Tag Archives: soapbox friends

Akwarian Sea Rebel EP release FRIDAY

Posted on October 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

Occasionally we turn over this blog space to help promote some friend-of-the-blog happenings, and this week is a going to be a fun one:

Akwarian Sea Rebel, aka Trader Joe’s artist-in-arms and all-around groovy person Mandy Heck, is holding an EP release party Friday at Matchless featuring several things you probably haven’t seen before at a show in Williamsburg.

1) Dancers
1) A) Dancers in MASKS
2) More drunk Trader Joe’s employees per square inch anywhere outside the Brazen Head.
3) A Sesame Street-featured artist performing live!

That last one is awesome, and loyal blog readers (ha!) will remember reading about this earlier. Since then, Mandy and MJ had their cartoon accepted by Sesame Street, where it will run on the venerable children’s program Nov. 3. (Suck it, Katy Perry!). Watch it again to get it stuck in your head before Friday, and click through for more details about the show. Oh yeah, and it’s a FREE SHOW!:

Lonely Eleven

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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A long gone daddy in the U.S.A.

Posted on June 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

On the occasion of Father’s Day, which also syncs up with the season that is most suitable for long humid nights of Springsteen on the speakers, which also happens to kick off the time of year we lost Dad a few summers ago, I get to thinking about this piece written by good friend and frequent Inverted Soapbox dropped-name Barry Schwartz three years back. The piece first ran in the now-defunct Stylus, a densely talented, scrappily vibrant but under-appreciated web music mag that was tragically truncated well before its energies had run out, where Barry was writing about  Born in the USA for a regular Stylus feature looking at the “why” behind albums that sold 10 million+.

Not only is this one of the best things Barry has ever written (disposing of passive-aggressiveness here to say: BARRY SHOULD STILL WRITE MORE), it’s one of the best things I can ever remember reading about fathers and sons; something that hits the rare balance of poignancy and anthropology. It kinda rips me up a little bit.

I’m guessing I can run the whole thing here since Stylus is now just a rotting husk (original link here) on the interwebs not even relegated to a proper 404 burial. Thanks to Barry for this one and the implied consent to republish here. And thanks to Dad, for all his great Vietnam stories, and for being the kind of guy Springsteen wrote about, just trying to do right by his family. Happy Father’s Day:

_________________________

By: Barry Schwartz
Published on: 2007-05-08

The Diamond is an apt name for albums certified for 10 million + sales by the Recording Industry Association of America. Each entry in this series will pose the question: why should we separate art from commerce?

Most likely I don’t know your father, but the laws of average suggest he’s probably a lot like mine. Mine’s named Mark; he’s from Syosset, Long Island; married his high school sweetheart when he was 20; commuted to the city everyday until he was 40, owning and operating a bridal gown business with his father on 38th and Broadway. In the early ’90s the garment industry went completely to hell so now he sells Toyotas. Continue reading →

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Stop beating your meat, go to the Brooklyn meat up

Posted on September 17, 2009 | Leave a comment

Here’s the info on the first ever Brooklyn Meat Up, the singles event to serve as respite for the desperately stroller laden, depressed breeder-surrounded struggling lonely people of Park Slope/Gowanus. It’s being organized by the devastating blogfecta of Brokelyn (holla), Fucked in Park Slope and Brooklyn Based. Other ideas that were tossed out from our meeting: jugglers, magician, singles scavenger hunt, seven-minutes-in-heaven room, mandatory 10-drink minimum. If I win the pig-butchering class, I will be severely annoyed:

bk

So, our friend Erica at FIPS posted a letter from a reader this summerkvetching about how hard it was to find a good, single man in Park Slope, land of the Bugaboos. Fifty-six comments later, she realized she had no choice but to enhance the locals’ mating prospects and throw a singles party.

Knowing there were many other unattached Brooklynites, male and female, who were having the same problem all over this borough, she decided to invite Brooklyn Based and Brokelyn into her planning room, and, well, you can only imagine the ideas we’ve come up with together. (Let’s just say we’ve tossed out the Tarot reader!) The result of our collective brainstorming is the most hilarious, fun singles party ever: The First Brooklyn Meatup (meat market + meetup = meatup!), on Wednesday, Sept. 30 at the Bell House, where we’ll be co-hosting an evening of tongue-in-cheek fun designed to make you drop your…inhibitions.

We’ll be serving jello shots and $2 Busch beers from 7-8pm, and then the Busch will be just $3 for the rest of the night (wink, wink). A few lucky guys will get to bare their chests in perhaps the first-ever male wet t-shirt contest, the winner of which will win a free pig-butchering class from The Brooklyn Kitchen’s soon-to-open cooking school, The Brooklyn Kitchen Labs! A few more giveaways will be peppered throughout the night, including prizes worth $120 from Babeland and a free room at Hotel Le Bleu! (And hey, if you don’t win that, there’s always the Bell House’s photo booth!)

And because we went a little overboard on the Meatup theme, we invited La Cense Burger Truck to serve its grass-fed patties from 7-10. (Vegetarians, we hope that’s not too much of a turn-off for you.)

Tickets, $10, are on sale now. Buy one and follow us on twitter to stay posted on things like the male/female ratio and other goodies your hosts have in store for you. While you’re at it, RSVP on facebook, too!

