Carlos Danger: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

Posted on July 24, 2013 by The Chop

We don’t believe a whole hell of a lot of the bible. Noah’s Flood and Moses floating down a river and God raining down plagues on Pharaoh… they all strain credulity more than a little. That being said, those stories aren’t in there for no reason. They’re there because they are valuable teaching tools with universal lessons about humanity that are as true today as they were 6000 years ago.

Take the forbidden fruit, for example. If you want to live in the garden, you can run wild and do whatever you please, except eat from that one particular goddamn tree. Likewise if you want to be a politician, you can do anything you want except cheat on your wife!

Now in the case of Anthony Weiner you may say that a few pics and some text messages aren’t “cheating” but go look at the source material here and here and tell us you wouldn’t call it cheating if your husband did it.

This girl is 22 and she said she was dying to meet him and he says he’ll buy her a condo in Chicago and get her a job at Politico and this is all after the resignation? Get the fuck out of here. We don’t care how long and stupidly Huma Abedin wants to stand by her man. He’s an idiot and not fit for public service of any kind.

Now, if she had left him and he was running for mayor, it might be slightly less bad. (Nobody ever gave a shit what Gavin Newsom did because he was never married.) If Weiner had stayed married and gone off to get a job as a lawyer or something nobody would care who he sexted or what he promised.

But he can’t get it through his thick fucking head that you can’t have the garden and the fruit. It just doesn’t work that way. Especially in our party. One of the reasons the Chop is proud to be a Democrat is that we’re not afraid to throw people right under the bus when they fuck up. And that’s the way it should be. We don’t have any Vitters or Ensigns or Sanfords in our party (at least not in the post-Clinton era) and it would be nice to keep it that way. Weiner should get out of this race right now and let the jizz fall where it may.

Ironically (and thankfully) Weiner may have completely ruined Eliot Spitzer’s career the same way Ryan Braun is ending A-Rod’s, and quite a few others. We get a feeling NYC Dems are going to say ‘Hey Raw Dog, Weiner hasn’t changed a bit and we don’t know if you have or not but we’re just not gonna chance it. Smell you later.”

Speaking of Braun and company they’re another good example of the forbidden fruit. MLB Players can do pretty much whatever the fuck they want in life. If they want to go play outside Organized Baseball they can even load up on as many steroids and HGH as they want. But you can’t cheat in the MLB. The League doesn’t accept it, the Fans Don’t accept it, and going by the HOF voting the Writers definitely don’t accept it. We’re glad that baseball has cracked down as much as they have, but it’s clear that more needs to be done. A lot more.

But the Hebrew Hammer is making ol’ Raffy and his index finger look not so bad, we’ll give him that.

If you want to come out tonight and make a bunch of Weiner jokes the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally will be meeting at Liam Flynn’s Ale House at 8 pm. Admission is free and open to liberals and progressives of all stripes. http://livingliberally.org/drinking/chapters/MD/baltimore for more information.

The Chop Goes to Austin

Posted on July 17, 2013 by The Chop

Sorry Baltimore, but it’s Summer vacation time for the Chop. Since half of North Baltimore is about to be taken over by Artscape we’ve decided to slip out while the slipping is good and we’re slipping all the way to Texas, can you dig it?

One of our closest friends moved to Austin last Fall, so we’re heading down for a visit. We’ve been just about everywhere anyone would want to go, but this will be our first trip to Austin, which is pretty far out of the way of everything. While we’re there we’re going to check out Barton Springs Pool and make a side trip to Arlington to see the Orioles play the Rangers on the road.

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Other than that, no real plans. Just getting drunk and raising hell in somebody else’s city for a change.

If you want to go on a virtual vacation right along with us we suggest you check out this Comprehensive List of Austin’s Best Blogs which is only a few months old. After clicking around for a while we didn’t exactly get the key to the city, but it’s always kind of neat to see that other people love their towns too, and that we’re not operating in a great void of bloggy nothingness when we type out these posts every day.

We’d rather do our discovering in person anyway. While we’re gone you can watch our Instagram, which is probably going to get quite a workout this week.

Smell you later, Charm City.

