Ken Tanaka has a blog

Ramen in Los Angeles

2011-12-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

Miss Hannah Minx and I visited Yamdaya ramen. It's a new tonkotsu ramen shop in west Los Angeles, and it's one of the best along with Jinya and teh new one on Swtelle.

One more elephant

2011-12-14T10:16:00.001-08:00

This is a totally different elephant than the one in my last post. This is Bruce. He is a predator, a raptor. He perches high atop narrow mountains and then swoops down to gobble up unsuspecting savannah grasses that innocently sprout below.

It happened to an elephant I know

2011-12-13T19:29:00.000-08:00

Superman : Middle Age

2011-11-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

Scissor's Temptation

2011-11-23T13:19:00.000-08:00

Batman's Facebook Lament

2011-11-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

This is the newest part of the Batman the Heartbreak series which follows Batman through a difficult break up.

Batman keeps calling me at all hours of the night to talk about his break up. I love Batman and I want to be a good friend to him, but this has been going on for years, and I feel like I've done everything I can for him. Listening to Batman talk about his relationship troubles can be really frustrating. It's so clear that he keeps repeating the same pattern over and over again, but he just doesn't see it....and when you try to point it out he gets really defensive. Batman, if you're reading this (and I know that you follow my blog) please limit your calls and texts to me to once or twice a day during normal business hours, and when I answer the phone, ask me if it's a good time to talk before you start yapping non-stop for 20 minutes. I love you , Batman, but we need to establish some boundaries right now before this really starts to effect our friendship.

Welcome to California

2011-11-09T10:01:00.001-08:00

This is the "Local Interest" section at the Barnes and Noble book store in the Los Angeles Grove shopping center. It's all about how to grow a plant called marijuana. Apparently this is of great interest to local people in Los Angeles. I remember going to a Barnes and Noble in Baltimore , Maryland once and the local interest section was mostly full of books about crab.

Here is a video of mine from a while back where I visit a Kentucky Fried Chicken that turned into a medical marijuana shop.

The Final Chirp

2011-11-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Doyle's Mortuary. Follow us on Twitter.

After meeting and becoming good friends with newspaper cartoonist Keith Knight (The Knight Life) and single panel toon star Lonnie MIlsap I have been inspired to draw some single panel cartoons. I just did the above one, which I drew while sharing a booth at Alternative Press Expo with Lonnie and Keith and selling my Everybody Dies Children's Book.

The one below if my first ever attempt at single panel, that I did during the superbowl in January. I tried to do both in black and white first, but I have a hard time not coloring and painting them since that is what I am used to.

La Luz De Jesus 25th anniversary art show in LA

2011-11-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

In 2009 I had my first at show at Billy Shire Fine Arts in Los Angeles, the sister gallery of La Luz de Jesus. Now it the 25th birthday of La Luz and they are having a big show with artists like Mark Ryden, Clayton Brothers and ...Me Ken Tanaka ;-).
The show will open this Friday and Saturday November 4th and 5th
Click here for more info.

My piece is called Self Portrait of Plastic Robot. It's done by my friend Great Mazinga. They also made a book with all the artists in it...which you can see here.

Halloween Cat! Kittens and Pumpkins

2011-10-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

These are my friend's kittens Bicylce (white one) and Oliver.

This video combines some footage from a few weeks ago when they were new born and some new ones from today when they are a bit older.

The pumpkin they are chewing on is named Pumpey and he was later turned into this by me.

Here is a picture of Bicycle as a young kitten. Bicycle is a pretty good name for a cat, but I would have named him Surfboard. Good surfboard, gooooood surfboard.

World's Longest Cat Ever

2011-10-16T14:01:00.001-07:00

This is Jacob the Cat. He just won the Guinness Book World Record for Longest Cat ever, measuring at 38 inches.
Jacob also just signed a deal to appear in TLC's new reality tv series Guinness Animal House.
The show will feature 7 world's record breaking animals (Including Tabitha, a giant 47,000lb whale shark) who will be living together in a small house overlooking Los Angeles' Palos Verdes beach.

