Category: Store Events

  • There's Something Wrong With Chess Event

    A Dual Release Party For THE2NDHAND broadsheet no. 32,

    featuring a short story by Patrick Somerville

    & Greg Gerke’s There’s Something Wrong With Sven

    Patrick Somerville is the Chicago-based author of a novel, “The Cradle,” out this year, and the “Trouble” collection of shorts. His “A Game I Once Enjoyed,” a short about a chance chess match between two neighbors during the biggest snowstorm of the year, is the featured piece in THE2NDHAND’s 32nd broadsheet, released here. Somerville has been widely reviewed and praised. “The Cradle” even showed up earlier this year in the staid New York Times Book Review, yet he remains true to the roots of his work’s genesis as a mainstay of Chicago’s indie-lit scene. To read selections from his work, interrogate some of the reviews out there, and get in touch, visit his website, www.patricksomerville.com.

    THE2NDHAND contributor Greg Gerke lives and writes in Buffalo, N.Y., where he penned the flash-fiction collection “There’s Something Wrong With Sven” — out this year from BlazeVox Books. His work in fiction has appeared variously in several mags, including Rosebud, Fourteen Hills, Pedestal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, and THE2NDHAND. Writing in the Buffalo News, journalist and book critic R.D. Pohl described the new collection as “a picaresque gambol through many of the leading tropes of contemporary American storytelling from the manic to the gothic, absurdist romance to mock epic parody, Rashomon-effect reverie to tavern patron’s tall tale.” This versatile writer brings his bombast to Chicago in a stop on a multicity tour in support of the book. Visit www.greggerke.com for more.

    Spencer Dew, based in Chicago, authored the 2008 “Songs of Insurgency” collection, out from Vagabond Press, and his shorts have appeared in great frequency in some of America’s best online and print lit mags, included, meagerly, THE2NDHAND. Amy Woods Butler (also, incidentally, more recently a contributor to THE2NDHAND) last said the stories in Dew’s collection “pound through the apathy and delusions of our post-9/11 world with the force of a jackhammer.” His delivery, too, honed through regular readings in Chicago and around the country, is unparalleled in its energy. Visit www.spencerdew.com for links to pieces of his prolific online lit presence. (Dew authored THE2NDHAND’S 30th, Winter 2008-09 broadsheet, “Gives Birth to Monsters.”)

    C.T. Ballentine, THE2NDHAND’s Chicago editor, will host. Ballentine’s the creator of several one-off and short-run zine projects, including an audio zine (“Radio Plays”) and the occasional “Aftercrossword Special” for his own work. Prior to joining THE2NDHAND as an editor, the mag published his serialized novella “Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date.” Visit www.the2ndhand.com/archive/fried1.html for the first installment.

  • Onsmith & Nudd at Quimby’s!

    Ice cream, buzzing flies, cow udders, double-tongues, jarred brains, twisted limbs, floating heads, mysteriously sheathed meat-slugs, severed arms, eyeballs, and shrunken-head fishing lures.  Welcome to the graphic underbelly of Onsmith & Nudd, a cartoonish netherworld of darkly comic doom.  Witness the mushy quadruple-stacked heads that form the menacing totem pole-like Head Heaps.  Or the freshly staked heads and weird diseased udder worship of Monkey Nudd Wine. Together as friends,  Onsmith & Nudd made close to 1000 prints this year, plenty to sift through, scour and pick apart with a fine toothed bone.  Many of these prints, mostly silk screens,  will be on view and available at Quimby’s in addition to Onsmith & Nudd’s extensive back catalog of zines, mini-comics, miscellaneous multiples, video editions, posters, flyers and original art. As an extra added bonus, visitors are invited to participate in Onsmith & Nudd’s newest collaborative body of work, Horde of the Flies: An Infestation.  Many large sheets of paper will be provided so that Quimby’s guests may draw between 1 and 1000 flies that will eventually culminate in a massive swarm of pesky winged insects.  Examples, materials and sources will be provided.

