Awesome Maryland

India Day Festival 2010

2010-08-30T08:38:00.003-04:00

Sunday, August 15 turned out to be an overcast, rainy day. But if you've seen any Bollywood movies you might know that a little "monsoon" weather doesn't stop people from turning out to sing and dance and have fun! The plaza behind the courthouse was lined with vendor booths featuring a variety of services and merchandise, including Indian food, sugar can juice, and India-themed temporary tattoos.

The Unity in Diversity Fashion Show produced by Tejash Natali was one of the highlights of the day. The courthouse steps were transformed into a catwalk for models and clothing that represented a rainbow of cultures and trends, classical and modern, that influence Indians and Indian Americans today.

Learn more about this event by visiting the India Independence Day Festival 2010 Website.

Map of the location: The green arrow points to the plaza behind the courthouse in Towson, bordered by Bosley, Washington, Pennsylvania and Chesapeake Avenues.

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By the way, if you want to try your hand at modeling or you are interested in organizing modeling/music events, Tejash will be happy to discuss projects with you. You can phone him at 443-600-6509, or you can e-mail him.

India Day Preview

2010-08-09T15:02:00.002-04:00

This is a preview for the Unity In Diversity Fashion Show being produced by my friend Tejash Natali. The Fashion Show will take place as part of the India Day Festival held every year in the plaza behind the courthouse in Towson. It's a free event with lots of cultural presentations and booths by local merchants and restaurants. Come and enjoy a day with our neighbors from India! The festival begins at 11:30 and continues all afternoon until 6pm.

Learn more about this event by visiting the India Independence Day Festival 2010 Website.

Map of the location: The green arrow points to the plaza behind the courthouse in Towson, bordered by Bosley, Washington, Pennsylvania and Chesapeake Avenues.

View Larger Map

By the way, if you want to try your hand at modeling or you are interested in organizing modeling/music events, Tejash will be happy to discuss projects with you. You can phone him at 443-600-6509, or you can e-mail him.

Aquarium Dinner

2009-10-09T17:19:00.005-04:00

The National Aquarium in Baltimore is hosting a series of dinners based on sustainable seafood, called The Fresh Thoughts Series. Each dinner begins with a cooking demonstration by one of the many talented chefs working in Maryland, followed by a multi-course feast featuring one sustainable seafood ingredient. This season the series kicked off with Galen Sampson, the owner/chef of The Dogwood Restaurant in Hampden. The featured ingredient was oysters, which are being farmed now by several companies around the Chesapeake. As he presented his cooking demonstration Chef Sampson told stories of growing up in Reisterstown and getting oysters with his dad from roadside vendors. They would take the oysters home and crack them open using various items from the toolbox. The menu Chef Sampson came up with was a far cry from those front-yard oyster shucking bouts, but it was very clear that the mollusks captured his imagination at a very young age. (View Full Menu)

The next dinner (Nov. 3), with Gertrude's Restaurant chef John Shields, will feature trout. (View Full Menu)

Links:
Chef Sampson used oysters from the following aquaculture farms:
The Choptank Oyster Company
Rapphannock River Oysters, LLC

National Aquarium in Baltimore

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Philippe Cousteau films a PSA in Annapolis

2009-09-12T07:11:00.007-04:00

On August 29 I was very lucky to be able to help out on a public service announcement shoot for the United Nations Environment Programme. The goal of this PSA is to raise public awareness of the "Seal the Deal" campaign for a comprehensive world-wide climate agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this December. After you watch this video, you might want to surf over to the campaign homepage to sign the petition and get more information about this worthy cause.

Overseeing the production of the PSA were producer Michele Abbott (one of the creators of the hit Showtime drama series The L Word), writer/director Jeffery Nachmanoff (Traitor, The Day After Tomorrow) and cinematographer Jimi Whitaker (Crossing Over, King of California). The spot stars a cast of luminaries such as actor Don Cheadle, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, concert violinist Midori Goto, and several prominent environmentalists and conservationists including Philippe Cousteau, the Founder and CEO of EarthEcho International. Like his grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Philippe is well known to fans of nature documentaries everywhere. He happens to live in Washington DC and he recommended the beach behind the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Philip Merrill Environmental Center in Annapolis as the location for his segment of the PSA. His message, about how warming seas could cause climate change that leads to disasters like Hurricane Katrina, was recorded against the beautiful backdrop of the late-summer Chesapeake, and we filmed the final shots as the setting sun lit up the skies and clouds in dramatic colors.

The producers chose a digital SLR camera, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, to record their images in HD video. Not only is the camera light and compact compared to dedicated video or film equipment, you can choose from dozens of Canon lenses to help you get the exact image that you want in many kinds of lighting situations.

Many thanks to Mich, Jeff, Jimi and Philippe for allowing me to record this footage during the shoot, and special thanks to audio engineer Bill Kaplan, my good friend who asked me if I wanted to tag along when he was hired for this project.

You can see the finished PSA at www.sealthedeal2009.org! A little teeny version of me appears in one of the still photos from the Cousteau shoot. The video itself will be unveiled on Friday, Sept. 18th.

If you've never been to the Philip Merrill Center, I think it's well worth a visit. There's a long stretch of pretty beach in the back, and the structure itself is an award-winning "green" building. To tour the interior though, you have to make an appointment about two weeks in advance... HometownAnnapolis.com has details on booking a tour.

