Hey, hey, more great official news to announce concerning my new arts center, opening this September; I now have the URL for its website registered, so I can in fact now start referring to it in public by its real name, without worrying about some asshole stealing the domain from me. So I'm happy to announce for the first time in public that the name of my new arts center is:

And for those who can't see the above image for one reason or another, that's the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, or "CCLaP" for short. Which, yes, already tells me something about who you are, and what chances you think this center has of success, based on what you thought immediately after hearing the name: "Cool, the acronym spells out applause, like a live audience," or "eww, the acronym spells out a venereal disease," because I've been getting a lot of both among my private reviewers over the last two years. So that's cool, needless to say, that I can actually start referring to it by its real name in public, and change my category names to reflect the name (which I'll do this evening, after traffic's died down again for the day), and can start building 'brand awareness' and all that other marketing crap. And for those who are curious, this name actually goes all the way back to when I first envisioned the center in the first place, in Europe in the fall of 2003. Which is actually a pretty interesting story, so I'll share it again with new readers who haven't heard it before...

In 2003 I made my first-ever trip to Europe, nearly a month in Germany while on a book tour, visiting around 12 or 15 cities total, staying each time with local writers and artists, who I had met either through the poetry-slam community or online. And so that was a doubly wonderful treat, of course; because I was getting all the craziness of a backpacker's first European adventure, and getting great stories about what drunk local artists are concerned about there, and getting dragged off to underground adventures I would've never found on my own as a backpacking tourist. And random craziness happened all over the country, in each new city I went to, and all kinds of adventures were indeed to be had, which is why I now try to go on such international adventures regularly.

Anyway, so one of the places I visited that year was Munich, for six days total in fact, and the people I stayed with while there were Sebastian Unterreitmeier and his girlfriend, Carolin Kretsch. And they were not writers themselves, interestingly enough, but actually two really incredible photographers. See, Sebastian is like a secret fourth member of the Beastie Boys (even the right age), and loves photographing the edges of society - the skateboarders, the porn stars, the poets, etc. And so he shoots regularly at the Munich poetry slam, and is a friend of the host there as well; and see, an ex-girlfriend of mine moved to Munich a number of years ago, and was reading at the open mics there regularly, and Sebastian apparently kind of fell in love with her (which happens a lot with this ex-girlfriend), which is how we met online, despite him not being a writer himself, because he was Googling her name and came across my site as a result. Whew. (UPDATE: Here, by the way, is where you can see some nice photos Sebastian took of me while I was staying with them, at this decrepid old laundromat in a sketchy section of town, coincidentally filled with all these bright knockoff Disney paintings. Sebastian thought it'd be a perfect place to photograph an American writer on a European tour. I look like a rock star, man!)

Anyway. The two of them actually live right across the street from the Olympic Park, believe it or not, in one of those prefab Danish spaces you see a lot of on the edges of German cities; as if IKEA had designed an entire one-bedroom apartment from the ground-up, put a bunch on a truck and stacked them up on-site. And this means big white walls and lots of tasteful teal furniture, and so Sebastian's used the space to hang big giant prints of some of his work, stuff ready for galleries but not currently in one. And wow, it just smacks you in the face, the moment you walk in their place, of how elegant and cool their space feels, and you quickly realize that it's these amazing photos, hung in these gignormous sizes, scattered throughout the place.

Staying with two working stiffs for six days, of course, I had plenty of afternoons with the place to myself (and their 13-year-old dog, who mostly waddled around and farted a lot), and to just silently marvel at how great Sebastian's photography was, especially when blown up to those impressive sizes. And suddenly it just popped into my head one day, "Wow, wouldn't it be great to have a place back in Chicago, where I could expressly just show off people like Sebastian? Just a nice simple little white gallery, where instead of big names I could show people I just randomly stumble across. And it might result in some of his work getting sold, or it might not, but if I gave the place the right name, it would at least add this very impressive-sounding credential to one's resume, and give the artist an excuse to take a holiday in Chicago."

And then ten seconds later I had this thought, which occurred to a lot of you as well, I'm sure: "Yeah, but a little underground gallery like that wouldn't really cut it, would it? Very few of even the big well-known galleries in River North, selling really important work for tremendous amounts of money, are making a profit these days; most of them, frankly, are vanity projects set up by rich husbands for their wives, to keep their wives out of their hair. If you really wanted to concentrate on underground artists and still make decent money, you'd have to build...I don't know, a whole media empire for it all. Do it the same way as Time Warner, but for good instead of evil - live appearances, tour sponsorship, albums, books, video, a publicity machine behind it all, one shared set of resources so as to cross-promote everything and everyone against each other. But like I said, all of it in this case for poetry slammers, hiphop artists, self-publishing intellectuals, graffiti artists, photographers who like to take photos of skateboarders and porn stars, etc.

