What Would Jesus Buy @ Windup Space Tonight

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Goddamn.

When the Chop started up earlier this week, we wanted to make a blog to tell you what we’re actually doing. We really are running wild in the streets now, and life moves faster than the speed of blog.

You won’t read any posts here about how the Chop sat on the couch all day and watched football and played with his cat and did the dishes. That’s not how we roll.

We’ve got the opposite problem, at least this week. We’re having a hard time picking events, and don’t know whether to drop them all on you in one post, or separate posts.

First things first though. And by first, we mean tonight.

What Would Jesus Buy? Sandals.... or a PS3.

Tonight the Chop will be showing up early to catch happy hour and secure a good seat at the Windup Space for a free screening of What Would Jesus Buy? , presented by the Action! Film Series.
The screening comes just in time for the kickoff of Christmas Shopping season too. With each passing year though, the Chop favors Christmas shopping less and less. The truth is that the Chop’s family members are all quite content, and at this point in life anything we could give or receive from close friends and family is little more than a token.

There’s also the fact that last year we celebrated Christmas in Freetown, Sierra Leone, drinking fifty cent beers, listening to steel drums at a street festival on a balmy night. Nothing like an African Xmas for a little perspective.

There’s also some business about a discussion afterward with representatives from local businesses, but we’re thinking we might just slide out early on that. After all, we’re taking the Part Time Professor as our date, and she’ll likely be impressed by the new furniture at the house, since she did sit on lawn chairs in the living room last time she was here.

I’m impressed by that furniture too. Its a wonder I even go out at all anymore… especially since I could stay at home and watch the whole movie for free online
 at snagfilms.com.

Stoop Storytelling @ Centerstage Tonight

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If you want to find the Chop on the town tonight, you might bump into us at Centerstage, where we’ll be checking in with the wildly successful Stoop Storytelling Series.

This installment of the Stoop features seven speakers holding forth on Kitchen Confidential: Stories about cooking, eating, and assorted food issues.

Given the glut of craptastic food porn that’s been clogging up our cable box these last several years, it’ll be nice to be reminded that there are more perspectives on food than Alton Brown and Anthony Bourdain, and personalities more genuine than the insipid Rachel Ray and more exciting than the vapid Giada De Laurentiis. And right here in Baltimore.

Plus, its a good excuse to drop into Iggie’s, whose pizza is fantastic, and who supports local non-profits.

Throw in drinks and a little live music, and you’ve got yourself a Monday evening.

Valentino Achak Deng @ Saint Marks Episcopal This Friday

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The Chop knows that you’re all dying to hear about Halloween with Louisville Slugger and the Roommate, and all the Sunday doings and advice, but we digress a moment.

Instead we want to tell you where you need to be this Friday, November 6 from 8-10 pm; namely Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Highland, MD (Just outside of Columbia).

Friday night the church is going to present “An Evening With Valentino Achak Deng.” (PDF) Deng is of course the subject of Dave Eggers’ 2006 Book What is the What, which chronicles Achak’s experiences as a boy-refugee from the oppressive Sudanese government and tribal warlords during the Second Sudanese Civil War.

The Baltimore Chop was pleased to have the chance to read about the What last year in advance of our first trip to Africa, and we highly, highly recommend this book to anyone who will listen. We’re also a fan of his earlier novels ‘You Shall Know Our Velocity!‘ and ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius‘. Eggers is also the man behind McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and has enjoyed recent acclaim for his adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are for the big screen.

In all of Eggers’ various projects though, What is the What will remain as his most unique and most important work well into the future. Billed as a novel, What was actually written by Eggers in close collaboration with the real life Achak Deng, and hews as closely as possible to Deng’s own experiences. As he explains it in the preface:

“It should be known to readers that I was very young when some of the events in the book took place, and as a result, we simply had to pronounce What is the What a novel. I could not, for example, recount some conversations that took place seventeen years ago. However, it should be noted that all of the major events in the book are true. The book is historically accurate, and the world I have known is not different from the one depicted within these pages.We live in a time where even the most horrific events in this book could occur, and in most cases, did occur.”