17 Reasons Buzzfeed Sucks Ass: The Tyranny of Listicles And the Dumbing Down of the Internet

Posted on July 16, 2013 by The Chop

1. The lead is a story about a fatal plane crash and you can navigate to it in “Flight Mode” Presented by GE.

flight

This is probably just an accident of their software making the most recent story show up on top, but come on… no editorial oversight at all here.

2. They pretend to be a news site and they aren’t.

politics

It pisses us off to no end when real (cable) news outlets have someone from Buzzfeed on as a panelist or whatever. Even getting on air is way more legitimacy than they deserve. There’s no actual original news reporting on that site at all.

3. Most of the articles are just cheap lists…

lists

… with completely arbitrary numbers like this post has in the title.

4. Some of those lists just play on nostalgia arbitrarily.

nostalgia

They stole this trick from Stereogum. You can pick out anything that happened in pop culture between 1988 and 2003 can make relatively young people say ‘Wow! I feel really old lol!’

5. Speaking of LOL, they use it all the time.

aolspeak

Surf the site long enough and you’ll feel like you’re in an AOL chat room.

6. They’re not afraid to resort to race-baiting to get clicks.

The VA lieutenant governor’s race is really national news? And why did it take them 3 months to post this?

7. They’re not afraid to gay-bait either.

gaybaiting

They tend to take a very progressive an pro-gay stance but it still amounts to cheap pandering.

8. The classic Buzzfeed post.

lists again

Also known as ‘Here’s a list of buzzy things we culled from the internet in the last 20 minutes. See also “I’d let Chris Brown beat me” and “Where is Baltimore anyway?”

9. Several cute animal posts publiished daily.

cute animals

Keyword ‘poodle’ and everyone who owns a poodle will retweet. See how that works?

10. Buzzfeed Ideas.

BuzzFeed Ideas

Buzzfeed has cheapened the word ideas the same way they’ve cheapened everything else. They leave the real thinkpieces to the Atlantic and Longreads though. An actual Buzzfeed idea headline is “27 Broiest Books That Bros Like To Read.” Reading, Bro.

11. Too Many .gifs.

anigif_enhanced-buzz-28149-1372710638-27 anigif_enhanced-buzz-22947-1372709993-60 anigif_enhanced-buzz-22938-1372709449-28

They actually ran these 3 .gifs next to one another in one of their dumb listicles. It’s like they’re trying to give you a seizure.

12. Way too many posts every day.

On a quick count we tallied up 51 posts in the last 24 hours, and that was on a Saturday during a holiday weekend when most other websites slow down considerably.

13. ‘Presented by’ Posts

BuzzFeed

An exciting new way to disguise advertising as content, invented by Buzzfeed itself.

14. Articles with no text.

no text

This list of fancy beach houses has no copy written for it at all. It’s almost like they even resented having to take 5 seconds to come up with a headline. Even in this lazy post making fun of Buzzfeed we’re still at least writing copy for each list item.

15. Doing the opposite of what they say.

glorifying idiots

If the world doesn’t need this meme then why are you perpetuating it on one of the country’s largest sites?

16. Some of Buzzfeed’s content isn’t Buzzfeed’s content.

partner content

Stories like this one link to external websites. Not sure why or how but they must be making a buck off it some way.

17. What the fuck is this???

artisan

Made in New York? What are you like some kind of small-batch artisanal authentically handcrafted made in the US shitty website? Are we supposed to applaud you for not hiring Indian hacks in Bangalore to make your cute puppy listicles and pop culture garbage memes? Fuck off and die with this pretentious shit.

State of the Orioles at the All Star Break

Posted on July 15, 2013 by The Chop

This past Saturday your Chop took part in the State of the Orioles Address before the game at Camden Yards against the Toronto Blue Jays. This annual event is meant as the Summer counterpart to the team’s annual Fanfest held each January, and gives season plan holders a chance to question the team’s top management directly.

General manager Dan Duquette and Buck Showalter took seats atop the third base dugout to participate in a two-man panel discussion hosted by broadcaster Jim Hunter, and spoke in general terms about the team before taking questions from the season plan holders, who altogether filled up about 3 lower box sections and two lower reserved sections with a little elbow room to spare.

Duquette and Showalter take questions from fans during batting practice.

