The new year is here, a lot happened in 2006 within the GR world. Here's a few highlights. If you read GR over time, and you'll know what we've been up to.

1) Award at JANM. GR wins an award for being a "visionary in the arts" - something like that. JANM is the Japanese American National Museum.
2) Madrid. I went there in Feb to be on a panel discussion on art at ARCO.
3) GR helped the Imprint conference, and we even had a sneaker panel that was pretty cool.
4) GR goes bimonthly. 6 a year starting in 06.
5) I judged at Takashi Murakami's Geisai art fair. Fun and more.
6) I went around the world From tokyo, HK to england (for the Spank the Monkey art show).
7) We spoke at Harvard, Walker art museum, and Irvine! There were others, but I can't remember right now...
8) I showed in two art shows, at GRSF (haha)
9) Met a lot of great folks and got to see others thru GR. Shepard F, Carlo McCormick, Dzine, Mr Murakami, Ai and Shingo, Dan Wu, Cut & Paste folks, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Jeff Staple, Michael Lau, Towa, Ryan McGinness, John Jay, Everyone who showed art at GR stores, Ashy, Kohei, Taroshooten, Cube, Ray Fong, Nao Harada, Edward Templeton, Gargamel, Kaws, and so many others.
10) I curated an art show in upstate NY. St. Lawrence University.

There were many other highlights in 2006. This list could probably be 10 entries longer. I think I went to GRNY 6 times, and GRSF 6 times and took a lot of other flights. It's nice to be back at home for a while.

We built a lot in 06 to hopefully set more up for 07. Other than that, all I ask is for people to be fair and decent.

Don't buy a new car, ever. Did you know buying a car is like talking to a guy like Borat. The guy will say whatever he needs to so you can pull out your wallet and buy a car. Some of it won't make any sense, and you'll be scratching your head. Also a lot of dealerships have the sleasiest sales people, don't get one of them. Be ready to leave!

1) Did you know buying a car averages 4 hours, it can take 6 or more!? Why not just 1 or 2 hours? It's a long process.
2) If you want a certain car, it can take months, so you might be stuck with one that has extra features that you have to pay extra for.
3) It's possible you won't get what you want, so you'll have to settle for something else. Different color outside, inside, etc.
4) the car negotiation process is a drag. It's the most ridiculous song and dance ever. It's goofy, you volley prices across a table. It's as dumb as can be. It's hard to keep a straight face in this, but I guess the way to do it, is to walk away and see if they chase you. It never gets regular, it's completely surreal. If you want to laugh go for it. Who cares, right?
5) Know what you're doing before you walk in. Figure out how much the car costs, figure out how much you want to spend, and how much you want to try and lower the price. Who knows where this info is, but in the end, it's all a terrible experience. Just try and get money off. Start ridiculous and then see if it works.
6) Be ready to be hungry and eat food. If you're there for 6 hours you'll get hungry. Use it to your advantage. "Let me think about it while eating food." See ya. Maybe that'll help.
7) Bring a negotiator. Want a deal? Bring someone who can do this. It's worth bribing someone for this help. It's unfortunate, that it takes a special person to help buy a car with the best deal. What happens to the folks are great, honest, but can't negotiate like a swap meet seller?
8) Be greedy. If you can do it, be a dick. I guess in the end, they expect that, and they're on commission! Do the best you can. It's a terrible process.

The commssion supposedly happens after a phone call comes. You supposedly will get a call asking you about your experience at the dealership. Two people very sternly lectured me and told me, I must say, "extremely satisfied" to ALL of the questions. I felt like I was acosted to say that answer to everything. They even asked me, "will you do this?" I answered with, "It depends on which questions they ask." Fair right? But they didn't like my response, and drove the point harder and harder and even said, "call us first. Or hang up" before I give a lesser answer. It's ridiculous and I'll answer how I want. The phone call is the last bargaining chip I have. I'm keeping this one for a bit.

Little Sunday Driver

This is the size of a Hot Wheel. It's Sculpy and will drive for a long time. The idea with Sculpy is to try and not make it look like something you can buy from Hallmark for $5. This dude is wearing ear muffs, a pink tie, white shirt, weird car with faces on both sides, and a crazy hat that's part Rege, Woodring, and Moebius. Try Sculpey sometime. SxK.

Dave Choe is a ham, watch him play video with a high school band. Dave's career is experiencing good things right now, and if you're in NYC, go see him on Saturday, January 6th, 7pm-9pm at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery_529 W. 20th Street, 9E_New York, NY 10011. It'll be a solo show.

