This ad in bus shelters all over the District is brought to you by Baltimore-based Christian nonprofit Campaign for Our Children, which is “targeting the attitudes of teens aged 15 to 19 with a bold new program, aimed at promoting one of the world’s most cherished institutions: marriage.”

First: 15- to 19-year-olds?

Second: CEO of Campaign for Our Children, Hal Donofrio, told D.C. gay pub MetroWeekly: “I would say, it’s not your issue. It has to do with the birth of babies and preventing unwanted pregnancy. Grind your axe somewhere else. We’re not in that arena. We don’t want to dictate to anyone. We just want to prevent teen pregnancy.”

Third: Not only are these ads offensive to gay people, they’re offensive to single people who have a bunch of smug-marrieds as friends, and married people who remember what it was like to be single and have a bunch of smug-marrieds as friends.

How long this campaign will last is unclear. Clear Channel Outdoors, which maintains D.C.’s bus shelters and sells its ads, has not yet returned a call. When they finally get back to me, what should I ask them?

When I started working as a journalist (OK, as a paid intern), there was no Internet or e-mail, unless you count PINE, located at one terminal where you stood up to use it. At our giant, metal desks, we pounded out stories and briefs and obituaries on word processors. The future of newspapers meant an end to ashtrays in the newsroom. Or so I thought.

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Left: Cara Ober. Right: Christine Bailey.

“Despite what the Baltimore Sun says, I am not angry about this any more,” says Baltimore artist Cara Ober. She is the subject of a story on a Baltimore exhibit, one that sort of features her work. It’s her work, all right, but by a different artist: Christine Bailey. For the show at 100 East Pratt Street in downtown Baltimore, Bailey made paintings that ape everything about Ober’s unmistakable style.

“And I would be fine with this project if it had included 3 artists,” says Ober, referring to Bailey’s original vision for the show, in which she would style-check other artists, not just Ober. “And I would be fine with it if they had just named me from the start.”

Now the Baltimore-based artist is fielding criticism from further afield: Blake Gopnik dismisses her in the Washington Post.

The newspaper’s chief art critic, who writes a reported review of Bailey’s show, discloses that his wife (artist Lucy Hogg) works with Christine Bailey. Bailey and Hogg are reportedly good friends, but never mind. Baltimore is a ways for a critic to travel who doesn’t write the galleries beat. Not only is the show across the way, it’s also not really a gallery show—Bailey’s work is hung in the lobby of an office building.

By the Post’s reporting, the show falls in line with the appropriation back-and-forth that’s occupied artists for the better part of the twentieth century. (My favorite recent example is Jill Miller’s mashup of Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, John Baldessari, and herself, titled I Am Making Art, Too. This piece illustrates the way that appropriation almost always works: A younger artist samples a highly known piece by an established artist to make a point about practice, politics, or whatever. Appropriation is typically greeted as a sign of respect, a nod from teacher to student, and it tends to be more subtle, an Easter egg for critics on the lookout.)

Bailey’s is a new escalation in a game of oneupmanship, Gopnik argues. Bailey and Ober are peers, both relatively unknown in the national context, and artists competing in the same market. That’s something of a new commercial twist. In fact, there are a number of commercial twists in this show.

One is that it’s hung in the lobby of an office building—a venue that’s not adequate to the task of providing any historical or critical context for the show. Nor did Bailey and the exhibit’s curator, Jordan Faye Block, make any effort to provide that context in explanatory text. The original text that hung with the show made no reference to Ober’s work. In fact, it’s arguable that Bailey obscured the fact.

“Combining imagery and text from various sources, including the web, pop culture, the urban environment and art history, the pictures are at once whimsical and melancholy,” the original press release reads. That sounds like Ober describing the work, not Bailey. Bailey didn’t mention Ober at all—not even in a roundabout fashion—until Ober threatened legal action. (Block has since posted a “clarification,” a revised statement in which Bailey writes that she “used the work of Ms. Ober, among others, as a point of reference” in pieces that adopted the notion of “designer replicas”.)

