Monthly Archive for September, 2013

Laydeez Do Comics October Edition: Beth Hetland and Jaclyn Miller 10/31

Published on September 27, 2013 0 Comments
Oct ’13
31
7:00 pm

Laydeez bigger logo May

Laydeez do Comics is a unique salon with a focus on graphic works based on life narrative, the drama of the domestic, and the everyday. Invited guest speakers have 10-20 minute slots to present works/ideas followed by a Q&A. Launched in London in July 2009, the group has now expanded to other cities, including Chicago. Quimby’s hosts the Chicago chapter and it is usually the last Thursday of every month.

October’s edition features artists Beth Hetland (cartoonist, teacher, lover of sharks) & Jaclyn Miller (cartoonist, Chicago Zine Fest organizer).

Beth Hetland was raised in the rolling hills of Wisconsin.  After earning her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, where she started making comics, she packed up and moved to White River Junction, VT to attend a graduate program at The Center for Cartoon Studies.  She graduated with an MFA in 2011 and accepted a position teaching comics at her alma mater, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  She has been teaching there ever since, bringing comics and cheer to eager young minds.  She has been self-publishing since 2006 with over 50 titles to her name. She has been the recipient of the both the Best Small Press Stumptown Award and Nerdlinger. Her longest auto-bio work, “Fugue,” is a three part story that traces the generational repetitions and relationship of her family utilizing music as a metephor. She frequently collaborates with her best friend, Kyle O’Connell, on fiction work–the current ideration of which is the first volume of their new series titled “Half Asleep.”  For more about Beth and her work, visit her blog: beth-hetland.com.

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Jaclyn Miller is a cartoonist living and working in Chicago. Her work deals primarily in autobiography, daydream, and memory. Her current project, “Rememberies,” is a minicomic series centered around childhood folly and reflection. When she’s not working her day job or surrounding herself with good people and good comics, she spends her time as an organizer for the Chicago Zine Fest. More info at fortfootcomix.tumblr.com.

Jaclyn Miller image

rememberies

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Off-Site Book Release Event for Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey at the Hungry Brain 10/16

Published on September 26, 2013 0 Comments
Oct ’13
16
6:00 pm

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Join us at the Hungry Brain on Oct 16th for the release of Fred Minnick’s book Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey (and yes, the book will be available for purchase, courtesy of Quimby’s). Special discussion panel guests will be Monique Huston, whisky specialist at Stoller Wine & Spirits, “Still Stoker” Karen Sisulak Binder of Southern Sisters Spirits, Meg Bell – brand ambassador for Death’s Door Spirits and one of Chicago premier female distillers Sonat Hart from Koval Distillery.

About the book:
Shortly after graduating from University of Glasgow in 1934, Elizabeth “Bessie” Williamson began working as a temporary secretary at the Laphroaig Distillery on the Scottish island Islay. Williamson quickly found herself joining the boys in the tasting room, studying the distillation process, and winning them over with her knowledge of Scottish whisky. After the owner of Laphroaig passed away, Williamson took over the prestigious company and became the American spokesperson for the entire Scotch whisky industry. Impressing clients and showing her passion as the Scotch Whisky Association’s trade ambassador, she soon gained fame within the industry, becoming known as the greatest female distiller. Whiskey Women tells the tales of women who have created this industry, from Mesopotamia’s first beer brewers and distillers to America’s rough-and-tough bootleggers during Prohibition. Women have long distilled, marketed, and owned significant shares in spirits companies. Williamson’s story is one of many among the influential women who changed the Scotch whisky industry as well as influenced the American bourbon whiskey and Irish whiskey markets. Until now their stories have remained untold.

Please note: This event it NOT at Quimby’s. It is at The Hungry Brain, 2319 W Belmont Ave  Chicago, IL 60618 (773) 709-1401.

The Hungry Brain on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehungrybrain

The Facebook Post for this event.

