Tag Archive for 'Store Events'

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

Published on May 6, 2009 0 Comments
Jun ’09
4
7:00 pm

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

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Joey Comeau Reads From Overqualified at Quimby’s

Published on April 29, 2009 0 Comments
May ’09
27
7:00 pm

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.

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

Published on April 25, 2009 0 Comments
May ’09
23
7:00 pm

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

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Cheryl Wagner Reads From Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around: A Memoir of Floods, Fires, Parades, and Plywood at Quimby’s!

Published on April 18, 2009 0 Comments
May ’09
16
7:00 pm

The cliché “New Orleans gets into people’s blood” happens to be very true — just not always convenient. For Cheryl Wagner (along with her indie-band boyfriend, a few eccentric pals, some ne’er-do-wells, and two aging basset hounds) abandoning the city she loved wasn’t an option.  This is the story of Cheryl’s disturbing surprise view from her front porch after she moved back home to find everything she treasured in shambles… and her determined, absurd, and darkly funny three-year journey of trying to piece it all back together again.  In the same heartfelt and hilarious voice that has drawn thousands of listeners to her broadcasts on the public radio program This American Life, Wagner shares her unique yet universal story of rebuilding a life after it’s flooded, dried, died… and then the copper thieves moved in.

Cheryl Wagner is a contributor to public radio’s This American Life, and her work has also been featured on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s The Current and Definitely Not the Opera. Her work has appeared in many print and online publications including Harper’s, McSweeney’s, the Mississippi Review, and Five Dials in London. Her cover stories for the The Times of Acadiana won first place for best continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina or Rita from the Louisiana Press Association. A Louisiana native, she is a graduate of Tulane University and the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. She lives in New Orleans.

For more info:
www.cheryl-wagner.com

As always, this Quimby’s event is FREE.

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Michael Roberts & Jason McBeth at Quimby’s

Published on April 16, 2009 0 Comments
May ’09
11
7:00 pm

Touring America through the Spring and Summer of 2009, The Lightning Bug Romantics are 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam runner-up Jason McBeth and Michael Roberts, author of the Puschcart Prize nominated collection “No More Poems About The Moon” (2008 Write Bloody Press).

As a pair, these two touring performance poets are polar opposites. Peanut butter and Jelly and siamese twins. Michael Roberts is trustworthy, heroically humble, and a recognized saint in seven different religions in 32 languages. He has been the opening act for indie rock bands at the famous Troubadour in Hollywood, has shared the stage with such spoken word legends as Buddy Wakefield, Derrick Brown, and Beau Sia, and recently toured eastern Europe, performing in Prague, Czechoslovakia; Budapest, Hungary; and Split, Croatia.

Jason McBeth is currently the second ranked performance poet in the world and among the many venues at which he has performed are London’s Globe Theater, The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Western Regional Poetry Slam in Big Sur, and Hollywood’s Da Poetry Lounge.

In addition to “No More Poems About the Moon,” Roberts contributed to the Write Bloody Anthologies “The Last American Valentine” and “The Good Things About America.” McBeth also contributed to “The Good Things About America” and his first book, The Cities Under Your Tongue’ is to be published this spring by Write Bloody. For more information: www.myspace.com/lightningbugromanticstour
www.thehopemeat.com
www.writebloody.com

FREE EVENT AS ALWAYS!

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