Happy New Year.
Have fun tonight & stay safe.
Archive for December, 2007
Ok, this is my place and this is what it’s about…
The first thing that I should address, owing to some questions I’ve gotten from some friends and family, is the name of the thing. Why “Chandler’s Bar & Grill” as a name for a blog? Well, it’s partly the mood that I’m shooting for. A really good bar and grill or a really good pub can be a great place for really great conversations. A place that attracts a good mix of people from a variety of backgrounds is usually filled with interesting conversations about entertainment, politics, philosophy, science, sports and everything in between.
Then there’s my long standing love of Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series. Callahan’s place was where you could come to joke, tell puns, chat and even occasionally share your problems with the goal of getting a little help. One of the tenets of that series is known as Callahan’s Law (also known as the Law of Conservation of Pain and Joy).
“Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased—thus do we refute entropy.”
Seems like a good thing to shoot for. Of course, the jokes and puns are a big part of it too. Depending on my mood, there will be the occasional threads started that are devoted to nothing more the bad jokes and puns. I can’t help it, I’m just evil that way.
But that’s not to say that other things will get short shrift. I’m a news and political junkie and that will be reflected in my posts. But I’m also a total sci-fi and horror junkie. Occasional posts (“What’s in the Menu”) will be reviews of books or comics and others (“What’s on Tap”) will cover movies, DVDs and TV. There’ll be no real system for what gets reviewed other then it’s something I liked and want to tell others about. It may be new stuff that gets released the same week that I review it or it might be older then I am and I just want to draw some attention to it.
I’m also hoping to bring a variety of viewpoints in with my site’s version of karaoke night. From time to time, I’m hoping to get some guest bloggers in here. I’ll never claim to know everything, so I figure that it might be interesting to get in the odd guest writer for the occasional thread. I’ve got friends and acquaintances who are chefs, amateur film makers, soldiers, artists, tactical team specialists and so on. If I can rope a few of them into it, my hope is that their thread headers will be entertaining and maybe even informative little changes of pace from my chosen topics.
And lastly, there’s my writing. This site will host some of my fiction as I work on it in order to get a little feedback and to maybe work out a few kinks. My goal is to use this site to keep me on a schedule. I figure that having a place to put some of it as I work on it and having people bust my chops if I’m slacking (I can think of at least one guy who’s likely chomping at the bit at the chance to get even with me on that score.) might help me keep my work ethic strong. Just a little motivational tool.
But the biggest thing in all of this is the idea of having a bit of fun. This is going to be a place where you can talk about a wide variety of topics in a friendly and enjoyable manner. So long as that simple idea is adhered to, even in absolute and complete disagreements, there will be no limiting of poster’s free speech here. However, if anyone comes along who wants to be a drunken and raving loon or an aggressively hostile drunk… Well, my bouncer will escort them to the door. Who needs that when your goal is to be merry?
Jerry Chandler
Proprietor, Chandler’s Bar & Grill
The first thing that I should address, owing to some questions I’ve gotten from some friends and family, is the name of the thing. Why “Chandler’s Bar & Grill” as a name for a blog? Well, it’s partly the mood that I’m shooting for. A really good bar and grill or a really good pub can be a great place for really great conversations. A place that attracts a good mix of people from a variety of backgrounds is usually filled with interesting conversations about entertainment, politics, philosophy, science, sports and everything in between.
Then there’s my long standing love of Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series. Callahan’s place was where you could come to joke, tell puns, chat and even occasionally share your problems with the goal of getting a little help. One of the tenets of that series is known as Callahan’s Law (also known as the Law of Conservation of Pain and Joy).
“Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased—thus do we refute entropy.”
Seems like a good thing to shoot for. Of course, the jokes and puns are a big part of it too. Depending on my mood, there will be the occasional threads started that are devoted to nothing more the bad jokes and puns. I can’t help it, I’m just evil that way.
But that’s not to say that other things will get short shrift. I’m a news and political junkie and that will be reflected in my posts. But I’m also a total sci-fi and horror junkie. Occasional posts (“What’s in the Menu”) will be reviews of books or comics and others (“What’s on Tap”) will cover movies, DVDs and TV. There’ll be no real system for what gets reviewed other then it’s something I liked and want to tell others about. It may be new stuff that gets released the same week that I review it or it might be older then I am and I just want to draw some attention to it.
I’m also hoping to bring a variety of viewpoints in with my site’s version of karaoke night. From time to time, I’m hoping to get some guest bloggers in here. I’ll never claim to know everything, so I figure that it might be interesting to get in the odd guest writer for the occasional thread. I’ve got friends and acquaintances who are chefs, amateur film makers, soldiers, artists, tactical team specialists and so on. If I can rope a few of them into it, my hope is that their thread headers will be entertaining and maybe even informative little changes of pace from my chosen topics.
And lastly, there’s my writing. This site will host some of my fiction as I work on it in order to get a little feedback and to maybe work out a few kinks. My goal is to use this site to keep me on a schedule. I figure that having a place to put some of it as I work on it and having people bust my chops if I’m slacking (I can think of at least one guy who’s likely chomping at the bit at the chance to get even with me on that score.) might help me keep my work ethic strong. Just a little motivational tool.
But the biggest thing in all of this is the idea of having a bit of fun. This is going to be a place where you can talk about a wide variety of topics in a friendly and enjoyable manner. So long as that simple idea is adhered to, even in absolute and complete disagreements, there will be no limiting of poster’s free speech here. However, if anyone comes along who wants to be a drunken and raving loon or an aggressively hostile drunk… Well, my bouncer will escort them to the door. Who needs that when your goal is to be merry?
Jerry Chandler
Proprietor, Chandler’s Bar & Grill
Chandler's Bar & Grill 
