Another run for brilliant “Baltimore, You Have No Idea” has Rodricks ready to write more for the stage

Venerable columnist Dan Rodricks returns for a now-annual Maryland Crab Cake Tour stop at Gertrude’s at The Baltimore Museum of Art, the same setting where his amazing play “Baltimore, You Have No Idea” will come back to life this week for one more run before he writes another production with a 1966 baseball and Charm City theme he’s keeping mostly a secret.

Nestor Aparicio and Dan Rodricks discuss Rodricks’ play “Baltimore, You Have No Idea,” which is returning for a third run at the BMA. Rodricks shares that the play, based on his newspaper columns, features a cast of 10 and has sold out two previous runs. They also touch on Rodricks’ upcoming play about the 1966 Baltimore Orioles and the challenges of modern journalism. Aparicio reflects on his own career and the importance of truth in journalism, while Rodricks expresses his commitment to writing and creating new works. They also discuss the political climate and the importance of maintaining standards in public life.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Baltimore crab cake tour, Maryland lottery, Jiffy Lube multi care, Dan Rodricks, BMA play, John Shields, family tradition, newspaper column, Eric Bogosian, political corruption, Baltimore Orioles, 1966 World Series, Cambridge mayor, revenge porn, Trump administration

SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, Dan Rodricks

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Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 task Baltimore and Baltimore positive. We are not in the studio. We are in one of my favorite places, the BMA. We’re right down here in beautiful Homewood. Homewood, as we would say, next to Johns Hopkins, we’re at Gertrude at the BMA. It’s all brought to our friends at the Maryland lottery. I have Raven scratch offs to get away. I only have a handful of these left. I’m gonna run out of these by the time we get to faith leaves next week, and then on to a me cheese. And don’t tell me they don’t have a crab cake. I know they don’t have a crab cake in a meat cheese, but we’re doing a crab cake tour there anyway, because it’s great. It’s the holidays, and then on the 18th will be a cost is for for the real celebration, the Final Celebration in Dundalk of the Maryland crab cake tour, also brought to you by friends at Jiffy Lube multi care. We’re out. We had a great time at Cocos. Kick things off over there with some eggnog. I had microsigliano. Nick the Greek seropoulos came out and hung out with us a little bit. Also had our friends from I smelled the coffee at Zeke’s with Thomas Rhodes. But this is my life for friend. He’s sort of a crazy uncle to me. We have fly fish together. We have coffee together. We have been out on pretty boy at the break of dawn, not K I’ve never caught a fish with you, even though we’ve gone fishing a couple times. Dan Rodricks is here, the man the myth, the legend. His show is amazing. Show returns here to the upstairs here at the BMA, which is why I wanted to do it here, not just because John shields and I found that that were related. Did you know that you

Dan Rodricks  01:24

and John shields are really related? Did you not know this possibly be Well,

Nestor Aparicio  01:28

I’m gonna tell you. Two years ago, my friend Dan Rodricks decided to have his little show here at the BMS of play. It’s a play, okay? It’s a play. And I decided to welcome you out. And I said, Do you know that John shields, Guy gertrudes, I mean, Gertrude or hotsy Topsy place was packed here for lunch, and you’re like, he’s one of the nicest men. You said that about John. You’re like, he’s one of the nicest men, you know, right? Absolutely okay. So I reached to him, and we did the show here. And it came to me when I was here two days before, I said to my son, my only son, doing the show for Gertrude at BMA. He’s like, you know, we’re related to him, dad. I’m like, what? It’s like, yeah, it’s Auburn’s cousin, his wife’s cousin. It’s my daughter in law’s cousin. Your daughter

Dan Rodricks  02:12

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in law’s cousin? Yeah,

Nestor Aparicio  02:14

her mother’s maid name was shields, correct. Her mother’s name shields. Okay, so John and I are related, so that makes this thing even more but doesn’t matter. I don’t have any other relatives. I’ve already called you a crazy on point. I know I’m not related to you. To honor you, today, I wore my Boston band belt buckle just to honor you know, I always have to have a theme for you.

Dan Rodricks  02:37

That’s a reference to the fact that I grew up in the Boston area, but I’ve lived in who would know? Who would know that for me, but I’ve lived here a long time. Oh, man, long enough to make this show longer than you’ve been alive. I think. No, you came

Nestor Aparicio  02:51

in 79 I was born in 68 Oh, really. I

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Dan Rodricks  02:54

read you the day you were here, complimentary.

Nestor Aparicio  02:57

I worked with you when I was 17 years

Dan Rodricks  02:59

old. You did. I’m 56 now that’s true. Are you Nestor? You look great. Do you

Nestor Aparicio  03:03

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remember the first thing you ever did for me? That was nice. Thanks, Dan. I’m about to thank you. I said you look great. You were a superstar to me on television. I had read your column in the early 80s. My parents got the evening sun and the News America, especially when I worked there. So I read your work, and then I saw you in the newsroom. You’ve been on, W, b, a, l, doing all your little funny bits, doing all your, you know, well, Marty bass did catching bass, which was his fun guy on the street, and you had Rodricks. You did your guy on the street, different, but the same, but sort of Baltimore. You know,

Dan Rodricks  03:37

I did some serious pieces and some light pieces. He did a lot of light pieces. But

Nestor Aparicio  03:42

you got to meet everybody, every John shields. You get to meet people in the city, right? Been great. And through this collection of people, some of it bad and murders and grizzly and things that are in your play, you have brought this thing to life. And I want to let everybody know I am a full on pimp for this show, I am not under any payment from Dan, other than love. He couldn’t even help me catch a fish.

