Puerto Rico Flowers, Pfisters @ Talking Head Stage Tonight

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The astute among you will quickly notice that the shape of the graphic below is not Puerto Rico, but is in fact Australia. It’s Australia because that’s where John Sharkey III fucked off to after Clockcleaner. Sharkey returns to the US tonight with his new project Puerto Rico Flowers for their only 2010 US date at Sonar‘s Talking Head stage. Welcoming Sharkey back tonight will be Fan Death Records label-mates and unfuckwithable local trio Pfisters as well as DC’s Screen Vinyl Image.

Puerto Rico Flowers plays the Talking Head stage tonight. 9 pm Doors.

We’ve got the feeling that Puerto Rico Flowers is going to be one of those bands for whom there is no middle ground at all. Anyone unfamiliar can slap on headphones and listen to about ten seconds of their 4 ep and decide instantly whether they want to listen to it on repeat all day, or whether they want to run screaming at its mere mention.

The Chop is squarely in the former camp, and we predict the forthcoming full length will be going into heavy rotation on the iPod for late drives home or nights out on the back deck. Sharkey has always been the sort who makes a very particular sort of music. It’s the sort that he wants to hear, and he makes it precisely because it doesn’t yet exist in the world. Whether anyone else listens or not seems to be irrelevant. PRF represents what has become all too rare in 2010… something entirely new.

That said, the influences are immediately discernible. The 4 ep easily conjures the best work of Joy Division, the Damned, Bauhaus, et al, and will become seminal listening for fans of those stripes.

The next time you hear someone staunchly defend Baltimore’s music scene as being better than DC’s and more genuine than Brooklyn’s don’t dismiss it. Shows like this one tonight stand as proof.

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Sonar is at 407 E. Saratoga Street downtown. Doors are at 9 pm, all ages.

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The Chop Endorses Conflict-Free Diamonds

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The Director is in town. More than a year ago, the Director decided he was sick and tired of using his film degree to edit bureaucratic training videos and pick up a little freelance wedding work and he took himself out to Hollywood to pursue his art and seek his fortune in the movie business.

Tonight we’re going to get to see the result of the first year or so of the “Hollywood Period” at what was supposed to be a screening party for the project he’s been working on.

We say supposed to be, because all indications are that tonight is to become more an engagement party than anything else. After a lifetime of being shy and awkward around girls and women, the Director fell ass backwards into a random roommate-as-girlfriend situation out there which as far as we can tell is all to the good. He got himself engaged last weekend.

The wrong ring can make a bride very angry. And bad things can happen when brides get angry.

Time was, this happy news would have been announced over a toast, and genuine surprise and elation would have been the tone for the rest of the evening. As it stands, it was announced via Facebook. Not quite the same.

Thanks also to the magic of Facebook, we got a chance to have a look at a picture of the ring, and, well, it’s fugly. There’s no two ways about it. It’s made of onyx, for Christ’s sake. We understand you both like horror movies, but come on… you’re only a half step above this.

It could be worse though. During our trip overseas one of our co-workers called us over to see his cousin’s engagement ring on Facebook. It was made of Moissanite, that magical meteorite matter that’s “even rarer and stronger than a diamond!!!” It had been bought with a coupon and it was maybe the ugliest piece of jewelry we’d ever seen wrapped around a chubby little unmanicured finger. Everyone in the place had a field day laughing, and that still stands out as easily the most entertaining thing we saw in 3 months.

So what have we learned, Baltimore? We’ve learned that this is the way things are done now. If you give her that ring, gentlemen, you can count on it showing up on Facebook the same day, and judgment will be swift and severe if you botch the purchase. For better or worse, diamonds are the standard in tradition and good taste. That said, blood diamonds are never in good taste. The Chop has been to Sierra Leone, and believe it when we say that there is not one person, building or road in that country that is not scarred by war.

Failing possession of a family heirloom, we say make sure your diamond is either lab created or certified conflict-free. And most importantly, make sure your diamond actually is a diamond. Anything less is, well… less.

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Belle and Sebastian @ Constitution Hall Tonight

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Yeah. You read that headline right. It’s Belle and Sebastian. It’s in DC. It’s tonight. And as Joe the Biden might say; it’s a “Big Fucking Deal.”

How big of a fucking deal are they? We bought our tickets months ago. We had to order them online from a primitive computing machine in the middle of the desert. We had to deal with Ticketmaster, break out a credit card, verify our stupid change of address and everything. It got us to thinking: this is the first real life, bona fide concert the Chop has ever attended. We’ve seen thousands of bands, and they’ve all been in small spaces where you pay at the door and get a hand stamp.

Belle and Sebastian play DAR Constitution Hall tonight. 7 pm Doors.

But Belle and Sebastian is such a big fucking deal that the last time they played the area was also at Constitution Hall, and we said to ourselves we said; “Chop, it’s a big fancy concert. It’s at DAR, where freaking Morrissey plays. Those tickets are going to cost a fortune and sell out and yadda yadda yadda.” And we were right. But when we found out they were touring again, and coming back to DC in support of their new record Write About Love, we said “Fuck it. They’re from Goddamn Scotland. When are they coming back again, eh?” Yeah. It’ll be a while.

For our money (and these tickets ran to money), Belle and Sebastian is the best thing to come out of Scotland since whisky.

If that sounds like we’re drinking the Kool-Aid, well, maybe we are. B & S are something of a cult band, and after a few good years of casual listening we are definitely in that cult. Not since that other cult band, The Smiths, has a group of musicians so elevated pop music to the level of high art. We’re sure that Ke$ha is going to come back and shit all over pop again any day, but for now, for today- October 14… pop is exciting, whimsical, and wonderful again.

Don’t believe it? Go ahead and stream the new album courtesy of National Public Radio and tell us if we’re wrong. (Hint: We’re not wrong.)

