CCLaP

So, I have some news to share today that I'm not particularly excited about, nor particularly happy about; that due to a lack of money, I've had to postpone CCLaP's live-events schedule to spring of 2007, versus this Friday when it was supposed to kick off. It's a frustrating decision for me, one that I put off until the last possible second -- after all, we were less than a thousand dollars away from being ready to start the live-events schedule, and I was really hoping that we might have pulled off a miracle there in the last couple of weeks. But alas, no.

Of course, this isn't all bad news; I've decided in fact to move CCLaP's publishing schedule, originally slated to begin next spring, up to the present day. So for the majority of you who interact with CCLaP (all you website visitors, that is), not much will change here; we'll still be featuring great creative work from brilliant artists around the world, and also sharing news and tips from the rest of the world of the underground arts. In fact, for those of you who live outside Chicago, you actually may be pleased by this announcement; it means not only the usual short stories, poems, essays, photos and more here at the site, but also a continual series of full-length electronic books being published by us too, all of them available for free, none of which contain crippling digital-rights management (DRM) software.

It probably goes without saying that it's been a stressful week for me; that's why I've decided to take just a bit of a break from CCLaP, perhaps a week or so, to regroup and get in touch with the authors and artists who I've been talking with this summer. As always, I appreciate the support that many of you have given the center, and hope that you'll continue to visit here this fall and winter.

Productivity site Lifehack pointed me today to this crazy-long and useful guide for self-publishing writers, over at a place called the Self-Publishing Blog. It's a great, great entry, too, one that seemingly never ends, giving writers advice on everything from the creative process to which printing plant to eventually pick.

By the way, that entire site is a pretty great one; I've just subscribed to its RSS feed, and I encourage you to do so too. Anyway, just a small heads-up for those of you in the middle of the self-publishing process yourselves.

Just a small note for you literature fans, and especially those of you here in Chicago; that the Gapers Block Book Club, a side project of the insanely popular online arts-and-entertainment guide, has decided to add weekly content to their club's website, along with the monthly physical meet-ups they had been doing. Their first, for example, is an excellent review of their current club selection, Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, a must-read for anyone interested in Chicago's sordid past.

Don't forget, by the way, that Andrew Huff, Gapers Block's founder and editor-in-chief, will be a guest of the center's own CCLaP Sessions on Friday, November 19th. I'll be talking with Andrew on a stage in front of a live audience for about an hour, concerning all kinds of random subjects -- his background, the trials and tribulations of running a commercial website, his thoughts on citizen media and citizen journalism, just all kinds of other interesting things. I encourage all of you to become regular visitors of their site, if you aren't one already; and I especially encourage Chicagoans to make it out to their monthly social events, because they really are quite fun.

Moleskinerie, the official blog of the Moleskine notebook company, let me know about this interesting organization called SketchCrawl. A loose coalition of artists and fans of the arts, basically about three times a year they try to convince as many people as possible to sketch in their notebooks on a given day, and then to share the images afterwards (at a blog, at a Flickr account, giving them to friends, etc). They run a blog, for example, linked to above, where random sketchers send them random things they've been doing; it's a nice little collection of random doodlings, definitely something fun to check out.

Anyway, their next one is September 23rd, and I think I'm going to participate; in fact, I might do the entry for my personal site that day as a series of scanned sketches, instead of writing it out. Ultimately SketchCrawl is after the same thing we here at CCLaP are; to convince more and more people to add at least a little direct arts in their lives on a regular basis, to remind themselves of what's so great about the arts in the first place. And if you haven't been by before, by the way, the Moleskinerie blog is another great one to check out. Makers of the notorious little black notebooks used by famous and infamous artists around the world, their site is a group effort of the entire small Italian staff, simply pointing out interesting things that people are doing with their own Moleskines around the world. I know that RSS readers can sometimes be an endless litany of news and weather updates; that's why I love adding feeds like these every so often as well, simply delivering fun and cool visual work to my reader on a regular basis too. I recommend both.

