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Work is available online now!

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Game Night is always a fun event. The evening had a summer vacation vibe as the area was filled with locals who were just cut free from school. Graduations just took place at the local colleges and everyone was happy to be out. It’s hard to capture the many little micro things going on at Game Night. The crowds came through in waves, so it went from packed, to light, to packed again. We had 4 different games, 5 stations, Yeren – a board game that’s part of Game Over, and even a marriage proposal.

The proposal. They were up from San Diego, he had told her that one day they’d go to a Game Night. He wore a different GR shirt during the day and had a costume change at some point, since at Game Night, he was wearing his proposal outfit. He got the ring a couple of months earlier. After playing games, checking things out, he played Yeren in front of Shelby Cinca and Sean Chao, and that’s where he popped the question. She said yes. Romantic dude. She was near shaking and fiddling with the ring nonstop. The photo below is just a few minutes later. Eventually, we hope to see their Flipcam video that someone shot. Game Night is magical.

The photos below is Glorkian Warriors shot from off the parking lot wall at Giant Robot 2. The art is by James Kochalka, and the Game play, Pixeljam. This will be a hit game. The animation is smooth and it feels like you’re in the Kochalka cartoon world. This is a fun one.

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[Click to enlarge]

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. ~ This week there’s been talk of restarting the Edison International-operated nuclear reactors at San Onofre.  Located between Los Angeles and San Diego, the two operational pressurized water reactors there ~ units #2 and #3 ~ have been shut down since January 2012, when an inspection found that new pipes that carry steam to and from the reactor’s generators showed unexpected corrosion less than two years ago after they were retrofitted. Any other time in the atomic age, the public might have just shrugged and accepted all the assurances of the giant utility. “Not to worry, folks.”

But it’s only been 15 months since the triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, and three of the Japanese reactors there are still leaking radioactive becquerels and bucky balls of toxic isotopes and a tsunami-shattered fourth reactor building houses some 1,500 spent fuel rods that some say could create another nuclear disaster that will dwarf the one that the beleaguered Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government will be battling for the unforeseen future.

The movement against the restarting of San Onofre #2 and #3 is growing. Warnings by the Southern California power companies that the absence of cheap and clean nuclear energy might cause rolling blackouts and limited time for junior on the Xbox don’t seem to carry the same fuzzy feelings as they did BF ~ Before Fukushima.

One month after Japan’s triple 3-11 disasters, our friends over at Gizmodo published a timely story entitled “How a Fukushima-Level Disaster Would Affect You in New York, L.A. or Chicago.”  The story featured some maps that were chilling then and that are even more compelling today factoring in what we didn’t know about the on-going nuclear mishaps in Japan.

Gizmodo notes that while Japan opted for a 30-kilometer or 18.6-mile radius long-term evacuation zone, U.S. scientists tipped their hand last March when they advised any American citizen inside an 80-kilometer ( 49.7 mile) radius of Fukushima Daiichi to leave. If that same policy were applied in the case of meltdowns at reactors near the three top urban populations centers of the U.S. ~ New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, this would be the scenario, according to Gizmodo:

♣In the worst case of an meltdown at Indian Point Nuclear Station in Buchanan, NY, more than 20 million people in the metro area would have to be evacuated, leaving the city deserted, from Long Island to the Bronx.

♣If a Fukushima-like accident were to hit San Onofre, Southern California, although the city of Los Angeles itself would fall outside the evacuation zone, some 15 million souls would be told to evacuate from  most of Orange Counnty, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes to the north;  greater San Diego to the south;  Fontana, Whittier and Pomona to the east; and Catalina Island and Pacific Ocean to the west.

♣A disaster at either Dresden Nuclear Power Station in Dresden, IL or Braidwood NPP, Braidwood, IL outside Chicago would see at least 9.7 million people evacuated from the Windy City and metro area.

Meanwhile, The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the first of a series of public meetings on the issues that have shuttered the San Onofre nuclear plant for more than four months. The NRC meeting will take place June 18 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the San Juan Capistrano Community Center. [Gizmodo ~ How a Fukushima-Level Disaster Would Affect You In New York, LA or Chicago] [Nuclear Energy Institute ~ State-by-State Nuclear Facts]

Thanks for the visit to Game Over at Giant Robot. The exhibition features 140 pieces of art from nearly 80 artists. The opening reception on saturday was one of the most crowded ever. People filed in at 6 and we had people still hanging around well past 10. The work fills the walls and if you’re a game or art fan, this is a perfect place to get lost for a while. One of the first things you notice are video game cabinets and they’re featuring a game made by programmer Beau Blyth with art by Jeni Yang. It’s called Catburger. That’s Beau and Jeni below. Again to those who helped us get the show together including: Meatbun, Adam Robezzoli, Carlos Lopez, Dean Gojobori, Kio Griffith and to who promoted, covered and showed up, thanks much. We’ll get art online for sale perhaps later today or tomorrow.

Dylan Sprouse is an indie gamer.

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That’s Karen Hsiao (Miso) and her piece for Game Over.

Sean Chao and Shelby Cinca with Yeren, the game.

Nick Arciaga with his Bub and Bob Kaiju.

