Ray Sohn and Tomomi Fujimaru Discuss True Chubbo

Raymond Sohn pushes beyond the boundaries of what even above-average people can do and is in many respects superhuman. He spent much of his young life winning martial arts tournaments and teaching Tae Kwon Do. But beating ass isn't the only world Ray's known--he's a also versatile musician and performer. When he was the guitarist and singer in the cacaphonous rock combo Banana Oil he would jump off the bass drum and land flat on his back without injuring himself. Later, after an Earth-shattering breakup, he became a softspoken acoustic country singer. Despite having one earhole to his head, he taught himself how to competently record and produce stereo, a feat that drove Brian Wilson, also a one-eared genius, to insanity. Creative geyser Gary Panter has involved Ray in some of his projects, including doing a giant mural with him and Frank Santoro, and more recently assisting Gary in the light show that was done for the Yo La Tengo/Black Lips show at Roseland Ballroom. Way back in our college days he was sleeping four hours a night and eating only one small meal a day, and somehow he had more energy than anyone else. Ray's so gifted and likable that it makes me a little angry. My anger is immediately squashed by my shame of having ill feelings towards such a great guy. He is the ultimate human. He might be a genius. A few years back Ray started dating Tomomi and they were married in July. Tomomi grew up in Japan and doesn't speak much so I know much, much less about her. Together they make a comic about themselves called True Chubbo. They parody their life together as being a sexual, violent paradise in which they are constantly getting fat all of a sudden, dying, pumping out mountains of shit, and trying to figure out how to exploit each other for their own immediate gain. I'm lucky to know them, Vice is lucky to publish their work (you saw it yesterday), and you are lucky to have found this interview in which we discuss just how truly great Ray is. VICE: Ray, didn't your mom kick you in the face? I know you used to be a competitive martial artist. Why aren't you out there beating on people professionally? Ray Sohn: Yes, it's true, I would fight my mom to help her train for tournaments. And she would occasionally kick me in the head or in the groin. Ouch! But we stopped fighting each other after an incident where I knocked the wind out of her and she started crying. I still feel bad about that. Sorry Mom! I started practicing Tae Kwon Do when I was five and continued until I was eighteen. I competed heavily for about five of those years and ranked twice at nationals, and I'm a Kukkiwon certified Master of Tae Kwon Do. I was even offered a scholarship to practice Tae Kwon Do at UC Berkeley. But the truth is that at some point it stopped being fun, and I would be so nervous before having to compete that I would get acid reflux and puke my guts out. And I further botched any chance I had of going to UC Berkeley by releasing and distributing a zine of dirty comics and slanderous editorials about teachers in the bathrooms of my high school. That got me suspended for the last week of the semester and I flunked all of my final exams for the junior year, thus obliterating my GPA. As punishment my parents threw away all of my beloved comic books. Can you imagine about ten black trash bags filled to the brim with comics sitting on the curb? But I became a cartoonist anyway. I remember you telling me about your parents throwing away all of your comics but I didn't realize that it was because you were doing dirty comics about your teachers. Do you still have that comic? I don't have any more copies, but I'll ask around and see If I can get you scans. Tell me some more of your family history. My great grandmother had seven children in total. Six of them were girls, and five of those died as infants. And the one girl that survived was fated to be mentally ill by fortune tellers. But my theory is that some of those babies were merely turned over and allowed to suffocate by the mid-wife, because at the time the culture put more importance on birthing males than females. And after six girls the family was getting fed up with my great grandmother because she had not produced a male yet. So they gave her an ultimatum that she either produce a male heir or she would be allowed to kill herself honorably by ingesting poison. Luckily that seventh child turned out to be my grandfather, and she didn't have to drink that bowl of poison they put next to her during the birth. My grandfather had four children. The first to be born was my eldest uncle, and here is where it gets a little crazy. According to family lore, my grandfather's sister struck my baby uncle in the head with a pipe and drew blood. And my great grandfather was so enraged that he beat her so bad that she withered away and died a few months later. Now, my grandfather was his own brand of crazy genius. A charming sociopath with