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Gregory Jacobsen & Dan Gleason
Tuesday November 16th 8PM
 
Gregory Jacobsen will read from his latest novel “Life is a tasty, tender brisket,” talk about comfort foods, discuss proper handling technique of several rare meats, and expose his extremely unique pelvic disorder for the first time in the U.S. nation. Dan Gleason will hum tunes from his album, “Songs of Sex, Songs of Pride,” re-creating his own 1978 appearance on the show ‘Dinah and Friends,’ for all to enjoy.
 
From Dan:
 
On November 16, Gregory Jacobsen and I will host a
multi-media event at Quimby’s, featuring multiple
medias, dual or triple (triumvirate ?) uses of
different mediums of expression, and, media. Media
will be utilized to tell tales which we have scribed
first in our hearts, and then fleshed out on paper.
We’ll show you our flesh. If you don’t live in town,
there is no need to make calendricular markings. But
if you do, I think you should be there, because you
may or may not like it. So mark them now, unless you
don’t like experiences, because that is what this
reading will be. On November 16th. 8 pm. If it’s
your anniversary, I suggest divorce. If it’s father’s
birthday, I’m more than willing to slay the lying
bastard, who more than likely is cheating on your
douting, loving mother. If it’s your mother’s
birthday, than she has guilt-tripped you into
witnessing her day of celebration for long enough and
you should tell her ‘forget you’ and come to Quimby’s,
where me and Greg will be reading stories to people
who have otherwise chosen to be there. Other tell off
options- we’ll discuss them later- Bonnie has to use
the computer right now, and I’m a good, good friend.
 
It’s November 16
 
I’m
Dan Gleason

Highschool Space Hosts Zine Making Party Nov. 21
 
Wicker Park, Chicago, IL —
Highschool Art Space hosts “READ Zine Making Party #5” at 7:30 p.m. Sunday,
Nov. 21st 2004.
 
The READ Party promotes media literacy and DIY ethics in a hands-on
environment.
 
Bring your friends, cameras, journals, and ideas to fill the blank pages
distributed at the entrance.
 
Pages created at the READ Party will be published in READ Zine #5, the
culmination of the event.
 
Publishers and zinesters are encouraged to bring their wares to trade &
sell.
 
In the past two decades “zines” — an informal word derived from “magazine”
— have become
a street art and literary phenomenon.
 
They are self-published periodicals often photocopied, noncommercial, and
frequently confrontational with mainstream culture and media.
 
The estimated 20,000 zines that exist in the United States today vary
largely in topic appealing to numerous audiences with specialized interests.
 
The READ Zine Making Party is made possible by Quimby’s, Loop Distro and a grant from the City of Chicago’s Community Arts Assistance Program [CAAP].
 
For more info on this event please contact project coordinator at
bradley_adita@yahoo.com.
More press, info & sample pages from previous issues can be found at
http://www.adita.org/read
 
Highschool is located at 1542 N. Milwaukee Ave. 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL,
60622 and maintains a website at http://www.highschoolspace.com or email
reeducation101@yahoo.com

The Amazing Tomascelebrates the
release ofGeek Magicwith LIVE MAGICSaturday, November 6th, 8:00 PM
FREE
 
Tomas, the professional magician, has had hundreds of shows throughout Chicago land–GREAT AMERICA, THE ALLSTATE ARENA, DOUBLE DOOR, CONGRESS THEATER, THE ODIUM, THE VIC, and THE HOUSE OF BLUES. Plus he?s kinda known by the magic nerds because of his marvelous \”CARDIOLOGIST DECK\”, the EXCHANGE, and \”AMAZING MAGIC WITH ROPE\” DVDs that are sold around the world (no kiddin). From Joey\’s eighth birthday in Hinsdale, Illinois to warming the stage for Insane Clown Posse, & Cyprus Hill nothing is beneath him. He has toured with the William Darke Psycho Circus and most recently you can catch him performing in the Lavender Cabaret at the Lakeshore Theater. Despite all the work performing, Tomas has managed to schmooze himself a job at the nation\’s largest magic manufacturer (FUN Inc.) working as a Customer Service Manager-WOW!
 
Tomas will be celebrating the release of his new Geek Magic DVD. Get ready to \”stun the teaming masses\” with bizarre feats impressive enough to amaze even the most jaded audiences. Geek magic is not the ordinary instructional magic DVD. This is a delightfully creepy collection of shocker pieces guaranteed to become reputation makers. The DVD is entertaining to watch and you too can learn how to: Swallow and Manipulate Razor Blades, Produce Live Bugs, Become a Human Spittoon, Ingest an Inflated Balloon, Drink Motor Oil, Chew on Broken Glass And Much More! This magic is not intended for the faint of heart – or stomach.
 
