Falcons on the Floor Reading and Release party @ Metro Gallery Tonight

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Attention: this post is for all of you internet people who claim to love books so much. It’s for all of you who wrung your hands about the discontinuation of printed encyclopedias and incessantly re-post that John Waters quote about not fucking people who don’t own books. It’s for those among you who belong to book clubs that are really more like wine-and-gossip clubs and those who cluck-cluck at everything on Oprah’s reading list.

It’s time to put up or shut up. There is a book release party at the Metro Gallery tonight and you need to go to it.

image of the cover of Falcons on the Floor

Author Justin Sirois reads from his new novel at the Metro Gallery tonight. 8 pm.

Justin Sirois loves books too. In fact, he loves them so much he’s even written a few of them. His new novel Falcons on the Floor will be officially released by Publishing Genius on April 3, but you can score your copy early at tonight’s reading and get yourself a nice inscription on the inside cover.

Justin’s been a fixture in Baltimore’s too-small literary scene for more than 10 years now, and we can personally recall him being at the forefront of the Iraq War protests locally during the days leading up to the invasion. That early dedication to the cause of peace manifested itself not just in demonstrations and appearances at readings around town, but later led to the founding of the Understanding Campaign, which has been encouraging international dialogue since 2007.

The war may now be over, but the work goes on. While many of us here at home are fatigued by even the mere idea of Iraq and want nothing more than to forget the Bush years entirely, Iraq is not going away, and will remain inextricably woven into our own national fabric for at least another generation, perhaps longer.

With that in mind it’s important to understand how this war has affected the people who lived through it. Now that it’s over, we may have a better opportunity to look at this war from an angle other than the ones presented by the embedded reporters and hero-worshiping politicians. Written in conjunction with Iraqi refugee Haneen Alshujairy, Falcons on the Floor presents coalition forces as the invaders that they were, as seen through the eyes of main characters Salim and Khalil, who flee their homes on the eve of the battle of Fallujah.

That’s not to say that the book is politically provocative, or even ‘political’ in any sense that we understand that word. This is, after all, a novel, and a piece of fine art. Such a work of art serves to present the complexities and emotions of war in a way that mere reportage and analysis will never be able to do.

If, by the end of page 300, you feel the book is saying that the war was a horrid and inhumane tragedy, it’s not Sirois saying so, it’s the War itself talking.

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Tonight’s release party begins at 8 pm and will also feature Alphonso Lingus and Ed Steck. Admission is free. The Metro Gallery is located at 1700 N. Charles Street in Station North.

Shakshouka!

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We don’t often blog about food. Even though the Chop is actually a very good cook, it’s just not something we enjoy talking about too much, let alone reading about and writing about online. But in Israel recently we discovered Shakshouka, which is just too incredibly life-changing not to share on the blog.

We’re already on the record as being very much in favor of brunch, but we had to go halfway around the world to finally track down the perfect brunch dish. Now that we’ve found it though, we fully intend to start making it here at the Chophouse just about every weekend, as well as telling any local chefs who will listen that they need to add shakshouka to their brunch menus immediately!

Shakshouka with feta in a skillet

Basically, it is what it looks like in the picture: eggs poached in tomato sauce and served in a skillet with bread on the side. That may not sound particularly life-changing at first blush, but again we say look at the picture. How do you not want to eat that? You’re probably drooling all over your keyboard right now.

Virtually unheard of here at home, shakshouka is ubiquitous throughout Israel, and with good reason. While we typically associate eggs and toast with breakfast, this dish also combines the savory and sometimes spicy sauce with cheeses and vegetables that are typically served in lunch and dinner entrees which not only makes it the perfect solution for brunch, but allows the Israelis to enjoy it all day and all night.

One of the chief virtues of this incredible dish is the variety of ways it can be prepared. Most cafe menus boast at least three or four different versions, often including stuff like eggplant, peppers, olives, mushrooms, onions, and a variety of cheeses. They also feature several choices of bread, meaning that there are literally thousands of ways to prepare shakshouka. If you’re cooking at home, you’ve never got to eat the same one twice.

Also good news for the home cook: this dish is almost impossible to screw up too badly. As long as you don’t absolutely burn the hell out of it, it will turn out delicious every time.

There are many, many recipes you can Google, but don’t be thrown off: most of them call for cooking down tomatoes and peppers from scratch, but that’s mostly because food bloggers are a precious and persnickety sort of people who like to show off. You can just get the chunkiest jar of pasta sauce you can find and use that, which is a big selling point on a hungover Sunday morning… you heat the sauce in the skillet and put in the eggs and pop the whole thing in the oven with some bread for a few minutes. What could be easier than that? While it cooks, you can even pour yourself one of our favorite brunch cocktails. L’Chaim!

The Couch Chronicles, Volume I

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So, when a man travels all over the world to exotic locales and the holiest sites in Creation, you would think he’d have a lot on his mind; history, philosophy, anthropology, war and peace. There’s so much out there to see and experience- lives, cultures, civilizations… it’s truly overwhelming.

That is to say, it can be overwhelming if you bother to think about any of it, and for most of this trip, we didn’t. We spent the bulk of the last four months thinking about furniture.

We started this blog just a few weeks after we bought the Chophouse, and since then we’ve thought a lot about furniture. When we moved in here, we had practically nothing. The few old pieces we did bring with us were in urgent need of replacement. We’ve gone through several cycles of going abroad to work, saving up money, and coming home to blow a few grand on furnishing a room. Rinse. Repeat.

su Casa Furniture

A visual approximation of how our living room will look. Except, you know, a little more modest.

