Monthly Archive for August, 2005

Perpetual Motion Roadshow

Aug ’05
31
12:00 am

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 reads from How to Rent a Negro

Aug ’05
26
12:00 am

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.”

Signing with Sam Henderson author of The Magic Whistle

Aug ’05
20
12:00 am

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 VACATIONLAND

Aug ’05
16
12:00 am

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
 

PANDA MEAT EVENT

Aug ’05
15
12:00 am

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