For the evenings festivities of shock and delight Tomas will perform Magic and be joined by his friend Bob Rumba, professional ventriloquist.

Steve Brodner signsFreedom Fries
Sunday, October 17th, 4:00 PM
FREE
 
For more than two decades, Steve Brodner has been the most savage editorial cartoonist/ illustrator to work in the United States. His pitiless illustrations, cartoons, comic strips, and illustrated reportages have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek as well as most other major magazines and newspapers in North America.
 
Freedom Fries is Brodner?s absurdly nightmarish journey through the last 30 years of American politics. And what a cast of characters: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II (and those are just the presidents). Add in such pretenders to the throne as Newt Gingrich, both Doles, Gore, and Nader, craven cabinet officers and legislators and you have the most horrifyingly hilarious rogues? gallery of striking resemblances anywhere.
 
Extensively annotated with Brodner?s own pungent commentary and reminiscences, and including some images that were simply too provocative to print the first time around, Freedom Fries is a stunningly reproduced, exquisitely barbed walk through the last 30 years? political landscape ? part coffee table art book, part madcap manifesto. In many cases, Brodner?s political perspective has only gained resonance in today?s climate.
Released as the 2004 election season heats up, Freedom Fries fits squarely into the tradition of provocative commentary by such firebrands as Michael Moore, Al Franken, Mark Crispin Miller and Molly Ivins ? except in Brodner?s case, the commentary is also a treasure of handsome visual art.
 
For this event not only will Steve Brodner be signing copies of Freedom Fries, he will also be drawing the 2004 presidential candidates live on the spot.
 

Sunday, October 10th at the Hideout: FOUND magazine! Time TBA. The Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia.

The Business of Holidays book release event
6PM Friday December 3rd
 
The Business of Holidays, ed. Maud Lavin (New York: Monacelli Press): Holiday celebrations in the United States are a surprisingly strong force behind the country’s $3 trillion retail economy. From New Year’s diets to Festivus-flavored ice cream, Presidents’ Day care sales to Independence Day barbecues, Hanukkah cards to Kwanzaa candles, the social and material culture of holidays has been transformed into a finely tuned marketing extravanganza. Contemporary holiday rites showcase a particularly American obsession with celebration–and the shopping, decorating, card sending, feasting, drinking, and advertising that goes along with it. This witty and satirical look at thirty-three of our most loved (and hated) holidays explores the history and the traditions, the kitsch and the color, of the business of holidays.
 
For the book release event join Maud Lavin, Alyson Beaton, Eliza Rosen, Courtney Perkins and Ben Finch
 
Maud Lavin is an associate professor in visual and critical studies and art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduate director of visual and critical studies. She is the author of a monograph on the Berlin Dada artist Hannah Hoch–Cut with the Kitchen Knife–and a book on design and politics–Clean New World.
 
Alyson Beaton is an instructor in visual communications at the School of the Art Institute. Her recent artists’ books are in the collections pf Printed Matter, Collette, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at SAIC.
 
Eliza Rosen is a freelance graphic designer in Chicago whose clients have included Deborah’s Place and Chicago Magazine.
 
Courtney Perkins is an independent curator who has organized exhibitions in Chicago at venues including 1926 and ThreeWalls and in Austin, Texas.
 
Ben Finch is the owner and creative director of The Killswitch Collective, a Chicago multimedia and design firm. He specializes in web and print design for the creative and music industry.

Friday, October 15th, 7pmat the Pritzker Pavilion:Dave Eggers!!!Presented by Quimby’s and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs
 
A quick note to let you know the Dave Eggers/Haggis-On-Whey event has been moved from the Cultural Center to across the street at the Pritzker Pavilion. It’s only a block away, just a few minutes walk. The address of the Pritzker Pavilion is 205 E. Randolph. You enter it at Washington and Michigan. You can also take a tunnel from underneath Michigan Ave at Randolph across the street too. It’s inside Millennium Park, which is Chicago’s new fancy pansty architectural ado. You know, where the big bean sculpture is.
 
Seating is limited. But the time of the event is still the same: Friday, October 15th at 7PM.
 
Dave Eggers will be on tour for the next volume in the Haggis-on-Whey book series.
 
