I’m turning 21 on Thursday, so as part of a series of elaborate surprises, my boyfriend, Rudy, told me to put on some comfortable shorts and we headed west to an undisclosed location. With our friends Tyler and Andrew in tow, we soon arrived in Beverly Hills, 90210, at a nondescript workout studio tucked away just around the corner from The Troubadour. It wasn’t until I received an information form to fill out from the spandex-wrapped former blonde bombshell at the front desk that I realized we had arrived at Slimmons, the private studio Richard Simmons has been running for more than three decades. We waited in the lobby for our workout to begin as a class called “Project Me” (described online as “a dynamic group discussion class that focuses on motivation”) wrapped up. Without warning, the doors flipped open, Abba started blaring, and in a flurry of motion, everyone in the lobby was rushing, spinning, or dancing into the studio.

Joined by our friend Michelle, the five of us tried to keep up with the class as we mirrored Simmons’ wild moves, which Tyler hypothesized were less planned routine and more Simmons’ arbitrary whims— but they were fun whims, to be sure. Roaming throughout the crowd, Simmons sardonically sported spittle on his lips, allowing saliva to dribble down his chin as he pantomimically called us out on our lack of adequate pizazz, implying we were nothing more than nursing home zombies lacking the true energy of a Slimmons devotee. For some in the crowd, this may have been true: the majority of our classmates were retired midwestern housewives, in town for one of Simmons’ bi-annual retreats (a weekend of exercise with Richard which includes a nighttime disco dance!)— but all of them were trying their hardest, and everyone was excited to be there. One of the midwestern ladies became convinced that Michelle, who’s Asian, and who bears no resemblance to any talk show hosts living or dead, was actually Ricki Lake. “You were in Hairspray, weren’t you? Ricki?” Soon, Simmons arranged the class in a big circle and pulled Rudy into the middle of it, for a one-on-one dance-off/miming session.

Michelle was next, as she handed off her cat eye glasses to Simmons, who gladly transformed into a bespectacled head-swayer for their special moment. As the class continued, we aerobicized to Cher, Ritchie Valens (which prompted Simmons to yell angrily in Spanish about the virtues of nutrition and exercise), Justin Timberlake, and a techno remix of the “Golden Girls” theme song — all DJed seamlessly by Simmons on vinyl! “I’m a whore for pizza!” Simmons declared, and told us about how he’d remove cheese from slices of pizza and leave it looking like the craterous face of an acne-riddled teenage girl. He was full of so much insane and amazing energy it was a challenge to keep up with the 60-year-old legend, as he alternated between dance moves and sassy (and surprisingly lewd) quips that recalled Joan Rivers at her best. “This is the best position to get in if you want diamonds,” he told us as we were on our knees, getting ready for push-ups. “You should see the vault full of diamonds I have at home just from this one position!”

Eventually, Simmons singled out our group of east side interlopers, asking us where we were from and what we had for breakfast. “Reese’s Pieces,” said Tyler, which led Simmons into a shocked outburst. “You’re too skinny to be here!” he cried as the class laughed along. “You look like a pioneer boy with that beard,” he told me, “You’re from Portland, right?” Later, he said Rudy looked like a serial killer and asked if he’d been in any prison movies. We weren’t alone in our ribbing— another young couple received a lengthy lecture from Simmons after he discovered they’d been dating nine years with no ring to show for it. “Cobwebs! You need to ask her already!” Simmons’ humor mostly comes from pretending to be a saucy, domineering bitch, but in reality he’s sensationally sentimental, and his class is more therapy than aerobics. His focus is on raising self-esteem and convincing his students to love themselves and treat their bodies well, and support others… and it’s all glazed over with disco and diamonds and sequins.

I came across a book of Yokoyama’s paintings at the Royal/T Cafe in Culver City, which is a highly buzzed-about new restaurant that pays homage to the “maid cafe” otaku culture in Japan. The cafe inhabits a humongous space filled out by fun, creatively curated glass-box art displays, as well as a gift shop filled with cool but overpriced (they were selling Yokoyama’s book, Painting for more than $100 when its American retailer prices it at $65) products to help you live your Japanese-loving lifestyle to the fullest.

I was immediately draw in to Yokoyama’s work by the delicious color palette he uses in his paintings, and my fascination deepened upon investigating his mangas. There’s something beautiful in the way Yokoyama exploits the cognitive tricks of comic book art, using suspense and careful framing to examine the details of everyday life, and manipulating our assumptions by carefully providing us with contradictory or intentionally illogical clues about what exactly we’re seeing. I came across an excellent analysis of Yokoyama’s manga work from Chris Lanier on the blog The High Hat. Lanier examines, among other things, Yokoyama’s use of fighting as a tool for deconstructing everyday environments, mundane objects like potted plants and kitchenware, and the conventions of superhero comics. Lanier describes a Yokoyama fight sequence set in a library, where books become weapons:

If the spine is sliced away, the cover and individual pages will detach and scatter. If a book is cut at the midpoint of the cover, from top to bottom, while still in its dust jacket, the half of the jacket without the spine will spill a sheaf of disconnected pages. If a corner of a book is cut away at the spine at a 45-degree angle, when the book opens, every page spread will have a triangle cut out of the middle. The variety becomes methodical, almost scientific — these are, in the most literal sense, cutaway diagrams. In fact, many of the books that come apart in “Livres” are books of diagrams: blueprints of floor plans, charts of evolutionary progress, maps of the globe webbed with latitude and longitude lines, geometric figures of mathematical formulae.

[…] The comic panels themselves, many of them set at skewed or slashing angles, become another kind of dissection, framing the scattered pages of the exploded books. The fighting figures and the floating illustrations in the books have the same visual weight, so the pages of the books act as panels within panels, space interpenetrating space (in fact, in one panel, a “villain” is about to get smacked with an open comic book, and the pages spread before him depict another fight). The air becomes a blizzard of information — and a fracturing and folding of space along kaleidoscopic fault lines.

Yokoyama’s paintings deal with similar subject matter and visual themes, but, naturally, find themselves divorced even further from the idea of narrative. Here, Yokoyama becomes even freer to drift into abstraction, without relinquishing the eerie uncanniness of his manga work. But best of all, the colors! They’re so reminiscent of childhood and candy and ice cream, but the content of his images never veers towards such tweeness. His paintings aren’t just colorful to make you pay attention, like nu-rave— Yokoyama really cares about the colors he chooses, and you can almost feel him enjoying the subtle mood each choice creates.

Jesse teaches art the way it should be taught, fully embracing the limitless possibilities of creativity with just the right dose of anarchy and indiscriminate positive affirmation. Maybe I’m just a complete hippy, but I do believe in the value of each individual’s uncensored self-expression. I think the goal of art education should be a therapeutic one: to lead the student to a place where they feel completely comfortable with the work that they’re making. As long as you’re genuinely happy with what you’re doing, there are going to be at least a few other people out there who feel the same way about your work, and then you’ve affected some sort of positive change in the world.