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Vice Blog

ZINE CREAMERS - 21-YEAR BONANZA

I grew up watching PAX--it was my own choice--and my favorite show was Touched by an Angel because I really loved the miracles. My parents, Ming and Ping, used to run and manage a Far East acrobatic circus and magic show. My father is a professional magician who does all those fire blowing, popping a balloon with a cigarette and turning it into a bird, jumping into a small box while a woman in a gold jumpsuit and a gold top hat is inside, a woman sits in a mirrored box and my dad turns her head into a balloon and pops it with a cigarette and she comes out of nowhere smoking a cigarette kind of tricks.

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As a young kid I rarely had a babysitter; my mother was always working three jobs. I woke up on schooldays before class for violin lessons 45 minutes away. After school, I learned about craft in my aunt's basement, where I assembled hundreds of hair accessories to be sold on Canal Street.

A woman who assisted my father in his magic performance had abducted me. Luckily, she was caught with a stolen a credit card that was used to buy hundreds of dollars worth of tie-dyed children's clothes for me and was driving drunk with a stolen car. She gifted me with a gross lock of her hair tied with a sweaty string that weaved itself into some Aztec friendship bracelet. I watched her sit in jail with her Tevas. Later, my best friend Kristin and I sat in front of the fireplace to watch my Kumon homework burn.

These prints and zines and videos are a chronological archive of the 21 years I have been on this planet. It's all stuff from that thesis project I kept talking about, a map of thoughts of what I understand and admire.