Media : Buzz

The owners of Hampden's Alchemy restaurant are starring in a new reality television show, according to tourism and hospitality website Citypeek.com. 

Baltimore-based RLTV is featuring the couple on a show called "What's Next," scheduled to air in the spring.

"The foodie show uses the small 75 seat venue ALCHEMY's partners Sommelier/Pastry-Bread-Sweets Debi Bell-Matassa and Executive Chef Michael Matassa to cover and tackle issues like: how do you run a business, how do you manage to work side by side your spouse," Citypeek.com writes. 

Founded by John Erickson, cable channel RLTV caters to the 50 + crowd in its programming.

The rivalry between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens is pretty intense  — to put it mildly.

But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Steelers' hometown newspaper, tells its readers to spend some of their time and money in a "city that abounds with great food and art."

The travel story tells readers to check out the Baltimore Museum of Art, Fort McHenry, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Little Italy restaurants and other venues. "Today, its most famous site is the landmark Inner Harbor, a historic seaport that was redeveloped from the late 1960s through the '80s," the Post-Gazette writes about Baltimore.

We'll ignore the little tidbit on picking a good Steelers bar. 

Cross Street Market or Eastern Market? It's a showdown between Federal Hill and Capitol Hill on the Travel Channel.

The cable network was in Baltimore Dec. 7 and filmed at the Cross Street Market, writes Kevin Lynch in SouthBMore.com. 

"Get down to the market and let people know how great the area is," SouthBMore.com writes. "And, while you are there, grab something at one of the many merchants and support local business."

We can't wait to see the show when it airs. 

Employing the famous maxim of 15th-century diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli, "the end justifies the means," may serve real estate and other professionals well. 

Thanks according to the studies of Morgan State University Associate Professor Abdul Aziz, who developed a personality test to determine Machiavellian tendencies, the Wall Street Journal writes. 

"A Machiavellian person, Prof. Aziz explains, is emotionally detached, prone to deceive and believes that the end justifies the means, even if it is not morally right," says the Journal. "Real-estate agents who exhibited more Machiavellian traits tended to see higher sales, meaning Machiavellian behavior and performance were found to be highly correlated," the paper writes. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Fortune magazine recently interviewed money manager Henry Ellenbogen, who manages the $9.6 billion T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund, which invests in small-cap tech, finance and health care stocks. 

"He's constantly prowling for promising tech startups, spending about 100 days a year on the road, about half of them out in the [Silicon] Valley," Fortune writes. Ellenbogen has large stakes in private companies Twitter and LivingSocial, Fortune writes.

The fund has had annual returns of 21 percent, topping the small-cap index Russell 2000.

You can read the rest of the story here. 

The crew of The CW’s “The Next: Fame Is At Your Doorstep” searched for Charm City singers with potential, according to an episode recap in Baltimore City Paper. The episode highlighted four singers performing at the Hippodrome: country singer Jenny Leigh, choir director Shannon Ramsey, pop singer Jordan Baird and teenager Chris Bivins.
 
Baird’s charismatic rendition of Gavin Degraw’s “Not Over You” won over audience members, who voted for him to be the winner of the night who gets sent to semi-finals in Los Angeles.
 
Read how the other Baltimoreans fared here.

We knew Michael Phelps would land a few more high-profile sponsorships after the London Olympics. First, the Rodgers Forge swimmer landed on the Wheaties box.

Now, the most decorated Olympian has wound up in the water again. No, not a swimming pool but a bathtub. Phelps joins Muhammad Ali and Angelina Jolie by becoming the latest face to grace ads for the French luxury line Louis Vuitton. 

"In a new ad for Louis Vuitton, Phelps can be seen partially submersed in a tub while wearing a suit and a pair of goggles with a duffle bag from the French fashion house sits conveniently beside him on a towel," E online writes. "The campaign was reportedly shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz."

The ad could get Phelps in hot water with the International Olympic Committee, which has a new rule that prohibits Olympic athletes from appearing in ads that aren't promoted by official sponsors, NBCNews.com writes. 

Looks like Baltimore illusionist Spencer Horsman might make it back to “America’s Got Talent”, according to the Baltimore Sun. Co-host Howard Stern chose Spencer Horsman as one of his wild-card picks. His competitors will include Ben Blaque, who uses crossbows and Todd Oliver whose dog doubles as a ventriloquist doll.

Read more 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. 

For his upcoming album, electronic composer Dan Deacon drew inspiration from his hometown of Baltimore, according to an interview with Deacon that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.
 
“The aptly titled America, due out Aug. 28 on Domino Records, is Deacon's tribute to the country he has come to love, from the deserts of New Mexico to the Guilford Avenue Bridge in his hometown of Baltimore,” the magazine writes.

Deacon hopes to ignite citizen pride through America, which presents “the beautiful deserts, the mountains, the forests, the coasts. But also the beautiful cities that are rapidly decaying in front of our eyes," he tells Rolling Stone.

Deacon also channels the pop beats of Wham City and recalls visits to Baltimore County’s Pretty Box to spark creativity. He also presents a chamber ensemble mixed with the Peabody Institute and the city’s music scene.

Last month, local food blogger Dara Bunjon wrote an extremely popular story that highlighted dining destinations on the Charm City Circulator Banner Route.

Mary Beth Marsden of 1090 AM WBAL Radio asked Bunjon how she got the idea for the story and to name some of the highlights of her culinary tour on wheels. The journey took her from Locust Point to the Inner Harbor. You can listen to the interview here. 

Bunjon authors the Dining Dish blog and is the Baltimore Dining Examiner for Examiner.com 

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. 

For the first time in 21 years, Johns Hopkins Hospital slipped from the No. 1 rank on U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals. Johns Hopkins fell to No. 2 while Massachusetts General Hospital took the coveted No. 1 spot. 
 
The battle for first was very close. Both hospitals had 30 honor roll points, but Massachusetts General claimed first with its 16 nationally ranked specialty programs, compared with Hopkins’ 15.
 
Still, Hopkins didn't do too shabbily. The hospital is ranked No. 1 in Maryland and the Baltimore metro area. Five of Hopkins’ 15 nationally ranked specialty medical programs are the best of the country: neurology and neurosurgery, rheumatology, geriatrics, psychiatry, and ear, nose and throat.
 
Rounding out the top five hospitals were the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
 
See the complete list here. 

While the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation filmed scenes in Washington D.C. last week, the Netflix movie House of Cards recreated the nation’s capital right here in Baltimore, reports the Washington Post.
 
House of Cards shot overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning at the Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute, which was “transformed into the fictitious ‘Hotel Cotesworth,’ a supposedly historic D.C. institution where the presidents have slept,” writes the Post.
 
The political thriller has also used the offices of the Baltimore Sun as the set for the show’s fictional newspaper, the Washington Herald.
 
House of Cards stars Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright and Kate Mara and is directed by David Fincher, director of Fight Club, The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

The New York Times recently interviewed actress and comedienne Rain Pryor, who has many ties to Charm City.

The 43-year-old daughter of Richard Pryor, she became artistic director of the Strand Theater Co. and moved to Baltimore several years ago.

You can read more of the interview with Pryor and Kelly Carlin, daughter of George Carlin, here.