Atomic Books Blog

Atomic Books T-Shirt Contest 2012 Deadline March 31st The Rules, Short & Sweet: 1. One entry per person 2. Two color design, front shirt design only 3. Must say “Atomic Books” in the design Please send your 300 dpi ready to print file to info@atomicbooks.com . The finalists will be displayed at our 20th Anniversary Retrospective Design Show, April 6th, and will be voted on by the attendees. The winner will receive a $300 gift card to Atomic Books and 10 shirts and we’ll do a limited run of their tshirt design.

Thursday, March 29. 7PM. Atomic Books. Hanne Blank will be discussing and signing copies of her new book, STRAIGHT - which deals with the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality. And Jo B. Paoletti will be discussing and signing her new book, PINK & BLUE - which deals with the gendering of pink and blue. Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality: In this surprising chronicle, historian Hanne Blank digs deep into the past of sexual orientation, while simultaneously exploring its contemporary psyche. Illuminating the hidden patterns in centuries of events and trends, Blank shows how culture creates and manipulates the ways we think about and experience desire, love, and relationships between men and women. "Blank’s tenacious research and insightful arguments make clear how malleable the attitudes of the world we live in really are." —BUST Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America: "When did we start dressing girls in pin

We sometimes get odd and interesting letters sent to us at Atomic Books. It isn't always easy to determine the intent of the sender. But we thought it might be interesting to share these letters from time to time. This letter was sent to us from an inmate at the Maryland Correctional Facility in Hagerstown, MD. This Is Not An Idle Threat by Jed P. I'm going to hunt down, I'm going to find and kill William Blake. He had no right To do like he done to me - But he'll get his due. And if that Byron happens to be there, I'm gonna take out that son of a bitch too. After that I'm heading straight For you Rimbaud You know that you were dead wrong To be messing around with my baby girl. I'll never understand, I'll never see what she was doing With a cocksucker like you! On and I'm finally going to get back The money that Walt Whitman owes me. He'll pay that seven twenty-five, He'll pay one way or the other, After I'

In the new issue of Mike White's excellent film zine Cashiers du Cinemart (#16) , there is an article by local filmmaker, musician, Microcinefest organizer and former Maryland Film Festival programmer Skizz Cyzyk on advice to filmmakers about avoiding certain film fest scams called "Film Festival X Is A Scam." "I'm not going to name the festival I'm talking about. Instead I'll refer to it as Film Festival X. Film Festival X has been around for years and has separated countless filmmakers from their money. ... Here's how Film Festival X operates. First, they search around online looking for lesser-known attention-hungry filmmakers. The perfect victims have put a lot of effort into their websites, but maybe not as much into the embedded video clips that appear on their sites. They might brag about hometown screenings or small regional festival screenings, but not screenings at major festivals like Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, Tribeca, etc." W

In the current issue of Under The Radar (#40) , the feature "In The Studio 2012" takes a look at a handful of hotly anticipated albums in 2012. One of the profiles is of Baltimore's own Dan Deacon, and his as-yet untitled next album due in June. Progressing out from Bromst , this record features not only a lot of acoustic instrumentation, but a lot of musicians as well (more than 30 players). Deacon explains this is going to be about protest music. "The music is very much influenced by the landscape of the United States, and the beauty of the country," he explains. "The lyrics are very much about the frustration of what it is to be American in this time. And how you feel this constant impending doom and fear, but also a weird, non-tangible freedom." ... As the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring unfolded around Deacon, the the aforementioned socioeconomic issues took on greater urgency. Ken Burns' The Civil War was also influential,

In this month's issue of Fortean Times ( #286 ) , local author Mikita Brottman has an article involving the curious 2006 death of Rey Rivera, a 32 year old financial writer working for Agora called "Death on the thirteenth floor". Rivera fell from the 13th floor of The Belvedere (one of our favorite buildings in Baltimore, also featured in the AMC show Mad Men ) and wasn't discovered until a little over a week later when tenants began to complain about a smell. The real mystery, Brottman's article reveals, comes from the Masonic connections. "Confounding the mystery further, Rivera's death involved a number of obscure Masonic elements, one of these being the unusual phrase beginning and ending the note found taped to his computer: 'Whom virtue unites, death cannot separate.' In its Latin form, this phrase was used in ceremonies performed by the Knights Templar, and it is still inscribed in the inside of Masonic rings. Rivera's family

In 1993 I was working at Geppi's Comic World in Baltimore's Inner Harbor - a small, traditional superhero comics shop. It was a quiet day in the store when someone walked in and began browsing the shelves with his back to me. I said, "If you need help finding anything, just let me know." "I do, actually," came the reply. The voice sounded familiar, and I immediately began trying to place it. Just as I had pretty much decided it was the voice of one of my uncles, the person speaking turned around and it was Robin Williams. He was in town filming the "Bop Gun" episode of Homicide: Life On The Street (a performance for which he would later receive an Emmy nomination). "Do you know if you happen to have," he asked, "any Moebius?" After taking a moment to calm down upon unexpectedly coming face to face with the actor, I knew what he was looking for and where to find it - it was shelved with all the weird, European com