Category: Store Events

Paul Collins, Nathan RabinClaire Zulkey, Elizabeth Crane Tuesday November 1st 7PM
 
The Collins Library is proud to present the triumphant return of Harry Stephen Keeler?to some, an overlooked genius; to others, the Ed Wood of detective fiction. The Riddle of the Traveling Skull is perhaps his best-loved work. The adventure begins when a poem and a mysterious handbag lead a man to the grave of Legga, the Human Spider?and things just get stranger from there.
 
The event will feature readings from:
 
Paul Collins edits the Collins Library series for McSweeney’s Book, including their latest volume THE RIDDLE OF THE TRAVELING SKULL. His own most recent book is THE TROUBLE WITH TOM.
 
Nathan Rabin is the head writer for The Onion AV Club, and featured in their interview collection THE TENACITY OF THE COCKROACH. He is a regular contributor to Air America and NPR’s Day to Day.
 
Claire Zulkey is the author of GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, NPR and Second City, and she writes daily at zulkey.com .
 
Elizabeth Crane is the author of two collections of short stories from Little, Brown, WHEN THE MESSENGER IS HOT and ALL THIS HEAVENLY GLORY, and writes frequently at elizabethcrane.com/blog/ .

Author Sander Hicks and Folk-Singer Holley Anderson Livein Support of Hicks?The Big Wedding: 9/11, The Whistle-Blowers, and the Cover-Up
Monday Oct. 31st 7PM
 
Sander Hicks is the investigative journalist and independent publisher who started Soft Skull Press and Vox Pop/DKMC. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, on HBO/Cinemax in the documentary, Horns and Halos, and has been featured in magazines Punk Planet and Silicon Alley Reporter. Hicks has done innovative reporting on 9/11 for the New York Press, Long Island Press, INN World Report Television, and the Guerrilla News Network (gnn.tv). Hicks claims to be the only reporter verbally abused by a member of the 9/11 Commission. Sander and Holley Anderson, his wife, run the Vox Pop coffeehouse, bookstore and media company in Brooklyn, NY. His live ?performance politics? on 10/31 at Quimby’s will have a special emphasis on the darkest secrets of the GOP, commenting on the little-known 1989 Bush White House call boys scandal and the possible Bush ties to Satanism and ritual murder.
 
As publisher of the critical Bush biography Fortunate Son in 2001, Sander Hicks had a unique position from which to cast a hard look at the official story around the 9/11 attacks. The Big Wedding examines the CIA?s controlling, client relationship with Pakistani intelligence, which had close, documented, under-reported links to the 9/11 terrorists. Hicks acquired startling revelations from government whistleblowers, including lauded FBI Whistleblower Coleen Rowley, ATF Agent Steve Barborini, CIA asset Brad Ayers, and US Navy veteran/con-man Delmart Vreeland.
 
Holley Anderson is a radical, smart, folky singer-songwriter and a partner at Vox Pop. Her music is both spiritual and political, the perspective of a young mother outraged at the current state of the world but empowered by a vision for social change.

Heather Rodgers author of GONE TOMORROW, the Hidden Life of GarbageWednesday Nov. 9th 7PM
 
The United States is the world capital of garbage; with just 5% of the planet?s population America generates 30% of the its trash. The average American creates a staggering 4.5 pounds of rubbish daily, but garbage is a global problem. Consider that the Pacific Ocean is now six times more abundant with plastic waste than zooplankton.
 
Everyone makes garbage. It?s there all the time, in the corner of our kitchens, in the bins next to our desks. But trash is also always in the process of disappearing?getting quickly, almost imperceptibly whisked out of sight. But where does it all go? And what is the impact of garbage on the planet?
 
In GONE TOMORROW journalist Heather Rogers addresses these questions by guiding us through the grisly, oddly fascinating underworld of trash. Excavating the history of rubbish handling from the 1800s?an era of garbage-grazing urban hogs and dump-dwelling rag pickers?to the present, with its brutally violent mob-controlled cartels and high-tech ?mega-fills? operated by multi-billion-dollar garbage corporations, Rogers investigates the roots of today?s waste-addicted culture.
 
Over the past 30 years, garbage output in the US has doubled. GONE TOMORROW explains that, despite popular wisdom, this explosion of rubbish is not the sole responsibility of the consumer. In fact, shoppers often have little choice in the wastes they generate. Consider packaging: tossed cans, bottles, boxes and wrappers now take up more than a third of all landfill space. More prolific today than ever before, packaging is garbage waiting to happen.
 
