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March 22 - 30, 2005
The Laugh While You Can Tour 2005. My colleagues Tom Hart and Jen Sorenson and I performed a series of slideshow/ readings in Providence, Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. I met a number of my longtime fans, described in the Philadelphia Weekly as "urban fringe people who come out only at 4 A.M." At last I met my young protege Jamie, the guy who sends me photos of stuffed animals with snarky political word balloons, and the woman who wrote an insightful review of my first book for The Sex Herald. I learned that my friend Zero has become involved in a new job that seems shady at best; wherever he travels in the world, turmoil and revolution seem to follow. I predict his headless corpse will be found in a ditch somewhere in Asia Minor. In both Boston and D.C. crazy ladies asked questions that had no point and no end, and they both eventually had to be shut down by bookstore employees or fellow audience members. I met Tom Tomorrow and Janeane Garofolo, and neither fought the former nor asked out the latter. I acquired many new groupies and stalkers, was asked out to lunch, given two phone numbers, and have received a number of follow-up e-mails. I was issued three parking tickets. On the last night of our tour, in D.C., I gave an impromptu speech during the Q.&A. that both Tom and Jen described as "transcendent." The aviator sunglasses that Lucre gave me to wear in her Porsche in Seattle were destroyed, and my friend Megan said she was glad.
Tim Kreider will be going on tour with two other social/political cartoonists, Tom Hart and Jen Sorenson, in March. Tom Hart is the author of the legendary Hutch Owen's Working Hard; Jen Sorenson draws a weekly cartoon, Slowpoke, which, like The Pain, appears in a few alternative papers but deserves way more recognition than it's received. Together they will be doing the Laugh While You Can tour, a series of lectures, readings, and signings at colleges and bookstores in that beseiged bastion of American civilization, the Northeast. Tour dates include:
Wednesday, March 23 - PROVIDENCE: reading at Rhode
Island School of Design, 4 P.M.
Thursday, March 24th - BOSTON: Signing at The Million-Year Picnic, 4 P.M. Reading
at the Lucy Parsons Center, 7 PM.
Friday, March 25th - NEW YORK CITY: Signing at Jim Hanley's Universe, 6 P.M.
Saturday, March 26th - NEW HAVEN: Reading at Atticus Bookstore, 4 P.M.
Sunday, March 27th: NEW YORK CITY: Reading at the KBG Bar, 7 P.M.
Monday, March 28th: PHILADELPHIA: Reading at Robin's Book Store, 7 P.M.
Tuesday, March 29th: WASHINGTON, D.C. Reading at the Warehouse Theater, 7 P.M
Additional details will be posted here as events are confirmed. Also see the
official tour website at http://www.newhatstories.com/laughwhileyoucan/
November 7, 2004
Tim discusses the grim prospect of having to draw another four years of political cartoons for Ben Walker's radio show The Theory of Everything. In the same episode, Pain regular Chris discusses the grim prospect of working for another four years on a Republican-controlled Capitol Hill.
October 29, 2004
Tim Kreider interviews Jules Feiffer for Indy Magazine. Highlight: Tim asks, "Are things really as bad--" They're worse," Feiffer says.
October 25, 2004
Tim lectures on Watchmen
and the graphic novel at Colby
College in Waterville, Maine.
October 23, 2004
Baltimore photographer Sam
Holden attends a reception for the opening of a show of his work at Mission
Space (338 N. Charles Street) from 7-10 P.M. The show is rumored to include
the official portrait of Tim Kreider and his friends.
October 10, 2004
Was that Tim Kreider surrounded by five
professional domiatrices in various states of undress in a midtown Manhattan
hotel room? He was later identified in the company of erotic model Sadie
Lune admiring the stained glass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, browsing the
lingerie section of Saks 5th Avenue, and enjoying a cocktail at Rockefeller
Center's glamorous Rainbow Room. And the next day he was seen brunching with
Film Quarterly editor Ann
Martin on the upper West Side.
October 1, 2004
Tim releases a special pre-election limited edition of his next book, titled
Fuck Them All,
a collection of his best poltiical cartoons chronicling the current Era of Darkness.
It is still available through this website and at bookstores in the handful
of civilized enclaves left in America.
September 29, 2004
Tim's essay on sex, humor, and cartoons, titled "The
Trouble With Girls," appeared in the Baltimore City Paper's comics
issue. (His original title, "The Women, They Are Killing Me," was
not used.)
September 28, 2004
Tim and Big Jim seen backstage at the Wilco
show at the Myerhoff, talking politics with keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and
front man Jeff Tweedy, much to the annoyance of circling would-be groupies.
Thankfully Jim refrained from raising his voice or jabbing his finger at either
Mike or Jeff.
September 2004
T-Shirts of the cartoon "One-Termer" become
available at CafePress.
June 29, 2004
Tim exchanged books with David Foster Wallace at a New York signing for Wallace's
new collection, Oblivion. According
to eyewitnesses, they were both very polite.
May 29, 2004
It is, perhaps, a mercy that those who did not attend the book release party
for the Fantagraphics
collection of The
Pain--When Will It End? will never understand how stunted and
lustreless and without meaning their lives will always be. The general consensus
is that it was the most fun anyone present had ever had. "It was like a
reunion," said one attendee who had never met any of the other guests before.
Tim and entourage took the Water Taxi to Fell's Point for a signing at Reptilian
Records, then back to South Baltimore for the party at Cox's Pub. All books
sold out. Tim Kreider was presented with a work of art stolen from an eight-year-old
and an enormous rusted sling blade. Underground radio personality Benjamen
Walker unexpectedly flew in from Boston. Tim's beloved groupie, erotic model
Sadie Lune, on a special visit from San Francisco, wore a white slip decorated
with silkscreens of Tim's cartoons of his own face. (The cartoon "Sodomy
Legalized" was tastefully situated over her ass.) Both she and transsexual
memoirist Jennifer Boylan
are rumored to have made out with cartoonist Emily
Flake in the ladies' room. (Ms. Flake denies this, and everything.) Boyd
White, wearing an Arab headdress and a T-shirt that said "FUCK TIM KREIDER!",
reportedly told novelist Myla Goldberg
that he loved her breasts. Alicia danced with Wilco's visual effects designer
Deborah Johnson
to "Let's Go Crazy" so lasciviously that the local ladies were forced
to rip off their own shirts in a last-ditch effort to wrench attention back
to themselves. Tim was seen kissing two different women, neither of whom were
his date. There was rampant slapping and laughter to the point of weeping. Tiny
meatballs were served. Most importantly of all, what had until then been the
entirely theoretical Coattail Effect was empirically proven beyond doubt to
exist. And that was only the first night.
April
29, 2004
Tim Kreider attended the signing/launch party for Attitude
2: The New Subversive Cartoonists, wearing a Parisian suit with an American
Flag pin in the lapel. Also in attendance were Emily Flake, David Rees, and
Tim's professional nemesis, Dan Perkins (a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow). To the disappointment
of fans, Tim and Tom Tomorrow did not come to blows.