So what is the State of the Orioles? Unlike with politics, you can’t just come out and say ‘The State of the Orioles is strong!’ and then speechify for 90 minutes. There are objective metrics in baseball. A quick look at the standings can tell you the true state of any baseball club midway through the season. As of right now the Orioles are 53-43 going into the break, which is a pace to win 89 games. That’s good, but it’s nowhere near good enough to win the AL East. They’re going to need to find about 6 more wins to take the division, and probably 3 more to snatch a wild card.

In this blogger’s opinion the club’s weaknesses are starting pitching, second base, and DH in that order. Dan Duquette Roster Roulette has been a daily occurrence, and carrying three 2nd basemen, all of whom can turn DP’s but none of whom can hit is not a recipe for success. It would be nice to have some consistency from that position and to have someone who can come off the bench to pinch hit more reliably and powerfully than Ryan Flaherty.

Nolan Reimold is also dead weight. Nate McClouth is a great player and a fan favorite and as much as we were rooting for Nolan in seasons past he never really caught on and is useless as a fourth outfielder/DH/bench player. He should be dealt to somewhere he can be put to better use for his last real shot, which is just about anywhere besides here.

A sell-out crowd lined up incredibly early for Adam Jones replica jersey day.

But that’s just our opinion. On to what was actually said:

The whole event had the feel of a very large, extended press conference. Although the season plan holders are typically among some of the most knowledgeable fans, the front office and Buck in particular have generated so much goodwill recently that there were not many hardball questions that demanded solid answers. Dan and Buck, who are both very media savvy and face tougher questions on a daily basis were free to exercise whatever flowery rhetoric they wanted without fear of a followup or clarification.

Jim Hunter seemed particularly surprised that fans weren’t chomping at the bit with questions right out of the box, but when the team is winning there’s not a lot to say. We expect if it had been MacPhail and Trembley up there the tone would have been markedly different.

Buck began by summing up the state of the club as “So far, so good” which is tough to disagree with. Duquette talked a bit about an organizational goal being to have “deep depth” at all levels of the minors, to which Buck agreed and stressed that it doesn’t matter where a player was drafted or at what level he’s playing, anyone who performs well is likely to be promoted.

Which led into the first direct question about the possibility of seeing Cuban defector Henry Urrutia called up from AAA Norfolk. Both indicated that they were watching him very closely, to the point where they could cite his stats from the top of their heads, and Duquette came around to saying that he’d be playing in the futures game and after that ‘we’ll see.’ It was our impression that he’ll be in the major league lineup sometime in August, although that wasn’t stated directly.

At this point some jackass said ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you need a pitcher’ and went on to ask if Angelos would ‘open the purse strings’ during a pennant race. Duquette replied that Mr. Angelos is very cooperative when approached about possible trades and acquisitions, and Buck let the guy have it a little bit pointing out that the club had ‘opened the purse strings’ and re-signed Adam Jones, JJ Hardy, Nick Markakis and Chris Davis. “I don’t spend a lot of time coveting other people’s players.” Buck Said, “I like our guys.”

Not letting it go at that, Duquette did make the point that the Orioles have the depth for a trade and will be active at the trading deadline if they deem it necessary.

The rest of the questions making up the 30 minute event were a bit more general, with Dan saying things like “They don’t show up every day to play, they show up expecting to win.”

Buck praised the city of Baltimore repeatedly, and often made the point that he likes knowing about something that other people, outsiders, may not understand or know about. He described it as an honest city and a blue-collar town and said that there’s a ‘purity’ here which if other people don’t understand it’s their loss.

The scene ended on a light and upbeat note with a question about Chris Davis competing in the Home Run Derby, which led Buck to praise Davis and talk about kind of player he is and conclude by saying “I’m proud of Chris. He represents the organization and I hope he hits it 700 feet.”

Modern Girls Record Release @ Windup Space Tonight

Posted on July 12, 2013 by The Chop

Back in May we did a post about new music in Baltimore featuring some of the more interesting bands putting out recordings in town right now. One of the bands we featured in it was Modern Girls, a down-tempo indie/electronic act who impressed us quite a bit when we found their Bandcamp site.

