Orioles still hitting ’em big for Home Run Riches contestants all summer long

Sure, it’s the All Star break in Baltimore but the season is far from over at the Maryland Lottery where fans are still winning big as the weather heats up and the balls fly. John Martin of The Maryland Lottery gets Nestor familiar with some new games and a work of art to go with the big winners.

Nestor Aparicio and John Martin discussed the Maryland Lottery’s new promotions and games. They highlighted the “Home Run Riches” game, which has paid out over $111,000 in home run winnings and has a current progressive jackpot of $80,000. John introduced four new fast play games: $1 Maryland Lottery Pick Three Fast Play Edition, $5 Chili Pepper Payout, $10 Lucky Numbers, and $30 Ultimate Payday. They also discussed the “Art Treasures” game, where Maryland artists can submit their work for a chance to be featured on a scratch-off ticket. The game will launch in spring 2026.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Maryland Lottery, new games, art contest, Home Run Riches, fast play tickets, progressive jackpots, multi match, scratch offs, Maryland crab cake tour, Maryland State Fair, art submissions, lottery rewards, free gas giveaway, Maryland lottery pick three, legacy program.

SPEAKERS

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John Martin, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W n s t, am 1570 Taos of Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive about to change the 26 to a 27 as we celebrate 27 years here of w n s t, beginning in August, we’re gonna be doing the Maryland crab cake tour all over the place. Feel like I’ve been all over the place this week. Uh. Hope you caught my act with Johnny Oh at the new Costas and Timonium, or with the family. The cost is family, as well as on Tuesday morning at deepasqualease, we were visited by Pete, karenge, Darren, the deepest squally sausage king now, as well as Joe and Dom and Nancy Longo came up from Pierpoint restaurant. We talked about food and Eastern Shore food, and maybe hungry, so I’m going back to Costas on Thursday. Steve rouse is going to join us. It’s all presented by our friends at the Maryland lottery. The Back to the Future. Scratch offs are out and about, and we’re having some fun. We’re going to be at Eldersburg next Wednesday, at 1623 drinking some beer, hanging out with Mike McKelvin. And we’re also going to be on next Friday morning. This is important at Zeke’s coffee in lauraville. Dan Rodricks was supposed to join me on Tuesday. Couldn’t do it. He’s gonna join us next week and receive and Cal Kevin callagher, who was the longtime cartoonist, political cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun. So we’re going to be doing the cartooning and politics and art and sports and probably acting with Dan Rodricks and probably some sausage talking. This you missed out on all the sausage talking. John Martin is here. He’s the Executive Director of all things Maryland lottery game. And you know, my whole about, you know, Martin’s been gone two weeks, and Seth’s been sitting in because he has to go and pay all the people from winning the grand slam home run. I don’t want to talk baseball. Luke’s on vacation this week so we could talk, yeah, you know, I’d rather talk about this art contest that I talked about with Seth as well. But the first

John Martin  01:46

question I have for you, and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s meant as a question, and it’s not meant as a to trap you or anything. It now appears to me, the casual observer that I am, that it takes food to get you out anymore.

Nestor Aparicio  01:59

Rock. No, no, no, just music, just music, music. And yeah,

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John Martin  02:03

so, I mean, you’ve got this litany of all these places you are, and they all seem to center around

Nestor Aparicio  02:08

eating. Should I defend myself here and say, Hey, this is about questioning Johnny. Oh, about politics. This is about talking about food, well as food part. This is about talking about crab cakes. This is, yeah, I guess I talk a lot about the Orioles are in last place. I mean, what we could do, home run riches if you want, but

John Martin  02:29

at the price, let’s, let’s start there only because we’re going to play our game that I I find amusing no one else does, and that’s where in the world is fill in the blank. So that’s like

Nestor Aparicio  02:41

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that game with me last week. Last week, and it was Indian head, and I knew exactly where that’s been, and I’ve been there. So go, Yeah, I mean that Charles County, that’s easy. That’s easy. I would have thrown that one back. All right. So the for those who keeping score, and I do, we have paid off over $111,000

