Fish and Chips + Sawtelle times.

Fried and fried. Fish and Chips gr/eats. Beer battered cod, so it's actually light and crisp. The malt vinegar is a nice touch, and I ate this entirely with my hands. We've been running this special lately and it's been quite fun to have. I can't eat this one too often, but it's good and filling.

Anne Matsushima and Alex Chiu doing the gr/eats. They do a bunch of indie projects, zines, art, and are making a collective of artist on the westside of LA. Motivated! They also dig doughnuts.

It's that season. Cherry Blossoms on Sawtelle. It's awesome how pink they are. I'd get out to the street this weekend to check on them.

A ton of images of Patchwork show at gr2. Tons of great art by great folks.

The Hundreds

When times are tough, it's great when a package of love shows up. Bobby Hundreds asked me for my sizes, and just a week later comes a box of goodies. First an apology. These are the worst shots possible. I didn't do it on purpose, but my camera battery was dying and I rushed through it. Three shots and it died. The Michael Lau figure above is awesome. I never thought I'd get one of these. I thought they were gone by now! The plastic on the hands are still on there. I guess you can call it Chinese Opera version.

I got three T shirts. I'm trippin on the middle one. The detail of their spoofs are insane. What fun it would be to design that shirt. I'll wear that one. The logo one is a no brainer. I think I have 3 or 4 of these now.

To sort of quote a song by the Untouchables. I Spy for the FBI.

one for when you go out, and another for everywhere you go.

Again apologies for the bad photo. These shoes are a lot nicer than these shots. I need some new shoes for when my Vans keel over. These are perfect.

The best BBQ marathon ever?

Backyard BBQs are usually about hot dog, hamburgers, and maybe chicken. That's what you do on the bare minimum. Sho from Yoshi's in San Francisco does things differently when food is involved. He goes all out. It's not an event to miss. Here's Sams hands making toro sushi. It's obviously amazing. Look at the pink color. Sushi was being made inside the house while a BBQ of amazing flavors happened outside.

Look at the rich orange color of this uni from Hokkaido. The label is below. The package it came in still had the shipping labels from Japan. Uni is usually a lighter orange, this one possessed a deep, rich color and tasted that way too.

The kitchen arena

The ikura was also a deeper orange than what you typically see.

Sam dealing with the ikura

Miles Nakamura and Daniel Wu. What kind of kicks are those?

Sho with the straw hat holding a bag of marinated tongue which was amazing.

Dan Automator on left, Sam the sushi man and friends

Intestines in two flavors and organic chicken.

a larger crew

Dan and Dan

The uni

Travelin' With Yoshitomo Nara

I was trying to help Yoshitomo Nara set up his computer with the system in the lecture room, McCormick 101. I had spoken the evening before without a hitch, and the system and his computer weren't talking to each other the next day. It took a while, but we got it going. I was hoping Nara would do the presentation in English, but he opted to go with a highly over qualified translator - the Head Chair of East Asian Studies. David Howell.

His katsu sweatshirt was too cool. Yabaton. They make their katsu with a miso sauce. It's in Nagoya.

This is more adjusting of the projection. I like how the light hits his face from the projection screen along with one of his paintings. It's a cool shot.

Nara points to the sleeping Tomio Koyama. After getting so excited by the Norman Rockwell painting in the Nassau Inn bar, he crashed out.

Which one did Nara draw?

The snow slowly melted away, and it actually wasn't that cold out.

This is dinner at a campus related place. Good food actually. The Too Cute! conference was coming to a close. The woman, Anne, who did a lot of the work to get the conference going is slightly pictured. I regretably didn't get a photo of myself with her. She's cool.

The group of photos is done until there's a food image. It was quite good.

Princeton Day 1

The plane ride was normal, until the white snow beneath. It's probably nearly all melted, but NY had something like a foot of snow, but an hour away, they hardly got any. I'm at Princeton, NJ, and did my talk which was streaming on the net and went actually pretty well. It was a new talk and I worked it over many hours of image searching and more.

This is a Rockwell painting that's hanging at the bar at the Nassau Inn. It's an original and was commissioned long ago, and sits where it's supposed to be. It might be the most expensive piece of art hanging at a bar. Someone should make a list.

Jimmy Stewart went to Princeton

Michelle Obama

Ralph Nader

Brooke Shields

Whoa! Patty and Karen, both of USC. They'll all be mad that I took sneak photos.

Joon Lee RISD, teaches English to art school kids.

This is a closeup of a piece of stained glass at the museum on campus at Princeton. Dogs and deer, a great combination. The stained glass is hundreds of years old and it's neat to see dogs depicted for some reason.

Jimmy. Everywhere I go, he happens to be in town. Japan, LA, and now Princeton. He too is a grad student, so he had some interest in being there, but bailed me out on an anime question from a student at the very end. Jimmy writes occasional reviews for GR, but the coolest thing? He set up an anime club for his fellow soldiers in Iraq when he was deployed there.

I'm speaking at Too Cute!

I'm speaking at a conference called Too Cute! at Princeton University. It's going to explore Asian popular culture and more. I speak on Wednesday at 4:30pm and Yoshitomo Nara speaks on Thursday at 4:30pm. It's supposedly all free and quite an honor. I've spoken so far at Harvard and Brown, so this will be Ivy school #3. This topic seems to come up annually in some form, and here it is for this year, but in a more academic setting. I hope I don't disappoint, especially since myself and probably Yoshitomo Nara will be the lowest SAT scorers in the house. I'll be working on my presentation over and over to get it decent. I've heard I get to do a Q and A as well, which is always fun.

Here's the schedule pdf link and here's a link to a news release.



Here's a link to a previous blog post about a Nara art opening.

I wish I had a larger flyer to show you, but this is all I got.