Category: Store Events

  • Megan Milks and Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf Read

    Megan Milks, a true gem in the Chicago literary scene, marks a new kind of adventure with her chapbook, “Kill Marguerite.”  The story runs with its variations on a theme and bends them with a retro twist: life in an old school video game. The result is a fresh, entertaining story with a heroine the reader lives and dies with, again and again, while continually forgetting that she is nothing but a pixelated image on a screen, whose volition is tied to the trivial push of an A or B button.

    Semi-professional mascot and full-time whiz kid Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf is currently getting his MFA at the School of the Art Institute, but more importantly he writes short little things that have been assembled in “An Implausibility of Gnus.” The book is the product of Bengelsdorf’s compulsive pick-pocketing from the coats of the American psyche. Over 30 stories pack into the collection, each revealing sparkling tidbits of the ordinary or ordinary disclosures of the fantastical.

    An Implausibility of Gnus will be available in late June from Another New Calligraphy. “Kill Marguerite” is out now. Another New Calligraphy is a new non-profit project that supports Chicago writers and musicians.

    For more info about this event, see www.anothernewcalligraphy.com
    For more information about events at Quimby’s, see http://quimbys.com/blog/store-events

    This event, as all events at Quimby’s, is a FREE EVENT.

  • Bob Odenkirk Signs Here!

    BOB ODENKIRK COMES TO QUIMBY’S TO SIGN COMEDY BY THE NUMBERS© BOOK-ON-TAPE CD
    (With Possible Special Funny Guest!)

    With the belief that “true creativity comes from simple formulas and the memorization of data,” COMEDY BY THE NUMBERS© BOOKON-TAPE CD! is nothing short of an indispensable audio guide on how to be funny. Prof. Eric Hoffman & Dr. Gary Rudoren first reduced comedy to an easy-to-follow manual in the McSweeney’s humor bible COMEDY BY THE NUMBERS©, and now, for the first time ever, their work has been lovingly adapted to the medium of sound with the help of the brightest stars in the comedy galaxy. Would you like to make your co-workers laugh but have zero sense of humor? No problem! Take a tour of comedy history as you discover the power of such tried-and-true humor staples such as; “#-14-Catch Phrases,” “#16-Clowns,” “#86-Novelty Items,” “#24-Cursing,” “63-Jews & Their Idiosyncracies,” “#95-Pathos,” “#144-The Double Take,” “#82-Movie Spoofs,” “#101-Pie In The Face” and much, much more!

    Guest readers featured on the CD include: Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Janeane Garofalo, Zach Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Andy Kindler, Paul F. Tompkins, Matt Walsh, McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers and many more!

    The question isn’t, “Can I live without this book-on-tape CD?”
    The question is, “How have I lived this long without it?”
    Executive producer by Bob Odenkirk (of “Mr. Show fame) will be on hand to sign copies of the CD with a special guest!

    For more info on the CD: www.astrecords.com

    This event is free.

  • ARCHER PREWITT SIGNS WORK ON PAPER

    wop_b00

    Multi-talented Chicago artist Archer Prewitt (The Sea and Cake, The Coctails) signs his new book, Work On Paper!

    Not many people will know that the author of crazy and perverted comic, Sof’ Boy, is the same man who drew the beautiful and delicate nymph-like girl from the artists’ own music album, Wilderness. But look carefully and you will notice that the most intricately drawn fine lines and dots are mutual features of much of his work; the same organic, subtle, sophisticated and tender sensibility shine through in all of Archer Prewitt’s creations and never ceases to charm us.

    This book collects 32 of selected works from a group of minimal drawings he has been working on for almost 20 years.

    Foreword by Jim Harris (Courtauld Institute of Art, London).

    Work On Paper (PressPop)
    Hardcover, 48 pgs, color, deboss stamping on front cover
    Japanese/English
    Size: 8 inches x 8 inches
    For more info: http://www.presspop.com

    FREE

  • Drawn + Quarterly Artists Adrian Tomine and Seth at Quimby's

    Please join Quimby’s and Drawn & Quarterly at an event with Optic Nerve cartoonist Adrian Tomine and Palooka-Ville cartoonist Seth. The two New Yorker illustrators will be celebrating their own new releases – Tomine’s new editions of Shortcomings and 32 stories and Seth’s new graphic novel George Sprott 1894-1975 as well as the releases of the books they have edited and designed – Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (edited and designed by Tomine) and The Collected Doug: Canada’s Master Cartoonist (edited and designed by Seth). The two authors will be in conversation, take questions from the audience and will sign books.

    This event is free!

