survived for over 70 years, the food is pretty good, and they also have that hotdog statue outside.
I uploaded that video on to my TikTok account but you can also see it on YouTube as well.
After I went to the Pasadena Toy Expo in Millersville (which I wrote about in my last post), I decided to head over to my old hometown of Glen Burnie because I was in the area anyway. I decided to check out the video arcade games at Crabtowne USA. Unfortunately I didn’t check my wallet to see how much money I actually had before I drove there because it turned out that I only had a dollar. I ended up playing just four video games because of it.
Maybe it’s just as well that my trip to Crabtowne USA was short this time around because the Coronavirus pandemic was still going on. Like every other public establishment in Maryland, this place now requires wearing face masks and we can only enter and exit through one door these days. They also provide hand sanitizers for people to use before and after playing one of the machines.
I decided to use my time there to shoot some footage for another short video in my ongoing series, The Baltimore and Washington, DC Area That Tourists Rarely See. I later edited it and uploaded it on to TikTok and YouTube.
Ever since the 1990s a transgender Madonna fan known as Madonna Girl Dale used to frequently dance on Ritchie Highway (Maryland Route 2) between Baltimore and Glen Burnie, although she did the majority of her dances in her then-hometown of Brooklyn Park. I wrote quite a bit about her in this blog starting from the first time I saw her on the streets while I was driving through Brooklyn Park to the time I saw her at the May Day protest in Baltimore against the killing of Freddie Grey by the Baltimore City police.
Last year she announced that she was moving to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Before her move last August she decided to do one last dance performance on Ritchie Highway in Brooklyn Park. I saw the announcement on Facebook so I decided to make the long drive to Brooklyn Park and brave the usual August weather in the Mid-Atlantic region (it was in the high 90’s that day with high humidity and full sunlight) just to see her perform in public one last time. I shot a bunch of pictures and videos with my smartphone. At one point Madonna Girl Dale stopped her dancing and she gave this passionate speech to the few people who were present that day, which I filmed. Once the speech ended, I decided to leave because the high heat and high humidity was starting to overwhelm me (and I basically just stood around shooting pictures and videos—Madonna Girl Dale and some of her friends were actually dancing in that very hot weather).
I had originally intended to put up a five or ten minute video on YouTube. But as I looked at the footage, I realized that I had enough material to do a short documentary. So I edited what became my second documentary—Madonna Girl Dale: Last Dance in Brooklyn Park—then uploaded it on to YouTube. (My first documentary, which is also available on YouTube, was Saving the Enchanted Forest.)
I posted links to that documentary on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Madonna Girl Dale got wind of it and she began to promote the hell out of that documentary on Facebook and Twitter. She promoted it more than I did. As of this writing my documentary had gotten over 2,000 views on YouTube.
Madonna Girl Dale settled in her new home in North Carolina while I moved on to other things in my life. By December Madonna Girl Dale had participated in a local toy drive that was sponsored by the the Winston-Salem police and fire department. I remember she had posted pictures from that event. One day she contacted me on Instagram asking me to make a slideshow out of those photos, used one of Madonna’s songs as the background music, then post it on YouTube and the various social media sites. It was a request out of the blue. I decided to do it because the holiday season was coming and I usually tend to feel more generous this time of the year. She also did me a favor by hyping my documentary so much that I gained a lot of views. So I decided to do a short one-minute slideshow just once as a favor for her.
She was so thrilled by that slideshow that she began to promote the hell out of it. That slideshow, called Madonna Girl Dale in North Carolina, had gotten around 500 views. Not bad for a static slideshow but it’s a far cry from the 2,000 views I got for the documentary.
About a week or two later Madonna Girl Dale contacted me through Instagram again. She wanted another slideshow based on photos of her and the various cops that she has posed with over the years in Anne Arundel County (Maryland), Baltimore City, and New York City. This time she wanted to pair it with music by Britney Spears. I was initially reluctant mainly because I had just done another slideshow for her (for free, I might add) and now she wants another one so soon after I finished the first one. I ultimately said yes because it was still the holiday season and I was in a generous mood. So I did the slideshow video called Madonna Girl Dale and the Cops. Once again she promoted the hell out of that slideshow on social media at it got over 600 views, which was more than the previous slideshow I did for her but it was still fewer views than the documentary.
I decided to stop doing slideshows after the holidays because I had a lot of other things on my plate that I needed to work on and I also grew tired of making slideshows for no pay. (If she had been paying me, it would’ve been different. But she wasn’t.) In January she contacted me about making more slideshow videos featuring her and I began to ignore those requests because she wasn’t offering to pay me and I had already done two slideshow videos for her for free.
