Scion Show in LA Weekly

Whoa, got a little write up on the Scion show!

Read the LA Weekly article. Pretty nice little clip.

IMDB

So it came up today, IMDB. I know I'm on there along with my cousin for Sunsets, but the bottom three things. Ego trip show, yeah they still show that! But the other two, I never did see the final product, the anime one, I don't remember at all. Anyone see the bottom two? Also my star meter thing went up 22%. What for? There's an arrow with it going up. Does that mean someone looked at my name? Is it just from me clicking on it? What's it say if you pay for the pro part?

Post show come down.

So it's back to work at the GR, I should be blogging daily still but that doesn't happen. But I am working on a little doc about Asian popular culture. Directing? I guess, I am... but it's a lot of fun, we'll see where it ends up since it has to be done soon. Roll em!

GR $ Scion Pt 1

Once in a while, things go nearly just right. Saturday night was one of those nights. We all have them. Surely, art shows are common, but sometimes, there's some great ones that happen, I'd like to think this was one of them.

I'll start with Kenton Parker. That's him above, doing any odd job it takes to get the show moving. When everyone's out eating dinner or even sleeping, he's at the gallery making sure the art is going up and looking good. He's a positive force, along with the others associated with the gallery, including Evan, Ian, Edith, Jeri, Cory, and well, there's even more.

My line for the show, was ripped off from Almost Famous. I kept thinking in my head and saying, "It's All Happening!"

Olaf Ladousse is from Madrid, along with screen prints, linoleum, and and comics, he makes doo-rags, which is the thing around his neck, it's a noise maker basically, and you can mess with the pitches to make more noise. He's a good fella, and was the elder statesman of the group show. I first saw his work in Madrid when I was at ARCO in 06.

Eishi Takaoka is the man. See all that wood? He made his own yurt and hung art on the outside and inside. I think he sort of stole the show with his hard work. See the piece on the left, the hanging phone? I think it was my favorite piece by Eishi.

Dan-ah! As seen in a previous issue of GR, this is Dan-ah, she's amazing, and is yet another Korean female artist. She came in from NYC. And, I made her pose like this. She's super shy, but made a great showing. A lot of people liked her art a lot.

feric is the man, some of his works had a price tag of 5 digits! Can you dig it?! Anyways, he's a nice guy now living in Hawaii. I think he had fun at the show. He always had friends around, and that's a great part of being able to travel, seeing your peeps.

Brian Ralph came to town and he's amazing. He painted that beast warrior dude, and hung his art all around. He looks triumphant, and of all the artists, I've known him the longest. It was great to see him, and it was great that he came out. I blogged about him the other day, so check that out.

French! From England, he's the hardcore skater who draws sort of kind of like Pushead. He's an amazing bloke, and he's surely having too much fun. He makes funny faces all the time, wears a lot of black, and is into the metal!

GR $ Scion pt 2

The night was decent. People actually came out, the space looked good, the people looked good, I appreciated the ladies who took the time out to dress nicely. Much appreciated! It brought some class to the event. I wore my old t shirt.

Look at the crowd. Decent and great. I can't ask for much more, it was one of those nights that makes me proud to be part of GR. This show's for you and us.

DJ Will on the wheels of metal. He rocks, and got on the mic and pushed GR nicely. He was just as important as anyone else who helped. His sounds made the night feel good. I remember he played Bad Brains at the beginning to set the tone for the night. Dragonforce made it in too.

The group shot... we made a sweep of the event, from the back to the front, picking off each artist one by one as we went. If we didn't, they wouldn't have made it all together. Yeah, our shot is funny, but there were 4 or 5 cameras flicking away. Kohei Yamashita's on the right with the numero uno. Martin's next to him, and he too helped a bunch, from taking Brian Ralph skating, and French to Thai massage, to helping B Ralph get new frames since they were all broken. It's all smiles.

Ahem. David Choe hits pay dirt. Some people know how to pose just right. I think he just met her, or did he? I have no idea. But she didn't hesitate to shift perpendicular (Y) to David's X axis intersecting at his hip. Tilting her head at a similar axis to the moon's rotation around Earth (David's head), she has a look of professionalism.

That's Kathleen Lolley, she has a solo coming up at GRNY. She was in town for her group show at Lab101.

Andy Kehoe was in town too for the same event. I like Andy, and it seems like I know him already, even though I've barely met him. Maybe it's a past life thing.

