Soft Skull Media

War Nerd: South Ossetia, The War of My Dreams

2008-08-11T21:06:34Z

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A contrarian take on the Georgian conflict from the War Nerd:

There are three basic facts to keep in mind about the smokin’ little war in Ossetia:

1. The Georgians started it.
2. They lost.
3. What a beautiful little war!

Read more here: http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-south-ossetia-the-war-of-my-dreams/#more-270

To discuss this, or any other conflict that might pop onto the world's radar screen, with the War Nerd, please email publicity@softskull.com and we'll make the arrangements.

Thanks!

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Get Your War On becomes a live animation video...

2008-07-24T16:49:34Z

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Since we're all busy folks, and since the VP of media relations at the Huffington Post is probably more adept at laying out content for quick assimilation than I am, we offer this press release detailing the coming to life of David Rees's GET YOUR WAR ON. (And, FYI, we're publishing the collected strips in October as Get Your War On 2001-2008: The Definitive History of the War on Terror.) Email us for a review copy, interviews etc...

FIRST-EVER VIDEO VERSION OF SATIRICAL CLIP-ART COMIC STRIP

DEVELOPED WITH �WAKING LIFE� ANIMATOR FLAT BLACK FILMS

Teaser Video Live Today at:

http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_promo_7897.php

Series Launches Next Week

New York, NY, July 24 � 23/6 (www.236.com), a leading comedic news site, is launching a 10-part animated series based on David Rees� �Get Your War On� comic strip, which Rees created after 9/11 to offer a wry take on the emerging war on terror. The strip is assembled entirely from 1980�s-style clip art and lampoons contemporary politics with scathing insight. Films, the innovative animation company that created the Richard Linklater film �Waking Life� and the recent �Talk to Chuck� campaign of animated advertisements for Charles Schwab, is creating the animation for the series.

The Get Your War On (GYWO) comic strip has drawn a large audience by depicting workers in generic office settings providing acute insights and critiques of U.S. policy post-9/11, from the �liberation� of Iraq to George Bush�s plans to send astronauts to Mars. The sly insights of these �average� Americans struck a chord with people growing increasingly concerned with the administration�s actions in the expanding war on terror. GYWO became a minor phenomenon since it first emerged in part because of the disparity between the stock, white-collar characters and the blistering sarcasm and foul-mouthed words which emanated from them. The 23/6 videos feature Rees� office workers commenting on current events, including the contentious 2008 election season.

�It was a real coup for us to secure David�s agreement to produce with us the first-ever video series based on his Get Your War On comic strip,� said Brian Spinks, Director of Video Content for 23/6. �David is part of a dying breed of satirists whose work still has bite � he�s a real maverick. His sensibility is a perfect fit for us, combining informed outrage with a true sense of the absurd. And we�ll be turning these videos around quickly, so they�ll have the immediacy of a daily editorial cartoon, but with the rich media experience people are used to on TV and online. It�s a new medium for political satire.�

Said David Rees: �Ever since Thomas Friedman rejected my application to be his moustache groomer, I�ve searched for a way to serve my country � and now I�ve found it!� He continued, �When 23/6 approached me about animating Get Your War On, I was skeptical they could do justice to my brilliance. However, they assured me I wasn�t actually that brilliant. Ever since that revelation, I�ve enjoyed breathing life into my beloved clip-art characters. These animations will be like Hobbes� conception of life in the state of nature: �nasty, brutish and short.� Anyone who enjoys Jib-Jab animations will have a nervous breakdown watching these things.�

The GYWO series has the distinctive look of the work of Flat Black Film�s Bob Sabiston, an MIT Media Lab veteran who brought the same interpolated rotoscoping technique to the Richard Linklater film Waking Life. Sabiston�s software lets animators trace over live-action footage easily and quickly to create comics that are amazingly life-like.

GYWO has been made in to two books and the third, Get Your War On � The Definitive Account of the War on Terror, 2001-2008 � publishes in October.

23/6�s GYWO video series credits: David Rees, writer and producer; Brian Spinks, producer; Holly Schlesinger, producer; Flat Black Films, animation; Jon Glaser, voice actor; and Anthony Laurent, voice actor

About 23/6

23/6 is a satiric news and opinion web site that offers insight into current events, from politics to pop culture. A collaboration between IAC and The Huffington Post, 23/6 provides a cheat sheet to world news that cuts to the heart of issues by telling you not what newsmakers said, but what they meant. With over 300 writers and contributors �from TV shows like The Simpsons, Real Time with Bill Maher, and 30 Rock, and movies such as The Aristocrats, Clerks, and Talladega Nights � 23/6 breaks ground with its heretical take on the top stories.

