The East Coast, Simplified

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People from Boston are great…

    …until you get them talking.

People from New York are interesting…

    …until you get them talking about food.

People from New Jersey aren’t as bad as all that…

    …until they start talking about New Jersey.

Those corn-crackers in Delaware are nothing but a bunch of trifling toll collectors.


People from Philly are really awesome…

    …as long as no one mentions pro sports.


People from Baltimore are the best people on the face of the earth…

    …until you mention you’re from DC.

People from DC are delightful…

    …until you get them talking about their careers.

And people from Virginia are wonderful…

    …until it’s time to talk about the South.

The Queers, Sick Sick Birds @ Black Cat Tonight

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We’ve never been very big into the Queers. There was a point in time, early high school, when we should have been a huge Queers fan. It was all there on paper: they’ve got songs about drinking, girls, farts, pranks, the suburbs, hating school, etc, etc. When we were a 15 year old suburban terror getting kicked out of the mall, engaging in minor vandalism, trying to make out with girls in parking lots and being as misanthropic as we could before curfew we should have been really into the Queers.

We never were though. Every time someone mentioned the Queers, it was just a reminder to listen to some other band. The Dead Milkmen, NOFX, Screeching Weasel… we liked a lot of bands better than the Queers. That said, it’s not like we don’t like them at all, and these days there’s a distinct lack of lighthearted pop punk goofball music in our collection. The Queers are at least better than watching TV, and for $12 at the Black Cat backstage, it’s hard not to want to go.

The Queers play the Black Cat tonight. 8:30 doors.

Opening up tonight is Baltimore garage/punk supergroup Sick Sick Birds who we’ve recommended a bunch of times before, and who have recently been in the studio recording some new stuff. Presumably, they will be playing some of said new stuff, so if you can’t make it to DC tonight you should at least come out to their next show this Saturday at Metro Gallery. According to that link, it’s their last one before Melissa goes on maternity leave from the band. Yeah. That’s a thing that old punks do apparently. Welcome to the new reality.

Also playing tonight are Dutch punk rockers The Apers who are touring with the Queers, as well as being their Asian Man Records label-mates. These guys are another punk band that sounds fourteen and looks 40, so they ought to fit right in. Hide your patches, hide your spikes, AND hide your Docs. At the Black Cat tonight they’re punking errybody.

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Black Cat is located at 1811 14th Street NW in Washington DC. Metro accessible from green/ yellow lines to U St/ Cardozo Station.

Men of Baltimore, Put Your Goddamn Keys Away

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This has gone on far too long, Baltimore.

We see a lot of people on a day to day basis. We notice things. Once we notice them enough, we start to form an opinion, and then we run and tell that to the internet. That’s how blogging works.

Of course, we’re not just now noticing that people wear keys on their belts. We did notice though, that of all the people we encounter in our travels around Baltimore, none of them happen to be motorcycle riders, jailers, janitors, building superintendents, boaters, or have any other practical reason to wear keys on their belts. We’ve also noticed that it’s 2011 for fuck’s sake!

The Queers play the Black Cat tonight. 8:30 doors.

How outdated is this keywear trend, really? Not only are belt clips actually marketed as “Hipster Key Rings”, but you know a trend should be well over when the designer version hits Urban Outfitters and sells for $18.00. Of course, the one in that link is on clearance, which indicates that even UO thinks this look is like… soooo 1999.

You might think this is handy, but as an adult it’s the functional equivalent to your mom pinning your mittens to your jacket. It makes you look like sort of a retard. If you carry a bag put your keys in there. If you don’t, put them in the pocket of your jeans. If your jeans are too tight to get them into the pocket comfortably, then for Christ’s sake get some jeans that fit.

We’re embarrassed for our fair city to see so many people still trying to rock this look. We’re putting you on notice Baltimore. It’s a rule now: no more keys on belts. We’re giving you until April to re-blog this on your tumblrs and get the word out on the street. After that we might have to start indiscriminately cutting belt loops. They don’t call us Chop for nothing.

