Sprkus

After a month of being M.I.A., Baumann returned Saturday night in full force.

Following the Ohio State vs. Michigan State game Saturday, Meghan and Ryan stopped by with plans of going out to a bar. A few minutes later, Van Culin stopped in with his friend Iker. But Baumann’s arrival trumped them all.

Baumann always shows up with a large amount of party favors, whether it be liquor or peanuts — a fact for which I give him props. But you know it’s gonna be a special evening when he shows up with three plastic bags full of stuff and announces, “I’ve got some chops!”

Right away the tornado that is chef Baumann hit the kitchen and started whipping up his masterpiece.

The rest of the crowd had pretty much decided on hitting the Dub Pub and were anticipating a departure just minutes away.

Me: “Um, Baumann, what … what are you doing?”

Baumann: “I’m making these chops!” (slaps his own belly)

Me: “How long’s that gonna take?”

Baumann: “Three hours. I’m gonna slow cook ‘em. Once I get them into your oven, we can go to the bar. Where’s your skillet?”

A half hour later, after I had convinced Tiffany I had the situation under control and finished following Baumann around the kitchen wiping up each flung piece of food that sprayed over every imaginable surface, I called a cab.

German Village Taxi never showed. So I tried 444-4444 just to be told they weren’t anywhere close to being able to send a cab out to us. The 777-7777 dispatcher told us they would come out but the guy was a real dick. The cab companies act like your a complete pain in the ass if you ever ask them how long the cab will take. Like you’re not supposed to have any kind of scheduled agenda. German Village Taxi’s always nice about it, but Upper Arlington is apparently out of their pickup range. They won’t tell you that though. Instead, they’ll tell you it will be 10 minutes, and when 30 roll by and you call them back, they act like they’re just now getting around to sending a cab to you. Maybe this is why people that move out to the burbs completely stop going out.

After toying with the idea of going to the Ci’ao bar, then thinking better of the idea, we just stayed in.

Before you knew it, the Baumann Special was done:

It actually tasted a lot better than it looked in that photo. An hour later, Baumann was in rare form:

* Video removed at Baumann’s request *

Or perhaps that’s not rare form, actually.

Collapsed on a lawn chair demanding ice cream and yelling “I’m an amoeba,” however I think is somewhat rare for him. The video’s dark because it was dark outside, but you can get the idea:

[flv]http://www.sprkus.com/video/baumannamoeba.flv[/flv]