“However much the paintings might look like Ober’s,” writes Gopnik, “Bailey isn’t using that look to the same ends that Ober, or an Ober forger, would.” If Bailey doesn’t mention Ober—and if Bailey makes claims about the substance and not the situation of these paintings—how can this be true?

Another commercial angle: Block, who represents Bailey now, used to represent Ober.

“I did my first gallery show with [Block] when she was the director at Gallery Imperato—’Femme Effect Part Deux’ in April 2006,” Ober explains. “The Femme Effect show was during the height of the housing boom and she sold a good deal of my work. Like 16 pieces. Most were small and inexpensive. She even bought one for herself.” Block left the gallery, but Ober stayed on. “I decided to stay with Gallery Imperato for professional reasons.”

Block describes her own split with Gallery Imperato as “a philosophical difference in vision.”

Ober’s contract with Gallery Imperato allowed her to participate in group shows at other spaces (provided that the show included five artists or more). Ober says that Block pursued her, and she agreed to participate in two of Block’s post-Imperato shows—curated independently under the mantle Jordan Faye Contemporary at various sites.

One of those shows was “Believe It: 14 Painters”, a May 2007 show at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson in Baltimore, in which Block came in for some criticism for painting her gallery logo—a Tiffany box–blue outline of a square—on the gallery floor. Some, like commenters and contributors on Ober’s art blog, thought this distracted from the work. “After that show, I decided that would be the last show I worked with her on.”

“The show’s not about Cara Ober,” says Block. “It’s about authorship, originality, it’s trying to question all those things. It’s a conceptual project. I stand behind my artists. I think Christine Bailey is brilliant. I don’t think I crossed any lines. And I didn’t make any work—I’m selling the work.”

“Cara is someone I don’t know, so I had no personal connection and could be dispassionate about the work,” writes Bailey on a January 21 post on Ober’s art blog (where Ober offered Bailey a venue to address the growing controversy). Block cannot make the same claim—and much of the ire in comments to that post has been directed toward her.

“I was surprised that people were confused, as if I had made a mistake, which I didn’t do,” Block says in response. “I’ve been curating for over 9 years. I don’t make mistakes.”

Maybe not. But to answer that, viewers need more context than an office lobby affords, and more disclosure from the artist and curator than none at all. Post readers deserve more of both, too.

Not even on the so called ‘quiet car” on the MARC train from Baltimore to Washington can a rider enjoy a book without a cell phone screamer breaking through. This morning I was forced to listen to a woman with an annoying Virginia accent (all Virginia accents are annoying to varying degrees) complain about her brother’s alcohol problem to who I imagine was another family member.

As the New York Times reported Sunday, there is a solution, albeit an illegal one, in the form of cell phone jammers. The story doesn’t say how long these techno marvels have been around, but supposedly the devices, the prices of which range from $50 to more than $1,000, can wipe out a wide swath of cell phone signals at the push of a button.

The Times story says the owner of an upscale Maryland restaurant bought one to keep his employees off their phones but had to get rid of it to keep out of trouble with FCC bad guys, who carry equipment that can pick up on a jammer.

Jammers can be fined up to $11,000 for a first offense. It’s against the law to block out someone’s chatter. Cell phone screamers could be calling 911 after all.

Aside from the fine, another problem with the jammers seems to be the distance at which they work. The Times story mentions 30 feet. From my experience, the collateral damage from cell-phone screamers carries at a much further distance.

Maybe jammers aren’t the solution. Maybe cell phone screamers should be dealt with like cigarette smokers. Kick them outside, in the cold, and certainly out of the quiet car.

On my daily MARC train trip to Baltimore last Tuesday evening, I fell into a head-hanging, drooling sleep so deep I nearly missed my station. By the time I reached home, the fever was on, and I was deep into my worst flu bout since elementary school.

