The Barryfest Chronicles

I think that you can tell a lot about a city by the way it rings in the New Year.  Minneapolis, for example, is a fun enough time but not really anything to write home about.  Chicago, on the other hand, offers plenty to do but your options can be limited by the bitter cold winters and spotty public transportation system.  And then there is New York, which is more or less a crowded, expensive theme park.

While especially apparent on the last day of the year, I think the statements above hold true for their respective cities at all times.  So, after getting intimately familiar with New Orleans over the past 12 months, I cut my holiday family time short to make sure I could test my “New Year’s Eve as a microcosm” theory down in the Big Easy.

Now, New Year’s Eve is nothing if it is not another excuse for revelry.  And when it comes to revelry, if you give New Orleans an inch, in one magnificent swoop she will take a mile, your favorite watch and every clean pair of tube socks you’ve got in your top drawer.  Luckily, she will return them before you know they are even gone.  New Orleans is sneaky like that. Read the rest of this entry »

Good luck finding The Rusty Nail on your first attempt.  Seriously.  This place is less than a five minutes from my apartment and it took me at least ten tries over my first six months down here before I successfully made it there when I actually looking for it, as opposed to the few times I did actually stumble upon it during daylight hours when I was still learning how to navigate the narrow, pothole-littered streets of the Warehouse District and subsequently forgot it’s location by the next evening when I was looking to check out it’s capacity for partying.

It is literally located on the wrong side of a dead end street that is hidden under an overpass.  Its signage faces the opposite direction traffic would travel if the one way block on which it sits was not closed for road construction (which it has been at least as long as I’ve lived in New Orleans). Read the rest of this entry »

I used to subscribe to a pretty antiquated school of thought when it came to the common practice of untagging yourself in pictures that show up on Facebook.  If you got caught from an unflattering angle or in one of those drunken “one big eye, one small eye” smiles that very few of us can pull off, I was cool with knocking yourself out of the caption.  I mean, no one should have to deal with the pitfalls of amateur photography.  But I was patently against people untagging their mug solely because the picture showed them engaged in behavior that they, under sober examination the next morning, found embarrassing or incriminating.

Untag all you want, I reasoned, but that shit still happened.  Just because there is no longer a blue box around your head in the shot of you cavorting with a group of ladies of ill repute – one hand holding a 32 oz plastic cup that says “Big Ass Beers,” the other throwing up “the shocker” – doesn’t erase that episode from the annals of history.  And just because there are no pictures of you smoking heaters directly above a link to your full profile doesn’t change the fact that your efforts to cut back on tobacco after college were flushed down the shitter once you got to the international waters of New Orleans.  You can hide your flaws and missteps from all your friends and networks, but you can never hide them from yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

You can count on the holiday season for many things, most of them welcome traditions that involve seeing friends and family and eating like one of Method Man’s torture victims.  But in this day and age, the last few months of the year wouldn’t be complete without a few people you may only be auxiliarly acquainted with wishing you well via a text message that was very likely sent to dozens, if not hundreds, of other people.

Don’t get me wrong folks, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to tap some generic season’s greeting into your cell phone and send it to every number you have stored in your address book.  I mean, if you are still banging that out on a 10-key, you could have spent 15, hell, 20 seconds assembling such moving prose and disseminating it to anyone you have made contact with since you first got wireless service.

Of course, with one of those newfangled smart phones that most people are carrying around these days, messages like these practically write themselves.  Couple that with the growing popularity of all-inclusive service plans that usually include unlimited text messaging, and the barrier to entry on this type of communication is at an all time low.  So, while more common around major holidays and playoff victories by your hometown team, I am suspicious that mass text messages are becoming more and more prevalent. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Sarah,

It wasn’t too long ago I declared war on you and the types of people that subscribe to your irritating brand of anti-intellectual populism.  See, after your reprehensible campaign antics spiked the enthusiasm already cursing through my veins with a toxic dose of vitriol, I went from simply supporting Barack Obama and his message of change to promising not to let any misinformed comment made by your uneducated, bigoted, racist followers go unchecked, regardless of the context or situation.  I was angry, and I was letting everyone know it.