The excellent "web 2.0" site TechCrunch let me know about a new article in the New York Times, announcing just a bit early Google's new News Archive Search. Just like it sounds, the new service will basically let you do Google searches within news publications on any subject you want; but in this case, with those searches being stretched back to the beginning of that publication's existence, which Google is promising will eventually reach 200 years or more. And they've got some impressive people signed up already too; the Washington Post, legal database Lexis Nexis, the New York Times themselves, even Time magazine (who, for those who don't know, already have all 300,000 articles they've ever published online and searchable, dating all the way back to 1923), with more coming every day.

(Image courtesy University of Puget Sound)

Well, hooray to that, I say! And here above is why! Don't recognize what we're looking at? Count yourself incredibly lucky; for this is what my friends and I used to call "Microfiche Hell," back in our undergraduate days at the University of Missouri - Columbia. For about half a century, this was the defacto way that most learning institutions and public libraries maintained archives of serial publications; it was the cheapest option, the option that took up the least amount of space, the one at the time that was most durable for archiving purposes. I mean, never mind that it was such a maddening process, you would end up cursing the need to ever know anything by the end of it all; this is simply the best option there was.

Remember the twenty minutes of looking up an article by hand in a paper book, then hunting down the appropriate reel in a vast, dusty, windowless Citizen-Kane type nightmare of heavy steel shelves? Just to discover that some hippie stole the reel you needed in 1972 on an acid-induced dare, and that the library has still never had the chance to replace it? Arrgghh! I remember that! Google's News Archives Search does away with all that, lets you instantly and elegantly sort through the news right from your home, in an electronic format that lets you instantly cut and paste the text right into an academic paper (unlike us, who had to make weirdo thermal printouts, then go home and retype it all into our TRS-80s).

I for one applaud Google for taking this on, and for plainly stating in that NYT article that they haven't even begun figuring out how they can make money from it, simply that it seemed like a cool thing to do. On a whim, by the way, I decided to test it out myself, so randomly typed in "1929 stock market crash;" one of the first articles it pointed out was this fascinating one from Time, examining the insane changes that happened in the diamond industry just a mere month or two after crash itself. And that was cool, because it was just what I was looking for; some article actually written back then, in the middle of it, sorta dryly examining just the crazy, surreal things that were going on right at the beginning of the Great Depression. It's definitely a cool thing to check out even at this early date; and it will be really cool, needless to say, when their archive goes back the full 200 years they're promising. Definitely check it out when you have a chance.

Well, here's some good news for those of you who have missed it; that I now have the time again to start regularly updating my Favorites page at insanely popular photo-sharing site Flickr.com. This has always been one of my favorite things about Flickr, in fact, and is what garnered them such big praise even from the beginning; that on top of simply sharing photos at their site, you can add a rich set of information to those photos (including now the ability to tag them to a map; here, for example, are ones from my account tagged in the neighborhood in Chicago where I live), have new photos delivered via RSS feed, keep track of your favorites from other photographers and more.

In effect it turns all members of Flickr into potential one-person curators as well, using their "Favorites" page as a virtual art gallery, where they alone are to program who's featured. It frustrates me sometimes that we don't currently have the budget to do all the things for photographers that I want; but at least I can start with that for now, with simply pointing out some of the amazing, mind-bending, thought-provoking photographers I'm always coming across, in the thousand or so new photos I peruse there every 24 hours on a good day. This fall, we'll be getting some of those people signed up here as Fellows, and featuring their work here at this site; and then some of them booked into our upcoming cutting-edge Flash-based online gallery, including MP3 audio interviews with the artists concerning each piece, and a full-color PDF catalogue/book to go with each exhibit. Later this winter, hopefully we'll add the 3D, real-time virtual gallery within the videogame Second Life; and then about four to six years down the line, if everything goes well, us finally opening our own permanent physical space here in Chicago.

