Raw

The small but heavy package arrived in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and was delivered around lunchtime. Cam Cameron ripped open the package and gazed at his championship ring from Super Bowl XLVII, the one the Ravens went on to win after relieving him of his duties in December. The dazzling ring weighed 380 grams, was encrusted with 243 round-cut diamonds and crafted in 10-karat white gold with yellow highlights. Without a hint of resentment, the team's former offensive coordinator who was at times the most-scrutinized man in the Baltimore area, said he appreciated the gesture from the Ravens and their owner, Steve Bisciotti.

As this week marks the end of the school year for Baltimore City schools, I thought I'd share a piece sent to me by a first-year teacher that draws a rather provocative conclusion that many of the district's struggles are fueled by its own low expectations. The reflection piece, titled "Low Expectations for Low-Income Students," documents some of the more tumultuous times in this teacher's school this year, which she says were mostly supported by policies that encourage poor academics and behavior and affirmed by manufactured statistics.

Monday night's Raw began with a well-executed angle and ended with a great match. What was in between was pretty good, too. When Chris Jericho came out to confront Stephanie McMahon at the top of the show, I never imagined it would result in Stephanie's firing Jericho. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts)

Baltimore Police have been able to present some impressive - sometimes maybe even hard to believe for some - crime statistics in the past decade, but a figure put forward last night was beyond head-scratching. In preparation of a walk through downtown to the Inner Harbor with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, police sent a reporter a data sheet showing that crime was down substantially in the downtown neighborhood and Seton Hill.  Down so much, the data showed, that it had declined 525 percent.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have devoured raw cookie dough. At least that's how Vanessa Simmons sees it. "My friends and I used to buy a role of slice-and-bake and just eat spoonfuls of it during a breakup or crisis," said Simmons, a 23-year-old Johns Hopkins graduate who lives in Mount Vernon. Raw cookie dough may heal a broken heart, but it's not so hot for the rest of you. Last month, E. coli turned up in refrigerated Toll House cookie dough at Nestle's Danville, Va., plant.

Kevin Nash is wrestling at the Big Time Wrestling show at the Maryland Theater in Hagerstown on Friday night. We were able to talk to him about what he's been doing since last being on WWE television, and as well as his memories of Wrestlemania over the years. Last time most people saw you, it was at the TLC pay-per-view in Baltimore in December of 2011.  What have you been doing since then? Kevin Nash: I've been keeping busy.  I've been making personal appearances as well as doing independent bookings.  I've been working on a movie project locally with some writers and a production group.  It has a good script, and a medium-budget of about $1-to-1.5 million.  There's also a reality show that I've been in talks with.  I also have a legends deal with WWE, so I go in from time-to-time for DVD commentaries, and I sometimes go to developmental (NXT)

The return of Mr. McMahon to Raw on Monday spiked the ratings. The show did a 3.9 (including a 4.1 for the second hour), which was up from last week's 3.5 and is the best number Raw has done since the Ric Flair farewell episode did a 3.9 on March 31. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts)

RAW: The Living Food Diet (Freepoint Entertainment, $29.95, DVD with booklet) This DVD is worth a look if you need inspiration to move beyond a nightly ritual of heating up processed food for dinner. RAW: The Living Food Diet is produced by a California company that espouses the benefits of eating raw food. Viewers may be enticed by the idea of cooking without cooking. But as it turns out, the 50-minute segment on preparing everything from seed cheeses to raw burritos is hardly simple.

If you're a big-hunk-of-steak kind of person like me, few things could seem more torturous than dinner at a raw-food restaurant. But as it turned out, it wasn't that bad. Dan Hoyt and Tolentin Chan, owners of the two Quintessence restaurants in New York, have created dishes that are varied, tasty and intriguing. Sure, being a raw restaurant, it offers no wine or beer, but the coconut drinks almost make up for it. On a recent Friday night, a friend and I trekked to the East Village restaurant to sample some raw offerings.

Q: Should I pay attention to my wife when she says that we should not order Caesar salads in restaurants?A: The easy answer is to tell you that you should always listen to what your wife says. She may not be right on every occasion, but it is true that Caesar salad dressing, made with raw eggs, has been responsible for many outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness due to contamination of eggs with Salmonella bacteria. These bacteria pose no threat when eggs are properly cooked, but Salmonella may infect the intestine if you eat foods containing raw or under-cooked eggs.

