Review 2007: Home

Kat Herzog on Baltimore

Good Morning, Baltimore!

It was big news when the latest incarnation of Hairspray was released this summer, with Baltimore fawning over their Pope Of Trash.

I love this about Baltimore, and about John Waters. He deftly skewers this city with such love, and while the bowdlerized Broadway and Hollywood Hairsprays don't quite have that loving touch of smut that all Waters films have, they at least wink at what they've hidden behind the family-friendly songs and scripts.

John Waters' Pecker was my Baltimore Orientation, prescribed a few months before I moved here. And that was a good thing, because I pictured a city of boarded-up drug dens and, more or less, every plot line from Homicide: Life On The Street. That's not to say that Baltimore isn't like that from time to time, neighborhood to neighborhood, but, for the most part, it's alright. The people were voted the ugliest in the country a couple years ago, but I see a lot of kindness and good humor beneath the shabbiness and trashiness. (Ask me if my car gets vandalized again, and I may have a colder perspective.) They call it Charm City, but it's probably not really the sort of charm you're thinking of. It's a little smellier than that:

What does the city of Baltimore mean to you and what sets it apart from the rest of the country?
John Waters: The city of Baltimore is home to me. I've always made movies about what the Chamber of Commerce tried to hide and I always joke that they should put out a bumper sticker saying, "Come to Baltimore and be shocked" and they did about five years ago. I guess they've given up and realized that we have to celebrate the weirdness of the city.

I think that Baltimore understands that. When he filmed A Dirty Shame in my neighborhood not too long after I moved in, people fought over the suggestively trimmed set-dressing topiaries. Fought over, as in: they wanted the penis-shaped shrubbery in their front yard. I can't think of a place that has as much of a sense of humor about itself.

One must have at least an abstract fondness for vermin to call Baltimore home. I don't know if I truly understood that before that afternoon in the cool dark theatre, with my popcorn and my Raisinets, the opening sequence capturing Baltimore through and through, filling my heart with warm pride, the same sort of buzzy, humming feeling usually achieved through greeting-card commercials and holiday songs. Except for the fact that my heart was joyfully bursting, tears welling in my eyes, at the sight of John Waters's split-second cameo as the flasher next door.

Kat writes Geeky Sweet Nothings.

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