Tiki Table

I’m busy with the baby these days, but the tiki won’t stop.  While scouring the thrift stores and flea markets of this great country, Evelyn found some amazing items for my tiki office.  First, the perfect office sign:

Oh man, is this sweet.  Check out the pirate parrot!

Evelyn also found these lovely placemats and salt shakers:

I’m now two steps closer to the perfect tiki dinner setting. Behold!

Thank you, Evelyn!

 

 

Tiki Baby

Now I’ve got a tiki office, and I’ve got a baby.  Time to set up the Pack n’ Play.

 

The Greatest Tiki Things in the Universe

Okay, so it’s been a while since the last Tiki Weekend update.  I was a tiny bit busy having a baby.  I was so busy I even missed this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.  But that’s fine, because at last year’s Comic-Con I got the greatest tiki things in the universe, and Andrew has finally framed them and hung them in the tiki office for me.  Thank you, Andrew!

And thank you, Mario, Jaime, and Gilbert Hernandez, for drawing me a triptych of hula girls!

That’s right: I have hula girls drawn by indie comics legenda Los Bros Hernandez.

Mario’s hula girl!

 

Gilbert’s hula girl!

Aaaand Jaime’s!  (On a smoke break.)

 

At this year’s Comic-Con, Gilbert and Jaime won Eisner Awards for the first time (no, really).  Obviously you’re not awards material until you’ve drawn some tiki art.  And now I have the best tiki office in the universe.

Holiday Greetings

Sorry to go so long between tiki posts.  I’ve been busy with this whole thing where I got pregnant.  But this did not stop kind people from continuing to brighten my day with tiki!

One of the letterers I work with at Viz, Annaliese, is an amazing person.  Every holiday season she sends each of her editors at Viz a homemade card based on a manga she letters for us.  I currently work with Annaliese on Tegami Bachi, the only fantasy manga I know about mail carriers, so for the past couple of years she’s sent me cards with the Tegami Bachi characters.  And look what I got from her this time!

Yes, it’s a tiki-themed Tegami Bachi card!

This is so sweet.  Although possibly its greatness is only comprehensible if you’re into both Tegami Bachi and tiki.  So me, basically.

Meanwhile, my cousin Killian was kind enough to give me a couple of great new masks for Christmas.  Check out these guys!

They will go up on the rafters with the rest of the Mask Army Auxiliary Corps.

Thank you, everyone!  I’ll try to get more tiki posts up soon.

Alina Chau

The tiki office remains a soothing tropical retreat in this unreasonably cold Bay Area winter.  So thanks, tiki office!

 

I realize that I’ve never gotten around to sharing all of the amazing tiki art I got at the San Diego Comic-Con this summer.  For example, ever since Andrew framed this for me, it’s been beautifying the office, and yet only now have I managed to post it.

 

This lovely watercolor is by the amazing Alina Chau, an animator and illustrator who worked on Clone Wars and more recently created the interactive children’s book Pickle.  Go look at her website!  It is incredible!  I like to give prints of her art as gifts, but the hula girl is mine, I tell you.  Mine.

And yet this is not even the most amazing tiki art from Comic-Con.  That’ll be in the next post.  You will weep in awe.  Until then, happy holidays!

Christmas Tree

The tiki office opened in June, but I always knew I would need to decorate it for the winter holidays.  And today, courtesy of the Japanese dollar-fifty store downtown, I added the tacky white bartop tree of my dreams.

I’ve wanted a tree like this for ages, and the price was so right.

I’ve had the ornaments for a while.  For some reason people keep giving me tiki ornaments for Christmas.  Actually, the turtle at top is a souvenir from my honeymoon in Kauai almost ten years ago, which is what started the tiki obsession in the first place.  Happy holidays!

Admission

I still have to catch up on sharing a lot of awesome tiki art, including a triptych of hula girls that are beyond your mortal comprehension.  But other tiki stuff keeps demanding my attention.  For example, what’s this by the door of my tiki office?

Holy crud, it’s a replica of the original admission sign to the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland!

When it first opened, the Enchanted Tiki Room was owned and operated by WED Enterprises, Disney’s development arm, rather than Disneyland proper, so it cost an extra 75 cents to enter.  Seventy-five cents well spent, I should add.  This replica was a gift from my friend Roy Zemlicka.  Thank you so much, Roy!  Now I can charge people to come into my office.

Brazillian Tiki

I apologize for not posting for so many tiki-free weekends.  A lot of regrettably non-tiki events have been keeping me busy.  For example, last weekend I went to Amadora BD, an amazing international comics festival in Portugal.  I ate so many different formats of salt cod.

But don’t imagine I ever stopped thinking about tiki.  While in Portugal, I met Brazillian cartoonist Gustavo Duarte, whose book Monsters will be out in the U.S. from Dark Horse come January.  Gustavo is an incredible, hilarious artist and you have to buy his book as  soon as it hits the shelves.  In the meantime, he was kind enough to draw me this:

So boss!  So sweet!

Obrigada, Gustavo!

We Are Tiki. Resistance Is Futile.

In the last Tiki Weekend, I shared an amazing tiki of the future, created on a 3D printer by Paul Lenoue.  Well, since then Paul has sent me an entire box of sci-fi tikis.  Behold!

 

THIS IS AWESOME

 

 

 

 

This jet-black moai is my favorite, but sadly he doesn’t photograph so well.  He’s strikingly beautiful.

 

Thank you so much, Paul!

Tiki Past and Future

Most of the books in the tiki office are work-related, like for example my shelf containing very nearly the complete works of James Tiptree, Jr.  (I’m still trying to get a copy of the 1970s fanzine that published Tiptree’s unproduced Star Trek treatment, and I’m so close…)  But I do have a small collection of books on Polynesian topics.

And my friend and coworker Amol was kind enough to gift me with two books for the tiki shelf!  Thank you, Amol!

A Hawiian Reader is a collection of classic stories and essays about Hawaii from decades past, only some of which are super racist in retrospect.  If you’ve ever wondered how Mark Twain enjoyed his Hawaiian vacation, this is the book to track down.  Maui the Demigod is a novelization of the Hawaiian creation myth, and is mainly awesome for featuring woodblock illustrations by major Hawaiian painter and printmaker Dietrich Varez.  Look how wonderful!

I know what you’re thinking.  Books, woodblock prints…those things are so old-fashioned.  What, you ask, lies ahead for Hawaiiana?  Well, Paul Lenoue was kind/mad-sciencey enough to give me a picture of the future, and it’s a mug feeding Mai Tais to a human face forever.

What’s so futuristic about this tiki mug?  Only that Paul made it on a 3D printer.

Yes, soon tikis will come to us Star Trek replicator style.  And I’m back to talking about Star Trek again.  Thank you so much, Paul!