Prime

The joint appearance by President Obama and Hillary Clinton on “60 Minutes” wasn't about the Democratic nomination in 2016, as some analysts have insisted this weekend. Watching the actual interview Sunday night, I am certain it was about something both much more immediate and long lasting. It was President Obama using TV - and the folks at "60 Minutes" happily allowing themselves to be used - to write the first draft of history on Clinton's performance as secretary of state.

Brendon Ayanbadejo doesn't need Super Bowl XLVII to assist the cause for gay rights and gay marriage. But the Ravens inside linebacker won't turn down the opportunity during the week in New Orleans to champion the push for equality. Ayanbadejo, who contributed to Maryland passing an initiative to legalize gay marriage in November, was peppered about using the lead up to the Super Bowl as a platform, but he pointed out that he doesn't really need to seek the cameras or recorders. “Organically, it was going to happen anyway,” he said after Friday's practice.

The Ravens will again wait until Saturday afternoon to make a decision on Ray Lewis , but early indications are that the inside linebacker will attempt to play Sunday against the New York Giants. Lewis, who is trying to come back from a torn triceps that he sustained in the Ravens' Week 6 victory over the Dallas Cowboys, practiced for the third straight week and he wants to return. The Ravens also possess the roster flexibility to accommodate him on the 53-man roster with Jameel McClain (neck)

The Prime Rib at Maryland Live Casino opened, quietly, a few weeks ago, six months after the casino's grand opening and 10 months after the surprise announcement that Buzz Beler's storied Baltimore steakhouse was joining the casino's lineup. Operated, Beler has said, as a "joint venture" with the casino's developers, the Baltimore-based Cordish Cos., the new restaurant has been designed with respect for Prime Rib icons like leopard skin carpeting, black-leather booths and Icart prints.

There are three prime opportunities to see the International Space Station fly over Baltimore over the next week. For those who saw its last pass-over in October, the show should be just as spectacular. In each case, look for a bright light more brilliant than a star but more distant than a plane, zipping steadily across the sky. You'll know it when you see it. Tonight, the ISS will appear over the southwest horizon at 6:39 p.m., though it will be a brief show and could be obscured by clouds.

Twitter and web radio carried a new kind of prime-time crime drama in Baltimore Saturday when a Waverly man refused to allow police to serve a warrant and then broadcast the ensuing standoff after a S.W.A.T. team arrived. He was on the air live Saturday night for more than 5 hours, much of it spent talking to a police negotiator before surrendering peacefully. Another day and night in the brave, new world of social media… Frank James MacArthur, a cabdriver, who tweets, blogs and broadcasts on the Internet as The Baltimore Spectator, left the airwaves just before 11 p.m. saying, “All right, it's 10:57.

Longtime general manager David Derewicz is leaving his position at the Prime Rib . His departure was confirmed by the restaurant's owner, Buzz Beler, who described the parting as amicable. Two familiar figures at the Prime Rib, John Klaus and Brad Black, will now be co-managing the storied steak house, and Prime Rib regulars will be seeing more of Beler himself. "I'll be taking over," said Beler, who relegated himself to an ownership role during Derewicz's long and widely admired tenure.

The Prime Rib at Maryland Live Casino is on track to open, quietly, sometime in December, but there is a hiring of note. The steakhouse has brought on as its dining room manager Jean-Jacques Retourne, who was the general manager at Citronelle in Washington for more than 13 years. Citronelle, Michel Richard's celebrated restaurant in the Latham Hotel, closed in July after suffering extensive water damage, and the status of its reopening remains uncertain. The restaurant also announced the appointments of head chef Michael Meisel and sous chef Doff Edwards.

  When we first heard about Birroteca, it was described as an artisanal pizza joint. Birroteca does have pizzas - good, wood-fired pizzas with chewy crusts and fancy ingredients, but there's more to it than that. Some of your friends and neighbors have already started staking claims to Birroteca, so don't wait too long. For one thing, there's an appetizer of grilled calamari that you need to have before the next fortnight passes. There are also promising pizzas, terrific salads and hearty autumn pastas.

Former two-sport standout and current NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders, in town for Thursday night's Ravens home game against Cleveland, stopped by Oriole Park at Camden Yards to take batting practice with the Orioles. Some players got a kick out of it -- left-hander Troy Patton asked Sanders for his autograph -- and Orioles manager Buck Showalter, who was Sanders' manager with the Double-A Albany-Colonie Yankees in 1989, reminisced about Sanders' athletic ability, saying that watching Sanders leg out a triple is "still one of the prettiest things I've ever seen.