There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep gives Anne Hathaway a very cool and refined dressing down for her ignorance of how fashion cycles work. It’s pretty much all the average person needs to know about High Fashion, and it’s a lesson that we’d all do well not to forget. She says in part “and then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers, and then it filtered through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin” We’re including a clip of it here, and we hope...
Tomorrow: Peals @ Baltimore Museum of Art
posted by The Chop
If you ever wanted to spend a nice, pleasant, relaxing day in Baltimore, tomorrow is it. For one thing, it’s Spring! The weather right now is glorious. It’s cool and warm all at once and everywhere there are trees and leaves and flowers and birds. For someone who’s seen little else but salt water and desert sand over the last six months as we have, just sitting on a patch of grass and staring at a tree constitutes a full day’s entertainment. But fortunately for us we live in a place like Baltimore, a city that gives us what we need, and so much more on top of it. Tomorrow we’re not going to sit under just any...
Tomorrow: Cabin//Fire in Gwynn Oak
posted by The Chop
If you don’t know Justin Sirois by now, you certainly should. Not least because he’s a friend of the blog and a Baker Artist Award winner. We’ve already told you about his novel Falcons on the Floor and were especially interested in his serial, app centric follow-up So Say the Waiters, which cut a new path in digital publishing while telling the story of Baltimore punk life in a unique and authentic language. Justin also founded Narrow House Press when back when. But he lives in a narrow house no longer. These days you can find him out at the western edge of the city in Gywnn Oak, where the biggest distraction a writer may...
The Top 6 Things We ...
posted by The Chop
We’ve been out of town a long time. So long that we’re still not quite up to speed. It’s going to take your old Chop at least one day for every month away from Charm City to get back on track. As we said just the other day, a sailor leaves, comes home and strives to pick up...
The Chop Rents a Car
posted by The Chop
It’s been well over a year now since we decided drive our trusty old Chevy down to Crazy Ray’s and let them chop it up. So far it’s gone really well for us. We’ve got no complaints and certainly aren’t going to be car shopping any time soon. A year on a bike has...
The Chop Returns Fro...
posted by The Chop
The life of a sailor is a peculiar thing. It’s more like two lives, really. There’s life at sea, which is very regimented and routine and carries over from ship to ship. After you’ve gained enough sea time you start to realize how small the world actually is- seeing some of...
The Chop Goes to Sea
posted by The Chop
This is what we’re doing today. This thing in the poster. Literally. We’re throwing a sea bag over our shoulder and climbing up a gangway and sailing halfway around the world. Some of you reading this already knew that. For others, it may come as a surprise. That’s what...
List of Baltimore...
posted by The Chop
We’re not sure Why it took us so long to catch on to the whole official election night party thing. It’s a pretty sweet deal. They’re mostly meant as a thank-you to staff and volunteers, but they’re generally open to the public so really any ‘supporter’ can...
2012 Election Predic...
posted by The Chop
We think Obama’s going to win. That’s not really a shocker coming from a decidedly liberal blog in a decidedly liberal city. We think Obama will win in a walk and that’s always been our opinion, since even before the GOP primaries. There was never even a time when we were...
Adults, War on Women...
posted by The Chop
A very well-kept secret of political activism is that a little bit of it can go quite a long way. When you turn on the news you can’t help but hear a lot about big money donors and fancy fundraisers. The images you see are all of paid staffers busily manning campaign offices or dedicated...
Couples’ Seaso...
posted by The Chop
For most people there are four seasons in the year. For the chronically single among us, especially those of us over 30, there are only two seasons: Dating Season and Couples’ Season. Today, the day after Halloween, is the official beginning of Couples’ Season. It’s the time...
Five Fall Soups for ...
posted by The Chop
Here at the Chophouse we like to cook. Whether it’s something as simple as putting together a good sandwich or as complicated as laying out a four course dinner for six, we do more high quality home cooking than the average bachelor. When the Fall rolls around, we really kick it into...
The Baltimore Chop i...
posted by The Chop
If you’ve been watching closely recently, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve changed things up a bit around here. We added an image of Wee Willie Keeler’s T-206 tobacco card to the header, and adopted it everywhere we are online… Twitter, Facebook, etc. But what...
About As Socratic as...
posted by The Chop
Back in June certain corners of the Internet went into a minor frenzy for about a week when NPR published an article by one of its 20 year old interns about how she owns tens of thousands of songs and didn’t pay for any of them and wants instant access to everything ever recorded for...
Mobbies Voting Begin...
posted by The Chop
Yes, Choppers, it is here once again. That magical time of year when for two weeks we generally pester the hell out of your for votes in an online contest so that our modest little blogging hobby can receive a tiny bit of validation from the media establishment. Voting officially begins today...
Baltimore Bike Party...
posted by The Chop
It’s been a while since we did the whole Bike Party thing. We tried to do it back in June and while we made it to the Block Party, we decided that 110° was just too damn hot for recreational riding. Then we thought about doing it again in July when there was a coordinated ride timed...
Covers Show @ CCAS T...
posted by The Chop
It is one of the great injustices in the music world that shitty bar bands who cover top 40 songs are usually some of the best paid bands out there. We don’t mean to say that getting up and playing Margaritaville and Rehab is ultra-lucrative and you can quit your day job doing it, but on...
What to Do if Your C...
posted by The Chop
If you’re standing on the street right now pissed off, smartphone in hand desperately Googling to figure out where the fuck your car is and how to get it back, relax. Take a deep breath. The Chop is here to help. If you were towed at rush hour, during a ballgame, or in connection with...
Gameday Regulars, Al...
posted by The Chop
It was a slow weekend around the Chophouse. We spent most of it drinking boxed wine and watching hard-boiled movies from the 70′s like Midnight Express and Dog Day Afternoon. Hell, it was a slow weekend around Baltimore. Except for Sunday night, there wasn’t much doing. So we...
Love in the Age of P...
posted by The Chop
So no more Republican. That was fun while it lasted but we split amicably and mutually after just a few months, which leaves your Chop in a frustrating and absurd position: the state of Passive Dating. For most of our life we believed Passive Dating was a fiction- a made up thing that people...
Our Picks for Baltim...
posted by The Chop
On Tuesday in this space we publicly proclaimed our love of Fall. But there’s a whole lot more to love about Autumn than just stylish scarves- namely Baltimore Beer Week. Yes Choppers, the fourth annual Baltimore Beer Week begins today with the ceremonial tapping of the first firkin...
Ignite Baltimore 11 ...
posted by The Chop
If there’s any silver lining at all to our beloved Baltimore Orioles being knocked out of the playoffs, it’s that we now have the evening free to go to the 11th installment of Ignite Baltimore tonight at MICA’s Brown Center. Small consolation, to be sure. While Ignite may not...