When Falls the Coliseum is looking for bloggers to post commentaries, essays, rants, satire, and reviews about current events, politics, entertainment, culture, and many other topics from a broad range of political and non-political perspectives. We appreciate both serious discussion and merciless mockery. If interested in being a regular contributor, visit our submissions page and tour our site. Our audience is growing and we’ve been linked from lots of places, including reason.com, amspec.org, instapundit.com, cnn.com, and bighollywood.com, and our posts are placing higher and higher on the Google.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

When Falls the Coliseum is seeking new contributors. We want more bloggers who are funny, provocative, insightful, opinionated, direct; who pay attention to current events, politics, culture, the way people behave; who can spot bullshit and mock it, from any political or other perspective; who will write blog posts regularly (at least a couple of times per month and preferably more often than that) in any of our categories. If the above describes you, or someone you know, our submissions page has more information about becoming a contributor.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

Last year The Weekly Standard kindly published my ruminations on the yearly celebration of the 1958 camp sci-fi classic The Blob in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. If you haven’t been, go see the movie in the very theater where the blob-consumes-audience scene was shot. It’s a hoot. Indeed, I had so much fun reporting the event I decided to enter this year’s BlobFest short film competition. Check out my entry if you have a spare five minutes, let me know what you think, sympathize with my long-suffering wife and pugs, etc., etc.

Tags: announcements, movies by Shawn Macomber
No Comments »

When Falls the Coliseum launched exactly one year ago, with our first post appearing on June 3rd, 2008, at 1:32 p.m. We have published more than 700 posts since then, and now have more than 40 contributors. This sort of hard data should impress you.

Since it’s our birthday, we expect that you’ll buy us something sparkly. And get us an ice cream cake. Don’t disappoint us. Oh, your budget is stretched as it is? Lucky for you, what we really want for our birthday doesn’t cost any money. What we really want is more readers. Thousands more. How about you e-mail a dozen friends and invite them to the party, announce us on Facebook and Twitter, maybe wear one of those sandwich boards with our URL in large print and find a good spot in a crowded intersection. You know, tell lots of people how much fun it is over here. Lie if you must and tell them we’ve got a keg and no cover charge.

Thanks to all our contributors and readers in year one, it’s been great fun so far. Here’s to year two having even more excellent posts and to the many new readers who’ll discover us.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
1 Comment »

Can you write? Do you pay attention to the news and think, “Hey, I think stuff about this stuff”? Are you funny? Outraged? Both? Do you find interesting news items or videos online and entertain your friends with your snarky comments on Facebook? If you answered yes to any of these inspired questions, maybe, just maybe, you could be the newest contributor to When Falls the Coliseum. [Read more →]

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

You might have noticed that When Falls the Coliseum has been adding lots of new content and new writers in recent weeks. This is only the beginning. We are looking for contributors who can write engaging posts on any of the subjects we cover. So if you have something to say and can say it well, read on. [Read more →]

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
1 Comment »

When Falls the Coliseum wants to expand its book coverage. If you are a book reviewer, or would like to be one, we’d be happy to hear from you. Our plan is to have a weekly column or columns that cover recent books in a variety of genres. This could include mystery, crime fiction, chick-lit, science fiction, fantasy, graphic novels/comics, so-called literary fiction, romance, and all subjects of nonfiction.

If you are interested, visit our submissions page and send us a bio like the kind our contributors have written. Also indicate that you would like to review books and tell us how frequently you can do this (every week, every other week, once a month) and what genre(s) you would like to cover. [Read more →]

Tags: announcements, books & writing by Coliseum
No Comments »

Congratulations to contributor Frank Wilson, whose blog Books, Inq was named one of the “100 Best Blogs” by the Sunday Times. Of course, we knew Frank when he was only famous to the many fans of his blog and to book lovers who appreciated his great work as book review editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer. We’re cutting edge like that. Don’t forget to read Frank’s column That’s What He Said every Tuesday morning at When Falls the Coliseum. Eight-thirty sharp.

