Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Saturday, a part of the indie gaming community, friends, and passersby got the first glimpse of Mighty Switch Force, a game by WayForward that’s not complete, but partially playable. Also in the house was the new Meat Bun t-shirt line as part of the Meat Bun pop up shop in Giant Robot 2. It’s not all guys playing the games!
One of the most consistent artists in the world is Deth P. Sun. He’s not a Steve Keene painting multiples of the same like a robot, he’s still working on individual pieces that make up a world that’s though provoking, cute, and sometimes mysterious. Why is that cat holding a knife? It echoes Yoshitomo Nara’s works that have young children doing the same. There’s ghosts, Death, and even scenery including the stars. The audience ranges from the first time art buyer to the collectors. We’ll be offering the works to the public online at 12 noon PST on tuesday Aug 30th. The link is here! We’ll post again when it’s live!
There’s another 100 photos below!
The Bunny Museum located in Pasadena is home to a story about a couple, who hands each other a bunny gift every day. They don’t shop daily, but as a token of their love, they give each other a bunny a day. Years of this later, they now have over 28,000 bunny items and it’s part of the Guinness Book of World Records. The owner Candace Frazee shows it by appointment only, and although it wouldn’t seem like it from the vast amounts of space it can take, this is her house. I got to see it as a pre birthday surprise.
That’s Jenny and Saelee who took me on this surprise. Did you know they called it a Dream Date? Two girls, one guy, good. 10 minutes of hiking uphill – sweaty and tough. Lunch of snacks while up the hill – good. Pop Rocks – not bad. A yard sale of custom jeweled flip flops – super bad. An Estate Sale – aight. Donut Man – excellent. Nap time – as soon as I fell asleep, I was woken up to go – bad. And the finale, The Bunny Museum.
It wasn’t that the place was the greatest, although it was truly great, it was the conversation with Mrs Frazee. She writes an advice column through snail mail and has some religiousness involved and she didn’t hesitate to start probing myself, Saelee and Jenny. She revealed a lot about herself, but also began to pin point “issues” in each of us. Flighty, have issues of cleaning, addictions, and these weren’t me! I did find out that I’m not a hoarder! I’ve been called a hoarder, but I do dump garbage, I get rid of boxes, and maybe I have clutter, or am messy, but in Mrs Frazee’s eyes, I’m not a hoarder. It’s great to find out that although I’m the recipient of a Dream Date, I’m pretty clean, and my hosts were the ones with the problems. That’s the gift of the day. I left happy seeing thousands of bunny items, some real bunnies, a cute cat and have met one of the most serious collectors of a topic in the world.
Photos below!
The 71st Annual Nisei Week Japanese Festival – a summer-long series of cultural, artistic, athletic and aesthetic events – lined the streets of Little Tokyo on Sunday night for its annual parade running up and down the historic Downtown Los Angeles neighborhood. Like the Tournament of Roses and its Rose Parade, every year the Nisei Week Foundation selects a Grand Marshall and holds a competition for the Nisei Week Queen and Court. This year, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, one of the seminal figures in the Japanese American community’s fight for redress was honored as the Grand Marshall and a new group of young women took their place as the 2011 Nisei Week Court. They also rode on a float with THE Angeleno of Angelenos, former Dodger skipper, Tommy Lasorda.
With obon dancers, taiko drummers, Stan Sakai and other community leaders riding on top of classic cars and Ken Miyoshi leading a half dozen import cars, the most dramatic sight during this year’s parade had to be all the military jeeps and trucks navigating through Little Tokyo. The last time anyone of us could remember witnessing something similar was during the LA Riots when the streets around the old LAPD Headquarters at Parker Center were heavily protected just up the street from Little Tokyo. The only other time we could remember was following Executive Order 9066.
However, not to be missed this year was the inclusion of the Harajuku-Girl / Anime-Manga fan-base into the parade. The Ajuku Girls rode on a car like other community leaders, and the legion of Anime fans paraded in costume behind traditional Japanese dancers. If anything the Nisei Week Parade pieced together all the different slices of Japanese America in Los Angeles for a great evening of celebration.
84 photos below! All by Thomas Nakanishi.
Heisuke Kitazawa or PCP opening took place on Saturday July 30th, and an array of fans and friends came through Giant Robot 2 to see his latest works. We overheard many say, “the more you look at it, the more you find” about his pieces, which is a great “problem” to have. Take a look at the set at the very bottom of the post.
Photo set below!