Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
When times are tough, Giant Robot works harder to bring the best in asian pop culture and awesome merchandise! Working hard at Giant Robot throughout the week, I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend of doing ….NOTHING. And the best way to do nothing is to plop down on my bed and doze off in a huge pile of pillows and plushes! I’ve collected so many plushes, and I’ve learned that they make the best pillows. Recently, Giant Robot has received so many new plush dolls with each one more cuddly and soft than the previous. Click the photo above or the link below in order to check out all of our plush dolls: Giant Robot – Plushes Don’t forget to check out the recent introduction of the plush Pecanpals to our online store! These plush dolls are the newest release from Noferin, the creators of Jibibuts! The Pecanpals are characters that live on Carrara Island, an island that rises majestically from the Pacific Ocean with sharp mountain peaks on one side and thickly forested plains on the other. These characters have so many stories waiting for them! But in the meantime, these super soft plushes are available for everyone to enjoy!
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The last time Alex Zhang Hungtai came through L.A., he was on tour opening for Dum Dum Girls but didn’t get to play because their gig was a fancy hotel event. Nonetheless, I grabbed that chance to meet him. He’s a longtime Giant Robot reader, mutual follower of filmmakers Jon Moritsugu and Wong Kar-Wai, and a new friend of mine. Alex’s taste in cinema is actually pertinent to any discussion about his music since I think both aesthetics come through in his lo-fi but fully conceptualized work. On the current Dirty Beaches tour, which just went down the West Coast as is heading across the U.S., he’s headlining for the first time. I arrived just as Neverever was ending. I’ve seen the post-girl group band open for other shows and I’m a fan. Then, as the second band was going on, I realized that I neglected to put my SD card back into my camera after downloading its contents. Sorry, Bell Gardens. Your first and last songs sounded lovely but I had to run home. What I saw of the set did provide an interesting contrast to the headliner, though. Bell Gardens uses at least six members including strings and horns to make a pristine pop sound. After they broke down their mountain of equipment, Dirty Beaches set up only a vintage amp, some pedals, and a guitar on a floor to weave together a fuzzy concoction that clouds ears and melts hearts. Not even a mic stand, since Alex either holds his vintage stick while he strums or puts it in his back pocket. The set was short and solid, and the bulk of it was his noisier work. Fans of his prettier songs had to wait through more abstract pieces to get them. While the washed-out sounds of Suicide and cool of Elvis are usually cited as touchstones, the live set also recalled Chip and Tony Kinman’s Blackbird (early ’90s, post-Rank and File and waaay after the Dils) project with the mix of mechanical beats, avant guitar work, and emphasis on vocals that lies somewhere between crooning and Krautrock. What could be a cold combination turns out to be raw, direct, and very human. Alex’s onstage persona is like an un-undead Lux Interior or Guitarwolf off speed, although when he humbly asked couples to slow dance to “True Blue” traces of Hawaiian Pidgin emerged… After the show, we went to Good Shine Chinese Food in Monterey Park for some late-night Taiwanese dishes since Alex expects to eat nothing but sandwiches between the coasts. I had the pleasure of meeting his friend and filmmaker Zoe Kirk-Gushowaty as well. Dirty Beaches wrote a score for her documentary Practical E.S.P., which investigates “the boundaries of verbal communication through equine facilitated therapy.” Between her work and Alex’s experiences and opinions on new music all over Beijing, Taipei, Singapore, and everywhere else–not to mention our favorite movies–we had a lot to talk about between bites. I have no double Alex will kick ass...
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GRSF is now closed. I sent out twitter messages with photos throughout the day and it was a beautiful one in the Bay area. It went by fast. I have to thank all involved. You know who you are! Above: That’s a hardcore Uglydoll customer with a skate deck that he just purchased.
Kimberly Chun who I met ages ago at APE. She used to make zines and now writes for publications in the bay.
Chiwan Choi lights it up! One of the pleasures in reading out is meeting other writers. April was a great month for me because I got to read with two stand-up guys who are also great writers with incredible new books out on indie nonprofit presses. Chiwan Choi, whom I was introduced to by my close pal Soya Jung, is the author of The Flood, a collection of poems, just published by Tia Chucha Press. He makes me think of a neo-Bukowski and his poems make me feel dirty and unloved. It’s easy to make people feel good. It’s harder to push people over to the crevasses and make them take a good hard look down. “and one day/i told my father i was leaving/and he sat up in his bed and cried/and we wrapped clumsy arms around each other/like two boys in love/but it was too late or too soon/for such things” – from the poem “tides.” Two peas from a damaged pod. Cihan Kaan (right) I met Cihan Kaan at AWP, just completely randomly because he stopped by the Kaya booth and picked up Waylaid. Hey, he had to be cool! Cihan’s collection of shorts, Halal Pork and Other Stories, was just published by UpSet Press. You want street cred? Homeboy has been getting death threats for the title alone. And just to turn a metaphor around, his writing is killer. “Brooklyn, New York, September 11th, 1981, I was four. My father had to break into his own apartment, where my mom and her new boyfriend were just beginning to throw a live lobster into a boiling cauldron. Up until that point, my short life had been filled with episodes of my parents battling each other on a near daily basis. When Dad finally left, Mom didn’t waste time finding the next guy.” – from “Isa, American Turk” Check out The Flood and Halal Pork and Other Stories. If you meet me and tell me you’ve read them, I will think you’re really cool.
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For our regular customers, you have already noticed the recent update to the Giant Robot Online store! For all our new customers, welcome! Giant Robot is the premiere source that brings you Asian pop culture and beyond! Want to catch up on the latest news, reviews and interviews? Then check out the latest issue of Giant Robot: Giant Robot Issue 68! Giant Robot features many popular artists and collaborations! David Choe’s Munko Uglydolls x Giant Robot – Uglycon II Skate Deck 2K – Matt Furie’s Flight Monster T-shirt (Cream) Giant Robot – Robot Army T-shirt (Navy Blue) Expect new arrivals and restocks of your favorite classics!
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