And make no mistake, Gentle Reader this book describes in detail some of the most horrifying human rights abuses, cruelties, injustices, and atrocities that one can imagine. As a small orphaned boy, Achak witnessed firsthand unspeakable acts like murder, pillage, rape, child slavery, starvation, drownings, and children being eaten alive by lions, and that was before spending 12 years in a Kenyan refugee camp.

Throughout everything though, Achak emerges as one of the kindest, gentlest, and most sympathetic characters in recent literature. His Faith in both the Lord and humanity remained unshaken even in the face of Job-like challenges. Make no mistake, the Achak Deng that Eggers presents is a truly exceptional man, and will make the reader seriously reevaluate his own ego and place in the world.

And judging by the real life Achak Deng’s ceaseless and tireless work in founding and promoting the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation the Chop expects the real life Achak to entirely live up to his literary persona. The VADF was begun with the proceeds from sales of What is the What, and works year round toward building community development in Southern Sudan, assisting Sudanese refugees here in the United States, and advocating on Sudanese policy issues. The foundation also recently completed construction of the Marial Bai secondary school in Southern Sudan.

According to the Church’s Announcement, Friday night’s program includes a lecture, Q & A session, and a reception and book signing. (The Chop will be bringing our copy from home, but we assume there will be copies available for purchase, which we strongly recommend.)

It is also to be noted that the church asks for a very humble $25 (minimum) donation per person to benefit the foundation, and that 100% of monies raised will go toward the foundation’s work.

The Chop doesn’t mind saying either that this is our favorite kind of philanthropy… the kind where the donation is quite reasonable and the donor enjoys immediate gratification in the form of an interesting evening out. Plus its always nice to look certain hipsters in the eye and ask:

What have you done for the Sudan lately? Eh?

Google Maps & driving directions to Saint mark’s Episcopal from downtown.

Someone’s In For A Scary Halloween.

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You never can tell where the night will lead in Baltimore City. It can begin in one neighborhood with the best of intentions, and end someplace entirely different, and even unfamiliar. The Chop might well start out at some ritzy affair at the Engineers Club, and end the night swilling tequila and losing at pool to a Honduran in Upper Fells. Or we might not.

Last night was one such night.

The chop was enjoying our Bar Bacon when we received a text from one of our suburb-dwelling friends, who along with another friend had somehow found their way to the Taphouse in Canton. It was an odd choice, both for the Chop and the friends in question, but we felt it best to go down and have a pint, since the Chop has some upcoming travel plans which will be discussed in a future post. We won’t be around for a good little while.

The Taphouse is sort of odd. Its nothing more than a traditional East Baltimore corner bar, which has its roots in the old UK public houses. The strange part though is that almost every single patron in there was under thirty, but behaving like a much more mature crowd. It struck us how much the neighborhood has changed. It also made us a little grateful that places like Looney’s exist, because they filter out all of the sharts from the rest of the bars.

Although that’s not entirely true. As we came to know, our friends had come to the Taphouse and met up with two others… one of them was a super-chic chick rocking a little black dress with black leggings and natural grain cowboy boots and actually pulling it off. The other was the biggest shart in the place; a shitfaced hood-rat with Glen Burnie written all over him. An odd couple to say the least.

Sometimes its not all bad though. As we know from being personal friends with one town’s official town drunk, the following logic can often prevail in the drunken mind on a Friday night:

‘Fuck it. If I’m gonna have a sixty dollar tab, I might as well have a hundred and sixty dollar tab.’

This is definitely a warning sign that AA is somewhere in the future. Its also a sign that you’re going to get bought drinks if you can stand being in proximity to this shart.