About David Rees

David Rees was working a crummy magazine job when Operation: Enduring Freedom inspired him to make his cartoon �Get Your War On.� The satire about the war on terrorism became an internet phenomenon. �Get Your War On� now appears in every issue of Rolling Stone. Sales of the two GYWO books have raised almost $100,000 for land mine removal in western Afghanistan and it has been adapted for the stage by the Austin theater company the Rude Mechs. David�s other comics include �My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable� and �My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable,� which appeared every Thursday in the Guardian until they dropped it. He currently lives in Beacon, NY.

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Get Your War On becomes a live animation video...

2008-07-24T16:43:27Z

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FIRST-EVER VIDEO VERSION OF SATIRICAL CLIP-ART COMIC STRIP

DEVELOPED WITH �WAKING LIFE� ANIMATOR FLAT BLACK FILMS

Teaser Video Live Today at:

http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_promo_7897.php

Series Launches Next Week

GYWO has been made in to two books and the third, Get Your War On � The Definitive Account of the War on Terror, 2001-2008 � publishes in October.

About 23/6

About David Rees

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The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles

2008-07-07T11:53:39Z

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We've a delightful little anthology publishing in early October, The Customer is Always Wrong, edited by Jeff Martin, and it just got a lovely review in Publishers Weekly, along with a wildly implausibly obtained blurb from the Creative Director of Barney's, Simon Doonan...

The review: "The mundane tasks and indignant exchanges with impossible customers are hilariously captured in this collection of personal essays by a cross-section of writers and humorists. Some, like a spa attendant’s dishy tale, are spun with a catty flair and flirt with a mild contempt for frivolous consumers; others, like Wendy Spero's turn as a door-to-door knife seller, are outrageously funny and incorporate life lessons in the litany of humiliations. Breezy and occasionally creepy musings on everything from guilt over serving fattening Swedish pancakes to seniors to the horrors of working at Sears may provide some nostalgic chuckles and perhaps even some unpleasant flashbacks as this collection elevates retail selling to a rite of passage. Two stories in particular that have less to do with the frustrations of the job and more about the impact of the experience on future endeavors: Hollie Gillespie recounts her days as an industrious child entrepreneur and maintains her
steadfast optimism in humanity, and the memories of writer and one-time drummer Jim DeRogatis, who passed the time—but never worked—in a local music store reveals the enduring influence of a mentoring shop owner and achieves true poignancy. (Oct.) "

The blurb: "Once I got passed the shock and horror of not being asked to contribute to this book, I started to enjoy it...a lot. Cathartic and entertaining, these essays will rivet and delight, regardless of which side of the counter you stand on."

Holler for review copies, eh?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Publication Date:
October 15, 2008

Always funny, frequently cringe-inducing, and often touching collection that is certain to connect with the millions of American men and women that work or have at one time or another worked in retail.

From Mom and Pop general stores to huge chains, it is impossible to think of American experience without thinking about the buying/selling culture that is retail. It is almost a rite of passage to pay your dues in a retail environment. The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles (Soft Skull Press / Counterpoint; Trade Paper Original; October 2008; $12.95; 978-1-933368-90-0) is a funny yet informative collection of essays by writers from all corners of the literary world.

Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job mystery series, describes all the crazy jobs she’s done to write her books; Jim DeRogatis (author of Let it Blurt) describes hanging out with Al at Al Rocky’s Music Store; Colson Whitehead describes how three summers working a Long Island ice cream store put him off ice cream and desserts of all kinds for the rest of his life; and enlivening the table of contents are Wade Rouse, Michael Beaumier, Po Bronson, Stewart Lewis, Victor Gischler, Timothy Bracy, Anita Liberty, Trisha Thomas, Kevin Smokler and T Cooper.

This book, however, not only shines a light on the absurdities of retail, but finds the delight in it as well. If it weren’t for the customer, our economy would not function. And for every abusive customer or moronic employee, there are people who come into our lives and change its course forever.

About the Author:

Jeff Martin was born in the summer of 1980. Growing up in Tulsa, OK, Jeff never expected his adult life to be filled with customer complaints and secret shoppers. With various aspirations from superhero (unrealistic) to the next Bob Dylan (impossible), he paid little attention to his schoolwork. His retail career began at a video store. Jeff soon began idolizing director Quentin Tarantino for the simple fact that he is the only ex-video store clerk to go on to win an Oscar and make millions of dollars.

