Film Fest and Yoshi's in SF

Terence Yin and Daniel Wu have the sunglass thing going on near the Japantown Plaza. Terence Yin and Eugenia Yuan are in a film called Fog. I didn't get to see the film yet, but it showed in SF for the film festival. This year, I wasn't there for an official project as in the past, but instead, there was plenty more to do. Visits to GRSF, hanging out with tons of folks who are friends or who have helped GR, and more. I didn't see any film festival folks however, I didn't know where they were. At the same time, I feel like GR and the fest are far apart these days. Maybe we'll close the gap one day.


Here's an example of Automator's music and towards the end there's Emily Wells singing. She's quite great and is part of a future project together.

Eugenia Yuan holding a pooch.

Patrick Lee doing the AnD merch section at Yoshi's. Big smiles, and he should have one.

Game Over! SF.

The Game Over 3 show features some great art. Check out this Team Macho cartridge! It's carved from wood, and painted in the coolest way. There's three versions and if you're a true game fan or game executive, this is a must have. There's plenty of great art on the wall at GRSF and the fans and friends from GDC were there in force.

I dig the pencil sketch mature Mario by the guy pictured: Jake Gillespie!

Ferris Plock and Kelly Tunstall

Petri, a game maker from Europe!

LA in the house. Souris Hustler of Culture, and Silvio P, game maker and artist, and their friend who's name is escaping me.

Aww blurrrr. Can't recognize them? Han, Melissa Hung, and more brain fart on the dude's name on the right. I know someone will comment in a minute.

filmmakers Jessica Sanders and Suzi Yoonessi

Goh Nakamura and Joe To

More game art

More Team Macho art!

The best BBQ marathon ever?

Backyard BBQs are usually about hot dog, hamburgers, and maybe chicken. That's what you do on the bare minimum. Sho from Yoshi's in San Francisco does things differently when food is involved. He goes all out. It's not an event to miss. Here's Sams hands making toro sushi. It's obviously amazing. Look at the pink color. Sushi was being made inside the house while a BBQ of amazing flavors happened outside.

Look at the rich orange color of this uni from Hokkaido. The label is below. The package it came in still had the shipping labels from Japan. Uni is usually a lighter orange, this one possessed a deep, rich color and tasted that way too.

The kitchen arena

The ikura was also a deeper orange than what you typically see.

Sam dealing with the ikura

Miles Nakamura and Daniel Wu. What kind of kicks are those?

Sho with the straw hat holding a bag of marinated tongue which was amazing.

Dan Automator on left, Sam the sushi man and friends

Intestines in two flavors and organic chicken.

a larger crew

Dan and Dan

The uni

The Courts

The tennis courts... I step onto a court and some guy says, "are you good enough to play here?" He then he points a finger on my chest to slow me down from getting on the court. I tell him "don't touch me" and he remarkably says, "I'm not gay!" I keep walking through it and I tell him, "I'm a terrible player." I hear people saying, "don't touch him." I walked through it. Then while I was on the court just a few minutes later, the guy walks onto my court area and starts babbling or something (it wasn't an apology) and I told him to leave my court with some expletives and then he kept coming forward. That's when it got ugly seeing a bunch of people running around to stop this. Yes, he got pushed a couple of times, and I remember him saying, "you can't say that to me, I'm going to call the police!" and then it was more mayhem. I just remember people holding me back, holding back my cousin, holding back that old man, and a lot of words. It turns out the guy has complaints against him. One person showed me a document that he filed to the police and park director from 2006 including the guys photos. That's life on the public courts. It's best to ignore it. Can you believe tennis can be like this? It's honestly not worth this blog entry, sorry to waste your time.

Yoshitomo Nara videos - Too Cute! Princeton

Here's some video I shot at the event. Nara's talk was fun and inspiring. I enjoyed how he intro'd himself by telling the tale of his youth. From being a latch key kid and having no neighbors and enjoying the company of animals, to then growing a bit older, getting a bike, and having friends. It's a fun talk, and his work is always cool to see. The talk went well over an hour, and this is just some excerpts I took in with Flipcam. Luckily the translator enunciates well. My talk will eventually show on Princeton TV... I was told. Hope someone points that out to me when it's up. This talk wasn't streamed and I'm not sure if it's going online at all.

Travelin' With Yoshitomo Nara

I was trying to help Yoshitomo Nara set up his computer with the system in the lecture room, McCormick 101. I had spoken the evening before without a hitch, and the system and his computer weren't talking to each other the next day. It took a while, but we got it going. I was hoping Nara would do the presentation in English, but he opted to go with a highly over qualified translator - the Head Chair of East Asian Studies. David Howell.

His katsu sweatshirt was too cool. Yabaton. They make their katsu with a miso sauce. It's in Nagoya.

This is more adjusting of the projection. I like how the light hits his face from the projection screen along with one of his paintings. It's a cool shot.

Nara points to the sleeping Tomio Koyama. After getting so excited by the Norman Rockwell painting in the Nassau Inn bar, he crashed out.

Which one did Nara draw?

The snow slowly melted away, and it actually wasn't that cold out.

This is dinner at a campus related place. Good food actually. The Too Cute! conference was coming to a close. The woman, Anne, who did a lot of the work to get the conference going is slightly pictured. I regretably didn't get a photo of myself with her. She's cool.

The group of photos is done until there's a food image. It was quite good.

Princeton Day 1.5

Hail Satan! This is an amazing detail from old art. All of the kids who are doing metal looking art, check this one out. Done hundreds of years ago. The guy who did this was probably possessed and now it's all metal album covers and t-shirts. How many mouths does Satan have? That one near his crotch isn't the one to be near.

I see it. I'm bad with names sometimes, and this painting is evidence of that.

Modigliani

This one is awesome. Nara described one of his works in the same way as I'd describe this one. There's a line that comes from that girl that goes through the painting.

The Princeton University Chapel here's a link. The building looks amazing, and when I walked in, someone was practicing the organ which resonated throughout the building. I was hoping to hear a Star Wars theme, but it didn't happen. It's an amazing building, but it's from 1924. I thought it would be a couple of hundred years old.

Princeton Day 1

The plane ride was normal, until the white snow beneath. It's probably nearly all melted, but NY had something like a foot of snow, but an hour away, they hardly got any. I'm at Princeton, NJ, and did my talk which was streaming on the net and went actually pretty well. It was a new talk and I worked it over many hours of image searching and more.

This is a Rockwell painting that's hanging at the bar at the Nassau Inn. It's an original and was commissioned long ago, and sits where it's supposed to be. It might be the most expensive piece of art hanging at a bar. Someone should make a list.

Jimmy Stewart went to Princeton

Michelle Obama

Ralph Nader

Brooke Shields

Whoa! Patty and Karen, both of USC. They'll all be mad that I took sneak photos.

Joon Lee RISD, teaches English to art school kids.

This is a closeup of a piece of stained glass at the museum on campus at Princeton. Dogs and deer, a great combination. The stained glass is hundreds of years old and it's neat to see dogs depicted for some reason.

Jimmy. Everywhere I go, he happens to be in town. Japan, LA, and now Princeton. He too is a grad student, so he had some interest in being there, but bailed me out on an anime question from a student at the very end. Jimmy writes occasional reviews for GR, but the coolest thing? He set up an anime club for his fellow soldiers in Iraq when he was deployed there.