Bluish Barn

Groundhog day, sadly, has changed a bit since I was a youngster. This morning I took a little stroll through Wheeler Park, ready to snap a shot of a local critter, making a predictive reading for the spring. Unfortunately, groundhogs in the park (Wheeler Woody, who was a big fan of my basil plants, etc.) were feeling shy this morning, and I don’t blame them since these days, stepping out of the hole is like Vegas sensory overload with the blinking police kiosk on 4th and large neon column that have cropped up as part of the new “Depot neon district.”

As a kid, we a lot of hungry little groundhogs hung out around our house, although my mama usually chased them out of the yard and garden, clanging pots together. But we were often able to get a Feb 2nd groundhog reading from the kitchen window when they skittered out of their holes in the morning.

In today’s commercialized version, regional prophetic groundhogs are pampered celebrities, free-loading yuppie hogs who live in castles and order fresh baguette from Zingerman’s Mail Order and have serious media connections. The groundhogs don’t “emerge” or “wander” out of their “hole.” Penn’s Punxsatawny Phil is “pulled out of his heated stump-shaped home by handlers.” in Georgia, General Beuregard Lee is “enticed out of his antebellum mansion with Waffle house hashbrowns*.” 

What a weird world.

  Anyway, geographically closest “official reading” I could find comes from a prognosticating woodchuck in Howell, (apparently lives in a paper-mache house on a stage?) who says spring is around the corner. I sure hope we get some sledding in before that. 

*Note: while famous groundhogs are eating well, kids suffer.  Sort of. The traditional groundhog shaped cookies given to elementary school kids in Northern Cambria, Pennsylvania were banned when the school board members realized the cookies have 37% fat content, 2% over the allowable fat limit of the Pennsylvania wellness program.  WWGNDD?  Replace the oil with applesauce?  Eat the fatty cookies anyway?  You can probably guess.

Some of you know about my somewhat embarassing domain-buying habit, some of you don’t.  It doesn’t matter.  Now is the time of year when I give away some domains before they expire.  Please browse the names I own below, and if you or anyone you know might want any of them, let me know by Valentine’s Day and I’ll transfer them to you for free.  (From there, GoDaddy fees are still $8/year.)

• ALITTLEOFBOTH.COM
• ATTEMPTINGTHEIMPOSSIBLE.COM
• CARRYINGTHETEAM.COM
• CIRCUMSPICE.ORG
• CRITICSRAVE.COM
• FLESHCREEP.COM
• FOLLOWSIGNS.COM
• FORHEREORTOGO.COM
• GRUNTWORK.ORG
• HOTASBLAZES.COM
• LIFTWITHTHELEGS.COM
• OLDBUDDYOLDPAL.COM
• RAMPANTTEEN.COM
• SINGLEWHAMMY.COM
• TYMBI.ORG

Thanks for looking!  You can find out more about my dorky hobby at Prefab Domains.

Next Thursday January 25th 9pm is your chance to hear one song by almost every single performer at last Summer’s Madisonfest. (One person declined to be filmed and the footage of two others was ruined somehow.) Local filmmaker Shawn Wernette was there with his camera during the entire local music festival, and he’s premiering his finished work here at the Bluish Barn.

Of course, if you missed the Madisonfest, this is your chance to get a sense of what happened. But what I like about the format is that it performs a sort of leveling to what can be a confusing and seemingly impenetrable local music scene for people who might not have ever heard of Madisonfest. You don’t have to be part of the scene to know about some obscure house show where one of these artists is playing. You don’t have to stay up late in a smoky bar or sit awkwardly among a bunch of reverent scenesters. And you don’t have to be assaulted with reminders about merch for sale or feel weird about leaving to go to the bathroom - or just leaving. People ignorant of the local “folk” scene - or whatever it’s called - can judge the performers alongside each other onscreen, one song at a time.

It’s incredibly mediated, but incredibly convenient, like many modern pleasures. Come get to know a huge chunk of Ann Arbor’s local music scene in 2 hours in the comfort of the Bluish Barn parlor room.

UPDATE: As I write this, a small army is working to cut the limbs that fell in our neighbor’s backyard and restore power by tonight!  (The friendly workers even agreed to let the wood drop onto our side of the fence so I could cut it up into firewood.)  So tonight’s screening of Dead Man is on!

Huge thanks to our new hardcore roommate Christina and Girl Next Door for sticking it out with me for 4 days of 40-degree temperatures inside our house. All our other neighbors were smart - though unadventurous - and left.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that 40 degrees doesn’t sound all that cold. We’ve all spent a night or two camping in that kind of weather. But when it’s inside your house, all day long, and the high outside is in the 20s, and there’s no light for most of the time, it can be very taxing.

And in the middle of all this, what arrives in the mail? An energy bill from DTE. Sorry if I don’t exactly hurry to pay that one.

So anyway, we’ll be truly celebrating tonight. Come join us.

