Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Jeremy Lin, the Asian American athlete of the year for sure, wins an ESPY award. Best Breakthrough Athlete. Of course he did! While there can’t be enough awards especially from an Asian American standpoint, it’s time for him to get playing again. [youtube]PGnGu84Iqpc[/youtube] [youtube]_54rIVrAuZk[/youtube]
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Some sights from the GR booth. Although there were plenty of others I saw, these are just the photos I took. I’ll try and explain a little about them in a few words.
Below: The brothers who make Color Ink Book.
The brothers Wong.
Aaron Woes, the Sniper.
THREE YEARS AGO, Pittsburgh-born artist Candy Chang was named a TED Senior Fellow for Urban Innovation, and since then she’s been caught up in the vortex of a whirlwind that has sent this architecture-graphic design-urban planning graduate of Columbia University and onetime New York Times graphic artist on a creative journey that has allowed her to leave a mark on communities in faraway places like Helsinki, Nairobi, New Orleans, Vancouver and Johannesburg. Chang’s now-global “Before I Die” project began when she she transformed an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans into a fill-in-the-blank chalkboard for people to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in a public space. “Before I Die” proved so empowering and uplifting, it prompted The Atlantic to call it: “one of the most creative community projects ever.” And regular folk flocked to its magic ~ and it has expanded to communities in countries around the world, including Kazakhstan, South Africa, Portugal, and Argentina. Catch up with what this child of Taiwanese immigrants is thinking and doing today by reading Karen Eng’s interview-profile of Chang ~ “A Global Family for Life” ~ which was posted July 10 on the TED Fellows Posterous.
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KRAFTWERK’s rendition of their 1975 song “Radio-Activity” at NO NUKES 2012 was sung with a new set of Japanese lyrics including the line “Ima sugu yamero” (Stop it now), proved to be the climax of the Saturday night show, which attracted thousands of Japanese to Makuhari Messe events center, and a cumulative total of more than 216,000 online viewers for the live feed on Ustream. Proceeds from the event will go to the Goodbye to Nuclear Power Plants movement, spearheaded by Nobel prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, whistleblowing journalist Satoshi Kamata and other prominent figures. The event was also aimed at increasing signatures for a large-scale antinuclear-power petition. The movement has currently gathered 7.5 million signatures. Listen to the iconic German electro-pop band show how relevant they still are in this SoundCloud audio capture Jean-Philippe Demoulin, a French expatriate musician living in Japan.
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Today is the first day of Comic Con (stop by booth 1729 and give the GR crew big hugs for me!!) and it was also the first day of Naadam in Mongolia. Naadam dates back to 3000 BC. It’s a celebration of the “three manly sports” – wrestling, archery and horse racing. The horse racing and archery now include women, but wrestling is still all boys. Naadam is celebrated all over Mongolia – in small villages and in one GIANT celebration in Ulaanbaatar. The festival lasts three days, and as a national holiday, well… hello 5 day weekend! We went to our local Naadam in Darkhan, after watching the opening ceremonies of the Ulaanbaatar festival on TV. Drove past friends and family on the two lane dirt road leading to the stadium who were leaving for the day, but there was still plenty to do and see. First stop, fresh cotton candy spun onto a chopstick. Second stop, shish kabobs with sheep meat served on a piece of toast. Third stop, huushur. Eating as much huushur as possible is Naadam’s unofficial fourth wo/manly sport. There were about 100 gers set up around the wrestling and archery stadium, almost all selling the same thing – huushur. Huushur is a Mongolian empanada, filled with goat meat and not much else. They’re greasy, crunchy (deep fried) and meat-juice and oil come pouring out of them with your first bite. People usually order them by the half-dozen and share them with family and friends. For some people, huushur is the highlight of Naadam, not the games, not the tradition, just the food. Darkhan’s Naadam definitely has a county fair vibe. Admission is free – carnival games, food and souvenirs cost. Getting your photo taken sitting on a camel is about $3. Riding horses kids brought in from the neighboring countryside costs about the same. You can see it all in a day, but the main events – the races, the wrestling and the archery – take all three days, running tournament style so you can keep coming back for more huushur. We caught the vetting for one of the last races of the day. Four year old horses were racing 15 km with their grade school aged jockeys riding in all arrangements of barefoot, bicycle helmeted and bareback. We’ll be heading back tomorrow to cheer on a cousin’s horses in the races in the morning, and to pick up some delicious looking watermelon, more cotton candy, and sheep shish kabobs. Not the same as eating vegan banh mi and Thai food take-out at the GR Comic Con booth, but the wrestler’s uniforms do remind me of all-too-revealing cosplay.
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