Love Wanter

2011-10-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

This is Bert.
I met him in a small patch of grass surrounded by asphalts.
He is so blue and smooth. If you find his smooth furs attractive
You can reach out to him and pet him.
All he is looking for is extra pieces of love that you might otherwise throw away.
That is what he lives for.
In a way, he is a superstarl.

Oh, Bert.....

Batman - The Fortune

2011-09-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

This is my new painting Batman- The Fortune.
It's for a gallery group show called Fortune 100. Each artist picks a fortune cookie and must make an 8x8 painting based on their fortune. Here is mine.

It was quite difficult to come up with an idea for this. I painted another idea but I really didn't like it, so I did this one on the day before the deadline.

Here is the flyer for the show. Come check it out if you live in LA. The show is at Balconi on Olympic Blvd just west of Sawtelle.

I have two other Batman paintings that I did...and I'm working on a 3rd. Here are the other 2.

Batman- Locked Out

Batman- The Heartbreak

See More art on my website Http://www.kentanakalovesyou.com
and see my book at http://www.everybodydiesbook.com

Bovine Transformation- Taipei, Taiwan

2011-09-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

Last year I made a trip to Taipei, and I had so much video it took me a long time to edit it all. I think this is my last Taiwan video. It shows a lot of the tasty street foods I ate.

I think I made five total videos of TAiwan. Below you can see the other four. I was hoping to go to Taiwan this summer to take some Chinese classes, but my herniated disc injury (Jacob the herniated disc) has kept me stuck.

This blog post is under video surveillance

2011-08-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

I came across this car on the streets of LA the other day. It's a pretty junky car that I might not have paid attention to, but I noticed a sign in the window. I went up to check it out.

The sign said

"This car is equipped with a hidden camera, anyone tampering with this car will be prosecuted."

There were a lot of empty boxes and junk in the car. I think the real reason for the sign is that the car is lonesome and neglected, so this sign is a way to get people's attention and get them to come up and look at the car.

He probably hasn't been touched in a long time. It's kind of sad. I've been going out to the car everyday recently. I've been performing little plays and puppet shows and hoping that they will be captured on the hidden camera.

I'm hoping someday the car will upload these videos to YouTube.

Ken Tanaka is Beautiful

2011-08-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

Miwa Yokoyama is known in Hokkaido and all over Japan as being famous for Street Make. She does make up for people on the street. During her tour of the US she stopped at Royal-T maid cafe in Los Angeles, and I finally got a chance to be beautiful.

And last week, I posted this video of Remi and I at Comic Con, featuring some of the best and cutest Cosplay costumes that we saw at the con.

I had a great time at the con, and afterwards, Fangoria magazine did a review of my book Everybody Dies- A Children's Book for Grown Ups. You can check the book out at the website Http://www.everybodydiesbook.com

See me at comic con July 20-24th with Keith Knight

2011-07-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

For the first time ever I i will be exhibiting at Comic Con. I will be sharing a small part of Cartoonist Keith Knights booth and selling my book Everybody Dies- A Children's Book for Grown Ups. Keith draws the K Chronicles, Th(ink) and the Knight Life which are cartoons syndicated in US papers. They are very funny.

Our booth is number k-15 in the small press section next to bob the angry flower.

Ken Tanaka is a Cowboy

2011-07-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

This song is part of the Jam session that Polo and I did on June 23rd 2010.... This is the last song that I will upload from that session. We improvised and ended up with about 8 songs in 2 hours that I put on YouTube. We re-recorded this one on my nice new Canon REbel T2i 550d camera, so this isn't actually the recording from 2010. The cowboy footage is all shot on a flip cam.

These are all the songs we've uploaded from that jam session

Party Animals at Royal-T starts July 7th.

2011-06-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

Royal-T maid cafe and art space in LA has a new show opening up the 7th of July, 2011 curated by artist Lindsay Scoggins and featuring works from the Susan Hancock collection. I just found out that one of my paintings in her collection was selected from the show. Lindsay is a video artists and makes handsome videos like this one.

Royal-T is one of my favorite places to visit in LA. Here are some videos of made there in the past.

Lost Snake has made an idiot out me for the last time

2011-06-28T00:16:00.001-07:00

Big Snake got-out
Harmless no Bite/5 foot
Easy to Pick-UP
He's Made a idiot out me 4 last time.

