FLOOD Festival Guide Presented by Toyota C-HR — Buff Monster Edition

F E S T I V A L

G U I D E

PRESENTED BY

BUFF MONSTER TICKLED PINK

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GET YOUR CLOTHES ON: FAST FESTIVAL FASHION

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YOK & SHERYO: THE ENDLESS PARADE

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TECH YOURSELF BEFORE YOU FEST YOURSELF

10 WE GOT THE EATS: KELLY FIELDS’S FOOD MAP OF AMERICA 12 DEMETRI MARTIN: SOME ONE-LINERS FROM SOMEONE ELSE

DEMETRI MARTIN COVER ILLUSTRATED BY ADAM BALLINGER BUFF MONSTER COVER ILLUSTRATION AND THIS PAGE COURTESY OF BUFF MONSTER

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GET YOUR CLOTHES ON:

F A S T F E S T I V A L F A S H I O N

It’s that time of year again: fest season. And big-box stores have been worshipping it since the start of spring deliveries in January. Let us ask: Would you wear a lyocell crop-top emblazoned with the logo of your favorite fest?

Didn’t think so. Which is why we decided to bring you our own fashion guide.

Our fetish: minimalism. Oh, and wearable beyond that one time you suffered heat exhaustion while getting meta with Gucci Mane in the desert.

BY CARRIE TUCKER

Buck Mason white slub pocket tee, $32 The coolest, most charming white tee around.

Reebok Club C 85 TG, $79.99 Get some inexpensive kicks in the shade o’ the season so you won’t bum out when you spill on them.

PHOTO BY DANIEL CAVAZOS

Topman matte black round sunglasses, $20 To quote ZZ Top: cheap sunglasses. Because you’ll probably break and/or lose them.

Matteau Swim square maillot in black, $280 IT’S HOT, but you’re an adult.

So wear a grown-up swimsuit.

M.i.h jeans Caron short, $195 And get some grown-up denim while you’re at it (death to crochet and excessive fray).

Vans Leather UA Old Skool Laceless DX, $85 Because you’re a summer goth and laces are REALLY HARD sometimes.

Reformation tee, $50 Preach. For each t-shirt purchased, Reformation will donate $30 to Planned Parenthood.

YOK & SHERYO: THE ENDLESS PARADE Yok & Sheryo like to stay busy. Like, really busy. There’s the street art—large murals that cover walls from Miami to Addis Ababa to Perth. There are the gallery installations, which, like much of their work, is painted in shades of black, red, and white. There are cartoons featuring outlandish, bubble-headed characters. They even have sheets of tattoo flash, just in case anyone is invested enough to permanently etch one of the artists’ creations on their person.

(So far there have been a few takers.)

“We’re trying to get on top of the list of things we’re doing,” admits Yok from the couple’s New York studio.

For every project they tick off their bucket list (and yes, they do keep an actual list) there are five more to take its place. But to hear them tell it, that’s exactly how they like to work: Their creativity is only satisfied by an endless parade of projects.

BY LAURA STUDARUS IMAGES COURTESY OF YOK & SHERYO

What were your lives like before you started working together?

Yok: I was always drawing, copying comics and skateboard graphics [in Australia].

Then my friends were doing graffiti, so I was drawn to that and was included in what they were up to. I started that way. Sheryo grew up in Singapore.

Sheryo: We were introduced through a mutual friend. I was living in Cambodia. [Yok] came to Cambodia with [him] and we painted a wall together. After Cambodia we were never apart again. [Laughs.] Working together, being together.

It sounds like you two instantly knew that your style and personal outlooks meshed.

Sheryo: Yeah, it was strange. Usually when you meet a person and you draw or work on a piece together, I think it isn’t that great. But when we do it, it just works; we didn’t even have to try. And we have very similar tastes aesthetically, [so] it’s easy to work together. He makes my drawings better

and I make his drawings better. We switch drawings when we’re working and then we switch them back.

How would you explain your style to someone at a dinner party?

