The Lost Essays

After finishing Octopussy zine -- much sooner than expected, I might add -- I really didn't know what I should start to work on next. Kung Fu Grip! No.4 seemed like the logical step, but it also seemed like a new issue of KFG! would only step on the toes of Octopussy; I wanted the new sister publication to have its own time to shine.

The next article for Giant Robot is still a work-in-progress. It has already gone through three drafts since I started working on it in the last days of April. But it seems that I will just have to keep adding more clay and chiseling away at the piece until it finally assumes its proper form.

Like most other creative types, I usually have a number of projects existing at various stages of development. Most of them, however, are closer to their beginning stages than their completed stages. And every now and again, a project like Octopussy will come out of the blue and will move from ethereal idea to solid product in a matter of weeks! This while several other projects still have the dusts of years layered over them.

In the fall of 2002, I finished the first of a series of four essays, each inspired by studies that I had made into curious themes found in medieval European religious art. The first of those essays was an examination of the Black Madonna.

Since childhood I was mystified by the seldom discussed images called Black Madonnas, and I wanted to understand the reasons for and the meanings behind such images. By 2002, I had spent several years researching the subject; the study continues even to this day.

For reasons that I won't articulate here, 2002 marked a turning point in my life. More than ever I felt the need start pulling ideas and information from my head and to get them on paper. I also wanted to share these thoughts with the people whose opinions mean the most to me: my father, mother and sister.


Rather than printing my essays for them to be read in the boring format of college term papers, I decided to try to make something with a little more panaché. A small edition of my very first zine called Thirdrail was produced in 1998. Based on what I learned from that process, the booklet format seemed like the the best way to present my writings.

I only produced a half dozen copies of the booklet editions of my essays, and I was pleased with the results. I was even more pleased with the responses I got from my family members after they were received in the mail and read.

After sharing those essays with the nearest and dearest, my desktop publishing continued and moved in a much more secular direction with Kung Fu Grip! zine. But after the first issue of KFG! was done I found myself revisiting and expanding upon one of the religious art essays. In 2005, it was made into the zine In His Image: Haile Selassie, Bob Marley and the Second Coming of Christ.


A few nights ago, while moving a stack of books I ran across the copies of the three remaining staple-bound essays from 2002, 2003 and 2006. Reading through them again -- which I haven't done in years -- I finally knew in what direction I needed to go.

Next on the horizon for me is a collection of those essays with one other that has still yet to be written. To be completely honest, this last essay is something that I've actually feared writing. But it's something I have to do so that I can more widely share the lost essays... no, The Lost Gospel of St. Paco.

Notes From The Underground (Excerpts)

"Zines have always been more than just words or images on paper: they are the embodiment of an ethic of creativity that argues that anyone can be a creator. Professional newspapers, slick magazines, and academic journals, art galleries and television shows, regardless of their content, have a uniform message to the reader or viewer: you can't do this, you are not skilled enough , you do not have the resources, so just sit back, appreciate and consume the culture that professionals have made for you. A zine, with all its amateur, low-rent, scruffy seams showing, says something else to the reader: this is easy, you could probably create something just as good, now go out and Do-It-Yourself...

"The zine world, like all bohemia, is a ghetto. This sounds negative, but I don't mean it this way. For in this ghetto, we get to set the standards of what constitutes valid expression and creativity, instead of having these definitions determined by the academy, art world or the commercial marketplace of culture. We create an alternative culture. Self-publishing may have been democratized with the rise of the Internet, but within the zine scene Do-It-Yourself is more than just publishing practice, it is an entire way of thinking, being and creating; a shared ideal of what culture, community, and creativity could be."

– Stephen Duncombe

Wait 'til they get a load of...

Make-shift

The best thing about subscribin' to the kinds of blogs that I've subscribed to is that they provide an endless source of information. I have always been an information junkie -- an information whore, if you will. And the blogs I follow have kept me up-to-date with all the cool (and sometimes even not-so-cool) things that people are doing and making.

The bad thing about the blogs is that -- in a creative sense -- I wind up just living vicariously off other people's work; living off the cool things that others are doing...and making.