Upon graduation, Jeff decided to leave his hometown and make his way in the world as a writer. A little over a year later, he returned home with his tail between his legs and a lot of bad poetry. With the writing not paying the bills, he was forced to look for alternative forms of income. A week or so later, he was working at a local bookstore. Seven years and one wife later, he’s still there.

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The Ugly Side of Disaster: Racism and the Calculus of Comparative Suffering

2008-06-21T11:44:30Z

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Tim Wise is the author White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (2005, 2008) and of the forthcoming Speaking Treason Fluently (Sept 2008)

The Ugly Side of Disaster:
Racism and the Calculus of Comparative Suffering
By Tim Wise
June 18, 2008

Disasters bring out the best and worst in people.

On the one hand, millions of folks respond to the suffering of their fellow human beings with compassion, concern, and even significant financial assistance when needed. Be it a hurricane, an earthquake, tornadoes or the recent massive flooding in the Midwestern United States, the hearts, minds, and often wallets of large numbers of the nation's people are with those in need.

And on the other hand, there's Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.

This week, as Iowans and some in Illinois watched flood waters rise ever higher, Limbaugh took to the air to contrast these supposedly good and decent people who have joined forces to help each other, with the presumably evil, lazy and violent folks of New Orleans, who we are told, did nothing but foment criminality and wait for the government to save them during flooding there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Thus, we have his statement of a few days ago, in which he noted that in the midst of the devastation in the Midwest:

"I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property...I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters. I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street...I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America."

Sadly it isn't only Limbaugh who has been making these kinds of comparisons. Millions of us have also been subjected to the e-blast missives making the rounds, which seek to contrast the law-abiding, God-fearing, and (let us not forget) mostly white farming folks of the Midwest to the black, urban, and congenitally defective folks of the Big Easy. If you haven't received something like this from a friend, relative or co-worker yet, just wait, because you probably will soon.

But what all of these like-minded rants indicate--whether spewed to 20 million pliant sheep via the airwaves, or posted on a pathetic little blog read by no one--is the dishonesty of those offering them up. Either that, or the fundamental ineptitude of the same when it comes to doing basic research, fact-checking, or merely paying attention to the fundamental differences between the flooding of New Orleans and that of rural and small town Iowa communities.

Among the differences that should be readily apparent to almost anyone, consider:

In New Orleans, residents were kept from escaping, literally forced back into the city by armed police from a neighboring community. Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, relief agencies like the Red Cross were prohibited from entering the city, thanks to an order from the Department of Homeland Security, which feared that the provision of relief would delay evacuation. In other words, the suffering was heightened deliberately by government order, as noted on the Red Cross website, as early as September 2, 2005. Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, those stuck in the flood zone (tens of thousands in all) were herded into the Superdome and Convention Center, where there was no air conditioning (at the hottest time of the year in that city), no food, and little or no water. When those who were trapped (and who would wait for three full days before any serious assistance arrived) tried to get to the food in the pantries of the Convention Center (food that would have gone bad or been written off anyway), they were met by guns, pointed at them by members of the National Guard, who warned them to "step away from the food or we'll blow your fucking heads off." Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, there are very few escape routes out of the city, as anyone who has spent much time there can attest. The only artery capable of handling a significant number of vehicles is Interstate 10, heading west or east. In the Midwestern flood zones, there are far more escape routes, far fewer people to get evacuated, and the flooding was a slow and steady process, unlike the rapid inundation in New Orleans, which happened quickly after the overtopping of inadequately constructed levees.

In New Orleans, according to data in the 2004 and 2006 American Community Surveys, conducted by the Census Bureau, residents were about four times as likely as their Iowa counterparts not to have access to a vehicle that could facilitate their escape from the flood zone. Whereas more than 21 percent of New Orleanians were without access to a car at the time of Katrina, only 6 percent of folks in Black Hawk County (home to hard-hit Cedar Falls, Iowa) and 5 percent of those in Linn County (home to flooded Cedar Rapids--the biggest city affected by the latest deluge) were carless. To put the importance of not having a vehicle in stark terms, 38,000 households in New Orleans, comprising approximately 100,000 people, were without a car, and thus, unable to flee on their own.

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Limbaugh and like-minded screeds has been the speed with which they have descended into the pit of racist myth in order to bash the people of New Orleans once again, much as they were doing in August and September of 2005. To wit, the repeated references to looting, rapes, murders, shooting at helicopters and other assorted mayhem by New Orleans' black folks, nearly all of which claims have been discredited as utterly false, almost from the time they were first concocted.

So consider Limbaugh's formulation, where he says, "I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street."

