Mr. Mcginnis and I took a nice stroll through the New York Art Book Fair on Saturday. So much to see! So many books! So many tote bags! Two floors of the Dia:Chelsea building full of tables staffed by cute, well dressed nerds. The first floor was mostly larger companies, like D.A.P., and rare art book sellers, like Glenn Horowitz Booksellers. I went to an opening at Glenn Horowitz's once and they have so many things I want... for so much $$$. Then up to the second floor where the cool kids had their booths. The first stop on the way in was the ANP Quarterly booth. Their new issue is awesome but more on that later. Also upstairs was an exhibit called Friendly Fire, a curated selection of independent publishing by artists. For me discovering little small books and art items at the artists' tables is the reason to go to the fair. Edie Fake was cutting and folding a new lil magazine next to the Islands Fold table of really cool looking comics and across the way from my old friend Darin Klein who was selling a selection of his old zines, a box he made, and art by friends. Over the next week or so, Mr. Mcginnis and I will be reviewing the stuff we bought and talking more about what we saw and who we met at the fair. But for now.... some pictures!

People browsing.

One Star Press' really cool shelf.

The fair made me feel incredibly poor... especially the snarky OneStar Press French dude who showed me a $10,000.00 book by Austrian artist Heino Zobernig. Doesn't that miss the point of the accessibility of books? Just saying. He wouldn't let us photograph it either! Fortunately, right next to him was a free copy of ANP. Maybe I could have gotten more free junk if I'd bothered to have Print Fetish cards made up... but I keep forgetting. As luck would have it, our famous asses were given some pretty books by Brian Kennon from 2nd Cannons and Nick Neubeck of Seems Books. I have no problem paying, but by the time I got to their tables, I had already spent too much. This is an expensive "hobby," let me tell you.

DWR is having it's semi-annual sale, so design is slightly more in reach. Slightly. So as a result, I'm finally featuring a DWR product, Fabio Lombardo's Print Magazine Rack which has a slick 70's sci-fi bachelor pad vibe. Made out of a single piece of plastic, it kind of looks like a butt. I can totally see the white version next to a white sofa and a glass/chrome coffee table on a white shag rug. OR in a large, tiled to the ceiling bathroom. For those who are feeling sexy and Italian, not for the shaved of chest.

Available at DWR for $180.00

UNISEX
Erotics, Esoterics
Edie Fake
4.25" x 5.5"
28 pages, B/W photocopy, w/ color copy fold outs
$6

Depending on who I ask, Edie Fake is from Chicago, New York, Los Angeles or possibly has just moved to San Francisco to apprentice at Black and Blue Tattoo. We appear to have a bunch of friends in common but I just met him the other day at the Art Book Fair. Met, actually, might be a strong word. I said hello, bought a comic, and as I was walking away mumbled something about sending him a lil photo-book when he asked if I too made things. It was early in the day and I hadn't yet hit my social stride.

Back to the zine at hand... I have Mr. Fake's awesome Gaylord Phoenix comic series about a mystical part robot creature of same name. The last issue was nominated for an Ignatz Award in 2006. This time, I picked up something new: UNISEX: Erotics and Esoterics, by Edie Fake. This little comic doesn't have a clear story to it. Some pages are overflowing with animals, magical symbols, handkerchief patterns, and plants. Others have single figures: from a fierce, sexy lady to a half/man half woman viking with some strategically placed hair. Fake also offers some exciting new hanky code options. As a sorcerer who fucks inanimate objects, I'll be adding a blood soaked sky blue hanky to my left pocket.

I'm not sure where you can buy this particular zine, as I can't find it on any site that sells Mr. Fake's other work. Perhaps you can email him directly through his website, or keep your eyes out while shopping at your local zine emporium.