So about a month ago I decided to do something to get my own creative mojo working again. I whittled my 70+ blog subscriptions down to the semi-essentials; mostly the shares I get from friends, as well as feeds from two magazines that I read.

Immediately after purging the feeds, I found myself missing the new music that I've grown accustomed to getting on a weekly basis via blog subs. But as the saying goes: you've gotta give up something to get something.

It was time to unplug.

With the exception of the article published in GR a few months back, it's been a long time since I produced something substantial. The last issue of Kung Fu Grip! zine was published back in 2007, and I think the bootleg of Count Dante's World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets was published later that same year.

So for nearly three years I've mostly been absorbing stimuli in the form of blog feeds, books, comics, magazines, movies and music. Nourished by all these sources, the 'brain batteries' have taken on a good charge, and it feels like its time to put the energy to good use.

Time to do something. Time to make something.

Permanent Press

I have never met the photographer of this image in person, but I have known him (Damon) for about 5 years now. We were similarly introduced to each other's works through Myspace, and there has always been a mutual appreciation of the things we create.

A few weeks ago, Damon sent me the photograph of one of his models sittin' in the laundromat reading a copy of the first issue of Kung Fu Grip! zine. I was surprised and flattered to see that the zine still meant enough to him all these years later that it would be factored in as a prop in one of his shoots.

Damon's Flickr feed contains a stunning assortment of afro-themed photographs that he's been producing over the years. I don't know much about the project itself, but the images all inspire me to want to finish something I started writing a year or two ago, which carries a similar theme.

I'm pretty sure that the copy of KFG! used in the photograph above is the same one that I sent Damon nearly half a decade ago. When I get around to printing up my newest project, I'm gonna send him a copy of it, as well as another copy of that first zine.

Knowing Damon, he'll probably still have 'em five years from now.

Gary Coleman (1968-2010)

Growing Pains

Late last night before I went to bed, I saw a headline that Gary Coleman had been rushed to the hospital. Knowing the kidney related health challenges that he'd had to endure his entire life, I expected there would be a follow-up reporting that the once-beloved child star was dead.

I saw that headline when I got to work this morning. But my full expectation of the news did little to lessen the small sense of sadness that came afterward.

Most people in America knew Gary Coleman from his wise-cracking role as Arnold Jackson on the television sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. But some knew him from earlier star-turning appearances on the sitcoms Good Times and The Jeffersons. People from Chicago like myself, however, knew Gary from his first TV appearance as a pint-sized pitchman in a commercial for Harris Bank.

At the time of the Harris commercial, I was all of age nine and Gary was just a year older. For several years after, the chubby cheeked boy from Zion, Illinois, would be the face of my generation. It was an impossibly large pair of shoes for anyone to try to fill -- especially someone as small as Gary.

In remembrance, I wanted to find an upload of that commercial to share in this blog post. Amazingly, though, it isn't anywhere on the web – not even on YouTube. I thought that everything ever broadcast on TV might be found posted there.

Thanks to Ebony magazine (Jun 1978), I was at least able to find an image of the bespeckled Coleman holding the Hubert the Lion doll with whom he once shared the screen.

Though I haven't seen the actual commercial in more than three decades, I can still easily recall the baritone voice of the cartoon lion mascot saying, "You should have a Harris Banker," and Gary replying in an elfish twang, "You should have a Hubert doll!"

Despite the litany of embarrassing 'growing pains' that he had to undergo in the bright light that comes with celebrity, I've always maintained a fondness for Gary Coleman. At the young age of 42, his pains, both physical and emotional, have finally come to an end.

Rough draft: Monster Islands

Monster Islands
By Paco D. Taylor

In the classic giant monster movies of Japan, the islands of the South Pacific are home to three of Tokyo's biggest threats: Godzilla, Giant Beast Gappa and King Kong. In real life, these islands are home to some of the biggest threats to anthropology classes everywhere.