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DAR Constitution hall is at 1776 D St. NW in Washington DC. Tickets for tonight’s show are sold out.

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Democrats We Hate: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

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It’s about to get interesting folks. The midterm elections are a mere three weeks away, and with the gross injustice of the Citizens United decision in full effect, the RNC and Karl Rove along with his secret billionaire friends are about to start slinging mud faster and more furiously than any of us have ever seen mud slung. Believe it.

So what’s a good old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool Baltimore progressive to do? Show up and sling a little mud of your own. Or better yet, sling a few pitchers of Dogfish Head with the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally at Joe Squared tonight.

Baltimore Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm

To a regular reader of these roundups, it may appear that the Chop is little more than a hopeless cheerleader for the Democrats. This is not so. At the end of the day, we’re really only lukewarm on the Dems. It’s our true, white-hot, pure unvarnished hatred for the Republican party which keeps us riding the Donkey. After all, way back when we voted in our first presidential election, even then we weren’t stupid enough to waste a vote on Nader.

In any year, there are going to be some Dems we love, and some we don’t. This year though, there seems to be quite a few we don’t love. In fact, there are some races out there in which we’d go so far as to outright endorse the Republican. This may seem an extraordinary measure, but the candidates mentioned below are extraordinarily terrible.

Richard Blumenthal has been running around Connecticut using the phrase “when I served in Vietnam”. Problem is, he never did serve in Vietnam, but was in a cushy stateside reserve post instead. He has yet to admit that he’s a bald-faced liar, and his apologies for ‘misspeaking’ fall flat and ring hollow. As tired as we are of the politics of Vietnam, this is beyond the pale and unforgivable, and Blumenthal has no place in the US senate or in any other position of public trust.

Alvin Greene is retarded. He’s literally retarded. We’re only surprised that no one has yet exposed Greene as the practical joke that his candidacy is. It’s still a mystery where the hell he came from, and how in the world he managed to secure the Democratic nomination. Better choices than Greene for senator include; a golden retriever, a man in a banana suit, a magic 8-ball, and of course, a Republican. As much as we hate Jim DeMint, we’ll breathe a little sigh of relief when he’s reelected with 99.9% of the vote.

Blanche Lincoln made us very angry on healthcare. Blanche Lincoln is making us very angry on EFCA. Blanche Lincoln pretty much makes us angry every time we hear her name. We’re getting really sick and tired of the Democratic leadership trying to whip 60 votes by kissing these conservative blue dog asses. We’d rather lose that seat all together than try to plan legislative strategy based on what a few hicks in Arkansas are likely to approve of in an opinion poll. To hell with Blanche Lincoln.

There’s a few more with whom we’re really not impressed who don’t merit mention here. If the Democrats are going to be losing seats anyway, we say now is the perfect time for a little house cleaning. Take Minnesota as an example: sometimes you’ve got to lose a seat to a sniveling shit like Norm Coleman in order to ultimately fill it with a true-blue progressive like Senator Al Franken.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. Joe Squared is located at 133 w. North Ave. All the above opinions are that of the Baltimore Chop Blog, and not of Drinking Liberally, it’s Baltimore Chapter, Chapter members or Joe Squared.

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On the Chop’s Visit to Diego Garcia

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As you may know, we spent most of the summer working overseas, mostly in Bahrain and the Emirates. One of the highlights of our travels though was the couple of days we got to spend on the island of Diego Garcia.

For the unfamiliar, Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. It’s little more than the tiny outline of a footprint (literally, it’s footprint shaped) in a vast, vast ocean. The whole of the island is given over to a joint UK/US military base, and as such it’s not only one of the most remote, but one of the most unique inhabited places on earth. It didn’t take us very long to see that Diego has its very own culture, which is an odd mixture of naval regulation, British propriety, Filipino culture, and Margaritaville, which is wholly unlikely but highly functional.

This is a pic from our crappy obsolete cell phone taken outside the Diego Garcia USS.

The island itself is literally a tropical paradise. It’s a ring of pure white sand surrounded by bright blue waters which are swim-able every day of the year and which provide some of the best sport and recreational fishing in the world. Exotic crabs scuttle everywhere, and coconuts fall to the sand and lie undisturbed long enough to split and sprout. You can literally see new trees growing out of coconuts.

As beautiful as is the island, most of its buildings are equally ugly. The architecture is as drab and uninspired as any other military installation. Most of them are little more than a box of cinder blocks with a number painted on the side.

Outside the px downtown they have one of those mileage signs. Bottom line, you're a long way from anywhere.

A free bus line runs around the island, and will take you Downtown from any point on the road. Caution is necessary though, since a first time visitor may have a lot of trouble recognizing his destination as any sort of proper ‘downtown’. What passes for Downtown is just a few squat, nondescript buildings, not very close to each other. A hapless bus rider could easily miss it and see the bus turn around, and then miss his original stop again since the bus will not actually stop unless you yell “BUS STOP!” at the driver.

Once you get downtown though there actually is plenty to do, even if you can knock it all out in a day or two. There’s your choice of 4 different beach bars (although beach bars are less fun without any women around, but the drinks are surprisingly cheap), the Diego Museum, a couple of restaurants, the old sugar plantations and cemetery to tour, a bowling alley, paintball, a free movie theater, basketball, softball, etc. and of course, the fishing.

In fact, if we were to go there permanently and attempt to write a daily events blog, there’s be not shortage of material. The Navy has something planned for every day of the month, boat races, volleyball tournaments, dominoes, organized tennis, and so on.

Oh, the places you'll go!

Still and all though, we’re glad we got to see Diego the way we did… in 2 days. It’s the sort of tiny little town where once you’re bored with it, you’re really, really bored.