I find out through the grapevine that we and our neighbors are the only ones who didn't give our UPS driver a christmas gift. What are the right protocals for this under these conditions?

1) I'm not Christian although I might give others some "christmas gifts" usually for my family and such.
2) Our driver isn't that great. We once had a great driver who I'd give a "bonus" to at the end of the year. The one we have isn't him.
3) Our ups driver made it a point to tell one of our employees about his lack of gift which makes it seem like he feels he's entitled to it
4) he didn't give one to us - yes, what do you think about that? He's getting paid to do his job. We're paying for him services, so... where's our gift?
5) he can actually be a jerk at times and has been to our manager.

To his defense, he does his job. He delivers us the packages, and picks up the ones we have for him - which is becoming less and less as we start to move on to using more of the crappy government services. What's the right thing?

Random musings. Late December.

Whoa gift basket #2! This one is from our print shop - Transcontinental. Thanks Mike Bradley and Kent Gower. They're nice folks, and something like this comes every year. They don't mess up much, and they're usually pretty good to me. So Merry Xmas and so on folks. When you get older, you get gift baskets, this year it's two, previous it's just one. It's over...

Sculpy project while watching TV. The headdress is cut off a bit, but in the end, it's a dude cruising in a car happy with a funky Tuvan hat. I'll have to paint this. Like his tie?! He's selling bibles door to door.

Whoa there GW... Islam isn't necessarily shit, right? This was seen in a parking lot in Santa Monica. Funny technique. Lettering gets a D rating. I welcome graffiti that has a message, and it would be neat to see more if it replaced some of the other types of graffiti. Maybe I'd actually get mad by a message and it'll make more change. Graffiti inspiring change in more fields than "just" art. That's an interesting thought.

Dessert Recon 2 - Phoenix Cafe Boutique

208 E Valley Blvd
Alhambra, CA 91801 (626) 299-1238

Next door to the Phoenix Inn restaurant is the small dessert spot. It's a small spot with mean ladies who work there. If you don't speak Chinese, expect little help from these angry ladies. see that one in the purple with the hat? Imagine this person as being mean...

Nice seats at the window. It's for quick tastes, it's nice to be there. In the counter on the left, there are nice jello like cubes of different flavors. These are great.

The woman in purple... she has no booty whatsoever.

In one glass case, it's drinks, fruit, stuff, etc. Some of it, they'll add fruit to it, others it's just ice. My suggestion is to get the fruit tapioca, it's the first thing on the menu, it'll come with chopped up fruit, tapioca (not boba), and coconut milk. It's really good even though there's less fruit in it than once before. I would have taken a photo, but my camera died. Eat at the Phoenix Inn, it's good Chinese food, and save space for dessert.

Desserts Recon - Scoops
712 N Heliotrope Dr. (2 blocks west of Vermont just north of Melrose)
Los Angeles, CA 90029 (323) 906-2649

It's not on Melrose, but a few doors up in an uppity cool neighborhood. If you were into going to the Macondo to see music way back in the day, this is the area. It might even be the exact spot, even though I'm a bit foggy on where Macondo used to be. You enter and the place is simple, bright, and has no frills. It's a place to eat ice cream. It's a bit off the main street, main neighborhood, and main people... it's carving out it's own existence and that's the toughest way to do anything.

The wall opposite of the ice cream looks like this. It's an art show!

The other side often looks like this. People come and ponder the flavors. He doesn't have hundreds, it's more like 20 at the most. Some have intriguing mixes like pomegranate passion fruit, bread, vegan chocolate peppermint... it changes and sometimes he takes ideas off of the bulletin board. Add your flavor if one comes to mind.

Homemade and handmade. The green one way down is pistachio.

This is vegan mocha (something), I forgot, but the brown is vegan chocolate peppermint.

This is Tai. He's the proprietor and a great guy. The ice cream is top notch, it won't disappoint. There are both vegan and non vegan ice creams and each flavor is made with care. We sell Scoops ice cream at gr/eats, and often people come in just to get ice cream. Hold the food! Scoops is a noticable departure from Pinkberry. If he had stores all over, the world would definitely be better. I've met Tai only once, but he has a good way about him, and you'll be happy when you leave.

read some more reviews.

Yogurt boy in the apron tells me to not take any pics. I guess no pics inside of PB

Mochi and kiwi. Unlikely companions, but it works.

