Barrelhouse

Movin on Up....

2008-10-22T14:21:00.005-04:00

We moved!As of October 22, 2008, all the bloggy jibber jabber is officially going down on our site, www.barrelhousemag.com, which you can get to by clicking here. You'll find the same random discussions of television, books, movies, commercials, snack foods, literature, and Barrelhousey news, all incorporated into the Barrelhouse site proper. Get on over there and check it out (scroll down to see

In Which Family Guy Craps the Bed Bigtime

2008-10-20T10:09:00.007-04:00

Color me confused by last night's episode of Family Guy. The plot revolves around Stewie's time machine and his and Brian's attempt to find Mort Goldman, who had inadvertently stepped into the machine, thinking it was a bathroom. Well...the machine takes all parties to Poland on the eve of World War II. Stewie and Brian find Mort at his grandmother's Jewish wedding. Then the Nazis attack,

Brilliant political calculation or desperate Hail Mary?

2008-10-19T17:28:00.003-04:00

I wonder what the rest of you folks think about Sarah Palin's appearance last night on SNL? If you haven't seen it -- I realize that some of you, unlike me, have actual lives -- I would imagine it's easy enough to locate on the interwebs.I imagine the idea behind her appearance was the same idea behind just about any politician's appearance: make herself appear more human via some gentle

This Week in St. Mary's Today

2008-10-17T15:44:00.006-04:00

St. Mary's Today is Southern Maryland's News Weekly. The citizens of Southern Maryland face many problems, particularly too much government, too many minorities, and an abundance of vague, misleading headlines, such as my personal favorite: Man Dead Due To SpeedIf you, dear reader, guessed that the aforementioned man throttled his car off a country road and bit the farm, then you may be from

Our Special Friends

2008-10-17T11:24:00.005-04:00

Barrelhouse board member Thisbe Nissen has a story featured in this year’s Best American Mystery Stories, editied by DC’s own George Pelecanos.Issue 1 poetry contributor Bradford Tice has a story in Best American Short Stories 2008, edited by Salman Rushdie.Regular Growler contributor Stephanie Anderson has launched Projective Industries to produce chapbooks that are beautiful in both design and

Mike's Adventures in Sitcomland: Day Four

2008-10-17T11:15:00.002-04:00

When people speculate about the downfall of America, it's usually our failing financial markets, our military over-extensions, maybe some sort of Apocalyptic religious war. But no one ever seems concerned about the state of American pop culture.I bring this up because NBC's Kath & Kim is, apparently, a remake of a popular Australian sitcom, another in what's becoming a fairly long line of

Mike's Adventures in Sitcomland: Day Three

2008-10-16T14:46:00.003-04:00

I came to Gary Unmarried with, yes, a fair amount of skepticism, but also with a small shimmering globule of hope. Like Gary, I'm unmarried (though, unlike Gary, I'm not unmarried due to divorce), and I'm also still grasping onto the possibly unjustified belief that Jay Mohr -- frequently criticized for his work in ... well, pretty much everything he's ever done -- actually has within him the

Mike's Adventures in Sitcomland: Day Two

2008-10-15T19:35:00.002-04:00

Here's a pretty good indication of the sitcom's current status in the universe of American television: there are no prime-time sitcoms on Tuesday nights. None. This isn't a baseball/debate abnormality, either, since the Phils had the day off and the two presidential candidates don't square off until tonight (Wednesday). Even when I expanded the search to include basic cable, the only sitcom I

Introducing the Carolina Chocolate Drops!

2008-10-15T15:00:00.007-04:00

Visited my buddy in Nashville this past weekend, and got to see some great live music, including the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who are revitalizing traditional African American string band music, which was very popular in the pre-World War II era, but is now incorrectly perceived as the sole domain of white mountain folk from the South. The CCDs spiced up their already impressive show with a

Mike's Adventures in Sitcomland: Day One

2008-10-14T15:11:00.003-04:00

What can I say: I'm a sucker for idiotic projects. So this week, in part to retain some semblance of sanity while fighting off both a flu and a giant stack of student papers, I've decided to, each evening, tune into one new (to me) sitcom, and report back to all those loyal readers in Barrelhouseland about what I find.Up front, let me just say I'm not optimistic. It's not a great time for the

If I Had Enough Money...