  • Russell Howze Brings Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art to Quimby's

    sn_cover_3inch_cmyk

    Russell Howze will be on the road this June, giving his slide presentation for “Stencil Nation.” This one hour presentation will give a great overview of the art form, using examples from the book as well as other outside sources, materials, and interesting items. Russell will also have actual cut stencils and will allow time for questions about all things stencil.

    Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art packs over 500 full-color photographs in a 192 page, 8 inch by 8 inch pound of paper and ink. The book presents work by more than 350 artists from 28 countries. Without a doubt, stencils are the fastest, easiest, and cheapest method for painting an image on a wall, a sidewalk, or almost any object anywhere. Stencil Nation focuses on the unexpected mix of this lively, accessible medium to reveal engaging aspects of an intentionally secretive international creative community. With dynamically illustrated perspectives from diverse niches of the art form, hundreds of photographs and numerous essays have been curated by StencilArchive.org’s founder, Russell Howze. Stencil Nation builds upon previous published works to give the most extensive and up-to-date history of stencil art, as well as how-to tips from the artists who work within the art form.

    Russell Howze saw his first stencil in 1990, which was J. R. “Bob” Dobbs on an apartment wall in Clemson, SC. In 1995, Russell saw an amazing sight on the exterior wall of the Reichstag in Berlin: a huge stenciled Bertolt Brecht poem. He snapped a photo of that stencil, then found one in Budapest, Hungary. Then a few more stencils appeared in Basel, Switzerland. When he landed in San Francisco in 1997, he found dozens on the sidewalks of the Mission and Haight neighborhoods. In 2002, Russell created the first version of Stencil Archive, thinking that he would have time to scan and upload his own collection before anyone discovered the site and submitted their own work. He was gladly mistaken, so Stencil Archive (www.stencilarchive.org <http://www.stencilarchive.org> ) took off, outgrew its parent site HappyFeetTravels.org, and ended up becoming a site with over 12,000 uploaded photographs.

    For more info:
    http://www.manicdpress.com
    http://www.stencilnation.org
    http://www.stencilarchive.org

    ALL EVENTS AT QUIMBY’S ARE FREE

  • Mike Edison Reads From I Have Fun Everywhere I Go

    Quimby’s is excited to welcome Mike Edison, author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot Porn Punk Rock Pro Wrestling Talking Apes Evil Bosses Dirty Blues American Heroes and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World.

    A rollicking, high-octane, always irreverent journey through the seamy side of the publishing industry. Mike Edison’s resume spans twenty years and a slew of notorious titles, including Screw, High Times, Penthouse, and Hustler. An Ivy League dropout who’s never looked back, Edison embarked on a career that’s landed him in the producer’s chair for one of the worst B movies of all time; on tour with the likes of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, GG Allin, and the Ramones; undercover at a religious cult; on a bender with Evel Knievel; feuding with Hulk Hogan; smoking dope with Ozzy Osborne; and authoring some twenty novels you wouldn’t want your mother to catch you reading—let alone writing. I Have Fun Everywhere I Go combines the fear and loathing of Hunter Thompson’s journalistic thrill rides with the acerbic insider voice of Toby Young. It’s an eye-opening, gleeful view of life on the edge—and the outlaws and oddballs encountered there.

    “If you have any interest in pot, pornography, punk rock, or professional wrestling, just buy this fucking thing.” —Nick Tosches

    Mike Edison is a writer, editor, and musician. He lives in New York City. At his event here at Quimby’s, he will be accompanied by the Interstellar Groove Machine, a “Rube Goldberg contraption built out of an electric organ, a tape loop generator, and theremin.” Expect literary mayhem of the highest order.

    Check out his video here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE_0_gtMMdE

    For more info: www.mikeedison.com

    FREE EVENT

  • Hal Niedzviecki, author of The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors Reads

    Peep Diaries_cover final_bleed

    The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors is the story of one man’s journey through a rapidly transforming culture of lying, spying, revealing, and confessing.

    We have entered the age of “Peep Culture”: a tell-all, show-all, know-all digital phenomenon that is dramatically altering notions of privacy, individuality, security and even humanity. Peep culture is Reality TV, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, over-the-counter spy gear, blogs, chatrooms, amateur porn, surveillance technology, Dr. Phil, Borat, cellphone photos of your drunk friend making out with her ex-boyfriend, and more. In the age of Peep, core values and rights we once took for granted are rapidly being renegotiated, often without our even noticing.

