"You probably know the [target] demographic," said sports promoter Lee Corrigan. "Volleyball with good-looking, athletic women - you really can't beat that, can you? And a cold beer at a reasonable price."
Phew! For a minute there, I thought the frat party was over.
An eye for the buttons
Michael Steele dismissed Barack Obama as an empty suit last summer during the Democratic National Convention, but that hardly hurt the future president's career. So Steele tried the label on himself.
Asked at a news conference last week how he'd fix his party's negative image, the newly elected Republican National Committee chairman stepped from behind a podium and joked: "Well, I got a nice suit, and the tie is good."
Among those impressed with that answer: Kwab Asamoah, owner of Kustom Looks Clothier, where Steele gets his snazzy duds - including the pin-striped suit and blue shirt he showed off for the news media that day.
"The only thing we didn't make was the tie," said Asamoah, who is relocating his Landover haberdashery to Silver Spring today.
The man chosen to lead the GOP out of the political wilderness is a clotheshorse whose taste befits someone straddling the line between trailblazer and conservative. Trousers with classic pleats and cuffs, for instance, but cut full - baggy, even - to evoke Harlem Renaissance styling. Classic pinstripes paired with a modern, fitted "athletic cut" suit jacket. And no more than three buttons on that jacket, even though the guy is 6-4.
"When you do four, it's not professional," Asamoah said. "When you're dealing with conservatives, especially GOP, no more than two or three buttons."
Those are our napkins!
So Jennifer Aniston and Drew Barrymore are in a cafe, talking about guys, no doubt, and everyone in the He's Just Not That Into You audience is eating it up - except the Baltimoreans. We're too distracted by the coffee cups and napkins. They bear the familiar oval logo of The Baltimore Coffee & Tea Co.
The movie, which opens today, didn't actually shoot in any of the company's three cafes, which are in Timonium, Annapolis and Frederick - not, as it turns out, Baltimore.
Producers looking for local color took some of its paper products back to Hollywood.
"We provided them with hundreds of cups, hundreds of napkins, a bunch of signage and the like," said David Nevins, a minority investor in the company who saw a preview of the movie at Arundel Mills this week.
If you must know, Nevins just wasn't that into the movie. (Too chick flick-y.) But he thoroughly enjoyed seeing the logo on the big screen. "It's kind of a kick."
Picking the right major
Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos, who testified this week before a House committee, graduated from Loyola College in 1981. He earned an undergrad degree in - what else? - accounting.
