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William E Burleson, discusses his new book Bi America
Thursday, Sept 15th 7:00PM
 
William E Burleson, author of Bi America, is a Twin Cities HIV prevention educator, activist, and writer. One of the founders of the Bisexual Organizing Project, Burleson is a past coordinator for BECAUSE: the Midwest Conference on Bisexuality.
 
Burleson is a regular speaker and workshop facilitator at conferences and on college campuses, discussing the bisexual community and the nature of sexuality. Current projects include writing essays about bisexuality for various GLBT publications and electronic newsletters and producing a weekly Minneapolis cable access television show, BiCities!
 
This will be a book reading and signing for the new book from Haworth Press, Bi America: Myths, Truths and Struggles of an Invisible Community.
 
Check Out
www.bi101.org

DVD RELEASE PARTY for SO WRONG THEY?RE RIGHT
Saturday, September 24th, 7PM
 
SO WRONG THEY?RE RIGHT, is the award-winning documentary about American 8-track format fanatics made by local Chicago filmmakers RUSS FORSTER and DAN SUTHERLAND in 1995. The evening?s festivities will include:
 
RUSS FORSTER performing his top eight 8-track songs on banjo, guitar, and even acapella, including a version of ?Stairway To Heaven? complete with original fade out, click, and fade in!
 
DAN SUTHERLAND reading some of his hilarious prose culled from his days writing for the collector magazine 8-TRACK MIND!
 
DEACON COLEMAN preaching the gospel of 8-track fresh from his pulpit at the Church of NONE BUT THE RIGHTEOUS!
 
Eulogies for two of the collectors who have passed on to the infinite loop, officiated by DEACON COLEMAN!
 
Clips of movie highlights, including street preaching by DEACON COLEMAN, eye-dancing by BURNSEE and DUST, and format surfing by the self-proclaimed 8-Track Messiah JAMES ?BIG BUCKS? BURNETT!
 
Giveaways, snacks and beverages, and of course copies of the DVD for signing and sale!

Machine magazine Launch Wednesday August 31, 8PM
 
Emerson Dameron: The only guy on the bill that is from
the South, Emerson Dameron was belittled in The Reader
as being a Tarintino wanna-be and heralded in UR
Chicago as one of the highlights of the Chicago zine
scene. The Reader was wrong. He’s a Jim Jarmusch
wanna-be.
 
Eric Lab Rat: When The Machine first heard the piece,
“Eric Lab Rat is Retarded,” we all agreed that he
should write a monthly column. After spending time
with the Rev., we’re come to the conclusion that he
was right, he is retarded. He’s also a member of the
Gentlemen Callers, which is a total waste of time.
 
Matt LaPorte: Mr. LaPorte is the Gay and Lesbian
editor of The Machine. This means that he is hated in
most of America. He also walks dogs. This means that
he is in touch with the canines. But he hates them.
Matt hates everyone.
 
Kelsey Snell: Ms. Snell is the creator and
co-Editor-In-Chief of The Machine. Her media
experience did not adequately prepare her for the
cockfest that is this reading. If you hate her
reading, you hate women. If you like her reading, you
are a forward thinking individual who knows what is
best for you and the world.
 
Brandon Wetherbee: Brandon has wasted ink in Foul,
Sanitary and Ship, college newspapers, religious
propaganda, the Bible and Entertainment Weekly. His
dream of becoming the guy in sweatpants on the bus at
4am was realized last Wednesday. He is also
co-Editor-In-Chief of The Machine.
 
Charlie Deets: The Machine decided to be ?artsy? and
have a Chicago musician write a monthly column.
Rather than make sense, Mr. Deets confesses to us like
one would confess to a priest or therapist. The
Machine didn?t want this. But we?re too afraid
Charlie will kill himself and take us with him, so we
let him keep writing.

