Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Jessica Lum passed away recently. I met her when she interviewed me for an article (link to that article) in UCLA’s paper and we became friends afer that. I remember the day when she said she had to leave school and deal with her illness. She was talking about how she had to leave her stuff in her dorm. I thought about how she was a photographer and writer with aspirations that might have included journalism but also with an interest in popular culture. I had her write about her illness, which has a name that not many can remember. It was about her isolation for many days in a chamber of atomic particles. She also didn’t hesitate to show what her tumor looked like. Before her operation which had possible dire consequences, we sent her to Hawaii. It was the first GR sponsored vacation. It was like a game show prize. “You and a guest will go on a ….” She picked her dude, Chris Tanouye. From her photos, you’d never think she was ill. It smiles all around the island. Thankfully, the operation worked out and we got more smiles throughout the next few years.
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An extensive article about Jin, the rapper who is now only 30 has had a long career in the music industry. He’s now based in Hong Kong and is a success story. This article serves as a primer, you’ll hear the downs and ups to being a born again Christian. (WLRN – Jin)
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Some images from the last fleeting moments of the Giant Robot Bienanle at JANM. It included a panel discussion on Saturday with Luke Chueh, Yoskay Yamamoto, Scott Tolleson, and David Horvath. Also upstairs was a workshop with Rob Sato.
So much for being past the 30,000 mark, it’s down to merely 27,776. This is still a considerable number every day. In the past the numbers end up being near 100 a day! (CS Monitor – Suicides)
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Last month South Korea elected its first female president. Seems progressive enough, but Park Geun-hye is a fiercely conservative daughter of a dictatorial former president. It was a passionate race to the finish, and her two liberal opponents at one point were going to band together to take her down, but they couldn’t agree on who should step down. Like Japan, the Korean people chose a conservative candidate to guide them through these recent troubled economic times, convinced they are the key to recovery. Unlike Japan, South Korean voters came out in droves on election day. Now South Koreans are lining up outside Park’s “Center for Proposals for the People’s Happiness”. As she transitions into power, downsizing government, chopping budgets, and hiring and firing, she has established this center (open until February 8th) to hear what the people want. Citizens are lining up (and camping out) to get their submissions in. Five officials will review the suggestions as they come in, and present the cream of the crop to the transition committee. It’s promised that some of the ideas presented will be put into action. Maybe someone will step up and request a South Korean Death Star, so the Republic can gain some street cred in the space race. That would make North Korea SO mad. So far the suggestions have been echoes of the requests made during the election, and campaign promises made by Park to make life better for the poor, the elderly and small businesses. There have also been less lofty requests to do things like shake her hand. There was also a request to make sex offenders wear giant, identifying barcodes at all times. Maybe a QR code would be more useful, and just imagine the fabric pattern possibilities!
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