I’ve been coveting this doll from artist David Choe since his Obama cover for Giant Robot and the video of his signing/opening at GR2 kind of hyped it all up. It’s his first full scale toy, made from all wooden mechanical parts with three faces (sad – angry – happy in the photo above) that you can turn with the knob on the top of her hat. I don’t collect toys, really, but this handpainted (albeit by a Chinese factory, not Choe) beauty was too hard to resist.
Joe’s folks live in Edmonton, and even though we’re not that far away in Vancouver we don’t get to see them very often. We’ve been to E-ville quite a few times to visit (my first experience with -30 degrees!) and always have a great time, but once in awhile Joe’s mom likes to shake it up and take us for a vacation somewhere in between instead.
Lucky for us, she has found a great spot. We’ve visited the hot springs in the town of Fairmont, B.C. two times now, which is situated in the Canadian Rocky Mountains on the east side of the Columbia River valley, just outside Banff. It’s magnificent!
It was a few weeks ago now but I got to go to this year’s Polaris Music Prize Gala at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto for work. It was dark and crowded, and I took a lot of crappy photos – these are the only two that even remotely turned out.
It was a really fun event to witness – even though I’ve been to Toronto quite a bit it’s hard for me to be get out of the intensely clubby entertainment district when I go because I’m usually there for work and it’s only for a few days. I did figure out a few new things on this trip though…
I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw the Miss A Kit (formerly called Miss Army) in a store called Hot Box on Main Street. Not because it is a mirror, flashlight, scissors, nail file, tweezers, pen, pill box, perfume bottle, knife, ruler, bottle opener, screwdriver, corkscrew, safety pin, needle and thread, and key chain all rolled in to one, but because my (now retired) zine Turf had envisioned something called the Swiss Miss Army Knife almost 10 years ago…
A long time ago I traveled to Taiwan on a summer student trip. It was pure hell. I’ll save that story for some other time but one of the few mementos that made that trip be somewhat worthwhile was this supremely awesome Japanese language cat alarm clock that I brought back for my friend Garett.