Fair enough. Those things aren't happening in Iowa. Yet, according to multiple post-Katrina investigations, and stories written up by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the London Guardian, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Reason Magazine and the American Journalism Review, they weren't happening in New Orleans either. Reports of shooting at helicopters, or rapes or murders were almost entirely false. There were no murders in the evacuation centers, few if any sexual assaults (and none on the street as Limbaugh claimed), no helicopters fired on, and no police officers shot by residents. Yes, there was looting, although by a distinct minority of persons trapped in the city, and overwhelmingly for necessities like food, medicine, water,and clothing to replace the rotting, soaked rags people were wearing after wading through waist-deep water. And according to persons on the ground in the flood zone, even the luxury items taken were
typically used as barter chips, to get rides out of the city for oneself and one's family when it became obvious that large scale assistance wasn't going to arrive any time soon. In other words, reports of widespread thuggery in New Orleans during the flooding have been greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated, and have only remained believable to millions because of the race and class biases that allow people to believe the worst about poor black folks even without a shred of actual evidence.

And while Limbaugh and others praise Midwesterners for pulling together in a spirit of cooperation--as opposed to the animalistic chaos we are to envision when thinking of New Orleanians during Katrina--the fact is there were innumerable acts of kindness in the streets of New Orleans as well. Those who personally brought supplies to the thousands trapped downtown reported little if any fighting or random anger amongst the assembled; rather, they saw persons trying to shade the elderly, and make sure that old folks and the very young had first dibs on what little relief supplies were dribbling in. But the media focused on none of that, choosing instead to highlight reports--false as it turned out--of mass violence.

Then of course have been the suggestions, especially common in the e-blasts and blog postings to the effect that Iowans, unlike New Orleanians, have helped themselves, because while the latter had grown dependent on government to solve their problems, Midwesterners in the "heart of America" still value the importance of self-reliance. But the fact is, Iowans are no less likely to receive government assistance than those in New Orleans were prior to Hurricane Katrina, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Surveys, taken in 2006 (the most recent year available) and 2004 (the last data collected for New Orleans before the flooding of that city).

In hard-hit Linn County Iowa, 2400 households receive cash public assistance, out of 85,000 total households, meaning that 2.8 percent of all households in the County receive cash welfare. In New Orleans, prior to Katrina, and contrary to popular belief, only 2.6 percent of households received cash welfare (4600 households out of 180,000). So in truth, a slightly higher percentage of Linn Countians were on the dole than New Orleanians. In Black Hawk County (also hard hit by the recent deluge),2.5 percent of all households receive cash assistance: again, suggesting no real difference between the mostly white and rural folks there, and the mostly black and urban folks in Orleans Parish at the time of Katrina.

And it should be noted, the average amount of welfare received in the Iowa counties was higher than that for recipients in New Orleans. So whereas the average annual amount of cash assistance received in New Orleans prior to Katrina was only $2800, in Linn County it's $3200 and in Black Hawk County, the average amount received is over $4600. Bottom line: those supposedly harder-working, more self-reliant white folks in the heartland are just as likely to receive public assistance as black folks in New Orleans, and when they do, they actually get more than the latter in raw dollar terms.

As with cash, food stamp participation is roughly the same in the hard hit Iowa counties as in New Orleans before Katrina. In 2004, about 11percent of New Orleans households received food stamps, as did 8 percent of Linn County households and 10 percent of Black Hawk County households in 2006.

In addition to traditional government assistance, let it also be remembered that Iowans are quite dependent on another form of public handout: agricultural subsidies. Indeed, Iowa--that place of hard working, self-reliant folks who are now being contrasted with the supposedly government-dependent laggards in New Orleans--receives the second highest amount of agricultural crop subsidies of any state in the country, according to data compiled by the Environmental Working Group. From 1995-2006, Iowa farmers raked in $16 billion in subsidies, with 7 in 10 farmers in the state receiving some form of subsidy from the federal government. Even those small family farmers at the bottom of the subsidy pile, who receive far less than the large corporate giants who take a disproportionate amount of the loot, still received a little more than $2000 per household: not much less than the amount received in cash welfare by those in New Orleans, prior to Katrina, who received such assistance.

To put the amounts received from government in perspective, in Black Hawk County, farmers get about $15 million in crop subsidies, while in Linn County the annual take is about $17 million. In New Orleans, prior to Katrina, residents there were receiving about $13 million per year in cash assistance under the program for dependent children and their mothers. So putting aside the cash welfare received by Iowans, which as noted above was actually more, per household, than that received by New Orleanians, crop subsidies indicate that Iowans were and are more government dependent than the residents of New Orleans, no matter what the racist and classist perceptions of the general public may be.