Anyway, feel free to follow along with my Favorites page there at Flickr, if you want to check out some of what I think are the finest photographers in the entire system (both professional and amateur -- there's a miniscule line there, which is something else I like so much about the service). And needless to say, if you're a photographer and feel like having your work featured through CCLaP, by all means let us know; although we're headquartered in Chicago, we actually feature artists from around the world.

And speaking of one-person virtual galleries; when are one of you young enterprising programmers out there going to build a better interface for Flickr favorites pages? Flickr publishes an open API, after all, which means that third-party developers are welcome to build their own interfaces and applications; hey, Flickr even helps promote them once they're done. It'd be cool to see someone build an interface for people's favorites, that was both more useful and more creative than Flickr's current offering; one that displayed titles, descriptions and artist names, that let the member display them in a certain order, etc. Even better, marry it and a little PHP to a social-app service like Ning, and let the entire community vote on people's favorites, in effect creating a network-wide favorites page as well, like Digg but for photos.

Ooh, actually, the more I think about it, the better of an idea that's seeming. Anyone want to teach me APIs and help build it with me? I'm not joking; I've been wanting to build my first app at Ning for a year now, but simply couldn't think of something worth the time to program. A voter-based favorites system for Flickr, based off everyone else's existing favorites pages, all of it fueled off a public free API, sounds like a good idea to me.

Hi ho, all -- Jason Pettus here, CCLaP's Executive Director. There has been lots of little tweaking going on recently of the center's plan, as we get more involved with the final things that need to happen before our live-event schedule starts. None of them have been interesting enough for their own entry here, frankly; but now that some have accumulated, I thought it'd be okay to post them all at once.

--First, as another entry here goes into detail, we have a host for our monthly CCLaP Showcases, a basement-press and zine veteran named Katherine Hodges. She needs a little time to get up to speed, though, which means that the series will now not begin until Thursday, October 19.

--Second, we've been thinking it over for awhile, and have finally decided that we're going to change the admission fee to our live events, before they actually start; to $5 total, from the $3 it had previously been. We ended up deciding on this for a number of reasons; to put us more in line with our direct competition, so that we could earn a little more per show, and of course because it's easier to eventually lower the price for a show than eventually raise it.

--Third, as long as we're moving the start date of the CCLaP Showcases to late October, we've decided to do the same with the CCLaP poetry slam and open mic too; this will give us more time to secure a venue, and get out the first round of publicity regarding the show.

--And then finally, some fairly major and sad news to announce as well; that Nikki Patin will not have the chance to be our Assistant Director anymore. It's a story as old as time itself unfortunately; since we do not have the budget for CCLaP to be Nikki's full-time job, she simply must make her full-time jobs her main priority. Did you know, by the way, that Nikki works at some amazing places around the city already, including The Center on Halsted and Young Chicago Authors? Or that she has an amazing creative career of her own, which keeps her constantly touring or recording almost a third of the entire year? Yeah, she's awfully busy; which is why I can't blame her for not having the time to take on CCLaP as well, even though it's still admittedly disappointing news to me.

Nikki's deciding at this point if she'll have the time to still be the host of the CCLaP Slam; I'll let you know later this fall, as soon as I know myself. For those who are curious, Nikki's former duties will simply fall back to me; I'm open for maybe hiring a new Assistant Director if someone is interested (please just contact me if you are); or maybe just relying on volunteers to take on very specific aspects of operations (like fundraising, the social-event program, marketing, etc), working maybe only five hours a week, in return for a free Fellowship and all the benefits that come with that.

Anyway, that's what's going on with us! It's strange being a transparent company sometimes, I'll tell you; how the public sees every step of what's going on, before the final plan is put in place. Don't forget that our first show, The CCLaP Sessions featuring Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, is still coming up on Friday, September 15th; and we're actually getting pretty close to finalizing a new venue for the show, too, and should hopefully have the name of the place to announce just about a week from now (or a week before the show, if you want to think of it that way). Zorn's columns recently have sometimes just been side-splittingly funny in this righteous way (including recent rants against Kumbaya and Olympic gold-medalist Shani Davis); I'm really looking forward to sitting down and talking with him.

