CARTMay Day Memory Lane
May 2008
Dear Readers,
Happy May Day! Radical historic significance aside, May Day is one of my favorite lesser-recognized holidays. When I was a wee lass we would weave paper ribbons through plastic strawberry baskets, fill them with flowers, leave them on neighbors' doorsteps, knock and run. Did you know you're supposed to get a kiss if you're caught? Pick your neighbors carefully, I guess! In later years this was the day that I moved my bedroom to a roomy second floor balcony and slept al fresco through the end of September. Although the official first day of spring has come and gone, it doesn't really get started for me until the 1st of May.
Two years ago today, I was traipsing around Rochester in Kent, England with dear friends, taking in my first castle, trying not to tread on ancient graves, and enjoying the annual Sweeps Festival. This was my most touristy request - attending a traditional May Day celebration. The rest of the trip was spent exploring relatively obscure roadside attractions, dusty bookshops, fancy chocolatiers, outdoor markets, and oddball museums.
This year, May Day happens to fall on the 1st Thursday of the month, so we have even more to celebrate than usual! We're proud to present an exhibit of recent work by Portland denizen and international animal hero, Nicole J. Georges, entitled I Like To Be Alive. In addition to the art show, we are also celebrating the recent release of the second collected volume of her enchanting and beloved zine, Invincible Summer (Microcosm, 2008). We've been showing Nicole's work for years and it's been a pleasure to watch her evolve as an artist. Even in the early days, she demonstrated a remarkable knack for capturing expression and spirit in her animal portraits, but this show, and in particular the wolves and rabbit pieces, reveal quite a leap in technique. It's going to be hard for me to restrain myself from snapping them up, so you'd better come quick!
So, after all this reminiscing, how about we start a new May Day tradition? Let's all do something fancy for someone else's benefit, for no other purpose than to brighten their day. You could have one intended recipient or perform an act of public fabotage* to benefit any random passersby. Send in your reports to for a future update. Bonus points for photos and anonymity in your fancy attack!
Your Faithful Proprietress,
Chloe
*Fabotage is a word that I coined last year to describe a deliberate action aimed at changing something for the better through various methods of improvement and embellishment. While a subversive and possibly illegal act, it should not obstruct, disrupt or destroy its target.
Shoppe
More Recent Additions:
- The East Village Inky #37
- The Duplex Planet #181
- Steampunk Magazine #4
- Somnambulist #10: The Portland Issue
- Parallel Strokes
- Paping: The Teachers Edition
- Glossolalia #10: Juvenile Justice
- Glossolalia #9
- Glossolalia #7
- Girls Like Us #6
The Ledger
New & Notable at Reading Frenzy this Week
Part Time Position Available at Reading Frenzy!
As If You Needed Any More Reasons to Come See Him...
Stolen from Reading Frenzy!
Zine Frenzy at Central Library This Month!
About
The Ledger is the Reading Frenzy blog written by Chloe Eudaly and celebrity guests!
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Currently Showing
THURSDAY, MAY 1st
- SUNDAY, JUNE 1st
I Like to Be Alive
Exhibit and Book Release Party for Nicole Georges
We're pleased to welcome local zinester, illustrator and pet portraitist extraordinaire, Nicole Georges back to Reading Frenzy for another solo show! This exhibit of recent work will feature paintings on wood, pen and ink illustrations, and a menagerie of plush creations.
We will also be celebrating the release of Invincible Summer: An Anthology Vol. 2 with collects issues #9-14 of her comic/zine of the same name.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 14th, 7PM
Jamestown
Reading and Signing with Matthew Sharpe
Join us this evening to welcome author Matthew Sharpe to celebrate the recent paperback release of his novel, Jamestown. The book tells the story of a group of "settlers" (more like survivors) arrive in Virginia from the ravished island of Manhattan, intending to establish an outpost, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. But nothing goes quite as planned (one settler, for instance, keeps losing body parts). At the heart of the story is Pocahontas, who speaks Valley Girl, Ebonics, Old English, and Algonquin -- sometimes all in the same sentence. And she pursues a heated romance with settler Johnny Rolfe via text messaging, instant messaging, and, ultimately, telepathy.
Deadly serious and seriously funny, Matthew Sharpe's fictional retelling of one of America's original myths is a history of violence, a cross-cultural love story, and a tragicomic commentary on America’s past and present.
"Sharpe's wit relies primarily on the juxtaposition of profundity and silliness, tragedy and absurdity, a kind of Catch-22 about the 17th century for the 21st century. Jamestown is packed with marvelous material, moving and funny and deeply provocative."
--The Washington Post Book World
"[A] cacophonous Sound and the Fury-style book for the wired generation, featuring all your favorite Jamestown characters tossed into a postapocalyptic salad."
--Entertainment Weekly (A-)
"A work of hectic brilliance and immense sadness."
--Laura Miller, Salon
"It's said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce; Jamestown manages to do both at once. Hilarious and horrifying, the novel is sure to place Sharpe foremost among contemporary literature's vanguard."