So here we are: a nation potentially on the precipice of electing a man of color as president, being told by media pundits and others that this fact demonstrates above all else how Americans have "transcended race," and put aside the old animosities and bigotries of the past. Yet, at the first opportunity, we see right-wing windbags striving to perpetuate the stereotypes, the false urban legends, and the deceptive rhetoric of racism to score points with their readers and listeners. And if the speed with which such venal propaganda is making its way around the web is any indication, the smear campaign seems to be working.

Just one more piece of evidence that this nation has transcended nothing when it comes to race and racism. Just one more clear indication that the success of Barack Obama says little in terms of what millions of white folks still believe about the majority of black folks with whom we share a nation. So long as entire communities can be pathologized in the minds of the masses, thanks to the efforts of unresearched gasbags like Rush, the ability of individuals of color to rise to positions of authority will say virtually nothing about the larger illness of racism and its continued salience.

Only when white folks stand up to the Limbaughs of the world--only when we see challenging white racism as our burden, our responsibility, and as a fundamental part of what we need to do in the realm of that vaunted "self-help" we're always preaching to others--will things likely change. We've been silent too long, and our silence implicates us, just as Rush's bombast indicts him, in the spread of this sickness known as racism. It is well past time to leave collaboration behind.

SOURCES:

All census data and data on public assistance levels and vehicle access comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Surveys for 2004 and 2006, available at:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_submenuId=&_lang=en&_ts. Once into the databases, information for Linn County, Black Hawk County, or New Orleans (entered either as New Orleans city or Orleans Parish) can be retrieved by entering the county/city and state name in the search function box and then following the various links for demographic, income and housing data that appear.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34103.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2315076.html?page=7
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3998
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/06/hurricanekatrina.usa3
www.ewg.org/farm

For interview requests and review copy requests please contact publicity@softskull.com
To keep track of Tim Wise's lecture schedule and new commentaries, at www.timwise.org

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Lost in the Supermarket: The Indie Rock Cookbook

2008-06-12T15:24:04Z

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From the folks who brought you "Please Feed Me: The Punk Vegan Cookbook" comes "Lost in the Supermarket," a combination of good eats and good bands that puts readers in the mood to dive into the nosh pit.

You can see the PDF here:
http://www.softskull.com/files/LostintheSupermarket.pdf

Historically, a love of cooking has been left to those considered far from cool—that is to say, suburbanite Betty Crockers toiling over a hot stove instead of standing in line for a rock show. But the new youth-culture sensibility has taken over, merging the axiom “You are what you eat” with its updated mantra “You are who you listen to.”

Lost in the Supermarket (Soft Skull Press; Trade Paper Original; Oct 2008; $17.95; 978-1-59376-203-2)—yes, named for the 1979 hit by The Clash—is a creative compendium of recipes that reclaims the kitchen for the hip crowd. At once a meditation on the connection between food and music and a great culinary resource, this cookbook is full of the favorite recipes of some of indie rock’s elite: in chapters on both daily dishes and special-event grub, contributions from such indie notables as Animal Collective, Black Dice, Sunset Rubdown, and Country Teasers are included. The braod range of contributing musicians includes everyone from Belle and Sebastian to Genesis P-Orridge, from Japanther to Lisa Crystal Carver, from Chumbawamba to the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players.

Whether they’re in it for the tunes or the tastes or both, readers will happily groove on celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s proclamation that there is a distinct “link of sin” between music (especially rock-and-roll) and food: both are about making people happy; both involve sensual pleasures; and both are tied to people’s yearnings to get laid at the end of the night.

The Authors
Kay Bozich Owens has been published in Morbid Curiosity and Fazed.
Lynn Owens is a sociologist.
The authors live in Burlington, Vermont.

Advance praise for Lost in the Supermarket

“This marriage of bands and cooking is a natural convergence.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

“Experience a new variety of tasty licks courtesy of ‘cool-kid’ bands: Find favorite recipes from Animal Collective and Black Dice, to name a few, in Lost in the Supermarket.” —Blueprint (“100 Reasons to Learn Something” in the last issue, before they shut it down...)

Lost in the Supermarket
By Kay Bozich Owens and Lynn Owens
October 2008; Trade Paper Original; 192 pages; $17.95; 978-1-59376-203-2
Soft Skull Press / Counterpoint / Distributed by Publishers Group West
Publication Date: October 10, 2008
Contact: publicity@softskull.com

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"Black Flies" receives a cover review from the New York Times Book Review

2008-05-16T17:44:28Z

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Liesl Schillinger's review of Shannon Burke's BLACK FLIES will be the cover review of the May 25th New York Times Book Review.