Wednesday, Oct. 16th

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New Stuff This Week

Published on September 21, 2013 2 Comments

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Henry and Glenn #3 Forever and Ever by Igloo Tornado and friends $5.00

Zines
KerBloom #103 Jul Aug 13 by Artnoose $2.00
Collide On Physical and Mental Illness by Maranda Elizabeth, Synthia Nicole et al. $2.50
Aint Shit, A Punk Zine $3.00
Dayburner #2: Information that is useless, “unless, of course,” you are an electrician by Frank Clark (Microcosm) $3.00
Rad Dad #24 $4.00
Wildlifoodin #2 by Phlat $3.00
Simple History Series #12: Mongolian Empire by J. Gerlach $4.00
SeXXX Files $6.00
Moist Ladies #3 We Shall Never Bathe by Nathan Veach $5.00
Francis Photo Zine $5.00
Pu Ro Mi Su by Francis Kulikowski $5.00
Warmth #2 by S. Ostrowski $6.00
One Time I Saw This Stuff by Kvnly $6.00
The Match #112 Fall 13 $3.00
New Ayers Rock City by Kevin Tadge $12.00

Comics & Comix
The Plot #3 Stolen Minds by Neil Brideau and Kenan Rubenstein $5.00 – What do you get if you mix a coming-of-age story in a weirdo forest mixed with a less sinister Logan’s Run? You get The Plot. It’s by Quimby’s Mini-Comics Sommalier Neil. Kenan Rubenstein drew 5 pages for him.
Phase 7 #018 by Alec Longstreth $3.00 – The incredibly cute adventures of Alec’s adventures being a Weezer fan. This issue’s album: Pinkerton.
Tough Cats by Burkholder and Mathewuse $2.50
Spiros Greek Myths #5 by Spiro Dousias $5.00
Mess by Andy J. Hood $5.00
Midwestern Cuban Comics vol 1 #6 and #7 by Odin Cabal $5.00 each

Graphic Novels & Trade Paperbacks

schoolspirits
School Spirits by Anya Davidson (Picturebox) $19.95 – The story of Oola, a high school student with an unusual connection to the supernatural.
Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps by Art Spiegelman (D&Q) $39.95 – a comprehensive career overview of the output of legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

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Reggie 12 by Brian Ralph (D&Q) $21.95
Pompeii by Frank Santoro (Picturebox) $19.95
Lost Vegas TPB Welcome to Fabulous Lost Vegas by Jim McCann and Janet K. Lee $14.99
World Map Room by Yuichi Yokoyama (Picturebox) $19.95

Art & Design
Henry Darger: Throwaway Boy the Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist by Jim Elledge $29.95
How Are You Feeling? At the Centre of the Inside of The Human Brain’s Mind by David Shrigley $19.95 – Take a look around this guy’s brain. He’s nuts! And we love him for it.
Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints From the Catacombs by Paul Koudounaris $29.95 – Skeletons with bling. That shit isreal.
Far Woods by Sarah Burwash (Conundrum) $20.00
Fantasy Tattoo Art: Artistic Illustrations by Xiaobai $35.00
Flood of Sunshine by Al Palmer $10.00
Doorjams: Amazing Doors of New York City by Alan Markman $39.99 – This sounds like it would be sublimely boring, but you’d be surprised at the street and outsider lowbrow art you see on NY doors!

Fiction
Everything Flows by James Greer (Curbside Splendor) $15.95 – Guided By Voices former bassist does words, GBV singer songwriter Robert Pollard does collage illustrations.
Tomorrowland by Joseph Bates (Curbside Splendor) $14.95
Suiciders by Travis Jeppesen (Semiotext[e]) $16.95
Seven Deadly Plays and thensome by Joe Janes $10.00

Magazines
Bust Oct Nov 13 $5.99
Laphams Quarterly vol 6 #4 Fall 13 $16.00
Dodo Magazine #1 $21.00
True Crime Sep 13 $8.99
Skeptic vol 18 #3 $6.95
Open Minds Oct Nov 13 $6.50
Pop Magazine #29 Fall Win 13 $18.99
Fangoria #327 $10.99
Video Watchdog #175 $8.95
Cinema Retro vol 9 #27 $11.99
The Paris Review #206 $15.00
Razorcake #76 $4.00
Tape Op #97 Sep Oct 13 $4.95
Radical Philosophy #181 $13.00
Against the Current #166 Sep Oct 13 $5.00
GLQ vol 19 #4 Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies $12.00
Freshly Inked vol 3 #5 $6.99
Harpers Magazine Oct 13 $6.99
Wire Sep 13 #355 $11.25

