Best Wishes

Next week is my annually favorite episode of Baltimore’s Best Alternative Weekly, to wit: Best of Baltimore! It is the Best, seriously, there are some other printed-on-paper publications publicating their own Best-ofs out there, but nobody brings the Best like your Baltimore City Paper, and next week you are gonna get a big pile of paper (or pixels if you go Internet) to plow through and there’s gonna be stuff in there that will make you happy and stuff that will make you mad, sure, but there’s gonna be so much stuff! Best of Baltimore! What is the Best? Who is the Best? The Best What? Best of Baltimore!

I always like to learn about Food, like what the best things to eat are, man, I never get tired of being interested in food. There might be a Best Thing You Like to Eat at a place you never heard of for you to go check out and agree or disagree! Best of Baltimore!

There will also be the results of the “Readers Poll,” where the Readers of Baltimore get to vote on what they think is Best, and you should always check those out because that’s more information, man! For me, it’s always more info of what to eat, but there’s also stuff about bands and shops, and for me, the Best category in the Best of Baltimore Readers Poll is “Best Reason we should Invite you to the City Paper Best of Baltimore Party” because the answers to that are always amusing, either because they are totally not amusing but you can tell they were trying to be, or else they are just crazy, which is always amusing until it happens to you, or else they are offers to wear silly costumes, which people do anyway at the party, but sometimes the invites have totally gone to people who said they would wear a silly costume, like last year somebody said they would wear a robot costume, but I didn’t go anywhere near anybody at the party who looked like a robot because I do not trust robots, and no way was I taking a chance on going near some robot who got into the party saying they were wearing a “costume,” get it? Best of Baltimore!

I’m terrible at doing Best of Baltimore because I can’t pick just one thing in a category that is Best, you know? If you were gonna ask me: “Hey man, what is the Best Pizza in Baltimore,” I would be all like: “Uhhhhh, well, that’s kind of depending on what kinda pizza you like, I mean, welllll, there’s places like Isabella’s down in Little Italy, and that Chazz place, which, don’t be put off that it’s run by a movie star from New York City, it’s pretty tasty pizza, but also there’s Matthew’s, which is totally different and great, and Angelo’s, and Joe Squared, and Iggies, even though they said they were gonna move outta town but they didn’t, so it’s really good, and there’s Hersh’s, and Bella Roma, and there’s that Hot Tomatoes place, and Fortunato’s, wow, I dunno, there’s other ones too, I can’t remember, but I would eat at all of ’em if I could! I don’t know, man! You’re giving me a headache! I can’t make decisions like this! Why don’t you just go find a well-established Local Publication and see what they say, like, maybe there’s a Publication that does a thing every year where they tell you what they think is Best! I bet they have the Readers put what they think is Best also! I bet they have ‘Best Pizza’ in there, man, leave me alone, now I’m hungry, jeez . . .” Best of Baltimore!

Best of Baltimore always makes me think of the things I think of in Baltimore, that are Best, and this year, the Number One Best Thing of Baltimore, for me, is Your Baltimore Orioles, right? I mean how Best are they? Who said they were gonna be sluggin’ it out with the hated New York Yankees in September for First Place? Not me! You? Nobody! Nobody said that! First Place! Errbody was all like, “well, Your Baltimore Orioles will be ‘Greatly Improved’ this year, it looks like ‘.500’ baseball and a ‘winning record’ will be a reality in Baltimore this year, blah blah bleh bleahhhh,” but look what Your Baltimore Orioles have done this year! Man, they should get a Parade, seriously, I know they are just Doing Their Jobs and they make lots of dough and stuff, but they made people excited about Life this year, man, for real, people are jacked up about this baseball, man, in September, and that’s a big deal, a Best of Baltimore, totally. Best of Baltimore!

On a personal note, it seems like only 14 years ago I started the “Mr. Wrong” column (Sept. 30, in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Eight, no kidding) and immediately started hoping I could get it to go from every-other week in the paper to weekly, since the paper is a Weekly, but it never happened, so this will be the last “Mr. Wrong” column ever printed in your Baltimore City Paper because seriously, it’s been 12 weeks since my last column, which like, doesn’t even make it a column anymore, you know? So my column will be on the pixels of theawl.com from now on, every week on the Internet, and every year, you, the Gentle Reader, you have been the Best! Especially the Readers (and even the Haters) of the “Mr. Wrong” column. Best of Baltimore!

theawl.com, mrwrong.tumblr.com

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