Spoiled Beginnings

I've said this almost 4 years ago on MySpace as well as on here a few times and I'll say it again. Everyone is very busy nowadays.

I'm not tripping, but seriously, everyone I know is either doing stuff that take up so much of their time and their schedules are even booked up a few weeks in advance. Its not just everyone that's busy, but I'm even way more busier than before, which is why I haven't been updating this blogsite in the past month. Not that I haven't lost interest in typing, but its just I haven't found the time to work on this.

Its been already three months since I've been driving taxicabs around the San Fernando Valley. Everyday, I've been doing it for 12 hours a day, driving an average of 100 miles at least for seven days a week, and getting paid everyday. Then I get about 8 hours of sleep and two hours doing stuff with the family, so there for I have about two hours of free time, which is mostly spent on checking on Facebook, instagram and my Bank accounts. Typing on this site for me requires some energy and thought, but for losing 20 hours of your time day after day, you just don't feel like spilling out some words like I used to, cause I wasn't working as much then as I am now. My favorite blogger/celebrity jeweler Ben Baller has to put his blog on the brakes last week cause he has to focus on his wife Nicolette Lacson and his son as well as other personal business. At first I was upset cause I would always look forward to reading his blogs for inspiration and amusement for the past 5 years, but in all seriousness, I respect his decision to no longer updating on his personal life and wish him the best in his life.

Like I said in the past, May is one of the busiest months of the year. Alot has happened and it's not done yet. One of my cousins (the youngest in my immediate family) will be graduating from Loyola High School in Los Angeles next week and my homeboy Eric will be linking his life with his fiancee Jessica  in their wedding ceremony this Saturday. Also, my good friend Katie Galvez gave birth to a wonderful newborn girl a two and a half weeks ago. I was there to visit her 24 hours after her new daughter was born and that was a very unique, interesting moment on that Saturday. It was the first time since my youngest was born 19 years ago that I've ever seen a fresh young baby just straight out her mothers stomach. It made me think alot of life and how precious and fragile it is. I give my absolute best to Katie and Rudy for their new addition to their lives.

So yeah, I just thought I spill a little update on what's been going on with me so far. Even though not too many people keep up with their blogs cause of other important matters in their lives, I'll still continue to write on here and upload some photography for those who like to read this shit whenever I get the chance  Finally, I copped the iPhone 5 yesterday (wasn't cheap, but whatever). Was impressed with my cousins iPhone 4s when I was with him last week so it made me go out and get one for my self, but only the latest model. Its gonna take a while to get adjusted to it for expect your news feeds on Twitter and instagram to be flodded with photos and random statues that get tossed around in my mind. I didn't take that many photos yet, but here's two I took so far.

Lastly, here is my current lock screen capture featuring Lisa Ann (who I've met last year). The Hundreds isn't the only thing that's Huge. 

Anyway, thanks for your time reading this. I'll have some interesting stuff in the works, so stay in touch with me on instagram @justforsneaks07.

Hanging Over the Balance Inquiries

For some weird reason, I always tend to slack off from updating this site around March every year. Maybe it must be some hidden "senoritis" type birthday hangover that's preventing me from typing.( I just turned 25 ten days ago, if that matters)

But anyway, I've been very busy as of recent. You've been very busy as of recent as well. Its kinda been like that since Barack was sworn in to the White House back in 2009, when the economy just started to suck. Everyone is more focused on their own priorities, yet they sometimes find a way to go clubbing on a fuckin' Thursday night and post drunk photos of themselves all over Facebook. Hell, even the bars will be packed with non-Irish blokes this upcoming Sunday night as they raise their Blood Alcohol Content to the point where their too fucked up to not have to go to class or work the next day or two.

Shit, I don't even have time to go out nowadays. I even missed Primitive's Pain of Beauty premiere at the Arclight in Hollywood on Wednesday night cause I had to be at a mandatory last-minute hearing that night in Downtown Los Angeles.

