Giant Robot Store and GR2 News – Tagged "News"– Page 79 – GiantRobotStore

dustin wong · greg fox · mark mcguire · Mediation of Ecstatic Energy · Music · MW · News · ponytail · thrill jockey · Sep 12, 2013

Dustin Wong (ex-Ponytail) on his newest solo LP, collaboration with Takako Minekawa, and upcoming tour

Dustin Wong has released so many solo albums, there’s probably no need to specify that he used to be in a band called Ponytail. Yet it is interesting to look back for comparison’s sake. He’s gone from the Baltimore group’s spastic rhythms and hyper energy to dreamy loops and improvisation. He’s also moved to Japan. I look forward to hearing his meditative and loopy but intellectual jams in a live setting when he returns to the United States next week, accompanied on many dates with his frequent collaborator and Japanese subculture icon, Takako Minekawa. Here’s the scoop…

MW: You’re on a roll with new releases. Have you been out of your mind creatively or do the releases just happen to be coming out around the same time?
DW: 2012 was a really productive year for me, writing-wise. Only a moment after finishing the mix for the last album, Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads, I started writing new songs. Since I finished this record I haven’t been writing as much for myself but I have been writing with Takako more, which has been really fun and imaginative.

MW: After leaving Ponytail and doing so much solo work, what is it like to collaborate again? And with Takako Minekawa!
DW: Oh my god, so much fun! Making music with her is like recess, running around the playground. In the beginning, we were definitely trying to figure out how to work together but once we got it going it’s been really amazing. We are working on a bunch of songs right now and hoping to put something out next year!

brian ralph · drawn and quarterly · jordan crane · martin cendreda · MW · News · reggie-12 · Reviews Publications · sammy harkham · secret headquarters · steven weissman · trevor alixopulos · vanessa davis · Sep 12, 2013

Brian Ralph and Reggie 12 land in Los Angeles

How cool is it that Brian Ralph’s “Reggie 12″ comic strips have been collected from the back page of Giant Robot mag and compiled into a gorgeous oversize hardback with amazing spot UV on the cover? Even better, Brian Ralph has been on the road and doing signings. The SCAD Professor of Sequential Art concluded the West Coast leg of his journey at Secret Headquarters in Silver Lake yesterday, so I got to do some catching up with him.

brian ralph · drawn and quarterly · jordan crane · martin cendreda · MW · News · reggie-12 · Reviews Publications · sammy harkham · secret headquarters · steven weissman · trevor alixopulos · vanessa davis · Sep 12, 2013

Brian Ralph and Reggie 12 land in Los Angeles

How cool is it that Brian Ralph’s “Reggie 12″ comic strips have been collected from the back page of Giant Robot mag and compiled into a gorgeous oversize hardback with amazing spot UV on the cover? Even better, Brian Ralph has been on the road and doing signings. The SCAD Professor of Sequential Art concluded the West Coast leg of his journey at Secret Headquarters in Silver Lake yesterday, so I got to do some catching up with him.

books · bushra rehman · corona · drugs · ed lin · fiction · jimmy heath · louis armstrong · nat adderley · new rochelle · new york · News · pakistan · pakistani american · people · puritans · Reviews Books · san francisco · Sep 11, 2013