Dan Rodricks  04:06

So you’re gonna mention that again, right? But

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Nestor Aparicio  04:09

I loved your show so much. Two years ago, I had you on. You came down to fade leads to talk to me about it two years Yeah, and I was excited about it because I thought I’ve seen you as a thespian. I remember you acting these Italian Arias at Jack Lemmons house in the neighbor where my radio station is, back in the 80s. You were big into Dondo, and you did all of this stuff, right? And you’re always talking about your fishing and your cooking and your eating and your singing, and you’re like all of this. And I thought you’re gonna bring a show to the stage that’s going to be worth my time and worth me coming over. And my wife and I came over on a cold night two years ago. We came, and I had no idea what you had cooked up at all, right? And you did mention Eric Bogosian to me two years ago. So I thought, well, this is going to be, this is going to be something, Dan’s putting something together. Yeah, I was, I cried. Up there three different times I came down. I saw friends of ours, mutual friends, former colleagues here, and I said, next year I’m gonna bring everybody I know you did to your show, and I did and last year I had my family, friends, loved ones. People are really important in my life. My sponsors, people to support me. All here. We had a room, we had faithless crab cakes, and we all went in and saw your show. And then we convened right here at this bar. My son was here, all of the key people. I had my family Christmas party here last year around your show. And people down here, it was exactly what you want. Dan, everyone came down here. We all convinced and had our thing and had our drinks, but we talked about your show. We were talking about the movie we saw and what we had just witnessed, and you’ve moved me through the third time that I’ve dragged your ass back out to the PMA, you’re gonna be living here for the next month. Tell everybody about your show, because you’ve added some scenes, and you’ve been kind enough to invite me out, and I wasn’t going to come take up a seat for somebody else, but no, you get extra scenes now.

Dan Rodricks  06:05

Yeah, so it’s a it’s called Baltimore, you have no idea, and you’re right. Nestor, we did it. We’ve done it for the last two years here. We’ve had sold out runs two years in a row, and the cast talked me into doing it one more time. They talked you into it. Yeah, I didn’t think we should do the play again. It’s enough. Well, we did, yeah, we did two years in a row. Do you have a good film of it? We have a good video. Yeah, we have a video that we produce with five cameras, and it’s been all sweetened and produced.

Nestor Aparicio  06:33

What will Schwartz know about cameras? Yeah,

Dan Rodricks  06:36

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producer that, yeah, and we’re hoping to maybe get it on, on television, some platform somewhere, yeah, yeah, because a lot of people have said he’s, I grew up in Baltimore, I can’t get there for the play. Is there a video available? We got a lot of emails like that from people, anyway. So the play is a it’s nine scenes. I think it might be 10 scenes. I’m sorry, but they’re all based on my newspaper column. Is stories that I’ve written over the years, and we dramatize these stories on stage with a cast of now we’re up to 10 people. Originally, it was a one man play with a cast of eight. Now it’s a one man play with a cast of 10, and we because they’re scenes, sort of like vignettes, like 10 plays within a play. Really? I pulled a couple out and stuck to new

Nestor Aparicio  07:24

stuff missing. I’m gonna come and things are gonna be gone,

Dan Rodricks  07:28

yes, but you’ll see something new, yeah? And, well, yeah, you won’t. What

Nestor Aparicio  07:31

if I missed the other parts? You won’t.

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Dan Rodricks  07:34

Okay, you won’t. This is, I think it’s better. I think I think it’s an improvement. The

Nestor Aparicio  07:38

really cool thing about this is two years ago where SIG couldn’t come right? Because I think he was up in Brooklyn with his grandkids. He did the show with me yesterday. We did a long thing. I didn’t mention you, but I mentioned you were going to be on. And two years ago, I’m sitting up in the theater, and I had a really good little seat in the second row, and I had my camera out. When you first come out your trench coat, you do your sort of the monolog to begin with, right? And the music’s playing. You have a wonderful pianist with a wonderful Baltimore motif, and there’s all this video, and there’s resig sitting there with the Earth, say, dummy. And I took a picture of it right away, and I sent it to reci from the scene. I’m like, you’re missing this. He’s like, next year, I’m gonna go. And so, you know, I last year, I got to drag all my friends, and the feedback was unbelievable. I will do. I don’t want to spoil the plot or any of that stuff, but you capture, as a writer, your 50 years in this city, in the story, and that the sort of best of stories, stories that matter to you. I want to get to the writing of it because I’m a I’m a newspaper writer. I write. I’ve never written any fiction in my life. I talked to Tim Wendell, who signed a books this week. Rebel falls, right. So, right. It’s gonna be do it right around the corner here. And we did an hour and I said, Tim, I know you teach writing. I’ve never written anything fiction. A young lady stopped me in here about an hour ago, and said, Are you an artist? It’s funny. And I said, Well, that’s a funny question. And she gave me her card. I’m gonna read it because her mother already hit me on Facebook. She was a sweet girl. Name is Finn. It says author and poet. Her name is Finn. And I said, I have never written a piece of poetry in my life. I’ve never written anything that isn’t worth even newspaper. I mean, that isn’t fact. I don’t do war of the world. I don’t think in terms of fiction. I think in terms of fact. And you took all of these factual stories that you wrote about and then had to bring it to a stage. And I think the writing part of that, I want to get back into your Bogosian from two years ago and say, You did it. You made me cry. You made me laugh. You did it twice. I’ve seen it twice. It still affected me. I was looking at how it was affecting other people that I’m sure on stage, you can hear people sobbing, right?

Dan Rodricks  09:53

But you have to be there are moments when the audience is so quiet. I’m, you know, impressed as I’m impressed by the quiet. It in the audience, as I am by, you know, applause or something. But

Nestor Aparicio  10:02

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that tells you, as a writer, yeah, people, you got them right in the heart. You know what I mean? I hope so you shot me in the heart. And that’s what every writer would like to do.

