May Day Rally 2010

I think it's delicious that Georgia's and Alabama's stern stance against undocumented workers has resulted in BILLIONS of dollars in lost revenue to the states due to there being no one to pick their crops.

Having said that I don't like the connotation that the only job Mexicans are qualified for is picking crops.

Two notes on these photos, they were taken last year at the May Day Rally and I don't really know exactly how much fiscal damage this crisis has actually caused, but a billion dollars sounds like a pretty big number so there you are.

(click on the photos and make them bigger.
They're meant to be viewed full-sized.)

Sweet Like Harmony Made Into Flesh

You know, I was never really what you call a political environmentalist. Not like one of these global worming types. I have this thing called humility before nature, that keeps me from thinking that puny human beings can control the outcome of something so large and so complex as climate of an entire planet. I drive a hybrid but it has nothing to do with carbon emissions, it’s because I hate the idea of my money going to rich oil tycoons. Honestly, oil companies are the worst, but I digress. And don’t get me started on these chumps that think that anything we can do could possibly end all life here on Earth. Trust me, life has made it through a whole lot worse than a little extra carbon in the atmosphere.






But still, as the old saying goes, don’t shit where you eat. And the thing about that is, something is always eating somewhere on this planet, so let’s try not to shit all over it. I recycle when I can and try not to take things like plastic bags and straws when I don’t need them (seriously, I did a beach cleanup once and wound up with a bag full of straws. It was kinda gross). I try and save water and yeah I drive a hybrid. What the hell why not mention that again. Recycling and conservation, I mean it just makes sense on its own level. No one cleans their house because it will keep a polar bear from drowning, they do it because they don’t want to live in filth.

Dilemma? Really?

George Washington was a punk ass bitch. I don’t really care if you think different because you’re wrong. No offense, but let’s face facts. Yes he was the first president of the United States of America. The father of our great country, whatever. Someone had to do it and he was in the mix.

I mean, I don’t know about you but I don’t want to idolize the man who owned slaves and then refused to take a stand about it one way or the other. Much like Puerto Rico, he wanted it both ways, privately thinking that slave owning was wrong, while publicly owning fucking slaves! And when abolition came to the table during the first continental congress he was too much of a pussy to say, “Nah man this slavery bullshit right here is wrong. We should totally put a stop to it.” Probably kept that little gem inside because it would have meant there was no way he could of maintained Mount Vernon and the large piles of plantation money it generated. Instead he was more like, “Well how about I don’t say anything. Sound good to you guys?” The original don’t ask don’t tell. Bullshit.
And I know some of you are saying, “But he freed his slaves.” Nope! What he did was put it in his will that his slaves could go free after his wife died. Not even after he died, after his wife died! What a noble effort from the man who supposedly couldn’t tell a lie after he cut down a stupid tree. And by the way you know how many slaves he owned at the time? Over 300. He got his first 10 slaves at age 11. Who needs 10 slaves at the ripe old age of 11?
I hate the nonchalance at which people blurt out, “Well it was the way things were at time. Everyone owned slaves.” No not everyone: Adams never owned a slave in his life and actively denounced the idea. And let’s get it straight, slavery was not a “dilemma.” It’s not good for a country’s soul to compare one of the great atrocities humanity has ever committed to the inconvenience of running out of underwear. So stop right now and speak the truth, slavery is fucked up especially if it’s en masse and en vogue, and owning them makes you a punk ass bitch.

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.

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!

Death Clock

Recently I filled in one of those death clock questionnaires on the internet and it said I would be dying at the ripe young age of 72. That's 2045 for those of you keeping score at home. While 72 is not as good as 82, it's sure a hell of a lot better then 54 so I can't complain. Having said that, a month ago I turned 36, meaning, I’m half way done.

I’m half way done!!!

A midlife crisis seems to me the perfect time to look back and so here are some of the things I’ve done in those 36 years:

• Successfully completed potty training.
• First communion.
• Bench pressed 170 lbs.
• Kissed a girl.
• Learned to walk.
• Graduated high school.
• Worked on several major motion pictures.
• Made a mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• Traveled to two different continents, bringing my total to three.
• Had two photos hanging in a gallery.

But what would a reflection upon my life be without stating what I have yet left to accomplish with the second half of what is so far (as I’m sure you’ll agree) my amazing life. What I have planned for the next 36 years:

• Kiss My Girl some more.
• Hang some more photos in a gallery.
• Play some baseball.
• Bench press 170 lbs.
• Make some good ice cream.
• Graduate college.
• Discover life on another planet.
• Create life on another planet.
• Destroy life on another planet.
• Travel to another three continents, not saying which.
• Make some major motion pictures.
• Learn to do the Soulja boy.
• Die.

I have a busy schedule for the next 3.6 decades.

War!

If you haven’t heard by now, even the prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is calling withdrawal of American troops by early 2010.

In an interview with Der Speigel magazine, he said: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal."

None too soon as far as I’m concerned. These photos were taken in late November so the numbers are wrong. The combat death toll as of this post is actually 4,131.

What a country!

In America you can always find a party. In Russia, Party always finds you.

In America you have McDonald’s. In Russia we have McDonald’s too except there it’s a little different.

In America, you have telephone poles. In Russia we have Poles who telephone.

In America your flag pin is red, white and blue. In Russia we have a different flag.

In America you cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like you. In Russia we really hate that about you guys.

In America you elect a president using a confusing system of delegates. In Russia we think that’s outdated and sometimes irrespective of the popular vote.

In America you deregulate your airlines only to have them re-regulate themselves into a lesser, more hazardous, more expensive conglomerate. In Russia we’re smarter then that.

In America marrying multiple underage girls and having large families with them all is an illegal act called polygamy. In Russia we have the same thing but we call it "Family Night at Chilis."

Simmons is Pink!

From movies.com: "Stay for the credits and count the digital animation people who are all probably really, really exhausted by now: For example, I counted nearly 40 names that worked on cloth and hair. That's it. Weeks and weeks of animating cloth and hair. Next time your boss makes you restock the plastic-cup lids for an hour, you think of that and count your blessings."


Our hair and cloth team is better then yours!

Seriously.

In 2007 the average person worked about 2000 hours, most of us had surpassed that by late August. Over 100,000 (wo)man-hours devoted to styling, draping, simulating, and animating . These are most, not all, of my fellow cloth and hair monkeys who slaved away for hours, for days, for months on what I like to consider the finest simulation work to ever hit the big screen.

We are ripper, slasher, gouger, we are the teeth in the night,
WE ARE BEOWULF!...cloth and hair T.D.'s.

The DVD "drops" in a week. Buy it and marvel.