Two major developments unfolded on Monday's episode of WWE RAW. The first was a big one in many ways - Paul Heyman revealed a new client, Michael McGillicutty, now known as Curtis Axel (Curtis after his father "Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig, Axel after his grandfather Larry "The Axe" Hennig). Though many fans complained about it not being a bigger name (RVD was speculated throughout the day), this is a great move and an even greater opportunity for a superstar to not only have instant credibility being aligned with Paul Heyman (arguably the greatest mouthpiece in pro wrestling history)

A "go home" Raw (the last episode before a pay-per-view event) is always watched with extra attention, mostly because critics have the same question -- did this particular show do anything to increase my interest in buying the pay-per-view on Sunday? Lately, many of these critics have answered no. Many people feel that Raw last night was no different -- that it was flat, lacked spark and didn't do very much to push the figurative "buy rate" needle. These, of course, are criticisms that always arise for this particular (mostly monthly)

What a difference a week makes. It's not like the members of The Shield weren't already on an upward trajectory to main event status. But, when you get to interact with The Undertaker to the degree the trio did last week in WWE, that's a game changer. On Raw last week, The Shield beat The Undertaker, Kane and Daniel Bryan. On Smackdown, The Undertaker beat Dean Ambrose, but then The Shield left the Dead Man laying and vulnerable. This week, The Shield was victorious again, against the team of Team Hell No and John Cena.

Ever since the day after WrestleMania, when "Fandangoing" became a thing, we knew that when WWE returned to the United Kingdom just weeks later, that it would all resume. Sure, the Fandango theme singing craze took a dip in between, but it's genesis was truly fans in the United Kingdom who made the trip to WrestleMania. So it comes as no surprise that the singing and dancing was out in full force on WWE Raw. I think WWE did a great job with the trend and weaving it into the show -- from using the theme song as a distraction for Chris Jericho in his match against Dolph Ziggler to having Fandango match up against William Regal (perhaps one of the only guys on the roster who could shift the crowd's attention)

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Kofi Kingston, a WWE Superstar who was hard-pressed to find a win on television in 2013, defeated a man in Antonio Cesaro who, weeks earlier, was taking on several challengers, showing impressive feats of strength. Then, Cesaro seemed to fall off the face of the earth around WrestleMania time. He didn't appear at WrestleMania. He didn't appear on Raw the next night. Then, he starts yodeling and loses the U.S. title. Is Antonio Cesaro in the dog house?

Everything that Wrestlemania wasn't, for the hardcore WWE fan, Raw was. It had twists, it had turns, and most of all, it had chants. Lots of chants. Chants never heard at a WWE event before. In fact, for much of Raw, the fans hijacked the show. It started with Dolph Ziggler. Fans were chanting for him throughout the show, until he appeared to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase, and the place went wild. Nobody sat down during the 2-3 minute match where Ziggler finally won the World Heavyweight title, with most fans in the audience having the opinion that he more than deserved it. It was a surreal moment ... a "WrestleMania moment," just the following day. Once fans got what they asked for with Ziggler, they turned their attention elsewhere.

It's hard not to dream of better times on a raw and uncompromising January afternoon when the air reeks of auto exhaust and the harbor looks like an acid bath. Baltimore is not at her best during the first month of the year.This is the high season of winter dreams, when the mind drifts to the land of endless possibility, to what might be, to what was, to what could be. . . .Hoping (in secret) that Baltimore will be lambasted with a real snow storm (more than 12 inches downtown) in the next three weeks, so that conditions will be so bad you'll be excused and paid for work for three days.

rawfoods.com This site offers raw-food news, information, recipes, events, books, a discussion board and an opportunity for single raw foodists to communicate with one another.

In the final segment of Raw, a Paul Bearer impostor (who looked like Paul Heyman) flanked by Druids mocked the Undertaker with the urn. The Deadman then got beat down by CM Punk before Punk opened the urn and scattered the ashes inside on 'Taker's body and bathed himself in it. The same questions will come out of Monday night that were asked the Raw after Paul Bearer passed away and the urn was introduced: Is this going too far? Is it in poor taste? And I will offer the same answers to these questions: this is WWE, where anything can happen, and what you see is designed to elicit a response.

Kevin Nash is wrestling at the Big Time Wrestling show at the Maryland Theater in Hagerstown on Friday night. We were able to talk to him about what he's been doing since last being on WWE television, and as well as his memories of Wrestlemania over the years. Last time most people saw you, it was at the TLC pay-per-view in Baltimore in December of 2011.  What have you been doing since then? Kevin Nash: I've been keeping busy.  I've been making personal appearances as well as doing independent bookings.  I've been working on a movie project locally with some writers and a production group.  It has a good script, and a medium-budget of about $1-to-1.5 million.  There's also a reality show that I've been in talks with.  I also have a legends deal with WWE, so I go in from time-to-time for DVD commentaries, and I sometimes go to developmental (NXT)