Sheryo: We’re really curious artists. We like to try doing different things all the time and dabble in different mediums. Our art style is humorous; it’s really similar to our characters. We don’t like to take ourselves too seriously. We’re imperfect, so our style is imperfect as well.

Yok: Whatever we’re doing or wherever in the world we are, it finds its way into the characters that we draw or the activities that the characters are doing.

We’ve spent a lot of time in Indonesia so there’s a lot of jungle references and surfing and sharks—characters you might find in the jungle. And we spend a lot of time in Brooklyn so there’s a lot of crossover from New York street style, too.

There’s a wall on your website from Coney Island that features a lot of hot dogs and carnival imagery.

Yok: Yeah, that was to reflect the energy of Coney Island. So we spent some time down there before we painted and we did a piece that encapsulated it.

We like to do that wherever we’re painting—just feel the vibe of the place and inject it into the artwork.

Do you find that kind of research to be almost as interesting as physically doing the artwork?

Yok: Oh yeah!

Sheryo: Eating hot dogs at Coney Island, hanging out, people watching, going to freak shows—every new place has something to offer all the time.

Yok: Right now I’m drawing a dragon for an arts festival in Malaysia. [It’s part of] an installation series that we’ve been doing. It’s going to be like an ecohome, but a dragon, if that makes sense.

Sheryo: It’s going to use technology and be part of a garden installation.

Yok: It’ll have a way to recycle water. An eco-dragon.

When you’re working on these large-scale projects, what’s the trickiest part in making it all come together?

Yok: I think we’re really good at drawing it and inventing it, and then people go, “Alright, let’s build it,” and we go, “[Uh-oh.]” Then we have to figure out how to build it.

Sheryo: It’s fun, too, since it’s challenging. We somehow always make it go.

Yok: We’re learning on the fly how to build stuff since we don’t have a background in construction. We just have to learn really fast.

Sheryo: It’s awesome. It keeps it fresh. Each one is always different.

What’s on your bucket list?

Sheryo: We really want to get into animation—we’ve started doing some animation stuff. You can check that out on our Instagram.

We really want to do one of those every week. [And] we want to do projection mapping; that’s high on our list, too.

Yok: We’ve been making our own surfboards and doing graphics on them [as well].

It sounds like you guys are naturally ambitious.

Sheryo: We just get bored and we want to do stuff! We want to do stuff in India and Africa. And South America—I’ve never been there. I would like to build a treehouse. But then the treehouse could be one of our installations. That would be fun.

TECH YOU

YOURSELF FEST

BEFORE YOURSELF

At first glance, a music festival might not be the ideal place to test out your new gadgets: There are massive crowds to get lost in, an overflow of drinks and food to spill on them, and—oh yeah—music to enjoy. But it’s 2017! The people, the eats, and especially the music are all begging to be captured and beamed far beyond the festival grounds. You’ve already got your bag packed, right? Here are a few of our favorite fest-going gadgets worth making room for.

BY DEAN BRANDT

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myCharge AmpPlus w/ USB, $29.99

Polaroid Snap, $97

You tell yourself that you’ll save your phone for emergencies, like locating friends. You tell yourself that you’ll only snap a few photos and Instagram them later. Make peace now with the fact that these are lies, and keep going with myCharge’s lightning-fast battery pack.

There’s still a bit of a wait until the muchhyped Polaroid Pop comes out (time to secure that endorsement from Community’s Magnitude now, guys), but until then, the Snap is the best way to take a kitschy approach at capturing your weekend.

Ridiculous, yes, but physical photos are always fun to take, have, and give—especially when the instant development process provides an IRL Instagram filter that hides the fact that you’ve been sunburned for two days.

Snapchat Spectacles, $129.99 The crowd-surfing dude in the American flag tights isn’t going to stop party-rocking just because you need a sec to pull out your phone. Snapchat’s Spectacles capture the scene—that’s every scene—from your perspective, posting straight from your face to the there-and-it’s-gone social network.

Oh, and unlike most wearable tech, you wouldn’t mind if someone took your picture while you were wearing them.