Located in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Papua New Guinea, is an archipelago of nearly 1,000 islands. Known collectively as the Solomon Islands, this multi-island nation sits along a volatile seismic strip in the Pacific called the 'Ring of Fire.' It is here that nearly 90% of the world's earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

The naming of the Solomon Islands (Islas de Salomon) is credited to the Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña, who 'discovered' the islands on an expedition from Peru in 1567. Hyped up by an alleged gold find on the largest of the islands (named Guadalcanal), Mendaña claimed on his return home that he'd found the location of King Solomon's legendary mines.

As is usually the case, though, with many of the places that Euros are vainly credited with discovering, the Solomon Islands were actually discovered thousands of years before the arrival of a 16th century Johnny-come-lately. And the tenants of the Solomons would give Álvaro de Mendaña the welcoming party of his life.

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Workin' on another article for GR. This is a rough draft of the opening, but the text is still very much a work in progress. I didn't have anything else to blog about, so I figured that I'd post this rough. (Please pardon the dust.)

Though the text still has a long way to go, I think it's off to a fairly good start. Unlike the last article, this one already has a good working title. It also has some really good pictures too.

A New World Re-Order

How it was that I managed to catch this episode of The West Wing when it first aired eludes me now. I didn't follow the show, so it might have been based on all the buzz that the show itself was generating at the time that I decided to tune in to see what the hoopla was about.

Based on what I saw of The West Wing that evening, the hoopla was well deserved. As you can see from the clip, the writers weren't exactly shying away from intellectually stimulating (or challenging) subject matter. A brief, but well scripted discussion on the Peter's projection map during a popular television drama took guts. I still think it's amazing that they did it.

I had read about, debated and embraced the use of the Peter's projection a few years before seeing it discussed on The West Wing. At the time, I even had a black and white computer print of it hanging on the wall next to my desk. It would be cliché now to say that what I learned altered the way that I see the world, but there's no avoiding the cliché. The Peter's map altered the way that I view the world -- by projecting the world as it really is.

The reason I mention this now is two-fold: One, I kinda' needed something new to blog about. And, two, I am working on a new writing project, and trying to reorient a ton of information that's drifting around in my head.

Actually, the piece that I'm writing isn't even new. I was having difficulty with it last fall and decided to try a complete reboot. The reboot (which uses a small portion of this still-difficult-work-in-progress) wound up being published in GR64.

Part of the problem I'm having now is the same as I was having before. But one good thing that came from my struggles last fall was the decision to simply start over. Another was the decision to break a mass of information into smaller sections.

Ultimately, I'm still trying to do the same as before, but it's very much like chiseling a statue from a large marble block. But I'm not quite sure that I'm going to get the desired result.

Maybe I should just flip the block and chisel it upside down.

Monday

Crescent Smoke Shop


Rocky Patel 1961


Downtown Tucson


Viaduct


Skrappy's

Black Rock Shooter [Virtuoso Version]

Since sharing the video clip for the forthcoming Black Rock Shooter anime a few posts ago, I've been pretty much hooked on the BRS theme song. I even have it in my iPod playlist.

While scrollin' through my blog posts tonight, I felt the urge to check out the video again. When the clip ended, I noticed the link to the video posted above.

Featured in the clip is a mysterious violinist playin' over the instrumental of the Black Rock Shooter theme song. Pretty effin' impressive, methinks.

I also think that the video exemplifies some of the coolest aspects of the user generated content which drives sites like YouTube. The video features nothin' more than a hooded guy with a video camera and some serious violin chops. Already it's up to over 55,000 views.

Now, is this mysterious musician actually a professional violinist, or just some shy music student who dreams of a place in a symphony. It's possible that he's just some hardcore anime addict whose parents forced him to take violin lessons when he wanted to watch Pokemon instead.

Whatever the case, the guy rocked the hell out of the Black Rock Shooter theme song.

GR64 Pictorial

Barnes & Noble


Jason's Deli


Corned Beef


Contents


Huke: Black★Rock Shooter


Cosplay


David Choe - High Roller


Paco Taylor - Black East


Continued


Double Shot


Border's Books

Letters to Vaughn Bode

 As is true for many, the late cartoonist Vaughn Bode was a big influence on me artistically. In the second issue of Kung Fu Grip! zine, I published a biography on the artist as well as a comic strip that I wrote and illustrated which featured some of Bode's better known cartoon characters.