The straight word: Pinkberry is the next Pokemon and it blows.

Yes, I know people love this place but I'll give you my reasons why Pinkberry fails. First, I've lived through three frozen yogurt fads. 1) Penguins, Heidi's, and TCBY. These sucked, and now they survive by selling ice-cream. 2) The fruit ground up phase in the early 90s. In LA at least, there were spots that had special machines that ground up yogurt and fresh fruit. Anyone remember Humphreys? Where are they now... 3) Pinkberry... Why will this last when the others didn't? You tell me...

I waited and waited thinking this was going to be great. In the end what are you getting?

1) A Rip - Pinkberry yogurt is just frozen yogurt with fresh fruit. At $4, you're getting ripped off. Buy a container of plain yogurt and freeze it, add fruit. I watched people go in and get yogurt and act like it was special. I also watched some get some who said it was a rip and the yogurt sucked. I'm not alone.

2) Good toppings - The mochi is actually good, but you can easily buy a piece for a buck. The fruit is fresh! Good for them, it's the only part they get right.

3) Mixed up - The space looks space age and neat, but isn't yogurt supposed to be natural and maybe better for you? How about a more natural environment? Why sell plastic junk kitchen shit? Department of Duh.

4) Yogurt boy - The guy who works at Pinkberry in the Sawtelle area is a rude kid, who thinks he's cool. In the end, he takes the establishment down another notch. Next time, call our name when the order is ready like you did for everyone else, and don't make lame comments - it's getting you nowhere.

5) You get stupid cookies on the table. It's already junk food, but now they're giving you more?

We were all disappointed in Pinkberry, it definitely fails to live up to the hype. For $4, get something good and as another said about Pinkberry, "don't believe the hype."

James Brown is dead. Wasn't there a song called that? But this time, he really died. RIP to the godfather of soul.

Paul Westerberg from the replacements did something weird. Why would he put a screwdriver through his hand? It was an accident, but it's hard to understand how you can do that! I guess Kobe put his hand through a window "while cleaning the garage." So a screwdriver through a hand taking out wax from a candle is totally possible. Look for him to be sidelined...

Getting towards Christmas...

David and Sun-min check out the drawings at gr/eats. So far we have 40, making it a 1/20 chance of winning. The final judging is going to happen soon after the 30th - the cut off date to enter the Draw Babo contest. You still have ample time.

Things are looking good. In the foreground, these look like the flowers Tray holds on the t-shirt!

Pablo walking Kaulana and Primo. These are Akitas. Primo is the old man.

Fabian on the Blackberry. Enough said.

This is what the day was like. That's Kyle on the left. Like a where's Waldo drawing, find Martin! He's in it.

Goddamn her. If I had Trump change, I'd probably sue Rosie too just so I could take a few dollars from her "fat ass". Her "Chinese" act is screwed up. If I had to energy of Donald Trump., I'd dig into truckdriver talkin' Rosie too. It's gotta be easy.

Dirty Hands, the movie about David Choe. That's Harry Kim, the filmmaker and we were in his apartment to do one last interview before the film could be cut and done.

There's a trailer at the site, you should check out. I guess it's an honor being part of David's life. From the first days we met to Comicon in 1997 or 8 and actually even before that at a Sunsets screening. Yes, Dave saw the film and talked to me then in SF. Being the last piece of the film I guess I was there to cover some things we might have missed from the earlier interviews. David's had early exhibitions, illustrations, and friendships with me/us here at GR. I hope I don't look too much like an idiot. The camera Harry is using is some newer Sony camera that's tiny. It looks like a regular home video camera, but it's not. It's tiny too. 6 years in the making, and it'll be done in 2007, hope we can be a part of that.

Back to Santouka. Shio ramen for Mr Bevry.

Can't hold back on the ramen. The key is the "special pork". That's what it looks like, and it's incredibly tender and amazing. It's different than the single slice of pork you get with the ramen, which is thin and more fatty. This is dense, probably cooked in a broth since it's nearly falling apart. It's a bit pricey, at something like $9 or $10 for the large, so my suggestion is to bring a friend and split the extra pork, it's a lot for one person. 2 visits and so far, stellar both times. I'm now thinking the medium or regular is the right size to get. The soup is rich and it might be too much to take in for a large. I wonder why the heck, do I see bowls of half eaten ramen there when I leave?

Check out the Ricoh. This was a macro quick point and shoot shot. I didn't do much to make this special.