ORIGINAL POST:

When freezing rain hits just before a deep freeze, everyone has a good few days to pull out our phones - I mean our cameras - and take pictures of things like this:

But something like 36,000 powerless DTE customers also have a good few days to freeze our asses off. Mid-day temperature reading inside the Bluish Barn today: 40 degrees.

40 degrees! We can see our breath quite well.

DTE says - but doesn’t promise - that power will be restored by Thursday afternoon. If it’s not, Thursday’s 9pm screening of Dead Man might have to be cancelled.

Created for the Bluish Barn by our friendly neighbor “Girl Next Door”:

Those are real tater tots, shellacked to death and comingled with spent ketchup packets.

What will our next wreath look like?  The call for submissions is still ongoing.

Here’s the movies we’re going to screen this Winter. The rule about always screening movies at least one of us has seen went completely out the window. Half of these were recommended by regular guests and will be fresh viewings for us. Come join us, it should be fun. Every Thursday, 9pm, free, BYO.

Jan 11: Assasination Tango - all Robert Duvall; with Argentinian food served by my housemates just back from Argentina
Jan 18: Dead Man - Jim Jarmusch directs, Johnny Depp stars, Neil Young scores; Western
Jan 25: Madisonfest: A Documentary - premier of Shawn Wernette’s documentary featuring one song by almost every single performer at last summer’s local music fest
Feb 1: Zardoz - ridiculous 1974 sci-fi drama featuring a young Sean Connery in heels
Feb 8: A Thousand Clowns - how can you argue with the tagline: “lift for the spirits, laughter for everyone”
Feb 15: Elevator to the Gallows - Louis Malle directs, Miles Davis scores
Feb 22: the Beaver Trilogy - no link; it’s best not knowing anything about this before you see it; an experience
Mar 1: The Falcon and the Snowman - young Hutton/Penn as real-life spies Boyce/Lee
Mar 8: Death and the Maiden - Polanski’s takek on Dorfman’s play about justice and revenge; riveting
Mar 15: the Idiots - Dogme #2; Lars Von Trier directs a social experiment of ‘idiots’

Please arrive on time and be respectful of our house and neighbors. Thanks.

We will not be having a New Year’s party this year here at the Barn. The basement just isn’t ready for dancing right now. But we’re helping to organize something with our friends at the White House. Join us for a tribute to James Brown and more.

Come as early as 10pm or as late as 2am.  We’ll be there.

Times like these, I start missing old housemates.

[post-event update]

I think we can all agree the Pizza Pizzazz schooled all other pans at The Bluish Barn last night.

Cheers to a fantastic season of gatherings.  Nothing substantiates my mitten-state residence like living next to a house where you can eat pizza and drink beer while discussing early mac artificial intelligence, mega pixels, hermeneutics, tristimulus values, and solving a morning by launching your puzzle-piece-ingesting cat through the window.  Bonus, you can now safely reference Home Alone in everyday conversation, and I will get it.

Thanks & see you next year.

 -girlnextdoor

[original post]

So we’re hoping to host a Peezha Kehvan night in Ann Arbor on Tuesday December 19th. We’re looking for pizzaeater / beerdrinker / Home-Alone-lover / types to be present. If you are interested in pizza, beer, or Kevin McAllister, please email Girl Next Door [at] bluishbarn [dot] com with dietary requirements. Or just show up at 8 p.m. But, first come first served (literally).

What is Peezha Kehvan?

Peezha Kehvan Night (devised by Claire Skowroneck and Girl Next Door) was conceived from her more sophisticated parent, Pecha Kucha, as a place for young Bluishbarners to watch Home Alone, drink Strohs, and compare/contrast various pizza baking products, including the Pizza Stone, Traditional Metal Pan, AirBake, and the famed Pizza Pizzazz.

But as we all know, give a plate to a Bluishbarner and you’ll be doing dishes for hours. The key to Peezha Kehvan Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed pizza and beer, then shown Home Alone. The only catch is that before leaving the Bluish Barn, they must wash and dry their dishes, and, once emptied, deposit their beer cans in the recycling receptacle. This keeps the countertops clear and Tim’s interest level in hosting future food-based events up.

Peezha Kehvan (which is certainly not Japanese) has tapped into a demand for a forum where pizza and beer are informally consumed while Home Alone is shown, without having to rent a DVD or chat up a hideous Cottage Inn waitperson. The demand for the best pizza pan will finally be met- as Peezha Kehvan Night, with a bit of blog-pushing, will bring bluishbarners together one last time before we spread to over a dozen cities across the world for the holidays.

Join us next Tuesday, 8 p.m. for Home Alone, homemade pizza, and Strohs!!!

Please spread the word.

Thursday December 14th, 8pm sharp at the Bluish Barn:

Sara Blakely
Forest Bright
Charles Fairbanks
Gabriel Harp
Melanie Manos
Lindsay Stern
Ann Stewart

Each of these presenters will show 20 images for 20 seconds each. It will be exciting. Hope to see you here.