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It’s the 10th year anniversary of Giant Robot magazine. I remember picking up the first issue of Giant Robot at Tower Records, which was back then one of the few mainstream places one can buy underground zines. The first issue, with the sleeping sumo wrestler on the cover as you see me holding above, was a true zine. Its irreverent pages, filled with esoteric Asian-American cultural references, were photocopied and stapled together by hand. By the fourth issue (the one on the right above), it had acquired a sleek 4-color cover but kept its interior pages rough-looking and in black and white (screened at 60 lpi). Nowadays, the magazine is a glossy, full-color rag but it has somehow stayed true to the spirit of its zine days.

(nytimes article via cheesedip)

Ibalik’s comment is the perfect segue into my next entry. I’m posting here a few pasalubongs* that I’ve received from various people:

Here’s one brought over by family friend Swerte from her trip to Europe. They’re mini chocolate donuts made in Spain called Filipinos. I believe they’ve been featured in a recent issue of Giant Robot magazine. True to form, an equivalent American snack is called Flipz which are chocolate-covered pretzels.

Here’s a PhilWeavers shirt courtesy of Kyo who brought it over from his trip to the Philippines back in December. Thanks Kyo!

Those things above are what you call katol, green coils of mosquito killer that you burn on one end. We don’t have a mosquito problem here in California, mind you. This was a personal request of mine, believe it or not. Over the years, when my wife’s relatives would go to the Philippines I would ask them to bring back a box of Elephant Brand katol. This is the katol I remember from my youth and I wanted to incorporate elements of the packaging into this idea I had for a design piece. Well, each time my wife’s relatives would come back from PI, they would bring back the wrong brand. I don’t think I made myself clear that any brand other than Elephant is useless to me. But who am I to complain? Katol is katol and apparently, the Elephant Brand is hard to find. So as you see I’ve amassed boxes of poisonous green coil that I’ll never use. The design of the Lion-Tiger Brand, however, is starting to grow on me.

*gifts brought from other lands (or more specifically, from the motherland)