Dan Rodricks  10:13

You know, these stories are all true, right? But I didn’t want to just do reenactments. I wanted it to be a play. It has to be dramatic, right? You have to have a little bit of attention. You have to, you know, you have to turn expository writing into dialog, right? So that was very believable dialog, yeah, believable dialog, yeah, yeah. I think I have a pretty good ear for that. That’s one of the reasons why I always wanted to write a play, is because I’m, I think, you know, I’m sort of a natural mimic. I don’t do it as much as I used to, but I hear somebody talk, and I they get in my head. And I used to do that on your Bal thing, yeah, I did. I did a lot of that. I could voices, people, impressions, yeah, especially with the Baltimore accent and all I, you know, I really got into that. And I so, I think I have a good ear for dialog. And of course, I’ve been interviewing people like you have for a long time, so you get a you get a sense of what they sound like, what’s natural, what isn’t. And so that went into the writing of the play, yeah, and I think it’s a pretty good, realistic, realistic portrayal of these people that I met, because I got to know them so well. Some of the people who are portrayed on stage, I’ve known for I knew for a long time, even though maybe I’ve only wrote about them once, they sort of, they stick with you. You know these people, these characters I write about, I’ve just known him for a long time. They become sources of mine for other stories.

Nestor Aparicio  11:37

Well, the woman who lost her son as a figure, and the perfect example

Dan Rodricks  11:41

of Mrs. Lula key is their name, right? And that’s that speaks to a relationship that can develop between a person and a reporter. Trust columnist, yeah, trust, I, I have a story to tell. And you know, a lot of the times we just parachute into stories, right? We come in then that you’re sent out on an assignment or a court case or something like that. You’re late to the game, right? You got a lot of catching up to do, yeah? And you don’t have time to, like, interview everybody, talk to everybody, and you’re really, like, a cop Joe Friday, like, just give me the facts, right? Just the facts, man. But there’s some people, over time you get to know you care about them. They care about you. It’s just kind of a cool thing about Baltimore is, you know, I got to know so many people like I say, maybe I wrote about them one time. Maybe I never wrote, wrote about them at all, but they you develop a relationship. That’s how you develop sources. That’s how you get the stories. You

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Nestor Aparicio  12:33

know, that’s why I hope people listen to me 33 years and I meet somebody out and say, Hi, I’m Nestor. I do sports, I do other stuff. I have radio, I have a web I have a fake follow me, come by, you know, and be a part of what I do to support the places like Gertrude. So we’re having crab cakes and good local people. And I think there’s a sense of community here that I don’t I fly into other places and feel other places that is really heartening to me. And I saw that even on Wednesday, when I invited Mike rano, Nick the Greek and and Thomas from Zeke’s coffee in Laravel over to Marcellus place. And they’re like, Oh, yeah. I was here in 1985 and I had my crab cakes here. I brought my family up on Fridays. And like everybody, it’s small to more in that way, in a way that I’m related to John shields. It

Dan Rodricks  13:21

is Baltimore, isn’t it? Yeah, but this your story

Nestor Aparicio  13:24

and this city, there is a uniqueness about this that’s you don’t have in Dallas or Albuquerque or Phoenix or places that don’t have this infrastructure of community of immigrants, of this funny accent, of stoops, of all of these things that are indigenous to Baltimore and really unique to Baltimore.

Dan Rodricks  13:46

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Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so I’ll tell you what else is unique is a newspaper guy doing a play. I mean, I can’t find anybody else who’ve done that. And you know, if your newspaper column is long enough, you accumulate so many stories, it seems like a gold mine, you know, really? Why did you get the idea to do this? To go back and tap into it? And, well, you mentioned Eric Bogosian a couple of times. He was 35 years Yeah, and people might have seen him on billions, or he’s been on some TV shows, but he’s not, he’s not as prominent on tour as he was once, when he was younger, he could stand on stage and do the voices and characters of 20 different people, just just one man on stage and transition from one doing no props either. He

Nestor Aparicio  14:31

had fake props, just him. Yeah, he

Dan Rodricks  14:33

smoked a cigarette on stage. Sometimes he’d imitate a sewer worker in New York City next to a homeless guy next to a rock star, next to a Hollywood agent.

Nestor Aparicio  14:43

And he would talk to himself, he would do both characters. Sometimes he

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Dan Rodricks  14:47

could do that too, yeah, and I saw him at center stage, and, you know, he’s out there in a leather jacket, and just going from one guy, one, one character to another. It was really amazing. He was great. He was really great. So I thought, I thought, well, I could do that. I. Ah, took you 35 years of truth, yeah. But then I kind of, I thought about doing a one man show, standing on stage and telling stories. I mean, I got a lot of stories, but you chickened out? Chickened out? Yeah. I thought it would be more interesting to bring men and women on stage actors to portray the people that I’m talking about, and so I interact with them again, sort of interview them again, right there on stage in front of everybody. So that’s, that’s kind of what happens in

Nestor Aparicio  15:24

all new scenes. You’re gonna give me any spoiler or no? Well,

Dan Rodricks  15:27

there was a, there was one scene in the original play that involved a caricature, not a real person, okay? And that was boss polyester. Oh,

Nestor Aparicio  15:38

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yeah, of course. I know. I know. I know him in the real world. Yes, New York

Dan Rodricks  15:41

had Boss Tweed. Baltimore had boss Paul yesterday. This is a, this is on a segment on political corruption, but he’s a caricature. And then I kept thinking about, I said, everybody else in the play is real, and the audience is sitting there. And, you know, these, these are real stories. I don’t, I don’t make them up. That’s gonna be the name of another play that I write Baltimore. You don’t have to make it up. So I thought, well, I’m going to do away with the caricature and insert a real character who was really funny and interesting and eccentric and involved in politics. So that’s what you’ll get in the

Nestor Aparicio  16:14

in the mayor Schafer, in this thing,

Dan Rodricks  16:16

you bring it back to life. No, no, but he’s referenced quite a bit, but that’s not the character he could have been, but that’s not the character I’m talking about all so

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Nestor Aparicio  16:23

we’re talking about a Baltimore you have no idea. Dan Rodricks, of course, longtime Baltimore Sun columnist, is my guest, my friend. We’re not gonna fish together here. We are gonna talk about the fishes.