And stand it we did for several rounds. Eventually though, the Chop’s mind wandered back to our brand new and luxuriously comfortable armchair-and-ottoman combination and the frozen pizza in our freezer, and we made our excuses. It was at this point that Cowboy Boots (who had contributed little to the general conversation before this point) came squarely up to the Chop and started chatting us up about fashion.

Now, its to be understood that the Chop dresses better than you. Last night we stepped out in an ultra-casual off-white sport jacket over a light gray argyle sweater.

Our outfit broke many fashion rules at the same time, and to be quite honest, with it being Halloween, we wondered if we might not be taken for wearing a Don Johnson costume.

You can see why this is to be avoided at all costs. Anyway, it was nice to get a favorable opinion from someone as stylish as Cowboy Boots, and from there the conversation flowed quite naturally into ” Oh yeah, we should totally go out. Here’s my number.”

Now, the Chop does not approve of drunken driving. However, every Baltimorean worth his Old Bay knows that its well nigh impossible to get a DUI inside the city limits. You can even bend a fender and the cops can’t hardly be bothered to come to the scene. This shart from the Taphouse though… he managed to tear his entire bumper off on a guard rail, and as the chop found out via text message, was subsequently made to blow and hauled into Central Booking.

View of Baltimore City jail from where I-83 is today.

Of course, if you go to Jail on Friday night, there’s no way in hell you’re coming out before Monday morning, and possibly even Tuesday. Our man is about to see if he can survive a weekend locked in the house of horrors with murderers, rapists, and the city’s living dead.

Happy Halloween, Shart.

This Is Why You Don’t Deserve A Raise.

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As you’re beginning to figure out, The Baltimore Chop is always on top of its game. We do what the hell we say we’re going to do, and when we say we’ll do it. Of course, our timing is always impeccable, and our attention to detail unimpeachable.

So we’re very disappointed when others fail to meet their obligations. We’re not one to lose our cool, but we are highly vexed by those of you (and you know goddamn well who you are) who wait until Friday afternoon to contact the parties with whom you do business, and say in effect:

‘Oh, remember that thing you were depending on me for? Well, I didn’t get around to it, and I need something else from you, and by the way I’m already mentally checked out since I’m leaving the office early today and going away for the weekend and probably taking a ‘personal day’ on Monday.’

This is entirely unacceptable. Don’t do this.

It seems the Chop has been running into these sort of people Every Friday since about the beginning of the recession, when everyone basically stopped caring and was paralyzed by fear. This Friday in particular, its the sales staff at Value City Furniture in White Marsh, who failed to deliver the sofa we had ordered. Normally this would be a mere minor detail, except that the Chop had already arranged for the Louisville Slugger to come all the way from the New York City this weekend, and we had offered him a couch on which to sleep. We won’t have our friends laid out on hardwood floors.

In related news, the Chop had a second date tonight with a very charming young lady whose father had the ill-manners and poor timing to have himself a small heart attack or some such thing, and managed to land himself in a Pennsylvania hospital. Needless to say the date is canceled, and probably wouldn’t be much fun if it happened under those circumstances anyway. We wish our (very remotely possibly) future father in law a quick and comfortable convalescence.

So while we’re tempted to do the call-around, The Chop is going to take this as a good excuse for some quality ass-to-seat time in our new armchairs (which actually were delivered), and probably make our way into Hampden for Bar Bacon Comedy IX at the Golden West.

Bar Bacon IX is at the Golden West tonight. 10pm. $7.

The Chop feels like we might well be behind the curve having let eight of these things go by, especially since we’ve heard nothing but good things. Jimmy “Valentine” Meyer even won a Best of Baltimore award for best comedy night, although the competition probably wasn’t all that stiff. Still and all, that’s even more reason to respect and support something like Bar Bacon. Any asshole can pick up a guitar and form a band, but there are far too few people willing to try their hand at comedy, and to give it the treatment deserved by the serious art form that it is. So the Chop is excited to finally hear the Bacon for ourselves, and we hope Meyer will keep cracking wise for a good long time, inspiring others to do likewise.