See Me Improving at Stop Smiling

Travis Nichols has written a book of poetry titled "See Me Improving" and to celebrate its launch, some of us will be performing previously untold "talents and amateur attempts" at his book release party at Stop Smiling, tomorrow, Wednesday December 8, starting at 6:30 p.m. (1317 N. Milwaukee Ave). I'm told that among the amateur skills being celebrated are: mixology, headstands, and for my part, I'll be demonstrating my newfound adeptness at applying "smoky eye" makeup. See above for the dramatic difference that it can make. For more info, go to Travis' blog, See Me Improving.

Book review for Stop Smiling, 7/28/09

Just published: a new book review for Stop Smiling, of Nelson Algren's Entrapment. The mag does a thing called "Two Takes," where they have two writers review the same book; then they publish the two reviews alongside each other. Beth Capper wrote the "alternate take."

Stop Smiling; Article: Jean Shepherd

Stop Smiling Magazine
Issue #27 / September 2006

In Shep We Trust: Jean Shepherd Remembered
By: Gretchen Kalwinski

“We spend most of our lives trying to outlive our pasts,” Jean Shepherd claimed in a radio broadcast about encountering raw clams, an unheard-of food in the meatloaf-Indiana of his youth. “And we never do quite expunge the past.” Known as “Shep”, Jean Shepherd (1921-1999), was a raconteur, writer, and actor, but his true legacy was his genius for weaving everyday events into goosebump-inducing radio narratives. He created a magnificent intimacy with his listeners in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Radio producer Harry Shearer notes; “He told supercilious East Coasters stories about the Midwest, not the romanticized Midwest of small-town life, but a Midwest that we didn’t know existed—the Midwest of steel mills, of tornados.” Broadcaster Joe Frank, a former insomniac, claims that Shepherd “had such a positive, life-affirming humanity that it gave me a genuine sense of comfort…. that made it possible to fall asleep.”

Shepherd grew up in Hammond, Indiana, a mill town bordering Chicago’s South Side, gaining mainstream fame for the film “A Christmas Story,” based on his short story collection, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. In 1955, he moved to New York where he began his radio show, but Shepherd’s voice retained his origins, and his crooning; (“After you’re gone, dere ain’t no denyin,’) contained the unmistakably nasal undertones of South Side Chicago and Calumet Region. He read poetry and organized listener pranks, often while kazoo-playing, with show topics ranging from his scorn of advertising, love of pickles, or the White Sox. But his best-known are those about kid-dom in the rustbelt Midwest. One show compares a steel mill to Dante’s sixth circle of hell; “I’m gonna tell you people about how different life is outside of the PJ Clarke and martini-drinker orbit. I worked on the bull gang in a steel mill… in a town that hangs like a rusty barnacle from the South Side of Chicago.” In Excelsior You Fathead!: The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd, Eugene Berman notes that Shepherd "tickled the better parts of your mind" because he knew just when to pick up speed or change course. This skill is the ability to make a dollar out of fifteen cents, and Shepherd had it in spades. His improvisational mastery led to friendships with Jack Kerouac and Charles Mingus; he collaborated with Mingus on his 1957 album, The Clown.

Often blurring fact and fiction, Shepherd often lied about or withheld actual biographical information; repeatedly denying the existence of his two children, who he abandoned along with his first wife. Shepherd gleefully disdained “suits” and enjoyed playing the disenfranchised gadfly. He sometimes lapsed into ranting and buffoonery, calling women chicks and portraying the gender as daffy biddies, and it’s assumed that the warmth in his storytelling probably wasn’t present in his personal life. In Hammond, Shepherd’s name inspires mixed emotions. The town has a community center in his name, and many revere him as “Hammond’s Most Famous Resident.” Others revile him for characterizing them as provincial, working-class stiffs; “If Chicago is the city of broad shoulders, then Northwest Indiana is its broad rear end.” But the region was his bread and butter, and in the rest of the world, he’s only marginally known. In 1999, Shepherd died alone in Florida with his past so emphatically shed that his obituary read: “no survivors.”

If you squint, a nighttime drive through Hammond is a Venice of glistening marshes and rivers. Cheap hotels flash neon, and lumbering freight trains blow whistles, while smokestacks on Lake Michigan pump smoke and blue-orange flames around the neighborhoods. Despite himself, Shepherd couldn’t shake these childhood impressions, and spent his life using his voice to drift into people’s nighttime consciousness. Being immortalized by his similarity to the Calumet Region would be bittersweet to Shepherd, but the words he broadcast through the night air voiced a desolation and ugliness so intense that it became beautiful, and he managed to transcend the smokestacks, hovering in listener’s minds like a pervasive cloud. --GK

Stop Smiling; Article, Third Coast International Audio Festival

Stop Smiling Magazine

Issue #27
September 2006
The Third Coast

By: Gretchen Kalwinski

The Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF) began in 2000 as a Chicago Public Radio project with the goal of celebrating the “best feature and documentary audio work heard worldwide on the radio and Internet.” TCIAF has myriad components including an annual conference and competition, and a website that archives Re: sound, a weekly radio program. TCIAF produced the cd that accompanies the Midwest issue, and here’s what executive director Johanna Zorn had to say about the Midwest tie-in.

How did you choose the pieces for the cd?
We wanted to offer a variety of examples, so we picked some favorites that demonstrate the versatility of the radio form. There are four tracks, and three of them were made by producers from Illinois or Michigan. The stories are all over the place! There's a first-person narrative by a young gay boy trying to find his way in the world, and a documentary about a town in Arkansas that's forever changed by the appearance of a bird. The topics are very different, but what they all have in common is that sound plays an essential role in each story.

Who were some of the producers and artists?
Some may surprise you--for instance, writer Rick Moody and musician Sujfan Stevens. Artists from other mediums have a growing interest in using audio to tell stories and make art; we're witnessing a renaissance in using radio as a storytelling medium. Now, the tools for audio production are relatively low-cost; anyone can podcast through the Internet, and there are more radio programs out there inspiring folks who never took a journalism class to pick up some equipment and get busy.

Why did you choose the name “Third Coast Festival”?
While other cities may stake their claim to the third coast, we felt the title was especially fitting for a festival rooted in the heart of America's Midwest and headquartered on Navy Pier in Chicago, right where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan. So the third coast is literal, another name for our prime location, but since we're an international festival, we also hope it evokes coasts throughout the world. ---GK