Come one, come all (creatures, perhaps).  This weekend will be a good one to head over to Westport Waterfront for the new Cirque du Soleil show, “Totem.”

There will be a 4 p.m. show and an 8 p.m. this Saturday, and a 5 p.m. viewing on Sunday, for the show that will focus all sorts of aesthetically bewildering tricks and performances on the evolution of mankind. Tickets range from $49.50 to $225 for the event.

Another viscerally colorful event going on this weekend is the Baltimore Tattoo Arts Convention, going on Friday, April 8 through Sunday April 10 at the Sheraton Baltimore City Center Hotel. Tickets are $20-$40, and kids 12 and under are free for admission.

There will be plenty of entertainment going on as well, with music by Lazlo Lee and the Motherless Children and burlesque performances by Rigor Mortis Revue. What’s in a name?

And if you’re looking for something more palatable for everybody, there’s the Grilled Cheese Sandwich Cook-Off! (Grilled cheese is worth the exclamation point.) For $10, you get to hang around the Mt. Washington Tavern to watch top chefs and home cooks duke it out over one of the best comfort foods, and then you get to eat their handiwork.

The cheesy goodness starts at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

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I found this video while trying to confirm the details of a story I wrote the other day about Baltimore developer Pat Turner. Turner turned out to be the highest-profile witness called by the prosecution in the trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon. Turner, the state said, gave Dixon gift cards meant for the needy, and Dixon used them for her own personal uses. Earlier this week, the prosecution described a close relationship between the mayor and Turner’s wife, Jeanine, who first met at a real estate conference in Las Vegas. Then on Thursday, during closing arguments, the prosecution described Turner as a “matter-of-fact man” who tells the truth and keeps meticulous financial records. As it turns out, Turner’s photographer wife Jeanine, is also fairly matter-of-fact.

The above video was posted as a teaser to a photography exhibit Jeanine had at SubBasement Gallery in Baltimore. Taking us through her artwork, she starts by saying flatly,

“Hi, I’m Jeanine Turner, and I’m an artist”

She goes on to describe how she became an artist, starting with a little pocket digital camera that her husband bought her, and upgrading to better and better cameras, which she used to photograph Silo Point, her husband’s luxe condo project in Locust Point:

About six years ago, my husband bought me a camera. A little digital camera, something you can stick in your  purse. And I loved it. I took pictures of everything, but mostly my drunk girlfriends. And anyway, so from that, he, the next year for Christmas he brought me another camera, and then the next year he bought me then another camera, and another one and another one, I mean, he just every year I got a better camera, and I was very excited. So then he bought this amazing building. It is a grain silo, and it is in Baltimore, and I started taking pictures of it.

The rest of it is just as good. As we await the jury’s verdict, I encourage you to enjoy this.

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Patrick Turner, the Baltimore developer who, it has been noted, resembles Virgin CEO Richard Branson both physically and for the audacity of his business ideas, has a little saying he likes to repeat:

“You make money when you buy, not when you sell.”

He’s told us that at least the last three times we’ve spoken with him, including on Monday, when we got him on the phone to reflect on 2008 and the economic climate for commercial real estate development, and predict the future of 2009 in real estate. But mostly, we ended up chatting about Silo Point, the century-old grain elevator in Locust Point that Turner converted into luxury condos, at a cost of $170 million. The condos went on sale this fall.

The condo tower is one of two marquee Turner Development projects backed by Washington-based private equity firm The Carlyle Group. The other is a proposed, multi-billion-dollar revamping of a 50-acre site known as Westport, on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco, where demolition of a former BG&E power station is almost done, someday to make way for homes, shops and what the developer envisions as “a second downtown” for Baltimore.

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