‘Leak’ is the new ‘press release’; AHO in Nashville Feb. 12, Rob Funderburk’s ils and more

This year’s Chicago snowmageddon, I’m happy to note, didn’t outrank my personal midwest winter initiation. After moving to the Chi in the fall of 1998 from the humid climes of Rock Hill, S.C., come the holidays I was back in S.C. but left early. A blizzard was predicted, see, and I was to start a new job Jan. 2 in Evanston, of all places. I motored back to Chicago in time for New Year’s Eve, as the snow began sometime early the next morning, not stopping for the next 24 hours. I was at that new job the following day, a near-four-hour public transit nightmare (never been so damn cold in my life, standing hopping foot to foot on the platform at Diversey, running in place, etc. etc.). That, friends, still sits in the history books as the No. 2 biggest Chicago snow, hell of an initiation rite for a Southerner. I have nerves of steel. Nah, but ’twas a great time to pretend.

Fortunately, in 1999 THE2NDHAND was just beginning to rise in my brain — we wouldn’t launch for another year — and there were no readings to cancel.  Our Nerves of Steel event last Tuesday coincided directly with the worst of the recent white torment, and we unfortunately had to cancel as participants, well, faced travel nightmares to and from the Hungry Brain. We’ll be featuring all — Tomorrow Kings, Mairead Case, Marc Baez and more — in upcoming installments of the event, we hope, the next one to take place March 1.

Meantime, disheartened by the decidedly un-nervy cancellation, Chicago writer Mason Johnson reportedly had his own “Mason Johnson has Nerves of Steel” extravaganza at Moe’s on the northwest side (Central Park and Milwaukee).  Check out the partial results.

ALL HANDS ON
The final day to preorder a copy of All Hands On: THE2NDHAND After 10 (our 10th-anniversary reader) via our Kickstarter campaign is Feb. 16. Reserve your copy. Sometime on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 26, we hit the funding goal, so barring a disaster the project’s a go. Among features will be  special-section author illustrations, some of which are leaked below, in process, by former THE2NDHAND design man Rob Funderburk — my favorite working painter, no doubt, and one of my favorite illustrators (he’s also a longtime and great friend, of course). Working from photos in many cases (most of the subjects he’s trying capture in portraits he’s never met), he’s been experimenting with all manner of techniques on these, as you can see. The technique behind the Michael Peck il Rob describes this way: “Laid paper over source photos on a lightbox, used flat side v. pointy corner of a graphite stick to render.” Makes it sounds simple, right?

Pretty stunning preliminary results, I’ll say. Find more from Rob’s illustration, painting and mural work, as well as framed watercolors and maquettes and a screen-printed study of the Chicago Rookery building, at robfunderburk.com. Or read his blog.

MICHAEL PECK

HEATHER PALMER

JOE MENO

KATE DUVA

PHILLIP BRUNETTI

AND NASHVILLE, TAKE HEED
ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION THIS COMING WEEKEND.

THE2NDHAND anniversary celebration | 11 years to the day after our first-ever release party
Saturday, Feb. 12, 7 p.m.
@ Portland Brew, 1921 Eastland Ave., Nashville, Tenn.
THE2NDHAND AFTER 10: A NASHVILLE READING Four days before the end of ourKickstarter.com campaign to raise $2,000 to print our 10th-anniversary anthology, All Hands On, THE2NDHAND’s editors and contributors gather at this event to present new writing and work to be published in the book, with performances by:
*T2H shapeshifting collaborative writing crew of the Pitchfork Battalion
*T2H Louisville, Ky.-based coeditor C.T. Ballentine (whose “Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date” novella is featured in its entirety in the All Hands On book)
*Birmingham-based Nadria Tucker, a frequent T2H contributor, with a special section in the book
*Nashville’s own Matt Cahan, whose “Coyote Business,” a short exploring the cultural connections between Mexico and the United States excerpted from his “Straight Commission” novel in progress, via the tale of a group of would-be Mexican migrants and a U.S. chemical salesman, is among new work featured in AHO
*Susannah Felts, Nashville-based author of the novel This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record
*Nashville-based Henry Ronan-Daniell

Nashville-based wood-block printmaker Martin Cadieux will be on-hand showcasing his print work for THE2NDHAND’s Kickstarter campaign, among other work.

Final 10-anniv. book push with Feb. events in Chicago, Nashville

With a month left in THE2NDHAND’s Kickstarter.com campaign to fund the printing of our mammoth 10th anniversary anthology, I’m starting what may amount to the final big push to reach the goal. It’s most definitely in sight. As of today, we’re just more than $250 shy of it. Contributors, T2H partisans and others who’ve helped spread the word about the project, a big shout to you. Your efforts have clearly born fruit. Now would be the time to start shooting out those reminders to those who may have been distracted by the holidays or just, well, distracted… I know I was, to one degree or another, but still managed to, just prior to said holiday, get the second in our All Hands On special-edition broadsheets out. If you missed Chicago writer and lit scene force Fred Sasaki’s “Pressure Billiards” minisheet (here pictured, front side), read it here or download the minisheet directly by clicking on the image. Part of Sasaki’s “Letters of Interest” series, which might well be the “Lazlo letters” of the internet age — marketing its target, manipulation through on-the-spot digital, textual interaction its method — the piece is also featured in the 10th anniversary collection, after debuting to a crowd at the East Nashville Portland Brew back in September last year.

Speaking of Portland Brew, two events will cap the fund-raising campaign. Here in Nashville, a crew of All Hands On-contributing writers spanning THE2NDHAND’s 11-year journey from Chicago to Birmingham, Nashville, and Louisville, with faces new and old, gathers 11 years to the Saturday, Feb. 12, we hosted our first release party on the fourth floor of 1278 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago. The reading will be in large part collaboratively focused, with Birmingham’s Nadria Tucker and Nashville’s Matt Cahan presenting work from the book and C.T. Ballentine, myself, Susannah Felts and Henry Ronan-Daniel performing under the Pitchfork Battalion moniker.

Martin Cadieux, too, the wood-block printmaker I’ve written about here, will table with certain of his prints, including examples of the envelopes he did for us to house collections of past broadsheets.

And if you’re in Chicago, Feb. 1 is the date of our next Nerves of Steel event — this one features the hip-hop of the Tomorrow Kings, Nerves of Steel alumnus Mairead Case, presenting a graphic novel, and All Hands On contributor Marc Baez, among others.

Here’s our Kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the2ndhand/all-hands-on-the2ndhand-after-10-a-reader.

And for media folks among you, I’ve updated our press release to reflect the upcoming events associated, at http://the2ndhand.com/T2HKICKSTARTERRELEASE.doc. Full text is below. Again, big thanks for helping spread the word, likewise to those who’ve contributed.

Nashville and Chicago-based THE2NDHAND passes halfway mark in pledge campaign for ‘All Hands On’ 10^th-anniversary anthology; ending campaign events in Chicago, Nashville Feb. 1 and 12

All Hands On: THE2NDHAND after 10, 2000-11, a Reader will be published in 2011 to celebrate and lay down the best of the broadsheet and online magazine’s 10+ years of publishing writing by the budding insurgents of the American lit landscape and other more established writers. THE2NDHAND reached the halfway point in a 90-day fund-raising campaign on Kickstarter.com a week after its launch on November 18 to raise $2,000 to cover printing costs.

By pledging $14 or more, readers can preorder a copy of the 300-plus-page book, which collects work all told from 40 writers, 3 illustrators, four editors, and a couple janitors. Visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the2ndhand/all-hands-on-the2ndhand-after-10-a-reader for the campaign, or http://the2ndhand.com/books.html.