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Mamma Mia! Movie Night at Basignani Winery

2009-08-17T12:57:00.010-04:00

This week we leave the sport of cricket behind for the sound of crickets. And the songs of ABBA. Because it's TGIF Movie Night at the Basignani Winery in Sparks, Maryland, and tonight they are showing the musical Mamma Mia starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried.

Sorry, if you are reading this now you've already missed Mamma Mia, but you can still see the movie scheduled for SEPTEMBER 4TH, Come September starring Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida. The film will be different but everything else will be the same, the delicious prize-winning wines created by Bert Basignani from vinefera grapes grown right here in his "backyard," the relaxed atmosphere of the bucolic winery, the outdoor blow-up movie screen of unexpectedly vast proportions, the free popcorn, and the savory pizzas personally prepared for you by Lynne Basignani and baked by Bert in their outdoor brick oven.

You can just drive up and park in the field next to the house. Buy an $8 ticket that includes the movie, popcorn and wine tasting, then claim a spot on the gently sloping lawn with your blanket or folding chair. Officially the event starts at 8pm but people start arriving with their friends, families and picnic baskets around 6:45. That way they have plenty of time to sample the wines and order a pizza, and hang out chatting, eating, and drinking until the sun sets.

As dusk settles over the vines and trees of rural Baltimore County, the stars come out. Tonight they are Streep, Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth. Next time they will be Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, Sandra Dee, and Bobby Darin. The audience laughs, cheers, applauds, and uncorks as the movie plays on. Bert and Lynne finally have time to make a pizza for themselves and they sit down with their grandkids to enjoy the evening with what seemed to me like a couple of hundred of their best friends.

TGIF Movie Night at Basignani Winery:
8-11pm... The next movie is Come September on SEPTEMBER 4th.

Basignani Winery
15722 Falls Rd
Sparks Glencoe, MD 21152-9582
(410) 472-0703 (directions)

To learn more about the Winery, take a look at this Washington Post story from 2006.

Other upcoming wine events and festivals from the Maryland Wineries Association.

Visitors, please leave comments by clicking on the word "COMMENTS" below, and if you know about any other great wine events coming up in Maryland, let us know and leave a link if you can. Thanks!

The Game of Cricket Thrives in Maryland

2009-08-07T13:48:00.025-04:00

This video was shot on August 1 at the Cricket USA 2009 Tournament at the Cricket Grounds located behind New Town Elementary School in Owings Mills. Please visit Cricket USA's website to learn how you can participate in this exciting international sport.

Thanks to Tejash Natali, Girish Parab and Sanjeev Singh of OMCC Cricket USA, and the Owings Mills Recreation Council for making this edition possible.

We had a great, sunny, summer day that started very early, around 7AM when volunteers from the OMCC began arriving to put the cricket ground together. The morning match was the last semi-final between the College Park Jaguars and OMCC's own Team 2. In a test of Youth VS. Experience the OMCC2 team prevailed over the kids from College Park.

In the afternoon a Final match was played between OMCC1 and OMCC2. Although the OMCC1 team captained by Sanjay triumphed over their brothers led by Ciby, everyone joined in the celebrations afterwards.

The OMCC Chargers will continue to play practice games and matches on weeknights and weekend days even now, after the tournament. Please visit and see for yourself if you're interested. The players and their families are all very nice people, and Tej, Girish or any of the players will be glad to explain how the game works.

You can also learn about the game on Wikipedia as well as the Cricket USA site. You can get a good idea of the game from movies about cricket, too. I recommend LAGAAN starring Amir Khan, or IQBAL starring Shreyas Talpade. This September a new cricket film will be released starring my favorite actress Rani Mukerji; the film is called DIL BOLE HADIPPA! and apparently it's about a girl who puts on a fake beard to join a cricket team... "Dil bole bat and bowl!"

Visitors, please leave comments by clicking on the word "COMMENTS" below, and don't hesitate to add your favorite cricket links there, too!

Hellooooooo Maryland!

2009-07-31T02:49:00.014-04:00

Actually, it's good night... It's past 3 am and I just got this thing working! We are going to launch this vlog officially with a story about our very own home-grown cricket league. Maybe you've never seen a cricket game. I'm not talking about the bugs, but the English sport, now avidly played in many former British colonies as well as the home country. Brush up on the rules at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket and stay tuned!

If you can't wait to see the video, you can come take a look for yourself. The semi-final and final matches for the summer 2009 season will be played this weekend, Saturday August 1st, at Chargers Field behind New Town Elementary School in Owings Mills. Start times are 8am for the semi-final between the Owings Mills Cricket Club Team 2 and the College Park Jaguars, and 2:15 for the final game to be played by the winner of the morning game against the other semi-finalist, the Owings Mills Cricket Club Team 1.

Don't forget to take a look at Cricket-USA's website, too.

NEW! - I was wondering what happened to the CareFirst Chargers team because I could have sworn they won last week's semi-final just before that mini-monsoon hit Reisterstown and Owings Mills. I thought maybe there was some major scandal brewing, as befits any popular sports league worth following. It turns out there was something like an illegal player substitution, and it was spotted by the officials and the matter was fairly dealt with, according to the league's strict code of ethics and regulations. You can read the details here.