    Also, Nudd will be releasing the first two volumes of R.U.B., a new DVD zine that features in-camera edited documentaries of local artists.  Volume I focuses on local kinetic sculptor Nick Black.  Watch Nick as he tinkers with his thriftstore-found animatronic toys, rearranging them into hilarious monstrosities.  His studio is a treasure trove of weird parts and pieces, a dizzying labyrinth of plastic and cheapness, and it’s all captured here on home video!!!  Volume II contains a video about Keith Herzik, local artist, zine-maker and, most notably, screen printer.  Keith began making screen prints fifteen years ago for local gigs, but has transcended the limitations of that form tremendously.  Although he remains quite underground, Keith’s influence on younger artists has been immeasurable.  Indeed, he is not only one of Chicago’s most prolific image makers and most gifted draftsmen, but also an outrageously daring colorist.  Watch him banter, print and give us a tour of his shop, the Alamo Igloo, right here on home video!!!

    Finally!  Years in the making, Corpus Corpus 2 is finally here!  A compilation zine with a notorious line-up, curated and printed by Paul Nudd, Corpus Corpus 2 contains thirty pages of mind and bowel blowing graphic mayhem.  Mariano Chavez, Anne Van Der Linden, Gregory Jacobsen, Bruno Richard, Mike Diana, Edith Sloat, Sophie Greenstalk, Kristen Romaniszak, Onsmith, and Ryan Travis Christian join forces in a fully lathered orgy of primal muck.   Silkscreened covers, some hand-tinted, and limited to 100 copies, Corpus Corpus 2 will not be around for long.   These suckers will be snarfed!

    Paul Nudd was born in Harpenden, England in 1976. He graduated in 2001 with an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recent exhibitions include Jack the Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, Western Exhibitions, Chicago and the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago. His website is http://www.paulnudd.com .

    Onsmith is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Chicago. His comics, prints, and illustrations have appeared in The Chicago Reader, Vice Magazine, both volumes of Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons & True Stories, and may also be viewed at http://www.onsmithcomics.blogspot.com He most recently began showing his art in galleries as well as curating a show of comics.

  • Duncan Wilder Johnson and Dan Lockheed

    Cabildo Press, an Orono-based small press dedicated to publishing works by new and emerging writers and poets, celebrates their release of author Duncan Wilder Johnson’s “How I Fell In Love With Punk Rock. Johnson is the frontman for Boston-based band Destruct-a-thon, who recently advanced to the semi-finals of WBCN’s annual Rock N’ Roll Rumble. He has performed spoken word shows in the United States since 1999, reading with such luminaries as Jim Carroll, Eugene Mirman and Lydia Lunch. He has read in England, Scotland and Ireland.

    Joining Johnson is Dan Lockheed. Through a tilted glass and a jilted sense of self actualization, he finds retrospect with his latest spoken word piece “Life in the Shit Show”. Fresh off five years in LA as a screenwriter Lockheed steps back into his Midwestern roots to make sense of his past plundering in the land of silicon dreams. After a myriad of independent films, commercials and sketch shows; including his self produced “Buck Stew” and “Coffee and Crackers”, Lockheed finally moved out west to…. take it on the chin. He feels much better now. Really, so much better… loads better actually. Lockheed currently has three film projects in play between LA and Detroit including “Getaway Girl$”, “Freakquency” and “Son of Rock” currently optioned by National Lampoon.

    For more information, see Duncan Wilder Johnson: http://www.thrashachusetts.com/dwj/

