We’re hard at work finishing the editing and publishing process for our first issue of the Dark Comedy Review, our print companion journal dedicated to exploring the dark undercurrents of current events. Issue one, entitled “The Fantasy Economy”, explores the current economic malaise and the pressures of the world of work. The issue features an anonymous review of the causes of the financial crisis by the Dark Comedy Hour’s own Wall Street Insider, as well as stories exploring military life, sexual mores in Brooklyn Hipsterville, unemployment, and the psychological terrain in Jos, Nigeria.
If you haven’t heard back from us yet about your submission(s), we’re still reviewing your material and may keep your work under consideration for future issues. Thanks for your patience! We’re a stumbling operation, but a determined one! Issue one should come to press around the beginning of April.
As you may also see, we’re overhauling our website: it’s a frantic scene over here, poems and stories strewn all over the floor and pasted to the walls, bloodshot code-filled eyes, spilled beverages and tangled computer cables. It’s a bona fide fire hazard. Please stay tuned!

We’ve got a new podcast up, featuring Gann Brewer. Gann came by the studio the other day and shared some original songs; he also did a reworked traditional about one Stagger Lee, about whom he told the tale. From Gann’s website:

Rox Sirand and the assorted management of the Dark Comedy Hour will be hosting our second annual winter festival this Saturday at the Triskelion Arts Center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (118 North 11th Street, (williamsburg), Brooklyn, NY 11211-1914, 3rd floor), from 11pm-3am. The show will feature performances from Gann Brewer, Brother Han, and our musical director Andras Pokorny, as well as a comedy spot by Mister Brown, featuring Adam Macy and Lucas Hazlett, a rocking rock set from Eugene Sounds and the Big City Fear, and assorted other attractions including live painting by Neil Enggist, a dramatic performance by Live Art, and late-night dance accompaniment by DJ Zesto. We encourage anyone and everyone to come out as we attempt to kindle enough of a fire to get our dithering selves through another artistic year!

We’ve rolled off the couch at the Dark Comedy Hour; slapped ourselves in the face; punched ourselves in the gut; picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off: Sylvia Hardy now offers a sampling of her photography at Burns Hot, Cold and Chaotic , Bye Bye Blue Smoke has begun chronicling the innovative guitar work of his late friend, and, most exhaustingly, we’re heading into the final stages of editing for the Dark Comedy Review , due out now in March. To all those who have submitted material so far, thank you so much, for both your material and your patience! We will be responding to everyone who submitted to our first issue soon.

We’ve also done some hard thinking on the Dark Comedy Hour experience at the prompting of co-director Rox Sirand. Many have asked, with puzzlement, what is the Dark Comedy Hour? As we enter the fourth year of our desultory existence, a little history: at first, we wanted to make a podcast called the Dark Comedy Hour, an old-timey radio show type experience. We quickly learned how much work that would be. We then had an idea: why not solicit material from the wide crazy world of the internet, and make a podcast with whatever we get, an online open mic. After trying that, we decided to host blogs from our friends, reflecting different sides of experience. Now, we’re starting a literary journal, and are starting an all out effort to get more bloggers. The podcast is being revived. Movies are being made. Our music director, Andras’s music remains a key part of our content. Etc. Etc.

Long story short, “The Dark Comedy Hour” is a confusing title, especially as we’ve never produced an hour-long radio podcast. We’re determined to remain “The Dark Comedy Hour”, so allow me an explanation: It’s late, raining, and perhaps some intoxicants have tickled the senses and be-hazed the mind; you’re in the middle of life, between experiences and selves, between relationships, or between jobs. You enter that special mental space, where your life seems like a distant joke, and you can begin to see the edges of the grand human comedy. It’s that hour of the day, when whiskey melds with synapses, that we mean to reflect in the Dark Comedy Hour. So if you’re in that state of mind, spend an hour with us.

To bring clarity, we’re going to be reorganizing soon. The blogs will soon be renamed the “half-way hostel” providing a space for bloggers to work on their half-formed ideas. We’ll be starting an online journal of new writing and other work called the Basement Archive. Lastly, we’ll be putting up new podcasts, the first of which will feature Gann Brewer, a great guitarist and singer who will be doing some originals and traditionals for us.

That’s the end of my salesmanship routine. We hope you’ll join us.

-Blue throat

The Dark Comedy Hour is now on twitter. Follow us here

Hello Ladies and Gentleman,

If you happen to be in the New York area this upcoming Friday, November 6, come out to Hank’s Saloon to catch our very own Eugene Sounds and the Big City Fear at 9pm. Its a no-cover show and should prove to be fairly epic. After this show, it’ll be the studio for these guys as they prepare to record their album for release early next year. So catch ‘em while you can.

Hope your Halloween was pleasantly frightening.

-admin

As we emerge from the summer haze and gather our wits about us once again, the dream of Autumn air invigorates us.

And, like squirrels on a forest floor scattered with good writing, we’ve begun collecting material for our first run of the Dark Comedy Review, due out this winter.

We encourage people who have submitted to the Review to also consider contributing material for our website here — if you happen to have a piece kicking around the dustbin, a more experimental work perhaps, stuff you’re not too sure about yet, we offer space for literary ideas you may want to test out. We are happy to accept audio and images too. Email us at submit@darkcomedyhour.com

Brought to you by: The Dark Comedy Hour

The Reform School Dropouts (formerly Eugene Sounds Retrospective) will be playing their re-branded brand of electro-funk tomorrow (Tuesday, the 26th) at The Trash Bar in Brooklyn. The rhythmic stylings of Brian O. from Yours for Now along with the head nodding, boot shaking, bass of Steve P. from Heads Up Display and the atmospheric additions of Ben M.C. on keys will begin around midnight. Eugene S. will, of course, guitar-play and sing up on the stage.

Then! on Saturday the 30th Reform School Dropouts will return with a set of Honky-tonk blues and rockabilly at Hanks Saloon supporting Yours for Now.

Hope you can make it!

EMAIL to:  journal@darkcomedyhour.com

the darkcomedyhour.com is pleased to announce we are seeking submissions (email for our first literary/musical review which we will soon name with unrestrained grandeur.  We are seeking any sort of prose (blog posts, letters to editors, poems, short stories etc.) and any sort of audio (songs, interviews, monologues), from any judy or earl out there– we are looking to make something interestingly composite of mostly (likely exclusively) amateurs, essentially the DCH’s participation, share a mic, incite a riot sort of aesthetic.   Your humble and thrilled editors, Rox, Blue Smoke and Eugene will select and pay the press to print our relic sometime before Halloween.  Submit!  Write us an email about something you might want to do, we will do out best from our cities to help/furnish you moral support/reinforce our LOOOOOOSE aesthetic wants. The only compensation we can offer is a copy of what should be a legitimate lookin’ journal (its all about the binding) and a sexy jewel cased cd.

email to : journal@darkcomedyhour.com

Ladies and Gents, we’ve got a new blog out in time for the boys of summer. Please check out Round the Bases, a blog that will touch on sports, women, chicken wings, and other manly interests.