I saw this mysterious sign today in Los Angeles.

Big Snake no bite.

Is it real? or is it some kind of street art?

I am not sure. Maybe I will call the number.

I'm kind of worried about this big snake. Will he be ok? What does he eat? If I see a snake, how do I know this is the snake from the sign. What color is he? What kind of snake? What name does he answer to?

Does he run away a lot? Or has he made an idiot out of his owner in other ways? What do you mean he has made an idiot Out of you for "the last time"? Are you threatening the snake? If I find him, maybe I should take him to some kind of sanctuary like a church or kindergarten.

Have you seen this Big Snake?

Doko Demo World Song by Ken Tanaka Band どこでもワールド

2011-06-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

EArlier this week we posted our song Doko Demo World. I wrote this song 11 years ago, but I only had the chorus (part sung by the girl in this) and the music. Last Fall Polo and TEruko and I got together in Polo's studio to record a version of Nanatsu no Ko (karasu) and when we finished, I mentioned this song. We played around and this is what we got.
I met Polo surfing in Los Angeles, and I met Teruko when she was working at an art show I had work in.

Youtube was kind enough to give me some credit at BH camera earlier this year, and I used it to buy the canon SLR rebel t2i camera. It's a bit hard to shoot on for me, since I'm used to making videos with a camcorder or flip. Takeo is a professional photographer and cinematographer though, so he was able to make the Rebel T2i work great for this video.

We shot for 3 days in Los Angeles. We were lucky that the flowers were in bloom :-) They don't last very long. Most of the footage is shot on a 50mm lens, but some is also on a 18-120 zoom lens.

I'm very happy with how the video looks and I hope it makes you happy.

This is the studio version. This was us recording with my Flip the day we were first working on the song. We recorded it with Polo a few days later. Polo is a master producer and did all the recording and sound editing.

I Lately I've been very satisfied by getting to make this song, and also my book Everybody Dies, and the gallery show that is up now. It goes till July 9th, so if you haven't seen it and you are in LA, please stop by. We will have a closing, signing party on July 9th (SAT) from 2-4pm

Hanging tomorrow's Everybody Die's Show at Lebasse Projects

2011-06-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

Today I stopped by the gallery to drop some things off and check out how it looks. The paintings are all hung handsomely. the above is a photo of the last few pages of the book.

Tomorrow's opening will start with a book signing from 7-8pm and then reception from 8-10pm. The show will run till July 9th.

They are even making little buttons with the skull from the books cover

Friday, June 10th, Everybody Dies- A Children's Book for Grown Ups art show in Los Angeles

2011-06-05T17:57:00.001-07:00

Friday, June 10th, Lebasse Projects Chinatown in Los Angeles will hold an art show featuring the original work from my book Everybody Dies- A Children's Book for Grown Ups.

All pages of the book will be on display in their original form. There will also be a pre-release book signing, with preview copies of the new, soon to be released deluxe edition of the book. It's 32 pages, full color, printed on heavy art paper.

If you can't make it to the gallery, you can still get signed copies at my website.
http://www.everybodydiesbook.com

The show will run till July 9th.

See me read aloud the first half of the book here

Engrish in TAiwan

2011-06-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

This video shows some handsome Engrish i saw during my trip to Taiwan.
I never noticed Engrish in Japan and Asia until I moved to the US, and went back home.
I found a few funny things.

I also just uploaded this video with some footage of handsome temples in TAipei, and the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall

I also did a video a while ago about Engrish in Japan.

What is your favorite Engrish?

KING of RPGS- One of my favorite comics

2011-05-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

Book 2 of one of my favorite American comicss has come out this month. King of RPGS by Jason Thompson published by Del Rey books.
Check out this review and preview.

It's a funny story about a role playing gamers in college.

Jason Thompson is a manga scholar and is the author of Manga the complete guide, so it makes sense that his handsome comic is very influenced by Japanese manga. It has the look and feel of a Japanese comic.
Please take a look at the website http://www.kingofrpgs.com/

If you are in SEattle or San Francisco, you can meet the author at a book release party. See the Above link for more information.