Jeff Mickey has finally created a portfolio website here. Dig the groovy pinhole photos, and be sure to leave a comment!
(and Jeff took part in Pinhole Day)
Archive for the 'Chicago' Category
If you look carefully you’ll see both 
Sometimes you don’t have time to finish breakfast, like when the phone company sends thugs in to throw you out of your apartment. Oh well, I was thinking about moving anyway.
This is a shameless plug for a friend. John “Blood” Unger makes the best damn firebowls in America, possibly the world. He makes them by hand, from recycled materials, in a small town in northern MIchigan. And you can now get them from the FFEJWORLD Amazon store. Prices start at $99 bucks (without shipping). Please help John put catfood on the table, he and Mojo will thank you.
The Pot-de-Feu grill 
For those of you with political aversion to Amazon, we’re providing a link to John’s lovely and inexpensive Pot-de-Feu grill at E-junkie it’s $129 (shipping included to the lower 48!): Click here to view more details
Will Elder passed away late last week, Born Wolf Eisenberg, he both had a unique personal style and the gift of perfect mimicry of other artists. His mimicry of advertising art was indistinguishable form the real thing, until you found the gotcha. I’ve heard it argued that he actually had multiple personal styles, his painted work considered from his line work. He was the origin of Mad’s gag art in the margin, although in his case it was additional gags he wrote and blended perfectly with the art for the (usually Kurtzman written) piece he was illustrating. This became known as Chicken Fat or Chotchkies. Along with Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood he was the backbone of the original Mad Magazine. For those of you that don’t know, Mad was the only EC comic book to survive the great Comic purge of the early 50′s, in which various clergy and a certain psychologist claimed that comic books were perverting the youth of Amerika. Elder was unique in his mastery of parody and satire, his become famous not for his pioneering work at Mad, but for Little Annie Fanny, and adult strip he and Kurtzman did for Playboy.
I grew up reading the old copies of Mad that littered the barbershop we frequented, and coveted the bound in copies that Mad put in their Specials in the early 70s, I bought all the mad paperbacks to get all the old work. Will Elder was one of the reasons I’ve used some variation of the ords parody and satire as my online nicknames for close to 30 years.
(Photo by PromoChick)
Lamprey stalwart John Gibbons died early yesterday morning of pneumonia, a complication resulting from his stroke some months back. John’s Laprey membership was unique: he never did a piece. Instead he always did the same performance: he cleaned up after us.
The powers that be are working out a memorial service, which will probably involve cleaning up our own mess. I’ll let you know when I know anything.
Kim Grove reports:
I have managed, in my own mind, a coup of sorts! Several of my photos have been selected for a group show called “Inside is Outside” as part of the Wicker Park/Bucktown Master Plan Open Houses. I am not a Wicker Park resident and my subjects cover the Maxwell Street area and the near West Loop, so I am honored that they chose to include my work and thought that some of you might be interested.The photos are being used as part of a project that the WPB Special Service Area is doing to promote awareness of neighborhood change and encourage participation and input from Wicker Park residents regarding development, etc. Many of you know that this is always a concern of mine, more so in Pilsen of course, but overall for Chicago as well. In fact, it may be inspirational for Pilsen, depending on the rate and form of development that we experience. Below is the information for the show–please stop in if you happen to be in the area!1275 North Milwaukee (next to the Radio Shack) Chicago, ILMarch 29, April 5, and April 12, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.http://wickerparkbucktownssa.org/?p=242Okay, thanks for checking this out!
But first, a message from Nostalgia…
Over 30 years ago I got my first digital watch. This was a big deal at the time, they were still relatively new, They were all the rage and everyone, nerd and commoner alike, had to have one, kind of like the iPhone or GPS in 2008.
Owning a digital watch lead to all sorts of day dreams ranging from two way wrist TVs ala Dick Tracey to wrist computers. But this being the 70s, and the peak of nutty Amerikan fads, I kept thinking about an LCD mood watch. My daydream watch would tell people in plain English how I felt, and would be readable in broad daylight. I never could figure out a goof proof mechanism to make it read my mood, since even now most bio sensors aren’t good enough to tell pissed off from horny (and PETs don’t fit into a watch case-yet-but they would let you read other peoples moods). So like most daydreams it faded.
Which brings us the the present. Internet time, and internet culture. The broken watch on my wrist has hands, most people wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a digital watch. And we have new ways to express our emotions, especially online: emoticons. They were invented to remove ambiguity in email text, and have since spread to IM, the Web and Twitter. They let readers know when your joking, playfull, angry or pissed off. We all know the basic emoticons, right
Former Pilsen resident, international man of mystery and one time chewtoy of the gods, John Unger (and company) have produced something akin to my old day dream, but melded to contemporary style and culture. The Emoodicon ring. It’s an emoticon mood ring. First off, it’s a nifty stainless steal ring with a removable bezel, instead of an impractical LCD screen. Secondly, you replace the Emoodicons by hand, removing the need for complex invasive biosensors and batteries. Fourthly, you choose the message you share with the world, so you can put a smiley face on it even if your crying inside, or vice versa if your Goth. Fifthly, it’s cute: there are two sets of Emoodicons currently available, Kitteh and Bleep each a cute graphical interpretation of a emoticon with kitten or robot theme respectively. Finally, it’ll get you noticed by glitterati and technorati alike, and not in a “Who’s the nerd with all the wires hanging off his wrist” way. They’re even having a contest to design the next set of Emoodicons, and I believe plans are afoot for a blank set. It’s the 21st century, and it fits the post modern, post ironic lifestyle perfectly. Unless your an aging boomer nerd who wants a wrist mounted positron emission tomography unit to read your friends moods (and minds). So go check it out.
