Like Crazy (2011)

I just saw Like Crazy last night and, stupid title aside, really liked it.

In a nutshell: this is the story of a boy and a girl: Jacob and Anna. Jacob and Anna go on a date, fall in love, all is well. And then Anna has to go and violate the terms of her student visa (because: love), and is barred from re-entering the states. Forever.

The next hour is spent as a meditation on the possibility of love surviving across an ocean, metaphorical or otherwise. Upon being refused entry, Anna and Jacob are barred from pursuing a life together by things bigger than the Atlantic–things like maturity, careers, other people. All these eventually loom larger than the time and space they regularly transcend, all for the sake of what at the end barely even resembles what it initially was.

This House is Open but You’ll Have to See It My Way

Louie Cordero at Open House, The 3rd Singapore Biennale

Search for Louie Cordero online and you won’t find a lot of pictures of Cordero himself; instead, you will be inundated with choice cuts from a body of work done over the span of nearly ten years, with a range running from the sequential to the sculptural. Setting aside a prolific career, Cordero is personable without the persona. He laughs easily and speaks in what could be described as a warm deadpan. He has most of his epiphanies while biking, and his favorite color is yellow ochre, because not only is it “the color of s**t, right?”, but a transition towards sepia: setting the tone for nostalgia and sentimentality for a fading past, which figures into Cordero’s work just as heavily as the scatological humor and fluorescent hues for which he’s known.

From his studio in Cubao, Quezon City (a former comic book publishing house) he has done album covers for The Sleepyheads and Radioactive Sago Project. He is also behind Nardong Tae (Nardo the S**t), a series of four photocopied comic books (with a fifth one on the way) about an anthropomorphic turd fighting for justice in a world submerged in the metaphorical crapper. Locally, Cordero identifies his audience as “young, daming bata,” the types who would find humor in his work before anything else; but one can just as easily enter the Cordero canon through, in his words the “very regal” gallery setting, with shows such as Sacred Bones (2010) and Absolute Horror (2008). “The reason why I work and I still do what I’m doing is because,” after a pause, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” He continues with a laugh, “But I don’t need to explain myself in a literary or academic form, because this comes off to me as a more interesting way to show what I want to do and say what I have to say.”

If A Girl Isn’t Pretty (On Beauty, Still)

I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. My issues with beauty didn’t come ’til later. Much, much later. It’s not even a question of being a late bloomer, but of whether there was any blooming done at all. The concept didn’t even hit me that hard until I began going to school with dudes who didn’t know me in grade school, when I was still a huge nerd (not even a geek, I was a nerd) with braces.

About the braces though, those came off when I turned 11. I guess if we had to trace any origins of whatever can be defined as “blooming”, we can go back to this point, when the boys in my class realized I had a full set of teeth behind all that metal, and I was capable of smiling without offending anyone.

So I forgot my keys in the car again. Both sets. Keys: you need those to get through life. Oh well?

Leeroy New, “Cosmic Cacophony” (2009)

I realized I feel worse about being late for appointments than for making mistakes, which should explain the excellent mood I was in all throughout my appointment with Leeroy New this morning.

I left my keys in the car AGAIN. This is the first time in years, but all the same. It sucks. If you’ve had those moments when the minute they take place, you already know you fucked them up; in which you can (in this case, literally) hear the latch clicking on your mistake? This is that.

But in the grand scheme of things, it’s 500 bucks. To quote Sorkin, it’s a speeding ticket. It shouldn’t be anything, and my being here right now, typing this, shows that it’s not a matter of life and death. Now, I’m just waiting for someone to get here and help me out with whatever it is I need. Now that I’m done worrying about my car getting jacked, my only worry is that he actually shows up.

Rob Corradetti aka Killer Acid for Status Magazine

I have an article in the April issue of Status on illustrator and former Mixel Pixel frontman, Rob Corradetti. It’s also the music issue, cover’s Santigold.
Here’s the original interview, outtakes included:

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1. Hi Rob! How are you? What are you doing besides answering this?

Well hello! I’m currently right in the middle of working on an album cover for Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang. It’s is large drawing that involves eagles, walking sticks, termites, flowing water and wind, and Bongo (which is slang for bling, bluff, or talkin’ shit). It’s called “Kill Me With Bongo” which quoting Boshra from the Bubu Gang translates roughly to “I have no money and you’re killing me with your ostentatious lifestyle.” I love their music! The album is coming out on Luaka Bop (David Byrne’s label) this Summer.