Email us back if you would like to be on the list for a review copy and have a lovely weekend...

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Starred PW for All About Lulu, our summer debut novel by Jonathan Evison

2008-05-12T13:17:22Z

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If you think you might like it as much as Publishers Weekly does, email us back, and we'll send you a review copy of your own.

"Evison's debut—of love and loss, growing up, throwing up and moving on—is a stunner. William Miller Jr. is a scrawny loner whose mother dies of cancer when he is seven years old, leaving him an awkward vegetarian with an ominously macho father and idiot twin brothers in mid-1970s Santa Monica. William's father, Big Bill, remarries a grief counselor named Willow, and Will spends the following decades in love with Louisa (Lulu, as she prefers to be called), his new stepsister. They are close throughout adolescence, but after a summer at cheerleading camp, Lulu returns home distant and hostile, leaving Will to pine for her in solitary desperation. Will finally appears to be on the path to normalcy in the early 1990s when he lucks into a radio talk-show hosting gig, but the stroke of good fortune is short-lived, as he discovers things about Lulu he'd rather not know. Evison provides readers a viciously funny and deeply felt portrayal of a blended family and one man's thwarted lo
nging. (July)"--Publishers Weekly, starred

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A freakishly charming tale of star-crossed, would-be stepsibling love in a family of failed bodybuilders in suburban Los Angeles.

In All About Lulu (Soft Skull; Trade Paper Original; July 25th, 2008; $14.95; 978-1-59376-196-7) William Miller--confirmed mamma’s boy and weak-eyed vegetarian in a family of bodybuilders--learns at a tender age what amounts to the Cartesian dictum for bodybuilders everywhere: no pain, no gain. I hurt, therefore I am--words he learns to live by in the wake of his mother’s death. When his father remarries a relentlessly kind grief counselor, Will falls in love with his troubled stepsister, Lulu. But as Lulu’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and inexplicably cruel, Will’s sense of identity begins to founder. Knowing that he can never hold the key to Lulu’s heart, Will only clings harder until his unwanted affection drives Lulu into a pattern of self-destruction that follows her into adolescence.

Lulu’s departure to college marks for Will the beginning of a personal odyssey which includes a crash course in western philosophy, a series of epic bad dates, and the enduring friendship of a poultry-obsessed former Soviet wrestler turned free-market capitalist, with whom he establishes Hot Dog Heaven on the Venice Beach Boardwalk. Working nights as a producer at the college station, Will catches a break one night when the overnight host eats bad razor clams, forcing him to take the mic without warning, where his performance catches the ear of the program director. In a world made of meat, a world where the corporeal is everything and identity is measured in mounds of flesh and striated muscle, Will discovers his strength in the disembodied voice of his late-night radio persona.

But when Lulu self-destructs, William is drawn back into her life, and ultimately discovers that Lulu was never who he believed her to be.

PRAISE FOR ALL ABOUT LULU

"The star-crossed lovers at the center of All About Lulu forge a middle ground between Archie and Veronica and Kurt and Courtney. Evison has delivered a witty, understated, heartfelt, and, at times, almost unnervingly honest debut."--Adam Langer, author of Crossing California

"Jonathan Evison is a killer talent, and All About Lulu is the kind of novel readers have been hungry for: funny, smart, entertaining—an all around delight. Literary fiction needs more books like this; maybe then people would stop talking about the Death of the Novel and just read and enjoy themselves."--Darin Strauss

"All About Lulu is an exhilarating, wholly original and brave novel about obsession, love and becoming. With Will Miller Evison has created a thoroughly modern protagonist steeped in Dickensian complexity, pure yet conflicted, lost yet driven to find truth in the dysfunctional American abyss."--James P. Othmer, author of The Futurist

"All About Lulu is a novel of tremendous energy and heartbreaking, hilarious insight, a novel with a heart of gold. In a manner that is both breathless and effortless, Evison reminds us of life’s beautiful oddity. A remarkable debut."--Brad Listi, author of Attention Deficit Disorder

All About Lulu is a fascinating meditation on growing up and growing inward, a wry portrait of the American family in all its excessive, dysfunctional, heartbreaking purity."--Josh Emmons, author of The Loss of Leon Meed

Evison keeps all kinds of balls up in the air, seemingly without effort. All About Lulu is the happiest sad story around, a meditation on the meaning of family, and how we fit amongst the people we love and misunderstand.--Greg Downs, author of Spit Baths

About the Author:
Jonathan Evison has worked a wide array of jobs from syndicated talk radio host to rotten tomato sorter—in the former role, his comedy show, Shaken Not Stirred, was nominated for two Peabody Awards. He has received two Silver Microphones and two Communicators and was frequently nominated for the Soundie Award. This is his first novel. He resides in Bainbridge Island, WA.