Like a good worker, I called in sick on Wednesday, Thursday, and again on Friday, to spare my coworkers from my germs. After six days, countless cups of ginger tea, a quarter bottle of Tylenol, and the second season of The Wire, I was back on the MARC Monday morning, hoping I wouldn’t spook my fellow commuters with a coughing fit.

I shouldn’t have worried. Although I did let out a few raspy coughs into my handkerchief, the final notes of my sickness were nothing compared to sniffling, sneezing, and full-on hacking of many other riders. A bearded man a few rows ahead of me coughed for so long, I feared he would pass out. The train car rang with sickness all the way to D.C.

It’s going to be a long, germy winter for commuters. Have the rules changed and it’s now all right to go to work with a serious cold or even the flu? If so, I propose we follow certain Asian countries where the polite person with a cold covers his mouth in public with a hospital mask. At least on the MARC train.

Maybe Michael Vick was onto something. Dogfighting might be the perfect sport for today’s America. Anybody who doubts how mean this place has gotten should read this piece in yesterday’s Baltimore Examiner that attacks the folks who pick up garbage at Camden Yards after Orioles game.

Somebody named Dan Gainor, who identifies himself as a “Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow” and apparently earns his wage as a shill for billionaires, takes it upon himself to advise readers that the work done by the stadium cleaners is “the least-skilled labor you could ever imagine.”

“You don’t have to train workers,” Gainor spews. “Heck, you shouldn’t even have to explain to them what constitutes ‘trash.’ You just hire them and set them to work.”

Gainor unloads on the cleaning crews because he’s upset that they are asking the Maryland Stadium Authority to pay them a so-called living wage, which in Baltimore is $9.62 an hour.

In his zest to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable, Gainor ignores the 2004 verbal agreement to pay the requested wage made by Orioles owner Peter Angelos to the workers, some of whom live in public shelters when they’re not cleaning up the stadium where the millionaires play.

Talk about garbage.

If only Linda Blair got a girl-band together instead of turning to softcore porn, Georgetown might have made the cut for Netflix Live! On Location. As it is, Baltimore will have to do. The Netflix tour hits three places this summer (New Orleans and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in addition to Baltimore next Saturday, the 15th) and includes a free screening and a concert by movie stars who think they can sing in the places where the movies are set or were filmed.

Enter the Bacon Brothers—Kevin, of course, and Mike, post-Queer Eye makeover—who will rock out (can country-folk rock out?) before Diner crackles to life once more on the Inner Harbor. Top billing for the movie, filmed mostly in Baltimore in the early ’80s, goes to studly pre-Cocoon Steve Guttenberg and features Bacon, Daniel Stern, and Schenectady’s finest, Mickey Rourke. So it’s not the Academy Award winners D.C. has turned out, but, hey, at least it’s free.

Nothing makes me feel more like a woman than getting my hair cut. Well, that’s not true. Nothing makes me feel more like my mother than getting my hair cut. My mom comes from Baltimore, the so-called hair capital of the world. Like me, she sports a gravity-defying halo of big, big hair. And, like me, she’s serious about hair care.

I learned my hair lessons early. When you have hair like ours, you have to be creative. You have to work hard. When we saw Dirty Dancing in 1987, my mom scoured the credits, tracked the film’s stylist down, and made appointments for both of us.

Then my mom met Tonnee. Tonnee worked at a salon at the Plaza Hotel. He was sarcastic, flamboyant, and fabulous. It was love at first snip, and before long, Tonnee was teasing both of our hair into matching bouffants. As he did so, I marveled at how intimate my mom and Tonnee were. When she insisted on drying her own hair, Tonnee scowled and said, “One of these days, I’m going to fire you.” But he didn’t. When Tonnee quit the Plaza, we quit with him, following him from apartment to apartment in the West Village and Chelsea.

