A Point of View

How we see the collection of the day is how we choose to see it. Good, bad or indifferent, it’s really a Rorschach showing us what we want to see. I decided to document my days in random increments and see what my life's images told me.

I sent out an e-mail to 30 of my closest friends, asking them to text me a short message at random times during the day. Upon receiving the text I would immediately take a photo of whatever I happened to be looking at. Over the course of three and a half days I took 513 photos. For me, the photos tell one overarching story or sometimes they tell a few shorter vignettes, depending on what I choose as my point of view.

(click images to enlarge)

I really want to thank all of those involved for their help. I literally couldn't have done it without you.

Being Patriotic Just Ain’t Cool Man

Can you imagine the kind of balls It takes to move 1000 miles away, into a foreign country where you don’t even speak the language? I imagine it takes about the same kind of balls as it does to follow a man you barely know to said country, illegally, where you know no one, and raise a family. It’s like you or I dropping everything and moving to Romania with someone we met on the plane. And that’s what my parents did, I marvel at that every day, and yet their story is not unique.

I am an American, and one thing all Americans have in common is an immigration story somewhere in their ancestry. Even Native Americans, their parents came from somewhere too. I’m lucky in the sense that I know the generation that immigrated. It’s a real privilege to be raised by them. A century from now, my parents will be known to my offspring as the people that brought us here and really did change our lives. They fought, they struggled, they worked their asses off and now here we all are.

And it really is a great country where something like this can happen. I think we all forget that sometimes. We forget it when we stop thinking of the struggles every new immigrant goes through upon reaching this place, and every new immigrant had the same struggles to be sure. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as natives, with an entitlement to everything this country has to offer us. We have to remember what our ancestors had to do to get us here, what they had to endure, and that the only reason we have what we have is because of that hard work. We need to remember that the best thing about this country is that nothing is promised, and everything has to be earned. I think that when we see the new immigrant with their heavy accents and weird customs we scoff, because we forget these things, and that does all of us a disservice.

So when I see the flag, or hear the star spangled banner or some other cliché like that, I think of my parents, and how what they did made my life possible, and I think that’s pretty cool.

You Know Cyndi Lauper Still Tours?

It’s a strange thing when rock stars get old.

One day Mos Def will be old. One day JayZ will be old, just like Whodini and Slick Rick.


I remember when the Rolling Stones got back together for their Steel Wheels tour. Why would people pay solid money to watch a group of old men gyrate to old music. I still feel that way about them.

I got a glimpse of our future a while back when I caught Cut Chemist performing at the Disney Concert Hall. In the audience no one danced, rather they sat in their chairs and clapped, much like they do with Beethoven.


I hate to watch my music idols become old men. As they grow old I grow old.

Seeing Debbie Gibson sing Electric Youth at the tender age of 40 is somewhat of an oxymoron.


A few years ago I watched Joan Jett sing “I Love Rock and Roll” and Juan pointed out we just saw an icon performing an iconic song, live.

More and more I find that I go to the Hollywood Bowl for concerts, and less and less to the Forum, Staples Center or Dodger Stadium. My next concert is also at the Bowl, after that it’s to the Cerritos Center for Performing Arts.


Depeche Mode had to cancel several tour dates for reasons of old age, and Robert Smith of the Cure looks ridiculous in makeup these days. Even so, both bands are still amazing live.


I’ve been going to Depeche Mode concerts for 19 years, and this was my first Cure concert.


Life is long enough that I’ve met Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher once. I almost met Martin Gore again last week. Man that would have been sweet!

A Whale's Tail

The best time to go whale watching is usually in the summer. The whales get tired of their lousy local weather and come to Los Angeles for some fun in the sun. It’s kinda like spring break: the whales cruise around the ocean boulevards getting drunk, picking up on whale chicks (which whale biologists call Marys). As you can see from these pictures, we decided to go whale watching in late July, the late July of 1992 to be precise. Sure enough, thousands of whales came to have a gander at our red and green party boat. The Marys even flashed us their breasts in return for sea beads, those photos were too scandalous for my family spun blog here. But we did decide to feed them.

Now whales typically eat between 4-5 thousand chickens a day, but they will gladly substitute poultry for some pork chops, as long as they’re fresh. We had brought neither, woefully unprepared, luckily the boat sold CornNuts by the barrel and so we fed them that. It turns out whales LOVE CornNuts! Especially the sour cream and onion kind! We fed them for about an hour speaking to them in their native tongue: Portuguese which is close enough to Swahili that Danny could translate. As the sun went down we harpooned a couple of them and ate whale-burgers which surprisingly taste like jelly donuts.

What a day!

A Civil Service

So here I am in court, and I’m looking around at my fellow traffic criminals as we wait in the gallery for the judge, and I do a little counting. As it turns out, in a room of about 50 people, about 22 were black, 18 Latino, about 8 were various other minorities, and just 2 people in that whole big ol’ room were white.

I have to believe that white people forget or don’t care to fix their fix-it tickets at the same rate as all other races. We’re all human! We all hate having to deal with stupid shit like driving with one headlight. I also have to believe that all drivers, regardless of race or color, break these minor traffic laws with the same frequency. If both these things are true then the obvious conclusion is African Americans get pulled over and cited the most for the routine traffic violations we all commit, then it’s the Latinos, then the“others” and lastly Caucasians.

Why?

No one wants to believe in racial profiling, but then again we all know it happens. If you knew me as a teenager you would know that there was never a reason for a police officer to push me onto the hood of his patrol car and search my pockets because he got a report that some Mexicans were throwing water balloons at cars. Yet there I was.

Hell, not more than three weeks ago Henry Louis Gates Jr., was arrested for breaking into his own home. And Obama was right, Cambridge police acted stupidly. I don’t care what color a suspect is, if you arrest a man breaking into his own home you acted stupidly.

We would like to think that racism doesn’t exist especially in our great city of Los Angeles, that we’re too metropolitan and sophisticated. Well we’re not. I envy my friends of European descent who can look at the police and feel safe, and I hate the fact that when I see a cop I eye him with the same suspicion that he eyes me. It sucks. But when you realize that half the people getting pulled over for the same crime that everyone is committing are one minority closely followed by a second minority, well then I think the suspicion is deserved, especially when you belong to the latter.

But firemen are cool. Props yo!