Tile, $100 for four Festivals generate a ton of trash—hundreds of tons, actually—which means if you lose your keys, you’re looking for a needle in a pretty nasty haystack. Attach one of Tile’s small, GPS-tracked squares to your keys, your wallet, your best friend, or anything else you want to keep track of, and you’ll be set.

Just keep that phone charged!

Verizon Ellipsis Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot, $19.99 OK, so this isn’t the sexiest item on the list, and it’s definitely not going to compare to a drone that brings you a hot dog, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t suggest the highly practical addition of a Hotspot to your onceannual three-day fast from constant access to Wi-Fi. For those who only have their phone to worry about, you’re all good, but for anyone that brings any device that needs Internet access to work—a laptop, say, or a drone that brings you a hot dog—you’re gonna be screwed if you’re relying on the good graces of the Festival Gods to provide you with enough connection to do it. Bring your own.

Drone it up.

We Got the Eats:

Let’s be honest: One of the main reasons to hit a major

K E L LY F I E L D S ’ S

festival this summer has nothing to do with the bands that

FO O D M A P O F A M E R I C A

are playing—it has to do with the food scene in whichever city you’re landing in. After all, the cities that host the big fests are also some of the best food cities in the country.

That’s why we got one of the best chefs in the country— James Beard nominee Kelly Fields of New Orleans’ Willa Jean—to dole out her must-eat recommendations for those

As Told to Jeff Miller

SAN FRANCISCO

times when you’re off the field.

LO S A N G E L E S

Outerlands

Mashti Malone’s Ice Cream

The classic California cuisine spot has become a Sunset neighborhood—and citywide—fave.

The low-key Hollywood ice-cream spot serves a slew of exotic flavors.

“The aesthetic of the restaurant is all wood and it all sort of flows. But they do a really good job of using what they have around them and making pristine food that’s completely approachable and craveable. It’s totally that California approach to just use what they have access to. They start with really good bread. It’s the ideal California restaurant, if you ask me.”

“I haven’t been to LA since like 2003. I’m really embarrassed to say that, but the only thing I remember is getting Turkish ice cream at Mashti Malone’s. It kind of changed my idea of what ice cream could and should be. From a technical standpoint, it doesn’t melt that quick and it’s all stretchy and kind of chewy and it’s just delicious.”

Must-order dish: Saffron ice cream

Must-order dish: The Dutch Baby

NEW YORK

NEW ORLEANS

Lilia

Turkey and the Wolf

You may need to stay an extra day in New York to hit this Brooklyn Italian spot since they’re only open for dinner, and you know you’re not gonna miss the headliners. It’ll be worth it.

Pick up a sandwich here before heading into Voodoo: It’s one of the best new sandwich shops in the country.

“Missy Robbins is the chef/owner. She does really simple, beautiful Italian cuisine there, and it’s all wood-fired—she’s got this big, beautiful grill, and she keeps it truly simple. She does grilled fish, and you also always have to save room for outstanding soft serve. Last time I ate there she gave me a vanilla soft serve and then doused it with olive oil and sea salt, and then shaved white truffles over it. I mean, it was stupid good.”

“Mason Hereford opened it about a year ago and I think he is one of the most talented chefs in New Orleans—and he’s making sandwiches. Like, fried bologna sandwiches stuffed with potato chips, served on those old school McDonald’s plates that you got your Happy Meal on when you were a kid.

He’s having so much fun doing really solid food.”

Must-order dish: Collard Green Melt

Must-order dish: Grilled clams

HOUSTON CHICAGO

Moneygun

Fluff Bake Bar This critically-acclaimed bakery revels in negative reviews—it’s infamous for using upset Yelpers’ takes as inspiration for new treats.

This barstaurant could be the perfect post-Lolla drink-hang.

“It’s clean but it’s cozy and kind of dark—and they have a super-great whiskey program. They also have little plates and sandwiches and stuff like that; [it’s] craveable, eatable cocktail food. It’s cavernous without feeling dark, and it’s masculine without being forcibly so.”

“Rebecca Masson owns it. Everything I’ve had of hers is like silly good. It’s more of a bakery than it is anything else. She’s always got some hot food, which changes a lot because she invites her friends to come cook with her.