2008-10-13T14:01:00.003-04:00

I would buy all of the ad time on Fox News and just show this video over and over and over:I recently saw a clip where 80+% of Fox News viewers thought McCain won the last debate. That's an astonishing number, and a dangerous one, but not because their viewers skew conservative. I'd feel just as strongly that it was worrisome if a channel had a viewership that felt the opposite. When a group

More Contributors Make Good

2008-10-13T11:42:00.002-04:00

Tilt has just announced its forthcoming chapbooks and the list includes two Barrelhouse contributors: Issue Three contributor Jeanpaul Ferro and Issue Four contributor Sarah Sloat. More info as it becomes available.Issue Three Illustrated Story artist Warren Craghead has a new free book out—Seed Toss, Rough Cut —available from his website. Warren did an amazing job adapting "Only Child" by Erin

Three Great Tastes That Taste Great Together (Kistulentz, Livingston, and David Lee Roth)

2008-10-13T09:47:00.004-04:00

Barrelhouse contributor (and owner of the dingy living room in which Barrelhouse was more or less conceived) Steve Kistulentz is the featured poet this week over at No Tell Motel, owned and operated by Barrelhouse buddy Reb Livingston. The title of today's poem -- which will also appear in 2008's Best New Poets -- pretty much says it all: The David Lee Roth Fuck Poem with Language Taken from Van

YouTube Famous

2008-10-10T18:40:00.002-04:00

Colby Hartburg has produced this nice little segment on the Barrelhouse Issue 7 release party and the Pink Line Project starring our own Aaron Pease as the Man with the Mustache and Barrelhouse board member Philippa Hughes as Skates with cameos by the DC Rollergirls as The Gang and Cory Oberndorfer as The Cat.Okay. I made up those names, but Cory does get billed as the man, the myth, the

This is absolutely the last goddamned time

2008-10-09T19:16:00.003-04:00

Look, I know I've been saying for weeks now that I'm going to stop watching 90210: The New Class, then each week here I am, once again, not only watching the show but sharing my thoughts on the show with the world (or at least the very limited part of the world that reads this blog). But this time I mean it! No mas! I've got a pile of books to read, I've got old episodes of The Wire on DVD, I've

Craigslist, one again, proves to be a treasure trove of ridiculousness

2008-10-09T18:17:00.003-04:00

Question: if you hire someone to write the 'about me' section of your online personal ad, doesn't that kind of undermine the very point of having an 'about me' section in your online personal ad?

Wolverines!

2008-10-09T10:45:00.002-04:00

As many of you know, the Barrelhouse Standard interview question is "What's your favorite Patrick Swayze movie?" Personally, I'm a Road House man, myself. To me, that's the template of The Patrick Swayze Movie. However, I do recognize that one of the "right" answers (there are, hmmmmm, up to four; maybe five) is certainly Red Dawn. It's got everything you might be looking for in a Patrick Swayze

Quantum of Solace

2008-10-08T14:19:00.005-04:00

A bizarre name for a movie...and a blockbuster Bond movie, to boot. It is only surpassed by "The Rural Juror" in hard-to-pronounce-itudeBut...It's growing on me. The "rebirth" of the Bond movie is to the rebirth of the Batman franchise as a tricked out Toyota Supra is to a Lamborghini. Batman Begins and the Dark Knight brought an element of realism, as well as a well-crafted story* and

The Larger SNL Issue: An Open Challenge to Lorne Michaels

2008-10-07T16:32:00.007-04:00

Aaron's post on SNL's missing content raises for me a more interesting question: when is NBC going to put this show out of its misery. My open question to Team Barrelhouse: do any of you (at least those of you who are younger than say Housley or me) have any idea who Lawrence Welk was? I didn't think so. Unless you were really high and your local PBS station was running a repeat and the remote