But not only was I locking political horns with every Republican I could find, I also started flying off the handle in unrelated situations.  I was yelling at my neighbors when they asked me to turn down the Chromeo, and shattering empty High Life bottles on the sidewalk outside of Pat Fannie’s because they don’t allow indoor heaters.  You got me riled up, Sarah.  And my aggression was unfortunately extending beyond mere political discourse.

This type of militant liberalism and general douchebaggery was exhausting, for sure.  But ever since that Tuesday night when staffers banned you from the podium as John McCain was graciously conceding defeat in the presidential election, my blood has calmed. Read the rest of this entry »

“That was the sweetest, but also the saltiest, victory ever.” -Kenny

Another season of RW/RR Challenge is in the record books, and I don’t know about you, but I have this bizarre urge to quit smoking and join the Army.  And although I find the “Sunny Side of truth” and “Army Strong” ads equally asinine, I have to admit that the media buyers vying for MTV airtime have got the viewing demographic at least half right.  But how effective can even a well placed anti-smoking campaign really be when, right after the corny PSAs air, they cut back to a bunch of hip young derelicts looking cool as they grill heaters while getting shitfaced on a beach?

And I have to think that the mere presence of Dan on this challenge has the bean counters in the US Army marketing department wincing each time the camera shifts to him during an episode.  All the money they are spending to underwrite the production of the show and buy ad time during the commercial breaks can’t change the fact that the one member of the cast who is a actual veteran of the Armed Forces has shown himself to be nothing more than an alcoholic with a notable track record of violent mood swings and piss-poor performance when he gets the chance to win a key.  I sincerely appreciate his valiant service in the defense of our country, but I haven’t quite figured out what “core Army characteristic” is exemplified by getting into an absurd argument and then passing out in a drunken stupor every night for a solid month. Read the rest of this entry »

“Let the girls braid the hair, let the boys tie the knots.” – Paula

I had a really hard time picking which quote I wanted to feature as the header to this particular post, as this was without a doubt the most entertaining episode to date.  Not only was the entire hour peppered with some of the greatest dialog I have ever heard on an MTV program, but starting around the 0:23 mark, there was about four or five minutes of solid gold.

This huge concentration of hilarious material took place as the remaining cast members started putting some heavy work into the building of the two boats.  And, as could be expected, Robin’s paranoia, Johnny’s megalomania, Kenny’s ironic detachment, Dunbar’s inferiority complex, Ev’s slowburning rage, Derrick’s valiant struggle with verb tenses and the plural form, Colie’s desperation, and Paula’s opportunism came to a head in one of the most satisfying programming segments MTV has broadcast since Krist Novoselic wielded a squeeze box during Nirvana’s Unplugged rendition of “Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been a pretty big Girl Talk fan since this girl I knew in Minneapolis pulled a copy of Night Ripper out of her purse at a dinner party and handed it to me.  She claimed that her discovery of Girl Talk about 6 months prior to our encounter had changed her life, and as such she always carried around a few burned copies of his latest CD just in case she sensed an opening during a conversation that she could use as a springboard to spread the Gospel According to Greg Gillis.  She was something of a Girl Talk missionary, you could say.

On Friday night I caught his show at the House of Blues in the French Quarter.  It was great.  Much like at a Rebirth Brass Band show, words (and even pictures, really) do no justice, so here is some footage:

“I gotta play my game.  I gotta play smart.  I gotta play ‘what’s gonna get me on that boat with a couple of dudes… who know how to tie some rope together… with a couple bamboos?’”  -Derrick

I may have said earlier that most of the people on these shows seemed locked in time, but – as with any rule – there are going to be some exceptions.  The most obvious (and heartwarming) exception to this rule I have found is Key West’s Paula.