Today Modern Girls’ keyboard player Micah Huerta joins the Chop for a brief interview to let us know a little more about the band, who release their debut self-titled LP tonight with a show at the Windup Space. Us and Us Only and Infinite Honey round out the bill.

Modern Girls’ debut LP will be available on white vinyl for the first time at the Windup Space tonight.

1. Hey Micah, thanks for taking the time to talk to the Chop. Why don’t we start by telling us who you are and how you came to form a band.

When we play live the lineup is Micah Huerta- Keys, Eric Bloodsworth- guitar & vocals and David Rosario- drums & vocals. However when recording, everybody does a little bit of everything. No one really has a set role.

Originally I met Eric while I was recording his old band, Park Police in 2008. A few months later, we ended up playing in a band called The Red Vines together, and as the project was taking a break we talked about starting our own project that included electronic instruments. We shared demos of stuff that we each had been working on, then collaborated and wrote a few songs together. We have been writing together ever since.

Tonight’s record release show is actually your first live appearance as Modern Girls. Isn’t that a bit of an unusual way to go about things?

Yeah it is a bit unusual. In a way recording the album kind of saved the project. When we first got together we were also working with Billy Tiedeken from Among Wolves and trying to go the more traditional route of writing songs together that we could play as a band. We had some success, but overall is was a bit frustrating because we were still learning how to deal with our equipment. We were 3 musicians who had only played ‘organic’ instruments in the past. I think in a way we lost a lot of steam at times dealing w/ MIDI issues and shit like that, and so the project just kind of wavered.

Around about that time Billy got married, had a kid, and Among Wolves was really busy and so it kind of evolved into Eric and I hanging out and working on our demos. At some point we just made a decision to make a record, because it was a way to keep things moving forward. It wasn’t until we had sent the record for pressing that we realized we then needed to figure out how to play a live show. We then put an ad on Craigslist looking for a third member and got really lucky that the first guy we met turned out to be our drummer, David Rosario who we gelled with right away. David was playing in a hardcore band but looking to start his own electronic project, so it was a perfect fit.

When we first heard the record, it came off a lot more polished and conceptual than most indie debuts; like something that was put together deliberately and there must have been a lot of stuff that didn’t make the cut. Can you tell us a little about the process of putting the record together?

When we first started working on the record we had about 4 or 5 complete songs and a ton of partial songs and bits and pieces. The first thing we did was go through all that material and determine what we could finish, and along the way we wrote a few more songs that just kind of ‘happened’. But a lot of material got left behind. Who knows, maybe we’ll use it down the road?

Once we felt we had the right songs for the record, Eric and I re-recorded most of the material and then spent a couple months mixing in my home studio. I know that seems like a long time, but we also enjoy a good meal and good wine, so some of our sessions got started a little late.

What bands or musicians would you say have had the heaviest influence on this band, and to whom would you compare the Modern Girls sound?

Our music taste is all over the place, but with respect to Modern Girls, what seems to surface the most is 70’s psychedelic, 80’s alternative and 90’s hip hop. I know that’s covers a lot of ground but this is what we grew up listening to. People seem to associate us with the whole chillwave thing. We’ve also gotten the comparison to New Order and Air.

Modern Girls is kind of unique in that you make electronic pop music, but it’s decidedly not geared toward dancing. Care to comment?

It’s funny you mention this because when we first started the project our idea was to do a disco punk kind of thing, similar to LCD Soundsystem or Hot Chip. As we started writing music and sharing ideas though, the stuff we seemed to gravitate to just happened to be the slower, more psychedelic stuff. We do like music that is danceable and we’re not ruling out more uptempo material in the future. In general it’s always been our opinion that we should just write music as it comes, rather than to try and make it fit into a certain genre. I think that also comes through on the record.

Now that the record is out and the first show will be out of the way tonight, what’s on the horizon for the next 6-12 months?

For the near future we’re looking to play more live shows, mostly around the area. No plans to tour anytime soon, but if the opportunity arises we certainly will consider shows outside of the area.

We have a handful of strong songs left over from the first record, and have started the beginnings of several more since so we should be able to get another full length out in the next year or so. Not sure we have a theme or direction yet. Just want it to sound great.