Mongo Nation

Nerdcore exhibit opens in Hollywood!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Starting last Thursday and continuing on through September 7th, popular gamer lifestyle brand “I Am 8-Bit” will be hosting a gallery of 8-bit inspired art at the World of Wonder Storefront in Hollywood.

I was lucky enough to attend the opening and check out some of the crazy artwork on display this year. While there weren’t any giant-size working controllers or custom chiptune Guitar Hero games or anything at the show this year, the Nerdcore girls were acting as a human exhibit of sorts, lying around glass enclosures in their underwear, playing old school games in front of drooling fanboys disguised as hipsters. Adding to the excitement were DJs playing midi tunes while bartenders served (free!) Colt 45s in custom designed 24 oz. cans.

Donkey Kong, Mario and Paul Frank

Now I’m not much of an art critic but I find the whole 8-bit art thing particularly fascinating because as a kid growing up playing those games, I remember using my imagination to fill in the blanks that the rudimentary graphics were unable to fill. What these artists have done is essentially given physical form to their own imaginary interpretations of subjects that figure very strongly in today’s pop cultural tableau. My camera is a piece of shit so please enjoy these pictures, most of which I cribbed from our friends over at Joysiq.com!

Samus

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The spawning pool of the nation’s hipster population!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Last week we examined some of the various characters that make up the landscape of art school, a magical place where people go for four to six years to escape reality and fritter away their parents’ money so that they can tell their fellow mortgage brokers that they “used to be a really talented artist” years later when their family cuts them off and they’re forced to get a real job.

Now you might ask yourself: “Gee whiz, is everyone that goes to art school an egocentric idiot with a funny haircut that exists in a fantasy world of their own making, oblivious to the fact that people don’t actually get paid to paint pictures of their nuts, and even if they did, they sure wouldn’t have learned how to do it in a school that charges double what a regular school would charge to learn something that’s actually useful?” The short answer is an emphatic “yes”, but since that was a very long question, the long answer lies withing the following profiles:

The Emotional Wreck

Way, way, waaaaay too much information. Every time.

The Emotional Wreck thinks that art school is like their therapy or something. Science is unable to explain why it is that The Emotional Wreck doesn’t just go see an actual therapist, which would not only be much cheaper, but also much more effective. The Emotional Wreck will always make the rest of the class uncomfortable with her film about being raped by her father, or her interior design project that reflects her uterus experiencing a third trimester miscarriage.

The Narcissist

I would have shooped my ears a little smaller, had it been me…

At least one person in every class in art school is a Narcissist. Every project by The Narcissist will be a self-portrait of some sort. The Narcissist is in art school to “take a swim in lake me” or some such bullshit. Not surprisingly, The Narcissist is also a chronic masturbator.

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And you thought frat bros were annoying…

By Jeremy Azevedo

Everybody knows that people who go to art school are essentially attention whores with unrealistic expectations. The general consensus is that most every art student is a stoner with rich parents that want their little self-absorbed emo douchebag child to graduate from college, even if it’s some kind of Micky Mouse drawing college that has commercials on late night TV…

But are all art school students really as 2-dimensional as all that? It just so turns out that I number among their kind, and am prepared to share with all of you what I’ve learned about the different kinds of people that populate this misunderstood niche of American culture:

The Rich Kid

One hour later, this asshole will be telling everyone he’s from Compton or something.

This prick comes from a rich family, but you’d never know it because they are pretending to slum it in art school until they run out of drug money and have to go back to work at their father’s company. This person will never actually become an artist, let alone graduate. But they do always have blow, and can probably pull chicks from the upper caste that would never talk to you otherwise, so they’re great to have around.

The Genuine Maniac

Now this is why they don’t paint nurseries with lead-based paint any more.

Everybody in art school pretends to be stranger than they actually are to get attention. It just goes with the territory. This person is not faking it. The Maniac is a person that is so crazy, he makes everyone else look like a total square. This weird bastard will either greatly annoy you or greatly entertain you, depending on your tolerance level for paintings made with human feces, taxidermied duck fetuses and ten foot tall prints of the artists balls, slathered in macaroni and cheese. It’s best not to ever make direct eye contact with The Maniac, but seeing other people’s reactions to their “work” is almost always a laugh riot.

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Where Leatherface would shop if he had internet access

Fur is so passé. This season, Serial Killer Chic is in, thanks to Skinbag!

Hipster Buffalo Bill: “Would you f**k me? I’d f**k me. I’d f**k me hard. Right after I finish my latte.”

Skinbag makes a range of products for the discerning maniac from a synthetic human skin that looks disgustingly real. (Seriously, it has wrinkles and veins and everything.) Look just like “Buffalo Bill” in stylish jackets and skirts that appear to have been carved right off of a freshly butchered transient!

Skinbag also makes camera bags and even courier laptop bags for the tech-savy whackjob with lots of money and disproportionately less common sense. Get yours today, and shame your family by dressing like a freak even though it’s not even Halloween time!

Made from leftovers of fat people after plastic surgery! Just kidding! (I think)

You can’t fault Skinbag for being original. But I think it’s safe to say that it is pretty gross.