theBarnstorming

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March 28, 2007

Busy and Then Some

While I was eating my way through Kentucky, Robbi stayed behind, laboring away on Volume 6. Such was the vigor of her industry that late last night we called the work completed. Today we printed out our first official copy and, as is our habit, signed and dated it. We sometimes remember to take a picture as well. Today we remembered. And so you may see it.

Yes, this is a true sneak peek, folks. Meant to titilate and delight those of you who are subscribers. And meant to send those of you who have not yet taken the plunge into a kind of anticipatory angst. What will this book be about, you wonder? How can I live, knowing that I will not know? Any of you subscribers who are enabling non-subscribers to not subscribe by quenching their anticipatory angst should be ashamed of yourself. Ultimately, you're encouraging behaviour that will lead said subscription-leecher down a slippery road of mendacity and self-loathing. Which will lead you down a similar road. In time, not only will our non-subscribers be riddled with angst, but so will the enabling masses that call themselves subscribers. You see what I'm saying. It's a lose-lose.

But moving on to the "Then Some" part of this entry, fresh on the heels of printing, binding, and stuffing Volume 6, which will go out next Tuesday with hopes of reaching our noble subscribers [not you shifty, dissembling non-subscribing hordes] by the end of next week), we are headed to DC this weekend to do another gallery installation. J.T. (of Hot Brown fame) is the Assistant Director of a new gallery, H&F Fine Arts, in the Gateway Arts District of Mt. Rainier, MD, just outside of DC. He has asked us to do a semi-permanent wall painting in the gallery's boutique, which will be carrying our books.

Here is the space in question:

It's 13 feet tall and about 7 feet wide, including the little jog in the wall. Our charge was to create a wall painting/mural that would 1) serve as an exemplar of what Idiots'Books "does" 2) create a visual anchor that will draw people's attention to the shelf of Idiots'Books that they might buy them, and 3) create an image so stunning and eye-catching that passersby on the sidewalk and street might be compelled to abandon their previous engagement and visit H&F Artworks instead.

Our wall can be seen through the front window.

Another challenge is working around this fire alarm, which sits at about eye level, right in the middle of our wall.

Robbi has come up with a clever solution for incorporating the fire alarm into the heart of the action. You will see.

Here are Karen and Cheryl, the two women who own and run H&F. We'll post a better picture of them at some point. When I took this picture, I had only known them for a few minutes. Not long enough to insist on a head-on picture for a Web site. Just well enough to feel like I could get away with a shifty, sideways picture.

We are heading in to DC on Sunday afternoon. We're going to start work when the gallery closes, just after 3:00pm and work until we're done. Robbi estimates that it will take us all afternoon and night Sunday and straight through Monday and Monday night. So any of you subscribers (and blameworthy, iniquitous non-subscribers who still call themselves friends of ours) should feel free to stop by the gallery any time between 3:00pm Sunday afternoon and 3:00am Tuesday morning. Come peer through the window at our bleary-eyed progress. Come bring us plates of warm food.

The last piece of "Busy" is really quite exciting. A few months ago now, the folks at Artiste Locale, a shop in St. Michaels, MD, a town about an hour south of here on the Eastern Shore, asked us to consider writing a book about St. Michaels that they might sell in their shop. We chewed on the idea and found it to our liking. I wrote a draft, which I shared with our friends at Artiste Locale, and which they found to their liking. While I was off breakfasting on the Mega Ho Triple, Robbi did some initial illustration studies. We came up with concepts for illustrations throughout the book. Last Wednesday we made our pitch, complete with various printing scenarios. The folks at Artiste Locale seemed pleased, but we decided not to count our chickens in spite of the rising excitement we both felt.

Later on that very night we learned that they had decided to partner with us on having the book printed professionallly, in Hong Kong of all places. We'll be ordering 2,500 hardcover books. Meaning: they will look and feel like real books AND we won't have to print, trim, paste, score, staple or in any way bind them. They will be delivered nicely wrapped in crates. It's really quite a stunning thing to contemplate.

Our book will be titled, St. Michaels, The Town that Fooled the British. Lest this title puzzle you, have a look at the sign that one sees when one drives into town:

Apparently, when St. Michaels was about to come under attack as part of the British offensive in the War of 1812, the townspersons of St. Michaels contrived an ingenious scheme to hang their lanterns from their rooftops and from the tops of the masts of their ships. This clever maneuver caused the British, who anticpated that the lanterns would be hung in typical relation to the ground, to fire their cannons too high, thus overshooting St. Michaels, and failing to do much damage in the warring scheme of things. By all accounts (other than the sign above), the whole story is a bunch of hoo-hah. But since we care little for historical fact, we decided to tell an apocryphal story in our apocryphal way. Perhaps things didn't happen as we suggest, but we contend that 1) they could have and 2) it doesn't matter if they didn't.

Apparently, Artiste Locale has been able to sell a few of our books in spite of its being the off-season. Here's the nice display they put up near the front of the store.

According to Marnie, one of the folks at Artiste Locale, they stratigically position a few "man-friendly" items at the front of the store so that the husbands have something to do while their wives venture to the back of the store to browse yarn and other unmanly items. In addition to our books, which have been getting some major air-time from the husbands, man-friendly items include hollow wooden drums and rock candles. We are simple, predictable creatures, we men.

I must admit, when I went into Artiste Locale for the first time, I went right to the hollow wooden drum. And then to the rock candle.

The last part of "Busy" is Volume 7, which is already under way. It would be premature to tell you much about it, but I will tell you (subscribers and base, contemptible non-subscribers alike) that my research for Volume 7 involves eating fried foods and watching zombie movies.

Got to go get started now, actually.

Posted by bogenamp at March 28, 2007 10:42 PM

Comments

Posted by: ming at March 29, 2007 11:52 AM