Once buried or burned, trash is hardly benign. Landfills, even the most state-of-the-art, are environmental time bombs. They spew greenhouse gases, and leach hazardous chemicals and heavy metals into groundwater and soil. Waste incinerators are no less disastrous. They emit 70% of the world?s dioxin, and pollute the air with toxic particulate matter and a host of gases that cause acid rain.
 
GONE TOMORROW also explores the politics of recycling, which is widely embraced?more Americans recycle than vote?but has serious limitations, and, as Rogers points out, should only be seen as a first step toward more fundamental solutions.
 
Part expos?, part social commentary, GONE TOMORROW traces the connection between modern industrial production, consumer culture, and our disposable lifestyle. Read it and you?ll never think of garbage the same way again.
 
Heather Rogers is a writer, journalist, and filmmaker. Her documentary film Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (2002) screened in festivals around the globe. Her articles have appeared in Utne Reader, Z Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Third Text, and Art and Design. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Quimby’s Bridgeport is at 3201 S. Morgan, which is south of W. 31st street and west of Halsted, between and S. Aberdeen and S. Lituanica Ave.
 
Sunday Oct 23rd 6PM
Stencil Workshop:
Free
We will have some cardboard and cutting utensils you just need to bring
images to work with and learn the basics of stencil making, Marty Garcia
from the Southside artist collective “House of Payne” will be your will be
leading the workshop. Check out www.casadepayne.org
 
This event is part of Select Media Festival, full line up and info can be found atwww.selectmediafestival.org

Exquisite Corpse making with local comics artist Grant Reynolds Wednesday, September 7th, 7PM
FREE
 
Grant Reynolds is twenty-six (26) and has lived in more apartments than years he\’s been alive. He\’s been drawings comics since at least fourth grade, mostly in the form of newspaper comic strips and short-run minis. His first professionally printed book Smaller Parts is totally available like, right now. As for street-cred, Grant has boatloads, and he owns almost two pairs of sturdy pants, though he has almost no money of which to speak.
 
For this event Grant will be hosting a night of exquisite corpse making. It\’ll go down something like this: a space will be cleared for folding chairs and a table. On the table the following will be placed: clipboards (near twenty), a stack of blank paper (folded into thirds), some Bic-type pens, and two baskets. The event will be contained to the back half of the store and will carry a very chill vibe of good, clean fun (although Grant is sure almost nobody will be able to resist the impulse to draw giant excruciating looking genitals on the corpses at least once during the event). The rules of exquisite corpse making will be briefly explained at the beginning of the event (and throughout as needed). They are these: take a sheet of folded paper from the Unfinished Corpse basket and do a drawing on the top third of the sheet (also write your name in the corner), then fold appropriately so that the drawing is all hidden from view and place the sheet back into the Unfinished Corpse basket. Everyone keeps doing this on different sheets of paper until all three panels are finished by three different people. Then the finished drawings are placed in the Completed Corpse basket, where they will be revealed at the end of the event. Everyone gets to take home their respectively named drawing to put on their refrigerators at home. Grant?s books will be signed and sold throughout the evening. Also, during the event the band The Ink Spots will be piped in through the overhead, and some sort of complementary warm cheap beverage in cans will be served.
 
Additional information on Grant and his comics can be accessed at www.grantreynolds.net

Quimby’s Bridgeport is at 3201 S. Morgan, which is south of W. 31st street and west of Halsted, between and S. Aberdeen and S. Lituanica Ave.
 
Sunday Oct 30th 5PM
Free
Randall Bailey local artist behind “Slitte” & “The Christopher Worm”
presents an interactive presentation with a sort of artificial intelligence
– in that a sort of communication is established between the viewer and
what is being viewed. Using original drawings, sound and collage Randall will do something strange to your mind.
 
This event is part of Select Media Festival, full line up and info can be found atwww.selectmediafestival.org

Mon, Nov 7th, 7PM
Join Seth (Palooka-Ville, Clyde Fans, Wembelton Green) and
Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve, Summer Blond, Sleepwalk)
as they sign books and comics at Quimby?s
 
While still in high school, Adrian Tomine started writing and drawing his mini-comic Optic Nerve. After some success Adrian began producing Optic Nerve as a regular comic book series for Drawn & Quarterly. D&Q also published Sleepwalk and Other Stories collecting the first four issues of Optic Nerve it remains a best-seller for the company Adrian?s work has graced numerous CD and album covers as well as magazines like The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Time.
 