ANP has no cover type at all, often sitting in a nice, neat stack awaiting discerning readers who aren't afraid to grab it without asking how much it costs. It's free, and the stack is sitting for less and less time as more people discover it. ANP treads into the art world, yet is still playful. It's perhaps Index's most likely successor. The new issue features interviews with our lesbro Sophie Morner (editor of Capricious), Make-Up freakazoid Ian Svenonius and artists Chris Burden and Rita Ackermann. I especially love the profile and cover images of the early 80's LA punk 'zine, NO Mag.

Arthur, the free and fiercely independent music and arts magazine out of Los Angeles, disappeared earlier this year due to an editor/publisher power play–but fear not, the rag with the nerdy/hippie/anarchist bent is back! Yes, it came out mid-September, but it's still out there and waiting for you to grab. Issue 26 features Thurston Moore and Byron Coley interviewing Yoko Ono, Douglas Rushkoff's take on 9/11 conspiracy theorists and profiles of Becky Stark and the Sun City Girls. The re-launch issue has more color and a fashion spread (they need to work on this if serious, sorry guys). OH, and it's also available FREE as a PDF download.

Fantastic Man has gold foil on it's cover this month, perhaps balancing on the precipice of looking like a high school yearbook–yet it succeeds beautifully. This is why I love Jop and Gert, everything they do is so well considered and refined, all else seems coarse and crass by comparison. Of note is the first woman on the cover, although she is hidden behind her partner. Fascinating. I had an art directed evening the other night: red wine on the sofa under the yellow glow of a paper lantern, leaning against an oversized goose down pillow listening to Jimmy Scott. I perused Issue No. 6 of Fantastic Man, the perfect weight and texture. I read interviews with Rem Koolhaas, one of my high school crushes Peter Murphy, the Brilliant artist Steve McQueen and cover man Vinoodh Matadin. I finished the evening with a viewing of Wong Kar Wai's As Tears Go By, and for awhile at least, was consumed by the possibility of beauty.

Flickr Finds: Black History Through Vintage Magazines.

I've been enjoying Errol Morris' NYT blog. The post that sucked me in was back in July and asked the questions: Does a photo by itself without any words mean anything? Does it need context? Can different captions and positions alter its meaning? Up there right now is a post about altering photographs, specifically war photographs, specifically Roger Fenton's "The Valley of the Shadow of Death." He talks about the Susan Sontag essay where she says there are two versions of the photograph, one with added cannonballs and one without. He also interviews Ulrich Keller who Sontag named as her source for that information. THEN Morris actually goes to the site where the photo was taken. Good stuff.

Sex Advice from Booksellers. (via BookSlut)

My new pal Julia Wertz has co-curated a comics exhibit at Secret Project Robot in Brooklyn! Art by Sarah Glidden, Julia Wertz, Ron Davis Brandt, Brandon Zamora, Allison Cole, Chris Uphues,Tom Hart,Gerard Smith, Tim Cryder, Esy Casey, Eamon Espey, Edwin Vasquez, Thomas Ptilli,James Keegan, David Wein, Kelie Bowman, Erika Anderson,Jason Estrin, Alec Longstreth and Fly. Opening reception is tomorrow night!

BoxSocial @ Secret Project Robot
210 Kent Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11211
OPENING RECEPTION OCTOBER 6th 7 to 10 pm
through November 8th

USELESS
Tabloid-sized
B/W, newsprint
$8

New York and London-based art mag Useless has the old school enthusiasm of ye olden music fanzines like Search and Destroy or MRR. Maybe it's the newsprint or that interviews, profiles, reviews, events and ideas are really packed in here—sometimes there'll be up to four different things on one spread. I love that. I got issues 5 and 6 at the Art Book Fair and still haven't come close to reading every word in them. I've opened up each issue on several occasions and flipped around, reading a bit of this and a bit of that. The issues have themes and, according to their site, the format of the magazine can/will change based on that. Issue 5's theme is "newer than ever" and my most favorite thing in here is a story called Legends of New York where Useless asks four fantastic old school New Yorkers to talk about NYC then, now, and 100 years into the future. Issue 6 is called "there you are" and has a Donald Urquhart drawing on one cover and Todd Haynes on the other. This issue has many highlights, including Joan Jonas, Ann Magnuson, Todd Haynes, Molly Shannon, Dirty Martini, our friends' band Golden Triangle, a random picture of another friend of ours kissing someone, etc etc. I was lying on the floor reading these issues with a friend the other night and we were talking about hype and pr and how underground mags are really no different than the big glossies. Big magazines mostly write about the same people at the same time because they have a movie out or a record or something like that. Cool small magazines do it too but just on a more indie scale. It's tiring. Useless has a little of that, I think, but not too much. I feel like they cover so much and such a wide array—from major names who've been around for years, to people you hear about these days, to people you've never or barely heard from. Well played, dudes.

