Author: Martin Wong

8 Questions

Apr 28, 2014

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I first became aware of Mark Trombino through his drumming. Holy crap, was Drive Like Jehu great. I drove from L.A. to San Diego many times to see the post punk rippers everywhere from the Women's Club to the World Beat Center to the original location of the Casbah. Amazing. So I was stoked when...

Uncategorized

Apr 22, 2014

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I have to admit that I used to scoff at WonderCon. It always seemed like a low-budget version of the San Diego Comic-Con, which I began attending as a comic-collecting little kid way back in 1979 and began attending as a Giant Robot booth guy in the mid-1990s. When I first attended WonderCon in Oakland...

Editorial

Apr 15, 2014

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Last week, I attended the final meeting of the Programming Committee for this year's Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Next month's screenings will be the thirtieth annual showcase of movies, shorts, and other cinematic endeavors presented by the Little Tokyo-based collective of activists and entertainment insiders. I belong to neither camp but am flattered...

Editorial

Apr 08, 2014

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Sometime around 2000, I met Greg Girard the old-fashioned way: I sent a letter to the publisher of City of Darkness, a brick of a photo book about Kowloon Walled City that Greg made with his friend Ian Lambot. Through a series of letters, faxes, and phone calls, I eventually interviewed the then-Shanghai resident about...

Editorial

Mar 25, 2014

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On Sunday, Eric Nakamura and I gave a 20th anniversary presentation about Giant Robot magazine at GR2. As co-founders of the publication, we gave plenty of talks about it at colleges, companies, museums, and juvenile halls from 1994-2010. They were always fun, equal parts (1) behind-the-scenes stories about starting a stapled-and-folded zine about Asian, underground,...

8 Questions

Mar 17, 2014

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My friend Jenny Liang always seems to be immersed in the most fascinating projects. Imagining utilitarian fashions for the homeless (i.e. a fabric pouch made out of upholstery swatches). Traveling to Africa to study and fight poverty. Improving dull urban landscapes with guerrilla furniture. It turns out her line of work is called social design, and...

Editorial

Mar 11, 2014

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[caption id="attachment_9842" align="alignnone" width="790"] Trinh Mai, Michael Massenburg, Ching Ching Cheng, and Michael C. Hsiung at L.A. Heat: Taste Changing Condiments at CAM (March 11, 2014)[/caption] This morning, I crashed the press preview of the L.A. Heat: Taste Changing Condiments exhibit at the Chinese American Museum. My friend Steve Wong, the museum's Interim Executive Editor and...