A few days ago, I received an e-mail from a gentleman by the name of Dan Osterman who found my zine on Etsy. Apparently Dan was a hardcore collector of sci-fi fanzines back in the '60s and '70s, and a lot of those publications frequently featured the cartoons of Vaughn Bode.

Dan had written to tell me about a handwritten letter than Bode had sent him back in '68. At the present time, he has it posted for sale on his Etsy page.

For a fan like myself, it was really cool to see, and I'm glad that he told me about it. But I really think that Ebay would be a much better venue to sell such a rare missive.

Frankly, I also think that the price on it is a little bit on the steep side (ten Benjamins) -- even for a handwritten letter. Bode's artwork on the other hand, can command that price with ease.

Too bad he doesn't have any of Bode's sketches.

Or maybe he's actually holdin' on to those.

The One Inch Punch

Two or three months ago I decided that I wanted to add something to my zine shop. Handmade one-inch buttons seemed like the way to go. There's just somethin' about fandom that translates well to the button format, and I wanted to explore that with the button sets that I came up with.

Button machines can be a little on the pricey side ($200) when you're ballin' on a budget. Once I got it in my head that I wanted to produce buttons, I spent a few weeks actually workin' on designs to make sure that I could come up with enough variations to justify the effort...and the expense.

The "Giant Robots" button set pictured above was the first of many sets that quickly came to mind. When I was six or seven-years-old, a set of buttons like that is somethin' that I woulda' killed to have pinned to my t-shirt or backpack.

Hell, even as a full-grown adult this set seems pretty desirable. (Haha.)

When my button machine arrived early last week, the Giant Robots set was the very first I cranked out. Featured clockwise are the Japanese kaiju (monster) characters Giant Robo, Goldar, Jet Jaguar, Mechagodzilla, Spectreman and Ultraman (center).

This past Saturday I put up a set of these in the pod at the day job and it added a nice change to the scenery. They're small, but they really pack a punch.

Yes, I'm well on my way with this process. After putting in some serious prep-work, I have nearly fifty different button sets already designed. This past Sunday, I even started posting 'em online through existing sales channels.

Tonight, just before starting this blog post I also received an e-mail from a prospective buyer, asking if I had any more of the set pictured above. I'd only made two sets last week, and after takin' the one for myself, the other was purchased soon after I posted it on Ebay.

I replied that I should have more of the buttons in question towards the end of the week. A few minutes later I received a fairly stirring response.

Apparently, the buttons are going to be a gift for the buyer's seven-year-old son, who he describes as a "huge kaiju fan." The child has cerebral palsy, and his dad helps him by collecting all of the vinyl kaiju figures that his son asks for. The button set will be a surprise addition to that growing kaiju collection.

Call me a softie, but I couldn't help but be a little moved by that. And maybe I was also moved by the thought of a seven-year-old receiving these buttons, and perhaps loving 'em as much today as the seven-year-old version of me would have loved them "yesterday."

Kodak™ Smile

This is a photograph of Lana Kim that I stole from the GR blog. I didn't know who Lana Kim was until I read the caption under the photo... and I still don't know. But the caption under the picture links her self-named web series The Lana Show, and a quick Google search reveals that she is Head of Music Videos at the Directors Bureau -- whatever that is.

Yeah, it's probably safe to say that I don't know much more about Lana Kim now than I did 5 minutes ago when I decided to steal the picture. But what I do know is that she's got one of the biggest smiles in the entire world as she poses for this picture with a copy of GR64.

And I know that my smile will look a lot like Lana's when I get mine.

GR64

The cover of GR64 was just posted today over at the Giant Robot blog.

Admittedly, my heart climbed into my throat a little when I realized what I was looking at. That's my issue -- the issue that my article is being featured in. There's even a cover blurb on it (note: Black Asians).

I'm not sure if that's the actual title. Martin (GR's co-editor) and I tossed a few ideas back and forth, and I left it up to him to decide which one worked best of those we both liked. Guess I'll see which one won out when I get my copy in the mail.

As of today, GR64 is only available at the Giant Robot vanity shops in LA, SF, and NYC, but it is promptly makin' its way out to newsstands, book stores and comic shops in your area. So be on the look out for it.