Details:
FIPS, Brooklyn Based, and Brokelyn Present:
THE FIRST BROOKLYN MEATUP
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 30, 7-11PM
TICKETS $10

THE BELL HOUSE
149 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY
(718) 643-6510
thebellhouseny.com

Tickets, $10 in advance and at the door, on sale now>>

(also, Sept. 30 happens to be the birthday of your trusty Inverted Soapbox editor! “Charm +2 Charisma +1 Luck +3. You have unlocked: END OF DRY SPELL(?)”

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See ya at Blog 9 3/4

Posted on June 15, 2009 | 1 comment

Inverted Soapbox is off to England for a week! This trip will now take over the spot for my most authentic British experience, a position previously held by a four-year stint as an employee of Union Jack’s on the Seaside boardwalk.

England, of course, I have every reason to expect will be nearly identical in look and behaviour to this:

Probably no posts in the next week or so, so this is a good chance to offer some recommended reading, a virtual Diagon Alley of blogcest, if you will:

Subway Style — Robin Monheit’s blog on fashion underground

Brokelyn — Living big on small change in the county of Kings (look for a new post by me on Father’s Day, I think)

Look at This Fucking Hipster — In case you haven’t seen it yet, for all your Billyburg schadenfreudists. Probably only about a week away from the inevitable book deal, I figure

Cribbster — A peak into the projection room of the J. Edward Cribbs’ cinema-fueled mind, focusing on the movie scene in Atlanta. He was linked to by Gawker last week. Nevermind what for.

Jeff Vrabel dot com — Music reviews, interviews and columns from a terribly underemployed editor in South Carolina, who texted me like 100 times this weekend about how many times he ran into Ted Leo backstage at Bonnaroo.

And, in honor of the trip, the only authentic British person I know (confirmation pending), Peter Hull, staff writer at the Charleston Post and Courier and all-around football hooligan.

Cheers, mates!

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Rejected Letters: junkies hauling around buckets of chemicals edition

Posted on May 17, 2009 | Leave a comment

In the spirit of rejection from life, dating, careers, freelance pitches and job openings that this blog is very much full of, I present to you a Rejected Letter to the Editor by Jonathan Cribbs, proprieter of Cribbster [link fixed], and former editor in chief of The Diamondback.

This represents his only swing-and-a-miss for letters to the editor. Two previous letters of his have appeared in The Washington Post — one disputing a Sally Quinn column about DC partying and one taking issue with a Tom Shales column about criticizing the performance of Will Ferrell, John C. Reilley and Jack Black at the Oscars — and one in the Miami Herald defending the ProPublica model of journalism (Read his previous letters here).

J. Edward Cribbs is devastating

J. Edward Cribbs will devastate your newspaper with his letters if you dare run them

Rejected from the AJC:

Someone over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution owes me $7.
I clicked on the headline “Suspected ‘rolling meth lab’ busted near Powder Springs” online today with a mix of fascination and excitement.
“Rolling meth lab?” I thought.
“Drugs dealers are going mobile with meth labs now? I’m certainly clicking on this headline as it is sure to be a tremendous read.”
After I finished the story, I realized the AJC had duped me again, sucked me in with a sensational headline that essentially had no basis in fact. Police said in the story they had no idea whether the people in the truck were actually cooking meth in the truck or simply moving it to an undisclosed location. No one in the story said they suspected it was a “rolling” meth lab. So, instead of reading about the glories of progressive methamphetamine production, I was tricked into reading a mere brief about three junkies who were simply hauling around a bunch of buckets and chemicals.
I spent $7 on a bowl of chicken teriyaki and rice today, and your editorial carelessness dampened its flavor. Thanks, AJC. Thanks a ton.
Jonathan Cribbs
xxx Newnan St.
Atlanta, GA
I agree. The story contains this sentence:
“Whether or not they were actually cooking [meth] inside the truck, or just transporting materials, remains to be seen,” Pierce said late Tuesday morning. He said investigators had not yet gone through the cab of the pickup.
Kinda misleading. The AJC should probably pay him the $7. It’s not like they’re using the money to hire new reporters or anything anyway.

Side note: the picture above was taken by this guy, probably the best photographer I know (sorry, Annie, maybe you should buy a pitcher more often when we’re out).

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Soapbox friends: Jeff Barnes is okay

Posted on March 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

Introducing Jeff Barnes, beer pong blogger.

This represents the triumphant return of Jeff “Don’t Ask Me Shit, Dawg” Barnes, one of the DBK faithful, to the written word. It also now means the only part of modern life without a dedicated blogger is nudist hiking. (Oh, nevermind.)

roll it back like Wal-Mart

roll it back like Wal-Mart

Jeff Barnes, you will remember, broke a news story for The Washington Times about the snakehead fish breeding in Maryland ponds. He was cited in a book from the Smithsonian about the phenomenon. He was not credited in the 2004 made-for-SciFi Channel movie “Snakehead Terror.”

Barnes is also the source of the Single Best Beer Pong Taunt in History from summer 2003, Ocean City, Md. When Barnes and partner quickly and soundly defeated a team of three girls across the table, he told them: “the last time I saw two guys handle three girls that good was in this” as he threw the porno “Where the Boys Aren’t 7”  from our DVD rack onto the table. Uproarious laughter and defiling of their honor followed.

The DVD then ended up in the freezer for the rest of the summer, for whatever reason.

He says he’s starting a general blog soon. Stay tuned for link love.

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