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At around 8pm on March 10, 2021, I arrived at the Silverlake Station parking lot after a quick trip to the grocery store. I was making dinner for my wife, who texted me earlier from her office to tell me she would be home at 8:30 pm.…
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10-Year Challenge. Dead Communists Edition. Hopefully, for the next challenge in 2019 we’ll have the whole Venezuelan government collection to play with. I’m not sure about keeping those stinky bones, though. I’m for loading the whole party and their minions in a few C-130 and dumping their red asses in the Caribbean Sea, never to be seen or heard of again
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It’s nice when the normally wide and clear Los Angeles sky gets a few clouds.
Last year, I hiked the MountRubidoux trail in Riverside, CA. It is more like a midsized hill with an American flag and a Christian cross at its summit. The hike is well-maintained and unchallenging, but it does well as a post-lunch afternoon hike. From the parking lot, the trail rounds the hill surrounded by interesting rock formations, just as the Kardashian monument I posted a few months ago.…
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Purchased products from “environmentally conscious” company. Amount of packing is ridiculous. Sending it back to them to see how they like it. Let them deal with the hypocrisy of their business model
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I was scouting a location in the dark boiler room of a 1920s building in Hollywood, when I ran into a single children’s shoe. A thousand possibilities flushed my mind as to why a child would leave a shoe behind in such a solitary place. None of them were uplifting.…
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Happy New Year! Wish you all a very special 2019. I received the New Year with Denise in Joshua Tree. Here are some pictures of our first day (explanation below). Subzero temperatures and Martian wind-storms tried but failed at making us crawl back to civilization. Or at making this trip less memorable. Although, it was a good reminder of our insignificance when standing in mother nature’s territory, which here, with its bizarre rock formations and lunar valleys, looks more alien than usual.…
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I have no idea who wrote this book. TomClancy is dead. JackRyan doesn’t exist. And Marc Cameron is not Tom Clancy — at Barnes & Noble Events, The Grove.
This is how random stuff led to interesting stuff, six degrees of separation style. I saw this clickbait ad and wondered who was the man with Doris Day. What called my attention was his small nose as it looked like a coke nose. So I googled Doris Day’s husbands. It wasn’t her husband, but her only son, Terry Melcher.…
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Some of you here are very my close to me, some are acquaintances, and most of you are men and women I have never met, but all of you are my friends thanks to this modern way of communication. We chat, we share, we argue, we cheer us up, and more importantly, we are closer sometimes more than people we actually see every day.…
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The more modern modern art gets, the less art modern art is as it gets more modern. That ridiculous phrase is art in the everybody-wins world of today, where I can fill balloons with my farts and release them at dusk on the Taos Gorge Bridge in New Mexico, on the last day of the Mayan calendar while black girls born in Idaho on September 23 wrapped in bloody Panam flags read backwards the names of the Canadians killed in WWI as the Voyager’s golden record plays in the background along a loop of canned laughter, and someone will find meaning in this and call it art.…
Read moreIn 1966 John Lennon said “We’re more popular than Jesus now.” According to Google Trends, it is Justin Bieber who is bigger than Jesus. Except for Belarus. An obviously godless country with much better taste in music than the rest of Planet Earth. The #Prince or Michael Jackson question pretty much over too. Even Jesus kicks Prince’s ass
… Read moreAs if life wasn’t annoying enough with a real dog, now you can pick up poo even if you don’t have one
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Big jump! From a show with zero black people to one with lots of enslaved ones 🙄 What about a show where slavery was backwards. Or better, one where slavery never existed
… Read moreLeyendo noticias de Venezuela y un montón de palabras innecesarias. El vital líquido (agua), se hizo acreedora (ganó), la tierra del sol amada (Maracaibo), precipitación pluvial (lluvia), pulmón vegetal de Caracas (el Ávila), tráfico de vehículos de combustión interna (me gustaría ver cuáles otros ruedan por Caracas).
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Weirdest thing. Last night I’m asleep when the voice of an uncle wakes me up. He yelled “Waaaatch Ooooout!” It really felt like he was in the room. Woke up white-haired scared. First thing that crossed my mind was to check the apartment’s door. Weird enough it was unlocked. Locked it. Went back to sleep. It took a while.
… Read moreVenezuelan government really close to accomplish the beautiful dream of total social equality. Everybody is poor and everybody is starving.