We’re gonna do a bake sale together this summer. I’m gonna go over and we’re gonna do pastries and then I’m gonna cook some crawfish and grits or whatever to sell.”

Must-order drink: Negroni Must-order dish: Laminated dough pastries

“I was on the street. This guy waved to me, and he came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’ And I said, ‘I am.’”

It’s one of Demetri Martin’s most popular one-liners, which is saying a lot when you’re talking about someone who’s crafted twenty years’ worth. But after decades spent on stage, from his first shot on Late Night with Conan O’Brien to the inaugural ID10T Fest this summer, Martin is starting to think that he maybe is, in fact, someone else.

“One of the things I love about comedy, especially standup, is it’s really challenging. And the challenges don’t seem to stop,” he says. “But being a parent now, I’m thinking more about comedy that comes out of feeling and emotional experience in addition to comedy of ideas and more cerebral stuff.”

If brevity is the soul of wit, then Martin could be called a tireless soul-searcher. He arrived on the scene in 2000 with a seemingly bottomless supply of dry and absurd insights into everyday ephemera, and he’s kept up a prolific output in the years since. While many comics spend tortured chapters of their lives developing their stage presences, Martin’s was fully formed from the start. He’s always dressed comfortably as he strums an acoustic guitar and offers his bon mots with the gentle delivery of a kid’s show host—though that quiet timbre often conceals an underestimated melancholy, as seen in jokes about being unable to keep a cactus alive.

BY ERIC STOLZE PHOTO BY RACHAEL MARTIN ILLUSTRATIONS BY DEMETRI MARTIN

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“I got into this because I like jokes as a way of sharing ideas,” he continues. But his relationship to the stage has evolved.

“It gives you a sense of your sensibility as other people receive it,” he says. “You have a live, real-time laboratory along the way. [There are] people telling you, ‘We like this from you, we don’t like that.’”

That lab work has led him to package his jokes in a wide range of containers, from whimsical illustrations delivered both live and in book form, to “remixes” that back his jokes up with glockenspiel accompaniment, to an ambitious couple of seasons of sketches in Important Things with Demetri Martin on Comedy Central. He’s sharpened his voice in the writing room at Conan and as a correspondent at The Daily Show. He was a one-man Twitter years before the platform existed. (“That’s certainly made it a little less fun to do one-liners,” he admits. “Now that everybody’s doing one-line jokes… And, sometimes, doing mine.”)

While his act has changed shapes, its tone has remained stubbornly silly and vaudevillian—in stark and curious

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contrast to alt-comedy trends over the years. His jokes have stayed short and obtuse despite comedians’ tendencies toward revealing monologues. He’s kept away from irreverence, never getting more personal than his grandmother’s cameo on his 2006 album These Are Jokes, never getting more political than the line “Black people only get three weeks more than sharks in this country.” It’s made him appear to be a bit of a cloudgazing misfit in the comedy world, as growing pains and rising anxieties make the community and industry very different from when he started.

It seems absurd to pose this question to a comedian, but here goes: Why so silly?

The query comes as no surprise to Martin, who’s quick to count himself among the anxious. “I feel it in the air.

I’m terrified, confused. It’s hard to get a foothold on how quickly things are changing, or in some ways devolving.”

But he feels no pressure or obligation to let the fear into his voice as a performer. “When I think of myself as a comedy fan, I appreciate those who can do political comedy and social commentary well,” he confides. “It serves a great purpose in our culture. But I still like daydreaming, and to escape. The combination of that, and that I’m not naturally inclined to make comedy out of politics because I get overwhelmed, those two factors lead me back to where I am now.

I’m a voter, and I’m involved as a citizen, but I don’t feel politically compelled comedically.”

director, and in playing the eponymous Dean, Martin built a vessel for all the various elements his act has incorporated over the years.

Martin considers himself a very different comedian from when he started—not because he’s changed his tone, but because the confidence behind it has changed. “I’m better at being more present in the room.

I improvise more, pay more attention during the show, so I’m not just reporting my jokes.”

