Burning Man Redux at a Quarter Century

This is the week, long-awaited all year...even more so after 50,000 tickets sold out back in July. The New York Times has jumped on the bandwagon with three stories in two days, including the Monday obituary of Rod Garrett who helped design Black Rock City's spoke-like layout and annual
Center Camps.

Like clockwork and seemingly by its very nature, Burning Man spins off speculation like swirling dust-devils. This year it has ranged off the art section to the business page and even Op-Eds.

So goes the 25th anniversary of Burning Man with the 2011 Art Theme: Rites of Passage. More traffic will fork through tiny towns for the Burn this Labor Day weekend.

For those who've gone before, want to attend, or wish to know what compels pilgrims to trek year after year to the Black Rock Desert in an arid corner of Nevada...we present our revised edition of Desert to Dream: A Decade of Burning Man Photography.

Barbara Traub updated her 2006 opus (since sold out too) with 2 more years, 16 more pages, and two dozen more photos, along with a fitting postscript by her friend D.S. Black.

We're pleased to publish this evolving chronicle of an event which has grown from a happening to a festival to the state's 10th largest city. But it still provides a rainbow of mesmerizing experiences, which differ to the viewer according to the time of day and the shifting sands of happenstance.

Fortunately, Barbara was there to capture these fleeting moments of spectacle and share them with people around the world, in the pages of magazines from Wired to Time and now in the 2nd edition of her book. Once the playa is wiped clean next week, participants and voyeurs can still appreciate the memories of the desert and their dreams they created there.

August means Attaboy!

Yes, we try to blog every month that begins with "A". No, seriously folks, we have a brand spanking new book out...so here goes.

This picture is worth at least 100 words. The other 900 and change you can find inside the covers of You Might be a Monster and Other Stories I Made Up. Attaboy surely has made more than his fair share of tales which collectively break the expectations of what a kids book is.

For one thing, when have you read a book with a couch of contents?

Secondly, name a children's adventure that had at least a dozen monsters you hadn't seen before?

Thirdly, when have you seen a dustjacket that can wrap around from the inside out?

Don't get me started buddy. You get the idea. Anyhoo, you'd definitely get more than your nickel's worth as you confront a riot of color, characters, and poems, chock full of brio and moxie from a certifiably wild brain.

Attaboy is definitely a rule bender, as you can tell from his recent author photo. As you may know, he co-founded Hi-Fructose magazine with his partner Annie Owens. This pop "cult" periodical showcases like-minded artists who push buttons and envelopes and other drawing implements around to create genre-bending and innovative art. Their latest issue #20 has instantly sold out.

Recently Atta kicked off San Diego Comic Con with his new book and now is slinging couplets at lucky readers up on down the California coast. Catch him in the coming weeks at:

August 5th at Dragatomi, Sacramento, CA

August 6th at The Escapist, Berkeley, CA

August 7th at SF MOMA, San Francisco, CA

August 11th at Meltdown Comics, Los Angeles, CA

August 12th at Sweet Breams, San Mateo, CA

August 13th at Books Inc., Alameda, CA

Atta will even give away a rare "heat-seeking" glow-in-the-dark ASTRX at the SF MOMA!

This will undoubtedly make more monsters out there, hungry for more offbeat humor and off-the-wall illustrations. As Publishers Weekly recently reviewed:

"Artist and toy designer Attaboy pairs flippant humor with page-popping digital cartoons in this collection of monster-themed poems....Readers should be drawn toward the subversive, macabre tone and lurid, Cartoon-Network-on-acid illustrations..."