A shamelessly self-promoting column

by Chris Auman, Dog Poop Catcher

January 2020

Happy New Year!

Happy 2020! How's it going? Winter has been pretty mild here so far. In fact, I think Chicago had its biggest snowfall back on Halloween.

Here's something new: we have achieved puppy status. Alternately known as Benjo Snippet (official) and Lil Snips (rap name), but also Nutty Von Thirstenburg, Slurpy, Weirdy, and occasionaly Poochikins, our dog is a young whippet who likes to run and sleep, pee and poop in alternating order. He's also a great coworker!

2019 in Review

For me, 2019 saw the publication of a few zines and a comic with Reglar Wiglar #25 coming out just a week before the start of the year (that was the 25th Anniversary issue, btw). My first ever perzine, Gray Flag #1 features journal entries from 1990-91 when I was a writing student at Columbia College and apparently spent a lot of time in bars. Old Joe is a lit zine featuring a silly short story I wrote as a sophomore at DePaul University and Sssnakes #1 comics features five of my comic strips starring everybody’s favorite slithery duo, Sly and Steven. You can order them all from RoosterCow Press or drop by Quimby's in Chicago.

And Reglar Wiglar fan(s), interviews you may have missed from the website in 2019 include my chat with Chicago’s fun-loving heavy rock band Lollygagger as well as comics artist Box Brown (Andre the Giant, Tetris, Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America) and head Head Lopper Andrew Mclean. 

In the Hopper

Empire Smalls, which has been an extremely erratic solo project of mine for the past 5 years, is now a three-piece band. We will be ready to take our show out of the practice space and into a basement or tavern near you soon. I will keep you posted here when I know more.

Also, Mike Dixon and I are still working on Used Records #1 which I hope will be out by the end of February.

That's all I got. Have a good 2020!

More Columns

September 2019

October 2019

April 2020