John Martin  02:57

in home run riches through the season. To date, we’re past the halfway point of the year, obviously the current progressive jackpot, $80,000 plus on the $5 home run riches, walk off winnings, fast play ticket Joe, go to MD lottery.com or visit any of our 4300 Maryland lottery retailers to learn more about the game. One of the fun things about it is you as a contestant can enter in that contest, be selected for each game the Orioles play. You win $500 for every home run the Orioles hit. It’s additional $500 and should one of those taters be a Grand Slam? $5,000 and we have fun with this. And you can see all of it on MD lottery.com, but coming up, I know we’re in the middle of a little bit of a homestand. Here we have a player, Tanner Nicholson, who is from graysonville, Maryland. Nestor, where is graysonville, Maryland?

Nestor Aparicio  03:51

I’ve seen it on like a sign. I think it’s somewhere between Baltimore and Washington. Am I right? Am I wrong? You’re not even close. Where is graysonville? I don’t know. County by Annapolis, isn’t it? Graysonville is near Annapolis. That’s without me looking it up, but now I’m gonna have to look it up, because you fully embarrass me, Grayson, you’re embarrassing yourself. No, hold on. Oh, it’s Stevens on 50 on the way to Ocean City. All right, so graysonville, I’ve been there.

John Martin  04:22

Of course, you have. You’ve been everywhere. I’ve had a crab cake there. I’m shocked that that hold on. I asked, Is

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Nestor Aparicio  04:30

the ken narrow bridge? Is that graysonville? Or is that like Chester? Or is that, well, I’ve been there. We’ve all been through graysonville Because we have been stuck in traffic on 51 yes, we all. We all. I knew. I saw it on a sign once

John Martin  04:45

we do have our graysonville story as hell. So we hope for, uh, hopefully Tanner Nicholson will be a big, uh, home run Rich’s winner that, but that that’s coming up this week. So yeah, then we got that nice little All Star break. We can all recharge before the real season starts, which is the. A trading deadline. But that’s, that’s another conversation. It must be

Nestor Aparicio  05:03

what it feels like when you pick the wrong door and let’s make a deal. I mean, I feel, I feel defeated right now that I people in graysonville are gonna be mad at me. You know,

John Martin  05:11

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don’t, don’t feel defeated because of many fun, exciting new promotions. I had a

Nestor Aparicio  05:16

sponsor in in graysonville with big bats Cafe, and they were the first ones to get behind doing the Polar Bear Plunge, like 20 years ago when Special Olympics came through, they literally I was at the first ever Polar Bear Plunge back in the day because of graysonville. So great. Come on. I apologize to everybody on the Eastern Shore and probably the places I’ve stopped in graysonville. So I just overshot that a little bit with everyone. I feel awful about this at this point. We’re not giving enough money away. We’re not hitting enough homework. Can I ask a place you’re the boss? I mean, maybe you make the rules. Can you add some money into the kitty for like, home runs from Ryan O’Hara Home Run Derby or no? No,

John Martin  05:57

that’s you late to write that in. That’s that’s not gonna happen. All right. Well, it

Nestor Aparicio  06:01

is all star game week, and we do have one All Star Yes, yes. And I would think when, if I’m from graysonville and I’m the contestant of the game, when Ryan O’Hearn is up, I feel better about my odds of winning 500 bucks. Well, who see?

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John Martin  06:14

Who we shall see. We shall see. But you can go to MD lottery.com if you’re not necessarily a homer riches fan. We have many promotions and exciting ways. If you’re a highs convenience gas station type person, you’ll know that we are partnering with highs for a free gas giveaway. You could win up to $1,500 in free gas at highs when you enter $10 worth of multi match tickets into your My lottery rewards account details at MD lottery.com we have a new promotion called fast play fireworks over the next several weeks, play any draw game for a chance to win free. $1 $2 $5 or $20 fast play games. Can

Nestor Aparicio  07:01

I endorse the fireworks because they don’t make noises and scare my cat? Sure, your fireworks games better than real fireworks, I think.

