The long-awaited autopsy on Lehman Bros. is out. Big news: The bank hid liabilities off its balance sheet! Everyone is shocked, shocked. The amazing thing is the mundanity of Lehman's methods: Repos. This was inside-the-box thinking even 10 years ago, when the bank apparently started using them. As the New York Times explains: Repos, short for repurchase agreements, are a standard practice on Wall Street, representing short-term loans that provide sometimes crucial financing. In them, firms e ... [MORE]

A reader pointed us to this death notice for John Elder, the former city-employed engineer whose troubles with the law and association with building collapses City Paper chronicled. Elder died March 3. His last couple of years were tough. Besides two investigations by the state Board for Professional Engineers, Elder suffered the death of his adopted son, Timothy, in November 2008. Last year he had his own health problems, including a blood infection that kept him in the hospital for seven weeks ... [MORE]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Obama plans to nominate Sarah Bloom Raskin, who has headed the Maryland Department of Financial Regulation since 2007, for an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. ... [MORE]

When New Yorker film writer Richard Brody made up his list of the best films of the '00s for his blog last December, he put Baltimore filmmaker Matthew Porterfield in the company of the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Wes Anderson, and Catherine Breillat by including Porterfield's 2006 Baltimore-shot independent feature Hamilton among his favorites. Now Brody is enthusing about Porterfield's new movie Putty Hill, a docu-drama shot here this past summer that recently screened in New York, calling it "e ... [MORE]

One totally hairless gold man is supporting another hairless gold man entirely with his neck. No joke: Atop a platform placed front and center on the Meyerhoff stage, two male acrobats clad in goldish trunks and tinted with golden body paint, slowly move through a series of poses that this writer couldn't pull off after about 1,000 hours of Bikram yoga and 10,000 crunches. One man moves into a one-hand stand, his supporting palm spread across the other man's head. One man moves from a hand press ... [MORE]

That was fast. It seems like just yesterday we were clicking Facebook petitions asking Google to add bike routes to its maps, which previously included directions for walking, driving, and public transit only. Yesterday the internet behemoth announced that, due in large part to "public support," a bike-route feature has been added. You can use Google Maps to look at bike lanes, designated bike routes, and preferred bike routes, and you can also use Google to plot bike routes around your cityR ... [MORE]

Reina Williams is one of the more unique musicians working in Baltimore these days, someone who straddles a few different genres. As a hip-hop producer, she's made beats for brash young rappers like Lil D, and recently won the producer competition No Guts No Glory at 5 Seasons two months in a row. As a solo artist, she's a singer/songwriter who gigs around town with an acoustic guitar, and plays every other Thursday night at Joe Squared. This past Thursday, she pulled double duty, doing her usua ... [MORE]

The Maryland Democratic Party has finally discovered one of last century's sincerest forms of satire, culture jamming. ... [MORE]

According to a post on the Restaurant Association of Maryland's web site, local pieman Rodney Henry was challenged to a quiche-off by Bobby Flay for the chef's Food Network television show Throwdown. Kudos to the Dangerously Delicious Pies-maker for gaining enough renown to bring Flay to Charm City. One thing, though: According to the post, Henry was told he was being followed around by Food Network cameras for a pilot only to find out he was going to be on one episode of Flay's show, which sou ... [MORE]

Jose Morales was sentenced on March 8 to 262 months—nearly 22 years—in federal prison for trying to bring 6 kilos of cocaine to Baltimore on a chartered jet. Judge Randy Crane of the Southern District of Texas heard several sealed (and therefore secret) pleadings before sentencing. Crane ruled that Morales is a career criminal, but gave him the low end of the sentence range; he could have received 327 months. Crane also gave Morales five years' probation after his release and recomme ... [MORE]

As the pop stars of the 1960s enter their 60s, as their hairlines recede and voices roughen, the second-tier stars begin to play smaller and smaller rooms. Thus it was possible on the night of March 2, within the intimate confines of Annapolis's Rams Head Tavern, to sit less than 20 feet from Ray Davies and hear him tell stories and crack jokes about his many years with the Kinks. The Kinks may not have had the commercial clout of their peers—the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Who—b ... [MORE]

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