About
Defensive Eating w/Morrissey & Comfort Eating w/Nick Cave
$19,167
560
Microcosm is pleased to present your soon-to-be most treasured cookbooks and works of art:
Defensive Eating with Morrissey and Comfort Eating with Nick Cave are sturdy hardcover books full of art, recipes, and lots and lots of feelings, drawn by Automne Zingg and reciped by Joshua Ploeg.
You can think of them as hilarious art books featuring artful recipes. Or as vegan cookbooks with illustrations of sad rock stars drowning their sorrows in food. Either way, you'll laugh, cry, and learn to make some really tasty recipes.
About the Books:
Defensive Eating with Morrissey: Vegan Recipes From the One You Left Behind is a book of beautiful portraits of Smiths star Moz hoarding food; each portrait is accompanied by a poetic vegan recipe, so that you can eat what Morrissey is eating.
The praise is already rolling in! "To dine on these sides is such a heavenly way to dine," declaims Wes Allison, co-author of The Taco Cleanse.
Comfort Eating with Nick Cave: Vegan Recipes to Get Deep Inside of You contains portraits of Mr. Cave crying and eating those salty, noodly, cheezy staples that we all crave when we're sad—with recipes for every one.
What's the story behind these unusual books? We asked artist Automne Zingg to write an introduction.
Automne's Story:
In 2013 I was broke, living in Los Angeles, and going through a terrible breakup. It was probably one of the darkest times in my life and I felt inconsolable. I wasn't working. I wasn't eating. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't doing much of anything except writing depressing songs and listening to even more depressing ones from my youth. I found it curious that the bands that got me through the general malaise of being a sad teenage goth served as a type of sonic comfort food for me as an even sadder adult. Was I having a midlife crisis? The only thing that brought me comfort during this nightmare was drawing. I started to doodle images of Nick Cave crying over pints of ice cream, Siouxsie Sioux devouring tacos, and The Sisters Of Mercy stuffing their faces with Cinnabons. The more time passed, the more surreal these drawings became.
Nick Cave was a particular go to for me during this time and he became the musical equivalent to my grandmother's lasagna. I devoured his music and binge listened for months. It was familiar and comforting; I thought whatever feeling emotional eaters gained from consuming a pint of ice cream, I got from blasting "Your Funeral...My Trial." As heartbroken as I was, I reminded myself that Nick Cave had been through much worse. I wondered what he did during those trying times and found myself unconsciously doodling pictures of him weeping while eating. Each day the drawings got a little weirder and my mood got a little better.
Eventually I started sharing them with others and everyone wanted to see Morrissey putting things in his mouth. Who wouldn't? I obliged and started doing a series of drawings of Morrissey hoarding food.
Nom nom nom. Boo hoo hoo.
xoxo Automne Zingg
We fell in love with Automne's drawings, and asked Joshua Ploeg to write a recipe to go with each one. The spectacular results are here for you to see!
Why Kickstarter?
These books are sturdy hardcovers without dustjackets (the industry term is "paper over board"). They'll hold up to a lot of sad tears, exuberant tears, and kitchen spills. We're Kickstarting them for two reasons:
1) The world needs to know.
2) We're committed to printing in the US. Most color books are printed more cheaply in China and then priced artificially low for consumers—so we are raising funds in order to pay for the printing without risking our building and staff, and to keep the price manageable for you, the reader.
By backing this project, you help us make an awesome book (and keep making more in the future!), you support manufacturing in the US midwest, and you get to never stop laughing. Win!
About the artist
Artist Automne Zingg originated the internet trend of drawings of goths eating things. Drawing these pictures started as a breakup remedy.... then things escalated. When not drawing, she makes video art and performs music as Lacey Spacecake. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About the chef
Joshua Ploeg travels the world cooking vegan food for a wide diversity of parties and causes. He's the author of many vegan cookbooks, most recently This Ain't No Picnic: Your Punk Rock Vegan Cookbook. When not cooking, he sings in punk bands: currently Select Sex, and previously in pioneering queercore bands like Mukilteo Fairies and Behead the Prophet.
About the publisher
Microcosm Publishing produces brightly-colored books that empower readers to improve their lives and change the world. Inspired by the ethics and aesthetics of punk rock, we've been scrappy and independent since 1996. With our staff of ten and almost 400 titles and 2 million books in print, we still come to work at our Portland, Oregon office and have the most fun every day.
We run Kickstarter projects for some of our books for two reasons: So more people can find our books and be delighted and inspired by them, and to pay the bills. Thank you for doing both these things!
About the other rewards
Publishing books is what we do best, so the rewards for this project consist of lots and lots and lots of our books. We've got something for everyone!