Zoom in and pow. Sharp! The bee is out of the main focal plane, but the power of Ricoh GR reigns supreme.

Don't fuck with the Don. "Rosie you're fired!" This guy is like a gangster. "Probably I'll sue her cuz it'll be fun. I'd like to take some money from her fat ass... Rosie is a loser." Don't fuck with Don, he's scary and can talk major amounts of shit and can back it up. He fucks Rosie up bit time. Meanwhile, he can show compassion for a hot Miss. America. What a guy. Check out Don.

Next fun video. Transformers.

My cousin and I have always had a fascination with giant squid. Maybe it's because we'll eat smaller squid whether it's calamari or ika sushi, but a giant squid can feed us for a year. It's been a myth for so long and even though there's sightings which usually have a bigfoot like appeal, here's one that's 24 feet, a small one compared, but this is clear video. Leave it to Japanese researchers to catch one.

UFO DIAPOLON
This robot toy can't be beat.
Three robot, the Trunk on the left, the Legger in the middle, and the Header on the right. On their own, they are powerful, heavy, and shoot missles. They don't really look alike, but they are family. I don't remember the show at all anymore. Surely there was one, but didn't catch on here at all compared to Mazinger Z and Raideen.

In their styro and packaging that's probably about 30 years old, each missile and part is in place. The robot have been played with, but they are intact.

The magic is that the Trunk, Legger, and Header all come apart to make one larger robot. IUt's cool how the feet have the mariner like spears, and the arm has saws that come out. Of course the chest missle will blind you, and I forgot to put in the blades for the fists. They shoot out too. Can you believe that a set like this was made? I had this robot set as a kid, and it's taken close to 8 years to reassemble the trio (I think I got the Trunk first about 8 years ago), and maybe 15 years since I thought about trying to get them all with each coming from different places. I've told myself that I'd stop buying robots like these once this set was done. Will I stay true to my word? I haven't bought a robot in years, until Header, so perhaps I will.

VICTORY - This is the winner of the Nintendo wii. I've had a bunch ask. We'll here's the winner. Also the mystery Mrs Field's package.... drum roll.... I called and asked them who the heck sent them to me! And the one person who I forgot. Our T shirt printer! Wow. Issues... yeah, she had a broken machine for a long time, making some jobs stall, but it's being worked out. I'm sure she was down about it for a while. I was hoping it was the bank or USPS or UPS. Now I feel a bit bad, but the cookies will help.

Walking in a different direction after my day, maybe to walk off some dinner, I found myself going towards Santa Monica Blvd. It's a neat area that doesn't really have a name, but has restaurants, and a cool video store. It also happens to be the night before Shari passed away. I can keep blogging about it, and she's not coming back anytime soon. I figure instead of moping, I'm going to try and talk just a little about what she saw around her immediate neighborhood.

Walking towards the video store where we both rented videos, Shari and I walked by this center. It's like a corner mini mall that's attached to a crummy market (Safeway). This center has a Hallmark store, bakery, laundromat, and some weird stores. I don't know what the heck these are... But see right about the roof of the car? That store has all kinds of crap. It's like a mixed up store selling clothes and junk.

The shoe store is open pretty late. I have no idea what's really there, but this center is sort of catering to Mexican nationals who live in the area. I'm glad they have sort of a place to be together, since I'm not sure if they're even cared for in the least by others.

Good food, I'm sure. It's awesome how something like this can just pop up on Barry avenue near Santa Monica blvd. It's there every night, and when I'm hungry, I'm going to eat there. It's smells great.

I'm not sure if this is necessary, but I can't help but walk by once in a while, this is the area where Shari's life was taken from all of us.

Although it's been a year, not one hint of her is here. Maybe it's for the best, she shouldn't be remembered here at all, she should be remembered doing the things she liked-crafting! Making Helvetica hoods, buttons, and other cool things.

Here's her hoodies. The blue and yellow one on the left is mine.

This is Video Store Named Desire. We'd rent movies here (and it's one of the best video stores ever). If you look closely in the window, that's Mike in the white t shirt. He's a bit camera shy. Shari and I would have conversations about Mike, and I remember how Shari once thought Mike and one of his employees were father and son! I thought it was impossible, and tonite, I asked Mike once and for all, if they were even related. No. But the kid used to call Mike, "Big Daddy," so Shari probably heard him say that. Mike and I got a small kick out of that tonite. I'm glad I shared even just a little bit of her memory with someone who knew her.

