punk planet

Even though I've never read Blender, much less paid for 12 monthly issues, I am now a subscriber. I'm a bit at a loss how this happened. A few possible scenarios:

1. A friend or family member thought this would make a great gift. The problem with that scenario is my friends and family members are perpetually broke
2. My wife decided there aren't enough photos of scantily clad 19 year old starlets around the house
3. Some intern came across my byline somewhere online and somehow mistook me for a person of tastemaking influence
4. Bender decided to trump Paste's pay-what-you-want deal and are now signing up random people for subscriptions

From Punk Planet 80

When the Independent Press Association went under, the independent publishing community lost more than a distribution arm.

Late in December 2006, while most offices were closed for the holidays, the Independent Press Association (IPA) quietly sent an e-mail to its member publications announcing that the organization was closing its doors. Despite previous optimism expressed by the IPA's board of directors, for many of the publishers whose titles the organization distributed, it came as little surprise. For them, the IPA's sudden announcement was endemic to a total communications breakdown between the organization and its client publications that began in early 2005. Publications represented by the IPA continue to contend with the likelihood that thousands of dollars they are owed will never be seen. For some, such as Kitchen Sink (and Punk Planet itself), this comes as the IPA's final, and fatal, blow. The fallout has been profound-the independent publishing community has experienced an unprecedented bloodletting in recent months, as magazines run on a shoestring have been unable to overcome huge losses in operating income.

Jane Palmer and Marianne Fairbanks of Noon Solar (formerly working under the moniker JAM, which is the name you'd recognize from PP 73) are featured as "entrepeneurs" in the new issue of Crain's Chicago Business. Somewhat oddly, Miss Alex White also makes an appearance:

Raman Chadha is noticing something different about the students coming to DePaul University's Coleman Entrepreneurship Center: More of them are women. . .

http://venuszine.com/stories/arts/4414

They interviewed me for this piece, along with Jackson Ellis of Verbicide and, of course, Dan and Anne.

I lost it :( or stolen, or thrown away.

Help Please!

Five years ago, with the help of Dave Hoffa, who at the time was a new intern at Punk Planet and went on to be the final reviews editor of the magazine, I built sturdy, real, walls in the Punk Planet office. We painted them bright colors and over the years covered them with stickers and pictures and hopes and dreams.

Today, with the help of Hunter Clauss, Punk Planet's last intern, I started tearing them down.

As terribly sad as it all is, there's something very satisfying in ripping walls out of the ground with nothing but your bare hands. The sweat on your brow and the dust in your lungs reminds you that you're still alive.

So my copy of #80 just came shrink-wrapped in the mail. I don't think I'm gonna open it. I don't want to. I can't figure it actually...the impulse NOT to open it. It's not wanting to say goodbye, sure, but there's something else. Anyway, for now, I'm leaving it wrapped.

I have a shelf of Punk Planets in my office. The collection only goes back to my first collaboration with the magazine, a cover story about Iraq in 1999.

I just put the wrapped #80 in its rightful place: squeezed in right next to #79. It's all working out fine. There's no room for a #81.

It's fine and it isn't. I'm going to miss this magazine. Not because the world will be empty without it. The world will not be empty without it. If you disagree (Dan and Anne, you are exempted here), you are foolish. Whatever you got from Punk Planet - and there was so much to be gotten - go and find it somewhere else. Whoever is offering it can surely use your support.

get a hanky, and prepare for a good half of my personal home telephone number: It's Anne and Dan on Chicago Public Radio!

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/CityRoom_Story.aspx?storyID=11554

p.s. I'm going to blog a lot today.

One important thing that Punk Planet did very early on (issue 17, to be exact) was to start paying our writers. It was never much (it never could be), but it was something--$30 here, $50 there--for their efforts and work. Unfortunately, those payments stopped about six issues ago, due to our ongoing fiscal crisis. Now, with the magazine over, the debt we owe to these writers looms large. We're asking for your help.