For many years the scientific and educational community has wondered and worried about the possibility that semi-sane scholar-pretenders would find the means to put out a series of reference books, filled with ludicrous misinformation and aimed at children. These books would inevitably find their way into the hands of households of well-meaning families, who would go to them for facts but instead find bizarre untruths. The books would look normal enough, but would read as if written by people who have eaten too many lead-based paint chips.
 
Well, happily, that day is upon us. We offer you GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! and YOUR DISGUSTING HEAD, the first two volumes by Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey. A world-renowned and much feared expert on everything, Dr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey has seventeen degrees from eighteen institutions of higher learning. With her husband, Benny, she has traveled the world many times over, has learned about all aspects of life, including outer space and food, first hand.
 
Besides housing the greatest collection of factoids ever assembled, these books display full color photographs, charts and meaningless diagrams; a plethora of connect-the-dots and word find games; and the several pages devoted to cheap shots at Madagascar.
 
This event will feature a presentation from Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey

Perpetual Motion Roadshow #17
featuring Todd Taylor, Darren O?Donnell
& Jonathan Messinger
Thursday, October 21st, 8:00 PM
 
Perpetual Motion Roadshow #17 features: Punk Rock\’s Studs Terkel TODD TAYLOR from L.A., end of the world idealist DARREN O\’DONNELL from Toronto, and transit tale-teller JONATHAN MESSINGER from Chicago!
 
Jonathan Messinger has written humor for McSweeney\’s Internet Tendency, Haypenny and Opium Magazine. He also served for two years as the editor of the humor magazine WheatBread Magazine, which won several awards during his tenure, and was involved, in two legal skirmishes. As a reporter with Pioneer Press in Illinois, he served for two years as a transportation writer before parlaying that experience into the online journal This is Grand: Stories of Chicago\’s Rapid Transit. On the Roadshow, he will perform funny and bizarre stories from trains and buses, and soliciting the audience for theirs.
(www.thisisgrand.org, jonathan@thisisgrand.org)
 
Todd Taylor has been called the Studs Terkel of punk rock. He is the co-editor, co-publisher of Razorcake Fanzine (www.razorcake.com) and Gorsky Books. Both enterprises hope to establish that punk can be ethical, vital, and fun without being tamed. For years prior, he helped run Flipside, living the motto, \”Too stupid to quit, too high to care.\” He\’s been published in Suburban Voice, Sassy, Dispatch, Barracuda, punkvoter.com. and is a regular contributor to Thrasher. His first book, Born to Rock, which he will be reading from, is a collection of essays and interviews he\’s conducted over the last eight years.
(www.razorcake.com, retodded@razorcake.com)
 
Darren O\’Donnell is a writer, director, performance artist, designer and artistic director of Mammalian Diving Reflex. His shows include A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, pppeeeaaaccceee, [boxhead], White Mice, Over, Who Shot Jacques Lacan?, Radio Rooster Says That\’s Bad and Mercy!; he has organized The Talking Creature, a continuing experiment in public discourse and published his first novel, Your Secrets Sleep with Me, with Coach House Books. He has also won a few awards for writing, directing and design. He will be doing something interactive and nervewracking.
(www.mammalian.ca, darren@mammalian.ca)
 
WWW.NOMEDIAKINGS.ORG

Art Spiegelman will besigning his new book In the Shadow Of No Towers
Wednesday, October 13th 6:30pm
FREE
 
For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day.
 
Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood, but the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda.
 
He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics (which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks), he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey–with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit–the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy.
 
Art Spiegelman is cofounder/editor of Raw, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics. From 1992 to 2002, he was a staff artist and writer for The New Yorker. Maus received the Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
 
Art Spiegelman will be signing copies of In The Shadow of No Towers

Quimby’s Thirteenth Year Exhibition
At the Old Town School of Folk Music
Saturday, Sept 25th 5-7PM
FREE
 
Old Town School of Folk Music is letting us celebrate thirteen freakass years in the world of independent publishing, with an exhibit opening at their pad on September 25th that will stay up through the end of October. With refreshments, music and dancing. And if you\’re in the mood, stay for the show afterwards at the Old Town School. WLUW welcomes Over the Rhine with Special Guest Thea Gilmore. The Quimby\’s part of the evening is free, but the show is a separate event that you\’ll need to purchase tickets for, which you can do at the OTS at 773-728-6000. The address of the Old Town School of Folk Music is 4544 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625. This Quimby\’s and independent publishing exhibition will stay up until the end of October, so if you can\’t make it to the event, stop by and see it when you get the chance. For more info about the non-Quimby\’s portion of the evening, see http://www.oldtownschool.org