Poetry, Lit Mags, Lit Journals, Chap Books
Slice Fall 13 Win 14 #13 $8.00
Satellite Toronto $11.00

Sex & Sexy
Contact High by Richard Kern $29.95
Sweets Magazine vol 7 #22 $7.99
Temptress #4 $6.99

Mayhem, Miscreants, Memoirs, Music & Misc
Midwest UFOs and Beyond by Tom Baker (Schiffer) $16.99 – No, not THAT Tom Baker. Tom Baker the writer.
Nick Drake: Dreaming England by Nathan Wiseman-Trowse (The Reverb Series from Reaktion Books) $25.00
Blood, Marriage, Wine & Glitter by S. Bear Bergman (Arsenal Pulp) $18.95
Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow by Andy Sturdevant (Coffee House Press) $22.00 – Keepsake, guidebook, and wunderkammer of enthusiasms, Andy Sturdevant’s essays offer a new way of thinking about urban spaces and the contemporary Midwest. Craigslist ads, homemade signs at Target Field, and alleyways all open up with possibilities for measuring cultural time and the resonance, not provincialism, of spaces closely observed.
Meaty by Samantha Irby (Curbside Splendor) $15.95

DIY
Pedal, Stretch, Breathe: The Yoga of Bicycling by Kelli Refer (Elly Blue Publishing) $9.95 Incorporate basic yoga exercises, breathing, and philosophy into your daily bike ride, from breathing their way up hills to dealing with achey knees and tight hips to overcoming road rage.

Politics & Revolution
Internationalism, Pan-Africanism and the Struggle of Social Classes: Raw Writings from the Notebook of an Early 1970s African-American Radical Activist by Modibo M Kadalie (One Quest Press) $28.95

Kids Stuff
Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman and Skottie Young $14.99
Making of the Platypus Philharmonic Orchestra by Eliana Joy Barnett $20.99
Big Wet Balloon a Toon Book by Liniers (Toon Books) $12.95

Other Stuff
A wallet! It looks like a bagel! $11.00
Socks! They say “Fuck This Shit!” on them! $9.99

Want to see what’s new to order in our web store? See quimbys.com/store.

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New Stuff This Week

Published on September 14, 2013 1 Comment

heavyhangstheheadHeavy Hangs the Head by Taryn Hipp $10.00 – The first book from long-running zinester Taryn Hipp (Sub Rosa, Lady Teeth). “This is a memoir novella about a woman with an addiction, a mental illness & a feminist identity. This is the story of one woman’s journey from anxiety-ridden child to delinquent teenager to divorced alcoholic & how she turned all those years of experience into a beautiful existence.” -Sweet Candy

Zines & Zine-Related
Visitor In Myself #2 by Nichole $1.00
Pieces #8.5 Flip Side a Split Twenty Four Hour Zine Made With My Mother by Nichole and Laura $1.00 – OMG zine freaky friday!
Baroque Genitalia book #51 by Dan Gleason and Jenny Inzerillo $3.00
Slut #2 by Jonas and friends $3.00
Sync Machine Part 1 Disco Revolution by Kamilah Jones $9.99
City of Maps Navigations in Paris France by Delphine Bedient $4.00
Symbols of American Opulence #1 by Glenna Fitch $5.00 and karl Walker $5.00
The American Association of Patriots Presents: How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety $2.00
Parts Of My Body by Molly B. $1.00

Comics & Comix
The Magic Whistle #13 by Sam Henderson $3.99 – Popular Among People Aware of its Existence for twenty years! Cheap! Hilarious!
Cartoon Picayune #5 Sum 13 $4.00
Lou #16 by Melissa Mendes (Oily Comics) $1.00
Teen Creeps #1 by Charles Forsman (Oily Comics) $1.00
Real Rap #3 by Benjamin Urkowitz (Oily Comics) $1.00
Noise #2 by Billy Burket  (Oily Comics) $1.00
Tiger Man #2 by Gabriel Winslow Yost and Michael Rae Grant (Oily Comics) $1.00
Various Comics Rich Tommaso, including Dry County #1 a Lou Rossi Comic $5.00
You Were Swell #1 by Sophie McMahon $5.00 – Elegant drawings with weirdo pop culture. A good companion for fans of Lisa Hanawalt.