    With hilarious, exasperated acuity, social critic Hal Niedzviecki dives into Peep, starting his own video blog, joining every social network that will have him, monitoring the movements of his toddler, selling his secrets on Craigslist, hiring a private detective to investigate him, spying on his neighbors, trying out for reality TV, and stripping for the pleasure of a web audience he isn’t even sure exists. Part travelogue, part diary, part meditation and social history, The Peep Diaries explores a rapidly emerging digital phenomenon that is radically changing not just the entertainment landscape, but also the firmaments of our culture and society.

    The Peep Diaries introduces the arrival of the peep culture age and explores its implications on entertainment, society, sex, politics, and everyday life. Mixing first-rate reporting with sociological observations culled from the latest research, this book captures the shift from pop to peep and the way technology is turning gossip into documentary and peeping toms into entertainment journalists. Packed with stranger-than-fiction true-life characters and scenarios, The Peep Diaries reflects the aspirations and confusions of the growing number of people willing to trade the details of their private lives for catharsis, attention, and notoriety.

    HAL NIEDZVIECKI’s writings on culture have appeared in newspapers
    and magazines across North America. He is the founder of Broken Pencil magazine and has published numerous works of social commentary and fiction, including Hello I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity and We Want Some Too: Underground Desire and the Reinvention of Mass Culture.

    FREE

  • Quimby’s welcomes James Danky, co-author and co-curator of Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics Into Comix

    The impact of American underground comix is profound: They galvanized artists both domestically and abroad; they forever changed the economics of comic book publishing; and they influenced generations of cartoonists, including their predecessors. While the works of Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman are well-known via the New Yorker, Maus, and retrospective collections, the art of their contemporaries such as Gilbert Shelton, Trina Robbins, Justin Green, Kim Deitch, S. Clay Wilson, and many other seminal cartoonists who came of age in the 1960s is considerably less known.

    Underground Classics (Abrams) provides the first serious survey of underground comix as art, turning the spotlight on these influential and largely underappreciated artists. Essays from the book’s co-writers and co-curators James Danky and Denis Kitchen, alongside essays by Paul Buhle, Patrick Rosenkranz, Jay Lynch, and Trina Robbins, offer a thorough reflection and appraisal of the underground movement. Over 125 original drawings, paintings, sculptures, and artifacts are featured, loaned from private collections and the artists themselves, making Underground Classics indispensable for the serious-minded comics fan and for the casual reader alike.

    James Danky is the author/editor of dozens of books on topics as varied as African-American newspapers, women’s publications, and the Native American press. In 1974 he published his first book, Undergrounds, a bibliography of alternative newspapers. He is on the faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also founded and directed the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America. In 2007 Danky retired from the Wisconsin Historical Society after building their nationally renowned collections for thirty-five years. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

  • Joey Comeau Reads From Overqualified at Quimby's

    Dear Sirs or Madams . . .    “I wrote a series of letters, many of which appear in the book, and sent them to real companies. I really sent them, and I never got one response, until one day  the police came to my door. They’d been called by the HR department of a company that received one of the letters.”

    Joey Comeau’s startling new novel Overqualified (ECW Press), is told through job application cover letters. But these letters have very little to do with finding work. Joey’s anger and hopes and fears become the focus — he tells jokes when he should be outlining his  relevant job experience; he tells stories about his childhood when he should be talking about his education.   Over the course of this series of letters, a narrative emerges. The reader comes to know Joey through confessions of family secrets and embarrassing sexual experiences. And there’s been a terrible car accident involving Joey’s younger brother.    Overqualified is a funny, unhinged, and angry book — but it’s hopeful, too.

    Joey Comeau writes the comic A Softer World, which appeared recently in The Guardian has been profiled in Rolling Stone, and which Publishers Weekly called, “subtle and dramatic.” He is the author of a previous novel, Lockpick Pornography, and a collection of  short stories, It’s Too Late to Say I’m Sorry.

  • Dan Gleason and Friends Read from Pieces of Paper, Amongst the Words That Rest Upon Them, at Quimby's

    Chicago-based weirdo Dan Gleason once again graces us with his presence and brings some friends to entertain us. Like who else? These fine folks:
    Marc Arcuri: poet/advocate
    Thax Douglas: author/scholar
    Dan Gleason: journalist/hair pie
    Greg Jacobsen: painter/songstress
    Meg McCarville: autobiographer/leading lady
    Mike McPadden: writer/musician
    Dave Tortuga: artist/mover

    Well, what will happen at this event? Here is what Dan told us:

    “Chewing tobacco will be provided.
    (Chewing tobacco will not be provided.)
    Large chunk of melba toast accidentally placed in ear.
    Together we transform into one being that possesses a lot of the same power as that recently cancelled Michel Gondry.
    People should drink.
    Ingrown hair in my left nostril.”

    You don’t want to miss that, do you?
    FREE EVENT