David Choe Biennale Unofficial flyer.

David Choe rips another one... unofficial GR Biennale Flyer.

Want to see it larger? Open our flickr.

Giant Robot in JPy+ magazine.

JPy+ magazine interviewed me. This is volume 3! "Message from Successful Men" it also says, Secrets to Happiness! The text is cute. If you read the small print, it's quite fun. "JPy interviewed an experienced businessman, who is full of positive energy, and asked him about his secret." Awesome. Click on it.

A larger readable version is here at flickr.

Giant Robot Biennale Cards: The first two.

First two official postcard images for the Giant Robot Biennale. A third is in the making. Click on the images to make them larger! Pass them around. David Choe art above, the mural from two years ago and some extras, and below it's the James Jean card.

Time Lapse Hong Kong storm

Time lapse in Hong Kong. I'm not sure if it should ever be called a gimmick, but time lapse always looks cool. I wish I shot this, and I do wonder how it was done. The lens gets wet sometimes! Maybe it's a window, but it's just so still and perfect.

Night happens at around 4:30. Skip there if it's too long.

kozyndan's new panoramic for GR Biennale 2

This is pretty amazing. Nakano is a great area in Tokyo which features Nakano Broadway, the otaku mecca toy building. This piece will be 10 feet long! Amazing.

Take a look at it large form here.

Masakatsu Sashie Twentieth Century Book - art shots

I hope some of you are in awe of this man's work. It's always striking and thought provoking, but it's pretty awesome how he went deep with his liking of T-Rex to make these works. Some of the links and references are way beyond me, and some are obvious. To a fan, they're probably easy... and we'll see what people say wednesday. Twentieth Century Boy

Editing down Sunsets

Somehow, Sunsets is cut down pretty far. From 98 minutes, I think it's something like 84 minutes. That's 14 minutes and after watching it for the first time in ages, I can't really tell where it lost it's weight, which means good things. The fat got cut and now it's svelte. Sunsets shows this Thursday, the link is here.

Don't mess with Bob

I wish I knew exactly what reptile this is. The only thing I know is that his name is Bob, and Bob is gigantic. I saw him at a pet store in Santa Monica, and it was sort of freaky. Look at the deterring sign below.

Uglydolls completists List

Uglydolls are a phenomenon. It's proven by this thread from their forums. It seems complete, but I'm not sure if it is. I have the piece above, that I don't see in his list. But it's quite great. I'm sure there are others. Two more Uglydolls are at GR store, and those too are handmade. Yes, they're somewhat faded, but that's how they are supposed to be - not part of a collector's wet dream, but actually a permanent part of the GR Store. That's how handmade Uglydolls can be as well and hopefully how David and Sun-min intended them to be. That said, maybe I should take them home!



Here a link to the forums.

Japanese American T shirts from way back - Who done it?

Does anyone out there know who made these T-Shirts? I don't know what I'd do if I had the information, but these are the prototypes for what's become the racist t-shirts made by conglomerate companies all over the world. Yet, this particular brand was made in the 70s and maybe 80s by a company who must have been local to Southern California, Japanese American, and I had a bunch of them, and wore them religiously. It was a form of yellow power. Shirts by "us" and for "us". I remember one saying, Kamikaze Taxi, need a cab, with a full buck toothed driver of a cab that was in old school hot rod Ratfink style. Another was Ichibun with a samurai scratching his ass. I had the Year of the Cock shirts, and of course they had one for each Asian zodiac animal. Then there was monku monku monku - bitch bitch bitch. There were probably more that I don't remember. The one above, Rotsa Ruck is one that I don't remember at all. Look at the color of the shirt first of all.

One of the best parts was the geta slippers on the front as a chest print. That was their logo, but they never did neck tags, so I have no idea what they were called. I bought this at a resale vintage shop for $18. They had another logo, a rising sun with a stereotypical buck toothed dude in the center of it. I wish I had those shirts too.

More than a Game - the movie with Lebron James

It's easy to say, More Than a Game is a good documentary, and I guess I just did. Is it as great as Hoop Dreams? It's not quite there to be honest, but knowing the Lebron James angle and what he's become, does make you want to see how he got there. This is what makes this film valuable. You get a great peek at his friends, the Fab 4 which later becomes to Fab 5, the 4 knew each other from when they were little, 11 years old and they played basketball together all the way through high school. Imagine the bond and how their friendship determined how and where they would play. I especially like Dru Joyce III in the center. He played high school ball and was sub 5 feet tall! Of course Nike is involved. Here's their link to the movie. Meanwhile Kobe was voted as the player of the decade by the Sporting News. Lebron may be the guy for the next decade.

