Vigorously Lazy

with Christopher Heavener

Blog

Monday, February 8th

The Grand Family.

Our intrepid intern comes at us with a report from the burgeoning art capital of the world, Orlando, FL. Take it away, Janelle!

Good friend and Annalemma contributor Gianelle Gelpi held an art opening at Stardust on Saturday night.

gia pic 1

Fans and friends came together to celebrate Gianelle’s first solo show.

giapic2

I donned my newly dubbed “Montana” jacket in honor of the furry family.

giapic3

Gianelle’s choice of medium ranged from rich, seductive oils to bright and yummy acrylics. The most beloved though were her drawings.

giapic4

By the end of the night they were all $OLD! Cha-ching is a good thing indeed.

giapic5

Gianelle’s style, influenced by World Mythology, has evolved into a kind of mystical optimism. Through the creatures of the Grand Family, she conveys a belief in the connectedness of all things alive and imagined. Their serenity may be ours as well.

giapic6

I especially loved the lion. Just look at his eyes! Gorgeous. Someone else snatched it up before I got there. Boohoooo.

giapic7

We are just bursting with pride. Gianelle owned Stardust. (And the dance floor a little later that night.) Expect to see more of her.

IMG_0249

We are just bursting with pride. Gianelle owned Stardust. (And the dance floor a little later that night.) Expect to see more of her.

| 0 Comments
Friday, February 5th

Holiday in Cambodia Excerpts.

HIC_BEAUTY-9

Today’s Holiday in Cambodia day here at Annalemma and we’re hoping to get you more psyched on this zine of ours that you have ever been on any other zine in your life. Thus, excerpts:

From Greyhound Christmas by Al Burian

I had been curious to see what sort of person takes an overnight Greyhound ride on Christmas eve. Would there be exciting, sinister motivations for needing to leave town at such an odd time? But the answer, depressingly and obviously, is that it’s mostly born again Christians. This became clear within a few minutes of departure from downtown Chicago, when the first person, an elderly gentleman in a crinkled suit, whipped out a bulky, well-thumbed and thoroughly hi-lighted jumbo print Bible and began shouting praises across the aisles. I looked around for someone to receive my exasperated eye roll, but found no one. The entire bus was enraptured. Soon, Bible quotations and hallelujahs were flying back and forth between the aisles.

My instinctual reaction to loud displays of fervent proselytizing, of course, is to want to jump up and begin yelling counter-arguments in a louder voice. Fuck religion, as the song says, but in this case I immediately recognized that as an inhumane, culturally insensitive attitude, and also that I was hopelessly outnumbered. So, rather than yelling out Crass-style lyrics, I restrained myself and listened.

From Jumping Rope with Satan by Cassandra Lewis

My mother is mentally ill but refuses to undergo treatment.  The first time she was hospitalized she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  However, another psychologist who met with her and later became my therapist said she believed my mother was misdiagnosed and should have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia since my mother fails to return to reality, entrenched in delusions.  She’s been hospitalized, arrested, and incarcerated, blaming everyone but herself, refusing to accept responsibility.  It’s all a big conspiracy, of course.  She believes everyone is against her and either works for the mafia, the CIA, or Satan.

From A Christmas Fax from Dad’s Lawyer by Ryan W. Bradley

The clearest Christmas memory I have is waking up, my sister and I beginning to sift through our stockings while our stepdad prepared breakfast in the kitchen. We’d only started celebrating Christmas since our parents had both remarried.

We heard the fax machine downstairs whirr to life. It was from our dad’s lawyer, passing on a court order that my sister and I were to spend Christmas day with our father. We got dressed, hurried through opening our presents, and fumed by the window waiting for our dad’s Isuzu Rodeo to arrive on our street.

From Survival Recipe by Liz Grover

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I went to Cambodia. I only knew that it was going to be difficult. My goal was to document what local activists were doing to protect street children from child sex tourists, indigenous tribes fighting to protect their dwindling rainforests, and women landmine survivors learning how to make a proud living through weaving, a tradition that was nearly erased during the dark days of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s totalitarian ruling Communist Party of Kampuchia. Oh, and by the way, it was my first time visiting a country where massive genocide took place.

From My Justice for All by Todd Dills

“I’ve seen the frayed ends of sanity,” Edwin said, finally, pretentiously, as he marched off to the Silver Dollar’s bathroom.