Dan Rodricks  16:33

Can we just talk about fishing for a minute? I took Nestor fishing a couple of times, couple times in the gun powder river and then in Western Maryland and picking up fly fishing and doing that thing is not easy, right?

Nestor Aparicio  16:45

10 o’clock, two o’clock, 10 o’clock, two o’clock, 10 o’clock, two o’clock. I should Tony doctorman showed me that to 10 o’clock. Yeah,

Dan Rodricks  16:51

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if I’d had more time with you, we I probably could have put you on a fish if I had more time in a you know. And some days you get skunked. Some days even you know,

Nestor Aparicio  17:00

I keep saying this, you don’t catch fish. You are, you are so apologetic that a fish didn’t come, yeah, that you think that I did not have the richness of the experience that I I loved my day sitting on that Slippery Rock, yeah, scared to death. Try not to fall. Try not to fall. And as you know, my wife had a great time. She

Dan Rodricks  17:22

did great her casting was pretty good. I’m sorry she didn’t hook up a fish, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t

Nestor Aparicio  17:28

casting well. And Dan caught a fish that was much smaller than this lottery ticket. It kind of fit right in the palm of his hands, and I had a picture of it, and the picture we took with you. Zoom in. Enough. The fish looks bigger.

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Dan Rodricks  17:41

So rainbow trout. You remember lefty cray? Well,

Nestor Aparicio  17:43

famous you and I have talked about lefty Cray, and I do remember lefty Cray, and I turned down a chance to fly fish with lefty. Oh,

Dan Rodricks  17:51

my God, that would be like,

Nestor Aparicio  17:53

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but I went with you. So his next best

Dan Rodricks  17:54

thing, yeah, to to batting practice with Ted Williams. That’s what that would have been like. But anyway, his his idea was, and he wrote this in the Baltimore Sun in his outdoors column, that when you ever take a picture of fish, make sure you hold it really close to the camera.

Nestor Aparicio  18:07

That’s why they do it in the salmon market Seattle. So it looks big, right? So, Dan, you did a show last year that we have not mentioned at all. I don’t know play. The second play was about courtrooms. I did not see your second play. I think I may have been you only did it a couple nights, right?

Dan Rodricks  18:26

No, we did it for six nights, and we sold out all the shows too. I didn’t see

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Nestor Aparicio  18:30

it. And I feel like a jerk because I didn’t see it. What? Because I thought you would do it again. Like,

Dan Rodricks  18:36

yeah, well, we did a run of six shows of the play called Baltimore docket. And as a similar format is like separate scenes, nine stories contained in an hour and a half, all of them set in courtrooms, all based on stories that I’ve cases that I COVID Over the years, some funny, some sad, some really tragic. And yeah, that we did that this past year.

Nestor Aparicio  18:59

Is that shelved, or is that on hiatus, or is that to come back again? Maybe,

Dan Rodricks  19:04

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yeah, that might come back again. I’m after. You’re a man of plays. Now you’re getting addicted to it, aren’t you? Well, after this run of Baltimore, you have no idea I’m gonna spend Are you

Nestor Aparicio  19:13

going upstate in the summer to do a

Dan Rodricks  19:16

summer stalking me? No, I’m gonna spend the time in the coming year, working on a third play. And it’s about. It involves the Baltimore Orioles in the year 1966 the year that they won the World Series. I know a shortstop that played on that team. I know you do. You do. So that’s what the play is about. It’s not just about the Orioles. It’s about the city in that year that the Orioles won the World Series.

Nestor Aparicio  19:40

Why that?

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Dan Rodricks  19:43

Because the more I’ve looked into it, I’ve done a lot of research on what was going on in the city. It wasn’t just baseball, of course, it was the first time the orals wonder World Series. Frank Robinson came over, of course, from Cincinnati and joined Brooks here, and they had a great run. They had a great

Nestor Aparicio  19:57

some would say, Hall of Famer Louis. Zaparicio joined the team from Chicago and created a spark. Somebody say,

Dan Rodricks  20:03

yes, yeah, you someone had that? Well, you could, you could, you can add that. By the

Nestor Aparicio  20:06

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way, I looked up Bucha Powell stats from 1970 this morning. He was a hell of a I saw a picture from the 1970 clubhouse and had Don Buford. It had Terry Crowley, who I saw two weeks ago up at Green Mountain station in it. Very young, Terry Crowley and holding a trophy Marcelino Lopez was no Chico Simone, but I looked at it, and I was trying to identify all the people, and I looked at the stats, and I’m like, Damn boo Powell was good. Yeah,

Dan Rodricks  20:33

great year. Yeah. He was on the 66 team, too short, and I’ve interviewed him for this play, but the city had all kinds of things going on politically in the state of Maryland, the gubernatorial election of that year was was full of the whole thing is full of racial tension, of course, political ying and yang. And there’s a lot of stuff going on in the city that I don’t think people know about. Because when we say 66 in Baltimore, you think of the World Series right away. That’s, that’s the first year the Orioles won the World Series and but, but the the backstory of the mayor, McKeldin, his efforts to deal with the racial tension in the city,

Nestor Aparicio  21:14

Angelos ran for mayor that summer. You know that, right? Angelos ran for mayor in those years in the early 60s. Ran twice.

