You knew the Barrellhouse was for sale. Well, it's been sold.

The website now says that tonight is the brewpub's last night at 22 E. 12th. There'll be a party from 4 to 10. Tonight.

I have seen the future of journalism, and it is good.

I had the privilege of participating in the Tristate Student Journalism Association conference yesterday at Mariemont High School. My part in the program - a full day that included Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. - was to talk about blogs and their impact on journalism. Co-presenting with me was Brian Griffin, the blogger behind Cincinnati.Blogspot.Com.

Prior to the conference, Brian and I discussed our presentation. We concurred it would be best to keep our own pontifications to a minimum and encourage an open, frank discussion. The danger of this plan ? What if our students were shy, uninformed, or both?

It's impossible for me to overstate how impressed I was with the knowledge and carefully considered opinions these young adults brought to the discussion. They spoke with passion on the subject of journalism's role and the responsibility those of us who wear the brand must carry when we do our craft - whether with ink and paper or URLs.

I know it sounds corny, but I predict one of the students I met will be a Pulitzer-winning keynote speaker at a future TSJA conference.

(And by "popular" I mean "that one dude in the comments." Hey, I'll take what I can get.)

Thanks to my sporadic updating, there's a lot of ground to cover. Luckily, I just wrote a story about this (to be published in the March 2 issue), so it's fresh in my mind. Here we go!

Karaoke Recap: Holy Grail
The Holy Grail was a fun time - college-age crowd, games on the TV, delicious fish-and-chip platter (that might have been due to the fact that I hadn't eaten in about six hours). We had our lightest turnout at the Grail - fewer than 40 people signed up to sing. That's OK, though - made our job easier.

Our Finalists:
- Christopher, who sang a great "I'll Be" and had excellent fashion sense.
- Chrissy, who performed "All That Jazz" complete with sexy dance moves.


Karaoke Recap: Southgate House
This was my first time at the fabled "birthplace of the tommy gun," and it was a good (if smokey) time. Here we found the contestants that take themselves the most seriously, especially one group of people who kept asking us how many people still hat to sing and how they were doing. Jamie made the fatal mistake of saying, when we announced our winners, that it was a close race between two or three contestants; afterwards we had several people ask us if they were among those few. Oh, and I forgot about my tab and had to come back the next night to close it. Go me.

Our Finalists:
- Micah, who sang Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" and had the crowd eating out of his hand.
- Chandra, with her hand-clappin', toe-tappin' "Chain of Fools."


Karaoke Recap: Hamburger Mary's
I rediscovered my love of quesadillas at the fabulous downtown gay bar/burger joint, and the Thursday drink special is margaritas, which is awesome. A highlight of the evening came when a lovely redhead got on stage and sang "Mack the Knife" in a gravelly Jimmy Durante voice. (She didn't win, but she would have been a lot of fun in the finals.) We saw quite a few repeats from previous weeks at Mary's, but a lot of new faces too.

Our Finalists:
- Mark, a returning contestant from Champps. There, he sang "Sweet Child Of Mine" and did well. Here, he sang "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" and did phenomenally.
- Jamie, who pulled off a passionate "Don't Stop Believin'."

Next (and final) round: March 2. Willie's. Mason. 10 p.m. Be there.

Let's hear it for the Class of 1990's Missy Doty, now known to the world as Cammi the waitress in Sideways.

Hey, everybody else in town does Breaking News Alerts, why shouldn't we.

For those of you who were anxiously awaiting her visit, I have it on good authority that the Tift Merritt show at Southgate House has been cancelled. Seems she's joining Elvis Costello's tour, which won't be anywhere near here, ever. (O.k., Cleveland in April, but really... Dude's going to Bozeman for crying out loud.)

Our cover story on commuting this week must be a popular topic. ABC News is doing a thing they call Gridlock Nation: America's traffic toll this week as well.

I was watching Nightline last night and they examined two strategies: London's congestion zone fees and something the Brits are considering emulating - a Dutch town's experiment that eliminates lights and signs, forcing motorists to share the road with bicylists and pedestrians. (Check the video section for highlights.)

Two other headlines:

• Does Changing Lanes Get You There Faster? Nope. And some University of Toronto researchers found some evidence for what Dave and I experienced.
• Do New Highway Lanes Equal Less Traffic? Not really. Sure more lanes equals more space, but pretty soon more people start using those lanes rather than doing what they used to do: traveling via other routes or at other times.

1) The CiN Weekly karaoke contest continues in about two hours at Southgate House. Singers take the stage beginning at 9. Hope to see you there! (Since I was lazy and didn't recap the Holy Grail karaoke experience, I'll have to do it when I do Southgate House.)

2) We're pretty excited about our upcoming CiN Live event at the Brown Dog Cafe. Free appetizers? Wine tasting? Hells yeah! Here's the info.