Check out the funky and colorful Buk magazine rack designed by Rodolfo Bonetto, which kind of looks like a giant letter "U" refrigerator magnet. Two of these on the floor would work marvelously as book-ends for a long row of magazines-or books I suppose (if you're into keeping those sort of things). You could also use them as bookends on a shelf, but I like the architectural look of magazines lined up against a wall. Online it looks like plastic, but it's actually made of super-durable Rotomoulded polyethylene, a material used in boat and airplane construction.

Available for $149 at Generate

Ok, this is totally weird. Fecal Face's John Trippe judges the Cut and Paste Digital Design Tournament at Yerba Buena in SF.

Bookslut's blog has a weekly interview series. This week they interview Jonathan Messinger from Featherproof Books.

Minimalist Desk How-to. A reader on Instructables shows how to make your own desk with a simple trip to the hardware store and the curb on big trash night. Mr. Mcginnis and I have made our own versions of this desk on multiple occasions and love it.

I love reading i-D. I learn something new every time. My favorite thing to do is lounge on my couch with a big cold lemon-lime seltzer and the new i-D and read that thing cover to cover. Their enthusiasm is contagious. I'm in school right now and have just come from taking a test so my mind is totally in note-taking mode. Here is a list of things I have learned from the World Wide Web issue of i-D: John Waters describes his style as "disaster at the dry cleaners," Designer Siv Støldal's raincoats can be turned into tents—the more coats you have, the bigger your tent, Naomi Campbell is... whoa, Sonia Rykel is rad, the 60th anniversary of Dior at Versailles looks like it was insane in its fabulosity, I could go on... Also in there is Pharrell Williams, new fashion from Antwerp, London, and the ITS competition in Trieste, shoots inspired by www stuff like facebook, google, modems, computers crashing, downloads, etc.

On a more sober note, I also just bought the new Adbusters. It begins with an excerpt about our disturbing fascination with the cult of celebrity from Al Gore's book The Assault on Reason. There are a couple articles about America's financial disasters: one on the national debt and the other on the cultural and environmental costs of constantly living and shopping above our means. More on rethinking our alliance with Israel, marketing guru Bob Garfield, and thoughts on Maxim's Sexy Israeli Soldiers story.

Doingbird issue #12 is finally out. Yay! Model Natasha Poly is on the cover, shot by Alasdair McLellan. Inside are contributions from some PF favorites: Ann Demeulemeester, Collier Schorr, Helmut Lang, Kim Jones, Taryn Simon, and Vashti Bunyan. Find this beautiful Australian magazine online here or at your cooler newsstands.

I know it's early in the day for me to be telling you where to go at 6pm, but I trust you will be able to handle this information....

Our friends at Capricious magazine are launching their 7th issue at 147 West 29th street 5th floor between 6th and 7th aves from 6-9. Drop in, let them know how rad they are and grab an issue! Flyer below:

NowNow, a favorite blog of ours, interviews Malcolm Watt, co-editor of Doingbird, one of our favorite fashion magazines.

Flickr Finds: Vintage Italian Adult Photo Comics

Alphabet: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography is showing at the Cooper Union, check out some examples on their site. On view October 11 - 27, 2007.