Dan Rodricks  21:20

Yeah, I know he ran. I was trying to think of what year that was. I don’t there was not a 6064

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Nestor Aparicio  21:23

I think is what it was, yeah, 6468

Dan Rodricks  21:27

like that. Yes. 66 was not a city election. It was a state election, correct? Okay, Governor, yeah. And that’s uh, so anyway, that’s what I’m working on for the coming year. There’ll be a play in 26

Nestor Aparicio  21:37

I hope. Why did that come to you? Of all the things you just think that was a pivotal moment.

Dan Rodricks  21:42

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Well, I just started looking into it a little bit more. I got the idea of a story about baseball, about Frank and Brooks coming together. I thought, you know, that could be some material for a play there. Let me, let me read. And there’s been a few books written about that year that team that also references what was going on in the city at the time and the whole state. Really. I have a

Nestor Aparicio  22:06

play title, Mr. Robinson’s. Mr. Robinson’s, okay, just go neighborhood. Yeah.

Dan Rodricks  22:13

So anyway, so I started with the baseball idea, and then I realized that the baseball is sort of the light motif through this whole story about the politics and race white flight, and McKeldin is kind of the hero in this, because he was a very progressive Republican mayor who, with Jerry hofberger, found a place for Frank Robinson to live in Baltimore is white Realtors wouldn’t show his wife a house in a white neighborhood. There were all kinds of things going on. I want to give too much of it away, because I got to write a play about it yet, but there’s good material there for story on stage, but not a one man. No, no, okay. Be if this might be a two act play rather than one act play, this might be go a little deeper than what I’ve done here already.

Nestor Aparicio  23:00

Dan Rodriguez is our guest of the Baltimore Sun of Baltimore. You have new idea. And we’re over here at the BMA. We’re Gertrude. It’s a little quiet because it was packed in here at lunch, and then it gets quiet again. It’s packed at dinner, so I’m trying to sneak it in here and bring Dan down. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. Have Raven scratch offs giveaway. John shields, my cousin by marriage, is going to come by with some food a little later on. We’ll make this a real crab cake tour, even though they have a vegan crab cake here, it’s delicious. Check it out. It’s like a zucchini thing. I had it. It’s delicious. Yeah, yeah. Well, Odette Ramos, Councilman had told me that, that they have such a thing here, yeah. And there are a couple of vegan and a couple of shellfish intolerant, uh, electeds who had all said, Hey, Gertrude has a something like a crab cake. The land of Cush, or house of Cush has that as well, has a vegan crab cake. So there’s a couple places you could do that. The play part of your and I want to get to the city in politics and try get all that, but I want to get into your head about where you are in life. I think I’ve told you this, and I said this to Mark Hyman this week when I had him on about sports journalism, my dad died. Really pissed at me back in 1992 because he thought I was gonna leave the Baltimore Sun with a gold watch. You know, my dad was of that era, 1919 Yeah, all that. And my dad had dementia at the end, but he was mad at me because I took the buyout at the sun in 1992 when I went on my pathway in life and thinking at that time in my life that I did walk away from a gold you know, I I thought at that point there would be a Baltimore Sun, there would be a newspaper. It would be bigger and better than it ever was, because how could it not be classified ads would still be, you know, it’s the way you think. We all thought that way, yeah, and then there’s this next thing in life, and I’m asking this as a friend, right? I’m 56 I’ve done this for 33 years. My documentary came out. There’s nothing left for me to do. I’ve been to 27 Super Bowls. I’ve had two parades, but in this sports journal, in what nothing left for you to do as a newspaper columnist. Dan, I mean, you would do, maybe you could write another column, but you can’t, unless you bring down the. Smear. I don’t know, you know, I don’t know from a journalism standpoint, but there comes a point where you’re like, all right? Always wanted to write a play. You inspire me, and I don’t know you don’t like it when I get all familial with you. But I’m wondering, I’ve done Baltimore positive, right? And people think of me as a radio guy, and I’m still 33 years in it, I don’t think of myself as a radio guy at all. I think of myself as a writer. That’s how I would identify myself as a writer. But I’m wondering what my next act is going to be at 56 you’re a couple years older than me, and you found this play thing, not getting wealthy on making plays, but I see this step in you that you wouldn’t have if you didn’t have this in your life right now, specifically with take over your newspaper and where newspapers are, but you’ve moved into this space that you’ve always wanted to move and I find that because Europe, you fish, you have a real life, you cook, you have things you love. I want

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Dan Rodricks  25:51

to keep writing and creating too. I don’t. Some people leave a newspaper, they retire, they don’t want to write anymore. They’re done, you know, they’re done. And I don’t feel like I’m done. I have more to say, more I want to write, and I really like this forum of playwriting, and you’re great at it. Well, I’m working at it. So, yeah, I think the next one is going to be really important to me, that because I want to do a full, maybe two act, like I said, a two act play with a where I’m not in it, you know, oh, the 66 I don’t know that I have to be in every play that I write, right? So they may not spike. Lee, no, I don’t have to be a narrator or Quentin Tarantino who shows up in his movies. I don’t need to do a cameo, yeah, maybe. But anyway, sure. I mean, this is really important to I’m headed for, probably headed for retirement, you know, from the side, I’ve been there a long time, and, you know, this is going to be give me something to do, not just something to do, to stay busy, but to create something new. You know, I have, that’s beautiful. I have, like, four ideas for plays, you know, yeah, four ideas. One of them involves a crab house women, four women who take over an abandoned crab house and compete with two other crab houses on the same corner. And it’s called steam females. That’s the working title, steamed females. So that’s one of you know, that’s down the road. That would be a comedy.

