Bring the Noise: The Best Pop Culture Essays from Barrelhouse

 

Over the past decade, readers have learned to count on Barrelhouse to publish inventive, irreverent essays by authors exploring the ways their lives have been shaped by their pop culture obsessions. Bring the Noise is a collection of the magazine’s greatest hits, plus five new pieces produced exclusively for this anthology. Inside, a roster of accomplished and respected authors grapples with a wide range of topics, including Thin Lizzy, dive bars, Barry Bonds, Bob Dylan’s beard, pro wrestling, The Hills, roller derby, Adrian Grenier, and Magnum, P.I.

 

Passionate, insightful, and funny, this collection is simultaneously a celebration and a critical dissection of the ways in which pop culture affects us all.

 

Here’s what a few high rollers had to say:

The troubled minds behind Barrelhouse have done it again: this book is hilarious, outrageous, and frequently profound. It is also, arguably, the most important document yet produced in the growing field of Patrick Swayze Studies. 

– Owen King, author of Double Feature

 

Bring the Noise blasts the old notion that literature is inevitably late to the news, a bit out of sync with the moment. It’s all here, the way we live right now, in all its mess and glory and confusion. And not a dull note in the house.  

–Paul Lisicky, author of Unbuilt Projects and Lawnboy

 

Table of contents

Introduction: On the Stupid Things We Love

by Tom Mcallister, Barrelhouse nonfiction editor

 

Before Adrian Grenier Got Famous

by Sarah Sweeney

 

Jam

by Paul Crenshaw

 

Home of the Poor and Unknown
by Chad Simpson

 

All Aboard the Bloated Boat: Arguments in Favor of Barry Bonds

by Lee Klein

 

Hipster Mosaic

by Johannes Lichtman

 

Irish on Both Sides

by Tom Williams

 

For the Love of Good TV

by Melanie Springer Mock

 

This is Not Their Job: The Never-ending Reality of The Hills

by Patrick Brown

 

Babyfaces

by W. Todd Kaneko

 

A Myopic Appreciation of Roller Derby

by Louisa Spaventa

 

Home From the War

by Steve Kistulentz

 

What it Means to Grow Bob Dylan’s Beard

by John Shortino

 

Return to Oz

by Matt Sailor

 

We Know the Drill

by Leslie Jill Patterson

 

This Essay Doesn’t Rock

by Joe Oestreich

 

Drumming

by Nic Brown

 

Lost Calls

by Jill Talbot

 

The illustrated story: On Tubes, by Ted Stevens

by Brian Furuness, comicked by Kevin Thomas

 

The swayze question
What’s your Favorite Patrick Swayze Movie?