This lovely magazine table is hand-made in India out of sheesham wood. It's a solid, more classic play on the Offi magazine table theme. You can flip it around for the magazine rack on either side, use it as a bench or coffee table, or flip it on its side as an end table or computer stand. You could totally work this into a slick modern look, a funky ethnic look, or EVEN a more standard contemporary decor.

Available in the UK for £189.00 at FurnitureToday

Please Let Me Help
By Zack Sternwalker
Microcosm Publishing
8.5 x 5.5"
B/W, perfect bound
69 pages
$2

Ha! This book is hilarious. I just got off a red eye flight from San Francisco and was keeping my super cool looking seat neighbor awake with my giggling as I read it. Please Let Me Help is a collection of letters from our hero Zack Sternwalker, a recently unemployed and divorced fellow who's gained a bit of weight and had to move back in with his mother. He spends his now ample free time drinking lemonade, shooting sparrows at the bird feeder, practicing the oboe, and writing screenplays. Please Let Me Help is a collection of his letters suggesting various inventions, screenplay ideas and employment opportunities to all manner of people and corporations including Tom Cruise, Harley Davidson, Irish Spring soap, and Canada. One of my favorites is an impassioned plea to the port-a-potty company to let him put a vase of fresh flowers in every portable restroom. He also includes with each letter, as a sign of his good faith, a drawing of a vampire. Seriously, this will crack you up. I bought my copy at the wonderful Needles & Pens. Also look on the Microcosm site.

I am totally addicted to Instructables, a seemingly endless and always updated site of user-uploaded documentation for how to make just about anything imaginable (and then some!). For us print fetishists, there's plenty of entries for making books or using books to make other stuff. I just found one that shows how to make this cool little origami mini book. User ericsnapple's instructions yield a 12-page book without using any cuts or tape or staples. I bet you could vary the size with some fooling around. A lot of work for a large print run but I'd be into making a wee edition of something out of this.

Everyday I scream, "DESIGN OBSERVER IS BORING!" Do we designers hope that something will rub off on us if we keep reading these lackluster established designers? Do we believe that their list of credentials and validation by (boring) publications and (boring) big-time clients somehow imbues them with talent? Why do we doubt our own taste, only in the presence of these professional mundanities?

Dream Whip #14
Bill Brown
Microcosm Publishing
1/4 Size, B/W, paperback, perfect bound
344 pages
$10 in stores/$8 from Microcosm

Driving and sleeping. Sleeping and driving. When you've been on the road for a while, you can't really tell the difference between them. Even when you're not moving, your body is buzzing. Bill Brown talks about this and other traveling truths—like how the epic lateness of Amtrak trains alters your perception of time—in his new mega-issue of Dream Whip. Brown has been publishing accounts of his travel adventures in this zine since 1992 and I've been reading it since somewhere not too long after. He, like other favorites Aaron Cometbus and Al Burian, has a traveler's spirit. A kind of endless patience for anything that may or may not happen (including waiting 12 hours for a train in the middle of nowhere) coupled with a joy for life's simple pleasures (like staring out train windows, late night truck stop coffee and pie, riding around on bikes and buses, etc). Brown is funny, insightful, and romantic. At the beginning of a freighter trip across the Atlantic, he describes the first night in his room: "My cabin has a bed and a couch and a coffee table that's bolted to the floor. Those bolts worry me. They mean there are days on this ship when the furniture needs bolting down. I slept on the couch last night. Maybe that's out of habit. Maybe because I'm more comfortable on couches...I consider sleeping on the couch every night, like I'm couch surfing across the Atlantic Ocean. That's a couch surfer's dream, after all, catching a ride on some couch that'll take you around the world, like some slacker Magellan, mooching a circumnavigation." So good!

Where to buy: Needles & Pens, Microcosm, St. Marks Books.

Alexander “Fish” Bohn talks about the fantastic new site ffffound

Flickr Finds: A lovely collection of miscellaneous paper ephemera

Print Shall Not Die [via magCulture]

Mini-comics are BIGGER than ever, so check out Shawn's mini-comics blog, Size Matters.

