Events : Buzz

You've heard of Restaurant Week and probably savored a few three-course meals for $30.

Now city promoters in Baltimore and other locales are devising hotel promotions and perks to lure travelers, writes USA Today.

"Baltimore's inaugural Hotel Week..comes on the heels of New York's second annual lodging promotion, which ended in January," writes USA Today. "Another Hotel Week is being planned for the Caribbean in August, traditionally a slow time in the islands."

Next year, Baltimore may combine its second Hotel Week and Restaurant Week, Visit Baltimore CEO Tom Noonan tells USA Today.

"During Baltimore's inaugural hotel week (Feb. 8-18), travelers could find package deals from 14 hotels including the Holiday Inn, Sheraton, Hilton, Hyatt Regency and Kimpton's Hotel Monaco," USA Today writes.

You can read the entire story here.  

The folks who put on the Academy Awards are taking their iconic gold Oscar statuette on a roadtrip. And Baltimore is one of the stops.

The first ever Oscar Roadtrip started in New York Feb. 4 and is hitting Baltimore Feb. 8. Oscar promoters are letting fans in 10 cities know what it's like to hold a gold statue in their hands.  Philadelphia, Chicago Washington, D.C., and Phoenix are some of the other places they will hit. The last stop is, of course, the live broadcast of the Academy Awards Feb 24 in Los Angeles.

It's unclear where exactly the Oscar will stop in Baltimore, as a lot of the decisions will be made at the last minute, the website says. You can follow @OscarRoadTrip on Twitter to follow their adventures or Tweet suggestions on places to visit around town. 

Mario Lopez tried to coax actors to try their hand at the Ray Lewis' squirrel dance at the Screen Actors Guild awards Jan. 27 — all with varying degrees of success. 

"Big Bang Theory" actors Jim Parsons and Kunal Nayyar, along with Chris Tucker all attempted to imitate the Baltimore Ravens linebacker's famous moves before the world sees the real deal for the last time in Sunday's Super Bowl game against the San Francisco 49ers. USA Today featured a video with the stars in action.

Lewis is retiring at the end of the season, after 17 years on the field. 

Meanwhile, Perry Hall resident and Ray Lewis fan Louie Silverio, attempted his own version of No. 52's dance and posted the video on YouTube. His girfriend Ashleigh Coffelt sent BmoreMedia the link. 

It's another contest between Baltimore and the nation's capital. 

This time, it's a battle of wits between high school debate teams in each city on how the federal government should invest in transportation infrastructure.

The session will be conducted by the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues, writes the Transportation Research Board. The event takes place Jan. 16 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. 

You can read more about it here. 

The Baltimore Ravens not only scored big on the field in their winning game against the Denver Broncos, they scored big ratings for CBS, according to USA Today. 

Even though Denver and Baltimore aren't particularly big markets, the Jan. 12 game drew the highest ratings for an AFC divisional playoff. The nail-biting game went into double overtime and ended in the Ravens' favor after Justin Tucker's 47-yard field goal. 

It could have also gotten quite a few viewers since it's the last season for No. 52 Ray Lewis, who is retiring at the end of the season after a 17-year career. 

Timonium's Festival of Trees is one of the top 10 great places to "put a spin" on the Christmas spirit, according to USA Today and Jinglebelljunction.com's creator Monica Mays.

"It includes a fairyland forest with more than 600 decorated trees, wreaths and gingerbread houses, all for sale," USA Today writes. "There also is a Harry Potter house, a toy train garden, holiday craft shopping and entertainment."

Tickets cost $13 and sales benefit the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Other contenders on the list include a Santa pub crawl in Reno and Santa Claus, Ind., a town that celebrates Christmas all year long. 

You can see the entire list here. 

The day after Maryland voters approved same-sex marriage, Baltimore's tourism bureau launched its website that helps gay couples who are planning a wedding.

"Celebrate your wedding day in Baltimore!" Visit Baltimore's site says. 

And USA Today took note of the quick response.

"Visit Baltimore is helping with venues, lodging, group rates and vendor suggestions," the paper writes. "It also has the fine print on how to wed there."

Same-sex couples can wed in Maryland starting Jan. 1. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Pabu, the Japanese restaurant inside the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore, is celebrating all things sake this week.

Free sake awaits happy hour patrons on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, writes Baltimore magazine. Thursday, the restaurant will hold a five-course dinner with sake pairings. 

You can read more about the sake celebration here. 

Pennsylvania has its groundhog Punxsutawney Phil to predict whether spring will come early. 

Now Baltimore has its own critter that can forsee future weather. Spice maker McCormick & Co. Inc. will rely on a crab to determine if we'll get an early winter, writes the News Journal of Wilmington, Del. On Sept. 26, the makers of Old Bay seasoning and other spices will make a crab walk the plank into the Inner Harbor, the paper writes.