Doing slideshows can be a bit time consuming because you have to time each picture just right so it wouldn’t be so short that it becomes one of those “blink and you’ll miss it” things while, at the same time, it wouldn’t be on the screen for so long that people get bored very quickly. I had decided that I would stop doing more free slideshows for her after the holidays unless she offered to pay me money for my services.
At one point she was contacting me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter asking me to come to North Carolina on February 29 so I could film her as she participated in the local Polar Bear Plunge on Leap Year. (She started to promote that event online in early December even though it was two months away and most people were in winter holiday mode by then.) Money was getting very tight for me by then and the event was at least a five-hour car trip away from where I live. I would’ve had a very hard time affording to buy gas, find a place to stay for at least one night (since there was no way I could make a day trip out of it), and buy meals on the road. What’s more, Madonna Girl Dale wasn’t offering to help defray those costs or anything like that. At one point I told her that I just couldn’t make it to the Polar Bear Plunge. She replied that I could make another slideshow. I dropped the matter because she was so convinced that I could go to North Carolina to see her at the Polar Bear Plunge despite what I was telling her otherwise.
It turned out that someone else had shot video footage and pictures of Madonna Girl Dale’s participation in the Polar Bear Plunge, which she shared online. She asked me to make a slideshow out of the pictures but I ignored that request again. I was dealing with my mother’s recent death plus the Coronavirus was starting to arrive in the United States. Besides, she already had video footage that she had shared online along with the photos so it wasn’t like it was imperative that I create a slideshow because it was the only way that Madonna Girl Dale can prove that she was at that event. So I ignored her requests. After a while she stopped contacting me.
Recently she started to announce on social media that she is working on another documentary with a filmmaker named Derek Starr called The World is My Stage. Compared to my documentary, The World is My Stage sounds pretty ambitious in that Starr plans on filming Madonna Girl Dale as she performs at various North Carolina nightclubs and events then travel to Maryland where he would continue to film her as she dances at her old spot on Ritchie Highway in Brooklyn Park. The documentary is supposed to include interviews with Madonna Girl Dale, along with various members of her family, and the locals in both North Carolina and Maryland as they react to seeing her dance.
If that weren’t enough, Madonna Girl Dale has announced that Derek Starr had helped her in setting up her own website, printing business cards, putting up a special Facebook page for The World is My Stage movie, and even opening an online store where it sells pink t-shirts that say “Madonna Girl Dale, Bitch!” on the front and “The World is My Stage” on the back. Madonna Girl Dale had also announced that Derek Starr will be writing and recording a special song for that film about Madonna Girl Dale’s life. It sounds like Derek Starr is doing far more for Madonna Girl Dale than what an average documentary filmmaker usually does for his/her subject of that film.
So I was surprised when I got a message from Madonna Girl Dale last week asking me to make a special film or slideshow and upload it on to YouTube promoting the fact that she was working on The World is My Stage documentary. I was surprised by that request because I have absolutely nothing to do with that documentary so I wouldn’t know what to say about it. I was initially going to ignore that request until I realized something.
For the last two months I have been teaching myself how to use TikTok. It was a way of getting my mind off of the Coronavirus pandemic. I thought it would be a neat idea to take a one-minute excerpt from my own documentary, do a voice over quickly mentioning who Madonna Girl Dale is and how she and Derek Starr are currently working on The World is My Stage.
The big challenge is this. I had originally filmed my documentary in the horizontal landscape format, which is the format that is not only favored by YouTube and other video sharing sites (such as Vimeo) but it has traditionally been the format that’s favored by television and movie screens. In contrast, TikTok prefers videos shot in the vertical portrait format.
So I had a potential problem that I solved by doing a few Google searches. Here is what I did. I brought the original documentary into iMovie on my MacBook and pared it down to a one-minute clip (since that’s the maximum length that’s allowed by TikTok). I removed the original soundtrack and recorded a new voiceover after I connected a Blue Yeti microphone (which I recently purchased used off of eBay) to my MacBook. Once I finished with everything I exported it as an .mp4 file.
I then connected my Droid phone to my MacBook and using Adobe File Transfer on the Mac, I downloaded that .mp4 file on my Droid. By that point I had downloaded this app on my Droid that one of the articles I read online recommended as the best way of rendering a horizontal video into something that can be played on TikTok. It’s called InShot and, based on my experiences so far, I really like this app. InShot is just as user friendly as Adobe Premiere Rush without having to pay the monthly subscription fee of $9.99 that Adobe demands. I imported the file into InShot, got it to be compatible with TikTok’s vertical format, then exported it directly to TikTok. Once I was in TikTok, I chose one of Madonna’s songs to serve as background music while tweaking the sound volume controls so the music wouldn’t drown out my voice over. When I was finished, I uploaded it directly to TikTok’s server then I shared that same file with my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube accounts.
