About Armchair / Shotgun
Armchair/Shotgun is a reference to a Bob Dylan lyric from his unreleased (December 1963) "Depression Cola" album: "Babe you rest my mind / soft as an old armchair / shotgun so comfortable and so kind."
Legend has it the magazine was founded by Ludmilla and Vaselka Stranoglatz, red-headed Lithuanian twins from Brooklyn. Forced to emigrate due to a typographical error on their Dutch exit visas, the twins left their hometown of Petrašiūnai and settled in Sheepshead bay in the late 1950s.
Together with disgruntled activist and one-time Greenpeace chair Arthur "Double-Barrel" Remington, they published their first broadsheets in 1967 (or early 1968), working on a rusty Adana Platen Press in the basement of an abandoned warehouse at the corner of Knapp Street and Avenue Y. By the summer of 1973 the journal, published as The Armchair/Shotgun Monthly Picayune, had become so popular that the Stranoglatz twins expanded their operation, breaking into the basement of Borough Hall by night to use the municipal presses there.
Arthur Remington passed away in late 2007 due to chronic liver failure. Estranged great-nephew to E. Remington (of Remington Typewriters and Rifles fame), he left to the Stranoglatz's an abandoned pulp-mill in western Manitoba, which he had accidentally inherited in 1994.
Armchair/Shotgun switched to its current fiction/non-fiction/poetry emphasis in early 2008, upon acquisition of a neighboring Manitoban paper mill through less than legal means. The current board of directors consists of the Stranoglatz's, former middle-weight champion Tiger Patricks, and most recently Michael Malloy, who serves in a symbolic capacity.
Armchair/Shotgun continues today as a biannual journal which publishes exemplary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Day-to-day operations are carried out by the five managing editors: John M. Cusick, Kevin Timothy Dugan, Aaron Reuben, W. Gavin Robb, and Evan Simko-Bednarski.
John Cusick is the love child of Truman Capote and E.B. White. In 1901 he founded The New Yorker with roommates Norman Mailer and the Monopoly Guy. He is currently the president of Penguin U.S.A. and CFO of Barnes & Noble (.com). He lives in a fortified compound underneath the Manhattan bridge. He is a mother of four.
Kevin Timothy Dugan is a freelance reporter and, according to some accounts, a handsome guy. He wrote every book by George Plimpton, usually a year after it was originally published. He variously lives in Heaven and ???. When he is not commuting to Brooklyn, he is usually thinking about commuting to Brooklyn.
Aaron Reuben famously fought both for and against H.M.'s Royal Air Force in the Second World War, receiving several commendations and one notable condemnation for his unthinking bravery in combat. He went on to star in a series of forgettable British murder mysteries, including the occasionally lauded Who Stole My Kippers?, In the Park with Madam Pomfery, and Blood Everywhere but Whose is it? He currently teaches field courses in experimental paleogastronomy in a parking lot rather close to NYU.
W. Gavin Robb was not born but ejected from the surface of the Sun. His spontaneous entry into the Earth's atmosphere in 1973 sparked catastrophic wildfires and a short-lived peace agreement between NATO and the Eastern Bloc. He has written 364 novels, all of which have been published in various translations but never in the original English. In 1984 he moonlighted as David Byrne's oversized suit. He currently lives in an abandoned subway car at the end of the G line, and enjoys scratching around in the dirt at Riker's Island, looking for clues. He is currently working on a novel written by everybody in the world.
Evan Simko-Bednarski is a freelance writer and reporter. He is also occasionally employed. When not proofreading the New York Times (unsolicited and two days late), he holds regular office hours in the second-to-last car of the C train.
