Dear Readers,

It’s been real, but my heart isn’t in it anymore. Barber College has run its course. It got us through those first few terrifying post-college years, but we’re adults now… or something like that. You may not have noticed, but BC always had a theme: Whatever we could post to fend off fear and boredom for another day. It has served its purpose. Besides, making fun of MySpace users just isn’t as fun as it used to be. Actually, it’s downright mean.

As for the future, Scott and A. have solo projects that you must frequent, and I’ll be back eventually - older, kinder, and gentler.

Our little A. is all growns up today. Best wishes to our lady of eastern Ravenswood.

In a unrelated note (though i suppose somewhat related in that I think a lot about getting older and the stumbling mess that amounts my adulthood), I guess it’s no secret I’ve been neglecting my barbering and I think it might be time to officially make the site J-ho’s solo online home.

Joel and I started this site to deal with post-grad ennui and keep each our smirking, even as we were jobless and hunkered down in our parents houses back in Michigan. If you read the archives you might get little flimsy looks at two guys having a fucked up time during the most fucked up time in the history of our country and our home state.

That story isn’t done, but it’s done with us. We brought A. on to help balance us out awhile ago, and for a bit it moved us back into a higher gear. Now we are slumping and I don’t know what’s going on with my buddy on the other side of the country as nearly as well as I would like.

That’s the story I hope J-ho will get back to cluing us into soon. Right here at BC.

Me? I’ll still be around on the backblog and as emeritus adviser. I’ll try to keep rolling on some of my own stuff at my new place, metropotamia.org.

So nothing sad or anything. Love and rock&roll to all of you, especially Joel and Aubs.

You’ve probably never met the supercomputer that powers Barber College HQ, but it knows you. More importantly, if you came to BC from a search engine it knows what you were looking for. Here are some of the highlights from this month.

Key phrases used on search engines

fetal alcohol syndrome hotties
somebody gonna get pregnant
fuckaduck
desperate myspace hotties
sucking actress hand
barber porn
crisis management tutorial
zap kidney stone
pushing dead guy in computer chair
megadik (multiple hits)
xenuism
barber fest
hitbooster (A. your diabolical plan brought in 2 hits so far this month!)

So I was telling A. about how I was buying new curtains, because my puppy decided to rip the Venetian blinds off my windows. Here’s the text message conversation that followed:

A.: If it weren’t for the Venetians, it’d be curtains for all of us!

J-Ho: Yay. You get 6,003 points for that one.

J-Ho: Did I say 6,003? I meant 600,000,000,003.

A.: I do what I can.

J-Ho: It took me a few readings to realize exactly how funny that joke is. The answer is extremely.

J-Ho: Like, the pun works on its own, but then I picture the Venetians and how proud they are of their contribution to the world.

A.: Can you really picture a Venetian? I can’t.

J-Ho: They look like greasy gangsters, but they’re wearing togas and holding blinds up with one hand, and they’re giving the world the finger with the other.

A.: Can the leader be yelling, “Slats, motherfucker!”?

J-Ho: He has to be! I didn’t have audio in my vision before, but that’s absolutely what he’s yelling.

J-Ho: This is going on BC.

Wishing you the best for a happy and prosperous 2008. Unlike some barbers out there, we promise not to murder you.

With love,

Us

Did you know we have a tumblr outpost for this little humble publishing house? Barbr College will keep you updated on what we’re gnawing over else where on the net and we’ll save the main page here for more serious stuff. Like making fun of Zoey 101 and her boyfriend’s upcoming statutory trial. Hot ‘08 trend: teenage bastard babies are the new celeb sex tape. Jamie Lynn, way to up our vague awareness over night. Anyways, here’s the BC Tumblr archive: live the dream.

Dear Scott,

I realized as soon as I started school that I would never be able to read the New Yorker again. It’s not that they don’t print great stuff (including this from George Saunders, who is apparently the only person in the world other than me who didn’t think “Borat” was the most brilliant piece of cinematic satirical genius in the history of humanity) sometimes. Mostly, my problem with the NYer is that the entire magazine seems to be written, laid out, edited, printed, and shipped from a compound located several miles up its own ass. I can’t explain it any better than that. I think you know what I mean.

The point is, that review makes me angry for the same reason the rest of the magazine does. The most insulting part is not that SF-J makes a total douche of himself –

[Oh, and he does. Who gives a flying fuck what a guy who says things like “I’ve spent the past decade wondering why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties” with a straight face thinks about rock and roll (or anything else)?]

– it’s that he gets people who like Pavement for the right reasons (people who heard them and thought Finally, music that celebrates my suburban bookworm lameness and makes me feel smart and loved and maybe just a little bit cooler than I felt yesterday and so on) to defend themselves by invoking the same ironic detachment that allows douches like him to thrive! Don’t fall for it, Scott (or anyone else) — your sincerity is in fact sincere.

On my way home tonight, I saw a guy on the train who looked just like Scott. The resemblance was uncanny. I thought for sure Scott was at BC HQ 700 miles away, but I decided I would test the look-alike just to be certain. I was like, “How vital do you think organizations such as the Elephant 6 collective are in this era of digital media, especially considering the RIAA’s hostility toward artists and consumers alike?” He was like, “Excuse me?” I was like, “For what? Not being the real Scott?” Then I stole his iPod.

Thanks in no small part to his experience hosting BC, Webmaster Gordo landed a dope job with IBM today. Henceforth, he will be known as IT Master Gordo.

Barber College: We make shit happen.