After, we went to the bunker in K town, with two big groups, and it was late. It was time to say our good byes... The show was ending, and we were shaking hands, giving high fives, hugs, and none of us wanted to go home.

Kohei gets air. Big time.

Scion $ Giant Robot opening night

The opening was last night, and I'm tired. Take a look at the photos below, maybe I'll post some and narrate what was going on at the time. It went really well and the artists had a great time. I'll definitely write more on it later on.

Terminal Island USA

Does this guy look familiar? Is it my uncle? No, it's a depiction of one of the 300 Terminal Islanders from before WW2, who lived there. At one time these folks fished the waters, with rod and reel, and then they were removed to the concentration camps and so forth. We once explored here with Money Mark issues back, and since then, a monument was made. Tuna street is the same. There's that one sign which shows you that a Japanese restaurant was once there. Thankfully it's broken so you can see it. The Korean owned spot is still there serving fish and chips, I'm sure it's the only place to eat there. There's a fishing book with some Japanese writing, is that an old ship? The prison is still there and that's where the monument's at. One neat thing is that right at the end of Tuna street are sealions! Just sitting there basking in the sun, you can hear them and watch them swim. This isn't a tourist area, so their show is just for the locals. Maybe the prisoners can hear them.

Here's a site on the place. And I guess there's a doc film too.

Scion $ Giant Robot

That's Brian Ralph, an old friend who's in town for the Scion show. I haven't seen much of Brian lately, but the best thing, he said tonight, was that he was having a good time and he now gets this art show thing. I've tried numerous times to get him into shows, and he did some, didn't do some, but now "gets" it. He's an artist, and is a great one. It's time he gets more exposure. Tonight, instead of going back to the hotel, since he doesn't know a lot of folks here, he went out with FRENCH to a sneaker party!

See more photos below, the space is looking good, and this saturday should be a blockbuster show. 7 o the 9 artists are going to be in town, and that's pretty cool. Hope they have fun.

Miniature

Minature Golf. You'd think this is near done. I don't hear of anyone trying it. But they still exist usually connected to batting cages. So, we decided to try it out. There's not too much excitement honestly, some of the holes have no tricks whatsoever, it's as if you're just putting in a straight line. I'm thinking, for these to really be cool, they need to work with artists and create a new and cool environment. So with that, anyone out there want to do it? I'd help you. It's a free idea! Maybe it'll be certain artists per hole. 18 holes, and 4 or 5 different courses, I'd say it's a lock. Anyone?

LOST

We lost the softball tournament game in the second round last night pretty handily. Something like 19-9 to a team that we can beat, but just not last night. For my cousin Mike who started the softball team about 5 years ago with an impromtu, dragging to Stoner park, of me, Martin, and Bill in our street clothes to figure out the game. We were raw, I think Martin never played an inning in his life, and the rest of us were pretty rusty from maybe Little League days. My cousin Mike's been playing softball here and there and saw an opportunity to make something-a team.

We've been playing, and maybe you've read about us here and there. We have three second place trophies picking up dust.This season was the first time we won first place. Our early exit yesterday wasn't terrible. We at least won a round, and did compete among the city's best C leaguers, most of who were probably first place in their divisions. So we competed among the best, and beat a team. Yesterday's effort wasn't the prettiest, we weren't hitting the best, and made a few botched plays that made the game out of reach. It was as if we were playing not to win after the first few innings. We had a glimmer of hope when we scored maybe 5 runs in an inning, but that was about it.

We huddled up after the game, and well, it was basically, "good season and good luck next season." Mike threw his beat up batting gloves into the dirt-retiring them and maybe "leaving them on the field," and was the first one to leave. He's taking winter off, and maybe he'll come back later on. It was actually a sad moment since I know I'll miss playing with cousin Mike, and I know he'll actually miss playing some. He did accomplish one thing, which was to help get a bunch of rag tag players to win a first place trophy and T-shirts! (first place teams get T shirts!) If you saw us in the beginning, you wouldn't have thought it was possible.

It's on us next season to play at the higher C+ level at a new park. Winter is sort of an off season, so it's time for us to work out a few more kinks and see if we can improve just that little bit.

fashion's

Sawtelle continues to evolve. There's a new shop. See the pic, that just came up. Aside from the apostrophe, and the fact that it's a vinyl banner for a sign, this is another boof by the Yamaguchi building. It's a loud pink spot, it's a shop that blows, and again, helps fuck up the area. If and when an older Sawtelle person sees the Yamaguchi building look like crap these days, even if it's just temporary, just looks like hell. Who's the blame?

