“Many years ago, on this very spot, there was a beautiful city of fine houses and inviting spaces, and no one who lived here was ever in a hurry. The streets were full of wonderful things to see and the people would often stop to look at them.”

“Didn’t they have any place to go?”

“To be sure, but as you know, the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.  Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly.  Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and the beauties of their city as they went.

No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen.  Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear.  Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible.  There was nothing to see at all.”

“What did they do?”

“Nothing at all. They went right on living here just as they’d always done, in the houses they could no longer see and on the streets which had vanished, because nobody had noticed a thing. And that’s the way they have lived to this very day.”

With the entire world (excluding pretty much all of the States except the sections with “all those damn illegals and their futbol”) chomping at the bit to display rabid nationalism in a socially acceptable manner, I figured I’d join in the festivities. However since there will be enough commentary on the actual teams, I decided a little cultural rivalry is in order, especially since we have a marked advantage haha.

So over the next week im going to be pinning countries facing off on the field, in a battle. Of the hip hop persuasion.

Tomorrow morning, the hosts of the World Cup, South Africa, will face off against Mexico, so they’ll be up first here.

On deck, ironic South African group Die Antwoord

And in the other corner Cypress Hill representing Mexico (yeah, yeah, whatever, but LA was part of Mexico at one point. It’s close enough).

Sorry this really isnt even fair. Max Normal (yeah look it up anyone thats fans of the NINJA… that was his old persona) is the new vanilla ice, is there any more to say? I dont think i need to even comment on Cypress Hill.

However I’m finding myself weirdly attracted to that Yolandi girl from Die Antwoord…

Up next, USA vs England….

Over the past few years, due to California and Texas basically sewing up their borders, Arizona has had an huge influx of border crossings. The confrontations between smugglers and border patrol units has risen, and as such so has the number of violent encounters. While I try not to speak for people when I’m not in their shoes, it’s clear that this is a job where the dangers are known and evident by each rookie even before they sign up for the job. For that matter I would expect that all who DO take the job were people who can handle the stresses and make quick RATIONAL decisions when faced with a situation. This applies to all law enforcement and even the military.

If you aren’t able to handle the responsibility of the power to kill someone, you should not be allowed the job. It’s akin to giving a child the keys to a car if they don’t know how to drive… “hope you can figure it out when you get in trouble!”.

What I’m getting at is my frustration with a situation that just occurred at the border on monday. When it was initially reported, a spokesperson for the agency said that the officer was surrounded by people attacking him with rocks. While a stoning may have been a situation that would warrant lethal force as defence, a video has been released which greatly contradicts the official account of what happened. Watching the video, taken by bystanders, it is clear that there are people attempting to cross the border illegally, lead by one or two people. The agent who rides up on a bike, detains one person, and proceeds to point his handgun across the river at a couple of the other people who had crossed. According to the people filming, some rocks were thrown at the agent, followed by at 3 shots in return. In the end Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca was shot dead. He was 15, not of any size or stature to physically intimidate the agent and according to his parents (not that it’s relevant), an A student.

NOW, obviously he was a coyote. Obviously he was breaking a law. He had been apprehended by the border agents 3 times previously, but had never been charged criminally. And there’s gonna be people who are gonna try to justify what happened because he was a criminal and was throwing rocks, etc. There was even a SERIOUS discussion on the John & Ken show (a radio talk show on KFI 1070 here in southern ca) about how a rock, thrown from a person 80 feet away could impart the same impact that a bullet from the 9mm gun could, thereby “justifying” the response of bullets to thrown rocks. I’m not gonna get into the specifics of their “logic”, but lets just say they ignore some SERIOUS contextual and physical holes in their “study”… Like the fact that a rock, even traveling at the speed of a major league baseball pitch, thrown from 80 feet away is 10 times more avoidable than a bullet from a 9mm.

Take a look at the video and let me know if it looks like the agent was in imminent danger of death or dismemberment. Please take note that the victim was shot from diagonally across the river, the same area where the other people who were attempting to cross the border were at. Which means that was the ONLY area where any rocks could have been thrown.

So, after watching that, would you have acted the same? In my opinion, the agent did not have appropriate reason to open fire. I’m only speaking about this one situation and ones like it and am not getting into a discussion about the agency as a whole. To me it seems that there are too many people working for the agency that do not have the appropriate mindstate to deal with situations like this, and this is when innocent people are killed. And yeah i said innocent-even in the course of committing a crime, if the outcome does is not justified by the actions of the person committing the crime, than they are innocent in the sense of being a victim of a murder.

