The Coolest Kids in Town: a blog about Baltimore, DC, and the misadventures of two-city life.

After following the O's to DC on Sunday to watch them beat the Natnals I only had one real regret: my Protect this Yard shirt hadn't come yet. Think of Protect this Yard as a Wild Bill Hagy for the 21st century: a superfan both in life and on twitter (with a gift shop to boot). PTY's online store is stocked with clever shirts that feature both current Baltimore athletes and past legends. They've also got some pretty fantastic customer service, so if you see a shirt you love that's not available in women's sizes yet, tweet them or send them an email to see if they have any plans to change that. Even the players seem to love them, which means next time you run into Jake Arrieta you'll be able to use your GI Jones shirt as an ice breaker. Actually, you might have to come up with something else, cause I'm calling dibs on that one right now.

Kids, Tex and I have been doing you a great disservice all these years (actually I'm gonna go ahead and call it an irresponsibility, because I'd like to think that the service we provide is outstanding, if a little erratic) we've been writing a blog about fantastic websites for over four years and have never once included any run by our friends. Well that changes now, as we introduce you to some of our favorite blogs run by some of our favorite people. You may recognize Two Dilettantes from their link in our sidebar, but if you've never given them a look before today you should. Two Dilettantes is really almost a digital lookbook for our two painfully stylish friends, Ashley and Patrice; it catalogs trends, offers runway rundowns, and includes a healthy dose of two very real girls wearing very cool clothes. Don't just take our word for it though, check out their interview with The Baltimore Sun which (correctly) refers to them as 'a collective [fashion]...

One of the brilliant things about having a brother in computer science is knowing someone who can hook you up with little known sites and services, as well as a Google Voice number, before they come out of beta. (Another nice thing is 24/7 tech support - love you!) And now, dear friends, I'm passing some of my favorites on to you. First up is Amazon's Mechanical Turk (delightfully subtitled 'Artificial Artificial Intelligence'). We all know that we can find just about anything on the internets, and we know that you can buy just about anything on Amazon , but sometimes the best results come from a little human intervention. Mechanical Turk is that human intervention. It was created to do what major corporations can't, by acting as a marketplace where people can either offer their skills or hire people to do the kind of personalized work that computers just aren't very good at doing. For example, you could hire someone to make a list of the top 20 European...

Oh, my darlings! How I've missed you. (Dickie, get my coat.) I can't believe it's been 4 months already (Dickie, I said the coat.) - look how you've grown! Why, I barely recognize you all! Come, step into the sunlight so Texas can get a good look at you. What has Cordelia been feeding you? You're all skin and bones. (Dickie, are you just going to stand there, or are you going to bring the dogs in?) No, I'm not saying you look horrible, darling - you look lovely as always. I'm just saying that maybe it wouldn't kill you to have the breadsticks once in a while. No, I'm not trying to - oh, honestly, now you're just being dramatic. Oh, I'm the dramatic one? Well, I like that! If you didn't have your father's - no, I will bring him into this, because it's a matter of principle, sweetheart, and - oh, fuck it - run along and read some of these awesome lifestyle blogs and leave me with my Pimm's. 1. Life + Times (Sean Carter) Yes,...

For my very second Awesome Blog of the Week (which I'm sure everyone's noticed isn't even a little bit weekly) I'd like to present Dear Blank Please Blank . Since the featured format is one of my very favorite forms of communication (as the Pittsburgh Steelers could undoubtedly tell you) the site would probably be pretty near and dear to my heart even if it weren't so funny . But it is. Filled entirely by reader submissions the notes range from sad to sweet , random to funny , totally on point to a little abstruse ; of course there's also the requisite sprinkling of anti-Americanism, but nothing's perfect, I suppose... Which one's my favorite? Glad you asked: Dear Edward Cullen, Avada Kedavra! Sincerely, Tom Riddle

Cocktails, broken promises, and regret time! Also known colloquially as New Year's . For those who aren't yet aware, Baltimoreans love parties . Balls, galas, concerts , beer gardens , festivals - despite our choleric reputation , we are a people who love merriment in all its curious forms , at all times, and with even the thinnest of excuses . So, naturally, when an actual holiday with actual cause for celebration comes along, we celebrate it the only way we know how: by exploiting a loophole in the law that lets us do what we want . Yes, this curious state of affairs surrounding New Year's Eve in Baltimore comes because our forward-thinking forebears in the great city had their grand-kids' well-being in mind when they decided that bars should not be forced to close at the monastic hour of 2 am on the most celebratory night of the year. Reinterpretation of that law means that bars in Baltimore open at 8 pm on December 31st, and stay open until 2 am on...

So, as Tex mentioned, we've been sort of busy. I, for example, am currently training to secure the title of 'fastest staple-puller in the west,' the competition is steep but I didn't major in philosophy for nothing. And as it turns out, neither did these guys . Dead Philosophers in Heaven might sound a little doubtful to anyone who doesn't own three different translations of the Nicomachean Ethics , but rest assured the humor doesn't require a BA in Pragmatism to enjoy it. If, however, you find yourself in need of some guidance there's a helpful, and hopefully growing, collection of philosopher trading cards that list strengths ( Karl Marx : comprehensive description of just how utterly fucked we are), weaknesses ( Frederich Nietzsche : syphilis, German), secret weapons ( Plato : terrible conversational skills, massive state violence), and other helpful facts to keep the material relevant to those who studied...something employable. So get out ther...