If I Could Turn Back Time

BUILD BRIDGES, not walls, or something to that effect. We last went to CAKE back in the last decade, so bridging this gap requires a way, wayback machine. Rubbernecking back to our 2019 CAKE write-up revealed that we were then Sean Knickerbocker, L. Nichols and CupCAKE Award winner, Adam Griffiths, then a Special Guest, at ye olde Center on Halsted, where we were still flirting with Gabe Howell, and the car was packed with leftover crap from the move out of NYC to the Best Coast. Jesus. When you get divorced, and there is oddly a coincidental Divorce Derby to go with the Baby Boom here at Secret Acres, you basically step out of a time warp into an unrecognizable self and world. Here we go again with the Chicago Alternative (K)omics Expo, without painful breakups and fumbling dating apps, but still with no idea of what to expect. Let us learn to live and love again, shall we?

 

 

The game changes but the players remain half the same. Washington White, the newspaper chapter, picked up the CupCAKE Award back in 2017, courtesy of juror Edie Fake, no less. Edie, Chicagoland’s own hometown hero, insisted that we pin Adam down for a book. For the first time ever, and this is really hard to believe, Adam Griffiths brings the actual book, Washington White, to CAKE. This feels like a victory to us, and, damn it, it should! Another sort of homecoming finds Gabe Howell back in Chicago, as a resident and with a Secret Acres book, too, the unforgettable Forget Me Not. Really and truly, Gabe belongs in the Windy City, so chalk up another win for the team, brining Gabe home to the Secret Acres CAKE table. Blowing our minds a little further out, Zak Sally and his Recidivist IV finally, finally come to CAKE after the better part of a decade since we first talked to Zak about the book – at CAKE. Talk about closure.

 

 

Previously, on the last episode of Scuttlebutt, we gave you the run-up to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, better known as TCAF, for the big, fat debut of Eric Kostiuk Williams‘s big, fat 2AM Eternal – and then yours truly missed the whole thing. A literal wreck cockblocked our first shot at partying behind the table with Eric. For those wondering, the spouse recovered, at least for now, and we made the trip back stateside safely, even if the baby bites everyone. Which means, at long last, we roll into CAKE a complete gang with Eric and 2AM Eternal both. We could not ask for a better way to christen the new CAKE digs. Moves make us nervous, normally, being the number one cause of divorces, but sometimes you just got to move on.

 

 

L. Nichols, who kept the show going in Toronto, sits this CAKE out. Yes, we owe you an apology, since you never got the TCAF rundown from them. Supposedly, you will get yours in communal property. CAKE may be the first stop for Eric on his tour out of Toronto, but we swear it will not be the last. In fact, a week from today, Eric comes to New York for a reading at BGQSD, and then another one at Topos, performance included, before he heads west (and before we head west before heading back to the Fatherland ahead of SPX, where we will meet up with Eric yet again). More on all that later, when we come back with our CAKE rundown – and you will get your CAKE rundown and it eat it, too. Who knows? Maybe L. will make it a double Scuttlebutt. Everyone needs hope. See you in a few…

Your Pal,

Leon

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