Tags: announcements, books & writing by Coliseum
No Comments »

When Falls the Coliseum is now on Twitter. So you can follow us, or twit us, or re-tweet us, or whatever the hell it is people do on Twitter. Go here and click “follow” and then share the love (you can choose how to receive updates — mobile phone, Web, RSS feed).

Our Coliseum Twitter Team will post links to entertaining and interesting sites and news and strangeness from across the Web throughout the day. Follow us. Tell your friends. You know you want to.

What is Twitter, you ask? We have no idea. But Wikipedia knows all.

Tags: announcements, technology by Coliseum
No Comments »

Congratulations to Coliseum contributor Michael Antman for being a finalist for the Balakian Award given by the National Book Critics Circle for reviewing excellence. You can read some of his literary essays and reviews here.

Tags: announcements, books & writing by Coliseum
No Comments »

Contributor Ari McKee’s recollection of her mother’s life, and its relevance to Obama’s inauguration, has been published by Minnesota Public radio.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

Please join us in welcoming our newest contributors: Amy Boshnack, Van McCourt, and Jaclyn Roth. See their bios to find links to their posts on When Falls the Coliseum.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

We thought so. Well, we are too. We’d like to be more promiscuous, but need your help. Can you do that for us, big boy? We thought so.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

When Falls the Coliseum contributor Shawn Macomber is in today’s Wall Street Journal. “Where Cool Cats Congregate” breaks some news that promises to be a game-changer for the upcoming election: Barack Obama’s grandmother is Rosa Parks. His grandfather? Isaac Hayes. Strange but true.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

Um, readers, just so you know, When Falls the Coliseum is, like, totally interactive. So how ’bout interacting with it?

Fred Siegel has been posting hilarious descriptions of his actual dreams. He invites you to write in with your interpretations. Feel free to comment on any of them — all of Fred’s Dreams are here. Let’s help this fine young man make sense of the chaos.

Ruby Mac is ready to give you some good advice about getting cheap thrills and getting by, especially welcome in these troubled times. You can ask her for advice here and she may reply in her column, just like Ann Landers, only funnier. And less dead. You can read all of Ruby’s “Advice for the Rest of Us” here.

All of our posts in all of our categories are open to your comments. So join the conversation.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

Coming soon: Advice for the Rest of Us, a weekly column by Ruby Mac. Read all about it here and submit your questions to Ruby. Kind of like Ann Landers, only still alive. And funny. Not at all like Ann Landers, now that we think about it

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

We’ve made a few improvements to When Falls the Coliseum. You can now access archives of all the posts by individual contributors lower on the middle sidebar or at the end of each contributor’s bio. Also, at the conclusion of every individual post, you can now find a link for a printer-friendly version of that page. Finally, each post now has a “ShareThis” link to make it easy for you to e-mail posts to your friends and list our posts in such places as Facebook, Technorati, Myspace, Digg, and Reddit.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

Are you a blogger? A writer? Can you be funny, entertaining, and intriguing while dishing out opinions about current events, politics, culture, everyday life, or any of the many topics we cover? If so, visit our submissions page.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »

We are pleased to announce that Mean Martin Manning, a novel by our very own Scott Stein, was reviewed yesterday by the American Spectator:

Crafting a breezily subversive, funny narrative out of a barely hyperbolized modern American zeitgeist, Stein spins perhaps a bit too-timely-for-comfort cautionary tale.

Read the whole thing.

Tags: announcements, books & writing by Coliseum
No Comments »

When Falls the Coliseum is looking for contributors. If you’re a writer — professional or otherwise — who can be provocative, funny, or otherwise engaging and fun to read, visit our submissions page. Our contributors are invited to write short blog posts, mini-essays, and longer, more developed pieces, on just about any topic and with any approach. A look at our key page should give you a good idea of how wide-ranging the writing opportunities are. Spread the word. Come play our little reindeer games.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
No Comments »