By the time I wake up and get my day going, it'll be more than one year. I hope there's a group of us thinking about her at any given time throughout the rest of our lives. If you didn't know her, that's a shame, and I'm sure you've lost someone special who we should have all met.

Today, this shows up on my desktop. Mrs Field's cookies. I guess they're pretty good, right? Tons of crap, brownies, cookies, all good to make me smile. But who's it from? The note said, to GR - "thanks very much for your patience this year w/ our issues." Let's figure this one out since it's unsigned. It shipped 2 day air to my house.

1) printer - we didn't have any problems this year. But maybe " issues" is a pun.
They're not that creative. No.
2) distributor - again, a great pun, but I don't know what "issues" there were exactly. Did they fuck up and not tell me and are apologizing? No.
3) past employees who are now admitting their wrong doing? Possible.
4) lawyer / accountant - maybe. There's always issues. Possible.
5) UPS or USPS - maybe. But they won't send cookies and they do suck and we do have "issues" with them. But no, I'm sure it's not them.
6) Current employee who's been a problem? Possible.
7) Doctors who couldn't fix my finger? Possible but unlikely.
8) Al Quaida apologizing to us at GR with cookies? No.
9) GW Bush saying sorry to GR? No.
10) Mrs Fields herself? Doubtful, but nice of her maybe.
11) The Earth thanking GR for helping? I'd accept that.
12) Popular Culture fans? I'd accept that too.
13) The Bank. Yes, maybe it's from the bank. Possible. We've had problems with our bank, but that only got hashed out yesterday, and this was shipped 2 day air. I'm not quite sure.
14) Maybe it's from aliens and or Yeti. We're really nice to aliens and Yeti and many paranormal topics. Maybe it just came from them. They hacked Mrs. Fields.
15) A Vendor? Again I have no idea who I had problems with. Surely some of them, but nothing that warrants such nice cookies and pastries. Probably not. We've never gotten a gift this nice from one.
16) A film festival? The issues thing is possible. We donate tons of magazines to them. Probably not.
17) My plumbing problems? Did my yard or porta-potty I rented hook me up? I wish.
18) Secret admirer who got none (therefore "issues"). Could be, but I don't know who this could be. Sorry.
19) Mean customers and evil art fans who say they're not coming back, but keep coming back? I'd like to believe this. There's been some "issues."
20) Last possible... someone who think we've had "issues" and worries about it. Meanwhile, I haven't spent any time thinking about it. Could be...

Issues... no idea, I thought I (we) had a fairly good year (I'll go through it soon in a post). Maybe it's a symbol of a great bookend to a year for GR that I thought went decently. Nonetheless, whoever I (we) had issues with, they're the bigger person for sending us a gift. Meanwhile, I'll sit and stare at these cookies and wonder.

Someone wrote to me asking about starting a magazine. I guess it's ok for me to post my responses. I hope they do help, although there's no real answers to some of these questions... I left the topic of his possible magazine out. I also edited things down to make them shorter and easier to read.

Was it difficult to take GR from a zine to where it's at now? Did you and Martin work full-time on GR from the beginning? Or did you have day jobs for a while? How did you fund it in the beginning when you first jumped into a full-on magazine? Given my limitations, do you think this idea is unrealistic?

1) I think you do have to start small. If you can figure it out, you can make a site first, then make the publication later. People seem to do this these days, it's tough work, but if you want it bad enough, it's there to do. It's totally possible to make this work. It's a decent idea. You might have to make sacrifices, you can't do it all. Had I not sacrificed, I wouldn't be doing what I do today. I watched people move forward in life, while I lived at my parents and toiled all night. Typical, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

2) It's a long ride, 12 years or more for us, so it's not easy, but small steps is what it took. It wasn't an overnight thing, it was small improvements each issue. Did you know we had black and white in the mag until maybe 2 years ago?

3) Martin worked FT elsewhere for 10 years. I worked on GR full time much much longer. I lived at home until I was maybe 30 or near there.

4) Funding. $200 for the first issue and it was out of pocket. If you have $200 you can start something. I don't know when the "full on mag" thing started, I usually say it's the first issue, but the jump to the third issue was $2000. You gotta have at least $2000 and something to get things going anyway, on the minimum. But we did start with $200.

5) Things are as real as you want them to be.