unlimited financial resources and a passion for life experience, he managed to burn through the family fortune with various schemes, go on two-month hunting expeditions where he drank boar's blood for vitality, claimed to see ghosts and experience visions, womanizing, gambling, delivering his own children and chewing through the umbilical chords with his teeth, and a laundry list of other exploits. Anyway, this is one of the more "factual" stories I've heard over the years. I have a whole bag of pseudo-mystical type stories which are based on a long narrative that my mother has woven about an enlightened being who watches over and punishes our family through the ages. That was a long and fascinating tale. What's it like living with one ear? Is that an OK question to ask? I was born with a condition called Microtia and according to Wikipedia it's a congenital deformity of the outer ear. So I had one regular size ear and one really tiny ear. It bothered me quite a bit and I went ahead and had surgery to try and fix it while I was in high school. They hadn't figured out how to do that thing where you grow your own ear yet, so I had it done the old-fashioned way. The doctors cut out a chunk of my lower ribs on my right side, carved that into an approximation of an ear, sliced a football shaped piece of skin from my lower back to cover it, and then proceeded to stitch it to the side of my head. And three surgeries later I went from looking like a guy with a weird little ear to a guy with cauliflower ear and some huge scars. One major bummer is that I can't enjoy, appreciate, or even experience stereo sound and the imaging that occurs in the brain with certain sound recordings. I also have tinnitus and bad hearing due to playing in bands, so please talk into my good ear. When and why did you two start doing these True Chubbo comics? Tomomi Sohn: It was two years ago. Ray: I was blocked, and really a bit aimless artistically speaking and I just didn't know what I wanted to do. So as that one person said, work makes work, and I just decided that we should start drawing comics to get our brains going again. I never really had any high expectations but it evolved into something quite personal and reflective. And for some reason it struck a chord, more so than anything I've ever done. I think that when you make yourself vulnerable, other people can relate to that nakedness because so much of our day-to-day is about covering up and presenting this persona in order to cope with the delirious madness of living. Where does the name come from? Tomomi: It's a nickname for Raymond that means really chubby. I mean it in a good way. Ray: The name comes from some Engrish that Tomomi made up in order to call me the fattest of all fatties. On a side note, when you get married, most of your conversations tend to revolve around making fun of each other. But anyway, I've always had a real fascination with Engrish since I was in high school. I just love the irregular juxtapositions of words that the Japanese come up with in order to express their thoughts in our language. Mostly the appeal is a comical one. How do you make the comics? Switching off every panel? Tomomi: Yes. Ray: Yeah, that's how it works. No secrets here, just two minds, merging as one in order to make one very stupid comic strip about our life together. I think the most unique aspect of True Chubbo is that it looks like the work of one, whereas most collaborative comics read like territorial pissing matches. All the comic strips are drawn in a Hand Book Journal Co. Travelogue, large landscape, with a black Faber-Castell PITT artist pen. The first sketchbook that we filled up was ultramarine blue, but we decided to go Cadmium Green this time. Usually we draw twice as many strips as we publish. So if you see ten strips, there are ten even crappier strips that will never be seen. Have your families seen these? Tomomi: No, my parents are old and I don't want to give them a heart attack. Ray: Mine have, but they came to terms with my mental illness a long time ago. It was sort of inevitable anyway. My grandfather was a Moonie and claimed to be clairvoyant. My biological father suffered from schizophrenia and is currently M.I.A., and my mother believes she is next in line to become the next Buddha. Cue the world's smallest violin. How'd you guys meet? What do you like about each other? Tomomi: I started dating him because I thought he would become a hipster kind of musician. I like him because he's so different from me and I never get bored staying with him. Ray: My heart had just been broken into a million pieces by a crazy fine art major so I was a bit of a sad bastard back then. And my good friend, Alvin, invited Tomomi and I to a concert. I don't think he meant to play matchmaker, but I could just tell she was the sweet, earnest girl I'd been looking for my whole life. Here's the very first e-mail I ever wrote to her after a dinner party at her loft where I drank a six pack and