Disguised in the Spotlight: “Real Characters” Live at McNally Jackson

Sometimes when there’s a frequently performed show that’s been going on for awhile – but which you are attending for the first time – there’s a warm and tingling sensation that you’ve stumbled onto a desert island with its own thrilling new customs, or a secret society’s meeting a la the Stonecutters on The Simpsons, or that crew that Ben Franklin hypes in radio commercials.

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Zines, punks, millenials, the digital age, etc.

Posted by Jason Diamond The always marvelous Lauren Cerand put together an impressive panel, “(Re)making media: DIY, zines, punk rock, gen X and millenials in the digital age,” at McNally Jackson the other night.  If you’ve got an hour to spare, please consider watching the video recap posted above.

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Behind Front Lines: Notes From Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2010 at McNally Jackson

Posted by Nick Curley Here are the trials of the Rookie Blogger, a title right up there with “A Literal Totem Pole’s Intern” or “Junior Secretary to the Orphaned Dog’s Scrotum”. I leave a copywriting day job for a very popular, mercilessly trite website at 6:50pm, knowing that I will not be paid for services rendered from 5pm on.  This pro-bono time is spent crunching numbers into various Excel spreadsheets: numbers of no bearing to any living soul, numbers that […]

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Happening: Ten Walks/Two Talks Book Launch

Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch will launch Ten Walks/Two Talks (Ugly Ducking Presse) on Thursday, January 7th. The book combines ten walks around Manhattan, and two dialogues about walking — one of which takes place during a late-night “philosophical” walk through Central Park. Each walk lasted sixty minutes and gets documented in sixty sentences. Both dialogues lasted forty-five minutes. You may remember Cotner and Fitch from their “Conversations over Stolen Food” at Electric Literature a few months back. 7 p.m. […]

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Bites: The return of Lemony Snicket, Bob Dylan at the controls, zombies, Marvel Comics, Sen. Alec Baldwin, and more.

I really liked the first few Lemony Snicket books, and then there were a few hundred more.  Now we get news that we can expect four more.  I’m alright with this, as long as there is no more movies with Jim Carrey involved. We really like to talk about zombies; this essay on The Morning News does it far better than just about anything we have ever posted. I smell a challenge, or possibly the stench of the undead. So […]

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Bites: The Pope embraces dandyism, Gary Indiana, own a piece of Virginia Woolf history, indie supergroups, new bookstores, and more

First the Pope says Potter is alright, now the Vatican is cool with the king of the dandies, Oscar Wilde. Strange things are afoot in Rome. Gary Indiana picks songs that relate to his newest work, The Shanghai Gesture, on Largehearted Boy. The beach that inspired Virginia Woolf to write To The Lighthouse is up for sale (thanks Litkicks) I guess starting an indie supergroup means that you need to sound like an updated version of The Traveling Wilburys, which […]

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Bites: Friends With Benefits, Tiny Vipers, horny at Hogwarts, Electric Literature, and this year’s books

New bimonthly lit mag Electric Literature is looking pretty cool. If you’re old school, it’s available in print but the e-version is half the cost. Natch, an iPhone app is on the way. Plus, they pay $1,000 per accepted submission. That’s new media that can actually pay its contributors. Progress! Washington Post is on board. Another story series in Brooklyn? By Impose? Called Friends With Benefits? With Jeffrey Lewis, Dave Hill, Chris Leo, Pepi Ginsberg, and Alica Jo Rabins? Wait […]

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