Today's photograph is the first one we've exhibited by new Fellow Brian Heiser (bio, category page, RSS feed). This is one of over 50 photographs that Brian has donated the publishing rights to, and I'm not sure why I picked this particular one as the first; perhaps because it combines so many of the things about Brian's work overall that I like...

--A great sense of formalism, not only in composition but in gray tones;
--A twist towards the surreal, with unique lighting effects that invoke the Victorian Age;
--And a tight focus on subject matter, concentrating mostly on images that are inherently interesting.

Plus, I love that he just candidly took this photo on a contemporary Chicago sidewalk one day, yet looks like it could be a still from a 50-year-old French New Wave flick. That says a lot not only about Chicago, I think, but of Brian's skills as a photographer; you can look forward to a lot more over the coming months.

Please note that this photo's title merely reflects CCLaP's numbering system for Brian's work, and was not deliberately chosen by Brian as this image's name. To see a larger (700-pixel) version, please click on the smaller image above.

By the way, I thought there was something fishy about Brian's original self-portrait! I thought maybe it was just a much older photo of himself, from before I knew him; but then after editing the rest of his submissions, realize that he'd simply mislabeled one of them as his pick for his bio. The one above is actually Brian, which as friends can attest looks much more like him than the last one; it's been replaced in his official bio here as well. As before, click on that smaller image if you'd like to see a larger one. Sorry for the confusion, Brian!

Happy news to report today; that the CCLaP Showcases, our monthly themed exhibition of mid-career writers, finally has a host. It's Katherine Hodges (pictured above outside the excellent Quimby's Bookstore in Wicker Park), someone who's been a friend of mine for a long time, and who I'm proud to have joining our staff.

For those who don't know, Katherine has been involved with the world of small-press and zine publishing since literally a teenager; in fact, it was a music zine she did in high school called "Spiffy" that first brought her to national attention, after her infamous article "My Mom Made Dinner for Pavement." (Her mom in fact even made Pavement a cake, with a big P made of icing on the top; when they asked what the P was for, she replied, "For Pavement!")

Katherine has been in the forefront of the basement-press community since then, regularly attending conferences and conventions on the subject around the world, as well as self-publishing a series of confessional booklets and zines, detailing such subjects as weight, identity, and moves to giant cities at a young and possibly not-ready age. (Her latest project, for example, is entitled "City of Destiny" and concerns all of these subjects; but Katherine asked me not to link to its blog, because "Oh God, I haven't updated it in such a long time, I'd just be ashamed of myself at this point." So okay, Katherine, update that blog already!)

And speaking of which, Katherine has of course asked if she can have a little extra time to get herself ready for these shows, which we're of course happy to do; and that's why the official start date for the CCLaP Showcases is now set for Thursday, October 19th. Don't forget, the Showcases has its own page here at the website, as well as its own RSS feed, for those who would like to check out the latest news concerning just that subject; and since Katherine is now a Fellow of the center as well, she too has her own webpage and her own RSS feed. I hope you're as excited as I am that Katherine is now in charge of this series; I'm looking forward to some great Showcases this fall!

Hey, check this out; it's a picture of my friend Susi Spicoli's multi-tiered, physics-defying photography gallery, within this rather fascinating online videogame called Second Life. For those who don't know, Second Life is a rather unique environment; one with all the real-time 3D processing power of a place like "World of Warcraft," but with no pre-designated gameplay decided for you ahead of time. There is no "point" to Second Life, no dragons to slay, no guilds to join; instead it is a blank world, with both the content and activities decided upon by your fellow game players, not the makers of the game itself (Linden Lab, this extremely cool little company based out of San Francisco).