Venezuela Drifts Into New Territory: Hunger, Blackouts and Government Shutdown
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“The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with”. Golda Meir
A pair of glasses were left on the floor at a museum and everyone mistook it for art
… Read moreMilton Friedman on the #Venezuelan food shortage crisis. “We #economists don’t know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a #shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can’t sell #tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly, you’ll have a #tomato shortage.” #miltonfriedman #venezuela #economy
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Just watched a clip of a Tarantino interview where he says Mia and Vincent’s dance at Jack Rabbit Slim’s Twist Contest was inspired by “The Aristocats”. Here’s a remix of “The Aristocats” dancing scene.
… Read moreIt’s funny when politicians talk about “real” democracy”. That has never existed, it doesn’t exist, and it will not exist. No country can be a “real democracy” once their financial, social, and political structure has been established. Having different ideologies voted into office every 4 years would destroy any country. Communists come, let’s nationalize, 4 years later republicans win, privatize, etc.…
Read moreCute birds tie knots to weave nests and compete for females by showing off their homes. Cute.
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Cher and Tina Turner lip-synching to canned-applause audience
… Read moreWalked 2 blocks around Koreatown 🙁 #koreatown #koreatownla
… Read moreDid you know Shakespeare died on his birthday? Probably. And that he was married to Anne Hathaway? Now you do, and to celebrate his double anniversary here’s something from Macbeth where he compares life to sitcoms. “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.…
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This is where I get confused about my values. A universal set if rights should be respected, but there has to be a change regarding some individuals. A sort of vacuum where you fall if you commit certain crimes. This doesn’t mean that you could be freely abused. Just that if you are, you have absolutely no right to complain about it.…
Read more#Chinotto tree at Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden.
… Read morePoor Ringo had nothing to do in this song. But had to sit through it anyway 🙁
… Read moreI met Pablo Manavello a year and some ago. My brother and I contacted him to compose the intro and closing themes of my first movie and we worked together on those songs for a couple of months. For several circumstances I ended up choosing song from a different artists but we agreed on working together on my next film.
His talent didn’t surprise me at all but his courtesy and humbleness did.…
Read moreWatching Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop. This has to be the most underrated science fiction film from the last 40 years. It has everything, social commentary, humor, great cinematography, non stop action, still awesome special effects, perfectly choreographed set pieces, and if you don’t care about any of this, the film is just bloody entertaining. The colors, the pace, the music, everything here works and makes current sci-fi (is there any, really?)…
Read moreBack in 2003 I was heavy into writing theater, concert, and film reviews. Mostly because I got paid for it and got free tickets to almost everything New York had to offer. But also because I got a sweet self-righteous kick by thinking the world benefited from my warnings. I loved believing that.
In reality, the world didn’t give a flying fuck about me. Two of my worst-reviewed films that year, SWAT (the worst part of writing about SWAT is acknowledging that I went to see it) and Charlie’s Angels 2 (Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore, and Cameron Díaz… Need I say more), squeezed as much box office blood out of their stony productions than most of my best reviewed films of 2013 put together (The Russian Ark, 21 Grams, American Splendor, Spider, The Fog of War, and Whale Rider).…
Read moreWake up in my car. I’m in a familiar town but takes me a while to recognize it as the place where I lived back in the 80s. Slight wind, leaves slow motioning over road. The works. I walk a few blocks to my former house and notice everything looks weird. People is not dressed right. Long white socks to the knees.…
Read moreI see a great future in the arts if my nephew manages to stay in the same artistry level till adulthood.
… Read moreWhen I watched Pacific Rim it was clear Guillermo del Toro also spent hours and hours watching this in his childhood. And Ultraman. He watched a lot of Ultraman.
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If you make pens filled liquid shit and use it to write uncountable unnecessary adverbs on used toilet paper to tell a billion-times-told story but with impossible teens, and then you use a catapult to launch said shitty book onto a movie screen and splatter shit all over a poor audience that doesn’t know better, then you know what I experienced watching Mockingjay Part Deux.…
Read moreGot me a couple of Sinatra albums for Christmas. Both amazing. Like Songs For Swingin’ Lovers Better but any will do for entertaining or just to sit back and relax by yourself.