  • BARRY SCHECHTER READS FROM THE BLINDFOLD TEST

    A WILDY IMAGINATIVE COMEDY ABOUT A MAN WHOSE LIFE HAS BEEN RUINED BY A ROGUE FBI AGENT…AND WHAT UNCOVERING THAT PLOT MAY MEAN In the sixties Jeffrey Parker briefly attended an antiwar rally. He wasn’t all that interested, listened to a few speeches, and went home…and nothing was ever the same. In this wildly comic debut novel, Parker’s brief dalliance is the beginning of the end. He never lands a decent job. Girlfriends never stick around. He has terrible stretches of bad luck, and is the unwitting victim of just plain bizarre occurrences: once, the final page in every one of the books in his library is removed. Then Parker discovers that he’s the victim of a government plot—like the FBI’s real-life COINTELPRO, set up to harass and surveil sixties peace activists—and the obsession of a rogue FBI agent who just won’t give up. This outrageously imaginative debut is reminiscent of John Kennedy Toole’s explosive out of-nowhere farce, A Confederacy of Dunces. Part thriller, part national tragedy, and all hysterical comedy, it is devilishly entertaining even as it forces Parker, and readers, to uncover the truth not only about their country, but about themselves.

    The Blindfold Test was inspired, according to author Barry Schechter, by his meetings with two people: The first was someone who claimed to have been a victim of the COINTELPRO program, “It sounded as if the harassment had amounted to a lot of very nasty practical jokes,” Schechter notes. His second inspiring encounter was “soon after that, with a woman who told me that one time, after she had cracked open a fresh egg, a perfect, white sphere about two thirds the size of a golf ball plopped out … and at that point I started thinking about how strange the life of somebody with a long-term practical joker controlling things might look. It would become very hard to distinguish between the conspiracy and the genuine oddness of everyday life.” And that, says Schechter, “is when I knew I had a novel.”

    BARRY SCHECHTER is a lifelong resident of Chicago. He has written for the Paris Review, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Review. This is his first novel.

    “Reading The Blindfold Test is a new and radical pleasure. Barry Schechter regards the dirty tricks with which life undoes his protagonist—the nightmare neighbors and prodigious happenings—with a kind of glee. We are reminded that Kafka was supposed to have held his sides laughing while he read friends his stories.” —Lore Segal, author of Shakespeare’s Kitchen “The Blindfold Test is a beautiful and terrifying pleasure, a metaphysically witty novel rich with melancholy joie de vivre.” —Matthew Sharpe, author of The Sleeping Father

  • Comics Artists Alex Robinson, Jeremy Tinder and Josh Cotter

    Top Shelf Productions publishes contemporary graphic novels and comics by artists of singular vision. Dedicated to championing veteran creators as well as finding and developing emerging talent, the Top Shelf library is anchored by such masters of the craft as Alan Moore (From Hell, Lost Girls), Craig Thompson (Blankets), Jeffrey Brown (Clumsy), James Kochalka (American Elf, Johnny Boo), and many more. Top Shelf’s catalogue includes all-ages material and cutting-edge erotica, genre fiction and autobiography, and all that exists in-between, and has received dozens of awards. Quimby’s is proud to welcome Top Shelf artists Alex Robinson and Jeremy Tinder. Local alternative comics artist Josh Cotter will be joining the event, whose Skyscrapers of the Midwest is similar in feel, even though his publisher is Adhouse.

    After graduating from art school, Alex Robinson began doing mini comics (small print run comics xeroxed and stapled by himself). He soon started working on the story that would become his first graphic novel, Box Office Poison. In 1996, Antarctic Press started publishing the serialized version of Box Office Poison. The series ran for twenty-one issues, and once the story was complete, Top Shelf Productions published the entire thing in one 608 page book. Shortly after the book was published, Alex won the Eisner Award for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition. As a graphic novel, Box Office Poison was nominated for several awards (a Harvey, an Eisner, an Ignatz and the Firecracker book award). 2005 got off to a great start when the French translation of Box Office Poison won the prestigious Prix du Premier Album award in Angouleme, France. Top Shelf published Alex’s second book Tricked in 2005. In 2006, Tricked won a Harvey and Ignatz Award. The Spanish publisher Astiberri released both of his graphic novels in handsome, one volume editions. Alex has expanded his storytelling to include fantasy, with the release of Lower Regions (Top Shelf) in 2007, and time travel/high school in Too Cool to Be Forgotten (Top Shelf) published in summer 2008.