Perpetual Motion Roadshow
Saturday September 3rd 7pm
 
For this installment of the Perpetual Motion Roadshow we offer readings from:
 
Ryan Robert Mullen from Wisconsin, author of short fiction. Check: www.getunderground.com
 
Tim Hall from New York writes fiction and essays, His novel Half Empty is out now from Undie Press
Check: www.tim-hall.com
 
Jennifer Lovegrove from Toronto who is a poet with books out now from ECW press.
Check: www.jenniferlovegrove.com
 
www.perpetualmotionroadshow.com

Damali Ayo will discuss and sign her new book How to Rent a NegroTuesday August 16th 7PM
 
How to Rent a Negro is framed as a handy guidebook that gives much-needed advice and tips on technique. It is actually a hilarious satirical look at race relations that reframes actual stories, techniques, requests, and responses gathered from the author’s 30-odd years of research and experience. It includes step-by-step outlines for renters to get the most for their money: how to grab black people’s hair, invite them to your party, get them to teach you how to dance; and for rentals, it gives tips on how to become successful and wealthy, including what to wear and topics of conversation to avoid. Punctuated by quotes from former renters, How to Rent a Negro shocks and amuses, presenting a strikingly stark mirror of human relationships.
 
Damali Ayo’s web site, www.rent-a-negro.com, has been featured in media outlets including the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Harpers Magazine, and Salon.com.
 
In her presentation, Ayo will read her favorite sections and tell some of the real-life stories that inspired the scenarios in the book.
 
Bring your camera and take a photo with Ayo in front
of a banner reading “my new black friend” or advertising themselves as “for rent.”

Sam Henderson author ofThe Magic WhistleTuesday, August 9th, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
SAM HENDERSON, 35, is living proof that Emmy nominees have to dive through couches for change. He has been a storyboard director for SpongeBob Squarepants and Camp Lazlo, and recently did a video for They Might Be Giants, but works mostly for print. He can be seen regularly in Nickelodeon magazine but his main vehicle is a comic called The Magic Whistle. Despite his high-profile gigs being for children, this is definitely not (unless you want it to be). Billed as the stuff that can?t go anywhere else, it is what he is most proud of.
 
Sam Henderson will sign his comics.

Ander Monson reads from OTHER ELECTRICITIES and VACATIONLANDSaturday, July 30th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
In Other Electricities we follow glimpses of dispossessed lives in the snow-buried reaches of Upper Michigan\’s Keweenaw Peninsula, where nearly everyone seems to be slipping away under the ice to disappear forever. There is Crisco Hatfield, the breaker of arms; Bone, dropper of bowling balls off interstate overpasses; The Oracle of Apollo in Tapiola, who sees all; Christer, a pyromaniac collector of pornography who jumps off cliffs for kicks; and most importantly there is Liz, the book\’s central obsession, an unknowable girl who crashed through the ice on prom night. Through an unsettling, almost crazed gestalt of sketches, short stories, lists, indices, and radio schematics, Monson presents a world where weather, landscape, radio waves, and electricity are influential characters in themselves, affecting an entire community held together by the memories of those they have lost.
 
The poems in Vacationland are set in Michigan?s Upper Peninsula, land of weather and long winters. His images: hotel pools full of refuse, wadded ATM receipts, cracked windshields in a land of endless snow, that all, ultimately, add benevolence and poise to life?s darker moments. In Monson?s world, the nearest city is a four-hour car ride and isolation is the backdrop for Monson?s vital yet haunting imaginings. His words stay with you and penetrate the heart like a beam of sunlight breaking across the icy Lake Michigan shore.
 