Subterranean (termites) homesick blues

See that long string thing? That's a subterranean termite mud tunnel going from the ground up. It's amazing how they can make such things, but this is under a house which gets no breeze. The tunnels are made of their excrement, so it must bolster the tube. I'm actually amazed at what they can do. If you break their moist poo tunnel, they'll die since they'll dry out. Evidently, a termite inspector will mark the spots with an S for subterranean for the next person who works on the property (even if they don't get the job). According to one inspector, he said, these folks did a good job before him, and that's what they're supposed to do. Evidently, there's a code of conduct for Termite exterminators. That's cool. Of course what's not cool is that he came out from under the house nodding his head "no" and dropped me the bad news.

See the tunnels in the corners? The termite guy put an S in that spot.

That's indoors.

Michael Lau September 29th in LA. This is the invite

You can try to bootleg this invite and I'm sure someone eventually will in China. But for now, this is what it looks like. We featured Michael Lau and actually were the first to sell his Crazy Children toys in 2000. Or was it 1999. It's a long forgotten fact, but we sold them as they came out, usually in pairs. It was soon after issue 18. Now you can celebrate the 10 years by checking out Barracuda store on Melrose. 7769 Melrose. LA, CA 90066. I don't know how many different kinds of figures there are, but I got the girl figure which is really nice. This show promises to be interesting. The day after, you have to come to see the Masakatsu Sashie show in Hollywood - 20th Century Boy.

Airholes on the box, 1) to probably pain bootleggers by adding an extra step. 2) the figure needs to breathe like a cabbage patch doll.

The text from the invite.

Wet Sand

Sometimes, sneakers just don't cut it. You can't beat the feeling of a thin layer of ocean water on top of the sand that's muddy and gives-in just the right amount.

Bear Flag Wine in the mail

Wine? Sometimes, rad things happen. Bear Flag wanted to know what I think about their wine, so in the mail comes this. Labels are artistic. I'll tell you how it tastes later on. On the left is Red Blend #1, and on the right is White Blend #1. Wine making has been the new micro brew, and we'll see how far it all goes. I get pretty red, so tasting has to happen after hours. bearflagwine.com

No, I swear I won't! Chinatown LA

No, really, I swear I won't! There was another sign that had a super blurry smurf on it! It's on the far left in the background. To make matters better, they even translated it into Chinese. No, don't self sample there, but it's ok everywhere else. I took a small trip to Chinatown today and visited the mayor of Chinatown, Bill Poon.

at Sam Woo

This font was amazing. I kept reading it as Hong Kong since I was so into the font, but it's Hong Chong.

Tons of undies on the the wire. That's old school, both in style and in undie choices.

Ostrich Feed Solvang

This car sits outside of Ostrich Land. I'm not sure if it's the greatest thing around, but for a few bucks, you can get some feed, and from across the fence, you can feed ostriches. They're not friendly, since all they want is your food. Use two hands so you don't get your finger bit off... Once you run out of food, they'll move on to the next person with more food. It's sort of like this video, which is super short.




This is the LEGO section of Danish Days which happens once a year over a specific weekend. LEGO, Denmark. Yes!

Inside of a clock shop, tons of cuckoo clocks. I guess these are Danish.

This is a Danish lunch. Sausage, pickled cabbage, mashed potatoes and gravy.

Paper cutting by Rick James Marzullo, who's pretty good.


I bought this piece from him. It's tiny. Maybe 2 1/2" across.

Birds at the beach in Carpinteria on the way back down.

Shunji Iwai

That's Ayako Fujitani working on a small section of a script with Shunji Iwai. I got to be the other "reader". Even with nearly very little lines, I'd still mess up sometimes, throwing off everyones timing. This is why I don't act. Read more about Shunji Iwai.

Albert Reyes at the Biennale

Albert Reyes checks out the Biennale space. Good job of having too much fun. You should have heard his speech. He promises an installation and art. Will it pass the tests of public safety? We'll see.

Lance Hahn 9/21/07

Sept 21, 2007 is when our friend Lance Hahn from J Church passed away. We won't forget him. Here's a blog post from Martin about Lance and the moment we found out. We were thankfully hanging out in Hawaii eating shave ice... Then the call came. It's been 2 years already. Time flies and all that.

Martin's blog.
lancehahn.org

Japanese Technology, Big American Taste

I open an older copy of SLAM magazine and see this ad. Interesting. Characters and burgers and the line, Japanese Technology, Big American Taste. WTF? What campaign was this? How does anything tie into each other to make sense. Did Japan invent burgers? Did they shrink them down into sliders? Did Sliders exist already? WTF? Try finding information about this campaign. I found none. I'm sure it failed. Even the characters aren't drawn well enough to be real.