But my daughter is shitting on your stuff right now. Four arms, a mohawk, a spiders worth of bloodshot eyes, bleeding wounds on the face, clenched teeth and raining blood (i don’t care that the whole things in red… it’s blood), all while riding a skateboard…. Too tough.

Death of an icon.

Died from a fall at his home. Diff’rent Strokes was one of my favorite shows back when i was about as tall as he was (not a jab, i promise).

Sorry, I can’t feel much sympathy for dudes who make a living taunting and slaughtering bulls for fun.

Stumbled upon this dude tonight while checking out sites that linked to us.  A couple weeks back Africa Is A Country pledged their support after viewing our Capitalist Pigs tee, which led to a surprising amount of traffic stemming from that post. Naturally i wanted to see what theyre all about.

From the short amount of time that I’ve spent looking through their site,it comes across as a refreshing, no nonsense blog that focuses on African issues without the usual Western Media slant that Africa cannot help itself.

In any case, without taking this post in too heavy of a direction (have enough of that around here already, HA!), I wanted to share this vid. 99% of the time i hear someone rapping in french and it just does NOT sound right. Odd rhythm and rhyming structure and a lack of, well… I cant really put my finger on it.

But this just feels RIGHT. Shit is mellow and funky at the same time, dudes rhythm is great, the backing band is ill as fuck, and I don’t need to know what he’s saying to enjoy the track (my litmus test for enjoying foreign language vocals). The dude’s name is Bajoli, a Congolese resident of Belgium. The potent mix of Afrobeat and his French flow just works. Not to mention all the vids were shot in different areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo- the visual impact is amazing.

This track is pretty much a remix of the traditional song celebrating the Congolese Independence 50 years ago.

Here’s another track from his Hotel Impala album… Theres a bit of (nearly) spoken word in the beginning… Track drops hard after the 2 minute mark.

BALOJI feat. KONONO n1 – KARIBU YA BINTOU from BALOJI on Vimeo.

BAJOLI

It’s a rare opportunity to be affected by a commercial. The shortest of short films, intended simply to burn an impression into your mind. The laziest simply explain a product or service- the best succeed by flashing a glimpse into a world or of a story that is so enticing and manipulative (in whatever sense intended) that you cant help but remember the company or product they are hawking along with it, regardless of your attempts to do so. I’m going to post up a few that have resonated with me over the years. Im sure youve seen a few of these, hopefully some will be new.

I watched this today and not only was the artistry involved in the animation impressive enough to stand on its own, they took it to a narrative read from a book that builds to such an emotional finish you wish there was more to go along with it.

On the other side of the spectrum are the ad companies that create an ad that resonates so well that they end up taking a life of their own as reoccurring characters and storylines that span several spots like mini episodes. Usually they run on the comedic side of things, since a 7 part dramatic storyline selling beer would be, hmmm… boring. Remember the Budweiser Frogs? Of course you do. They were so ubiquitous in the 90’s that they spawned all manners of paraphenalia: toys, tees, houseware, you name it. So to keep it going they even introduced new characters.

And before the gecko there were the cavemen. Their ads were so successful some ill-advised producer thought they could translate that hilarity into a 22 minute sitcom. What they didn’t realize is that the humor works because its in spurts, sandwiched inbetween boring commercials for products designed to make you even lazier. But back to the point at hand:

TANGENTS!

Early Spike Jonze work after moving from skate vids to music vids to corporate commercials. Coincidentally (or not) the song in this commercial was from the band Wax, who you may or may not have remembered from this, one of the music videos that (arguably along with the Weezer and Beastie Boys videos released the year before) brought Jonze into the mainstream spotlight.

A Better Moustrap:

AND of coarse I had to put a Bravia ad in here. Sorry.

Haven’t had a chance to blog as much lately…been working on some projects. Not saying what yet, but here’s some screenshots. Keep your eyes open.

So the first morning we decided to hike up to Fort Rodney, one of the oldest forts in the caribbean.

This was a makeshift dungeon/supply storage space. I can’t imagine that if this place was in the states that there wouldn’t be something keeping me from going down there. Not here though.

Mongeese? Mongooses? I dunno. These things were EVERYWHERE. Which i guess is a good thing since St. Lucia only has a couple of species of snakes and one of them is deadly.

The Berrics.

These plants were growing everywhere there was an old wall. Straight out of the rock. Can’t Fuck with Mother Nature.

Tonz o’ Gunz. Literally.