That's really the main thing fueling everything else behind CCLaP, for those who might not realize; it is at its heart an attempt to bring more legitimacy to underground artists. The whole point of CCLaP existing is to hopefully provide things to underground artists that they can't easily get on their own; an impressive credential to list in their bio, bigger audiences, more money, more opportunities, more mentions in the press, more notice. It was crucial that even the name itself reflect this mission, to let the listener immediately know that we were a serious organization. There are so many artistic groups with silly names like "Flaming Tongues Out Loud!" or "DosMosDef Collective" or whatever; underground artists' bios are full of those, so I wanted them to have a chance as well to say, "And I had a book published by the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography." "Wow, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography? That's impressive!"

A cheat, you say? A gimmicky way to add legitimacy to an artist's resume? No, not really, I counter; because like I said, even the name is merely a reflection of the overall goal, of building a place truly worthy of a name like that. Even if a person is intimately familiar with CCLaP, I still want their reaction to be, "Wow, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography? That's impressive!" And I've talked about this before here, of course, about how our overriding (and really, our only important) goal in the first year will be to establish our reputation - as a place that points out underground artists of outstanding caliber, and that delivers real benefits to those artists themselves. It's all part of a master plan, not one part leading another; it's not the name that brings legitimacy, but an overall legitimacy that includes the name.

Anyway, so that's when I thought of the name as well - back in Munich, sitting around Sebastian's apartment. And at the time, of course, it just got socked into that file of pipe dreams in the back of my head, that I'm always carrying around with me and most likely will never see to fruition. And I should explain, I guess, that I have ten or twelve of these in my head at any given time, just fun little hypothetical projects that I pull out from a dusty shelf every now and again, add a few more details and put back. There is Haven, for example, my idea for a 'coffeeshop' (a place that legally sells pot) in the red-light district of Amsterdam; clean hipster conditions, fully ventilated, not a Bob Marley beach towel in sight, a place that would hopefully attract a cult following like CBGB's in New York, where indie-rockers stop in while on tour, play a few impromptu songs on our stage in return for free weed. Oh, and then a retail place next door, I should've mentioned that, with tourist items like t-shirts and stuff, but also serious equipment for the local home grower; as well as a cutting-edge growing facility in the back, where we grow the special hybrid stuff we sell next door in the retail side, much like a microbrewery selling new batches. And then both tourists and locals can get free tours of the growing facilities if they want; and for example, we would sponsor a local "weed snob" growing competition for the locals each year as well, like American places sponsor regional wine competitions, to encourage the local community. The name of the place, by the way, is courtesy of my buddy Garth, who claims that it means the same thing in a whole bunch of different languages, perfect for Amsterdam.

Anyway, dorky ol' me, like I said, I've got like twelve of these ideas, each one detailed to the same point as above, stuck in the back of my head all the time, most of them not remotely ready to be tried yet, most frankly never actually tried at all. And CCLaP was back there on that shelf for a year as well, until August 2004 when I formally decided that I was going to quit pursuing a career as a writer, and instead pursue a career in...er, something else. So these twelve items from this shelf got pulled off and dusted off (including also a thinktank for issues on electronic text; "The Poet Hotel," combining the best of a B&B and a hostel; and others), and then maybe another ten or so ideas were added as well, like a website for citizen journalism, going back to graduate school (after finishing up the last three hours of my bachelor's, that is), teaching ESL in another country, etc. And I cycled through them and cycled through them, and that list got down to ten items, and then maybe five, and then down to two (CCLaP and the citizen-journalism site), then down to CCLaP. And that's for the reasons I've explained here before: because it took most advantage of the things in life I've already done; because it combines old ideas in a new way more profoundly than any of the other ideas; and again, more that I won't go into.

So anyway, that's that. And so this week what I'm hoping to do is build on this momentum a little, and maybe even get the first three features for the "CCLaP Sessions" solidly booked for this fall. This is the series, to remind you, that will take place in the back room of Dollop Coffeehouse, in the Uptown/Buena Park neighborhood where I live; monthly talks between me and intriguing people in the literary community, like novelists, journalists, critics and the like, done in the style of Charlie Rose or "Inside the Actor's Studio." One of them's no secret, of course - it's Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, who has publicly said that he'd be interested, so I'm hoping maybe I can now just peg him to a formal date and commitment. And one of them's still kind of secret for now, but it involves the heads of two well-known, supposedly competing hipster websites (who aren't really competing, but the appearance helps fuel popularity of both), appearing on stage at the same time with me, for an hour-long talk about their backgrounds, their aims with the sites, and what the competition aspect really means. And that would be extremely cool, because I think this would be the first time the two of them have ever appeared together like this on one stage before, which I think would attract a lot of attention. And then I haven't even contacted my third idea yet, so I won't even mention a clue about them here for now.

