Sources Say: It's an attack of the monster crab cake

A crab cake that would make a nice snack for Godzilla was recently served up in Baltimore by Arnold's own Donna Taylor, manager of the Graul's Market in Cape St. Claire.

Weighing in at a gargantuan 253 pounds, the crab cake fed more than 800 people and beat the standing record for the world's largest fish cake by 13 pounds.

Sound crazy?

"Even crazier is the amount of money we raise, which is the whole point," Taylor said.

The monster meal pulled in $9,000 for Special Olympics Maryland, the same organization that each January raises money by inviting thousands of people to take an icy dip in the Chesapeake Bay.

The crab cake cookers began their work at 3 a.m. at Baltimore's annual HonFest on June 13. For nine hours they rotated it every 15 minutes in a pan custom-made by

Handy International Inc., a Salisbury-based food company, Taylor said.

By lunchtime, hundreds had assembled to pay $10 for scoops of the crab cake served on rolls with lettuce, tomato and tartar sauce, all donated by businesses. Some also bought crab hats and T-shirts that read, "I ate a piece of history."

The Special Olympics crab cake now unofficially holds the Guinness World Record for largest fish cake. But more importantly, Taylor said, it tasted great.

"I think we left people waiting in line," she said. "We sold the whole thing. It was amazing."

Aloha, scandal

As we're sure County Executive John R. Leopold knows, some stories just won't die.

And sometimes they'll travel across a continent, as was the case with a series of stories related to the way Leopold allegedly treats women.

Last month, the Honolulu Star Bulletin published a "Whatever happened to …" feature about Leopold, who launched his political career in Hawaii four decades ago.

The article begins:

"Question: Whatever happened to John Leopold, a former state legislator and Hawaii's unsuccessful 1978 Republican candidate for governor?

Answer: Leopold is now holding public office in Maryland and battling charges of sexual harassment."

The article recounts some of the instances reported earlier this year related to Leopold's conduct, including the time a state employee filed a sexual-harassment complaint alleging Leopold aggressively hit on her in a lunch line and the tale of a former employee who said Leopold made her fetch women's phone numbers and set up dates for him.

The article goes on to quote Leopold's spokesman David Abrams, who discounted each incident one-by-one. But as any public-relations expert tells you, having a scandal pop up in another news cycle is never good news.

Real vs. ideal

Plato spent a lot of time trying to divine the difference between the ideal world that exists in our mind and soul, and the physical world that surrounds us.

A distraught Virginia man, Vladimir Moutafov, seems to have a clearer vision.

Moutafov wrote to St. John's College on May 31, demanding the highly acclaimed liberal-arts college, whose curriculum consists of teaching the great works of Western Civilization, "cease and desist from resuming your self-advertising as 'accredited by the Maryland State Department of Education.' "

Moutafov, who did not state his ties to the college in the letter, but who proved himself to be verbose enough to do well in the institutions's talky seminar setting, went on for four pages.

The upshot is that the state ed department doesn't accredit colleges, and Moutafov concluded his tome by making seven demands, including that the college destroy printed materials bearing the false claim, and issue a "corrigendum" - or as Webster's says "an error in a printed work discovered after printing and shown with its correction on a separate sheet."

He also included a statement that made it seem like he was about to lawyer-up to "recover the losses and remedy the injuries members of my family and I have suffered as a result of your deceptive conduct," and referred to St. John's as the "3rd oldest and 9th most expensive college in the U.S."

St. John's responded to Moutafov via their lawyers on June 10.

In that letter, the college's lawyers wrote that the accreditation reference was outdated and the school had corrected its Web site, but wasn't going any farther.

"Because the referenced language is not deceptive or misleading (in context), the college will not incur the expense and waste of destroying unused copies of printed materials and will not issue a 'corrigendum,' " the lawyers wrote.

Moutafov wrote back on June 25, "Since we seem to perceive this situation differently, we will have to rely on others to define it for us and for the public, in general, and to enforce appropriate measures to protect the public interest."

Moutafov responded to a reporter's e-mail asking for comment by sending the reporter links to about two dozen articles the same reporter has written about St. John's College, and stating "I'll Google you, of course."

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Sources Say is a behind-the-scenes look at local newsmakers and events. If you have information to share, call 410-280-5912 or e-mail capstaff@capitalgazette.com.