As a result, the universe comprising Second Life (which I'll just refer to from now on by its slang term there, "the grid") is admittedly full of what you might expect -- casinos, bordellos, giant teenage dance clubs and more -- but surprisingly, has also become a mecca for smart, tech-savvy arts administrators as well. There are lots of people around the world, after all, who have always felt they had what it took to run their own art gallery or live-music center, simply that they couldn't afford the physical real estate needed to do so; but with a small parcel of land costing you only $85 a year in Second Life (that is, by upgrading to a professional account), this lowers the barrier to small-business entry quite profoundly there.

What gets all the media attention in Second Life these days is the recent explosion of artists in that virtual world; but just as important and profound, I think, is the explosion of curators, editors, talent specialists and event coordinators. Really amazing things are happening in Second Life, I think, when it comes to the subject of organizing and presenting the arts; and as mentioned, with most of it coming surprisingly not from current arts professionals but rather amateurs, college students and homemakers and office workers, who always thought it would be cool to run their gallery or performance space. And lo and behold, it is!

CCLaP of course has lots of plans for getting involved with Second Life later this fall and winter; our own physical club there, rebroadcasts of our live events in real time, a photography gallery that doubles as a poster store, as well as such exclusive in-game events as Second Life's first-ever regular poetry slam, done through Skype conference calling. And why yes, we are looking for fellow Second Lifers who would be interested in getting involved! We need a variety of specialized people for our projects, doing a variety of specialized things; from those who can bring their SL-installed laptops to Chicago events, to those who can virtually host such events in the grid, while we're busy here in Chicago hosting the physical events. We welcome architects, administrators, publishers, anyone who has the specific tech skills needed to add an element to our overall plans. As always, you can just drop us a line to let us know of your interest; or just contact me while in the grid, where I'm known as "Miller Copeland." I and my avatar look forward to hearing from you!

(Photo courtesy Windy City Times)

Just some small news I wanted to pass along, for those who are interested; that Nikki Patin, CCLaP's Director of Live Events, has recently gotten a promotion here to Assistant Director! (Yeah, too bad for her it doesn't come with a pay raise.) It just makes more sense, when all is said and done -- she's ended up doing a lot more for the center than simply working on the live events, and I thought it was time that her title here reflect that.

Don't forget, Nikki's crazy summer of touring and recording is finally starting to come to a close; near the end of September we'll be getting her signed up here as a regular contributor, and then she too will be posting all kinds of fun entries about things happening in the Chicago arts. And of course, those of you here in Chicago who are planning on attending our events will be seeing a lot of Nikki as well; after all, she's still technically in charge of those, and will be trading off with me as far as working the door at these events.

Anyway, make sure to congratulate Nikki the next time you see her; and will you tell her to stop bugging me about a 401K account?!

Two lovers attend a county fair; one of them gets more than they bargained for on the rollercoaster. "Shiny Things," a new story by CCLaP Fellow Kathryn O'Halloran (bio, category page, RSS feed). CAUTION: This story contains explicit language.

Continue reading "Story: "Shiny Things," by Kathryn O'Halloran" »

The city of Chicago just announced their latest pick for the 'One Book One Chicago' (OBOC) program, and it's a doozy; it's the short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies by Pulitzer winner Jhumpa Lahiri. An Indian-American who hopped between Boston and Calcutta during her childhood, Lahiri's book is full of ambiguous, intriguing stories about the immigrant experience, both from the perspective of America and other countries; I've already read several of these stories in the past, and am looking forward to sitting down and reading the whole book.

For those who don't know, by the way, the OBOC series is a pretty cool thing, and something that's been perpetually popular here since introduced. The brainchild of the Chicago library system and our mayor, Richard Daley, about four times a year the city picks what it thinks is an intriguing piece of literature, then throws massive government resources into convincing the entire city to read the book at the same time. The series started off with a bang several years ago, with the selection of To Kill a Mockingbird, and has continued to be popular since; it's not unusual at all, for example, to ride a random el here and see five to ten people all reading the current OBOC selection at the same time.

By the way -- why yes, CCLaP would love to host a discussion club or other event concerning this book! If you're interested in hosting or organizing such an event yourself, with the center picking up the publicity costs and even helping you find a venue, by all means let us know. We're also very intersted in posting reviews of this book here at the website; those of you who are interested should feel free to contact us as well.

