I've reformatted the online store and I'm happy to announce our first two products! First up, Pandoom!

Pandoom

A baby panda is born in the Happy Bamboo Grove. It is a time for joyous celebration. But can happiness last in a world that has forgotten nature’s true wonders?

Pandoom is my first ever mini comic about . I'm working on getting print versions ready for this year's SPX, but if you can't wait that long or can't make the show, I'm selling a high resolution PDF version that you can purchase for $1.00 at the store.

If you purchase a digital copy and you'd like to get a copy of the print version, bring along your digital device to SPX with the thing loaded (or just tell me what happens on page 9 of the PDF) and I'll sell you a print copy for $1.00 (normally $2.00). Along with the print version, you'll also receive a Daruma inspired button while supplies last.

Next up, Daruma papercraft!

Some of you may have wondered, "Where in the world can I get a cutie Daruma doll just like the one YP uses for navigation?" Well, wonder no longer! Now you can create your very own YP Daruma doll papercraft! Just download the two patter files, print them out, cut out, and assemble with some glue. Printed out on 8.5"x11" standard printer paper, you assembled papercraft will stand about 4" tall. Then all you gotta do is make a wish, color in one eye, and when your wish is fulfilled, color in the other eye! The best part, it's totally FREE! So if you can't spare $1.00 for a super cute mini comic, get yourself a Daruma papercraft and make your wishes come true.

And please send me lots of photos of your assembled Daruma. I want to see Daruma all over the world!

Actually, I do know about the relocation camps, the 442nd, and the Chinese Exclusion act. But there are many more on this list of 10 Fact You May Not Know About Asian American History compiled by Jenn Fang to celebrate Asian-Pacific American Awesomeness month that completely blow my mind. The story of Vincent Chin is especially chilling as it happened in freaking 1982!

There's so much about Asian American history that I don't know. It wasn't taught in my schools growing up and at UMD, the Asian American Studies Program consisted of two classes. I kinda feel like May is a missed opportunity. Black History Month is very well publicized and celebrated. Women's History Month is also fairly well established. But for Asian-Pacific American Awesomeness month, you kind of have to go out of your way to find stuff. I think there's an opportunity here to raise its profile. I think next year I will attempt to help make Asian-Pacific American Awesomeness a much bigger deal than the kind of fizzling thing it usually is. I mean, come on, I want a damn PBS special!

CNN recently aired a public interest story about a 103-year-old Pennsylvania woman who still drives. I know what you're thinking. The only possibly jam to play for such a story is Coolio's "Fantastic Voyage!" CNN thought so, too. Unfortunately, the producers didn't grab a radio-edit of the song so Coolio's line about "punk-ass niggas set trippin'" made it out on the air.



CNN apologized for airing the offending lyric. Now on the one hand, I think it's complete appropriate for them to apologize. "Nigga" is not necessarily appropriate for 10:30AM. Primetime? Shit yeah! On the other hand, I don't think they really needed to apologize. I think it's pretty clear that CNN was not calling the woman a nigger. Sure, it's a little surprising to hear Coolio on the air again after all these years so maybe they were apologizing for that. But the jam was appropriate for the segment and I think a majority of the people watching at 10:30AM would understand that.

Nigga, nigger, N-Word, or whatever variation is out there fascinates me. It's one of the few slurs that I hear on a regular basis (I listen to a lot of Hip Hop). Black people can call each other nigga with no worries. But if someone who's not Black tries to use it, instantly it becomes racist. I don't think there's any other racial slur quite like it. I mean, it would be totally weird and fucked up if I went around calling fellow Asians Chink, Jap, Gook, Flip, slant, slope, or anything like that. I've never heard Latinos refer to each other as Spics. I don't get it.

I've heard the argument that Black people use it as a term of endearment to sort of reclaim the word and flip its negative connotations. But if that's really true, then why can't anyone who's not Black use the word without being called racist?

Anyway, I'm actually more surprised that CNN producers were hip enough to choose the song than the fact that they grabbed a non-radio edit. So go on CNN, play some more tasty jams from the 90's!