Graphic Novels & Trade Paperbacks
Louis Riel, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Comic Strip Biography by Chester Brown (D&Q) $21.95
Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me and Other Astute Observations by Peter Bagge (Fantagraphics) $24.99 – This is the expanded hard cover verion of this title, which encompasses a decades worth of reporting for Reason Magazine.
2 books by Gene Luen Yang: Saints and Boxers (First Second)
RASL – The Color Complete Graphic Novel by Jeff Smith $39.95 – In hard cover.

Art & Design
Surf to Skate vol 1 Evolution to Revolution by Stanton Hartsfield and Jason Chin $29.95
Alec Goss Cold Lightning $24.99
Print Collect by Jennifer Coster et al. $10.00
Taxidermy by Alexis Turner $35.00
Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet by Keith Lovegrove $14.95
Dew Dew Dew Its Photo Book by Hiro Tanaka $20.00 – With an introduction by Nick Zinner of  Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Freehand Sketching Tips and Tricks Drawn From Art by Helen Birch $18.95

Mayhem, Miscreants, Memoirs, Music & Misc

dreadnaught

Dreadnaught: King of Afropunk by D.H. Peligro $18.00 – By the legendary Dead Kennnedys drummer (and um, the Red Hot Chili Peppers).
Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen and Candy Stripe Nurses: Roger Corman, King of the B Movie by Chris Nashawaty $35.00
Rap Coloring and Activity Book by Shea Serrano and Bun B $12.95
Barracuda In the Attic: A Memoir By The Latest Member Of A Comedic Dynasty (Fantagraphics) $26.99 – Whether shooting pool with the mobster Crazy Joey Gallo, attending a dinner party hosted by an aged but remarkably spry Groucho Marx, or simply playing doctor with a classmate in the former estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kipp Friedman, the youngest son of celebrated writer and satirist Bruce Jay Friedman, led a colorful childhood.

Politics & Revolution
Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe by Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk (Seven Stories) $13.95
Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive by Julia Serano $17.00
High Rise Stories: Voices From Chicago Public Housing by Audrey Petty (McSweeneys) $16.00 – From the Voice of Witness Series. Don’t miss Audrey Petty, editor of High Rise Stories, at the Hull-House 9/24, in conversation with WBEZ’s Natalie Moore. Join us! https://www.quimbys.com/blog/store-events/high-rise-stories/
Diary of a Combatant by Che Guevara (Ocean) $23.95

DIY
The Vegan Stoner Cookbook: 100 Easy Vegan Recipes to Munch by Sarah Conrique and Graham I Haynes $16.99

Fiction
Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem $27.95
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon $16.99 – Now in soft cover.
Mira Corpora by Jeff Jackson (Two Dollar Radio) $16.00
You Are Make Very Important Bathtime by David Moscovich $12.00

Kids Stuff
The Exorcism of Mr. Squiggles: The Adventures of Sexy Sam Captain Calamari and Mr Squiggles by Matthew Gindling $15.00
Crazy Creatures and Cute Characters Coloring Book by Melissa Rohr $10.00
Hank Finds an Egg by Rebecca Dudley $16.99

Magazines
Shots #121 Fall 13 by Russell Joslin $6.95
Ancestry Quarterly #1 $18.95
Modern Farmer #2 Fall 13 $7.99
Tattoo Collection #58 $7.75

Poetry, Lit Mags, Lit Journals, Chap Books
Booth, A Journal, issues #2-#5 $8.00 each
The First Line vol 15 #3 Fall 13 $3.00
The Iowa Review vol 43 #2 Fall 13 $9.95
23 Skidoo: 23 Form Fitting Poems by Eckhard Gerdes $12.00
Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (The Song Cave) $18.95

Want to see what’s new to order in our web store? See quimbys.com/store.

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Q&A with Tonight’s Reader David Moscovich

Published on September 13, 2013 0 Comments

David Moscovich

David Moscovich, author of You Are Making Very Important Bathtime, is no stranger to cross-country jaunts. The New York resident will be journeying here to Quimby’s for a reading with fellow writer Eckard Gerdes tonight. Nicki Yowell, Quimby’s Outreach and Communications Coordinator, caught up with David to chat about clumsy Japanese translations, the perils of teaching and the many iterations of his performances.