… Read moreOrganizing my closet found this flyer of the time I saw Charlie Watts from a first row table at the Blue Note. A friend was visiting from Philly and while walking to a bar we noticed this hanging from the door at the Blue Note. There was no line. We just paid cover and sat to drink while he played. Then Shawarmas at Mamoun’s.…
Read morePirates were no better than ISIS. So I think it’s safe to speculate that in 200 years we’ll have an ISIS Disney ride and a hit movie starring 2215’s Cyber Johnny Depp. Kids will dress like jihadis for Halloween and no one will bat an eye at their adorable little historically inaccurate scimitars. Romantic legends are nothing but human tragedies washed down on the blinding streams of time.…
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It’s Friday and I’m partying on the roof of the Ace Hotel with some friends and some pornstars. Naturally, I’m not bored but the view of Downtown during sunset is quite stunning, so I walk to a glass wall and look out. Awesome. 30 seconds later I’m ready to go back but as I turn around my eyes stray down to Hill St.…
Read moreXXL sweaty woman wearing weirdly shining Leggings and dirty Crocs rolls into gas station store dragging two kids and yells at Indian attendant, “Yo, where’s the restroom at fool?” He says, “Sory, no restrum”. She curses him and wobbles her way out to a car where people seems confused about how to use a debit card to put gas. In 2015.…
Read moreAfter 2 years slowly rebuilding a Technics SL-1200MK2, today I finally received the last two parts needed to bring it back to life. And it works. Still missing the dustcover and the 45″ adapter but the turntable works fine without those 2. I’ll put them on the list for 2016
… Read moreWent to Home Depot to buy some plants, unloaded them in front of my apartment, and when I came back from parking found this little stowaway exploring its new surroundings.
His sticky path kinda looks like Snoopy.
… Read moreIn the film Zoolander, David Duchovny’s character (J.P. Prewitt, the world’s greatest hand model) explains how the fashion industry has been behind every major political assassination over the last 200 years. “And behind every hit, a card-carrying male model”.
Prewitt tells Zoolander that Kennedy was killed because the Cuban embargo halted the shipment of Cuban-manufactured slacks, an “incredibly popular item at the time”.…
Read moreSome actors spend their whole lives playing baddies and, naturally, die a lot. On film. Billy Drago is one of those actors and he died on every film I can remember. I think once Chuck Norris even shot him in the balls. And he died. Of course. Or threw him out of a plane over the Amazon. Or something like that.…
Read moreFor as long as I can remember my dad owned a Buddha. He still does. It is a little figurine the size of three standing packs of cigarettes with a green velvet covered bottom that, except for a chipped ear, managed to survive in one piece through our family’s different stages and events. Especially the movings. We moved a lot between the 70s and 80s and lost lots of cool stuff in between, but not that little golden statue, which usually was the first thing to find a place in each new home.…
Read moreWe all know the feeling. You are happily checking your Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/RedTube accounts when all of a sudden your boss materializes 5 steps away from your desk. What to do? I’ll tell you what and you can thank me later.
In the past you’d wet your chair while looking at your boss with one eye and checking for a browser tab that showed something remotely work-looking with the other.…
Read moreEven though by now most racially insensitive stuff is already out of print in the Western World, you can still find the “classics” online.
You can buy “Mein Kampf” in Amazon (used and new from $4.99). And I recently bought a first edition of an American biography of Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gomez in which Venezuelans are described as the expected result of mixing lower races.…
Read moreThere’s a world outside the world where I live in where this is true. Please share how Kanye West influences your life. I might be missing something.
Read moreAmerican photographer William P. Gottlieb was responsible for some of the most famous portraits of the golden age of jazz.
According to him, Billie Holiday was at her musical and physical peak when he took this picture in 1947, which is considered the most widely used jazz photo of all time. Ironically, that was because she spent the previous year in a federal reformatory for possession of drugs.…
Read more1200 kilometers off the coast of Brazil there’s a small island called Trinidad. It is not the Trinidad of Trinidad and Tobago, but a smaller piece of land covering about 10 square kilometers. No one lives in Trinidad and, in fact, few human beings have set foot on its volcanic hills. However, once upon a time Trinidad was a kingdom fought over by the English, the Portuguese, and the Brazilians.…
Read moreA few months ago a former ENCI contributor stayed in my LA apartment. We had not seen each other for about 5 years but I kept in contact with him and his wife via Facebook. Back then they lived in Massachusetts and we spent hours talking on the phone, but as it often happens with long-distance relationships, little by little we gradually drifted apart.…
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?<?php endif; ?This prints first 200 characters of a given text. $content = $this-artist-name; $pos = strpos($content, ' ', 200); echo substr($content,0,$pos );… Read more