John Martin  07:08

Well, thank you. Thank you. And if you’re whether you’re playing that approach or not, we have four new, sort of new, fast play games out in the marketplace this week. We have our $1 now, this is gonna be a little confusing, so stick with me here in Nestor, $1 Maryland, lottery pick three fast Play Edition. So it’s the pick three game in a fast play ticket. So you’re playing fast play, but the game itself is a pick three style game. So you can check that out at $1

Nestor Aparicio  07:39

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which is like the it’s classic lottery pick three number Exactly, exactly. Okay, fast play classic is what I call but it’s the Maryland lottery pick three fast Play Edition. Okay,

John Martin  07:47

very nice, very nice. We have progressive jackpots. Players love those progressive jackpots. Nestor and no surprise, $5 chili pepper payout and $10 lucky numbers. Now these are both. What do I want to call them? I want to call them, well, we’re, we’re bringing them back. This is nostalgia a little bit. Okay, alright, fair enough. These are tickets we had before the marketplace. But as we’re apt to do, after they have a fair run, we put them on the shelf, bring them off, dust them off, and put them back.

Nestor Aparicio  08:20

I got a word. Legacy program is that good? I love that. It’s a leg It’s a legacy program. Legacy

John Martin  08:26

game, $5 chili pepper payout, $10 lucky numbers and $30 ultimate payday, progressive. Progressive jackpot starts at $500,000 and each of these progressive you can watch the tallies, watch the tote boards scroll by on MD lottery.com, so four new fast play games this week.

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Nestor Aparicio  08:45

Chili Pepper payout. That sounds like a hot game. John All right. John Martin is here. He’s executive director of all things live somehow his speaker went, went out after my horrible sense of humor with some of this stuff. You mentioned progressives last week. We had a 2 million we have $4 million winners, but 3,000,001 $2 million winners, some of these progressives get really, really heavy, you know, like when you start thinking about $2 million on a $30 ticket and knowing that it’s climbing like it was a couple of weeks ago, I think when people go to MD lottery.com we all know games, and I give tickets out and stuff like that, but there’s some really booming sort of progressive jackpots that become larger. And we talk about them, they wind up getting hit within a week or two. We get really, really big winners on these programs, much more so than even five or 10 grand, which isn’t a bad idea when

John Martin  09:43

you win that either. No, not bad at all. And again, you can check those, those tallies at MD lottery.com or any of our 4300 lottery retailers. But you’re right. We’re at a charles county man winning a $30 fast play Gold Rush progressive ticket over $2 million Dollars. That’s that’s not a bad day’s work. And I love this winter story, and then hopefully you will too. We have a game called multi match. We’ve talked about that before. Now the highest gas promotion is tied to a multi match spend. We had a group of siblings, and I love when people play the lottery this way. A group of siblings. There were four of them that have pulled their money together for eight years to play multi match, and finally, after eight years, their pooled ticket came through on a $1.8 million jackpot, which unfortunately for them, they had to split with another winner in silver spring. So when that happens, we cut the prize right in half. So $900,000 for one ticket, $900,000

Nestor Aparicio  10:48

for the other. But does it doesn’t diminish their win at all. They it’s over 100 grand a person, right? That that’ll keep them again, that’ll keep them playing for in low people I knew who did that are like horse players, my dude, Dick Girardi, they put their little syndicates together to get into all sorts of exotic wagering at the track and and, and they have cashed those kind of tickets and horse racing. But I think people, if you don’t know about this, or here are segments, or been up to MD lottery, these sort of progressive things as they go on it, it does get large, I mean, and honestly, as someone that’s represented the lottery last five or six years, and knowing how this works, I would have never have known about some of the family of games that are out there and the ways to do this, but they clearly have. They had a, I don’t want to call it a scheme, but they had a way that they did it. They had a system, is that correct?

John Martin  11:41

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They had a plan, and of course, clearly, they played responsibly. They played within their means. You know, they put a couple bucks on it and had some fun multi matches, drawn twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays.