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The War Nerd

2008-04-30T14:12:23Z

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A self-described slob and data-entry drone from Fresno, CA, Brecher is P.J. O'Rourke on Red Bull, writing with passion and profanity on the nature of warfare and the ongoing wars--those on the front page and otherwise--that are being fought every day around the world.

[Review copies now available, please email publicity@softskull.com]

Gary Brecher is a war nerd and he's not alone. People like him, he says, normal Americans, fat and alone and stuck in a stupid white-collar slave jobs, get off on reading about war because they hate their lives.

In The War Nerd (Soft Skull Press / Counterpoint; Trade Paper Original; June 2008; $15.95; 978-0-9796636-8-0) Brecher provides the utterly uncensored, ribald, gonzo, judgmental, opinionated, entertaining, enlightening and enraging thoughts of the Dean of war nerds. Part war commentator, part humorist, Brecher inveighs against pieties of all stripes. Although he reserves his most acidic diatribes for neo-cons, few are spared: naked Liberian generals, Tom Clancy UN peacekeepers, Dick Cheney, the Israeli Defense Forces (the current lazy ones, not the rugged 1950's and 1960's incarnation...). A provocative freethinker, he also expresses admiration in the mostly unlikely situations and for not the most pacifistic of reasons-the Tamil Tigers and their air force, the Lebanese Hezbollah (taking strategic advantage of their primary asset which is their disinterest to minimizing casualties), the Danes (of 1000 years ago), and so on across the globe and the centuries.

The War Nerd deploys the full arsenal of crude, scatological, un-PC humor, in such essays as "Monster Trucks in Ramallah," "Aceh vs. the Borg" and "Kargil: War as Ice Capades" to get across a crucial message-there is massive incompetence, laziness, and complacency in the precincts of military power. While he might spend too much time surfing the internet, and watching CNN and al-Jazeera, we need guys like the War Nerd to provide a truly un-varnished view of the world's wars.

About the Author:

Gary Brecher is a data-entry clerk in Fresno, CA. His regular online column in the Moscow-based alternative newspaper The eXile is attracts a large, ideologically diverse audience.

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Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing on Woman's World

2008-04-24T08:12:43Z

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Sorry for the recent spasm of emails but there's are quite active here. Very Short List is a daily email recommending one excellent, but under-hyped, entertainment gem. Yesterday's VSL recommendation came from Mark Frauenfelder, founder of BoingBoing and E-i-C of MAKE. He wrote a short review of Woman's World, a novel by Graham Rawle.

Here's what he had to say: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/23/womans-world-reviewe.html

Women’s magazines of the 1960s set impossible standards for the modern housewife: She was expected to be an immaculate housekeeper, a brilliant entertainer, a fashion plate, and (natch) a perfect pleaser of the man in her life. For Norma Fontaine — the first-person narrator of the new, wholly original thriller Woman’s World — the tips, instructions, and suggestions in these magazines rule her life, which is no surprise, considering her every thought and utterance literally originates from the magazines she worships.

In creating Woman’s World, collage artist Graham Rawle spent five years cutting 40,000 snippets of text and spot illustrations from 1960s women’s magazines and pasting them onto 437 sheets of paper. The result is a page-turning thriller that’s utterly original yet retains the sensibility of its source material. Even without Rawle’s amazing facsimile presentation, Woman’s World stands on its own as a delightfully dark suspense novel about a family with a horrible secret.

[More details here: http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-183-X][For a review copy of your own, email publicity@softskull.com]

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Curious about what real gang members (not fake memoirist gangbangers) have to say...

2008-04-22T13:00:13Z

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...about their lives and the world around them?

The Bandana Republic
A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates
Edited by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George
Foreword by Jim Brown

An intergenerational, multi-racial anthology edited by two gang members turned cultural workers, The Bandana Republic seeks to showcase the creative impulse that, along with violence, has always been a part of membership in urban gangs.

Urban youth gangs and street associations are viewed more often than not as training grounds for thugs and felons. Left out are their members' emotional sensitivities, their political consciousness, their individual and collective capacities to assess the social conditions that gave rise to the need for such associations.