Happy day! CCLaP has its first Member! It's Patrick Spiroff, as a matter of fact, a musician and corporate worker who lives in the near Chicago suburbs. I met Patrick originally through my personal website; he was one of the first supporters of this center, way back when it was nothing more than an idea on a piece of paper, and I'm proud to have him be our first official Member as well.

Don't forget, Patrick now has his own category page here at the site, where you can always find the latest concerning him; he also has his own RSS feed, for those who would rather subscribe and get the latest delivered in real time. Also, I wanted to mention that Patrick is a habitual player of the alternative-reality videogame Second Life, just like myself; he will be helping CCLaP with our virtual events there later this fall, once we're finally up and running there.

I asked Patrick if he'd give us a few thoughts concerning creativity and the type of work he likes; I found his answer both funny and touching...

"As you can see from my photo, I fall into that ever elusive category, old fat white guy. As a matter of fact, my opinion on anything no longer matters since I've slipped out of that all important 18 to 49 demographic that advertisers so dearly cherish.

"At one point in my life I wanted to be rock star. I was a singer/songwriter heavily influence by Elvis Costello and Mr. Springsteen, as all my contemporaries say, back in the day. But after years of being a starving artist it lost its charm. I didn't so much as give up my dreams as wrapped them in plastic like a used wedding dress and put them in the back of my closet.

"Now I have no greater aspiration than to be a great father. I have two wonderful daughters, ages 12 and 9 and a wife I still adore after 16 years. It is their company I cherish the most.

"I have a job that pays me fairly well but never defines who I am.

"Actually, I'm still a songwriter, just I've limited my audience to my daughter dancing in the living room. But I'm still passionate about music. I purchase on average two CDs a week [yeah I'm old school in that way that I still like to hold something in my hands]. Unlike most people I know however, my taste did not petrify the year I graduated college. I'm sure I skew to the right of pitchforkmedia.com's target market but find I agree with their many of their critiques nonetheless.

"My other passion is literature, ever since I realized in 6th grade, after finishing Dickens's Great Expectations, it had the power to make me cry."

Thanks for your support of the center, Patrick, and I look forward to seeing you at many of our events. Don't forget, for the low price of US$50, you too can become a Member of CCLaP; in return you receive a free t-shirt, the same online benefits as Patrick, plus free admission to all 60 of our live events over the next year (or free copies of our first ten books, for those who live out-of-town). Those who are interested can click here to both learn more and to apply this instant.

(Click the above image to see a larger [700-pixel] version.)

I'm happy to announce that CCLaP has its newest Fellow; it's Chicago-based visual artist and fashion designer Brian Heiser. Brian and I met at a local cafe where he works, through mutual friends of ours; I'm a big fan of his work, and am sure you will be as well. Don't forget, Brian has his own category page here at the site now, a central page where you'll be able to find all the latest news and work by him; he also has his own RSS feed, for those who would like to get the latest from him delivered in real time. This is a benefit we give to all Fellows, in fact, along with free admission to all our live events (or copies of our first ten books, for those who live out of town); those who are interested can click here to learn all the details.

I asked Brian if he would give us a few thoughts on the subject of art and creativity; here's what he had to say...

"Art is visual, something different, abstract, or unharmed. To define yourself as an artist is somewhat indifferent; everyone is an artist in and of themselves. It's the people who see things in an obscure way, making an environment look completely different in which no one else could see makes them specific in that understanding. People everyday say that they themselves are artists, but when in fact they are just replications of what someone else did, but I guess that could be defined as art as well. I don't want to pronounce myself in those limited terms, but I want my visual ideas to be out there for people to view. What I see in the world is raw and the naturalness thereof can be beautiful, through that I am inspired and use it to an advantage. I appreciate small simple things and with that my inspiration flows. I have no prerequisites to show for, all I have is myself. Simply look, take in, like or dislike. But in the end remember we are all the same, just some see things a little differently and through that art is made."