Nestor Aparicio  11:53

School, teacher, office thing, right? Like office, pools and people, yeah, okay,

John Martin  11:57

all right, yeah, and, and, yeah. I think it’s cool that families get together and do things like that. And kudos to them. They enjoyed it. We had a

Nestor Aparicio  12:06

great summer. Yeah,

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John Martin  12:11

I wanted a jackpot. So, yeah, that’s, that’s a lot of fun. Hey, you know what else is fun? Go ahead. Art is fun. Okay,

Nestor Aparicio  12:18

I was gonna segue this is gonna be my favorite segment of the whole thing, because I’m always trying to, like, find get behind the scenes, peel back the onion, as to how the Back to the Future scratch off looks this way, and how you come up with all these eight, eight eights, and the stuff, fun stuff Seth and I talked about last week, and driving the DeLorean and all that. Um, this is like a real from scratch thing. So as much as old movies, or let’s make a deal, or the Whammy and pressure lock. Um, this is organically Maryland, right? Like and, and I’ve thought about this for a week because I know some art people, and my favorite part is it has art in it. Which art model. I don’t want to really want to bring that up with you, but it has a art feel to it. And I know a lot of artists, so please do tell because I hope somebody I know wins this thing, because it’s really a cool promotion. I like it.

John Martin  13:04

It is a cool promotion. And, you know what, full disclosure, we kind of stole the idea, but, but that happens in the lottery business. You know, some some jurisdiction has an idea, and we look at and think, gee, would that play here? You adopted a good idea. Is what you do. Adopted. Thank you, right? Yeah, that’s why we have these weekly chats,

Nestor Aparicio  13:23

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like a synonym guy here, like an AI synonym guy, right? Yeah,

John Martin  13:27

yeah. So the So, what it allows us to do is look at and say, Can’t will this play here? How can we internalize this? And people are very proud, and they should be, of the great state of Maryland. You’ve got a diversity of of of cultures, of landscapes, of interests. And so we said, You know what? Let’s, let’s open the doors. Let’s let people who are artists within the state of Maryland submit to us the things that resonate with them. It could be any visual presentation they want to have. I see a crab cake, you know, if that, if that works, that that’s, that’s what

Nestor Aparicio  14:05

it’ll be. I got an idea ready. I don’t want to rig the I don’t want to rig the competition here. But if the winning, if the winner has anything to do with crabs, we should have a scratch, a sniffer, scratch it and it. What do you think it smells like? Like? Smells like the ocean. No, it smells like hostess, crab, acid, Dundalk at eight o’clock on the front smells like summer. It smells like, I don’t know, I just like scratching. Sniff. It’s scratching. So I’m going a different direction with this. You know? I

John Martin  14:39

mean, I’ll tell you what. Keep that on ice, if you will. We may have a scented ticket in your future, but that’s not today’s. I bet

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Nestor Aparicio  14:49

it’s going to be for the holidays, and you better not smell like snowflakes again this year. They better smell like gingerbread or something seasonal. But let’s get back. Yeah, but the. Thing is, it does. I just opened my mind to an idea that it could be ascended. I did open but, but this is literally no AI. I’m learning AI this summer movie. Yes, this is for real artists, not people like me that are stick figure

John Martin  15:16

people, yeah, that’s the you bring up a good point. I mean, it’s got to be original work. It’s gotta be something that that, and we will submit it to a entries will be reviewed by our panel. Hey, who’s on the panel? I want to be on the panel. No, no, not you, not you. You were this close until you had this idea of of a scratch and sniff thing. No, no. You’re

Nestor Aparicio  15:37

also too ambitious. You. I have been accused. I played it too soon. I have been too ambitious. But this, when I think about this, I’m thinking, I just, Oh, my God, it’s Maryland, right? It could be crabs, it could be the beach, it could be the ocean, it could be the mountains, it could be the city. It could be the key bridge. It could be the new Key Bridge. It could be the it