True to form, the book begins with a section of new, as-yet unpublished work representing the full range of the magazine’s long local presence in Chicago (with new work by Chicagoans Patrick Somerville, Michael Zapata and Fred Sasaki), Birmingham, Ala. (Nadria Tucker) and Nashville, Tenn. (Matt Cahan), as well as its far-flung influence in the world of new literary writing the nation over. Contributors to the front, new-work section of the book represent regions from New England to the West Coast, and the large majority of the collection is devoted to special sections highlighting short fiction by the magazine’s best repeat contributors, from Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps), first published in THE2NDHAND in its third issue in its first year, 2000, to more recent contributors like Chicagoan Heather Palmer, whose novella “Charlie’s Train” was serialized at THE2NDHAND.com as its 11^th year began in February of 2010.

On Feb. 1, Chicago writer and All Hands On special-section contributor Marc Baez will perform as part of THE2NDHAND’s SoYou Think You Have Nerves of Steel? literary/variety performance series, hosted THE2NDHAND coeditor Jacob Knabb and All Hands On contributing writer Kate Duva, and in Nashville, THE2NDHAND founding editor Todd Dills and coeditor C.T. Ballentine (of Louisville, Ky.) gather with contributors Nadria Tucker (of Birmingham), Cahan, Susannah Felts and others for a reading on the exactly anniversary of THE2NDHAND’s first-issue Chicago release party in 2000, Feb. 12. See below for full reading details.

(Zapata’s “White Twilight,” a speculative fictional take of sorts on the first U.S. census to come back with those checking “white” in the race/ethnicity box in a solid minority, is the featured story in THE2NDHAND’s broadsheet No. 35, out now as a sneak peek into the book; also recently released was an installment — broadsheet No. 35.1 — of THE2NDHAND’s mini-broadsheet series featuring Fred Sasaki’s “Pressure Billiards,” part of his “Letters of Interest” series, a sort of Lazlo letters for the Internet age. )

Other pledge rewards include, in addition to a copy of the book, THE2NDHAND’s signature bergamot-infused bar by Alabama soap maker The Left Hand (thelefthand.net), several books by contributors and editors (from All Hands On cover designer and past contributor Zach Dodson and contributor Patrick Somerville to THE2NDHAND’s founding editor, Todd Dills) and, among others, packets of 10 and 15 broadsheets spanning the 10-year history of THE2NDHAND packaged in custom-designed and -printed envelopes by Nashville-based wood-block fine-arts printmaker Martin Cadieux. At the highest pledge level, $150, a limited number full boxed sets in packaging likewise printed by Cadieux are available.

For more about THE2NDHAND, visit THE2NDHAND.com and peruse past broadsheets and online-magazine archives. THE2NDHAND’s editor will be sharing previews, likewise, of some of the artwork to be included in All Hands On – Chicago artist Rob Funderburk, formerly THE2NDHAND’s principle designer, is at work on illustrative portraits of special-section writers included, for instance. Some in-process photos of Cadieux’ wood-block-printed envelopes are already available in this blog post from early November by THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills. A fact sheet of sorts about the book, its contributors and the history of the broadsheet and online magazine follows. For interviews with any of the writers listed, please contact THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills.

EVENTS (http://the2ndhand.com/events/events.html):

Tuesday, Feb. 1, 8 p.m.
@ Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, Chicago
SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE NERVES OF STEEL?

Featuring:
*Longtime THE2NDHAND contributor, Chicago experimental writer Marc Baez
*Mairead Case w/ a graphic novel slideshow
*hip-hop by the Tomorrow Kings (http://empworldwide.com/tomorrowkings)

Also: A special public service announce from Seth Dodson and Kellen Alexander

*House band: Good evening (http://goodeveningmusic.com)

*Hosted by Monsieur Harold Ray (the janitorial-services-type, still-West Virginian v. of T2H coeditor Jacob Knabb) and T2H regular Kate Duva

Saturday, Feb. 12, 7 p.m.
@ Portland Brew, 1921 Eastland Ave., Nashville, Tenn.
THE2NDHAND AFTER 10: A NASHVILLE READING

Four days before the end of its Kickstarter.com campaign to raise $2,000 to print its 10^th-anniversary anthology, All Hands On, THE2NDHAND’s editors and contributors gather at this event to present new writing and work to be published in the book, with performances by:

*T2H shapeshifting collaborative writing crew of the Pitchfork Battalion

*T2H Louisville, Ky.-based coeditor C.T. Ballentine (whose “Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date” novella is featured in its entirety in the All Hands On book)

*Birmingham-based Nadria Tucker, a frequent T2H contributor, with a special section in the book

*Nashville’s own Matt Cahan, whose “Coyote Business,” a short exploring the cultural connections between Mexico and the United States excerpted from his “Straight Commission” novel in progress, via the tale of a group of would-be Mexican migrants and a U.S. chemical salesman

*Susannah Felts, Nashville-based author of the novel This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record, Watkins College of Art & Design writing professor and regular contributor to Humanties Tennessee’s Chapter 16 literary website

*Nashville-based Henry Ronan-Daniel

Nashville-based wood-block printmaker Martin Cadieux will be on-hand showcasing his print work for THE2NDHAND’s Kickstarter campaign, among other work.

FACTS:

THE2NDHAND KICKSTARTER campaign main page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the2ndhand/all-hands-on-the2ndhand-after-10-a-reader.

VIDEO: A photographic tour through 10 years of THE2NDHAND’s broadsheets, with audio selections from editor C.T. Ballentine’s introduction to All Hands On and more is available via THE2NDHAND’s Kickstarter fund drive page or www.youtube.com/the2ndhandutube.

IMAGES:

All Hands On: THE2NDHAND After 10, 2000-2011, a Reader, cover image:
http://the2ndhand.com/print35/allhandscovercolor.JPG
THE2NDHAND Broadsheet No. 35 pdf:
http://the2ndhand.com/print35/THE2NDHAND_35.pdf
THE2NDHAND Broadsheet No. 35 front side image:
http://the2ndhand.com/print35/thumbnail.JPG

Some other things that are known:

75: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked or are currently working in the mag’s co-HQ of Chicago.

25: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked in West Virginia.

25: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked in past co-HQ of Birmingham, Ala., and current co-HQ of Nashville, Tenn.

50: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked in Louisville, Ky.

42: Number of total THE2NDHAND broadsheets, including numbered half-issues 6.5, 13.5 and 16.5 and our recent 8.5-by-11-inch mini-sheets for primarily digital distribution, begun with No. 33.1 in January 2010.

Today, THE2NDHAND is:

Editors Todd Dills (Nashville, Tenn.), C.T. Ballentine (Louisville, Ky.), Jacob Knabb (Chicago)

FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Philadelphia)

Janitors: Rufus Beady, Harold Ray (all over and everywhere)

And many writers

When it began with a launch party Saturday Feb. 12, at 1278 N. Milwaukee, Floor 4, in Chicago, it was:

Editor Todd Dills (Chicago)

Design men Jeremy Bacharach and (now children’s book illustrator) Matt Cordell (matthewcordell.com)

And fewer writers

Between 2002 and 2004, it was:

Editors Todd Dills and Jeb Gleason-Allured (Chicago)

FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Louisville, Ky.)

Design man Evan Sult (later of band Bound Stems, of Chicago)

Propaganda minister Eric Graf

And more writers

Between 2005 and 2007, it was:

Editors Todd Dills, Jeb Gleason-Allured (Chicago) and C.T. Ballentine (Chicago)

FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Louisville, Ky.)