Tuesday October 23rd: Ed Hamilton, writer and Chelsea Hotel blogger, is reading from his new book Legends of the Chelsea Hotel at the 6th Ave Barnes and Noble. 675 Sixth Ave @ 22nd St. 7pm. Free.

Also tonight at 7pm, you can truck up to the Guggenheim for a panel discussion entitled The Worst of Warhol. I'd like to go to this. From the email about it: "Focusing on Warhol as publisher, collector, chronicler, publicist, and progenitor of a larger-than-life public persona, discussants entertain the provocation: Is the worst of Warhol really the best of Warhol?" Panelists include Richard Prince and Robert Nickas. Guggenheim Museum. 1071 5th Avenue @ 89th St. 7pm. $10.

Wednesday October 24th: Luc Sante and Tim McLoughlin are reading from New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg at Spoonbill and Sugartown in Williamsburg. New York Calling was put together by blogger/New York historian Brian Berger of Who Walk in Brooklyn. Berger will also be at the reading to talk about stuff, things, and his book. 218 Bedford Avenue. 7pm. Free.

Saturday October 27: The School of Visual Arts is having an open house for its new MFA program in design criticism. The program's Chair, Alice Twemlow, will be presenting an overview of the curriculum, while faculty members Philip Nobel, Alexandra Lange, Emily Gordon and Steven Heller (also the program's co-founder) will be there to answer questions. 133 West 21st street, 1st floor. 2-4pm. Free. (via Core 77)

Through Sunday October 28th: This week is your last chance to see Mike Nelson's mind-blowing installation, "A Psychic Vacuum," at the old Essex Market building on Delancey and Essex. Brought to us by Creative Time, this dizzying maze of rooms, items and smells reminds us that great things still happen in New York. Go, get lost, be amazed. 117 Delancey @ Essex. Friday through Sunday. 12-6pm. Free.

Photo from A Psychic Vacuum by f. trainer.

Machina
Photographs by Mårten Lange
Published by Farewell Books
6" X 8.75"
38 pages, black and white, laser printed and perfect bound
$10

Last May I described Mårten Lange's photos of tree branches as, "...reminiscent of a tangle of amplifier cords–nature transformed into man-made disarray... " when I reviewed his first book, Woodland. Now comes Lange's second book, Machina, which has the exact opposite effect: cords, knobs, and pressure gauges transformed into wilderness. The high contrast black and white photography comes in close and abstracts the machines which are as entangled and chaotic as nature, and like the trees and foliage of Woodland, seem to be consuming their surroundings.

Available at Farewell Books

Ker-bloom! 67 & 68
Karen Switzer/Artnoose
5.5" x 4.25"
8 pages, Letterpress cover and inside, 2 color, stapled
Numbered editions of 483 (67) and 500 (68)
$2

Longtime Bay Area resident and zine-maker Karen Switzer, A.K.A. Artnoose, moved to Pittsburgh. Issues 67 and 68 of her zine Ker-bloom! are titled "Why I Love the Bay Area..." and "...and Why I'm Leaving" respectively. In the first of these lovely little letter-pressed volumes, Switzer tells the story of building a life and a community, her love for the Bay Area and her thoughts on the concept of family. Then she goes on to talk about growing up, and figuring out ways to move forward with her work and her life, and leaving the Bay for Pittsburgh. Every issue of Ker-bloom! is a story about something going on in Switzer's life. They're like the best kind of short, late night conversations. You know, after you've been hanging around the party for ages and you and the person you're chatting with in the corner have finally gotten to the heart of the matter, the good stuff.

I bought these two issues of Ker-bloom! in San Francisco in a moment of Bay Area nostalgia and wistful feelings and am now in bed in my New York apartment reading them. Switzer is not the first person to bring the idea of moving to a cheaper smaller city to my attention, plenty of other pals have thought about it and then done it. Half of me has been like, "sure just go, you wuss" and the other half understands the need for cheaper rent, bigger spaces, etc. I wonder if I could pull it off. I feel so comfortable in New York, I can't imagine leaving but maybe a bigger, cheaper place would allow me to make more stuff. I don't know. The last time I lived outside of a major city, it was a bad scene. But then again, who's junior high school experience wasn't! These things are definitely on my mind lately.