    Jeremy Tinder is an artist and cartoonist based in Chicago, IL. In 2007, he earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he now teaches classes in cartooning and self-publishing. Jeremy exhibits his artwork across the country both as a solo artist and as a member of the artist collective Paintallica. His first two books, Cry Yourself to Sleep and Black Ghost Apple Factory are published by Top Shelf Productions. New comics from Jeremy will soon appear in the fourth volume of Image Comic’s anthology series Popgun, Family Style’s Elfworld 2, and in the current volume of Black Warrior Review, published by the University of Alabama Press. Jeremy proudly contributes weekly to the jam comics of the Trubble Club.

    Joshua W. Cotter was born and raised in the vast farmy nothingness of northwest Missouri, as reflected in his Eisner-nominated Skyscrapers of the Midwest (Adhouse), filling sketchbooks and painting paintings. He now resides in Chicago where he recently finished up work on his “intuitive narrative,” Driven by Lemons.

    For more info: www.comicbookalex.com , www.jeremytinder.com , www.comicstripjoint.blogspot.com
    www.topshelfcomix.com

  • Dave Reidy and Friends Host a Quaroke Reading

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    Dave Reidy’s collection of fiction, entitled Captive Audience (IgPublishing) features, among other stories, the award-winning story “The Regular.” And that particular piece is about arty nerdy introverts doing karaoke. In Chicago. In a neighborhood that sounds suspiciously like Wicker Park.

    What better way to welcome this new collection of punchy literature with a night of Quimby’s Quaraoke? KJ (that’s karaoke disc jockey, folks) services will be provided by Shameless Karaoke, a husband-wife team composed of, well, arty nerdy introverts who met doing karaoke. In Chicago.

    Also appearing: Claire Zulkey, Megan Stielstra and Mark Bazer

    “Dave Reidy’s matchless reports from the heart of twenty-first century America, a landscape of technological obsession and performance anxiety (in many forms), are elegant, precise, cool, and funny. Here is a young writer from whom we can expect much in the future.” -David Leavitt, Author of The Indian Clerk

    Dave Reidy’s fiction has appeared in Pindeldyboz and The MacGuffin. In 2007, Charles D’Ambrosio chose Reidy’s story “The Regular” as winner of the Emerging Writers Network Short Story Competition. Captive Audience, a collection of short stories about performers, is his first book.

    For more info: http://www.davereidy.com

    FREE EVENT

  • Jason Buhrmester Reads Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock’s Greatest Robbery

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    In Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock’s Greatest Robbery, Inked magazine editor Jason Buhrmester tells the conceivably true tale of a group of small-time crooks who, against all odds, manage to pull off one of the most infamous fleeces in classic rock’s history.

    Hours before the final show of their 1973 U.S. tour, the members of Led Zeppelin find all the cash missing from their safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel in New York City. The $203,000 robbery was never solved. Now, in Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock’s Greatest Robbery, Inked magazine editor Jason Buhrmester tells the story. In this book of fiction, slacker Patrick returns home with the plan for one last crazy scam. He gathers his slacker buddies—Alex, Frenchy, and Keith—and convinces them to take a break from their crappy jobs, getting high, and jacking car stereos to plot an improbable robbery of Led Zeppelin. Nothing quite goes as planned, and the guys find themselves mixed up with Backwoods Billy, the psychotic, born-again leader of the Holy Ghosts Christian motorcycle gang and various other adventures, in this tale that just might shed light on one of the biggest capers in rock and roll history.

    “Almost Famous meets Reservoir Dogs in Inked editor Buhrmester’s debut novel about a quartet of wannabe young criminals who probably should’ve stayed in school. Buhrmester demonstrates…a heartfelt affection for all that rocks. Casual music fans will enjoy the heck out of this hilarious and gritty tale; rock fanatics will adore it.” —Kirkus Reviews

    Former editor at Playboy and current editor at Inked, Jason Buhrmester has been published in Spin, Wired, the Village Voice, and other publications. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he is working on his second novel and listening to Black Sabbath.