Well put! Brian's donated quite a bit of work to CCLaP, by the way, over 20 photographs altogether; we'll be slowly getting that work posted here to the site over the next few months. Thanks again for joining, Brian, and I hope you enjoy your Fellow experience.

Well, so in a day of bad news and entreaties for help, here's at least one good piece of news I can share: that the CCLaP podcast finally has a start date! It's this coming Tuesday, in fact, September 5th; or for you Americans, the day after Labor Day.

For those who don't know, our podcast is not going to have a standard format so much, but rather be like a little network; a combination of field reports from interesting artistic events, recordings of our own live events, interviews with touring artists, studio-produced "shows" and the like. Our first episode on Tuesday, for example, will be of one of these studio-produced shows; it'll be a weekly "talk show" done from the apartment of our director of live events, Nikki Patin. Each week we'll be inviting three or four interesting people to come hang out and drink over at Nikki's place (yeah, just like Digg); we'll then have a half-hour roundtable discussion about various issues in the news that week, and then broadcast the results here every Tuesday.

And speaking of which, have you ever wanted to do a weekly show on the arts yourself? Now would be a good time to let us know, before our schedule fills up! We're up for just about anything arts-related you want to suggest; studio shows, ones done in the field, by yourself or with friends. Just let us know.

Anyway, hope that all of you will end up enjoying our upcoming podcast, and become regular listeners. And don't forget, we also have an RSS feed just for the podcast too, for all of you who would like to fire up your iTunes and other podcast software in advance. Onwards and upwards, my fellow lovers of the arts!

Wow, hard to believe, but after two years of working on the plans for this arts center, our live-event schedule finally begins in a mere two and a half weeks. Yikes, I'm nervous! And that's because we still have a lot to do before the first event happens, including finding venues for our three ongoing shows. Want to help? Got a place in mind? Here's how the month of September is looking, for those who are interested...

--To start, on Friday September 15th will be the first CCLaP Session, in this case featuring Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn. This was formerly scheduled to be held at a coffeehouse in the Uptown neighborhood, owned by the boss of my last day job; but he and I have ended up having a falling-out, so now we're back to having no venue. (It's this previous day job, in fact, that has ended up causing all these problems with CCLaP in the first place; namely, that I ended up putting in over 420 work hours at it in two months, leaving me with just absolutely no time at all this summer to work on these final details.)

--Then on Thursay, September 21st will be the first of our CCLaP Showcases; three to five mid-level writers, many with their own books and zines, each reading on a common subject picked in advance. And yes, once again, we currently have no venue associated with this show.

--And then on Monday, September 25th, comes the date that I know many of you are looking forward to -- the first CCLaP Slam and open mic. And no, we don't have a venue for this yet either!

After this, then, CCLaP settles down into its regular schedule; the Slam every Monday, the Showcases the third Thursday of each month, the Sessions the second Friday of each month. Anyway, that's the latest; and if any of you either own or work at a venue in Chicago that would be interested in sponsoring one of these shows, or simply know of a cool place that you think will likely say yes, by all means please let us know. By all means let us know!

Hey, Chicago-area undergrads! Feel like getting your hands dirty, pulling off some pretty incredible things, and getting college credit for it to boot? Why not become a CCLaP intern? We're looking for someone pretty special as we speak, who would be interested in putting in about 10 hours a week helping to make this organization run smoothly.

Grades aren't important, and neither is your major; what's of most importance to us, in fact, are your ideas, as well as your philosophy about the future of arts administration. As anyone who's read through our PDF brochure knows, we're not your usual arts center, and we're not looking for your usual intern either; we're looking for someone with smart, innovative ideas, ones that are untested but with an inherent logic behind them.

As our intern, you'll have a chance to actually put such ideas into action; you will also be helping the existing staff with scheduling, fundraising, and the actual running of the shows themselves. Unfortunately there's no pay involved; but like I said, we'd be happy to work with your college or university, to make sure you get class credits for your time with us. And of course, in the future as we expand, this internship is the number-one way to guarantee future paid work with us.