But what of his new interest, for the first time in his creative life, in bringing more personal material into his act? Recent developments have brought meaning to his world far too significant to be contained in one line; he’s a father now, after all, and as of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, a filmmaker. His directorial debut, Dean, won the fest’s Best US Narrative Feature Award, and is in theaters this summer. As the writer/

Pete Dello and Honeybus’s music flows through the film’s shifts between comedy and drama, and Dean’s illustrations convey his internal state as he struggles to process his mother’s recent death. “I saw the screen as a great opportunity for [my] drawings,” Martin elaborates. One particularly poignant split-screen juxtaposes Dean roaming through a party full of strangers with a sketch of him dwarfed among gigantic legs.

Most significantly (and revealingly), as Dean jets between New York and LA in an attempt to escape his mourning, he delivers distracted asides to almost everyone he encounters, as when he waxes philosophical about the lack of burger royalty near a Burger King. Through the lens of Dean and his grief, Demetri Martin’s decades of silly asides start looking more and more therapeutic.

“In my own life, there’s a parallel there. There’s always been some escapist element in daydreaming, and especially in sitting down and writing these jokes out,” he says. In Q&As with audiences and encounters with fans after screenings, Martin faces something utterly new: Rather than just reciting their favorite bits from bygone specials, people immediately share stories of their own losses and relate to the film in deeply vulnerable ways. “In twenty years, I’ve never had something where you’re just instantly having a real conversation with people like this,” he says. “It makes me feel closer to people. It’s felt like the antidote to the social media age we live in, in that we’re connecting over something real.”

These reactions have turned a new, albeit slightly hesitant, page in Martin’s sketchbook as he develops his new material. “We live in an era of oversharing,” he opines. “What I call ‘diarrhea of autobiography.’ Some people, I do want to hear their stories. But not everyone, and not always.”

As he starts turning his absurd observations inward, his confidence turns a humble shade. “Getting a little bit older…and making the movie…I’m drawn

more to emotional sources of comedy. I don’t know if I can quite do it yet, but that’s what I’m heading for: a one-way conversation worth listening to.

I find that challenging. I do want to give more, if I can, but I want that to be worth [the audience’s] time.” His self-consciousness inspired the name of his upcoming standup tour: “Let’s Get Awkward.”

Beyond his tour dates and set at ID10T Fest, Martin has a new book of drawings called If It’s Not Funny It’s Art debuting in the fall, plans on shooting his next Netflix special for release next year, and is diving into work on the script for his second foray as a writer/director.

For now, though, Martin’s new chapter invites reappraisal of the long list of catchy, meme-friendly one-liners that brought him this far. Consider his fan-favorite description of swimming: “Sometimes you do it for fun, and other times you do it to not die.” We can apply that to writing—and receiving— jokes, too.

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THE FASHION ISSUE STARRING DR. STEVE BRULE

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6/15/16 2:42 AM

BUFF MONSTER

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By Kurt Orzeck Images courtesy of Buff Monster

It’s a rainy day in mid-May, a few weeks after the last snow melted, and Buff Monster couldn’t be happier to be living in New York instead of Los Angeles. The street artist was looking for a change of pace, so in 2012 he left behind a city he’d already covered with cartoonish pink monsters. The Big Apple rewarded Buff with a new life, and a deluge of artistic and entrepreneurial opportunities.

“There’s nothing wrong with nice, but nice gets old after a while,” he says of perpetually pleasant Los Angeles during our phone interview. “It’s a struggle here, but it keeps you honest and keeps your integrity in check. After living in LA for so long, it’s incredibly refreshing. LA is based on fantasy and made-up things; New York is less about that.”

Buff knows a thing or two about made-up things. He also has a savvy eye for business opportunities. From Disney and Coca-Cola to Nike and Hello Kitty, his collaborations continue to expand as his indefatigable ambition shows no signs of slowing down. He’s even managed to incorporate himself into the New York zeitgeist, painting an “Eye Heart NY” mural on one of the elevators in building four of the new World Trade Center as part of a curated art exhibition.

