Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
If you’re in LA on saturday, you should be here. GR2 will have the post it show. Part 2. I can’t explain how rad and epic this show’s gonna be. The worry I have is the admin part. It’s scary. We estimate that there’s 2000 post its. We also know, there’s no early birds, we’ll be sticking to the show times.
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I’m addicted to Sculpey. Maybe it comes from the rehab time when I wrecked by finger. I had to buy a $10 ball of clay just so I could work it over all day long. It was supposed to give me a better chance at a full recovery. It failed big time, but the messing with the clay part was the added bonus. Sculpey is a simple pink chunk of clay. It can become almost whatever you want! They can be animals or even mock food! The way it works is you basically work with your hands, get your piece how you want, then what you’re sure, you close to deal by firing it up in an oven. It’s relatively simple. Like many things, the hard part is getting going. I wish I made all of this. Yesterday was my birthday. Aside for the best wishes that came from many directions including the robot lounge, store employees, friends, and family, I got some gifts. I got some acrylic paint, brushes, spray stuff, paint pan, vellum, 2 boxes of Sculpey, clay tools, 2 tickets to see Mastodon, 2 bottles of Vitamin water, 3 lb bag of Haribo Gummy bears, Izod clothes, food, cake, and more best wishes. Sculpey is pink. Get this kind. The white kind seems to get more grainy. If you don’t have a tall enough toaster, be careful, parts can burn and get brittle. Look at the dude’s ears in the photo! (sorry i found out that the dark parts are nails – but really, they can burn if they’re too close to the heat source.) In the instant when the candles come, I automatically think about a wish. I’m sure a lot of you do this too. But is a wish something like a New Year’s resolution? I think it can be, but it depends on what you’re looking for. Are you supposed to tell people? Is it a deep secret? Will they not come true if you tell? I’ve made wishes and resolutions, and they’re interesting because, I know a lot of people forget them a week or a month later, I tend to try and stick to them. I won’t get into telling you about what I wished for or what resolution I made, but the New Year’s one is rolling along fine, the birthday one, we’ll see. The best part about making resolutions and wishes is that, there’s no real rules to them. If your resolution isn’t working out, or you change you mind on your wish, there’s no one saying you have to keep them going. Some things work out and some don’t, that’s why it’s called a wish, and a resolution, it’s similar. Like a pink ball of clay, you can work on something for a while and fire it up, but if you don’t like it, you can always smash it up and start over.
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From Gabe Ritter-san a friend and frequent GR contributor on Sawtelle. Eric, do you remember O-Sho’s, the old-style Japanese restaurant that used to be where Tofu House is now? Might have been the same lot as “Sawtelle Fish Market” once was. That’s the first place I ever had Japanese food…probably a bowl of Miso soup at age 4 or 5. My Dad always used to love that place (till it started going down-hill) and we’d always stop by Yamaguchi’s for those four packs of round gum-balls and rice candy. Later on that’s where I got my notepads for practicing hiragana and katakana. Sorry to see them go. I always liked the fact that they carried Dickies and underwear. Yamaguchi’s was totally Sawtelle’s general store.
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Death Cab For Cutie’s bass axeman Nick “The Cub” Harmer rolled through LA and hooked me up with great seats at the Greek Theater. Anne Ishii who you might see if you’re lucky at GRNY, did too. It was nice to see them both for just that little bit. The food at Doughboys which is on 3rd in LA, is supposed to be good, but I’ve had little luck with it lately. The last few trips have been busts. Death Cab Clip Death Cab Clip 2
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Things come in threes. This is a huge painting by Souther that was just too big to do anything with. I thought it was a nice work as a whole, but the size was killing the deal. So on Saelee’s request, the piece had to get cut down. They wanted the cat, and the rest was ours as long as we cut it. So carefully picking a spot that made two pieces come out of the remainder, here’s what we got. The girl’s pants hang low and her underwear shows a little. What was Souther thinking? Then in another weird division of art… at the Rosebowl flea market, we ran into a great set of illustrations. Done probably in the 50s with gouache, these looked amazing. They’re unsigned, and were somehow associated with an advertising agency. They were asking $150, and we got em for $125. Each piece was something like a bit over $10! Cheap! We had to discuss how these were going to be divided. We picked numbers and went at it. This is the filmmaking/filmmaker set. These went well together in a weird way. I wonder where these illustrations went? A space-age filmmakers book? This was the pick of the litter. It’s an office room with men working and women in the background doing nothing. There’s a solar system on the back wall and the green plants in the background make this piece perfect. Souther got this one. This is the ad agency where this came from. Anyone have any info on this agency, and who may have worked on these illustrations? This is the set I ended up with. My first pick was the top piece. Pick number 2 overall. With my 2nd pick, 5th overall, I picked the bottom image. The two looking at a meter. The colors went well with my first pick and makes a great compliment to the franchise player. The third pick, 9th overall may have been a sleeper. Instead of picking a piece with people in it, I went with a sort of Jacob Magraw looking piece with a rocket flying. I thought about picking this with my second pick, but figured it would still be around at the end. I guess this is how sports drafts work.
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