Q&A With Author Bushra Rehman

And I’m not talking about the beer, though it may help! (Art by Chitra Ganesh) This is one of these short books that you finish in a few hours and it resonates with you for weeks, maybe years and possibly for the rest of your life. Corona reads like a fascinating collection of journals and fiction mashed together in a backpack and bound as is. It’s quite fitting that author Bushra Rehman was a vagabond poet. Bushra and I met not even a year after after 9/11 and it’s a complete coincidence that I’m posting this on an anniversary of 9/11. 9/11 actually figures into the fabric of Corona, as narrator Razia Mirza, a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens, travels through the country and through time, through troubled relationships and relationships with trouble. Smoking pot with asshole soon-to-be-ex-boyfriends. Drinking beer with racists in the burbs. It’s funny, it’s sad and, if you hang on long enough like Razia manages to, it’s funny again. The book is a brilliant rendering of life and if it is not always life-affirming, it is always genuine and honest. Are you in New York this Friday Sept. 13? I strongly suggest you come to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and see Bushra in all her glory. She is a fantastic reader and always a joy to behold. Below is Bushra’s official bio. Below that is a little romp of a Q&A with her. Bushra Rehman’s first novel Corona (Sibling Rivalry Press) is a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States and was noted among this year’s Best Debut Fiction by Poets & Writers. Rehman’s first book, which she co-edited with Daisy Hernandez, Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism was included in Ms. Magazine’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time. Her writing has been featured in numerous anthologies and on BBC Radio 4, WNYC, and KPFA and in Poets & Writers, The New York Times, India Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Sepia Mutiny, Color Lines, The Feminist Wire, and Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America. 1) When we met you were a poet. Did you shift to narrative storytelling or have you been collecting these stories all along? Yes, I remember those crazy tours we did with the Asian American Literary Caravan, hitting unsuspecting Asian-American students all over the country with our insidious literature! My poems were all so heavy and disturbing back then that I started to tell funny stories in the middle about my own personal misadventures to lighten the mood. That way the audience could join me on the emotional rollercoaster of my mind. The book is composed of some of those funny stories, mixed in with some heavy dark moments. Onwards with the Asian American Literary Caravan! 2) There are so many crazy, dangerous and awful things that happen in Corona, and yet the reader comes away from it in the same way that the narrator Razia does — with a measure of humor. I feel that people who’ve lived tough lives are...

books · bushra rehman · corona · drugs · ed lin · fiction · jimmy heath · louis armstrong · nat adderley · new rochelle · new york · News · pakistan · pakistani american · people · puritans · Reviews Books · san francisco · Sep 11, 2013

Q&A With Author Bushra Rehman

And I’m not talking about the beer, though it may help! (Art by Chitra Ganesh) This is one of these short books that you finish in a few hours and it resonates with you for weeks, maybe years and possibly for the rest of your life. Corona reads like a fascinating collection of journals and fiction mashed together in a backpack and bound as is. It’s quite fitting that author Bushra Rehman was a vagabond poet. Bushra and I met not even a year after after 9/11 and it’s a complete coincidence that I’m posting this on an anniversary of 9/11. 9/11 actually figures into the fabric of Corona, as narrator Razia Mirza, a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens, travels through the country and through time, through troubled relationships and relationships with trouble. Smoking pot with asshole soon-to-be-ex-boyfriends. Drinking beer with racists in the burbs. It’s funny, it’s sad and, if you hang on long enough like Razia manages to, it’s funny again. The book is a brilliant rendering of life and if it is not always life-affirming, it is always genuine and honest. Are you in New York this Friday Sept. 13? I strongly suggest you come to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and see Bushra in all her glory. She is a fantastic reader and always a joy to behold. Below is Bushra’s official bio. Below that is a little romp of a Q&A with her. Bushra Rehman’s first novel Corona (Sibling Rivalry Press) is a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States and was noted among this year’s Best Debut Fiction by Poets & Writers. Rehman’s first book, which she co-edited with Daisy Hernandez, Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism was included in Ms. Magazine’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time. Her writing has been featured in numerous anthologies and on BBC Radio 4, WNYC, and KPFA and in Poets & Writers, The New York Times, India Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Sepia Mutiny, Color Lines, The Feminist Wire, and Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America. 1) When we met you were a poet. Did you shift to narrative storytelling or have you been collecting these stories all along? Yes, I remember those crazy tours we did with the Asian American Literary Caravan, hitting unsuspecting Asian-American students all over the country with our insidious literature! My poems were all so heavy and disturbing back then that I started to tell funny stories in the middle about my own personal misadventures to lighten the mood. That way the audience could join me on the emotional rollercoaster of my mind. The book is composed of some of those funny stories, mixed in with some heavy dark moments. Onwards with the Asian American Literary Caravan! 2) There are so many crazy, dangerous and awful things that happen in Corona, and yet the reader comes away from it in the same way that the narrator Razia does — with a measure of humor. I feel that people who’ve lived tough lives are...