"If he goes off the right side it will be an early winter. And if he goes off the left side it will be a warm fall," writes the News Journal. 

McCormick recently opened a Harborplace retail location, near which the event will take place. 

IdeaMensch is a community that shows people how to bring their ideas to life and it is helping the fine folks in the Free State. 

"Whether your idea is an app, a nonprofit, a book, a website or an invention – what matters is how you bring it to life. Who matter are the people who bring those ideas to life," the IdeaMensch site says. The Los Angeles-based organization is going on a four-month road trip and is hitting every state. 

It makes its stop in Maryland Sept. 25 at the Loyola Columbia Graduate Campus, starting at 6 p.m. Speakers include Social Toaster CEO Brian Razzaque and PointClickSwitch CEO Phil Crowskey. Read more about the Baltimore event here. 

Bryan Voltaggio paired up with his brother Michael Voltaggio of Los Angeles’ Ink to present “Hungover with the Voltaggios” to the Los Angeles Food & Wine Festival.
 
The crowd enjoyed the two brothers for both their culinary skills and comedic relief, according to a recap in Los Angeles Magazine.
 
The Voltaggios exuded the same personality and cooking style as fans saw on Season Six of Top Chef when Michael won and Bryan, owner of Frederick's Volt restaurant, was second runner-up. “Bryan seems happy to play it straight while Michael engages in all manner of wild and eccentric experimentation. Hence, the coffee cake," LA Magazine writes. 
 
The best part about Bryan’ cinnamon swirl coffee cake and dollop of bay leaf ice cream and Michael’s egg yolk gnocchi and bacon is that they’re things you can replicate at home, Bryan tells the magazine.

That is of course, if you have superb culinary skills and liquid nitrogen.

The Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania will be hosting an exhibit of art inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, who lived for a time in Baltimore.

Antiques and Arts Online describes how Poe inspired abstract expressionist artists after his death.

“Poe's popularity soared in France shortly after his death, especially with avant-garde French writers and artists who appreciated his emphasis on the psychologically dark, perverse and strange.” The article also highlights two works from the Baltimore Museum of Art: Antonio Frasconi’s “The Raven IV” and Horst Janssen’s “Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe”.
 
Edouard Manet, Gustave Doré, Paul Gauguin, James Ensor, Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, Harry Clarke, Barry Moser and Robert Motherwell are among the artists featured in "Picturing Poe: Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe's Stories and Poems,"   which runs Sept. 8 to Nov. 15. Read more about the exhibit and Poe’s take on illustrations here. 

Everyone knows by now that Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian in history, with 22 medals. 

But he's struck gold in social media as well, according to a Reuters story that appeared in the Huffington Post. 

Reuters reports that Phelps added one million followers during the London Olympics, bringing his total count to nearly 1.3 million. He also has 800,000 Facebook fans. Jamaican track-and-field athlete Usain Bolt is ahead of the race, with 1.5 million Twitter followers. 

And in other Michael Phelps news, the Rodgers Forge native is set to appear in his own reality show. Don't get too excited. We probably won't see our hometown boy engage in crazy antics a la Real Housewives. He'll be playing golf on the Golf Channel's the Haney Project, the Hollywood Reporter writes. 

We know you can't get enough of Michael Phelps, now that the Rodgers Forge native is the most decorated Olympian of all time. 

And neither can Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe. The five-time Olympic gold medalist says Michael Phelps' slow start at the Olympics, when he came in fourth in his opening final race, made his career that much more special. 

"People were stunned when he came fourth in his opening final," Thorpe writes on the BBC News website. "They can see he is human now and that makes him all the greater. He deserved his gold-medal finale on Saturday. I doubt we will ever see the likes of Phelps again, considering how strong swimming has become on a global stage."

You can read the rest of Ian Thorpe's column here. 

Now that Michael Phelps has retired from competitive swimming after winning 22 Olympic medals, you might wonder what he's going to do with his time.

It turns out that most decorated Olympian is going shark diving with his South African competitor Chad Le Clos. He told NBC's Bob Costas in a post-race interview that he's fascinated by the creature and plans to go diving in South Africa with the swimmer who has long regarded Phelps as his idol.

“That’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and Chad (Le Clos) and I were talking, and Chad said ‘why don’t you come to South Africa?’ So I said ‘let’s dive with great whites together.’ And he said ‘OK, let’s set it up,’" Larry Brown Sports writes. 

He also talks about taking up golf to maintain his competitive edge. 

But will the Olympian stay in Baltimore after selling his Fells Point condo for a $400,000 loss? A source tells WBAL News that he purchased another property in Canton.