Design man (Chicago artist) Rob Funderburk (robfunderburk.com)

Propaganda minister Eric Graf

And more writers

Between 2006 and 2009, it was:

Editors Todd Dills (Birmingham, Ala.), C.T. Ballentine (Chicago)

FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Philadelphia)

And more and more writers

Of those writers:

Contributors to All Hands On: THE2NDHAND After 10
It’s been a long run for THE2NDHAND, the little magazine — not even a magazine in any traditional sense, but rather a broadsheet, perhaps the last periodical on earth to be launched without a prefabbed website to bolster its offset-printed pages (though ‘twas to follow shortly, publishing flash and serial fiction weekly from late 2000 on). We mean: THE2NDHAND is a page. A big one – 11-by-17-inch block of black text peppered variously with photo-illustrations, comics, line drawings, distributed in storefronts first in Chicago, then in an ever-growing list of cities around the U.S…. “New writing,” simply, has been its focus since 2000, when THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills founded the broadsheet working from a crackerbox hole of an apartment in Logan Square, Chicago — small-format has been its watchword physically, but a loud mouth and a big heart its most important parts.

True to form, All Hands On’s front section features new work by Michael Zapata, Nadria Tucker, Jamie Iredell, Patrick Somerville (The Cradle), Fred Sasaki, Amanda Yskamp, Ben Stein (Amherst, Mass.) and Matt Cahan, as well as a collaborative short by Susannah Felts & Todd Dills and a mini-epic poem (“Chicago”) by Doug Milam.

**Cover design by Featherproof Books’ (and T2H contributor) Zach Dodson
**Illustrations for the lead section by comix artist/cermacist Andrew Davis
**Author illustrations by Chicago artist and T2H occasionaljanitor-in-residence Rob Funderburk
**Special sections with multiple short stories by Marc Baez, coeditor C.T. Ballentine (including the entirety of his “Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date” novella; Ballentine also penned, with copious editorial footnoting by Todd Dills, the book’s introduction), Philip Brunetti, Al Burian (the Burn Collector zine and associated books), Tobias Carroll (“The Scowl” blogger), Spencer Dew (Songs of Insurgency), Kate Duva (cohost of our Chicago “So you think you have nerves of steel?” reading series), David Gianatasio (Mind Games), Mickey Hess (Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory), Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps, Hairstyles of the Damned), Jonathan Messinger (Hiding Out), Doug Milam (Still the Confusion), Anne Elizabeth Moore (Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity) with comic adaptation by Josh Bayer, Greggory Moore, Kevin O’Cuinn, Heather Palmer, Michael Peck, the Pitchfork Battalion (a collaborative crew with roving membership, including many of those already listed, plus, featured in the book, Sean Carswell, Jim Murphy, Emerson Dameron, John Minichillo, Motke Dapp, and Dominique Holmes), Lauren Pretnar, Patrick Somerville (The Cradle), Jill Summers, Paul A. Toth (Finale), and Nadria Tucker.

I-65 U.S. Interstate Highway within 40 miles of which 57 percent of all AHO contributors live.

30: Percentage of AHO contributors who live in Chicago.

ABOUT Special section authors in AHO:

Chicago writer Marc Baez’s work first appeared in THE2NDHAND in its second year, with a minidrama involving two men and two women seated on a floor after having played a game of Twister, speaking quite baroquely amongst themselves about the personal, artistic and philosophical gulfs that keep them together–and apart. Part 1 of his most recent, tricornered contribution, published in 2009, is featured here, among others. Baez teaches writing at the University of Illinois Chicago. Baez’s work was also featured in THE2NDHAND’s 2004 All Hands On: A THE2NDHAND Reader, 2000-2004 anthology.

C.T. Ballentine has been an editor with THE2NDHAND since 2007 and a contributor since 2005. Also a sound engineer in various music halls and opera houses, he lives, writes and loves between Louisville, Ky., Chicago and Huntsville, Ala.

Philip Brunetti lives and writes in Brooklyn, N.Y., and has been contributing to THE2NDHAND since the fall of 2008.

Al Burian wrote the first issue of the Burn Collector zine in the mid-1990s and continues to write it — and much else besides — today. He’s behind a book of the same name collecting previous installments of the zine and Natural Disaster, collecting later work. When not touring with his work, he lives in Berlin, occasionally Chicago and elsewhere.

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in Brooklyn, N.Y. His work as a book and music critic has been published widely, and his fiction has appeared semi-regularly in THE2NDHAND (since 2007) and other mags. Find more at his indie-culture blog, The Scowl (yourbestguess.com/thescowl).

Spencer Dew, based in Chicago, authored the 2008 “Songs of Insurgency” collection, out from Vagabond Press, and his shorts have appeared in great frequency in many online and print journals, including THE2NDHAND. In 2010 Another New Calligraphy is publishing his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres book. Visit spencerdew.com for links to pieces of his prolific online lit presence.

Kate Duva grew up in Chicago in a bar; she still lives in the city, where she writes and serves as cohost in THE2NDHAND’s ongoing So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel? reading series, first Tuesday of the month at Hungry Brain on Belmont. Other of her work can be found in Fugue and Opium, on Vocalo Radio and at kateduva.blogspot.com.

David Gianatasio is the author of two collections of short stories, most recently 2008’s Mind Games (Word Riot). He’s published prolifically online for years. He lives in Boston, Mass.

Mickey Hess is a professor of English at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J. His work for THE2NDHAND has included serving as progenitor and editor of our FAQ section, and his stories and essays have been published in journals and magazines ranging from Punk Planet and McSweeney’s to more scholarly affairs. He is the author of the memoir Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory and the editor of Greenwood Press’ two-volume Icons of Hip-hop, among other literary and scholarly works.

Longtime THE2NDHAND contributor Joe Meno is the author of several books, including most recently the novel The Great Perhaps (2009), as well as short story collections Demons in the Spring (Akashic) and Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir (Northwestern University Press) and the novels The Boy Detective Fails and Hairstyles of the Damned. He is on the faculty of Columbia College in Chicago, where he lives and writes.

Jonathan Messinger is Time Out Chicago’s books editor and the driving editorial force behind the Chicago-based concerns Featherproof Books and the Dollar Store reading series. A prolific short-story writer in his own right, his first collection, Hiding Out, came out in 2007.

Doug Milam lives and writes in Bellingham, Wash. He is the author of a chapbook of shorts, Still the Confusion, and has been published in a variety of other literary magazines. Visit him at milam.blogsite.org/wordpress.

Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007), and Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull, 2004). Moore served as associate editor of the now-defunct Punk Planet magazine and was the founding editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin. Today, she teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when she’s not traveling the globe speaking on freedom of speech issues.

Greggory Moore is a lifelong southern California resident, freelance journalist and fiction writer and poet.

Kevin O’Cuinn lives in Frankfurt am Main but is originally from Dublin; he coedits fiction for Word Riot.

Heather Palmer lives in Chicago. Her work has been published in a variety of magazines. In 2010 THE2NDHAND serialized her novella, “Charlie’s Train,” at THE2NDHAND.com, parts of which are excerpted in AHO.

Michael Peck, after a time in Philadelphia and with roots deep upstate New York, lives and writes in Missoula, Mont. His fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The Rittenhouse Revue, 34th Parallel and others.

The Pitchfork Battalion is THE2NDHAND’s answer to the Wu Tang Clan or to any collaborative artistic group, really. Typically, we collaborate on a theme, or do individual riffs on a phrase in prose – sometimes poetry, as the case of Jim Murphy’s addition to the 2009 “Extraordinary Rendition” is evidence. In AHO are some of our best. For the lot of them, written at the initial instigation of our FAQ editor and continuing contributor Mickey Hess, from 2005 to the present, visit http://the2ndhand.com/archive/archivepitchfork.html.