Ander Monson grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He lived briefly in Saudi Arabia, Iowa, and in the Deep South, where he received his MFA from the University of Alabama. He is the editor of the magazine DIAGRAM and the New Michigan Press. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including The North American Review, Fence, Field, Gulf Coast, The Bellingham Review, Ploughshares, Boston Review, and the Mississippi Review, among others
 
Check Out: www.otherelectricities.com
 

The Bird Machine family celebratesPanda MeatSaturday, August 13th, 7PMFREE
 
Panda Meat is a cutting-edge collection of 110 contemporary underground and mainstream artists, illustrators, and graphic designers from a networked community of self-made artisans. In recent years, the world of independent poster artists has created a new revolution, bringing together designers from all around the world. This explosion of creativity has resulted in the equivalent of a new pop art movement that is continuously growing in popularity. Panda Meat is a source book to some of the great talent involved in this new movement. Each artist uses different media, but all of them work independently to manufacture their own products. Contact information for each artist is included in the back of the book. Edited by Frank Kozik, the widely-recognized master of concert poster art and author of Man’s Ruin, Ode to Joy, and Desperate Measures, Empty Pleasures.
 
Appearances from Bird Machine family folks:
Jay Ryan, Dan Grzeca, Nick Butcher
If you?re lucky, they?ll bring original prints to sell!
 
More info is at:
http://www.thebirdmachine.com
http://altpick.com/members.php?id=17507
http://www.foundation-gallery.org

Winners of the 27th AnnualInternational 3-Day Novel Contest,Meghan Austin & Shannon Mullally read from their NovelLove BlockThursday, August 11th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
LOVE BLOCK by Meghan Austin and Shannon Mullally is the Winner of the 27th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest. Love Block is a collaborative novel, written via phone and email by writers living on opposite ends of the United States. Through a series of correspondences, two secret agents debate, bicker and commiserate while they search for a mysterious cure for the lovelorn (possibly in the form of a \”love block\” potion that will foil any and all heartbreak). Love Block explores the question of whether or not humans should surrender to the idea of true love. It\’s funny, furious, sometimes crazy and always fast-moving, just like the 3-Day Novel contest itself.
 
Meghan Austin and Shannon Mullally met while earning their MFAs in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. When they agreed to collaborate on this contest, Austin was living in Portland, Oregon and Mullally was living in Chicago. They both now live in Chicago, where they continue to study and write. Love Block is their first published novel.
 
The 3-Day Novel Contest has run every Labour Day Weekend for 28 years and has garnered a reputation as the cheeky and uncompromising rebel of literary forms. It has been called \”a fad,\” \”a threat,\” and a \”trial by deadline\” and it flies in the face of the notion that novels take years of angst to produce. Although every entrant desires the Grand Prize of publication and instant fame, most enter the contest to shake off writers\’ block and to kick up their creativity. They?ll sweat, they?ll cry, their fingers will cramp?they may go mad?and they might just produce something amazing. And if they win, they?ll be published.
 
Checkout : www.3daynovel.com

Jake Austen celebrates the release of his new bookTV-a-Go-Go – Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American IdolFriday August 26 8PM
 
Jake Austen is the editor of Roctober magazine, produces a cable-access children’s television rock show called Chic-a-Go-Go, and writes for magazines including Playboy. He is the editor of A Friendly Game of Poker.
 
TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol
From Elvis and a hound dog wearing matching tuxedos and the comic adventures of artificially produced bands to elaborate music videos and contrived reality-show contests, television ?as this critical look brilliantly shows? has done a superb job of presenting the energy of rock in a fabulously entertaining but patently “fake” manner. The dichotomy of “fake” and “real” music as it is portrayed on television is presented in detail through many generations of rock music: the Monkees shared the charts with the Beatles, Tupac and Slayer fans voted for corny American Idols, and shows like Shindig! and Soul Train somehow captured the unhinged energy of rock far more effectively than most long-haired guitar-smashing acts. Also shown is how TV has often delighted in breaking the rules while still mostly playing by them: Bo Diddley defied Ed Sullivan and sang rock and roll after he had been told not to, the Chipmunks’ subversive antics prepared kids for punk rock, and things got out of hand when Saturday Night Live invited punk kids to attend a taping of the band Fear. Every aspect of the idiosyncratic history of rock and TV and their peculiar relationship is covered, including cartoon rock, music programming for African American audiences, punk on television, Michael Jackson’s life on TV, and the tortured history of MTV and its progeny.
 
This will be a release party, with readings, rare video clip screenings and more.