To express an interest, please drop us a line in the usual way. Why yes, we are looking for someone right now!

So, I won't lie; we here on the CCLaP staff are starting to feel a wee bit panicky. And that's because our first event, an interview with Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, is coming up in two and a half weeks; and at this point we still don't have nearly the amount of audio and other tech equipment we need to pull the show off. This was supposed to have been paid for with the money I had been making at my day job this summer; but then the owner of that company screwed me out of the money I was owed, which means that we are back to being broke and without equipment.

We are in desperate need of the following, before September 15th:

--Decent-sized speaker;
--Amp;
--Basic mixing controls;
--Four microphones;
--Both full-sized mic stands and desktop ones;
--Mic cords;
--High-quality digital audio recorder;
--A dolly to transport it all.

You wouldn't happen to own any of this equipment yourself, would you? Maybe sitting in a box or a dusty shelf in your basement, where it's not being used? Any chance of...you know, donating it to us? I won't kid you; at this point I'm not sure how we're going to be able to get all this equipment on our own by September 15th; we need help, frankly, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Anyway, as always, just contact us if you could be of service, and as always you get our eternal thank-you and a free Fellowship for your efforts. And don't forget, as a for-profit center we are allowed to take on commercial sponsors as well; if your business would be interested in sponsoring/underwriting one of our regular shows, you should also feel free to contact us.

For those who don't know, CCLaP actually has a number of cutting-edge experiments planned for the website this fall, using the latest in so-called "Web 2.0" technology to help in our continuing mission to support underground artists. These projects are so cutting-edge, in fact, that I don't know how to program them myself; I thought, then, that I would maybe make a mention of the projects here, for any of you with tech/programming backgrounds who would like to help out the center. Don't forget, such projects count towards earning a free Fellowship; build one of these for us, and we'd be happy to give you free admission to our live events for a year (or free copies of our first ten books for those who live out-of-town), a free t-shirt, and all the other things that come with the program.

1) We want to build an in-house wiki here, entitled "The CCLaP Guide to Being a Self-Sustaining Artist." This will basically be a giant interactive document, explaining in detail many of the issues that come with being an underground artist; how to create chapbooks, where to publish your own full-length book, how to book your own tours, what to look for in contracts you sign, just all kinds of things like that. The trick, however, just like with other wikis, is that it's our Members and Fellows actually contributing the information, not just the CCLaP staff.

2) We want to build a social network here, entitled "The Chicago Cafe Network." This would basically be for visual artists in the Chicago area, as well as the cafes, restaurants and bars in Chicago that feature visual artists; a way to streamline the process, in other words, so that not only artists could search for businesses that feature their type of work, but business owners could search for artists that create the type of work they want to feature.

And 3), we want to build a micropayment system here, called "Shoutouts." Micropayments, for those who don't know, are basically loopholes in the credit-card transaction process; a way for two people to exchange just tiny amounts of money (a dime, a quarter, etc), without either party having to incur a heavy transaction fee for doing so. The way it'll work at CCLaP is actually quite simple; for $5.50, you'll have a chance to buy 20 "shoutout credits" worth 25 cents apiece, with the extra 50 cents going towards a one-time transaction fee for those 20 credits. Then anytime you stumble across a poem or story or piece of visual artwork here that you like, you'll simply be able to click on a link saying, "Send this person a Shoutout!" to pay that artist 25 cents. It's not a big moneymaker for sure; but definitely a way to send at least a little compensation to the CCLaP artists you most admire.

Anyway, we're looking for both back-end people (PHP, MySQL, etc) and front-end (Ruby On Rails, AJAX, etc), who would be interested in taking on one or more of these projects, in return for a free Fellowship and our undying thanks. And hey, you even own the code afterwards; sell it commercially, put it on your resume, use it at other sites, we don't care! If you're qualified and interested, simply contact us and let us know. Thanks!