This year I was lucky enough to get a decent amount of traveling in and not have to go broke doing it, which is pretty much my only requirement. I’m not the type of guy who needs to be pampered while on vacation (not that its bad!), just give me a place to sleep and i’ll be more content cruising around with the locals than staying in some all-inclusive resort crap.

Had the chance to go sailing in the caribbean for a week in St. Lucia with my daughter earlier this summer. After spending a week doing that I dont think i could ever stay in a hotel again if I were to return. The fact that you can simply pull anchor and move to a new bay each day for free or at most $18 bucks is rad because you’re not dependent on paying an arm and a leg for taxis to get around the island (and believe me, you’ll pay it down here).

First things first, had to get to LAX at 5am… ugggh.

In-flight reading.

Leaving LA in a fog…

Halfway there, over the Everglades of south Fla’ada. Crazy how half of this whole state used to be like this…

Never Not Working.

Almost there…

We landed in the middle of the night and had to take a taxi from the bottom of the island back up to the Rodney Bay up at the top. Rodney bay is the main bay of the island, with the largest town, Castries straddling the south end of it. On friday nights in the Gros Islet neighborhood (located in the middle of the panorama) the streets turn into a huge block party they call jump ups. The shit is so loud you can hear it miles away.

This was my front porch for the next week.

More next post…..

Just cut that flourescent growth off of his left arm and Kid’s got the game locked DOWN.

Those who know me well understand that an extremely unorganized person. To counter this (usually unsuccessfully, i might add) I try to make tasks into routines, which helps me immensely. So to make sure i keep updating this blog on a regular basis, I’m planning on making specific topics and whatnot for each day. I woke up this morning, after 2 straight days of a full nights sleep- which is stellar for me- sat down with a cup of mate (pronounced MAH – TAY, see below) out on my back patio and soaked in the morning sun. I forgot how good that shit feels.

SO, me being in such a good mood today, I’m gonna write about 3 things I really like right now.

MATE

I first started drinking this stuff about 12 years ago when my cousin’s wife introduced me to it. Back then you could only really find it in big 1lb. bags at the local carnicería, and maybe if you were lucky in the “Ethnic” section at a supermarket. Myself being the lazy bastard that I am, I don’t prepare it the way youre supposed to, which is in a gourd, with a straining straw. Partly cuz I dont want to go through the trouble of finding and buying the stuff.

If you look at the picture above you can see that there’s a shitload of mate compared to the water, which is because you’re supposed to keep refilling with hot water instead of steeping a new batch. I’m a bit more stingy and usually steep it in a tea ball so its not as strong. It’s a great alternative to coffee, as it still has stimulants in it, but doesn’t make you feel tweaky like strong coffee does, and it also has a bunch of vitamins and minerals.

ROBERT LAWSON ILLUSTRATIONS from FERDINAND THE BULL

I LOVE this book. Not only because the story teaches kids to be individuals, and has a pacifist theme, but because of the art. The illustrations that Robert Lawson inked for this story are so thoroughly contemporary looking that it’s hard to remember that this book was published in 1936. From the character design to the intense detail and effective use of negative space… dude was a true master of his craft.

CRASS / GEE VAUCHER

Appreciating Crass as a band is an acquired taste. Some people liked them the second they heard them, some had to grow to appreciate them and some never could get into it. I was of the second group. Having been first exposed to them before I hit double digits in age (I’m 28 now, figure it out) by my older brother, it wasn’t easy for me to listen to them. As I got older and dove more into the bowels of obscure music, I gained a healthy appreciation not just for their music but the strength of their idealism, the DIY ethos and the subversive nature in which they lived their lives, challenging everyone around them.

On top of all that though, stood the artwork that came packaged with all of their releases, and it became an aesthetic that has influenced so many people it’s hard to imagine what the art world would be like if they did not come to public light. Gee Vaucher was responsible for most of the collage type graphics used. Even today alot of them are still very bold in their aesthetics, and the technical aspect of their construction sets them apart from so many. Her work has always been a big influence in my life and you can see the results of that on some of our pieces like this seasons Tyranny of Evil Men and last seasons Rise of Everyone Else.

This song is one that I keep going back to because, while yes, like most anarchists they blame the “system” for alot of problems that face the public, the blame wasnt spared on the apathy of the individuals who allowed themselves to get caught up in it. In short: You have a choice to swim with the current and live a life of restrictions or you can choose your own path. It may be harder, but it is a life lived by your choices, made by your own decisions- not one where your choices are put upon you by others.

-G

Launching the website today…. still gotta do a few more things to add but its ready for public eye…