Today is Martin Luther King Day

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As we all pause today to honor Dr. King’s legacy, it is important to note that some of us honor that legacy by word alone, and not by deed. Hypocrisy and injustice continue today, and for those of us who truly value civil rights and equality, protecting that legacy means guarding against its appropriation by those who would embrace ideals that are in direct opposition to those of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement.

MLK went to Memphis to support striking workers. He spoke and wrote repeatedly on the lockstep relationship between African Americans and the Labor Movement, and believed that workers’ rights and civil rights are inseparable. Not only are all men created equal, but all men are men. We are all to be accorded dignity, and are all deserving of a living wage, safe and decent working conditions, and the right to call one another brother.

As Republicans today shamelessly attack public employees, oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, attempt to take health care away from millions of citizens, and claim to abhor gun violence while embracing guns, we must remember that the only way to stand with Dr. King is to stand against those who would attack what he spent his life working for.

    “Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires, and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor’s needs — decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”

    -Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961

In Praise of the Workbench

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We’ve got some wasted space in our bedroom closet.

It’s not much space, really. 31″x21″x20″ About 8 cubic feet we’d guess. In a Baltimore rowhouse though, closet space is a precious commodity, and the waste of any of it is silly and shameful. For one such as the Chop, who shops for clothes regularly and likes the room neat and orderly at all times, maximizing closet space is imperative.

So we went to Home Depot and looked for a shelf. We didn’t expect we’d find one that was exactly 31″x 21″, but we were dismayed to find that we couldn’t even come close. We couldn’t seem to find any shelving broader than about a foot.

You can accomplish a lot with a good workbench. Just ask this guy Edison.

It was then that we strolled over to the lumber aisle and found some really nice planks of maple. ‘This’ll work.’ we thought ‘We can cut this to size, use the cut piece as a shelving front, and attach it to the walls, et voilà, custom shelving. We’ve even already got some antique white paint at home to match the trim, or stain and lacquer to match the furniture.

But we quickly realized just how impractical this plan is. Why impractical? Because we haven’t got a saw. Buying a circular saw isn’t out of the question, although it is a very small project to justify the purchase. Even if we had a saw though, we’d probably cut a hand off with it- for we have no workbench.

We don’t even have anything even remotely resembling a workbench. No old folding tables, sawhorses, nothing like that. Without a proper workspace, even something as simple as joining two pieces of wood becomes much harder than it should be. Ditto for painting it, so we’re setting aside the shelf idea for now.

When we enumerated our New Year’s resolutions a few weeks ago, there were a few of them we left out for brevity’s sake, and one of those is to build a workbench area in the basement. We’ve been wanting to do this since before we moved in. Even touring the house with our Realtor we thought that sectioning off a part of the basement for a bench was a great idea. Then roommate moved in, and our basement filled up quick with toys, action figures, T shirts, and sundry other junk which should have found its way to eBay or the dump a long time ago.

Having a bench handy will not only enable us to build and repair things around the house, it will also enable us to build up a decent collection of tools as the need for them arises. As it is now, our humble set of tools is in a box. Not a toolbox, mind you, but a cardboard box. They blend in very nicely with the rest of the junk down there, and we’re hesitant to bring home anything for which we don’t have a place.

Aside from all the practical concerns though, we’ve got to admit that we’re also drawn by the sheer goddamn manliness of the workbench. While we’ve been able to knock out every repair or improvement we’ve faced so far, we anticipate many more in the future around here, and having the right tool for the job and getting it done in a space you’ve designed and built yourself has a deep inherent satisfaction, and we suspect that chasing that satisfaction will have us spending more of our Sundays accomplishing home improvements, and fewer of them sulking around, listening to Belle and Sebastian and looking at the sex stories and personal essays on nerve.com.