Lauren Pretnar lives and writes in Chicago.

Patrick Somerville is the author of a novel, The Cradle, and the Trouble collection of stories (patricksomerville.com). In 2010, his genre-busting The Universe in Miniature in Miniature was released by Featherproof Books. He lives and writes in Chicago.

Jill Summers’ audio fiction has been heard via Chicago Public Radio and the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines, including THE2NDHAND, where she is a continuing contributor.

Paul A. Toth is the author of a triptych of novels — Fizz, Fishnet and Finale — and lives today in Sarasota, Fla., after years in Flint, Mich. Visit www.netpt.tv; Toth also works in multimedia, poetry and nonfiction.

Nadria Tucker hails from Atmore in South Alabama, though she lives and writes in Birmingham.

TONIGHT

Holmes, Gianatasio, Baez — words for now

Big thanks to all the folks who’ve contributed to the fund drive for THE2NDHAND’s 10th-anniversary anthology, being conducted via Kickstarter.com here. A third of the way through, we’re more than two-thirds funded at this point, well on track to reach the goal — keep getting the word out there as you can. (Past THE2NDHAND.com contributor Ben Tanzer, proprietor of This Blog Will Change Your Life, take note, posted about ‘All Hands On’ a week or so ago, among other notes around the web — thanks, Ben!)

Today, a couple contributors to THE2NDHAND featured in special sections in the book whose work continues to be some of the most at once challenging and comically adept of all T2H’s writers’ to date.

Today we’ve got up as a little Christmas gift to those not worn out by present-getting the first part in Kingston, Jamaica, writer Dominique Holmes‘ “The Girls Talk to Her Like It’s Nothing,” a fantastic story of a world in post-calamity mode, after a flood. Holmes appears in the Pitchfork Battalion special section in the collection in collaboration with myself and T2H coeditor C.T. Ballentine.

David Gianatasio, Boston-based author of a couple collections of shorts, most recently Mind Games (Word Riot 2008), penned “The World Ends Every Day,” a perfect example of the playful intertextuality of much of Gianatasio’s work. We published it in our online mag just last week. It begins:

The onramp swoops overhead like some giant abstract sculpture. We made a film about the last man on earth, and this long-closed stretch of overgrown highway and its immediate environs provided the perfect set. If this were an apocalyptic novel, by J.G. Ballard perhaps, the central traffic island would be cluttered with rusted household appliances, mangled cars, shriveled-up condoms and empty cigarette packs…

The piece proceeds as part film script, part commentary on the script and the film’s making by the method actor telling the story. His ultimate apocalypse (an experienced unveiling, by definition, when the curtain is drawn back to reveal the heart of the truth), in story, is more affecting than the film, to be sure. Read it here.

The second, Chicago scribe Marc Baez, remains perhaps the most wildly experimental of all THE2NDHAND’s regular writers, and thus to my mind one of the most dynamically appealing. Baez’s triptych of stories — well, a poem (“Elegy”), a piece of disjointed poetic prose (“Bloodlines”), and an hilarious exchange between a mother and son (“The Similes”) — featured two weeks back at THE2NDHAND.com is a quick blast emblematic of the author’s range. From “The Similes: Episode 1 — Eat Your Greenbeans”:

Mother: You better eat your green beans unless you wanna look like an old scratch instead of something the lord made.

Son: But they taste like skin.

Mother: Don’t you dare talk to me like I’m some whitefaced doll sewn in an Alpine meadow that you can just hang out with on the moon because nobody on earth likes you.

Son: Lots of people like me. I’m like euphoria for British rockabilly addicts.

Mother: Actually, you’re like an American rapper sucking the milk out of a fainting goat.

Son: You’re like a person who just sits on a chair and paints meat.

Mother: You’re like a local Nebraska television cameraman eating a macaroni salad on break.

Son: You’re like a middle-aged guy from Arizona who just opened the door of his Honda Civic.

Baez I’ve known since the year 2001, when we published the first of his pieces in our then newly minted online mag. Twas a minidrama involving two men and two women seated on a floor after having played a game of Twister, speaking quite baroquely amongst themselves about the personal, artistic and philosophical gulfs that keep them together–and apart.

Highlights from his later work include “Report From Dr. Fugue,” published in our 10th broadsheet, the story of the title Doc’s reanimation of the corpse of Henry Miller and the ensuing havoc wreaked on Chicago bystanders. Read it here: http://the2ndhand.com/print10/story1.html.

Revisiting Billy Clockout, Antipurpose; New Davis illustrations to be featured in ‘All Hands On’

If you haven’t in the recent past, take a moment to page back through the installments of Indianapolis/Bloomington, Ind.-based comix artist and ceramicist Andrew Davis’ “Hideous Bounty” series.

The latest edition, “Sea Snake” (pictured here) is live. Davis cut his artistic teeth in a grad program in Northwest Pennsylvania after a childhood and undergraduate work in South Carolina, where we shared an apartment for a brief time. He inked the original comic to appear in THE2NDHAND‘s first broadsheets — the adventures of one “Billy Clockout,” a young loser bumbling his way through a bizarre existence with a very large rabbit-human for a girlfriend — and the “Hideous Bounty” series was launched way back in 2004, during the arguable height of American messianic tendencies, as the “Antipupose Driven Life.” And I quote:

The Oath of Antipurpose
1) Create your own chemicals or use already existing ones.
2) Have five cats or have none.
3) Watch the sun rise or sleep in.
4) Fight or make love.
5) We must repeat.

Davis’ illustrations also show up in THE2NDHAND no. 35, our latest broadsheet, which showcases new work from All Hands On, where his work will be featured prominently.

Last week, we passed the halfway point in our fund drive at Kickstarter.com for the AHO book, marking THE2NDHAND’s 10th anniversary. Check out the video on our Kickstarter main page for several close-up stills of Davis’ past Billy Clockout comics.

****
And hey, Harold Ray made Chicago weekly New City and other papers this week, in stories about the So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel? event upcoming Tuesday, Dec. 7, next week, which features among others broadsheet no. 35 writer Michael Zapata, AHO contributors Spencer Dew and event chost Kate Duva and many others. Ray (aka T2H coeditor and ACM fiction editor Jacob Knabb) talked with New City’s Kristine Sherred about the event’s genesis about a year ago in the mind of coeditor C.T. Ballentine as well as, well, the Kickstarter pledge campaign. . . T2H partisans, thanks for all the support in that endeavor thus far. Keep the word moving out there, and a big thanks, again, to all who’ve laid down preorders and contributed thus far. If you haven’t, go for it.

Shya Scanlon’s ‘Forecast’; THE2NDHAND’s 10th anniversary anthology

Kudos to Shya Scanlon. His debut novel, available now via Flatmancrooked, marks the release of something long in the making that I’m happy to say we could be a part of via THE2NDHAND.com. Last summer, we published a small piece of the book in Chapter 8 here, one in 42 separate online pieces published in 42 separate online mags and blogs Scanlon proved marked logistical prowess by roping together in an uninterrupted chain of publishing.

He recent wrote all of us to announce publication of the ultimate results in a single volume, calling it “something I hadn’t, at the start, foreseen,” but I cry wolf to that. Anyone with that much pull on the imaginations of that many editors could well be forgiven for expecting as much, if not more. Get over to Flatmancrooked and order a copy.