“Me too,” I called after him. “Wasn’t that a Metallica song?” though I knew it was, from the classic …And Justice for All. Metallica was about insanity, after all, and more explicitly death. In their 1980s heyday they sought, however confusedly, to encapsulate living organisms’, man’s, inexorable and punishing route toward death in their hectic, unyieldingly pounding riffs. Death via war, via insanity and bad choices, via addiction, via chance in the chaos of human experience: the unfinished business of the bell, which on their second album they left up in the air, incomplete, but if you got the reference to Donne — and you’d have to be a Neanderthal not to — the implied finale was clear. Luck be damned. Time marches on. The shortest straw is pulled. That bell tolls for thee.

Remember: Limited press of only 100. Supplies will not last. Click here to order!

| 0 Comments
Friday, February 5th

Introducing Holiday in Cambodia.

HIC_BEAUTY-6

It’s finally done. And only six days late!

IMG_4512

It all started last week, when I had to re-learn how to make a zine. I hadn’t made one since college.This was the Wednesday before last, when the iPad was getting announced. It felt real weird to be doing the most rudimentary practice of media distribution, while thousands of miles away, the “future” of it was being unveiled.

IMG_4513

Prototypes. I did a shitty layout, then sent it over to Jen who typeset it beautifully. And for free! Big heart on that O’Malley.

IMG_4534

It came time to print and I was having major issues. Printer was claiming I hadn’t loaded the paper properly or there wasn’t enough paper when I told it, repeatedly, that this was not the case. I contacted Epson, who was no help. I was having nightmares of having to take this thing into Kinko’s. Then I saw this red button. And what do you do to a red button? You press it. And the printer started working. That’s all she wanted, just to know that I was there, that I hadn’t forgotten about her. This is apparently the reassurance button.

HIC_BEAUTY-3

And BOOM! You got yurself a zine. Not long after this photo was taken I did an email with The Cambodian Daily about this project. No joke. First bit of international press! Oh, and Yahoo users: did you know about this?

HIC_BEAUTY-8

Festive table of contents.

HIC_BEAUTY-10

Very happy with this one. Oh yeah, did I mention…

IMG_4524

Red staples. It’s called attention to detail, people. Maybe you should look into it (this hubris does not apply to typos).

http://www.vimeo.com/9222777

This zine’s dancing with talent!

HIC_BEAUTY-9

Did I mention that we’re only print 100 of them and that orders are shipping now? Click here to buy!

| 0 Comments
Thursday, February 4th

120 in 2010: Burn Collector Fourteen.

burncoll14

Random Thoughts:

Damn. Remember Burn Collector? Remember Al Burian? Not that either of these things is forgetable, but Al seems to have taken a few years of from the zine making business and kind of fell off my radar.

al-burian

Reading BC feels like such a singularly Chicago thing to do. Most of what Al writes about takes place there and I first found out about it when I was hold up in my absolutely frigid shit hole apartment, in the throws of writing school, getting bored with most of the required texts. BC offered a kind of refuge, a metered and comfortable voice talking about the places and people I was starting to familiarize myself with.

255439467_72b5927ae8

Reading this time around I was trying to figure out why Al Burian’s style is so damn compelling. It’s not crafted masterfully or anything. It’s not like there’s a ton of lush imagery or drastic conflict arcs. On paper it just appears to be a collection of loosely connected observations on life.

100602_burncollector

But I think that’s precisely why it’s so compelling. There’s a comic panel in the new BC where Burian’s hastily scribbled version of himself proclaims, “Best to keep it simple… to the point… that’s the only way I’ll be able to have a hope of capturing the chaotic maelstrom of my existence even fractionally…” The fact that it’s not literary makes it appealing. It’s a clear, uncynical voice, not critiquing something disposable like a new album or movie, but critiquing every day life.

l

One quote in the book I must take issue with:

(Regarding the cold in Chicago and how it strengthens you) “It sucks, but at times there is a euphoric shock to that knowledge, the only we know what we’re feeling feeling that makes you suddenly love everyone around you with an intensity of unified righteousness that they just don’t have in Florida. In Illinois, it takes effort to find the good, and that makes it all the more remarkable when it’s there.”

I’ve lived in both places and the hellish cold that occurs there did nothing to instill that kind of camaraderie in myself or anyone else I knew in that town. It just made you want to curl up in your bed and wait for May. I’d argue that Florida has some of the most beautiful, driven and creative people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know personally. And if it takes effort to find the good in Illinois then it takes a goddamn journey to the center of the Earth to find it in Orlando, and if you do find it you feel like you’ve stumbled upon the treasure of the Sierra Madre.

alscoiffure

But I’m sure you didn’t mean it like that, Al. I still like your stuff.