Although we’ve only touched on home decor in a few posts in the past, furnishing our house has been an ongoing obsession with us. We’ve never blogged much about it, partly because we weren’t sure if people really find it interesting, and partly because it seems a little too show-offy to put up a bunch of pictures of your dining room saying “Oooohhh. Look at all this nice stuff I bought. Pat me on the back for my wonderful interior design skills now!” So we’ve refrained from that. Even though It’s been tempting. Even though our little Chophouse is coming along quite nicely.

All that changes now though. Today marks the first installment of the Couch Chronicles, our new weekly series in which we’ll document in detail the transformation of our living room space from a completely bare and unused room into the modern, cozy, heart of the house. We’re going to talk in detail about pulling together aesthetic elements, honoring our location and lifestyle, and choosing and purchasing actual furniture and decor pieces and fitting them all together into a cohesively designed living space.

There’s one more big piece of news to go along with all this: We’re excited to announce that we’ve been chosen to participate in Su Casa Furniture’s Test It, Blog It, Win It contest.

Here’s the deal- they picked a handful of local bloggers who each get to choose and take home a piece of furniture to keep for a month. You blog about your furniture, and if you write real good and all, you win and get to keep it for free. Here’s the part that’s really interesting: even if we don’t win we get to buy a couch for 50% off the retail price, (!!!) as well as receiving a discount on additional items, which we may also win. So even if we lose, we win.

It’s almost as if they designed this contest specifically for the Chop. The timing couldn’t be better, either. The winner is set to be announced July 1, which is right around the time we ought to be just putting the finishing touches on our new living room. Check back with us here every Saturday, and we’ll let you know how it’s coming along.

Roomrunner, Chain and the Gang @ Floristree Tonight

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One of the disadvantages of leaving the country for months at a time is that you miss out on what’s going on here at home. Since we left in November, one of the major things that went on here in Charm City was Roomrunner’s instant ascent to the upper echelon of Baltimore bands. Roomrunner was just about to hit in the last months of 2011, and now that 2012 is here they’ve hit in a big way.

It makes a lot of sense- this is the right band at the right time. Music in general right now is going through a period of being a mind-numbing, soul-fucking nostalgic wankfest. If you were in a band in the 90’s that anybody ever heard of, you can pretty much write your own ticket in 2012 to tour the country and cash in. Even the Refused are headlining festivals and getting rich, and The Refused are a terrible band!

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Unfortunately, the few bands who dare to be current and actually do something new in this day and age are usually described with adjectives like dream, ambient, hazy, ethereal, etc. When people say those words, all we hear is: boring, dull, vapid, self-indulgent. Enough with the dreamy dreams, kids… this is rock and roll.

One of Roomrunner’s great strengths is that they are a young band. They’re vital. They’re happening right now. They’re too young to really get bogged down in the muck of the bands of Christmas past. At the same time, they’re not too young. Old enough to have graduated from successful bands like Double Dagger and Yukon, Their debut cassette out on Fan Death Records sounds more like a band that’s hit mid-career stride than one that’s been around for a couple of months.

Roomrunner alone is worth showing up to Floristree tonight, so you should consider the chance to see Chain and the Gang a bonus. We’ve got nothing but good things to say about Ian Svenonius. As somebody who actually was in a classic punk band from the 90’s, Spiv could be out there headlining mid-level festivals and re-working the same old shtick for base monetary gain. Instead he’s come up with some completely new shtick, and he’s done it just for the fun of it. Chain and the Gang sounds great, and of course, completely unique.

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Floristree is at 405 W. Franklin Street downtown. The Creepers, Sterling Sisters, and Work Clothes also play.

We Are Gone: New Works by Jeremy Crawford Opens Tonight @ Metro Gallery

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Whenever some local publication has one of those “Baltimore’s Best Bartender” contests, we always nominate and vote for Jeremy Crawford. A fixture at the Club Charles for years, Jeremy has never been anything but kind, patient and understanding when he’s working at Club Chuck. He’s one of the people that makes a hometown feel like home.

As great as he is behind the bar though, it’s not what he does best. He’s also one of the city’s most talented visual artists, with a new series of work opening tonight at the Metro Gallery.

jeremy crawford self portrait

A Crawford self-portrait from 2008.

Tonight’s opening reception runs from 6-10 pm and features live music from Raili Haimila of Lo Moda and Mike Furniere of Sri Aurobindo. Here’s a description from the Metro Gallery site:

Jeremy Crawford’s paintings have always explored the boundaries of representation, but many of the paintings in “We Are Gone” started without even a clear definition of who the subject was. As each work developed, the characters began to develop a personality and became someone that was familiar to the artist. The same idiosyncrasies that we dredge up when trying to recall someone’s face emerged in the paintings, and led the artist to the identity of his subjects. Some of the paintings are based on people, others are rooted in abstract concepts, such as death or love. Crawford believes all loan deeper insight into the way we perceive identity.

As an aside, we also want to mention tonight’s show at the Talking Head featuring Holy Tongues, Bad Biology, At the Heart of the World, and the debut of Old Lines. It’s an outstanding bill, and it’s all to benefit Moveable Feast’s Ride for the Feast. Doors for that show are at 8 pm.