Buy Ker-bloom! at Switzer's Etsy store, Microcosm, or your favorite zine store.

Donovan Beeson posted a very clear and easy tutorial for making a book of envelopes for the Instructables and Etsy Sew Useful contest. Beeson is a maker of books and stationery, lover of vintage papers and admitted postal pervert—he loves everything to do with the mail. While I understand the idea of this, I'm too afraid of the Post Office to properly share his fetish. I do, however, share his appreciation for both the glory of office supplies and those paint chips from hardware stores. The envelope book he makes is beautiful and also a good organizing tool. I may have to make one to keep all my receipts straight. See also Beeson's Etsy store.

Tuesday October 30: Writer, critic, interesting fellow Greil Marcus reads from his new book The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. Go early, cruise the mag racks and then listen to Marcus talk about America, Twin Peaks, political speeches and Philip Roth. Barnes & Noble, 33 E 17th St. 7pm. Free.

Wednesday October 31: Happy Halloween! I always have a hard time deciding what to do on Halloween. Email list Nonsense NYC sums it up, "Halloween can be really shitty....Somehow it's become a major business too, with elaborate store-bought costumes turning everyone into pop culture jokes or slutty parodies: Last year we went out in Manhattan and it was pretty much a Boschian nightmare of naughty nurses, sexy cops, and drunk asshole vampires." So what do you do? If you've never been to the Halloween Parade, you should probably go check it out. This year's parade has a "Wings of Desire" theme. Let's see, you could go as an angel, a German, Peter Falk, a piece of the Berlin Wall? The parade starts at Spring St. and goes up 6th Ave. 7pm. Free. If you're not in the mood for that, I say make yourself a costume and go walk around looking for a party to crash. If you're in SF, I guess just stay home. What a drag.

OR Night of the Living Dead is playing at MOMA. 11 W. 53rd St., nr. Fifth Ave. 6pm and 8pm. $10.

Thursday November 1-Sunday November 4: Editions/Art Books Fair 2007. This year the E|AB celebrates their 10th anniversary by moving into The Tunnel in Chelsea. That space is huge. I can't wait to go look at all the books and items. Here is a full list of the many participants. The gala is on Thursday night, costs $50, and benefits P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. The rest of the weekend the fair is open to the public for free. The Tunnel, New York, 261 11th Ave.

The Best of LCD - The Art and Writing of WFMU-FM
Edited by Dave the Spazz
Princeton Architectural Press
7.6 x 10 inches, Paperback, 256 pages
150 color illustrations; 300 b/w illustrations
$29.95

I don't listen to the radio unless I'm in the car. But then when I am driving, it almost seems like cheating to bring CDs or tapes along. I leave the car radio on WFMU and am excited to hear whatever strange or awesome or horrible thing they might be playing when the car lurches to life. Then I drive around and listen for a bit. Well, actually, I sit and listen while double parked with coffee and a bagel waiting for street cleaning to finish so I can move the car back. It's a good station. I take notes for future record buying sometimes. I didn't know until today that from 1986 to 1998, WFMU published their program guide as a print magazine called LCD (lowest common denominator). The Best of LCD - The Art and Writing of WFMU-FM is a wonderful collection of comics, covers, articles, and stories from these program guides by the likes of Luc Sante, Nick Tosches, Daniel Clowes, Daniel Johnston, Harvey Pekar, Gary Panter, and a bunch of others. I love that this is packed with so many great comics. Other favorite things include the bios of forgotten radio personalities, crackpots and visionaries trading cards, an article titled The Devout Fornication Agenda of Wayne Newton, record buying tips and tips on remaining unemployed.

This book comes out tomorrow, November 1. Buy it directly from Princeton Architectural Press or at a cool bookstore near you. You can also see some LCD back issue content on the WFMU site.