Once everything was uploaded I contacted Madonna Girl Dale on Instagram letting her know that the video was now live. She thanked me for what I did then proceeded to promote the hell out of it on all of her social media accounts while continuing to promote that future documentary. You can view that one-minute video on TikTok or you can watch the YouTube video below.
It wasn’t until after I uploaded everything online that I noticed that TikTok had lopped off the end of my video, even though everything was fine when I originally did it in InShot. The end of the video originally had these lines:
She is now working with Derek Starr on another documentary called The World is My Stage, which sounds way more ambitious than what I did in that there are plans to film Madonna Girl Dale at various locations in Maryland and North Carolina once the worst of the Coronavirus pandemic passes. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing it if and when it gets released.
Unfortunately TikTok had lopped off the words “gets released.” I decided to keep the video as is because I think the average viewer will get the gist of what I was trying to say and I really didn’t want to spend a huge amount of time on this video since I was working for free and I really have nothing to do with the making of that other documentary.
As of this writing, that video is my least-watched out of all of my other TikTok videos. I’ve gotten a few more views on Instagram and YouTube because Madonna Girl Dale has been making a series of posts featuring those links on social media. (She has yet take out an account on TikTok as of this writing, even though her idol Madonna has an official presence on that platform.)
Even though Madonna Girl Dale is constantly promoting the hell out of that new documentary, based on what I’ve read online, it looks like filming either hasn’t started yet or it’s in the very early stages. Filming has been delayed due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic so I seriously doubt that this film will be released before 2021.
I hope that movie becomes a reality because it sounds potentially interesting. I’ve seen a previous project that Madonna Girl Dale had hyped on social media for several months only to have that project fall through. I still remember back in 2015 or 2016 Madonna Girl Dale had teamed up with a local writer who was intending to write a book about Madonna Girl Dale. I remember Madonna Girl Dale promoted that book nonstop for months on Facebook and she urged her followers to follow the author on his professional Facebook page as well. So I began to follow the author and he made posts updating the progress of the book. I remember one of his last posts was about how he had just finished a three-day interview with Madonna Girl Dale’s mother.
The book was supposed to be released in early November with book signings scheduled to be held in various parts of the Baltimore area from late November until shortly before Christmas. Thanksgiving Day and the winter holiday season came and went with no book released. By mid-January the author posted a notice on Facebook announcing that he was no longer working on the book project because he found a few things about Madonna Girl Dale that he personally objected to. He refused to elaborate on what exactly were those things that he objected to. In any case I never heard from that author again.
Only time will tell as to what will happen to The World is My Stage documentary, especially if the Coronavirus restrictions are gradually lifted enough so filming can begin (or resume). Hopefully it won’t go the way of that book project, especially since Madonna Girl Dale has been posting nonstop about that documentary on social media while the film is still in its very beginning stage.
My mother lost her 12-year battle with multiple sclerosis on February 6, 2020. She was 79 years old. My family held the viewing and funeral just four days later. My cousins tried to contact old friends but they had either died themselves or their health was too frail to attend. (One of them mentioned that she tried contacting a longtime friend whom my mother and late aunt had gone to school with—he even served as my mother’s date for her junior prom—only to find that he had died two years earlier.) They also tried to contact an uncle who was the only member of my late father’s side of the family whom my mother kept in regular contact with (until her illness made it very difficult for her to even talk on the phone) but they couldn’t reach him.
My mother had originally purchased a double burial plot at Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore when my father passed away in 2000. It was always her wish to be buried next to him. So the family decided to have a viewing and funeral at the Loudon Park Funeral Home that was adjacent to the cemetery. The original plan was to have the first part of the funeral indoors then a procession to the gravesite where the family would gather outside for the second part of the funeral.
But then it rained that day. We had the viewing as originally scheduled. The weather was so lousy that there was a last-minute change of plans where the entire funeral was held indoors. The funeral home got a Methodist minister to preside over the funeral. When the minister finished the undertaker announced that the rain had let up briefly so we quickly ran to our cars while the pallbearers brought my mother’s coffin to the hearse. We had a very short procession (my parents’ grave is located just a few feet away from the funeral home) where the pallbearers managed to take my mother’s coffin out of the hearse and place it above the hole where her coffin will eventually be lowered by the gravediggers. By the time all that was done, the rain began again so we all quickly got back into our cars and left. There was no reception because the funeral was held early on a Monday morning.
The day before the funeral I look up Loundon Park Cemetery on Google Maps and realized that it was located near the neighborhood where I lived until the age of five (when my family moved to Glen Burnie). I decided to visit my old neighborhood once again since I was in the area. I also decided to pack a change of clothes for after the funeral when I would visit Yale Heights.