Oh, and I finally got an email off to the hipster bar in Uptown where I'm hoping to hold the weekly CCLaP Slam starting this fall; and I got him the PDF file that explains the entire center, and also pre-answered some questions I figured he'd likely have. So I'm hoping he'll dig the idea, and that he and I can sit down soon and actually hash out the details, so that I'll have yet one more official announcement to make about the center. (And then there's the third venue, of course, a bookstore where I want to host the CCLaP Showcases [monthly themed invitational events, centering on one type of writer], but I haven't contacted them yet either, so we'll leave them out of the discussion for now too.)

Oh, and for those who have already inquired: yes, I'm of course happy to hear from anyone who's interested even at this date with working for the center; but please understand that it would be a volunteer position only, and that even our entire salaried staff of three are sometimes not even going to get paid on some weeks, much less hiring anytime soon. That said, I'm always interested in hearing from someone who wants more graphic design experience, editorial experience, bookmaking experience, computer-programming experience, or who for whatever reason would enjoy hosting some of our events, or helping us find and schedule features and themes. That's another whole point of the center; to let the general public get involved individually as little or as heavily as they themselves want. You want to come down to every event, donate creative pieces, work the door a couple of times, get a Fellowship, submit a manuscript, rise in the Slam ranks, get feature opportunities and the like? You are more than welcome here. You want to be sane instead, occasionally give us three bucks to see a great literary event, buy a t-shirt to support the cause, be impressed enough six months into it to purchase a $50 membership? You are very welcome here too. And both groups are just as important as the other, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, no need for a resume, and in fact I probably wouldn't even read it; just send a plain-language letter about who you are, what you've done, and in what way you would want to get involved with CCLaP. I'll read through it and definitely contact you if I want to know more (and most likely I will want to know more). Huzzah, huzzah, one more step crossed off the never-ending "CCLaP Before September" GTD project list; one less thing to worry about from now until September, when we actually do open.

Hey, hey again, two new 'jasonpettus' tags in the blogosphere this weekend: first, John Bruzan reprints my friend Wade's news about Missouri store Liquor Guns and Ammo closing; and new reader Shannon Whitley announces that he's a new reader. Nice to have you aboard, Shannon! And even cooler, two new audio comments! And both from British males, too! Man, what is it with British males and this website, I'm tellin' ya? (I'm not complaining, believe me.) Unfortunately, though, I can't share either with you, because both in the middle of their comments shared personal information (cellphone number for one, Skype account for the other), then said, "Oh, and I hope you won't share that with your readers, will you?" Well, guys, I don't actually have the ability to edit those audio files! I either get to share them the exact way you put them up (notes, photo and all), or not share them at all; so I'm erring on the side of caution and not sharing them at all for now. So, if either or both of you guys want to click over again and leave another message without personal information (or any of you other readers as well), I'd love a chance to actually share those audio posts with the general public too. (Oh, but I can mention that one of them is "Friend of Jason" Goldenlad, over in London, who has set up audio commenting at his own site as well, and also gave me another year-long Pro status for my Flickr account! Cool! Thanks, Goldenlad!)

Let's see, and what else? Oh, two short random tech notes, jotted in my Treo earlier this week...

1) You know what I'd like to see as one of those "20 percent projects" by one of those smartypants at Google? The "Google Crossword Helper" - you type in what you know about the word, and what letters you already have, with dashes in the correct places ("Surrealist painter D--ha-p"), and Google helps you figure out what the word is. Fantastic thing for actual crossword-puzzle junkies like me, of course, but what amazing potential for the general public this would have as well. Look up writers whose names you can only half-remember, historical figures you're constantly misspelling. Use Boolean logic to do super-cool specialized searches ("World capitals Q-*"). Won't somebody at Google think about taking this on as one of their side, non-project-related experiments?

2) Am I doing something wrong with my iTunes software? Now that I have this home connection, of course, I thought I would try going to the iTunes store for the first time, to check out what's there even though I don't own a credit card, and especially to see what free content they're offering (podcasts, video previews and the like). So I tried, but as far as I can tell, I need to actually own a credit card to even become a member there, and to click into the store for the first time. Is that right? Oh, or be a member of .Mac or AOL, neither of which I am. So am I just shit out of luck? Do I not even get to check out the free content there, just because I don't own a credit card? If that's the case, then screw you, iTunes; there are lots and lots and lots of places for me to find free multimedia on the web, who don't demand a credit card from me, thank you very much.

Okay, that's it for today. See you later!