Aside from the forthcoming issue of Optic Nerve, Adrian has recently edited The Push Man and Other Stories the debut volume in a groundbreaking new series that collects Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s short stories about Japanese urban life.
 
Seth was a childhood fan of “Peanuts” and Jack Kirby?s “Eternals,” Seth was also influenced by the work of R. Crumb, Edward Gorey, the Hernandez Bros., Herge, Yves Chaland, John Stanley, and the cool, wry wit of mid-century “New Yorker” cartoonists. Drawing from this disparate group of inspirations Seth has distilled one of the most distinctive and recognizable cartooning styles of the past decade and has his illustrations in The Washington Post, Details, Spin, The New York Times, and the New Yorker. He is the author of Palooka-Ville and its two collections Clyde Fans and It’s A Good Life. He the lead designer on the 27 vol. project The Complete Peanuts, Seth lives in Guelph, Ontario with five cats, a huge collection of vintage records, comic books.
 
With his new Graphic Novel Wimbledon Green, Seth creates a farcical world of the people whose passion lies in the need to own comic books and only in pristine, mint condition. A charming and amusing caper where comic-book collecting is a world of intrigue and high finance. Part riotous chase, part whimsical character sketch, Wimbledon Green looks at the need to collect and the need to reinvent oneself.

Saturday Nov. 19th 7PMan event for two of our 33 1/3 series authors: J. Niimi, who wrote a title in the series on Murmur and Franklin Bruno, the author of a book about Elvis Costello\’s Armed Forces.
 
More Info TBA

Joshua Cohen reads from The QuoSaturday, October 8th, 7 PM
FREE
 
Joshua Cohen has performed in-depth investigations into mirrors and navels to return with The Quorum, his first collection of short fiction. A set of ten stories, a set of dreams, and a long monologue, these are all first-person rants given over by the somehow alienated, individuals seeking only a sympathetic hearing, all dealing with identity and religion as well as occupied with technical ideas of reliable narration and the structure of the mind\’s ear. From a review of a book about the Holocaust that\’s six-million blank pages to a suicide note from a young university student, from a letter to home outlining an economy based on hair to a eulogy for a poem, from a story narrated by three-hundred concubines to the title story about a group of people who interchange appearances, habits, proclivities and talents, The Quorum is a sensitively written and inevitably absurd take on the individual\’s lifelong quest to get someone, anyone, to listen.
 
About the author:
Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in New Jersey. He has worked as a journalist, essayist, translator and editor for many publications, including the Prague Literary Review, and the Forward. His fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, such as Sleeping Fish, Zeek, Fiction Warehouse, and The New Book of Masks (Raw Dog Screaming Press). Cohen\’s novel, Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, is forthcoming from Fugue State Press in 2006.

Signing with Jolene Siana author of Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock CutterThursday November 10th 7pm
 
Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock Cutter by Jolene Siana captures teen angst and music obsession like no author before her. Through confessional letters Siana sent to the singer of her favorite band, Go Ask Ogre reveals a troubled but hopeful and often hilarious ?goth? girl, determined to rise above her dysfunctional family life in a dying Midwest city full of head-bangers and fast-food futures.
 
Siana?s life throughout the Reagan era was a deeply troubled one. Her mother was single, alcoholic, and abusive. Jolene grew suicidal and became a ?cutter??someone who cuts their skin to feel relief from emotional pain. A suicidal tailspin led her to reach out to Ogre, the enigmatic singer of the influential industrial band Skinny Puppy. For more than three years, Siana sent Ogre a stream of letters, elaborately decorated with illustrations, photos, stories and clippings.
 
Ogre was so moved by the letters that he kept them in a box for more than a decade, returning them to the author after a chance meeting. After sifting through the details of her former life, Siana?now a well-adjusted and vibrant woman living in Los Angeles?found herself with an ?unintentional memoir,? and a persuasive testament to the power of art and music?even ?Devil Music??to transform lives.
 
Go Ask Ogre features Jolene?s accounts of personal interaction with several alternative heroes from the ?80s?including bailing Skinny Puppy out of jail, attending a slumber party with punk legends The Descendents, getting a pep talk from the Revolting Cocks, meeting Peter Murphy, and more.