And hey, in case you’ve missed the news making the rounds on the social networks and at our site, we’re live both with a new special edition broadsheet (with an absolutely kick-ass short by Chicago’s Michael Zapata) with a Kickstarter.com campaign to raise funds for printing and related expenses for our All Hands On: THE2NDHAND After 10 collection next year. You can preorder the book for $14, and there are other associated rewards at various pledge levels, including broadsheet packets and some full sets with block-printed covers by Cadieux (see previous post), bizarre “buy a header” schemes (think of it as a sort of satirical/whimsical take on vanity publishing, or textual/print tagging).

We’re doing well thus far, but still have plenty of ground to cover. Check out the vid below, and following find a link to a press release we’re updating with facts/figures as they are remembered/recorded.

A QUESTION: When did you first encounter THE2NDHAND. Tell me at todd@the2ndhand.com. Can’t remember? Hey, we like to read fiction, of course. -TD

Grab the press release, with links to images, video, etc.

From the release:

Nashville and Chicago-based THE2NDHAND launches pledge campaign for ‘All Hands On’ 10^th-anniversary anthology / “Nerves of Steel” event Dec. 7.

All Hands On: THE2NDHAND after 10, 2000-11, a Reader will be published in 2011 to celebrate and lay down the best of the broadsheet and online magazine’s 10+ years of publishing writing by the budding insurgents of the American lit landscape and other more established writers. THE2NDHAND launched a 90-day fund-raising campaign on Kickstarter.com November 18 to raise the money needed to cover printing costs, and will host a kickoff party as part of its regular So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel? reading series event Dec. 7 at Chicago’s Hungry Brain.

By pledging $14 or more, readers can preorder a copy of the 300-plus-page book, which collects work all told from 40 writers, 3 illustrators, four editors, and a couple janitors. Visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the2ndhand/all-hands-on-the2ndhand-after-10-a-reader for the campaign, and http://the2ndhand.com/events/events.html for details on the event.

True to form, the book begins with a section of new, as-yet unpublished work representing the full range of the magazine’s long local presence in Chicago (with new work by Chicagoans Patrick Somerville and Michael Zapata), Birmingham, Ala. (Nadria Tucker) and Nashville, Tenn. (Matt Cahan), as well as its far-flung influence in the world of new literary writing the nation over. Contributors to the front, new-work section of the book represent regions from New England to the West Coast, and the large majority of the collection is devoted to special sections highlighting short fiction by the magazine’s best repeat contributors, from Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps), first published in THE2NDHAND in its third issue in its first year, 2000, to more recent contributors like Chicagoan Heather Palmer, whose novella “Charlie’s Train” was serialized at THE2NDHAND.com as its 11^th year began in February of 2010.

(Zapata’s “White Twilight,” a speculative fictional take of sorts on the first U.S. census to come back with those checking “white” in the race/ethnicity box in a solid minority, is the featured story in THE2NDHAND’s broadsheet No. 35, out now as a sneak peek into the book.)

Other pledge rewards include, in addition to a copy of the book, THE2NDHAND’s signature bergamot-infused bar by Alabama soap maker The Left Hand (thelefthand.net), several books by contributors and editors (from All Hands On cover designer and past contributor Zach Dodson and contributor Patrick Somerville to THE2NDHAND’s founding editor, Todd Dills) and, among others, packets of 10 and 15 broadsheets spanning the 10-year history of THE2NDHAND packaged in custom-designed and -printed envelopes by Nashville-based wood-block fine-arts printmaker Martin Cadieux. At the highest pledge level, $150, a limited number full boxed sets in packaging likewise printed by Cadieux are available.

For more about THE2NDHAND, visit THE2NDHAND.com and peruse past broadsheets and online-magazine archives. THE2NDHAND’s editor will be sharing previews, likewise, of some of the artwork to be included in All Hands On – Chicago artist Rob Funderburk, formerly THE2NDHAND’s principle designer, is at work on illustrative portraits of special-section writers included, for instance. Some in-process photos of Cadieux’ wood-block-printed envelopes are already available in this blog post from early November by THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills. A fact sheet of sorts about the book, its contributors and the history of the broadsheet and online magazine follows. For interviews with any of the writers listed, please contact THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills.

FACTS:

THE2NDHAND KICKSTARTER campaign main page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the2ndhand/all-hands-on-the2ndhand-after-10-a-reader.

VIDEO: A photographic tour through 10 years of THE2NDHAND’s broadsheets, with audio selections from editor C.T. Ballentine’s introduction to All Hands On and more is available via THE2NDHAND’s Kickstarter fund drive page or www.youtube.com/the2ndhandutube.

IMAGES:

All Hands On: THE2NDHAND After 10, 2000-2011, a Reader, cover image:
http://the2ndhand.com/print35/allhandsoncovercolor.JPG
THE2NDHAND Broadsheet No. 35 pdf:
http://the2ndhand.com/print35/THE2NDHAND_35.pdf
THE2NDHAND Broadsheet No. 35 front side image:
http://the2ndhand.com/print35/thumbnail.JPG

NERVES of STEEL DETAILS:
SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE NERVES OF STEEL?
8 p.m., Tues., Dec. 7, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, Chicago

THE2NDHAND announces to Chi-town, city of its birth in 2000, the T2H Kickstarter.com campaign toward publication of its 10th-anniversary book, All Hands On: THE2NDHAND After 10… and of course much more, with performances by:
**THE2NDHAND No. 35 (just released) writer Michael Zapata
**the team of Matt Bell (Wolf Parts, among others) and Michael Czyzniejewski (Elephants in Our Bedroom)
**and Natalie Edwards, Mary Hamilton (of Quickie’s reading series) and Lindsay Hunter (Daddy’s) in a collaboration that will melt faces like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they open the ark…

ALSO:
**Puppetry by Brandon Will
**music by Nerves of Steel house band Good Evening
**and a PSA by T2H regular Spencer Dew (touring a little with his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres book out from Another New Calligraphy)

Some other things that are known:
75: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked or are currently working in the mag’s co-HQ of Chicago.

25: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked in West Virginia.

25: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked in past co-HQ of Birmingham, Ala., and current co-HQ of Nashville, Tenn.

50: Percentage of THE2NDHAND’s current editors who have once lived/worked in Louisville, Ky.

42: Number of total THE2NDHAND broadsheets, including numbered half-issues 6.5, 13.5 and 16.5 and our recent 8.5-by-11-inch mini-sheets for primarily digital distribution, begun with No. 33.1 in January 2010.

Today, THE2NDHAND is:
Editors Todd Dills (Nashville, Tenn.), C.T. Ballentine (Louisville, Ky.), Jacob Knabb (Chicago)
FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Philadelphia)
Janitors: Rufus Beady, Harold Ray (all over and everywhere)
And many writers

When it began with a launch party Saturday Feb. 12, at 1278 N. Milwaukee, Floor 4, in Chicago, it was:
Editor Todd Dills (Chicago)
Design men Jeremy Bacharach and (now children’s book illustrator) Matt Cordell (matthewcordell.com)
And fewer writers

Between 2002 and 2004, it was:
Editors Todd Dills and Jeb Gleason-Allured (Chicago)
FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Louisville, Ky.)
Design man Evan Sult (later of band Bound Stems, of Chicago)
Propaganda minister Eric Graf
And more writers

Between 2005 and 2007, it was:
Editors Todd Dills, Jeb Gleason-Allured (Chicago) and C.T. Ballentine (Chicago)
FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Louisville, Ky.)
Design man (Chicago artist) Rob Funderburk (robfunderburk.com)
Propaganda minister Eric Graf
And more writers

Between 2006 and 2009, it was:
Editors Todd Dills (Birmingham, Ala.), C.T. Ballentine (Chicago)
FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Philadelphia)
And more and more writers

Of those writers:

Contributors to All Hands On: THE2NDHAND After 10
It’s been a long run for THE2NDHAND, the little magazine — not even a magazine in any traditional sense, but rather a broadsheet, perhaps the last periodical on earth to be launched without a prefabbed website to bolster its offset-printed pages (though ‘twas to follow shortly, publishing flash and serial fiction weekly from late 2000 on). We mean: THE2NDHAND is a page. A big one – 11-by-17-inch block of black text peppered variously with photo-illustrations, comics, line drawings, distributed in storefronts first in Chicago, then in an ever-growing list of cities around the U.S…. “New writing,” simply, has been its focus since 2000, when THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills founded the broadsheet working from a crackerbox hole of an apartment in Logan Square, Chicago — small-format has been its watchword physically, but a loud mouth and a big heart its most important parts.