John Martin  15:59

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could be the harbor. Yeah. I mean yes, yes, and yes, all right, it can be all of that. And we will have three entries will be selected of the, hopefully dozens, hundreds, whatever of entries we have, we’ll be called down to three entries. And then these three entries will get, obviously, these people will be compensated. They will be get a cash award and all the details, MD, lottery.com, but then these three selected art pieces, if you will, will then be produced on a scratch off ticket. And

Nestor Aparicio  16:32

so it’s not just one winner three that increases my odds. Okay, good. I like that, right,

John Martin  16:36

right, right. And when we when we do that typically, and I hope I’m consistent with what our product people are thinking. When we do that, we put those three scenes, if you will, back to back to back. So if you got, if you bought three tickets of the of the of the art treasures game, you would be guaranteed to get one of each of the the winning pieces. So yeah, that’s that’s coming up, and the game itself will launch spring of next year. So we’re we’re in the early stages right now. We’re in this collecting of the of the art submissions. We will then announce the three winners, sometimes later this this year, and then put it in production, and it will be on the street spring of 2026

Nestor Aparicio  17:20

I told Seth, I was gonna try to get on the panel. He told me it was a bad idea. John Martin is here the all the promotions are up at MD lottery.com I had someone make the mistake. John is saying to me at deepest Qualis on Tuesday. And by the way, the schmutz, whatever the word is for the it’s all over my my tablecloth at Baltimore positive because Joe Giordano scratched his and got schmutz all over my thing. So I learned about schmutz free, which is some of the fast plays different than the scratch. These flash on them, right? They are art ones. Well, yeah, definitely watch it. Okay, I’m just asking. So he said, he said, This is a losing to Eastman Dundalk, this is a losing ticket. I’m like, Oh, don’t you dare say that. It’s a non winning ticket. And look on the back and download the ad. So I went through the whole thing about people like, this is how you win Second Chance prizes. This is how things like I hear. We’re going to have a raven scratch off coming here soon as well. But when you’re in these competitions, please don’t call them losing tickets. It It upsets John. It offends my sensibilities in being involved with and it’s just not correct, because I want to give you another opportunity to win. So this is my chance to tell you that I test, test, Joe Giordano, photojournalist and and professor. So I taught a professor something. He’s a Micah. He teaches smart photography things. So I told him that there’s more ways to win. And I think it’s important that we tell people that well

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John Martin  18:42

done, well done, that’s correct. Nestor. And again, my lottery is my lottery awards.go. To MD library.com, and learn all about that. And and not only is it for a second chance contest, you can accumulate points for drawings, special events, again, all those details on the website and, well, maybe next time we chat, we’ll talk about some of the upcoming things as we have from time to time, pick your vacation destination or packages on technology or media or outdoor grills. I mean, there’s lots of lots of other prizes that are available to people have just been participating in my lottery rewards. I

Nestor Aparicio  19:19

will give you a little homework this week, because I Seth mightn’t even know the answer to this, but I’d love to know the percentage of people that ever, oh, I’m sorry, Scratch one of these or play a game and somehow are have never downloaded anything. I’ve never used an app. I’ve never done anything but played once and it went into the cosmos or whatever, because I would think the percentage is always growing, but you never get it to where you really like it to be, to have people have the most chance to win, but you’re working on that every day. But I’m sure it’s a lower percentage than you want, right?

John Martin  19:56

Oh, absolutely, yeah, no. I think it’s a fair assessment. I think, I think. Anybody in a in a retail oriented or a public facing program, feels same way. I’m sure, I’m sure some of your sponsors feel that their rewards programs or their loyalty clubs don’t perform to their full capacity. So yeah, I think that goes on a lot, and I don’t think the lottery is is immune to that, or any different than that,

Nestor Aparicio  20:19

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but in the modern world, it’s an amazing thing to get the benefits of that. And I would think if you’re wagering, and I think about going into a casino and playing games to think that you’re not maximizing your possibility to win, I just think it’s paramount. So I do just Joe Jordan, now, if you could do something about the schmutz, you know, we’ll work on that. But, but the schmutz is legend. That’s why people play. He had so much fun scratching.

