toybot studios: Hanging around Chicago with Skullbrainers

Chicago is a beautiful city. It's a big city, but still has that small town feeling. I got to hang out with fellow 'Brainers SmilingIdiot, DamagedBryan and Legoomba. We began the journey at the Silver Palm Restaurant. Site of the infamous "Three Little Piggies" sandwich made famous on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations show on the Travel Channel. He called it the best sandwich in the United States. Given how much Bourdain loves Pork, you can see why.

This monstrosity has breaded pork cutlet, ham, bagon, two eggs, onion rings and gruyere cheese. It's huge, it's insane and yes, that good.

Legoomba looks kinda scared. He was the only guy that didn't finish it.

I eat fast. It's a bad habit growing up in a big family. But Minh east SUPER fast. I wasn't even half way through and Minh had finished the entire sandwich long ago.

DamagedBryan says "Hell Yeah!" to the plentiful pork sando

Best Sandwich in the US? I dunno about that. It's really good and obviously very filling, but I tend to measure things on how much I want to go back and eat it again. I can assure you I was not that interested in returning the next day to have another one. Having said that, next time i'm in Chicago, I'm pretty sure I will be having it again.

Now were waiting around for Rotofugi to open up on Saturday so we can get our ticket to line up again at 7pm for the show. Bloodrinker in the red.

A bit more Japanese toys selection since the last Toy Karma show 2 years ago...! What I like best about Rotofugi is that all the toys are out on disply ready to be touched and played around with. None of them are behind any glass cases. Apparently kids in Chicago don't steal that many toys.

First time i've seen the 3A Toys Large Martins in person and they are quite impressive! Sold out everywhere else. I contemplated getting one, but I would have had to purchase another seat on the airplane. lol...

Rotomeisters Kirby and Whitney

This Coarse Toys guy is pretty cool. Would make a great coat hanger.

We were going to go to Hot Doug's for their famous gourmet hot dogs, but Logang said it would be a 2 hour wait so he convinced us to go to Smoque. It was a good call because it was one of the best bbq brisket sandwich's i've ever had. I was so interested in eating the damn thing I completely forgot to take a picture. food does that to me.

Then DamagedBryan busted out his tats.

Then for some sight-seeing! Picasso sculpture.

Cloud Gate on the AT&T Plaza
Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.

Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.

What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline…so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one's reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around.
-Anish Kapoor

This thing was pretty crazy. Two giant glass brick towers with water flowing down on all sides. Some kind of LED disply that puts giant animated faces on one side.

Designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa and inspired by the people of Chicago, The Crown Fountain is a major addition to the city's world-renowned public art collection.

The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out. Plensa adapted this practice by having faces of Chicago citizens projected on LED screens and having water flow through a water outlet in the screen to give the illusion of water spouting from their mouths. The collection of faces, Plensa's tribute to Chicagoans, was taken from a cross-section of 1,000 residents.

The fountain, which anchors the southwest corner of Millennium Park at Michigan Avenue and Monroe Streets, is a favorite of both children and families. The water is on from mid-spring through mid-fall each year (weather permitting,) while the images remain on year-round.

A fountain is the memory of nature, this marvelous sound of a little river in the mountains translated to the city. For me, a fountain doesn't mean a big jet of water. It means humidity, the origin of life.
-Jaume Plensa

At certain intervals, it shoots water out of the mouth. Very cool, but kinda creepy and Big Brother like.

This was the best thing ever in Chicago.

Chen Wenling combines folk art and symbols of wealth in a satirical display of a golden pig and fat man and woman clutching onto a large tongue spouting from the mouth of red cartoonish automobile