Nestor Aparicio  27:18

So what we’re doing right now with Dan Rogers is he’s giving me the pitch you’re pitching me on what’s a good idea. But I think there is a point where whether it’s a good idea, and I deal with this every day of my life, like I unearthed all these old music interviews that I did at the Sun Hall of Famers, deceased. You know, Hall of Famers, all that’s but I have all these arc of in the same way John Eisenberg as unearthed, yeah, his Oriole. All recorded off in the David Bowie Billy Joel cassette on micro little Radio Shack. Yeah, guys, right.

Dan Rodricks  27:51

What’s the quality? Like?

Nestor Aparicio  27:53

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Phenomenal. I got it off of Well, I had to lend a trip button so, well, this is fun because you work at the Baltimore Sun. Van Halen, I did Alex Van Halen, yes, 1986 on the 5150 tour. So I had, when my wife got sick, I had a cummerbund box that was that had all the micro cassettes in it, probably 60 cassettes cummerbund Bucha box, the boxer would have a cummerbund in a tie as hiking right on the top of it. All right, it’s like one of your plays. So it had all my tapes in it. When my wife got sick, I was, you know, afraid she was gonna die. All that she’s down at the hospitals a lot of time in her hand, she spent 155 nights in a hospital fighting two transplants. But during that period of time, the little cassette thing that had batteries in it to double A batteries, and it had a laptop just like this, and a cord. And I just trans, not transcribed. I I turned it from a tape into an mp 305, so I took all of that and I made it real about 10 years ago, of the current Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, since then, 12 years later, Joan Jett, Debbie hair, you know, people that I’ve interviewed have gone into the Hall of Fame, so I’ve redone it. But this is the best part. And I taught John Eisenberg this tapes when you have them now, there’s a thing called otter transcription. You literally just take the mp three and throw it over, and you get a complete transcription of the conversation. That’s changed my life for being able to use that at the sun. Yeah. I mean, transcribing old audio is how old we’re getting. We just have to go back and listen to

29:26

it like, Oh, what

Nestor Aparicio  29:30

did he say? Don’t get his quote wrong. Gotta get it right, you know. So I think the modern part of all of this in what I do with my time to create what I do, which isn’t the Ravens this week or fire Justin Tucker or John, any of that I did, all of that I’m trying to find the next thing. And I’m really inspired. Are

Dan Rodricks  29:49

you gonna turn those into a podcast? Yeah,

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Nestor Aparicio  29:51

I have them all together. You should do that. You should do that. Yeah, I have all that up on Baltimore positive. I’m working on that because I found it and I unearthed it. I’m like, it’s sitting here. Somebody wants to hear with Pat denizio from the Smith arrange. He died seven years ago. What he said to me over an hour 30 years ago about his out new album. I have all of that, right, because I have the story I wrote or whatever. But you know the story? We talked to him for 30 minutes and we put five quotes in a 12 inch story about a band, right? So this is all the stuff on the cutting before, but I don’t know what to do with any of that I’m saying, that’s what I’m doing with my time lately, and saying that’s a worthy project, right? Yeah, with your play, you didn’t do it to get rich. You did it because you were looking for like a worthy project, right? Yeah, it must feel worthwhile to you.

Dan Rodricks  30:33

Three years great. I love this. I and I’m still, I’m still kind of in shock at the reaction to it, because especially the first play, and the docket went over well too. I’m just sort of amazed that people like it. What do you because I didn’t know what to expect when we first did it, you know, what do

Nestor Aparicio  30:52

you find compelling from the columnist standpoint, and what’s happened in your paper and you’re headed to retire, you’ve given me all you give it all that away, but like, just the things that keep you going that aren’t writing about 1966 and Frank Robinson, the things that are happening here today, especially with what’s about to happen to our country next month, in regard to electing someone that knows gonna have incompetent people.

Dan Rodricks  31:17

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Yeah, like the worst people. It looks like Trump is assembling the worst people for his cabinet. We did

Nestor Aparicio  31:23

that the first time, kind of, sort of, but then this is those people, yeah, and John Bolton had credentials and, you know, yeah,

Dan Rodricks  31:30

I mean, actually, a lot of them did. He had those generals around the so called adults in the room. There’s not gonna be anything like that this time. And I finished, I just finished writing a column today about the vote in the City of Cambridge, on the eastern shore, for mayor. People in Cambridge voted for a mayor who was not her opponent, who had been convicted of revenge porn just a couple years ago, and decided, well, he pleaded guilty to 50 counts of revenge porn as Mayor of Cambridge, and he resigned, but he decided he’s going to run again, you know. So, okay, time heals all wounds in two years, right? Yeah. So the piece reformed, so the people in Cambridge said, No, we’re going to vote for this city council president, this woman here, black woman, she’s now the mayor of Cambridge and and so they rejected this guy who brought shame to the community and broke the trust of the public, even though he was contrite, and all that which Trump has never been. But I said, I’m going to applaud these people for drawing a line here and saying, No, we’re not going to reward bad behavior and make give you, make you mayor?

Nestor Aparicio  32:40

How Republican is Cambridge?

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Dan Rodricks  32:43

Well, I don’t think it is. I’m not sure.