At some point in my teens, however, I rebelled. I dyed my hair red. I went curly. I developed my own hair regimen and became faithful to my own set of products. But I always craved the kind of relationship my mom had with her hairdressers.

Then, after college, I came to Washington and found Patrick. Patrick works at Bang Salon & Spa. At first, he was businesslike, perfunctory, but I wooed him with TV gossip and tales of my love life. When Patrick moved from the U Street Bang to the Verizon Center location, I moved with him. And when I brought my own products to an appointment a couple weeks ago, he smiled and promised he wouldn’t fire me.

Tracking the Nats’ historic chase of the ’62 Mets

Current Record: 27-37 (.421, 9.5 GB)

Projected Record: 68-94

Percentage of Camden Yards Seats With Butts in Them: 43.9

What This Says About the Argument That Bringing Baseball to Washington Would Cut Into the Orioles’ Revenue: MASN!

Parsing the Win: Nats 7, Baltimore 4. For a town that’s produced so much great TV—The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Stop Snitchin’—you’d think Hollywood on the Patapsco could get its freaking TV working. How will Sam Perlozzo ever get his news?

Barry Svrluga Adjectives of the Day: “undeniable,” “simple,” “different”

It’s better in Baltimore. You’ve heard it. Well, before you move out of your absurdly priced D.C. apartment and join the commuters from the “real city” next door, let me tell you what it’s really like.

Sure, you get an apartment with a full-sized refrigerator for under $1,000, but there’s hell to pay. First off, there is the MARC train, the $175-a-month tin can that regularly grinds to a halt with engine failure or when tourists use the emergency brake for a handhold.

On Tuesday, I arrived at Union Station just in time to catch the 6:40 p.m. back home to Baltimore. The train was in the station, but passengers formed a scrum on the platform. A blown engine? Windows taken out again by well-thrown rocks on the way in? Hard to tell.

A half-hour later we were halfway home when the train slowed down, then stopped. On the track ahead, an Amtrak train had conked out, blocking our path, a conductor told us. Passengers were being loaded onto another train. We’d move when that was finished. The lemmings pulled out cell phones to pass the information to their spouses. “Eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich,” the guy sitting next to me said to his phone.

If the trains are troubling, the helicopters are a nightmare. A few hours after pulling into the station, I was in bed. I hadn’t been asleep long when I heard the shots, like a full pack of firecrackers thrown into a campfire. Maybe it was firecrackers, I thought, and drifted back off.

Nope. Soon the tell-tale thwack of helicopter blades, the spotlight, the sirens.

The shooting was just one instance of violence in the city on Tuesday, the news said.

It wasn’t the 6-year-old caught the crossfire, the triple shooting on Fayette Street, the dude shot in the head, the woman shot in the stomach, or the others. It was the four men shot a couple blocks from my apartment on Mount Royal Avenue.

The helicopter spun circles around the neighborhood for more than an hour, illuminating the alleys, rattling the walls.

Wednesday, I sprinted to catch the 8:10 a.m. MARC train back to the world. I arrived at Penn Station at 8:08 a.m., head groggy, covered in sweat, low on caffeine. I glanced up at the board. The train would be 10 minutes late.

As expected, the labor/management struggle up at Camden Yards is getting uglier.

Last weekend’s protest against the underpaying of the workers who clean up Oriole Park after ballgames drew an estimated 400 marchers. This was the first of a series of events planned for this summer by the United Workers Association, which has been fighting for three years to get the cleanup crew a living wage.

A day after the march, Next Day Staffing—the Baltimore employment agency contracted by the Maryland Stadium Authority, which owns the O’s home coliseum, to hire the cleaners—went to court seeking to prevent UWA officials from recruiting workers to the fight on stadium grounds on game days or nights. (Todd Cherkis, brother of City Paper’s Jason Cherkis, is a UWA organizer.)

UWA brass alleges that the protesting workers were threatened by a Next Day staffer wielding, appropriately enough, a baseball bat.