By that point it was lunchtime so I drove to a nearby Royal Farms where I ordered a fried chicken meal with a soda then ate it in the car. Afterwards I drove over to a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts where I purchased a donut then changed into more casual clothes in the restroom.
So I drove to Yale Avenue, where my family lived. I took photos of my old neighborhood, Yale Heights, the last time I visited it in 2015. The one thing I noticed on that visit is that Yale Heights seemed more middle-class suburban than the rest of Baltimore.
I also shot those photos on a day when the weather was much better.
I’ll admit that the main reason why I wanted to go back to Yale Heights was to investigate an old childhood memory that has remained with me for all of my life. Here are the details. Both of my parents worked during the day while my widowed grandmother (my mother’s mother), who also lived in that apartment on Yale Avenue, took care of me. She had left South Stricker Street in the Mount Clare neighborhood where she had spent the majority of her adult life when my parents moved to Yale Heights after they were married two years before I was born. Despite that, she was able to thrive in her new surroundings because she could walk everywhere.
I remember she used to frequently take me to a playground that was located near the apartments. But there were some days when she would walk further than that playground. I remember she would walk further while I sat in a stroller that she pushed. She would go to this pharmacy that had a sit-down lunch counter with a soda fountain and she would buy me a soda. I remember that she purchased other things at that pharmacy as well. (She had high blood pressure so she used to take medication for that.)
All that I know is that memory had remained among my happiest childhood memories to this day. It was especially way better than the hell I went through in Glen Burnie when I encountered kids who called me “retarded” and I even had this bully who wrote this hateful message in my yearbook without my permission. It says it all when my happiest high school memory was the day that I graduated because I knew that I no longer had to be in the same building as those people who made my life a living hell. I still don’t regret leaving Glen Burnie permanently.
Anyway I thought a lot about that pharmacy and I wanted to see if it still existed. On my last trip in 2015 I didn’t find anything that resembled a street where such a business would’ve been located. I decided to use the day of my mother’s funeral to find out once and for all if that pharmacy was still there since I was in the area anyway.
I saw on Google Maps that there was an area on Frederick Avenue that seemed like it could potentially be a commercial district. So I drove along Yale Avenue after my stop at Dunkin’ Donuts while looking at the houses, row houses, and apartment buildings in my old neighborhood. I turned right on Frederick Avenue and saw something at the intersection of Franklin Avenue and Collins Avenue that could potentially be the pharmacy from my childhood.
This building is located just few blocks away from Yale Avenue so my grandmother could have walked that length while pushing the stroller.
I remember that part of the pharmacy had the full-service soda fountain where my grandmother would buy a soda for me while the rest was a typical pharmacy. I remember the pharmacy was brightly lit with white walls. When I entered I saw that this building was literally split into two with two separate entrances. The door on the left led to Collins Beauty Supply store. The door ahead led to ABH Pharmacy.
I entered through the pharmacy door and found something that was very disheartening. The counter was behind bulletproof windows along with the majority of the inventory. There was a locked cabinet in the middle of the floor that had more inventory. It looked like an inner city store located in a high crime area.
I felt like I was shopping in a locked fortress. I quickly left because I felt so deflated by what I saw. I didn’t even bother with entering the beauty supply store because I didn’t want to see more inventory behind locked cabinets.
I don’t know for sure if that building is the same location as the pharmacy where my grandmother used to take me to all those years ago. (My grandmother has been dead for many years and my mother had recently died so I can’t ask anyone.) If it is, then it’s really sad what happened to it. I guess my recent visit proves the old saying that really you can’t go home again.
The Collins Ave. Thrift Store is located next to the pharmacy and beauty supply store. I entered it and it’s more like a typical thrift store where the inventory is located on racks and shelves. The only inventory that was behind locked cabinets was the jewelry. Otherwise everything seemed normal. If I lived in the area, I would feel comfortable with shopping at the Collins Ave. Thrift Store.
I walked around Frederick Avenue and I saw this area next to City Chill that has a concrete hopscotch pattern, a wall mural, and what looks like a few miniature golf holes.
I walked a little bit more around Franklin Avenue but there weren’t really any places that enticed me to stop inside.
I decided to drive south to my old hometown of Glen Burnie since it was on the way back from Baltimore. I went to Crabtowne USA where I played some of the vintage video arcade and pinball machines.
Among the vintage arcade games I played was Tapper. I loved playing that game so much that I shudder to think about how many quarters I have spent playing it over the years.
The one thing I noticed about Tapper that I haven’t noticed before is the sides of the machines, which contain this really nice old fashioned Gay 90’s-style line drawing.
I also noticed that the restaurant part of Crabtowne USA had these really nice sea-themed pillows that were placed along the larger tables where patrons generally eat crabs.
The restaurant was mostly empty because I came on a Monday afternoon. I basically played some arcade and pinball games then left for home.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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