Shiv/Shill/Shine

Oh, hi there. Shilv.org’s managing editor started a personal blog o’ recession-repression. Feel free to check it out, or offer him a stable job.

Zach Galifianakis interviews the guy who stole our best band idea.

SO YOU WANT TO HAVE AN EVENT AT QUIMBY’S

Events at Quimby’s Bookstore are not limited to signings, readings, and release events. That being said, if you’re inquiring about having an open-mic poetry night, I’ll save you a lot of time: the answer is no.

This week @ shilv.org: blazing Chicagoland non sequiturs until someone interrupts. ^{[fast rap via Gapers Block]}

We’re generally inclined to avoid imposing dubious feminist narratives on protracted public meltdowns, but encountered a copy of Blood and Guts in High School while snooping around the house in which just we cat-sat, and now hope for a big reveal in which we learn that Britney’s choices are informed more by Kathy Acker fandom than the “mentorship” of Madonna/Mel Gibson–and have been in the service of a forthcoming non-linear memoir, replete with self-portraits chalked in cheeto dust.

I did less drinking than observing of drunks in high school. So I don’t think I ever went to Chicago’s Wiener Circle, a Lakeview hot dog stand, to preempt a hangover. The few times I was there late at night, I silently saluted the employees who gruffly dismissed drunks who couldn’t quickly stammer out their orders. Never mind that I’d taken the same abuse sober.

For “The grease and the grouse,” the Onion A.V. Club consulted a cultural anthropology grad student to explain why diners thrill to rude service in contexts other than dungeons. The piece also indicated the full name is “The Wiener’s Circle”. Though I’ve never heard that possessive pronounced, I suppose it more clearly evokes the taste of victory and encased meats. Below, learn how verbal battery’s the best condiment for people with nothing else to talk about.–Hastings [Read more →]

We’re under the impression that most of our contributors are lapsed Catholics, with the lone exception belonging to a Protestant denomination that had some sort of “confirmation” ritual, so basically, same thing. Anyway, apparently the collection plate rituals of the still-faithful keep the church’s debt prime and securitizable.

“We’re not trying to turn the bishop into a CEO,” he says. “We tell them how to make the most of their temporal resources so they can go out and save more souls.”

[WSJ]

Pic jacked from Chip Kidd, who puts the tricky dick in perspective ^{[prelude to an actual post]}

In the past few weeks, I’ve informally applied for a few freelance proofreading and light copy-editing gigs. I generally downplay my lack of 9-5 experience in formal publishing environments, avoid mentioning the careless vetting of Gay-Fed’s posts–and instead invoke old projects that hewed to some variation on AP or Chicago Style. The approach feels boring, but professionally relevant: I’m not sitting on the editorial board of the nation’s 5th largest newspaper, trying to meet cute with the internets before a mad real estate magnate with an informal correspondence style finds my job redundant as, say, a copy editor’s.–Hastings