Click on this to make it bigger, but we accidentally got many of these posters from Woody at Sneakerfreaker. So no new issue yet, but many posters. But while we're at it, how many of these can you name? Are all of those 5 striped ones KSwiss? Sneaker Freaker Woody is a great guy, if you ever get a chance to meet him, shake his hand.

Santouka originated in Asahigawa in Hokkaido and now they've landed in West LA in the Mitsuwa food court. What was once Tampopo ramen in the food court serving what was always maybe average ramen, it's now the king of ramen in Los Angeles.

A small line formed at lunch time on an average tuesday. There's not a lot of seats open, and the audience is mixed, some are Japanese, many aren't, but you can tell a lot are food people checking the place out. There's a bit of construction going on, but it's not too annoying.

The glass case, shows the entire menu, there's ramen, basically three types, salt, shoyu (soy sauce), and miso. The inside line from my friend in Japan is that the "shio" or salt ramen is the one to get. I opted for the regular shio with ikura over rice combo.

The ramen broth is a tonkotsu (pork) and shoyu broth mix. If you order shio ramen in another ramen joint, you might get something nearer to a clear based ramen, but shio here means it's salted tonkotsu-shoyu ramen. The bowls are actually small, so if you opt for just ramen, you might end up a bit disappointed. If you're a ramen eater, get the large. If you're getting a combo, perhaps stick with regular. The ikura bowl was fair, in the end, it's sort of like filler, you're getting rice and fish eggs, and neither are spectacular, but Santouka is famous for it's ramen. The shio ramen was again, smaller in size, but hearty in flavor. The whitish broth has a savory flavor that's filled with the familiar tonkotsu style pork broth you'd fine in ramen from Kyushu. It's oils mixed with it's long boiled broth make it exciting and satisfying. The noodles aren't anything new, they're decent, and the small fixin's inside are fine with the pork standing out. It even comes with a mini umeboshi.

The plastic food versions actually look decent, although there was less ikura than the plastic example showed. The hardboiled egg was actually surprising since it's been soaking in a soup base. My combo was $10.49. If you decide to get just ramen, for the shio small it's 5.49, medium 6.49, and large 7.49. You can always get extra pork, and that's good too. The hot miso ramen seemed least appetizing, and I probably won't be getting that until I've tried everything else.

Take a look at the ramen. These are plastic. Click on it and zoom in and you can see what's written here.

Santouka Ramen
3760 Centinela Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90066
10:00am - 8:00pm
(310) 915-0442

The Other Address!
21515 S Western Ave
Torrance, CA 90501
(310) 212-1101

Here's an excerpt of an email about Uglycon. Of course, I'm keeping this positive, since there was some collector backlash involved as well. I may add more to this later. Maybe not... not sure yet. But here it goes.

I am Griffin's mom- remember the Secret Mission Babo nutty eight year old?

I wanted to comment on the event, that has now become a memory burned into our cerebral banks- I am sure he and I will talk about it for years to come.

We found out about the event on the Ugly Dolls website, when I was looking to adopt some more dolls for Griffin for Christmas. It has been a love at first sight for Griffin when my sister bought him Jeero when he was in kindergarten.

I had no idea that the dolls had such a cult following; we came because we thought it would be fun, Griffy wanted to be in the costume contest and he really wanted to meet David and Sun Min. He knows all the stories of each doll; he considers them his buddies, he reads to them, we take them in the car and sleep with the entire family, which has grown to 15 after UglyCon. He loves Big Toe, which you all awarded to him at the contest- he was thrilled!

That night he kept thanking me for bringing him and telling me it was the best night of his life, which warmed this mom's heart and made the journey from the OC well worth it.

Griffin loved hamming it up in the parking lot and goofing with Ox and Wedgehead, as you will see in the pictures...

All of these pics are courtesy of Griff's mom. I like how the Ox on the left has a Muppets like mouth. I think that's where the person looks out of!

Griff got 2nd place in the costume contest. It's not the size of the costume, it's the personality of the character. Griff passed out cookies like Babo.

Martin got one too!

Griff is a tiny dude!

Anyone who reads GR is a friend of mine. Look at Griff's T!

Whoa, that's Big Toe. That's what Griff got for 2nd place. I wish Uglydoll was around when I was little. They would have my friends then like they are now. I hope Griff never outgrows Uglydolls.

-lastly, thanks to Griff's mom. Imagine if she was too tired or too busy to make it down to Sawtelle? Taking a short trip and checking out something new can have it's high points. Coming to Uglycon II in SF next year?