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Mike Barthel

@mikebarthelauthor.com

1.9K followers 810 following 3.6K posts

Writer/critic/researcher/musician in DC. Fiction lotsa places. Writing a speculative novel and a book for DUP “Singles” about “Party in the USA.” mikebarthelauthor.com Making music as APOPHRA https://apophra.bandcamp.com/

apophra.bandcamp.com

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 4d

As promised/threatened! More in a little bit.

bring on the headless horses @ihavethatonvinyl.com · 5d

today at IHTOV:

@mikebarthelauthor.com goes long and deep on billy joel in a beautiful, gorgeously written essay on being a joel fan. you're going to want to read this one. put a few minutes aside. it's good ihavethatonvinyl.com/essays/life-...

Life in a Glass House

All of which is to say that I loved Billy Joel because I loved my dad. I loved that he’d moved 300 miles away from Farmingdale to some little rural town (the Hudson River line would only take you part...

ihavethatonvinyl.com

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 11h

There’s not! What is this country coming to

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 11h

Is there a “Pink Pony Dub” there has to be

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 12h

Haha that’s amazing

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 13h

This is especially true of stuff that has all the juice sucked out of it and becomes déclassé to mention, so it never gets cited as an influence, even though it’s there.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 13h

For me it’s been the 00s stuff becoming dated—all 70s things I experienced as a fun window to what my parents were like before I came around!

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 13h

And so it may very well work its way into the things they make or say, but since it’s at a remove, they’d likely never make a direct homage like Burton did, so it’ll be almost impossible to trace to the source. A detail of gesture or visual flair or plot.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 13h

Burton is playing off the Boomers’ shared childhood moviegoing experience, which I was familiar with because my dad shared it with me and it was all over pop culture. Now my kids are getting bits of it, but not the whole—unlikely they’ll ever watch the Lugosi Dracula unless they’re goths or cinastes

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 13h

Watched Frankenweenie and the kids had a lot of “why is this like this” questions—the black and white, the old monster movie references—and it’s a great example of how a particular time-bound shared cultural experience can jump, fractured, forward in time.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 4d

Which made me think about how art, as a permanent thing captured in a piece of media but also an unsettled thing in terms of what it means to an individual, is a kind of vehicle for time, and becomes one of the ways we experience time through our limited window of consciousness.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 13h

I’m sorry

Tje instructions say “Place your Skin Suit flat. The diagram is showing a Skelton lying flat on the floor of a room with a sunlit window and a clock.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 14h

Ended up with two Draculas and a glow in the dark skeleton, not too bad.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 14h

Too big but cute

Small girl in a green T-shirt wearing a sparkly adult jack skellington mask

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 15h

Oh no

Spirit Halloween costume of “hot pink tumbler” IE a Stanley cup

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 15h

Watched four movies today and now we’re going to the Halloween store

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 16h

APPROVED

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 17h

“If I hate this enough they’ll let me run it” is the true secret heart’s desire of every single blogger in the 00s

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 17h

Your success is their doom, and I for one welcome it with open arms

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 17h

Super excited for this next chapter at an entity whose very existence is an affront to God

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 17h

If only I’d known you could get a leadership position somewhere by being such a huge, visible hater of it that its enemies force them to hire you, I could’ve been the lead singer of U2 years ago

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 17h

I would not bet against Bari Weiss in the same way I would not bet against any highborn courtier who clearly enjoys the King’s favour

Reposted by Mike Barthel

E.A. @eeeeaaaa.bsky.social · 1d

Now listening to the new album from Lebanese composer Yara Asmar. It’s oblique and highly experimental ambient music. I definitely recommend it, and I recommend reading her account of the making of the album on the Bandcamp page.

everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much, by Yara Asmar

yaraasmar.bandcamp.com

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 1d

I feel very old!

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 1d

Tootin, but perhaps not rootin.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 1d

I thought I’d turned on a The Other Ones episode!

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 1d

Turned on SNL and genuinely thought the Role Model performance was a skit at first.

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 1d

I thought Mare of Easttown would be better prep but also I didn’t see it.