True to form, All Hands On’s front section features new work by Michael Zapata, Nadria Tucker, Jamie Iredell, Patrick Somerville (The Cradle), Fred Sasaki, Amanda Yskamp, Ben Stein (Amherst, Mass.) and Matt Cahan, as well as a collaborative short by Susannah Felts & Todd Dills and a mini-epic poem (“Chicago”) by Doug Milam.

**Cover design by Featherproof Books’ (and T2H contributor) Zach Dodson
**Illustrations for the lead section by comix artist/cermacist Andrew Davis
**Author illustrations by Chicago artist and T2H occasionaljanitor-in-residence Rob Funderburk
**Special sections with multiple short stories by Marc Baez, coeditor C.T. Ballentine (including the entirety of his “Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date” novella; Ballentine also penned, with copious editorial footnoting by Todd Dills, the book’s introduction), Philip Brunetti, Al Burian (the Burn Collector zine and associated books), Tobias Carroll (“The Scowl” blogger), Spencer Dew (Songs of Insurgency), Kate Duva (cohost of our Chicago “So you think you have nerves of steel?” reading series), David Gianatasio (Mind Games), Mickey Hess (Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory), Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps, Hairstyles of the Damned), Jonathan Messinger (Hiding Out), Doug Milam (Still the Confusion), Anne Elizabeth Moore (Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity) with comic adaptation by Josh Bayer, Greggory Moore, Kevin O’Cuinn, Heather Palmer, Michael Peck, the Pitchfork Battalion (a collaborative crew with roving membership, including many of those already listed, plus, featured in the book, Sean Carswell, Jim Murphy, Emerson Dameron, John Minichillo, Motke Dapp, and Dominique Holmes), Lauren Pretnar, Patrick Somerville (The Cradle), Jill Summers, Paul A. Toth (Finale), and Nadria Tucker.

I-65 U.S. Interstate Highway within 40 miles of which 57 percent of all AHO contributors live.

30: Percentage of AHO contributors who live in Chicago.

ABOUT Special section authors in AHO:
Chicago writer Marc Baez’s work first appeared in THE2NDHAND in its second year, with a minidrama involving two men and two women seated on a floor after having played a game of Twister, speaking quite baroquely amongst themselves about the personal, artistic and philosophical gulfs that keep them together–and apart. Part 1 of his most recent, tricornered contribution, published in 2009, is featured here, among others. Baez teaches writing at the University of Illinois Chicago. Baez’s work was also featured in THE2NDHAND’s 2004 All Hands On: A THE2NDHAND Reader, 2000-2004 anthology.

C.T. Ballentine has been an editor with THE2NDHAND since 2007 and a contributor since 2005. Also a sound engineer in various music halls and opera houses, he lives, writes and loves between Louisville, Ky., Chicago and Huntsville, Ala.

Philip Brunetti lives and writes in Brooklyn, N.Y., and has been contributing to THE2NDHAND since the fall of 2008.

Al Burian wrote the first issue of the Burn Collector zine in the 1990s and continues to write it — and much else besides — today. He’s behind a book of the same name collecting previous installments of the zine and Natural Disaster, collecting later work. When not touring with his work, he lives in Berlin, occasionally Chicago and elsewhere.

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in Brooklyn, N.Y. His work as a book and music critic has been published widely, and his fiction has appeared semi-regularly in THE2NDHAND (since 2007) and other mags. Find more at his indie-culture blog, The Scowl (yourbestguess.com/thescowl).

Spencer Dew, based in Chicago, authored the 2008 “Songs of Insurgency” collection, out from Vagabond Press, and his shorts have appeared in great frequency in many online and print journals, including THE2NDHAND. In 2010 Another New Calligraphy is publishing his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres book. Visit spencerdew.com for links to pieces of his prolific online lit presence.

Kate Duva grew up in Chicago in a bar; she still lives in the city, where she writes and serves as cohost in THE2NDHAND’s ongoing So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel? reading series, first Tuesday of the month at Hungry Brain on Belmont. Other of her work can be found in Fugue and Opium, on Vocalo Radio and at kateduva.blogspot.com.

David Gianatasio is the author of two collections of short stories, most recently 2008’s Mind Games (Word Riot). He’s published prolifically online for years. He lives in Boston, Mass.

Mickey Hess is a professor of English at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J. His work for THE2NDHAND has included serving as progenitor and editor of our FAQ section, and his stories and essays have been published in journals and magazines ranging from Punk Planet and McSweeney’s to more scholarly affairs. He is the author of the memoir Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory and the editor of Greenwood Press’ two-volume Icons of Hip-hop, among other literary and scholarly works.

Longtime THE2NDHAND contributor Joe Meno is the author of several books, including most recently the novel The Great Perhaps (2009), as well as short story collections Demons in the Spring (Akashic) and Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir (Northwestern University Press) and the novels The Boy Detective Fails and Hairstyles of the Damned. He is on the faculty of Columbia College in Chicago, where he lives and writes.

Jonathan Messinger is Time Out Chicago’s books editor and the driving editorial force behind the Chicago-based concerns Featherproof Books and the Dollar Store reading series. A prolific short-story writer in his own right, his first collection, Hiding Out, came out in 2007.

Doug Milam lives and writes in Bellingham, Wash. He is the author of a chapbook of shorts, Still the Confusion, and has been published in a variety of other literary magazines. Visit him at milam.blogsite.org/wordpress.

Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007), and Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull, 2004). Moore served as associate editor of the now-defunct Punk Planet magazine and was the founding editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin. Today, she teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when she’s not traveling the globe speaking on freedom of speech issues.

Greggory Moore is a lifelong southern California resident, freelance journalist and fiction writer and poet.

Kevin O’Cuinn lives in Frankfurt am Main but is originally from Dublin; he coedits fiction for Word Riot.

Heather Palmer lives in Chicago. Her work has been published in a variety of magazines. In 2010 THE2NDHAND serialized her novella, “Charlie’s Train,” at THE2NDHAND.com, parts of which are excerpted in AHO.

Michael Peck, after a time in Philadelphia and with roots deep upstate New York, lives and writes in Missoula, Mont. His fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The Rittenhouse Revue, 34th Parallel and others.

The Pitchfork Battalion is THE2NDHAND’s answer to the Wu Tang Clan or to any collaborative artistic group, really. Typically, we collaborate on a theme, or do individual riffs on a phrase in prose – sometimes poetry, as the case of Jim Murphy’s addition to the 2009 “Extraordinary Rendition” is evidence. In AHO are some of our best. For the lot of them, written at the initial instigation of our FAQ editor and continuing contributor Mickey Hess, from 2005 to the present, visit http://the2ndhand.com/archive/archivepitchfork.html.