Left out of the popular dialogue on gangs is the creative impulse that has continued to manifest in popular culture-from the birth of the Blues to Rag Time and Swing, to BeBop, Doo Wop and Hip Hop. From the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, Young Lords and Brownstone Rangers to the height of the Civil Rights Movement to our current Hip Hop culture, urban gang rhetoric and its symbolisms have informed almost every major social movement of this century. They have also played a role in protecting neighborhoods, initiating food and clothing drives and in taking on housing-related issues such as gentrification.

The Bandana Republic focuses on creative literature written by adolescents from such contemporary gangs as Crips and Bloods, Latin Kings and Mexican Mafia, Black Spades and Neta, Black Gangster Disciples and Hells Angels. It also includes work by former gang members who have entered the arena of social work or gone on to other careers. The anthology showcases writing by television and film actors Malik Yoba, Edward James Olmos, Ruby Dee, Mos' Def, and Jim Brown; performers and lyricists Oscar Brown Jr., Gil Scott-Heron, Dead Prez, and Snoop Doggie Dog; and journalists Felipe Luciano and Mumia Abu Jamal-all of whom have either come from urban gangs or were closely affiliated with street-based organizations.

Like many adolescents, they initially attached themselves to the available rough-n-tumble street role models, becoming active gang members and adopting "the ways of the street." Inside of this framework, and in spite of the stereotypical "conventional wisdom" concerning street gangs, they were also reared into the creative aspirations of their respective communities. Not just dancing and styling, but reading and studying, learning to develop the gall to give voice to the voice.

About the editors:

A former street gang member, having come from one of the more notorious New York urban gangs of the 1950s, the Chaplain Nation, which once comprised as many as 19 separate divisions throughout the borough of Brooklyn, poet/essayist Louis Reyes Rivera is now known as the Janitor of History. He has been studying the craft of poetry since 1960 and teaching it since 1969. The recipient of over 20 awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), a Special Congressional Recognition Award (1988), and the CCNY 125th Anniversary Medal (1973), Rivera has assisted in the publication of well over 200 books, including editing Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Crown Publishers, 2001) with Tony Medina. Considered by many as a necessary bridge between the African and Latino American communities, he is a professor of Pan-African, African-American, Caribbean and Puerto Rican literature and history whose essays and poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Areyto, Boletin
, The City Sun, African Voices, and in award-winning collection, including ALOUD: Live from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Of Sons And Lovers, and his own Scattered Scripture. Since 1996, Rivera continues to host a bi-monthly Jazzoetry & Open Mic @ Sistas' Place (where he also conducts his writing workshop), in Brooklyn. He appeared on C-SPAN, as part of the REPARATIONS NOW! rally held in Washington, D.C. and on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO. Currently, Louis Reyes Rivera can be heard every Thursday, at 2pm, on radio station WBAI (99.5 FM), hosting his show Perspective. He lives in New York City.

A former gang member, Bruce George has been writing poetry for over 25 years. He is co-founder of Russell Simmon's Def Poetry Jam, for which he received a Peabody Award, and executive producer of the spoken word documentary Bone Bristle, currently in post-production. Bruce George has served on panels for Harvard, The New School, Medger Evens and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and has judged hundreds of poetry contests. Bruce George is currently Executive Consultant for the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition. He was born, raised and currently lives in New York City.

From the Foreword by Jim Brown
"The Bandana Republic is the most provocative, researched, educational, opinionated piece of work that I've ever read . . . In its own provocative way, The Bandana Republic makes you think, reflect, cry. I recommend to all of you, and to all people who purchase this anthology: read it, learn from it, try to draw your own conclusions. What you have in front of you is a reflection of every revolutionary, every victim that ever lived in this country. Color, gender, race, religion . . . it does not matter. Only the individual dealing with correctness, fairness, love and caring, multiplied a billion times, will ever bring about the proper change in human behavior. __Read this anthology, and then check yourself."

Praise for Bum Rush the Page, also edited by Louis Reyes Rivera
"A remarkably democratic anthology . . . the topicality and directness of the poems make this an ideal textbook for introductory poetry classes, especially for urban high school students, and for anyone interested in poetry as a social art." -Publishers Weekly

"A solid volume of smart and exhilarating poetry by poets from diverse backgrounds . . . Medina and Rivera's contributors are passionate, witty, wise, socially conscious, and artistically adventurous."
-Booklist

978-1-59376-194-3
Trade Paper 6 x 9 288 pp
Literature/Sociology $16.95
June 15, 2008

Learn more at www.myspace.com/thebandanarepublic

soft skull press | 19 w 21 st, ste 1101 | new york, ny 10010 | 718.643.1599 | 866.881.4997

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