Eishi in town

Eishi's in town and sleepy. He's in for the Scion - To the Masses show that I curated this weekend, on Saturday.

Also schedule to DJ is DJ Will. Guess what music he will spin. He's also on the message boards. Here's the thread on the show.

ranked

I played wii tennis with my cousin Jon risking my 1600 pro rating. He's a tournament player in real life and in his age bracket of 40s, he's a national ranked player. So thinking I would wipe him out, in his first few matches, he was pretty good, changing spins, ball speeds, and moving the ball around the court. All the stuff that it takes to play the real game. Of course, I beat him, using more shots than he has, and hearing tons of excuses, and definitely, him playing real tennis makes a huge difference in this game. But the lame, part, of course, after I wiped him out, he pulls out the "Let's take it to the real courts!" card, and well, that's another game. Wii is pretty cool, and in the heat wave we're having, made me break a good sweat in a short amount of time.

docu projects

Working on a short documentary project is a tough one. It's been a while, since I've messed with film. The youtube projects I've done, are mostly improv. I just shoot, get a bunch of stuff, then edit it all together. Here's our Youtube page.

The Space Invader documentary that I actually just shot through my camera has 14000 views, which is pretty cool. The others don't have nearly as many views, but it's a miracle that anyone has seen them.

So, when you have nothing shot, and you need to economize, what do you do? How do you set up your projects without anything? It's a tough thing in a way, and in the end, it'll take more improvisation. I think my "docs" have been alright so far... and if I set out to do them as "docs" in the first place, they'd probably be even better.

past present future

Ranking NBA players past present and future.

How the heck do you do this?

I'd agree, Jordan and Magic in the back. That's pretty unbeatable already. Isiah? No way. Jerry West, no. But the center, Russell? Common now. Maybe for the pace of the team, you'd put him in there, but Kareem, not the guy who was 42, but what about that 30 year old kung fu fighting one? Yes, he's in the box. Start him. Wilt was bad ass, but who'd get all the ladies? MJ Wilt or Magic? Forwards, Bird, yes, he'll make that outside shot. Tim Duncan as the other forward. ok, fine. But he's still playing. Worthy? No, I guess not, but Bernard King?! Maybe. But Tim would be best. I guess he's old school enough now. But Let's put Riley in there. Speed this shit up.

Present, Kobe and Nash, yes, that would be too much. Duncan, Garnett, LeBron. ok. That's good. There's Duncan again, this time as a center. Shaq could have it, if he participated in his own show and kicked ass even at his age. In shape, Shaq all the way. We're talking about one game to play right? This isn't a whole season, right? Garnett, maybe. I like him, but do you really want this guy on your all time best present team? Dirk? I guess the present isn't as exciting as the past. I'd think the past could beat this present team. More team work oriented for sure. Plus the MJ factor...

The future. That's ugly. Take a look... Amare, yes. Yao Ming sure of course! right? Kobe, LeBron sure. This is 2012. We'll see this all unfold. Are these guys of the material that the past guys were about? Ethics? Is it there? I hope so... for all of our sakes, not just in bball.

birthday

Yeah... it was my birthday yesterday. It moved swiftly away. Not too much to say about it, but another year passes by, and I grew my beach glass collection. Thanks to the close friends and family for being around.

softball playoffs

20-18 GR beats a newer team, the Gammas in the first round. The Gammas were a Latino team of kids, they're younger, fast, and need more experience to get on with softball. Our team is experienced, although somehow we let them go from 7-1 to 7-6, then when we were up 20-10, they came back 20-18 mostly with 2 outs. We were imploding. A few bonehead plays here and there, gave them a bunch of extra runs, and they even got the point where the tying run came to bat. What happened? It's hard to figure out why stuff like this happens. But when it's two outs, and it feels like that third out should haver happened 2 and 3 times, letting in more and more runs, then that's when you begin thinking, "if we got that guy out at that point, then..." So it happens, and that's where we're at as a team, enough to win, but is it enough to win again? We'll find out next tuesday.