    A helpful review of the book is here.
    FREE EVENT

  • Gigposters.com Founder Clay Hayes Brings His Gig to Quimby’s With Artists Featured In the Book, Just In Time For Pitchfork Music Festival!

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    You’re used to seeing gig posters, flyers, and handbills displayed outside your favorite concert venue. Now, with Gig Posters Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century (Quirk Books), artwork featuring your favorite musicians can be found in a lasting book format. Each of these posters originates from Gigposters.com, which has been the Internet’s first and best resource for concert art since 2001. Their massive online database showcases more than 100,000 posters from 8,000 different designers, including all of today’s top poster studios. Gig Posters Volume I highlights the best examples from that collection. Inside you’ll find artwork promoting shows by Radiohead, Kanye West, Wilco, the Decemberists, the Shins, the Beastie Boys, Arcade Fire, Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, Joan Jett, Wu-Tan Clan, N.E.R.D., Diplo, and many, many, many more. Organized by designer, each page features an artist along with their insights on influences, methods and mediums, and why they do what they do. Author Clay Hayes is the founder of Gigposters.com. Read a helpful interview with him here.

    Specifics about the book follow:

    Gig Posters Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century
    By Clay Hayes of Gigposters.com
    Paperback with perforated pages, $40.00
    11 x 14, 208 pages, in color
    700 full-color examples of unique concert art,
    including 101 perforated, 11-by-14 inch
    ready-to-hang posters!


    Like all events at Quimby’s, this event is free!

  • OFF SITE EVENT: Quimby's and the Alternative Press Center Welcome Paul Buhle at the Alternative Press Center Open House

    Paul Buhle has edited several books of comic art, including Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation, Wobblies!, A Dangerous Woman, Students for a Democratic Society, A People’s History of American Empire and The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics. An active member of Champaign-Urbana, Storrs, and Madison SDS chapters during the late 1960s and founding editor of Radical America as well as co-author of The Encyclopedia of the American Left, Buhle will discuss the legacy of alternative media and underground papers as well as his contemporary work in graphic adaptation of left history at the newly expanded and relocated Alternative Press Center (APC).

    The APC is a periodicals library and nonprofit collective that promotes access to independent and critical sources of news and information. Founded in 1969, it remains one of the oldest self-sustaining alternative media institutions in the United States. The APC Library is located in Logan Square after more than 30 years in Baltimore, Maryland. The most recent five years of the collection is held at the APC Library and includes titles from around the world such as Colorlines, n+1, Souls, Gay & Lesbian Review, EarthFirst! Journal, Off Our Backs, Camera Obscura, Claridad, Historical Materialism, Canadian Dimension, Review of African Political Economy, Labor History, Hypatia, Red Pepper, El Viejo Topo, Le Monde Diplomatique, and hundreds more. In addition to the periodical collection, the APC Library has more than 1,800 books — classics of the Left with emphasis on the 1960s and 1970s.

    Buhle’s books and other merchandise will be on hand courtesy of Quimby’s and APC will celebrate the author’s presence and its move with free wine, beer and snacks.

    For more info: www.altpress.org

    FREE EVENT
    At The Alternative Press Center / 2040 N. Milwaukee, 2nd floor.
    Note: the location is not handicap accessible

  • Rory Litwin Discusses Library Juice Press

    Quimby’s is always crawling with librarians during the ALA conference (American Library Association Annual Conference, July 9th-15th) every year, and we expect this year will be the same. And who better to have come speak during the conference at Quimby’s but some cool librarian who publishes stuff like Alternative Publishers of Books in North America or Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library: How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education, and the Public Good?

    Rory Litwin runs Library Juice Press, which specializes in books like the two listed above. Topics covered include library philosophy, information policy, libraries and politics, and in general anything that can be placed under the rubric of “critical studies in librarianship.”

    This event is, of course, of particular interest to librarians. But it will also appeal to anyone interested in going to libraries, curating and organizing book collections, or checking out hot librarians with or without sassy glasses. ‘Cause let’s face it: librarians are hot.