I like hockey. A lot. So when the National Hockey League (NHL) held its 62nd All Star Game in Los Angeles, Calif., signing up to volunteer was a no-brainer. At the orientation, we were promised that volunteering would be one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives. It turns out my assignment was to strap equipment on fourth graders so they could play simulated goaltending.

Although exposing inner-city kids to hockey certainly wasn't a bad thing, I couldn't help but feel like a lowlife carnie. All I needed was some cheesy tattoos, a few less digits, and a criminal record. Some of the world's best athletes were in attendance, but I was reduced to hawking a game to a bunch of rubes. On top of that, I had to show up at 8 a.m. four days in a row. For free.

I might have felt differently about the situation if I wasn't helping to start Giant Robot at the time.

When Eric Nakurama decided to apply the do-it-yourself energy to Asian and Asian-American culture in 1994, I was the first to join the Giant Robot staff. The first issue was a photocopied, stapled-and-folded, digest-sized brick with articles on sumo, the Boredoms, and travel in Hawaii; we made about 240 copies. Since then, the magazine has slowly evolved into a full-size, (mostly) color, glossy publication, and now has an unaudited distribution of about 30,000.

Making an independent magazine is a lot of work. Having a lean staff of about six ensures long hours that stretch even longer when deadlines draw near. Even on a quarterly schedule, there's always work to be done - assembling articles and lining up decent images is just the beginning.

There's also behind-the-scene chores that need tending, like printing, distribution, and advertising. Eric had to learn most of this stuff from scratch, getting tips from other independent publishers and doing his own research. As editor, my responsibilities deal with wordsmithing, and trying to make our writers' very different styles have a powerful and natural flow that adhere to the rules of grammar – or at least break them consistently.

Taking into account the varied aspects of art, film, travel, music, food, and other manifestations of Asian and Asian-American culture, the magazine can be hard to digest for people with little exposure to anything outside the mainstream. Many newsstand operators unfamiliar with our magazine place Giant Robot next to gay porn or Asian business digests.


Advertising agencies also have a hard time swallowing our content. The vast majority of our advertisers are not Asian or Asian American, but are independent record labels. Our advertisers know we speak to a niche of people that is hard to reach through the mainstream press, and that our readers are the ones who start trends.

There are of course those who claim the magazine is just glossy imagery that promotes stereotypes or panders to white men with 'yellow fever'. That's bullshit. Our articles have covered topics including orchids, snow monkeys, and long pinky nails. Anyone who beats off to that has problems unrelated to our magazine.

These days, letters pour in from around the world, and the response ranges from high praise to readers who just like talking shit. There are die-hard fans who have followed us since our single-digit issues, and who freakishly know exactly what Eric and I have been doing for the last seven years from reading the magazine. The best letters say Giant Robots makes them proud to be Asian.

Giant Robot is not another job for us: it's how we live and what we do all the time, captured in print. This is the culture that we breathe, put on paper for people to share, probably laugh at, and hopefully learn from. I suspect that people enjoy volunteering for the NHL's annual FANFest because they like to take a break from their regular routines and work for a common cause. At Giant Robot, I get to do that every day.