Does anyone else remember how she spent her time in the Keys?  In case you forgot, here is a recap:  When she wasn’t refusing to eat and having panic attacks after a long night of drinking, she was picking all the scabs off her arms and legs.  She was bulimic, anorexic, addicted to diet pills… exhibiting all the classic symptoms of being absolutely batshit crazy.

And sure, it was easy at first to maybe think that her psychosis could have been the product of creative and malicious editing on the part of the producers.  But then shortly after her season of The Real World aired, she was arrested for domestic violence in the actual world. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Elizabeth,

I know there are a lot of reasons people choose their particular political affiliation.  Each party and candidate has to take a stance on a variety of issues, and I realize that different issues resonate differently with different people.  Some people vote based on their economic situation, others look to their views about foreign war, and some actually rely solely on their religious views.

Sure, it would make far more sense for voters to weigh the relative importance of all a candidate’s positions in regard to the current challenges facing our nation and make an informed decision based on all factors, but I get what an unrealistic prospect this is.  And I’m really okay with that, as long as people are truthful about their intentions.

If you are most concerned with protecting your wealth, just admit that you don’t want to cast a vote that will take money out of your pocket.  If you are a highly religious, just admit that you would never support a candidate who supports a woman’s right to choose. If you are a bigot, just admit that you favor discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Read the rest of this entry »

“That’s the best docking station on the market right now, for sure” – TJ Lavin

Looking back, I don’t think I have ever been part any elite groups of rabid followers of groundbreaking shows during their original broadcast run.  I just got into The Wire this summer, have never seen a full episode of Lost or Heroes or Weeds, and got on The Sopranos bandwagon late and fell off in short order.

So last summer, when HBO started pumping their new drama John From Cincinnati, I cleared my schedule for the premier and – even though it left me wholly confused and underwhelmed – was determined to struggle through the boring exposition of the contrived and nonsensical story so a few years down the line when the show was sweeping the Emmys (or being triumphantly snubbed), I could say I was there from the start.

I wouldn’t exactly call this plan successful, as John From Cincinnati quickly went from bad to worse and was canceled immediately after the last episode of the first season aired.  But I survived a brutal test of patience and mettle, and I think I am a better man for it.  For those were the qualities that I was calling on during the first two and half episodes if The Island, and they did not fail me. Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s gonna take that heart to sail that boat” – Robin

I have been following The Real World franchise since it’s grainy, poorly lit inception over 16 years ago.  And while I have been pretty adamant about the recent decline of civilization in the last few Real World houses, I realized last night that I have been overlooking a very important fact that has undoubtedly bended my perception over the years.  I’ve grown up.

See, I still consider The Real World: Seattle the undisputed high water mark of MTV programming.  My memories of the show are filled with authentic interactions between dynamic people in real-life circumstances.  There is no doubt that these memories may be entirely accurate.  An equally likely scenario, though, is that at the time the series aired I was a 14 year dork who didn’t even know what “authentic interactions,” “dynamic people,” and “real-life circumstances” actually were. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Dan,

Across the street from my apartment, there is a decent sized, stand-alone building that formerly served as a Robért Fresh Market but is now completely boarded up and dying for occupation.  Other than the two days the ample parking lot served as base camp for the cast and crew filming Carmen Electra’s new movie, it just sits there, an apparent casualty of the disorganized jack-o-lantern spattering of property revitalization that has been trudging along since the storm of 2005.

Don’t get me wrong, there is amazing work going on all over the city; in every single neighborhood and on every single block.  But there are some shocking plots of land that, for one reason or another, have just been left behind.  This is one of them.

I think it would be a perfect place to open a Trader Joe’s.

I mean, you’ve got stores in Minnesota and those fucking rubes make you jump through hoops just to grab a sixer of microbrew with your groceries.  If you were to open in the greater New Orleans area, there would be no need for that loophole exploiting pay-for-your-groceries-at-one-register-then-walk-through-the-antechamber-to-the-booze-shop bullshit I had to go through at the St. Louis Park location up north. Read the rest of this entry »