Had to add... more... seems negative up there in that post. But really it's not. We friggin won! I think it also means, that as a team, we always play down to the level of our opponents. When they stink, often, we do too. When they're good, sometimes, we rise and play much better. It's how it works.

art center review 2

Back to Art Center to help critique a lighting class. The kids came up with great ways to make lighting happen. Some looked ready to go into production, and some needed a little more work. But each were truly amazing, and the ideas behind each were solid and well thought out. I think the only thing I left with was... "is this really school?!" The work seems to fun for it to be true. Check out the images for what the heck the kids are making. I'm ready to buy some of this stuff.

Bombs Away

It looks like something went wrong here, but no, it's just a firework that looks like it blasted people. It's an image from the post tennis fireworks. I forgot to say before that on Saturday, Sharapova was supposed to play, and the night started late, then next thing you know, they announced, she wasn't even going to play, so she comes out, makes a bunk announcement, and off she goes. The doubles proved to be good actually, and we saw a decent match, but we also got free tickets to the finals. The fireworks didn't disappoint. So for those of you who care... here's some more shots of fireworks.



Next, doubles. Two people play. Usually, your best strategy is for both players to be together, whether it's up at the net or both back. One up, and one back doesn't work out well, and we saw examples of that all night. One team didn't bother to follow any of the conventional "rules" of tennis. Of course, they were young and had some great shots, and managed to blast to win a few games, but the regular way, of playing as a team prevailed. There's something to say about having fundamentals.

Common Stubbs!

In tennis usually the top seed does alright.

Kveta Peschke, Czech Republic, and Rennae Stubbs (2), Australia, def. Alicia Molik, Australia, and Mara Santangelo (1), Italy, 6-0, 6-1.

But not yesterday. Tennis is trying to promote the value of women's doubles, by saying it's exciting, and the new no-ad scoring (to make it faster) is better and so on. But yesterday, the 2 took out the 1 in nothing flat. It was a 43 minute pathetic effort by the top seeds who just had no skills whatsoever. Exciting? No. I heard moans of people wanting money back for the quality of this match. It's definitely not worth having on television. However, Rennae Stubbs is pretty fun to watch. She's a Aussie who's sort of like the Yoda of women's doubles. 56 titles now, and counting. A few grand slams, so she's for real. She's in her mid 30s, born in 1971, gets hyped up, and is an outspoken lesbian. She has a hard serve, handles volleys well, and overall, is pretty tough, but according to her wiki entry, as only got as high as 64 in singles! Read this article on her.

Stranglehold

Remember the ad we had? It was our first ad and we had it for two days. I guess we never got it back. Here's what happened. We got the ad on the front page. It was a click counting type of ad, so more clicks, the more money. So for some reason, we got a high rate of clicks in the first day. I swear, it wasn't me just sitting there clicking, but the number was high enough that it caused some concern. I guess a "glitch" is what they call it. Something was up, and the ips were all the same. I think. So it ended with a, "we'll contact you again" type of thing, and of course, they didn't. But the good thing is that it made us seek other advertisers, and so on. In the end, that's where we're at.

Scion postcard

Scion show. So yes, I curated a Scion show at their space in Culver City. How will it be? Here's the final postcard. I think the booklet that Martin pretty much handled will go to print next week. Did I say Scion? Anyways, it's fun to work on projects for others sometimes. Of course, them having a budget for it makes it all possible. 8 of 9 artists should be coming to town.

kaikaikiki kanye

The Kaikaikiki machine keeps rolling and they're always working with the big names in entertainment, fashion, etc etc. So now, it's a Kanye West album art, and there's been some more video here and there of Kanye hanging out with Kaikaikiki goods. I dunno what this all means, if anything, but just know, that right when you don't hear much about it, a lot of news starts flooding in.



Kanye West visits Kaikaikiki.

MOCA $ MURAKAMI $ LOUIS VUITTON

Here it goes: Takashi Murakami's going to have a Louis Vuitton shop inside of his exhibition at Moca. That's crazy. A lot of artists, even young ones have made some issue about art purity. Is it okay to make products, is it ok if Takashi Murakami makes products and art and exploits them both? I've always been okay with it, as long as it's good. He's done that. For this exhibition, a solo at MOCA, he's taking "it" to the next level. The retailers of all retailers, expensive bags, but custom, and probably getting a huge percentage of that sale. I've heard mumblings of things for months, but I think it's official now.

Comicon Rafu

Cover of the Rafu. Made it. Walking by the Comicon booth a Rafu staffer, Cari Yasuno, said hello and snapped a photo. We look ok there, but it was hectic.