various mixed drinks. Keep in mind we were not dating at this point. --- From: Raymond To: Tomomi Sent: Sunday, April 2, 2006 5:52:42 AM Subject: oh tomomi! i may be drunk but oh tomomi, thank you for the free beer and i think i'm in love with you, let's get married tomorrow -ray --- Three years later, we are now married. Why are you always killing each other and forcing each other to eat shit in your comics? Is this the only forum you have to express your aggression against one another? Tomomi: That's because of Raymond. Ray: Yeah, that's mainly me who injects the murder and feces into the strip. And that's probably because I spent a good portion of my life beating people up and trying to dominate and crush my opponents inside the ring. Not to say that I didn't take my fair share of beatings, because I did get knocked out plenty of times. So, I still have issues with aggression but I get it out in my work. What do you guys do for a living? Tomomi: I go to work every day and make celebrity ads. Ray: This year I've been lucky enough to be able to survive on freelance work. Some projects were better than others, but here are the highlights. 1. Getting flown down to Roanoke, Virginia, to assist Gary Panter and Frank Santoro with a mural for the Taubman Museum of Art. We spent about a week and a half in a total mind meld working everyday from morning until way past midnight jamming out to Black Sabbath. It was an education being in the presence of these two great artists. They openly shared their stories, secrets, pitfalls, gossip, joys, and hardships with me. I gained a perspective of two lifetimes in this week and a half. 2. Being a part of the Joshua White & Gary Panter Light Show with Yo La Tengo & Black Lips at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC. Joshua White is a genius and an American treasure and it was my honor to be a part of this show. It bordered on religious experience, and I started tearing up around the second song because of how beautiful it was. Yo La Tengo played great and our light show ensemble worked in perfect harmony to complement the music. 3. Working on a secret project with Gary Panter and Frank Santoro. I don't want to jinx myself, because if I start blabbing it will never get done. You helped Gary with that lightshow?! Dagggg. Dagggg, How was it? You got any photos? Tomomi: It was an awesome show! Ray: It was my first time with the light show and the crew were really nice and showed me how to operate all the various light making and reflective devices. It was more like an electric light orchestra, and Joshua White was the conductor. Here's a blog post I found with some photos and video of the event. When did you realize you were huge perverts? Tomomi: I don't think I am. Ray: For me it has a lot to do with my childhood. While other kids were watching Sesame Street, I was sneaking out of bed and watching late-night HBO. My step-dad, like clockwork, would always fall asleep in front of the television, and I would hide behind him and watch. I have a fond memory from when I was about six, watching Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick, and being perplexed by the suicide scene in the bathroom of the boot camp. I was confused for years as to why he died from sticking a rifle in his mouth. But I continued to watch these types of movies, because they intrigued me on a gut level. And that's how it was for me growing up, and probably why I am a “huge pervert.” It seems silly now, but when you are a child everything is a little more mysterious. And as I've grown older the world just seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors. The really magical things in life for me are the relationships that we cultivate with each other over a life time. On a scale of 1 to 10 how hard do you guys fuck? Tomoimi: I can't scale. Ray: A few years back I was heavily into Yoga and following a strictly macrobiotic diet. I would wake up very early to practice before work, and I lived off of one meal a day. Yet, I felt great and I had more energy and mental clarity than I've ever experienced in my whole life. Period. One day I happened to be meditating and my neck began to stiffen and my head started to rise up, and I felt this intense heat in my skull and I just began to weep uncontrollably. After I was done crying I felt cleansed, and the best way to describe my state was that I felt free from the duality of nature. I was in that state of mind for two days and on the second day we had sex. Everything was going fine, and then right after I came she blacked out, and when she regained consciousness she was in a flu-like state, experiencing chills, and crippling stomach pains. So I rushed to the Rite Aid to get something for her stomach but by the time I got back she was fine. I have a theory that it had something to do with my mystical mojo, because after that I started coming down and feeling like a human again. So, I guess that's a 10? For more, check out Ray and Tomomi's websites.