Quimby’s: You’ve resided in quite a few places during your life: Portland, New York, Boston, Japan. Would you say your personal well-rounded sense of place factors strongly into your work?

David Moscovich: My sense of place is probably more lopsided because of my personal geography — but being a Nebraska boy at root keeps me humble enough. Growing up in my own personal iron curtain as a Romanian-American in Nebraska gave me a sense of aloneness that didn’t disappear until I visited the old country as an adult. How does that translate into my work? I think it keeps experiences relative, and my attempt with Bathtime is to fuel misunderstandings between characters with even greater misunderstandings, to pose the assumptions of American and Japanese cultures in comical juxtaposition with each other. I try to expose the narrator’s biases and preconceptions in Bathtime by allowing him to gaff and to faux pas his way through most situations. In a sense, I tried to create a character who has committed a spiritual crime, a kind of culture-cide, but does not have the conscience to realize it. It torments him but not in the way a Raskolnikov is tormented.

Q: Flash fiction is a literary medium that seems to fit well with our times. Short, punchy, quick to get your attention. What draws you to shorter narratives? Are they more approachable in our temporally fractured culture?

DM: The way the story tells the story has to be more immediate in short fiction. I want to say more with less, and I also revise obsessively. It’s not that I am always drawn to the short form, but often I’ve cut back more than fifty percent of the words. You Are Make Very Important Bathtime is a complete rewrite of a much longer novel that I threw out to rework the voice. I wanted it to be about the voice. I also think of short fiction like punk rock. Put together fifty fast-paced songs and there is a concentrated performance that tells a longer story.

Q: The title of your latest book, You Are Make Very Important Bathtime, reminds me of a dubiously named website, Engrish.com. Translating Japanese to English can be a tenuous, problematic proposition, indeed. How does the central problem of language factor into the story?

DM: You Are Make Very Important Bathtime plays with the notion of weird, broken, unconventional and/or unaccepted grammar as a cause for celebration. Usually without thinking we accept grammar as a set of patterns that are “correct” in any given language without acknowledging that “correct” grammar might be viewed as merely another aesthetic.

Throughout the work is the comma splice, which came from a desire to intentionally circumvent the rules of punctuation and give the sense of reading each story in one long breath. The Japanese language also allows for females to refer to themselves by name. A character, Kimiko, says to the narrator: Kimiko loves okonomiyaki. These types of peculiarities fascinate me, like the fact that it’s possible to hold an entire conversation in Japanese without the use of a subject.

Language teachers might berate a student for collocational fumbles or syntactical mishaps but language itself loves errors and to me it sounds like poetry. Japanese is a very flexible tongue. Switch around verbs and nouns and leave out subjects, still we are understood. Languages are transforming, living beings, the long tentacles of cultures they are attached to. My attempt is to embrace all of it, to fully love the flexible grammar out there.

In one of the stories, a certain beer menu reads, “Please Choose the Drunk.” It’s incredible how much impact a single letter can have. And that is part of the book, this enormous potential that lies within the playing and shifting of letters.

Q: How has teaching shaped your point of view of writing? Do you ever picture your students as your audience or are you their audience?

DM: The goal for me is to marry writing and teaching by channelling them in a state of urgent transmission. Writing happens from a necessity of expression, as Rilke would have it. The delineation between teaching and the performance behind the writing disappears. That is the ideal — to share completely and selflessly what has worked for me as a writer, and equally so, what has not worked.

Q: Much of your work has a performance or performed component. You’ve done radio broadcasts and musical collaborations in addition to your live readings. Do you consider these performances to be separate and complete or a necessary companion to the written work you make?

DM: I like to think they compliment each other but ideally each stand alone. They are also different mediums. If a person prefers reading without the social aspect necessary for performance they can read instead. What I’m trying to do with the live performance is to offer something from my work that a reader cannot get just holding the book. But even within reading a written story to oneself there are so many possibilities. Any book could be read in a non-linear fashion as well as the traditional way from the first story to the last. You Are Make Very Important Bathtime was designed as a book to be read in any and every order whatsoever. The sequence offered in the book as published could be thought of as a “serving suggestion.” The reader sets the table.

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