Snap shot

Have you seen those matchbooks bearing anonymous photo-booth photos scattered around various coffeehouses in the city? They are the teasers for "A Booth Project," the endeavor of Verdir Studios, a small interactive-media organization. Keenan McDonald and partner Janice Phillips came up with the idea to have people from all over the city, as well as around the globe, post their photos on their website http://wonder.verdir.com, launched the end of June. McDonald is fascinated by how photo-booth photos can become mementos from a forgotten night. "I always kept them, but I think the first time I ever did it, I didn't think I would be looking at it four years later." She also hopes for the website to become a social experiment of sorts. "I also had this idea that people would post old photos of friends, and then their friends would stumble over them, and these friends would come into contact with each other." Her favorite photo booth in the city is the Rainbo in Wicker Park--"It's always been the mainstay"--but she also appreciates quick-pic culture in Berlin, which has photo booths in every train station.

Hawk hunting

Wilmette native Jerry Vasilatos can actually say that he was inspired by spam. When the president of Nitestar Productions, a multimedia production company in Los Angeles, was consistently barraged by emails shilling for the "Deck of Weasels," a card set taking aim at celebrity antiwar protestors, it got him and his wife, Lisa, who he met while at Columbia College, thinking. "Frankly, I was offended at it," he says. If people are going to point their finger at the unpatriotic, then what about the many Republicans who got out of serving their country, like our current president, he thought? So the idea for "The Deck of Republican Chickenhawks" took flight. After posting their website on a few boards, they had 500 orders within the first week, and have sold one thousand orders to date of the satirical deck of 52 pro-war Republicans wanting personally in armed-service records, ranging from op-ed columnist Ann Coulter, dubbed "Wicked Witch of the Right," to Dick Cheney. Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow linked their website, www.chickenhawkcards.com, on his page, which has helped the card entrepreneurs get 50,000 web hits since they went live mid-May.

(2003-07-16)

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