Quit Your Wining
With the passage of HB 429 in 2008, of-age Illinois citizens lost their right to buy wines from out-of-state retailers. Some Illinois wine-lovers, not a bunch to take things lying down, have formed IWCC, the Illinois Wine Consumer Coalition. "We are a group of people that have run across each other on different Web sites and different boards and had the same complaints about not being able to get the wine we wanted," explains Gretchen Neuman, IWCC Steering Committee member. "As we talked, we realized we needed to organize." While they met and organized online, the IWCC Steering Committee also gets together in person. "We all met in December," Neuman says. "We sat around at Bin 36 drinking wine and talking about the laws." Alas, it is not all wine-swilling and mud-slinging. "At this point we are trying to gather members and inform the public about what's going on," Neuman says. "We're hoping that with enough voices, enough signatures on the petition, we can get the attention of our legislators and change this anti-consumer law. We are hoping that as little as a few thousand names can really make our voice heard."

Bad at Sports
InCUBATE, the Institute for Community Understanding Between Art and The Everyday, has put together a quirky set of events to generate a dialogue about the 2016 Olympic Games under a guise of their own: The Unlympics. In cooperation with person-in-residence Anne Elizabeth Moore, the Unlympics will begin with Opening Day Ceremonies on January 24 at the InCUBATE space (2129 North Rockwell) and continue every Saturday until February 14. Competitions include events in Class-Conscious Kickball, Fashion, Karaoke, Live Action Role Play Family Dinner, Dry Humping, Spelling and many more. "My fiancée and I will also be entering the Official Unlympics Valentine's Day Karaoke Competition at No Coast as a duet," says Matthew Joynt, Chicago Unlympics Events Coordinator. "I don't want to give too much away. I can, however, guarantee coordinated dancing and puff paint."

Ice Box Cometh
On January 23, Ice Box Press holds a reading and book signing at Quimby's in Wicker Park, in celebration of Ryan Pendell’s chapbook release, “Say To These Bones, LIve!” Also reading will be poets Tara Walker and Erin Messer, previewing their upcoming releases. "My book of poems, ‘Say To These Bones, LIve!,’ captures a lot of the joy and humor I find in language while keeping a kind of hopeful melancholy about the world," Pendell says of his book. "As the title suggests, my work speaks to the yearning for repair and resurrection inside the human heart." Of Walker and Messer, he says, "I think our styles create a rich dialogue together, a playful experimental poetry that has become a trademark of our generation of poets."

(2009-01-20)

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