Giant Robot talk at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena on Friday, December 10
The Pacific Asia Museum invited me to take part in this month's Active Cultures program, and it takes place this Friday night! The deal is that two unrelated speakers from different backgrounds give short presentations about what they do, and then they field questions from the audience and each other afterward to show commonalities and contrasts and complement both. Cool, right? I'm being partnered with indie filmmaker Arthur Dong, who gained a serious reputation for three documentaries on being gay in the military, being gay in a conservative family, and murderers who killed gay men, but recently proved that he can also make crowd-pleasers with Hollywood Chinese, which celebrates and criticizes the treatment of Chinese and Chinese Americans in front of and behind the camera. I've actually interviewed him a couple times–once in the pages of Giant Robot and once for an event hosted by the Chinese American Museum. He's a cool dude who does important, interesting work, and he knows how to talk about it, too!
As for my portion, this will probably be my last speaking engagement for a while and I want to make it count–not that I ever mail it in. No one wants to hear about how crummy the magazine business is going these days, so I'm going to discuss editorial, which is what I do anyway. I've spend the last day or two selecting some of my favorite stories over the last 68 issues and recalling anecdotes about weird things that happen during the interviews, how ideas evolve and mutate, and how certain articles have had unexpected, interesting repercussions. The stories behind the stories, as a certain radio announcer might say. I think it will be an interesting 30 minutes (bookended by Arthur's talk and the Q&A) and if it isn't, at least there will be images like the ones in this blog so you won't be totally bored!
Admission is 10 bucks, but who knows? If I have a small guest list, maybe I can get you in since Eric is out of town and Wendy might stay home with Eloise (since the wine tasting part isn't exactly right for a 2-year-old). Send me an email or message on FB because I could use some support!