John Martin  20:45

Who are we to deny someone they’re fun?

Nestor Aparicio  20:48

Yeah, all this digital nonsense going on, John, did I miss anything? It’s hot as Hades out here right now. We got these thunderstorms go through, but I know you guys are still doing stuff. You’re at the ballpark this week, moving around, spinning wheels. We don’t have as many festivals in July. You and I will be getting together next month at Mako down in Ocean City, probably talking about state stuff. I know there was some casino information this week. Anything I’m leaving out of this? Marilyn lottery? No, I think we’re

John Martin  21:11

in good shape. We’re we’re wrapping up our fiscal year. It closed officially June 30, so now we’re in the allegiance of people are counting all the the nickels and dimes and seeing how the the year ended up. And yeah, when we get together in Mako, we’ll have the official numbers to report on both Seth, and I look forward to seeing you down there. And yeah, then we come back from Mako, it is State Fair time. We got lots of fun things to talk about the state fair, but we won’t talk about them too soon. Maybe we’ll tease you a little bit in in Ocean City about what to expect at the Maryland State Fair this year,

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Nestor Aparicio  21:43

music, food, fun, the Maryland State Fair, right here in Timonium, there are new cost us in. We’re going to be a cost us in on Thursday with a man who was a great lottery spokesperson for many, many years. I’ll probably bust his chops about it. Steve rouse longtime WQs, our morning show host could be coming out and entertaining me about his farm. Maybe his farm could be the motif of my artistic drawings. Or, by the way, John, I’m never going to let this art thing go. I love this art competition thing. I’m going to be asking about it. I’m going to be jelly on the outside looking in that I’m not on the artistic panel and all that. But I have a feeling you’re really going to get some great stuff. I have a feeling the 100 you don’t pick are going to be as good as the three you do. Literally. It

John Martin  22:23

is, you’re right. It is fun, it’s engaging, and early response has been very, very encouraging, so we’re looking forward to it, and we will definitely bring it up when we speak between now and the final date. All

Nestor Aparicio  22:35

right, I don’t want to complain to you about this, but I’m bummed that you’re not putting a lot of the entries up and letting me, like, click and drag and see them, because that would be a lot of fun. You know, like to not to pick the winner, but to see what people come up with. I I feel like it would be a shame if we only see three of them, honestly, because I think you’re going to get some great, great stuff. I really

John Martin  22:53

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do. I will take that back and discuss it with the team and see if there may be other, other avenues. I

Nestor Aparicio  22:59

think it’s neat to I know the one thing I ever drew in my life that was displayed when I was a boy down at this Science Center. I believe it or not, laugh at me, if you want, but I drove a shoe, and it was a pencil art thing I was a little kid. I was like, you know, maybe 910, years old, and the teacher definitely helped me with it, but it won, like it got put at the Science Center, and my parents and I went down when I was a boy and saw it display, seeing people’s art when I walked through to subways in New York and seeing kids art on the wall, I stop and look at it every single time so and, but you have to be of legal age to witness to can’t win a competition. But I, I just think this is, this is a cool thing for people that are involved in art. So I will get behind this 100% Thank you. We appreciate the support, even though I’m not artistic. We all know that. Here’s John Martin. He’s executive director of all things Maryland, lottery and gaming. I would encourage everybody go out to MD lottery.com to learn about all that and please play responsibly. It’s summertime. It’s baseball season. We’re at the beach. We’re all trying to have a little bit of fun here and enjoy the good weather. Come on out and see us. I will be at 1623 in Eldersburg on Wednesday with Mike McKelvin, my old W Bal buddy. We’re going to tell some old Vince Bagley stories, I’m sure. And then on Friday of of next week, we’re going to be doing the morning show in at Zeke’s coffee. We’ll be there all morning having coffee Dan Rogers. A whole bunch of great people, great cartoonist and artist as well. I’m gonna have two cartoonists and artists on the show next Friday, so I’m never too far away from art. I am Nestor. We are wnsta of 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Some have called me a work of art. We’re Baltimore positive. Stay with us.