Lauren Pretnar lives and writes in Chicago.

Patrick Somerville is the author of a novel, The Cradle, and the Trouble collection of stories (patricksomerville.com). In 2010, his genre-busting The Universe in Miniature in Miniature was released by Featherproof Books. He lives and writes in Chicago.

Jill Summers’ audio fiction has been heard via Chicago Public Radio and the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines, including THE2NDHAND, where she is a continuing contributor.

Paul A. Toth is the author of a triptych of novels — Fizz, Fishnet and Finale — and lives today in Sarasota, Fla., after years in Flint, Mich. Visit www.netpt.tv; Toth also works in multimedia, poetry and nonfiction.

Nadria Tucker hails from Atmore in South Alabama, though she lives and writes in Birmingham.

Carving w/ wood-blocker Martin Cadieux/Nerves Tuesday, Nov. 2

Ever carved a woodblock for a print? Let’s just say it’s not the easiest thing you could choose to spend several evenings a week putting your visually tuned/technically apt side to work. It hurts, strains some seldom-used muscles. Most printmakers today work in linoleum or by more automated means.

Which makes it, well, more valuable to my thinking, more interesting. I got the chance to try my hand at it (pictured below) in a sit-down with Nashville printmaker Martin Cadieux (picture, immediately below and right) at his place a couple weeks back and carved out several of the lines in the letters in the t – h – e – 2 – n – d – h – a – n – d logo/mast type stylization, with an All Hands On twist, that Martin’s put together to go along with a special collection of past broadsheets we’ll be offering as one of many bonus gifts with donations toward publishing our 10th-anniversary book, slated for the spring, via a Kicksarter.com program we’ll be launching later in November. (It follows with our upcoming, 35th broadsheet, featuring a story from “All Hands On” by Chicago writer Michael Zapata.) Essentially, Martin’s designed and carved a block for printing a set of 30 special envelopes for the packaging of the collection. They’ve turned out nicely, as you can see in the lead photo above. I met Martin when I happened to be tabling next to him at the last of the Walden Artisan Market events at Chapel/Eastland in East Nashville, shortly after I moved to the neighborhood. I couldn’t have been seated next to a more appropriate artist, to say the least. Stay tuned for more about the book.

TUESDAY: Chicago folks, don’t miss our newly reconstituted “Nerves of Steel” event — at a venue that couldn’t be better, the Hungry Brain. Details about the second installment at the venue here: http://the2ndhand.com/events/events.html.

And FRIDAY: Atlantans, myself and THE2NDHAND contributor/Keyhole mag editor Gabe Durham, along with Missuer Andy Devine, will be reading as part of the Solar Anus reading series there, curated by among others Mr. Jamie Iredell, whom you’ll remember from a mini-sheet of somewhat recent vintage. I’ll be reading from some of the ongoing work I’ve been posting in fragments here. Speaking of which.

Work in progress:
Charlotte wasn’t exactly all open arms and jubilation for me, in essence. All the same, the context for my return afforded entrée into a world I’d never known there. The ramshackle structures into which I was thrown as member of a NASCAR pit crew–socially, I mean, structures of meeting and greeting near nonexistent, a man a man not if he had the wits to outsmart Zeus but rather if he had the physical strength to best whatever foe happened to be standing in his way, whether three-foot concrete wall, rival for a woman’s affections or unemployed former tire carrier–carried enough a priori respect to make it fun to worry about keeping oneself fed and clothed and suited. A little fun, anyway. Not that the last required much worrying.

By the end of the week I was signing a $900 month-to-month lease on an apartment in a mixed-use building downtown. My neighbor to the immediate south on the hall was a young lawyer whose apartment was also his office, likewise the folks across the hall, a pair of former college roommates from Rock Hill, just past my hometown on the south side of the border, who’d gone in together on a graphic design business, building websites and such. The elder of them — Rob Rene was his name — was the artist of the pair, and I found out he was a race fan when I ran into him loading some stuff in Friday: bed from my mom’s, which I tied to the roof of Tacklebox’s Ford, some clothes. After I gave him my brief intro spiel, he sort of exclaimed, “I’m standing here in my own apartment talking to a bona fide member of a Cup pit crew whose background is in performance art?”

“And fryer art, too,” I said.

“My life just got a lot more interesting.” And he was off to find his roommate/business partner, Matt Caudill, who was strangely less outgoing than Rene. One always assumes the more sales-oriented person will have the people skills. It’s not always true.

But Matt was a fan, too, and came at me with a myriad of questions I had no answers for other than those directed at sussing out the real qualities of the job, many of which I was too new still to really know all that well. I could sense his disappointment. “Check back with me a month from now,” I said, and he nodded.

“Dover this week?” Matt knew the schedule.

Indeed it was – I was getting on a plane with several other of the guys, including Tacklebox, tonight for Delaware, and the relatively short track, after the mammoth Talladega, presented great opportunity for Bascombe to shine, to hear the crew chief talk about it all week long as a sort of pep-talk refrain to we team members: “Team Bascombe rules the shorts,” Huggins echoed that pep talk on a sports talking heads television program Thursday night that I’d caught at a less-than-lively but not quite lonely downtown bar. When Huggins came on the feature program, the bartender, in response to the shouted pleas of several men at a big table in back of the place, shut down the house music so all could hear the man’s strategy talk, which consisted of less actually talking strategy so much as talking around strategy with platitudes like the one above for the host, who joked and in only a minor way cajoled his path through the majority of the interview; he was ultimately the takeaway for viewers, or most of them, anyway. I didn’t think much of the silliness, but did at least perk up at the mention of “personnel changes, particularly in the pit crew area” in a question from the interviewer about Bascombe’s perceived good chances on Sunday.

Huggins, from whom I’d only gotten a sort of all-business attitude to date, here turned on some performer’s charm and “didn’t exactly regret the decision to fire my son,” he said, “since we’ve really shuffled the team around for the better, with an addition of a fantastic young tire carrier — who’s also quite a good driver, I understand, great addition to the team nonetheless, not the error of judgment I may have thought it was at the get-go.”

This was me he was talking about, of course.

Chicago comes to Nashville — Brick this Friday

Nashville, head out to Portland Brew Friday this week for the next installment in the Brick reading series (the rest of you, tune into the web stream at 7 p.m. CST here), which sees two of my favorite Chicagoans in town — Fred Sasaki, an editor with Poetry mag (a big force behind the conception of the grand and long-running Chicago Printers Ball) who contributed to THE2NDHAND’s 29th broadsheet back in 2008 (see the second page, at the bottom) and my coeditor Jacob Knabb, all-around outstanding photographer and fiction writer — he also edits fiction for the venerable ACM.

What’s more, Gabe Durham, Brick coproducer Keyhole mag‘s new editor, fairly new to Nashville, will be reading from his “Fun Camp” book, a sort of series of unlikely, philosophically madcap monologues surrounding an early-teen summer camp we excerpted in the latest mini-sheet, no. 34.2 (see second page). Gabe’s got a pretty excellent blog, too, in “Gather Round Children,” with a recent post detailing his encounter with the work of writer James Robison, published in the late 1980s, apropos of noting several writers other than Jonathan Franzen worth checking out. The exhilaration of discovery is palpable, better than most blogs (including, er, this one. . .). Gabe’s a fantastic reader, and if I’m reading certain of his e-mails of late you might well expect singalongs of various natures. Or not.

What you can expect in this is another in a series of collabos you may know by the name of Pitchfork Battalion. The last of these I helped debut at the last Brick with Motke Dapp, John Minichillo and my fave Nashville writer (yeah, I’m partial, and we share living space, and more…), Susannah Felts. Check out vid from that reading below. . .