Chris Chan’s Streetfighter wood series. Very nice and they’re over a foot tall each.

Luke Chueh always comes through for us.

Pacific bluefin tuna migrating last year from coastal Japan to the waters off Southern California contained radioactive cesium isotopes from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, scientists reported Monday. This news sent the Twitterverse careening out of control for a time, but what are the facts?
The amount of radioactivity in the fish was one-tenth the level the U.S. and Japan consider dangerous, and likely posed no public health hazard or risk to people who ate the seafood, the scientists said. But the study showed for the first time that migrating sea life rapidly brought traces of radioactive elements from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors across vast distances.

[Read more about tuna and radiation:  HuffPo ~ Bluefin Tuna Radiation: Is There A Health Risk? / The Wall Street Journal ~ U.S. Tuna Has Fukushima Taint

Thank you for coming through. When the idea of a “reading” was happening, I was picturing Ed Lin reading out of his book, or perhaps notes or anecdotes, but it turned into something else. A reading event with poets. At first it was a strange thought. In reality, it’s merely art form. You only have to listen and try and absorb the sounds, the words, and the tones of what’s being said. There’s a dynamic range of the many styles and this night showed it all. It started with Franny Choi (below), who’s a slam poet. She’s a competitor and brings an animated and strong performance to her words. She’ll grab everyone’s attention every second.

Chiwan Choi’s work is touching, subtle compared to Franny Choi (no relation), and his works are introspective yet mainting a hard hitting quietness, like a silent assassin.

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Taiwan-based EVA Air and toymaker Sanrio have joined paws and sent an adorable  fleet of three Hello Kitty-themed Airbus 330-300s to do battle against their many competitors in the short-route airline wars in East Asia, flying routes between cities such as Taipei, Fukuoka, Tokyo (Narita), Sapporo, Incheon, Hong Kong and Guam.  EVA spokespersons were quick, however,  to quell rumors that pilots of these aircraft would be dressed as Pikachu. (BuzzFeed ~ Thank You for Choosing Hello Kitty Airlines)

What’s a gallery supposed to do when an artist can’t make it? We’ve had that issue in the past but this time, we did something creative with it. Eishi Takaoka isn’t the most talkative but across the world at his house in Kagoshima, Japan, he joined his solo effort at Giant Robot 2 – I Am Fine. He spoke to visitors as if he was there using Skype video with HD cams. He answered questions with some translation help from Google Translator, our friends Kio and Shihori. (The art is available here.)

Kanji characters scrawled on a soccer ball in indelible marker have linked it to a school near a region of northeastern Japan ravaged by the monster tsunami wave that devastated cities in three prefectures last March and may represent the first positively identified items to reach U.S. territory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Response and Restoration reported April 19.

A soccer ball and volleyball were found on the beach of Middleton Island by David Baxter, a technician at the radar site on the remote island in the Gulf of Alaska. Baxter’s wife translated the writing on the soccer ball and traced it to the name of a school. NOAA confirmed that the school was in the tsunami zone, though located uphill and not seriously damaged by the disaster.

NOAA has been monitoring floating debris from the tsunami for the past year, and some very buoyant items have already made it across the Pacific. A derelict fishing vessel drifted at least 4,500 miles before it was spotted off the coast of Canada and sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard in early April. (Anchorage Daily News – Tsunami Debris)

UPDATE (Monday, April 23, 2012)

MORIOKA (Kyodo) — The owner of the soccer ball that apparently floated across the Pacific Ocean from northeastern Japan after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami was found Sunday to be a teenager who survived the disaster. He says he is surprised but thankful for the Alaskan who found it.

“I have no doubt that it is mine,” Misaki Murakami, a 16-year-old high school student in the devastated city of Rikuzentakata, told Kyodo News after hearing the news that his name was written on the ball found in mid-March on the coast of Middleton Island off Alaska.

The ball also bore a message of encouragement in Japanese to Murakami and a signature indicating it was written in March 2005 by third graders of an elementary school, Yumi Baxter, 44, the Japanese wife of David Baxter who found the ball, told Kyodo News by phone.

Ramping up for its gala opening next month, developers this week gave domestic and foreign journos a heart-stopping over quarter-mile ride up, up, way up to the observation level of Japan’s latest entry into the ongoing “biggest and longest” competition among industrialized nations ~ the 634-meter-tall (2,080 feet) Tokyo SkyTree. White-knuckled reporters boarded the SkyTree’s high-speed elevators with nervous smiles and waited a minute and 20 seconds to be lifted to the imposing tower’s observation level 1,476-feet above the metropolis. Earthquake’s? The Skytree survived last March’s 9.0 with no damage. The SkyTree has a restaurant and two cafes on the observation decks, a vertigo-inducing glass floor that lets vomitous visitors look straight down and an emergency staircase with 2,523 steps just in case you’re in the mood for a workout. Yomiuri Shimbun has video of the high-level junket (in Japanese but the flyover footage really doesn’t need translating) and HuffPo has a writeup and a slideshow.

All photos by Dean Gojobori.

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The visitor! We’ll have the art available to see online quite soon. Perhaps tomorrow. Monday.

That’s Erika Yamashiro on left.

Food spread!

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