Reading a note on the Bengals blog, I saw that Casey Bramlet is going to spend his spring with the new Hamburg Sea Devils of NFL Europe.

He's one of four vying to be the starting quarterback for the former Scottish Claymores, who moved last fall to put five of the league's six teams in Germany. Seems the Germans like our football more than the rest of the continent.

I figured if he was going to speak with the media Monday, I'd hunt down a story for you. But alas, I found no such thing. There is something about how they're stocked after the NFL allocation process. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Then this story is for you: Zwei echte Cowboys "schiessen scharf" für die Sea Devils

At some point, you should be able to get your Sea Devils gear and cheer along.

Once I fill up a few browser tabs, I fell compelled to share with you all things I read that seem related to life in the TSGCNKY region.

• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is working on a series about the working poor. Their story about how sales taxes take disproportionately from those people seemed quite relevant in light of Gov. Taft's tax reform proposals.
  
  
• There's an auto show coming to town next week. We're working on some things about big cars and small cars. Two stories came across my desktop: (Almost actual size) - Tinier than a Mini, it's little wonder that Europe's Smart car has now made its way to the U.S.; and 25,999-pound* fashion statement - Celebrities' latest toy raises the bar for excess.
  
  
• And finally, a story about Baltimore , with its falling crime rate but persistent homicide problem, includes this quote:

  "This is the smallest big city I've ever lived in. Violence is very personal, because everyone knows everyone else or is a relative. If you shoot someone, the retribution will be fast and sure."

  
  
  Sounds similar to something reported about life here: "On the city's most dangerous streets, people who shoot others are rarely caught, prosecuted or sent to jail."

On our Web site we have a form people can use to send story ideas. This one might actually turn into a piece on gym etiquette, but it's too good not to share right away. It's from a woman named Christa.

Time and time again, I catch people with sweat-drenched shirts simply walking away from machines without even a thought of wiping them off! Gross. And every day I am stuck taking 45lb weights off of the leg-press machine, left on by huge, muscular guys – I'm only 115lbs! Shouldn't every person who has a gym membership be required to follow gym etiquette of wiping machines down and returning weights to their proper place? :)

Gym pigs, what do you have to say for yourselves?

Um, did any of you watch "American Dad" last night?

OK, well, did anyone notice that the screen went black a few times during the program? Like, just for a second, and the sound kept going, so it wasn't really annoying, and you figured you could chalk it up to some sort of glitch at Fox?

But then, around the third or fourth time this happened, did anyone start to notice the Safe Auto logo in the corner of the black screen?

And did anyone start to realize that what you were seeing was not a glitch, but a one-second commercial break? And did anyone start to wonder if this was going to be the future of advertising?

... Anyone?

Sorry for such an after-the-fact post, but I spent all day Thursday trying to catch up on stuff I should have gotten done on Wednesday, but didn't - in part because I was helping out with the karaoke. Anyway.

Let me just say: Wow.

I always thought I was OK at karaoke. I'll kick your ass at Karaoke Revolution, anyway. But the competition at Wednesday was fierce. If I had gone up there, I would have been in the bottom 10. We kept saying to each other, "This has got to be the one." And then the next act would come on, and suddenly we were certain that that guy was gonna be the winner.

We were at Champps until 1 a.m. We closed down the place, and we still weren't able to listen to everybody who wanted to sign up. It was incredible.

So, without further ado, the winners, who will go on to the finals March 10:

Girl: Sherrica, who sang a powerful "Natural Woman" that had the crowd swaying and singing along. Plus, we loved her hair.

Guy: Antawon, who blew us away with his rendition of (of all things) "Lady Marmalade." He hit all the high notes and everything.

This was such a tough call. I think we could have picked all 10 finalists from the people who sang at Champps. If you were a contestant there, and you think you had a strong showing, try again at one of our other events - maybe there won't be a Sherrica or an Antawon to edge you out this time.

CiN's next karaoke contest is at 9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 9 at the Holy Grail, 13 W. Charlton St., Corryville. Get there early to sign up.

And if you like singing and winning fabulous prizes, Champps gives out $300 each Wednesday at its karaoke night - $100 for second place; $200 for first. I'll definitely be back once I hone my karaoke skills.

Sometimes, our Wednesday publishing schedule isn't the greatest. Like when things happen Wednesday night or there's a registration deadline on Tuesday. It's tough to highlight those things properly.

So, here's two events I wish we had made more prominent in the magazine:

CSOEncore! is having a party after the Thursday concert with Keith Lockhart. Now, they want you to call (513-744-3590) by 5, but maybe if you plead they'll let you in. If nothing else, keep your eye on the other stuff this group does.

The Fine Arts Sampler Weekend is having a kickoff party Wednesday the 9th at the CAC. Apparently, red is some sort of theme.