Arts DEVO

CNARTS In anticipation of Artoberfest, and the largely Chico-rooted arts love we’ll all soon be spreading, Arts DEVO is going to take a moment to give a shout out to a couple of former members of the CN&R family who have busted out of the Chico cocoon to spread their creative wings.

First up is Jory John, the former CN&R intern and Orion cartoonist whose exploits in art and design, arts mentoring and publishing we’ve highlighted in these pages before. Now based in Santa Cruz, John recently sent me links to two new ventures, both collaborations with writer Avery Monsen. The first is a single-panel comic called Open Letters featuring unlikely, amusing letters written to various off-the-wall entities: “Dear The Internet,” “Dear Science,” “Dear Guys Named Gordon,” etc. The other project is a really clever-looking new book called All My Friends Are Dead, with scenes from the point of view of dinosaurs, old men, lonely socks and others standing hilariously alone at the edge of existence. Visit John’s sites for info on his books (http://nomorefriends.net); his comic (openletterscomic.tumblr.com) and other designs (www.bigstonehead.net).

Also busy on the big scene is long-ago CN&R designer and cover artist Gary Edward Blum. Old-school A.D. pal and notable figure-sculptor Dan Corbin called and clued me into the fact that, not only has Blum been showing at the respected Dolby Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco (for which he recently received positive notice in the S.F. Chronicle), and had two of his pieces purchased by Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum, but he’s also slated to appear in the October issue of Art in America, which is totally badass.

DEVOtions

• The Head Cat: Lemmy from Motörhead’s ’50s-rock cover band, featuring drummer Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats and guitarist Danny B. Harvey, takes over the El Rey Theatre Thursday, Sept. 23.

• Bacon and bubbly: Help the Blue Room Theatre raise money for this season’s productions at a bacon-and-champagne-and-live-music brunch Sunday, Sept. 19. (See Special Events, p. 30.)

• And, end with a joke: In anticipation of the TV debut of the year (tonight, Sept. 16, 10 p.m., on FX) A.D. has selected a few choice quotes from Charlie, the loveable glue-sniffing, waitress-stalking janitor of Paddy’s Pub on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, to tide us over:

• Do wasps make honey? … All right, well, I’m gonna check it out anyway, there could be something delicious in here that wasps do make and I want that.

• Cannibalism? Racism? Dude that’s not for us. … Those decisions are better left to the suits in Washington. We’re just here to eat some dude!

• I always knew my cat Annabelle could smell crime, among other things.

• I’ll just regress, because I feel I’ve made myself perfectly redundant.

• Did you fuck my mom, Santa Claus?!