If you're in the Washington DC Metro area, the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, MD is running an Akira Kurosawa Centennial film festival from May 15 – June 21. Though I've seen most of his samurai movies (Rashomon is one of my favorites), I haven't seen any of his non-choppy stuff.

Looks like a really good lineup of his work. I've never seen a Kurosawa film on the big screen so this looks like an amazing event. And since they're calling it Part 1, I imagine there will be a Part 2 sometime in the future. All films will be shown in Japanese with English subtitles. So if you're in the DC area, it's time to get your Kurosawa on!

This morning when I went to check in on the site to see if everything loaded properly, my Wordpress dashboard was all screwy. The admin dashboard didn't seem to be calling the CSS correctly. Dicking around looking for answers online I came across some posts from people having similar problems. Somehow, there was a malicious line of code inserted into the first line of every one of their PHP files. I decided to do some digging and sure enough, on the first line of every goddamn PHP file was a line of code that wasn't there before. Shit.

About then, a handful of YP fans emailed me with problems. There was some kind of redirect that sent them to a spammy website for virus protection. They figured it was a badly configured ad. But I think the problem was that yucky line of code. So I grabbed a fresh install of Wordpress and Comicpress, changed my admin password, and uploaded clean versions of all the files. It should be all fresh and clean now. I think.

If anyone still has problems accessing the site, please let me know. I hope this fixed the problem, but I'm just a novice at this stuff. Comics, yeah, I can draw that shit. Bug busting? Uh... I may need more sophisticated help in the future.

You may recall that some time ago, I did some axe chopping work with the one and only Axe Cop. Here's the final piece I submitted to Ethan so he could take a final pass.



The file is so huge it takes ten minutes to save the damn thing so it's taken a while, but Ethan has put up his final edits. And holy crap, the shit looks absolutely amazing! The piece will be printed as a limited edition framable, high quality art print. Only 150 pieces will be sold with the first 25 signed by Ethan and Malachai. I believe there will be an announcement on Wednesday on how to pick up this totally crazy print.

My good friend and fellow cartoonist, Ross Nover, just made an epic Happy Birthday post for lil' old moi. I can't seem to comment on the post for some reason, but I wanted to thank Ross a lot for that post. It's the best present I could have ever hoped for.

So, System fans, if you're visiting for the first time, I hope you enjoy your stay. Feel free to poke around. I don't do as many design jokes as Ross, but we do feature designers and corporate meh. And for you YP fans, please check out The System. Someday, Ross will take over the world. So be an early adopter and prepare for much laughingness.

Super Art Fight is one of those events that must truly be experienced. Whenever I try to explain in words what the Super Art Fight is all about, I see eyes glaze over. But whenever I grab someone and throw them into a room where Super Art Fight is throwing down, I see eyes explode!

The video of our performance at MIT this past weekend as part of ROFLCon is up so you can experience that madness yourself. So grab some popcorn, fullscreen that shit (seriously, they captured us in HD!), and prepare for your mind to be blown for the next hour and a half! Thanks to Jamie Baldwin, Yuko Ota, Chris "IMPACT" Impink, Zack Weiner, and Tak Toyoshima for helping us win the con.

In America, the month of May has been designated Asian-Pacific American Awareness Month. I remember when it was only a week.

So I don't know who designates this kind of thing or who to talk to, but I propose we change May to Asian-Pacific Amercican AWESOMENESS Month! We can make it happen! We have the internets! Tell all your friends to tell all their friends that the era of awareness has passed. Let the era of AWESOMENESS begin!

Tomorrow I'm heading up to MIT for the second annual ROFLCon as part of the Super Art Fight crew. We have an art fight battle on Saturday where I'll be facing off against Tak Toyoshima. If that name sounds familiar it's because he's the man behind Secret Asian Man, one of the first Asian American comic strips ever published. He's kind of a big deal. And I'm just getting started. It's like David's third cousin fighting Goliath.

I'll probably be twittering from the event all weekend and probably recording some videos that I'll post over at the fan page when I get them edited together and such so keep an eye on both places for this weekend's madness. And if you're going to ROFLCon, stop by the Super Art Fight booth and I'll draw you a Kamen Rider or something!