In the meantime, check out the trailer for the anime Black★Rock Shooter. HUKE, the creator of B★RS is featured in this issue. His kick ass art is also featured on the cover.

Art of Zines Addendum

Art of Zines runs through March 13 at Anno Domini Gallery, 150 S. Montgomery St., Unit B, San Jose, CA. For more information visit www.galleryad.com

500

Last night I did some much needed math. I finally went ahead and calculated the total amount earned sellin' my zines through the online outlets that I've used over the past three years (Ebay, Etsy and Big Cartel).

Since 2007, four hundred and twenty eight of my zines have been purchased online, generating a not-so-whopping total of $1969.57 in sales. (I should mention that this amount and the title of this blog are purely coincidental.)

Now, over the course of three years, that's not a lot of money. Most of it went right back into buying supplies and makin' more zines. But it's something. And it's something that I'm a little proud of.

Combined with the copies that I have sold offline, and the review copies that I've given away, I have managed to get more than 500 of my publications into the hands of the people who've ordered them. Cool cats & kittens from across the United States, as well as Mexico, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Switzerland, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Estonia.

I wasn't sure when I would hit the 500 mark, but it finally happened sometime last year. And that is a milestone that I'm really proud of.

Sneak Preview

Article excerpt: As a kid growing up on the far South Side of Chicago, whenever I would envision the physical features of Asian peoples—since those I saw most were in martial arts movies and Ultraman reruns on television—a fairly narrow set of characteristics always came to mind. Perhaps not surprisingly, brown skin and curly black hair were never among them.

But one fateful day my father would tell me of an eye-opening experience he'd had as a young man serving in the United States Marines. While stationed in the Philippines between 1961 and 1963, "Pops" would learn of Asians whose physical features were significantly different from what most Americans have been conditioned to expect.

There in the Philippines, Pops would see native Filipinos who, albeit small in stature, looked a lot like him, with dark brown skin, curly black hair and—stranger still—African facial features. To say the very least, the sight of such people living in the heart of Southeast Asia was completely unexpected.

It was also unsettling.

Perhaps equally as unsettling, my father would soon learn that these puzzling pint-sized people were referred to locally by a Spanish term, one that translates literally into English as the "little blacks..."

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On Friday of last week, the 64th edition of Giant Robot magazine went to press. Shortly after, I received an e-mail from co-editor Martin Wong. He was droppin' me a line to say that in a few short weeks a copy of that issue would be mailed to me directly from the printer.

Back at the end of January, Martin had advised me that a piece I'd penned on the indigenous blacks of Southeast Asia (previewed above) was going to be used as one of the features in the upcoming issue of Giant Robot. As pleased as I was to hear the news, though, I wouldn't allow myself to actually believe it until I saw an actual layout.

Well, by the end of the first week of February I was lookin' at an e-mailed pdf file of the four pages my article was spread out over. Each page was a beauty to behold.

Whenever I get my actual copy of the magazine in the mail, I'll be scanning one of those pages to post here in the blog. If you want to see the actual article, though, you're just gonna have to buy yourself a copy of Giant Robot 64.

D-I-Y: Paper Pinhole Camera

Posted today on Complex magazine's blog was a link to a D-I-Y (do it yourself) paper pinhole camera by Czech designer Jaroslav Jurica. The camera, called the Rubikon 2, is a modified take on an older paper model (above) that has apparently been makin' the rounds through photo mags, classrooms and shutterbug circles since 2005.



According to Jurica, his Rubikon 2 is even easier to build and use than its predecessor. Though I can't say that I actually plan on making one, in the back of my mind I keep tellin' myself that someday I'm gonna do some experiments with a cool paper pinhole camera like this.

Art of Zines Covered

"Why have something tactile and in 3-D when you can just put a blog up? But it's different; it's in the moment of making these things and putting them out and having something tangible that is never going away. I don't care what anybody says about the end of print. This culture is not going away."

- Cherri Lakey, Anno Domini Gallery

The Art of Zines 2010 was covered today in the San Jose METRO Weekly. Read the full article in the Arts section by clicking here.