SNL Controversy

2008-10-07T13:17:00.002-04:00

Hulu.com and NBC.com and probably YouTube by now have pulled a skit from last Saturday's show that satirized Democratic leaders, such as Barney Frank, who fought efforts to more closely regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the collapse of which has played a huge role in the current financial mess we are in. (Frank's partner was an executive at Fannie Mae who pushed for relaxed restrictions on

Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em

2008-10-07T11:17:00.004-04:00

As a fan of Adam Corolla, I watched The Hammer the other day, a film he co-wrote and starred in about a 40 year old boxer competing in the Olympic Trials. This small movie, whose only ambition is to go straight to DVD, is basically a Rocky knock-off with about 10 scenes set aside for a mixed bag of Corolla riffing on driving too slow, the La Brea tar pits as a date destination, etc., and

A Day Late, and Many Dollars Short

2008-10-06T19:13:00.003-04:00

I'm a bit behind on my 90210: The New Class blogging duties, as sometimes life gets in the way of my vapid-pop-culture consumption. I apologize; it won't happen again. As you may recall from last week's 90210, The Black (easily the most likable character on the show) made out with Silver Silver (the show's second most likable character). Also, the other people did some stuff I've already

Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals

2008-10-05T12:43:00.002-04:00

Meet Me in St. Louis (or don't, actually)

2008-10-02T14:39:00.002-04:00

Apparently there's some kind of debate this evening, between Joe "Mad Dog" Biden and Sarah "Lipstick'd Dog" Palin. Conventional wisdom is that Biden can't be too mean, or else people might feel bad for Palin, while Palin needs to somehow not be a moron. Of course the whole thing's already biased against Alaska's wolf-shootingest governor, since the moderator apparently wrote some book about black

This is exactly what's wrong with the Internet

2008-10-02T00:06:00.003-04:00

On the one hand, the Internet gives everyone a voice. On the other hand, the Internet gives everyone a voice. Like whoever wrote this little bit of hate mail to a conservative blogger who dared question Sarah Palin's readiness to serve:"Your article sounds more like a female on the rug. You don’t do yourself credit for the lousy journalism you displayed in your article. The article filled with so

Irony, Post-irony, or am I Just Thinking Too Much?

2008-09-30T15:14:00.004-04:00

One of the strange things about being a 40 year old guy living in a college town is that you feel alternately younger (there's a lot of young people around, a lot of things that cater to young drunk people, like bars, pizza joints, wing joints, taxis, tailgating, bands, bars, etc), and really old and out of touch (like, there's a lot of young people here). One of the things that falls into that

The Open Memo to Senator Obama

2008-09-30T14:24:00.004-04:00

If any of Team Barrelhouse happens to have David Plouffe's email address (that's Obama's campaign manager for those of you playing the home game), please dear God ask him to watch this video. Complexity is a good thing. America needs more than 10-word answers. I am one of hundreds of thousands of Americans who is literally begging to be inspired, to feel as if--at the very least--my government is

There IS a God!!

2008-09-29T16:16:00.004-04:00

In this age of rampant skepticism and hatred of all things religious, I submit to you that I have SEEN the LIGHT. I am a NEW man. I am SANCTIFIED, for this here is a religion I can go down on...I mean get down with: State attorneys say John LaVoie should be forever barred from the massage business because he ran a house of prostitution camouflaged as a church. But in his latest court argument,

State of the Union

2008-09-29T13:41:00.003-04:00

Barrelhouse Issue 5 contributor Terrance Hayes will be reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library tonight as part of State of the Union: 50 Political Poems, a new anthology from our friends over at Wave. Nick Flynn, Terrance Hayes, Eileen Myles, and Edwin Torres read their contributions to the collection along with the works of other poets. Conversation moderated by Matthew Zapruder, poet and Wave

A Tale of Two Chaps

2008-09-27T11:32:00.005-04:00