Work in progress…
Huggins disappeared, riding a curse of his own family, now–including crew chief Eddy Huggins, no doubt–into some distant haze at the crown of some nearby mountain. He didn’t show for Talladega racing Saturday, and I got my training on the fly that night, Tacklebox running through the essentials of carrying–“squat, lift with your legs”–careful not to over-exert the new guy. “We don’t want you feeling like a dead mule in the morning,” he said.

If only he knew what I’d been doing all week. The cleanup in Ensley took its toll, and the long night previous hadn’t helped the stiffness at all.

I practiced throwing my legs quickly over the pit wall, a move Tacklebox said wasn’t necessary. “Most guys just get up in a crouching position on the wall, like this,” hopping onto the balls of his feet atop the small wall.

I closed my eyes, sat with my back to the pit road, trying hard to sense Tacklebox’s motion, sound, behind me. “I’ll do it this way,” I said, kicking my feet high and pushing off my right – I raised my body onto my left hand and threw my feet over the wall with the rest of my body.

“Ta-da!” he said. “That’s slick, but one misstep and you’re toast. I’d suggest extreme care. And remember, it might not be exactly easy with a tire and wheel in your hands. Speaking of which…” We walked through the garage area, something of party scene this evening after the junior series race, teams celebrating small victories and ignominious defeats in small groups on folding chairs set up at the back of big team trailers, lined up in two big rows ass to ass like slicker versions of the rigs at the truckstop I’d seen just a week ago with Stonefly Sanders.

Montuck Jr.’s team, Tacklebox pointed out, were “drunker than skunks. They rolled the Busch Chevy today.” Montuck and several other premiere series drivers moonlighted in the junior competition as a way of getting more track time, I figured, but Tacklebox disagreed.

“Every car’s different,” he said. “Practice with one won’t do shit for you with the other. They do it for the money. Not like they need it so badly.” Montuck, he added, speaking softly now as we strolled down the aisle between the two trailer rows, you wouldn’t find imbibing with the junior series team, one of the many indicators of his particular character. “Turner’s a party man, which makes him great for building camaraderie, see–or ‘team love,’ you could say. You’ll see these guys up here and the most relevant point of comparison you might want to make you saw coming at your face last night. Most of us can keep things in check because we like the job, you know. We like our driver. These guys here are just stiffs and, like factory workers or temp slaves, they tend to overcompensate in the off time. I have doubts about whether any of them have even talked to Montuck.”

He motioned their way as we passed–three guys, part of Montuck’s Busch team, still in their red-and-black fire suits, milling about the back of their trailer on folding chairs and looking as if they would fall asleep at any moment. We walked on for 30 seconds or more. “That doesn’t mean we don’t like them, of course,” Tacklebox laughing when we were out of their sight. “A friendly prank is friendly, in the end.”

He turned a 180 abruptly, then, and motioned for me to follow as we doubled back and slipped into the three feet, tops, of lateral space between Montuck’s trailer and the Canadian whiskey logo-emblazoned team house beside it. We stopped halfway to the front of the trailer, where tires were stacked high in several columns under a canopy: “For the race tomorrow,” Tacklebox said, then stopping, turning with his index finger firmly to his lips, before we continued on to walk through the space. In all of it, I could catch just the hint of grin.

When we reached the pile, he hoisted the top tire and passed it back to me. Each in the stacks had M-O-N-T-U-C-K written in fairly large yellow capitals and in repetition around its circumference. Tacklebox pulled a yellow paint pen from a pocket somewhere and, devilish grin spread over his face, directed me in the tires’ defacement. The difficulty was in morphing the C to a K without a black pen, but otherwise the joke was fairly simple. As it turned out, it wasn’t the first time Montuck’s team became the P-O-K-E-M-O-N express.

The sixth tire in for me, maybe the eighth for Tacklebox, we were spotted by a team member from the rear of the trailer, who gave pursuit. We exited at the front of the rig, by the tires–Tacklebox sprinting left, me right, divergent paths back to the main garage area between the rows of trailers. We convened inside the Bascombe trailer, Tacklebox already popping a beer when I entered.

“To a long and productive day,” Tacklebox raising the can, sounding like Trey or Carl or one of the many whose IDs I’d memorized at the Meadowlark. That was where the resemblance stopped.

He leaned from his chair and hit the play button on a stereo system’s CD unit, the opening cello strains of an old Anthrax record swelling through the team “lounge,” this 10’-by-10’ compartment at the back of the rig. “You like noise, you said,” Tacklebox raising his right hand, fingers configured to the horns of the devil, and banging his head a few strokes when the guitar and drums came in.

“Euphoria,” I said, “State of…” remembering the record’s title. We sang along at the chorus. “Be all, and you’ll be the end all / Life can be a real ball / State of mind: Euphoria!”

I popped open my own beer and relished the fatigue growing in my biceps, at the back of my thighs, calf muscles. I attempted to resist the urge to break back in the mind into my childhood’s dirt backyard and the little cassette player and its C batteries, nothing near the Scream’s surely more worthy D-powered behemoth. I nonetheless caught the thread of something fascinating there in the trailer. Tacklebox continued his ridiculous headbanging–ridiculous for his lack of headbanger hair, his ’do close-cropped over the ears and above the eyebrows and tucked under a ball cap–and I popped a beer and channeled the present aggression of the music, closing my eyes to feel the tinny speakers’ whine, dirt on knees and elbows and my muscles in the memory of flailing around the backyard, kicking up more dirt, alone and content and full of undirected rage ultimately false in its very conception.

“I fucking love that shit,” Tacklebox said when the song was over. “Now let’s get back to it a bit.”

Revisiting Doug Milam’s ‘Future History’

A quick mind-control experiment, here, if you could.

1. Read H.P. Albarelli Jr.’s June “Strange Story of Sally Hartman” at the Truthout site, about a purported case of a U.S. government employee turned CIA MKULTRA guinea pig. The piece ends with a rather ominous anonymous bit of quoting from an intelligence source about the world post-9/11, about the potential need for a “miracle” of mass mental influence to reprogram terrorists and their sympathizers worldwide. . .

2. Now read THE2NDHAND contributor Doug Milam’s excellent “Future History of How It Is,” published in 2003 at the T2H site as the Iraq War really got off the ground and American civic pride was, at least in my neighborhood, at one of its major low points.

3. Post your thoughts about the connections between one and two in the comments here. Who’s controlling whom?

‘The Great Stare-off’ in May, new readings this weekend

This vid’s of perhaps the most brilliantly suspenseful moment in the whole shebang — that’s May 18 at Whistler in Chicago at the So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel event; next reading in the series is this coming Sunday, June 20. The video’s of Palmer’s staring contest with a game, quite brave audience member, which preceded her reading, sees such developments as the audience singing ocular-themed tunes, lots of hemming and hawing from Harold Ray (for a quite excellent pic of Ray, check out the flyer here). The vid is below, and for more, visit THE2NDHAND’s YouTube channel.

Also this weekend, Friday, at the East Nashville Portland Brew (1921 Eastland) for those of you in town, the Brick series event features MTSU prof and excellent fiction writer John Minichillo, a Twitter storyteller reading from his quite more expansive novel in Motke Dapp, and one of my personal faves, of course, Susannah Felts (I live with her, to state the situation mildly, though, so I’m partial). Hope to see you there. For full details, visit this page. The all-Nashville crew, including myself, will join together at the end of the reading for a round-robin of prose pieces, each contribution beginning with the phrase “After the flood…”

Now for that vid. Enjoy. THE GREAT STARE-OFF: