Aw man. After 13 years and 80 issues, Chicago-based fanzine turned magazine Punk Planet is folding. Their distribution house went bankrupt last year and they took a big hit. Sound familiar? Punk Planet's first issue came out while I was working in a record/zine shop. I've been reading it on and off since and am sad to see it go. If you're unfamiliar with the mag, I'd suggest buying their collected interviews book. Here are some other responses: Chicago Tribune, The Portland Mercury, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

ANP Quarterly's new issue has Phyllis Diller on the cover! Photographer Lisa Eisner shot Ms. Diller and her paintings. I imagine that's all I really need to say to get you to run out and find it. Just in case it's not... Also in the issue is pictures by amazing Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, with interview by Ed Templeton, nice big pictures of the choppy, weird work of Swedish artist Jockum Nordström, and cool math-y genius/artist Xylor Jane.

Me Magazine is always going around changing their whole design, even logo, based on the subject/guest editor of each issue. While I j'adore that about them, my personal tastes go for certain issues over others. This new brightly colored jam featuring rapper, performance artist, general hot freak extraordinaire Tara De Long is particularly pleasing to me. Jack Pierson took the photos featuring Tara and her team of geniuses, back-up dancers, pr sluts, and fashion collaborators and it looks like the shoot was fun. The party was also fun though I wish I'd gotten there in time for the whole show...

The Summer 2007 issue of Hamburger Eyes is a special music issue. I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for music photography though I'm not really sure why because most of it is a serious bore. In usual Hamburgular fashion, this issue is far from boring. It's packed with fabulous images from new names as well as the names you'd expect to see: Boogie, Ricky Powell, Alissa Anderson, Jim Jocoy, Ed Templeton, and many others.

OK... here is yet another psychotically expensive magazine rack solution - BCXSY's See-Saw Bookshelf. Yes, a bookshelf - but as the product-shot illustrates with copies of National Geographic - it works quite well for magazines. It's made with walnut wood and powder coated steel parts. I absolutely adore this kind of playfulness in design - I just wish it didn't cost so much! However, I do think that this is an easily replicated design with a bit of carpentry and some sturdy croquet hoops.

Available at Generate for $1,899.00

All is quiet... it's gray out and the 4th of July. Where are all the raucous BBQers in my hood? I think the fact that it is our nations birthday is a good time to see if there is anyone out there in another country who would like to contribute to Print Fetish. Please, insert your big lady liberty on our shores!

What we are looking for isn't going to be easy - we want someone, somewhere in Europe who can write about non-English magazines. Therefore, they will probably need to speak multiple languages AND be able to write well in English. It goes without saying that whoever it is must have good taste and read more than just commercial magazines. If you are interested please send us some writing samples and a short but sweet bio.

I don't know about you but I'm a little sleepy after so much 4th of July running around. We laughed, we cried, we bbqed, we saw bands play, we snuck onto rooftops, we set off bottle rockets, etc. In the spirit of a slow post-holiday workday, here are some links to look at/read/waste time with:

Sarah Ball, taker of the above photograph, has some new work up on her site. It's lovely and shot with a large format view camera in her hometown of Natchez, Mississippi.

Bernd Becher, 75, Photographer of German Industrial Landscape, Dies. (via avisualsociety, and nyt)

While we're on the subject of photography, I've been looking at/reading the Magnum Agency blog all morning.

Arthur Magazine is a free bimonthly news/music/culture magazine that shows up all over the country in record shops, cool bookstores and coffeehouses. Unapologetically anti-war, nerdy and a bit hippy—Arthur eschews the irritating faux-irony and snarkiness of most American lifestyle/culture magazines. We got all frightened because Arthur looked DOOMED—but this summer it is back!

How did you come up with the name Arthur?

Around the time that the project needed a name, sometime in 2002, I was baking bread and the flour I was using was King Arthur.

What is Arthur's editorial mission? What made you put in so much effort to produce an independent national magazine?

Arthur's editorial mission, at least at its inception, was to give writers the freedom to write about what they wanted, in the way that they wanted to, at the time that they wanted, and at the length they wanted, in a magazine that would reach an audience they wanted to reach. Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that. We don't accept the work of just any writers, and we have to balance subject matter in each issue so that the magazine will offer a compelling mix. In practice that means articles sometimes get commissioned and then held for publication. In some cases, writers have waited for up to a year to see their piece in print. Our guiding principle has been 'writer knows best.' When writers ask me for advice on how to approach a piece that they are working on for Arthur, I often tell them to do what the piece requires. Serve the piece. Serve the audience. If it demands 12,000 words, with first-person narration, so be it. So, the writer, now freed, shoulders a responsibility that's been usurped by house editors in American publishing in the last 30 years. The result, hopefully, is more engaged writing that cuts closer. Remove the rules; ratchet up the responsibility; see what happens. Same goes for photo essayists, cartoonists and columnists: they all, pretty much, have carte blanche. And they deserve it. These people are very, very smart. The readers deserve it, too, of course. What we're going for is highest common denominator; nothing gets dumbed down at Arthur, but at the same time, everyone is aware of their responsibility to communicate, not simply self-express.

The Kin Series
Published by These Birds Walk Press
4 books, editions of 300
5" x 7", full color, 40 pages, perfect bound
$75.00 for unsigned subscription
$150.00 for signed subscription

The Kin Subscription Series is the fourth effort from These Birds Walk, a small press started by photographer Paul Schiek out of Oakland, California. The Kin Series is a set of four books released quarterly throughout the year. You can buy them signed or unsigned. Each book is the work of a single artist exploring Schiek's idea that "all lessons of photography are handed down through the
generations, inter-linking all photographers knowingly and unknowingly." Looking at the books all together, I can see what he means. It's obvious--conscious or not--that Mike Brodie's polaroids of train-hoppers have learned something from Magnum photographer Jim Goldberg's amazing Raised By Wolves series from the '80s. I first saw Brodie's photographs while working at Nerve. They were putting together a gallery of his work and it was love at first site. I'm so happy to see his work again in book form. In some way, all the photographers are also looking at notions of family, biological or contructed. I love Ari Marcopoulos' kids. They are such scrappy little dudes--always bruised and cut up, running around, making forts, etc. The first two images in his book--a wall with pin-ups of sexy ladies and the wreckage of a plane crash--make me think of how fleeting boyhood dreaming can be. This is the first time I've seen Paul Schiek's work and I like it. I'd say he seems to like these kind of boring off-moments but because of flash blow-outs or other camera weirdnesses they become almost surreal, definitely pretty, abstract sometimes. Ordinary moments are captured and printed in a way that allows deeper emotions--sadness, aggression, loneliness--to bubble to the surface. You can buy The Kin Series from These Birds Walk's site. The Jim Goldberg book comes out September 8th and we'll keep you posted about the party they're having for it.

I was trolling around the internets just now looking for back issues and scanned spreads of old magazines I once loved... And I ran into the website for the great My Comrade, a sexy rag by drag queens and weird queers, that published regularly from 1987 to 1994. It came back in 2004 and has published two issues since. Their site has a covers gallery, go look at it. And if you can, donate some money to the fabulousness. I need more issues of My Comrade!

Martha Southgate discusses the dearth of black people in the literary world.

Flickr Finds: Vintage Marilyn Monroe/Norma Jeane Baker Magazine Covers

The nerve! Jane Magazine Folds! Jane moved on already anyway.

There Weren't Many Girls Around, So We Dated Ideologies. This Left Us Always on the Brink of War. We Often Discussed That a Likely Result of Battle Would Have Been More Girls to Go Around Amongst the Survivors, but We Quibbled Rather Than Acted, & Slept Alone in Our Cold Beds Dreaming of Glory.
Drawings By Ami Tallman
Published by 2nd Cannons Publications
2007
11.25" x 9", 46 pages
1st printing, edition of 500
$28.00

LA based artist Ami Tallman's new book from 2nd Cannons Publications has an extremely long title, see above. Actually, I'm going to type it out again: There Weren't Many Girls Around, So We Dated Ideologies. This Left Us Always on the Brink of War. We Often Discussed That a Likely Result of Battle Would Have Been More Girls to Go Around Amongst the Survivors, but We Quibbled Rather Than Acted, & Slept Alone in Our Cold Beds Dreaming of Glory. I love a long title. It reminds me of my favorite long titled movie, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies! All that long title loving aside, the drawings in this book are lovely. They are mostly of lush, fancy interiors with occasional interruptions by various armed persons. The book tells the story of an English aristocratic heir who gives up his manor for the affections of a Red Cross member. Trench warfare ensues and our heir reflects on his life from the field. Get the book directly from 2nd Cannons.

Basically I have problems with a lot of things, especially Condy Nasty.... but I do like The New Yorker. I think the supposition that the staff are editorial perfectionists is absurd—I've yelled out loud over the crappy things I've read within it (they are as guilty of fuck me for an article as any NY magazine), but basically I'm a fan. Strangely enough, I have less of a problem with the design of The New Yorker than it's writing. I love that it has illustrations on the cover, is ACTUALLY legible and doesn't bombard me constantly with garish layouts and photography. I find it fascinating that just as serif typography has come back into (pardon me) vogue and McSweeney's has ushered in a sea change of editorial design, KT Meaney argues for a re-design of The New Yorker.

Meaney uses a 1992 cover (pictured above) to illustrate her point—Edward Sorel's illustration of a punk rocker riding around in a horse-drawn carriage. She argues that the text of the magazine is all forward thinking and up-to-date, but displayed in an out of touch, clunky design. Firstly, this women obviously doesn't appreciate this awesomely absurd drawing (which perfectly encapsulates NY in '92), secondly she doesn't appreciate how wonderful it is when funky people take over old-fashioned things. Being up-to-date with an eye for quality should not mean demolishing what came before. The design of The New Yorker is like a fine old building, that is of course impractical for some purposes, but therein lies it's charm. If anything, this kind of charm only emphasizes the quality and urbanity of the writing. Personally, I would rather live in a nice old Victorian house (years ago I squatted in one, mirroring Sorel's cover) than live in one of those new, hideous glass towers sprouting up all over New York. Please, please New Yorker, resist—don't succumb to all demands for change, especially from a designer who is responsible for a magazine design that is 10 years out of date. Better to be 82 years out of date.

Back to something affordable! The Task Wall-Mounted Magazine Rack available at Target (online) is only $35, and available in java or black finish. Its made of MDF rather than wood, which is why it's so cheap. For those of us who buy more than a couple of magazines a month, a few of these racks can be lined up vertically to make a longer rack.

For a step up, you can also find this design made in lovely, eco-friendly kiri wood for $65. This version is actually cheaper, because it comes with more compartments (three of the target version would be $105). It's far more attractive than MDF, with a beautiful finish achieved by burning the wood and waxing the ashes back into it. I'm a fan of beautiful, affordable and eco-responsible. This rack pretty much touches all the bases.

The Task Wall-Mounted Magazine Rack is available at Target for $34.99

The Wall-Mounted Kiri Magazine Rack is available at Koo De Kir for $65

Paper Cuts, the NYT books blog, has a cool slide show of old book ads. Pictured here is Edna O'Brien looking awesome in an ad for her book August is a Wicked Month.

The Freakanomics people muse on what the world would be like without libraries. ack!

From Book Slut: Yet another article on indie publishers money problems but this time with some positive notes.

Not exactly a book event but too good not to mention... go see the hilarious genius that is Dynasty Handbag tonight at the Dixon Place Hot! Festival. They are also screening The Quiet Storm, a short film about Ms. Handbag by Hedia Maron. 258 Bowery. 8pm. $12-15.

Sunday night Jerry Stahl is reading from Love Without, his new book of stories, at the Open City Series at KGB Bar. 85 East 4th @ 2nd Ave. 7pm. Free.

Mr. Mcginnis and I have some poster ideas we've been kicking around for a while. Last week we got some silk screening stuff at a friend's sidewalk sale and took it as a sign that we should get moving on this project. I've been searching around for some helpful how-tos and found these:

This most thorough Silkscreen How-To in all the world from Fecal Face is good for doing multiple colors in the old school way. Lots of clear photos and description.

Craftgrrl's LiveJournal has a good tutorial for some quick and easy 1-color screen printing. This is a great way to get started.

Artist Shannon Gerard (her website is cute!) gives a thorough and amusing tutorial on Jim Munroe's Blog No Media Kings. With the help of the Virgin Mary and Spiderman, she shows us how to screen posters and t-shirts.

Make:Zine's Bre Pettis and etsy.com's screenprinting expert Matt Stinchcomb's How to Screenprint T-shirts Weekend Projects podcast gives some helpful advice as well. And it's nice to be able to see them in action.

Art Metropole is a gallery, archive, and distributor of contemporary art in multiple format: artists books, multiples, video, audio, electronic media, etc. It was founded in Toronto in 1974 by the art group General Idea. Go spend some time looking around their site. They sell anything and everything from a $14,000 Raymond Pettibon zine set (I wonder how much my one Pettibon zine is worth... too bad I'll never sell!) to $2 postcards from gallery shows. Their periodicals section is also wicked impressive and carries issues of General Idea's own magazine FILE from the '70s as well as new issues of mags like Girls Like Us and The Wire.

Aside from selling and archiving stuff, Art Metropole also curates shows and events. Right now they have a print-media project called Advertising By Artists where four artists make advertisements for Art Metropole in five different publications over the course of fifteen months. Cecilia Berkovic, Stephen Ellwood, Nestor Kruger and Yoko Ono are making ads for Border Crossings, Butt, Cabinet, They Shoot Homos Don't They and The Wire. Pictured above is Stephen Ellwood's ad for Butt.

You can search the entire Art Metropole Collection here. And the National Gallery of Canada has a PDF of the history of Art Metropole and its events for download here.

Apparently architects, at one time or another, believed in something. From April 12th through September 9th the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal presents Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 1962-1979. For those of who can't make it, the website features covers and descriptions of these DIY architecture 'zines, self-published by architecture students and school associations.

Flickr Finds: Victorian Ephemera

Joseph Cornell was a print fetishist–one can only imagine the stacks of periodicals, books and picture postcards populating his home and irritating his mother as they fell over and into the hallways. He was probably my favorite artist in high school, and a little trendy in New Orleans I must admit, where countless artists assemble curio cabinets. The entire city in fact might be seen as one of these dream boxes, filled with faded images, wax figures and broken vintage toys. Joseph Cornell is also one of the few major artists of any interest to be seen at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where I spent many free Thursday afternoons wishing I could grab one of his boxes to play with, as it was meant to be. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Massachusetts has put up a lovely flash site exhibit of many of Cornell's boxes and journals. For the first time you can "flip" through pages and see videos of boxes being opened, touched and played with.

Tonight, July 19th at 7PM Dominic Priore signs copies of his new book Riot On The Sunset Srip: Rock'N’Rroll's Last Stand In 60’S Hollywood at Spoonbill & Sugartown on Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn.

The Art of Music
Secret Project Robot
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday July 21, 8-11pm

Tomorrow night Secret Project Robot gallery in Williamsburg is having a show of handmade, original, and limited edition record art by collectors, artists and bands. There will be work by great Providence band Lightning Bolt, spazzy art collective Paper Rad, British post-punk band Scritti Politti, early '80s LA punks 100 Flowers, no wave label guy with awesome name Dan Seltzer/Acute Records, Brooklyn screenprinters Kayrock Screenprinting, record labels Social Registry and Troubleman, East Village gallery Little Cakes, and more. I'm looking forward to this. I love record cover art. I have so many favorites. While looking around for some of my own favorites, I ran across this list of Beck's favorite record covers and this selection of some of the worst record covers known to man--love Heino, glad he made the list!

I just ducked into this coffee shop on the way to the train. I'm running a little late but it's so nice to just sit here and look around. The days of hanging around all day in coffee shops and record stores are long over for me but right now I'm having a moment. It's pouring rain outside, the coffee shop workers are singing along to The Supremes, I'm in the middle of a crossword puzzle, and there are some cute coffee drinkers here today. I have a copy of this adorable zine from years ago called Coffee Shop Crushes where in comic and short story form various artists and zinesters tell their stories of café love. I went looking around and found that Microcosm Publishing rereleased it earlier this year. Submissions include Nicole Georges (Invincible Summer), Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man), Greig (Clutch), Aaron Renier (Spiral Bound), and Brad Adkins (Charm Bracelet). Buy from Microcosm directly and stay dry if you're in New York.

Let's step back and get a l'il more classic this week. I'm a fan of this black magazine table and its scalloped edges and leather piping look. This table would be perfect for displaying my collection of Nest magazines (if I had a larger apartment), or any swanky mag collection that is never intended for the dust heap. If you're going to buy a table this size, with the magazines displayed up off of the ground, upright with spines legible, you obviously want it and the magazines to be seen–so I mostly imagine it placed between two windows (not beside a chair or couch), with a few carefully chosen art books arranged on the lower shelf.

available at amazon.com for $179.99

Jeff Bridges signed on to star as Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter in the film adaptation of Toby Young's How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. (via Bold Type)

Tintin in the Congo has been pulled from the children's section of Border's and re-shelved in adult graphic novels due to complaints about its racist content. (via Bold Type)

Page 23 is a myspace blog that reviews new, mostly indie, fiction and interviews writers. (via Book Slut)

Salon interviews former carpenter turned food magazine editor Ed Behr about his magazine The Art of Eating and its 20th anniversary. I'm obsessed with food writing right now so I'm interested in this. (via Book Slut)

In who cares news, Vibe Vixen ceases publication with the August/September issue.

Along the same lines, according to WWD Jane subscribers will most likely have their subscriptions filled out with issues of Glamour. Ew!

In non-magazine news, tomorrow is my birthday. Woo!