$50 Vegan Cooking with Joshua:
- This Ain't No Picnic: Your Punk Rock Vegan Cookbook Stories and recipes that capture the many eras and facets of punk in this full color book with photographs of brightly-colored food
- So Raw It's Downright Filthy The only cookbook in the world that features photos of trash instead of food
- Fire & Ice A pocket-sized zine featuring hot and spicy food, cold food, desserts, and alcoholic beverages
- In Search of the Lost Taste An adventure cookbook that takes you to the moon, the center of the earth, and the bottom of the ocean in search of the perfect recipe
$75 Music & Humor Comix:
- Henry & Glenn Forever: The original satirical comic about what might happen if two of the most macho guys on the planet were in a sincere, monogamous relationship with each other. You'll laugh til you cry. The only thing wrong with it? It's not a cookbook (at least not yet). By Tom Neely and Igloo Tornado
- Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever It's the longer-form stories you crave after reading the original comics collection, also by Tom Neely and Friends
- Meal Deal with the Devil a sing-a-long songbook for adults by hilarious underground rockstars Bobby Joe Ebola
- The Snake Pit Book: Daily Diary Comics 2001-2003 Ben Snakepit's daily diary comics that started it all
$100 Vegan Ultra-pack:
- Joshua Ploeg's cookbooks (see above)
- Mama Tried: Traditional Italian Cooking for the Screwed, Crude, Vegan, and Tattooed is Cecilia Granatas flash art and vegan cookbook
- Think! Eat! Act!: A Sea Shepherd Chef's Vegan Recipes Activism, resources, and cooking by Raffaella Tolicetti is a chef aboard ships that blockade illegal whaling operations
- Barefoot and in the Kitchen: Vegan Recipes for You Learn to cook healthy, tasty vegan food when you don't have access to fancy ingredients, with Ashley Rowe
- Hot Damn & Hell Yeah / The Dirty South Ryan Splint's spicy classics and Vanessa Johnson's southern standards, made vegan and tasty in this split cookbook
- Please Don't Feed the Bears Asbjorn Intonsus pairs heavy metal and vegan recipes in this book that's really not like any other
$125 Punk Living:
- Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life & Business with Asperger's is Joe Biel's story and Microcosm's, too
- Crate Digger: An Obsession with Punk Records Bob Suren's life in punk music, and how it almost ruined him
- Underground: The Subterranean Culture of DIY Punk Shows Daniel Makagon tells the history of an important subcultural movement
- Punk USA: The Rise and Fall of Lookout Records The record label that birthed Green Day was fraught with scandal
- Scam: The First Four Issues As a young punk, Erick Lyle lives all-out at the margins of Miami in the 90s, and chronicles it with hilarity
- Beyond the Music: How Punks are Saving the World with DIY Ethics, Skills, and Values Joe Biel interviews people who have taken punk culture and succeeded with it in non-musical areas
- Bobby Joe Ebola Songbook The lyrics and story of everyone's favorite underground band from Pinole, California
- Snake Pit 2008 A year in the life of Ben Snakepit
$150: Big Old Comix Deal:
- Everything in the Music & Humor list (see above), and:
- Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and Trafficking Anne Elizabeth Moore and the Ladydrawers bring us comics journalism about women's labor worldwide
- On the Books: A Graphic Tale of Working Woes at NYC's Strand Bookstore Greg Farrell's first hand account of labor organizing
- Yo, Miss: A Graphic Look at High School Lisa Wilde's stories of teaching at a second chance high school in NYC
- Manspressions: Decoding Men's Behavior Elly Blue and Joe Biel team up to define a thousand patriarchal papercuts
- Sounds of Your Name Nate Powell's early comics, collected
- BFF (Brainfag Forever) Nate Beaty draws funny and evocative tales from his everyday life
- Invincible Summer I Nicole Georges' diary comics about being cool, young, and queer in Portland of yore
- Invincible Summer II More good stuff from Nicole Georges and her small dogs
Moar rewards:
Want to have your own portrait eating your favorite food made by Automne? That's one option! Or want Joshua to cook you and your friends an elaborate meal theme on a suitable theme? We'll be adding more rewards throughout the project, so stay tuned.
Thank you! We are so excited that we get to work on books like this, and can't wait to make these happen with you.
Risks and challenges
We've been publishing books for over 20 years, and we do it well. So why Kickstarter? Printing is one of the biggest costs in publishing, and to put out two books at once is a real financial challenge. That's why we're running this campaign!
There's always the possibility that one of the fine gentlemen lovingly parodied in these books will sue us into oblivion. We ran a fine-toothed legal comb through the books and even asked both Morrissey and Cave point blank if they'd object ... or if they wanted to be involved in the books (Cave's agents graciously declined to be involved; no response from Moz's people). This is America and anyone can sue anyone for anything. But parody is protected under fair use and we think we're well protected.
The biggest challenge we expect to face is: Will we make our goal? These two books are drawn, written, formatted, edited, layed-out, paperworked, publicized, and basically completely ready to go to print. We've invested a lot in these already. But will we be able to afford to press the send button on that email to the printer? And will this work of art make it into your eager hands? That's up to you!
Thanks in advance for helping us create these books. They've brought us a lot of joy as we've worked on them in the last year, and we can't wait to share them with you all.
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Funding period
- (29 days)