--Daily Candy
Matthew Sharpe is the author of the novels The Sleeping Father and Nothing Is Terrible, as well as the short-story collection Stories from the Tube. He teaches creative writing at Wesleyan University. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, Zoetrope, BOMB, and McSweeney's, among others. He lives in New York City.
Upcoming Events
THURSDAY, MAY 29th
Grand Floral Parade & Portland Rose Festival
Keeping our customers at bay since 1996!
Every year I think about launching a lawn chair and blanket drive so that homeless people can sleep on the sidewalks unmolested along with everyone else the night before the Rose Festival Parade. I'm afraid I've never gotten up the gumption, but I'm throwing the idea out there for anyone else who might be inspired!
I also annually consider closing the shop for the week, as most of our customers are avoiding downtown like the plague, and we're inundated with looky-loos and folks who desperately need a public restroom due to overimbibing at the beer garden. Note: We do not have a public restroom! Alas, I can't quite bring myself to forgo the pittance we still manage to take in, so we will be open for business, but we will be opening at noon on Saturday, June 7th in order to avoid the parade madness.
THURSDAY, JUNE 5th, 6PM
Horses, Dolls and Other Junk
Photos by Geoffrey Ellis
After years of admiring the work in Geoffrey Ellis's photo-zine Sadkids, I'm pleased to announce that we will be hosting an exhibit and zine release party for him this June!
Horses, Dolls and Other Junk is not so much a detour from Geoffrey's usual grander themes of derelict buildings and decaying signs, as much as it is a closer look at the detritus that one might find collected within such roadside attractions, which he has faithfully paid homage to across the US, but especially in small towns scattered throughout the South and Southwest. Across seemingly disjointed pictures of old toys, decaying photographs, and porn that was once hot, a greater picture of unpolished America emerges.
Sadkids Number 5: The GonerFest Edition documents bands and fans who participated in this annual garage rock festival in Memphis last September. Including Quintron, Hank IV, Donnie Denim and Jay Reatard (to name a few).
Geoffrey Ellis went to school to be a graphic designer, publishes a photo-zine called Sadkids, loves to collect stuff and loves taking pictures. He won the 2007 Phelan Award in photography. He has lived in southern California, Florida, and Memphis and currently resides in San Francisco with his beautiful wife and a bunch of cats.
THURSDAY, JUNE 26th, 7PM
Iggy Scam's Secret History of Cities
Reading and signing with Iggy Scam and special guest(s)!
Scam, an icon of the samizdat zine scene of the 1990's, is equally at home on mainstream radio, where he has done several commentaries for This American Life. His "Secret History" traces the evolution of cities, for sure, and of neighborhoods, and of dissent, but also of his own thinking under the pressure of experience, from his early focus on the more outre forms of resistance, through more contemplative times as he becomes preoccupied with the passage of time and starts to articulate an affirmative vision of the type of society he'd like to live in and fight for. In writing, for example, on Reagan's death he feels relief that came from realizing that by the time Reagan had actually died, his teenage rage had ceased being the motivating factor in his life, that what keeps him going is the sense of what he wishes the world actually looked like, inter alia, public art, squats, free breakfast programs, illegal peace demos in San Francisco, punk holidays (Joey Ramone day, in which people gather and do a secret santa exchange of mixtapes), even a booklist.
But he never seeks refuges in the abstract—in one of the book's key set pieces, "The Epicenter of Crime: The Hunt's Donuts Story," Scam celebrates the history and passing of a donut shop that was once a nerve center in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood. On one level, it's an epitaph for a beloved hangout. On another, it's a metaphor for the racial and economic tensions that can accompany gentrification. And on yet another, it's an untold history of an entire neighborhood via a single retail establishment.
Scam gives the reader inspiration for living defiantly in these times.
About the author: Erick Lyle (Iggy Scam) is a writer, musician, actor and zinester. Born in Miami FL, he's lived all over the United States, and resides mostly in SSan Francisco CA.
Throughout the 1990's, Iggy edited Scam, an influential zine that featured personal writing, politics, reports on protest events and interviews with activists and punk bands. He has been a frequent contributor to Maximum Rock N Roll; Error, edited by Sam McPheeters; the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the audio zine Long Ago and Right Now. He contributed an essay to the City Lights anthology San Francisco: The Political Edge and the AK Press anthology Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority. He has also performed several commentaries on NPR's This American Life.
Iggy Scam is also a drummer. In the 1990's he played with the band The Hidden Resentment. In the 2000's he began playing with Onion Flavored Rings, who released the CD Two Minutes Enlightenment in 2005.
As an actor, he appears in Greta Snider's celebrated film Portland, a tale of three zinesters travelling from San Francisco to Portland who encounter all kinds of unexpected adventures.
THURSDAY, JULY 3rd, 6PM
1st Thursday Artist Reception
Recent Work by Ryan Berkeley
More info coming soon...