Nestor Aparicio  32:46

Well, I’m just wondering how a Democrat, a black female, democratic woman, can get elected in Cambridge? Because we had a black democratic woman that couldn’t become the president United States, and I had grave concerns about that the minute that she was given the nomination, essentially. And all my independent people freaked out, saying, yeah, come on. I mean, your Democrats beat it. Have a race. Have, you know, primary.

Dan Rodricks  33:09

I just applaud the people of Cambridge for doing something the nation didn’t do, which is reject a law breaker. Reject the idea of giving a law breaker public office again, which, you know, so millions of people inside, they’re okay with that. What would

Nestor Aparicio  33:24

8

be unthinkable for your parents and my parents who lived through World War One and World War Two, to do that? Yeah,

Dan Rodricks  33:30

if you coming out of Watergate, I go back at 50 years in the all the years I’ve known since Watergate, there’s been this strong reaction to no Sheila Dixon, you know, tried three times to Mary

Nestor Aparicio  33:41

Barry was one, right? But that was smoking crack. That wasn’t that there’s

Dan Rodricks  33:45

exceptions to this, right? There are a few exceptions, but not many. I mean, mostly people reject felons who come out of prison, even though they want to have a job and they’re earnest about getting a job, can’t. A lot of them can’t get jobs because people reject that idea that I can never trust you again. You know, it takes years for people to restore trust in others. So when it comes to public life, to make the President of the United States a man who’s been through what, you know, what, who’s done what Trump did, I don’t know. I mean, I’m in, still in shock. I’m

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Nestor Aparicio  34:16

in shock. I’m still in, yeah, and I don’t even, I

Dan Rodricks  34:19

don’t understand my own country, I

Nestor Aparicio  34:20

haven’t talked about it with almost anyone, like not even my wife, so much, but like, this is one of the first, because I respect you so much. I mean, I can’t, I’m trying to process where this is going. As an FCC license holder, as a journalist, as Hispanic, as someone that has already been castigated as a media member by Chad Steele and Greg Bader and just said, you see Nestor out treat him like he’s not really a journalist anymore. Don’t let him in. You know, I’ve had, I’ve had all this happen, and I’m thinking, Where is this going to go when this is institutionalized for anyone who’s margin. Lies. And anyone who does the work we do, which is journalists, you know, I

Dan Rodricks  35:04

8

got thrown off of the enemy of the people already, right? Well, I’ve

Nestor Aparicio  35:08

got thrown off a Twitter, and I had a potential client, guy selling pizza. Ask me, what? Why did you get thrown off of Twitter? I got thrown off of Twitter about three weeks after the madman from South Africa who’s going to be the vice president, apparently. President, apparently got control of x right? And I got thrown off. And I couldn’t figure out why, but my first word defining what I am, Nestor Aparicio, Twitter journalist, I got just thrown off. I just, like, literally, and when I appealed to get back on there. There’s nobody doing. Everybody quit at Twitter. Remember the day he went into Twitter? 80% of their infrastructure just said, Yeah, gone. He laid him off. Yeah. Lot of just quit, yeah. A lot of quit because they knew he was going to turn it into, you’re on Twitter. I mean, yeah, the algorithm, not

Dan Rodricks  35:56

anymore. Well, right?

Nestor Aparicio  35:57

It completely, yeah. Disrupted the world’s newspaper, kind of is what it was. And it was this $48 billion takeover of this thing that had no funding, using this incredible mass of money to just destabilize information. And

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Dan Rodricks  36:16

what’s he doing now? He’s sort of like a billionaire who’s committing anarchy, basically causing chaos, right? Yeah, he knows what he’s doing. I don’t know why. What’s the end game? It’s like Steve Bannon has influenced all these people just blow it all up. Cash Patel says he’s going to turn the FBI upside down. Why? What’s wrong with the FBI? What is it about the FBI? You don’t like they do a pretty damn good job. The FBI that I see here in the Baltimore region, day in and day out us, attorney’s office here they they indict people who commit crimes. The FBI helps them. The DEA is there. I don’t know what’s the problem? What needs to be blown up. So anyway, that’s that’s where we are. Now. There’s a lot of talk, you know, and it’s a lot of bluster. Maybe, I don’t know the

Nestor Aparicio  37:02

point he can get away with. That’s going to be the way. That’s a lot the executive can

Dan Rodricks  37:05

get away with, right? There’s some things he can’t get away with, because there’s a thing called the Senate, and there’s a thing called courts, and there is some possibility that some in the Senate will stand up to him, and some of the courts will say, No, you can’t do that. But I don’t know, it’s no

Nestor Aparicio  37:20

8

way to push a country forward. Absolutely

Dan Rodricks  37:22

not. It’s not nothing photo, but what’s the end game? I don’t understand. It looks like a lot of chaos and anarchy to me. Like, what do you what do you hope to gain here? I think billionaires probably like it. However, you know, destabilization is not something Wall Street likes is not something most economists advise us to have is, is an unstable, rocky economy? Well, there’s

Nestor Aparicio  37:47

no plan to fix the cities. There’s just a plan to defecate upon them. That’s really, oh, you

Dan Rodricks  37:51

mean the Urban Policy, Republican Urban Policy, is that what you’re talking about,

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Nestor Aparicio  37:56

that is what I’m talking doesn’t exist. I think that’s the thing that concerns me the most for anyone who lives near a city, and also the last time around, we did have a plague, the last time around that was denied. Lied about me. He lied to every citizen

Dan Rodricks  38:10

about a plague, yeah, be over by springtime. He said, Yeah. Lied to

Nestor Aparicio  38:15

every citizen about an insurrection, about like. So I can’t get my head back into that until next month. But once I get my head into that, I don’t know how we get out of it, especially from an election standpoint, where they tried to turn the post office upside down four years ago to turn the election, they tried to turn Twitter upside down to turn the election, they tried to turn Facebook upside down. The Chinese and the Russians were involved in that eight years ago. So I don’t this friendship with Putin. I