868

Awesome journalism. Syringe font? Amazing. Barry Bonds did his thing, broke the 755 mark, that from when I was a little kid thought was impossible. I remember the Hank Aaron baseball cards which I couldn't get, were the most coveted for me. More than Mantle, DiMaggio, Ruth, Pete Rose, George Brett, all of them. The record is now in the hands of Barry Bonds, and guess what? I have his rookie card. It's too bad, I care more about the graphics of the NY Post than Bonds, the record, or even the controversy. I also no longer care about the Hank Aaron card as well. He's now number 2, soon to be number three when A-Rod does his thing in a number of years. But don't forget the number you should care about?



868

That's the real number. As the Beastie Boys said in "Hey Ladies", "And I've got more hits than Sadaharu Oh." It should be homers, but oh well, they're close enough.

Brickwall

Brickwall. They're back... And no, we're no affiliated with the fine folks at LEGO®!

Blik Party $ GR

Blik party! We're part of the Blik family, and they're celebrating 5 years. They used a couple of my designs and created the Giant Robot Blik wall deals. We sell them! It's been fun, and at the same time, people have been decorating their homes with them.

Scion $ GR

I worked with Scion on an upcoming art show in August. This month! It's called To the Masses featuring some great artists. Caroline Hwang, French, Eishi Takaoka, Kohei Yamashita, Olaf, Brian Ralph, Ben Woodward, feric, and Dan-ah Kim. It's going to be an awesome show, and most will be in attendance. Giant Robot + Scion at their space in Culver City.

Pikapika

Got to try pikapika last night ahead of time for the Imprint conference that GR and InterTrend are sponsoring.



No, we didn't do this one, but we did one that wasn't as good compared, but it's fun. You might notice that their work is like that Sprint commercial. These guys did it before them and were pretty much ripped off. Takeshi, one of the pikapika kids does animation and teaches it at a school in Osaka.


Here's what we made.

x

I watched a bit of the street skating part of the X Games. It's pretty neat, but the part that sort of stinks is that these dudes at times, miss maybe 80% of their tricks, maybe more. The course may be tough, who knows, but it seems to lend itself to bad TV. Maybe it's more like soccer, but we're all too spoiled by skate videos where they're either eating shit over and over, or making every trick.

The winner seems subjective, do you pick the guy who landing 2 tricks over the guy who landed just 1? What about degree of difficulty? What if you landed none? I'm not sure how it works, after watching this, and the lack of spectators, it's sort of a sad event. The best of the best are there, and this event seems to get the least amount of attention, yet it's the style of skating that's the most prevalent.

Blow

I took a trip up to the SF Bay area today to interview future managers. Yes, Myleen the SF manager is leaving us, sort of, she'll be taking a smaller role, while he's going back to school. I flew in via Jet Blue from Long Beach. Let's start with that first.

I drive past LAX to get to LB sometimes. Why? It might be a bit faster in the end, but LAX is the biggest hassle ever. Flights get delayed, cancelled, and you have to deal with dicks. Dick everyone. Dick cops, dick parking people, dick counter people, dick security, and dumb fucks working for the airlines. Long Beach is a bit better. I swear, even the police are nicer there. Getting in and out is pretty easy, and the stress level is nil. The drive actually turns out to take about 35 minutes from Long Beach to West LA, it's not bad.

The day in SF was decent. I walked in the door at 12:45, and left the place at 6:10pm. Up and back pretty quick.

But I have an issue with the Bay... and don't get me wrong, I do like the place. But today, I got a ticket. A ticket for coming out of the Muni without a transfer, which actually doubles up as a receipt. I came out of a train and got "Carded". Imagine, how many times have you been carded coming out of a train? or a bus? or a cable car? It doesn't happen, well, today, it happened to me. The guy was cool about it, but I thought he'd let me go when I proved and explained that I was from LA for the day, and didn't know that the transfer is also receipt. When the driver handed it to me, I refused, thinking that I'd save paper. An eco-thing that's in tune with the Bay area... right? But no. I got a ticket. While I stood there, the other "cop" let a woman and two kids through with a warning when they didn't have their "receipts". I now have to appear in court, or call and present my case and see how much of a fine I have to pay.

So today, I'm a marked man and right now, I'm sitting on my sofa relaxed with my crotch presented to the bay. You owe me one.