Favorite quote:

(regarding bike messangers) “These people are like vegetarian hell’s angels, displaying similarly brazen, hard-headed pride in their chaotic, dangerous mode of living – and they’ve got to be proud of themselves, because no one else is on their side.”

Also, he skillfully picks apart an essay written by Dan Clowes in 1998. Impressive.

| 0 Comments
Wednesday, February 3rd

Mail Bag.

IMG_4511

What showed up in this unassuming envelope with the sick lightning-bolt-heavy-metal handwriting that looks more at home on a high school notebook cover?

IMG_4517

The new Caketrain! Can’t wait to read it. How insane is that Cure All cover, btw? Looks like someone’s got a BBCDW coming their way.

| 0 Comments
Tuesday, February 2nd

Holiday in Cambodia Preview and Pre-Order.

Picture 5

We’re slacking a bit on this. I’m not entirely sure why I decided to have a deadline coincide with the printing of a zine. Guess I’m just ambitious and stupid like that.

Picture 2

If you are extremely eager to get your hands on this you can pre-order here.

Picture 3

Might not be a bad idea to pre order, seeing as 1) it’s for a good cause 2) it’s got a pretty serious roster 3) Two words: limited edish. We’re only printing 100 of them.

We’re shipping this Thursday, when we’ll also have a more in-depth blog post/press release/big hooplah about it. Anybody know where I can get my hands on a saddle stapler besides Kinko’s?

| 0 Comments
Tuesday, February 2nd

Karin Driejer Andersson.

I may or may not be late to this party, but ever since I saw this video last week I’ve become obsessed with Karin Driejer Andersson:

YouTube Preview Image

How come writers don’t do shit like this?

09129_133015_feverray

Is it because pop music and performance art is all about getting as far away from being human as possible and writing is about getting to the core of being human? Is it because writers are trying to stimulate your brains and not your eyes?

feverray

Maybe that’s not true though, the stuff about performance artists moving away from being human. I see Driejer Andersson going so other-worldly that she circles back around, getting closer to a more primitive and spiritual part of being a human.

feverray1

Nevertheless, what’s her counterpart in the writing world? Only person I can think of is JT LeRoy. Or possibly Tim Jones-Yelvington.

YouTube Preview Image

Favorite tracks:

YouTube Preview Image

…and this (dicks won’t let me embed).

| 5 Comments
Monday, February 1st

120 in 2010: Await Your Reply.

resize_image

Random thoughts:

I love that Dan Chaon takes advantage of a dimension of books that’s so simple but rarely gets taken advantage of: unlike a film, you cannot see the characters in a book. Some of the characters identities in AYR come into question and you get the sense that if you could only see them with your naked eye then this wouldn’t be an issue. An aspect that could make filming the book somewhat complicated:

YouTube Preview Image

(This is the best book trailer I’ve ever seen btw.)

Chaon puts his characters in the dusty flat plains of the midwest, the desolate northern territories, the hidden cabins of Michigan. He cuts up the isolated locals with brief moments in Las Vegas and the Ivory Coast. But for the most part he uses these lonely backdrops, ones that are rarely shown so honestly, not as places that industry has left unsullied, bastions of the real America, but as what they are: places where people go to disappear.

EugeneMcCaul_WeatherWinner_lg

AYR is one of those books where it’s all about the third act. The first 2/3rds exist solely to setup the final 100 pages, and it’s evident when you’re reading it that these long ruminative chapters of characters hemming and hawing about the decisions they’ve made will eventually pay off if you just keep reading. But Chaon makes it frustrating sometimes as he’s so stingy with the clues, with the revelations, with the breadcrumbs. He makes you starve for information. Which can be a risky move. If you’re starving you’re either going keep reading or you’re going to go to McDonalds.

art19285widea

One thing I gotta mention though is his style. Chaon’s goes for simple and direct, which is great and I applaud him for that. But what feels simple and elegant at first gets tiresome a couple hundred pages in. The adverbs were what killed it for me. A few here and there are excusable, inevitable at some point. But used too often adverbs just read like lazy writing to me. Saying a character sighed wearily, or gestured nonchalantly, or looked blankly into the distance doesn’t really illustrate much for me. It makes one word do all the heavy lifting instead of dispersing it over an entire sentence. That’s not to say Chaon is a hacky writer. Far from it. There’s moments of true style in this book but they’re lopsided by the unnatural sound that adverbs make in my head.