Dan Rodricks  38:40

8

like, Oh, my God. I don’t know. What concerns me is, how does it turn around? You know, the people, millions of people, voted for this guy given who he is, I don’t have to go through all that. You understand. It’s what my point about the people in Cambridge voting to say, No, we’re not going to reward bad behavior when the nation just did right? So how do you turn that back? Where people say we’re going to have some standards here. We’re not going to put back in public life people who commit crimes and commit political corruption, even if they’re contrite, but the

Nestor Aparicio  39:14

people don’t believe you committed to crimes. That’s the That’s the issue. That’s the magic trick. So

Dan Rodricks  39:19

the real, yeah problem you’ve touched on. The real problem is we can’t agree on what the truth what a fact is, yeah, where the fact is, what the truth is, yeah. Pete, you argue a fact with people, and they say that’s your opinion. I said, No, no, really, it’s not an opinion. This is a fact, right here, right here,

Nestor Aparicio  39:37

and they don’t, but this does speak to and I spoke to mark COVID About anything like that before? Well, for me, I was so blessed as a 56 year old. And you know, I’ll use the word I always use, y’all were bullshit detectors. For me, every editor I ever had, every boss I ever had, I’m a 15 year old kid. I come into the newsroom. I’m trying to get a job, keep a job, have a reputation, put my name on. Something, my byline, my name by Nestor Aparicio, news, American correspondent, my father would cut that out of the newspaper, put it in his wallet. My name, my name was on that. What

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Dan Rodricks  40:09

do you know say about bullshit? Detective, I’m glad you mentioned that, because I have a thing about bullshit every

Nestor Aparicio  40:14

editor, yeah, and grown up and teacher, yeah, that I had became a bullshit detector. For

Dan Rodricks  40:22

me, this is what I want to say, this. I say this about Trump and Trump followers, people generally pride themselves in having a good bullshit detector, right? You don’t want to be conned. You don’t want to you’re not going to get over on me. You don’t be filled shot of money, right? Yeah, you’re not going to get over on me. Why they’ve accepted all these lies from Trump. I just don’t, I just don’t get it. What happened to your bullshit detectors? Well, that

Nestor Aparicio  40:45

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that was what I gained as a very, very part of that street, Dundalk, right, part of that street, growing up in a city, part of that really was having a notebook and standing literally in front of a lot of coaches in my life. Are you being honest that? Because what I just saw out on the ice, out on the field, yeah. Are you being honest with me? I was just in the locker room talking to the player. Are you being honest with me? I’ve lost all that with the Ravens. I mean, John Harbaugh sits there at a podium and lies most of the time so like, and I don’t know how, when they say it, you quote it and write it, yeah, and therefore that is it, yeah. All that being said, the Fox News crowd reminds me of a bunch of people that just didn’t read a newspaper when they were they didn’t have the ability to tell fact from fiction. See credibility versus not credibility, or know the difference between the National Enquirer on the way out of the checkout stand.

Dan Rodricks  41:34

I think they know better. I think they know better. And this is all performative. They just getting paid to lie, getting paid to accept lies and to exaggerate. I

Nestor Aparicio  41:44

remember when Trump said eight years ago, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Still trying to figure that out. I really am. I’m still trying to give you a nightmare. I saw the files in the bathroom at Mar a Lago, you know? And I’m like,

Dan Rodricks  41:58

yeah, what she’s gonna get away with now, yeah, yeah. Ken

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Nestor Aparicio  42:01

Rodricks is here. We’re fed up. Come see the show. Baltimore. You have no idea. Give me the dates again. How many we’re doing?

Dan Rodricks  42:08

It’s, it’s December, 11 through 15th. We’re doing five shows. And I think we’re but not two weekends this time, you know, just one stretch of five shows, and we’re at 9092, 93% sales.

Nestor Aparicio  42:22

So hurry, hurry, hurry. You can’t get Group Sales for this. No, well, I

Dan Rodricks  42:27

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don’t know. I’d have to go look.

Nestor Aparicio  42:28

I think group sales last year. So that’s getting late, but what’s the website? So everybody can find it. You have

Dan Rodricks  42:34

no idea.org.

Nestor Aparicio  42:36

You have no idea.org Dan Rogers is my guest. John shields is gonna join us from Gertrude. He’s here. We’re also going to be joined by Stacy Munsell a little later on in the afternoon as well. All the brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. I have Raven scratch offs to give away. We’ll be giving these away next week at fade leaves on Wednesday, we will be at a meet cheese on Tuesday the 17th. You’re laughing because they don’t have

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Dan Rodricks  42:56

you’re just amazing. It’s all brought to you by Jeff even

Nestor Aparicio  42:59

multi care as well. I do this professionally, at least. I try. Yeah, Dan’s gonna hang out. We’re gonna stop talking politics, and we’re gonna talk about your absolute second favorite thing behind journalism, which is food. Yeah, I want to talk about fishes and Christmas and tradition. We’re gonna do the sauerkraut and kielbasa thing the proper way. Here. We’re gonna talk about peppers and onions with eggs.

Dan Rodricks  43:19

Oh, okay, no peppers and peppers, peppers and eggs. Peppers and eggs. Sub you want to talk about peppers and eggs that you we’re going to talk about that is one of my favorite your officials make

Nestor Aparicio  43:32

him hang around. Is talking about his favorite things. Dan Rodgers is here. Rick gertrudes at the BMA. Stay with us. We’re Baltimore positive. You.