“A lot of brands and opportunities call for a New York–based artist. After moving here, all of a sudden I’m in the running for these things,” he says.

Los Angeles was actually the second place that the painter, toy creator, sculptor, and animator called home. He was born in Hawaii in 1979, and he grew up in thrall to ice cream, Garbage Pail Kids, and heavy metal before enrolling in the University of Southern California. Inspired by commercially iconic artists Walt Disney and Andy Warhol, he earned a minor in business administration along with a major in fine arts.

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Buff, who coyly insists that that’s his real name, reflects on his business-minded decision: “I don’t think it was [necessarily] that smart—it just kind of made sense. All the biggest artists are great businessmen. Business is all around us. Everything we wear, eat, and deal with in our lives comes from a business: the pen you’re writing with, the phones we’re talking on, the paper this will be printed on.”

And Buff’s entrepreneurial spirit is paying off. A few days after our phone call, he will separate the product division of his business into its own brand (a move similar to the one Shepherd Fairey made with his Obey clothing venture). The new company will be called Stay Melty, which also served as the title of Buff’s self-designed, 224-page book documenting his artwork.

The peculiar phrase makes sense to anyone familiar with Buff’s images of drippy, disconnected eyeballs and pink, melting monsters.

It rings even more true when one bears witness to his fascination— nay, obsession—with a particular confectionary carnality.

“Ice cream is a metaphor for life,” he muses. “A scoop of ice cream is awkward to deal with in the beginning. It has potential but isn’t fully realized. Once it melts, the promise is coming true. It’s sweet and it’s filling and it’s really becoming what you want it to be.”

He continues: “As time goes on and ice cream melts, it goes into this soupy, messy state. The melting ice cream cone metaphor relates to my work ethic, too. It’s as if I’m holding an ice cream cone that’s melting. It addresses the individual versus society or culture as a whole, [too].

“We’re constantly melting,” he concludes. “But inside of everyone melting collectively and individually, we can still enjoy it for as long as it lasts. As long as you’re eating ice cream, you can’t go wrong.”

Brain freeze? We’ll give you a moment to collect yourself.

A couple of weeks ago, Buff was bumbling about the Arctic Circle—a precious place that is itself melting all too quickly. He went there with his girlfriend as the region was experiencing its spring season.

“It was still snowing every hour on the hour, and it was cold as all hell,” he recalls. “It was amazing to go to this place where all this awesome heavy metal comes from.”

Like ice cream, metal is another childhood fixation Buff has continued to cling to in adult life. But while there’s some Internet chatter about him favoring black metal, his go-to sub-genre isn’t of the face-melting variety. Buff rocks out to power metal—bands like Iced Earth (of course), Blind Guardian, Metal Church, and King Diamond.

Of course, he’s no stranger to extremity.

“My street-art partner and I, we would do billboards. That was such a crazy time,” he remembers. “I was climbing up these long, sketchy ladders and onto super-sketchy billboards. I’m thankful I got out alive and unscathed. It seems like a lifetime ago I was willing to climb up all those places.”

But don’t think for a moment that he’s toned down. Last year, on a brick wall in Jersey City, he painted his biggest mural yet: a sixty by fifty foot tall behemoth with his smiling cyclopean creatures

depicting the seven heavenly virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity) in front of a pink backdrop. The project required him to use a cherry picker and reach as high as he was physically capable.

Buff says some people can maybe recite the seven deadly sins, which he painted last summer in Montreal, but most don’t know about heavenly virtues.

“Politically and socially, in America in 2017, it doesn’t hurt to have a reminder of the virtues,” he says.

So what is he brewing now? He’s releasing a Spanish-language version of his Melty Misfits trading cards and stickers, which parody his beloved Garbage Pail Kids so perfectly that they even come wrapped in wax paper. Also in his sights is an installation at Life Is Beautiful, an art-meets-music festival that’s happening in late September in Downtown Las Vegas.

Buff has another massive project on the way, but while he initially planned to reveal it this year, it’s delayed.

“Some projects just take so long—and that’s OK. I have a lot of short projects that are rewarding. Maybe next year.”

Till then, stay melty.

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