Dan Chaon

While it did leave a bit to be desired in the language department, it had been a long time since I’d read a story as tightly crafted and intricately thought out as this. Something strangely satisfying in putting your trust in an author and having it pay off so well in the end. Thanks Dan.

| 2 Comments
Monday, February 1st

Deadline Passed.

human-sacrifice

The deadline for our sacrifice themed issue has passed. Much like the science report in high school that you forgot about until the night before it was due, many of you waited until the last minute to submit work. I respect your eagerness to be published. Thanks to everyone who submitted. You’re efforts will not go unrecognized. I am recognizing them. Right here. Consider this recognition.

Now I have to go read 150 short stories in eight hours.

| 0 Comments
Friday, January 29th

Finnegan’s Wank.

image.php_-499x75

Happy Friday everyone. As a special present for making it to the end of the week, we give you the fruits of the HTMLGIANT “When Writers Get Off” contest. In retrospect, it may have been wise to choose a less confusing title to parody, but whatever, it makes for some good ol’ fashioned time wastin’ on a Friday afternoon. Thanks to everyone who submitted!

And now, Annalemma is proud to give you a work of classical literature that has been totally porn-i-fied. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…

Finnegan’s Wank

force that through the green fuse drove the wildebeest in rear of the long bus with high seatbacks for high school play, untucked oxford shirt, corduroys unsnapped, downzipped to match her plaid skirt split thigh-wide, knees pinked, still drives me to wankshire, memory slick with swells of youth, yea, I was still a boy back then, virginia’s son, unlicensed but with mansome fingers, guitar-licking at the loudhouse, labial mimetics of miss winnie who would whimper first, a chorus, huff-n-hew, then lift me with her muttonbrooch, the niceliest mouthing of fist with slurp hole, oh, imagine the sound, how I would soak the buttoned cotton clean through. learned to launder by eleven, so dear mother, sweet saintly mami, immaculate cleanser of marriott and sheraton, would not know nor touch the spraycrust from breath slide, wring and bell-tongued ball (like wool-white plunge for heaven’s serf) of the selfsame girl who’d heave jameson at the freshman formal, but not before geyswerk beneath cloth table. we told ourselves no one could see, yet when discovered otherwise saw no need for disgrace, groan with willful eyes, glouch before mirrors, windows, open doors, like this one now, upon the aerie annalemma. finn’s splooge is yours.

- jesusangelgarcia

Mastabatoom, mastabadtomm, when a mon merries his lute, he tips un a topping swank cheroot, giving the Paddybanners the military salute, from out the belfry of the cute, to send more heehaw hell’s flutes, comming nown from the asphalt to the concrete, from the human historic brute, schwants (schwrites) ischt tell the cock’s trootabout, to traverse same above statement by saxy luters, and the Beer and Belly and the Boot, in spite of all that science could boot, like to ants or emmets wondern upon a groot, very largely substituted taker of the tributes, for render and prender the doles and the tribute, when rodmen’s firstaiding hands had rescued, the prettiest pickles of unmatchemable mute, when an explosium of his distilleries deafadumped all his dry goods to his most favoured sinflute.

Saddenly now. On a second wreathing, a celt, unwishful as he felt, was pelted (in pelted thongs), lugging up and laiding down his livepelts (birthday pelts), a lad’s thing to elter, and boundaried round with a twobar tunnel belt, where the poules go and rum smelt, and yet smelt the highstinks aforefelt, erning his breadth to the swelt, and devious delts, a bright tauth bight shimmeryshaking for the welt, and candlestock melt.

- William Walsh

Finnegan sat in the corner, spent.  He was sad now.  The softest part was always the hardest part. He spit on the ground and looked around.  He grabbed a dirty towel and weakly cleaned himself.  A big fart let loose from his fat ass. The magazine he used was called Phoenix Park, and Finnegan made a note to himself to remember the title.  It was a keeper.

The bachelor’s apartment only had one room, other than the bathroom.  The only sink was in the bathroom.  Finnegan kept a hot plate on a table near the only door in the apartment.  He occasionally cooked grill cheeses on the hot plate.  He had never cleaned the hot plate.  He owned two dishes, and he would clean them in the shower at the same time he showered himself.  He owned one fork, and cleaned it with spit.

Through the dirty window, Finnegan spied a bird flying.  He coughed once and turned away from the window.  He lay back and stared up at the ceiling, scratching his belly.  He imagined the two Asian girls he saw at drycleaner earlier in the day.  They leaned over a sink, each washing a shirt.  One was tall like a tree. The other was squat and short, like a stone.  They were both beautiful.  They were both perfect.  Each time he jerked it thinking of them, he felt closer to them.  Every day he felt closer to them.

Finnegan waited to get hard again.  It wouldn’t be long.

- P. William Grimm

| 1 Comments