What was the hearing for? Well, right now I'm currently and just recently employed as a driver in the Los Angeles Department of Transportation in their Taxicab division. I didn't really ask for it, but it was given to me. I been driving their cabs every day for a month so far, with only one day off on my 25th birthday so far. The hearing was for 2 complaints that some of the customers I picked up had snitch on me to the company that I drive for (United Independent San Fernando Valley). But I told them I just got started, and it was settled by having to pay them a $2.00 fine in Money Order.

Surprised that I'm now driving cabs around the Valley? Well, you're supposed to be. Surprises are part of life, from finding out that your first crush in elementary school is getting married for the third time on Facebook, or learning that one of your parents is dating somebody 15 years younger than them. My moms just called me this past week and we had our usual arguments. At the end of the conversation, she told me that I'll be 30 in 5 years, which surprised me as I though of it. Honestly, I really wish that I had one single legit job aside from my photography for the past six years instead of having several different ones. Since 2007, I was a cashier, a sale associate, a stock keeper, a security guard, a paparazzi photographer, a family portrait studio photographer, a paid volunteer at Providence Tarzana Medical Center, a car washer at Galpin Ford, and a warehouse supplier last year which I didn't mention that much on this blog. Hell, I even sold junk food and snacks at a small commissary there for the employees there with a deaf person in his 50s that was my supervisor there. I didn't know sign language, but despite the challenge, we somehow manage to communicate and get along very well while selling Coke Zeros and Frito-Lay products.

I'm only in this taxicab business just so that I can pay bills and shit like that and then later on in a few years I can start focusing on what I really want to do. I had to spend about $500 that I don't have to start and get all the permits and pay the exam fees and drug testing to drive cabs around the Valley, and its paying off well so far. If I never drove my drunk friends to their house in the past or if I never grew up in the 818 and knew every street by heart, then I wouldn't have interest in this job. To me, its just a regular job. Nothing to get excited about since most other better places to work at is very hard to get nowadays. I'm at the banks all the time and I work almost everyday for an average of 12 hours, so you'll rarely see any updates on here or on Facebook. But if you're on instagram, feel free to bother me at @justforsneaks07 so that you can see some photos that you won't see on Facebook.

Even though I missed the Pain Is Beauty invite only premiere on Wednesday night, you can check out the film right here on The Berrics, which is a website that post videos of all things skateboarding. The Berrics also have several other videos of Skateboarder/Primitive co-founder Paul Rodriguez from his web-reality series Life: Paul Rodriguez and a excellent feature on his partner Andy Netkin with his sneaker collection. Check it out. Pain is Beauty link

Anyway, I end this post right here. I'll have some photography and other stuff that I've been working on and will be working on that I'll share with y'all in the coming months, so keep a lookout for that. Anyway, thanks for your time reading this.

Sinking Sandy On Other Grounds

I don't even know if I had people in the east coast (New York, New Jersey, DMV area, Philidelphia, The Carolinas) reading this blogsite, but for those who have been reading this, get the fucking hell out of there and don't be like these two women taking gay-ass pictures of them in the storm to post on instagram.

Speaking of photography, the photo below this paragraph is just awesome. It is the best journalism photograph I've seen all morning. THAT'S THE MONEY SHOT RIGHT THERE, and it should be on the cover of the next National Geographic magazine like they did with Dorthy Lange's photograph of the Migrant Mother during the Great Depression. I don't know who the photographer is that shot this (probably somebody from the Associated Press or Getty Images), but that tells a story right there of the girl and her dog being amazed and surprised of Hurricane Sandy.

The Fifth Year in July

Independence Day was yesterday. I didn't like it.

I was at my crib in Sylmar during the whole 4th of July, and that shit was annoying. Drunk excited fools were blowing off Fireworks, Roman Candles, M80s, cherry bombs, and other explosives since the afternoon. Yes, fireworks went off during the daytime. As I said on my Twitter, It felt like being at an episode of World Wrestling Entertainment's Monday Night Raw with all that noise and explosions in the sky. If you've been to driven past Sylmar at least once, you'll see some people riding horses on the streets (in fact, its the only city in the San Fernando Valley where people ride horses on the streets legally) and on the Fourth of July yesterday, shit, them horses were scared as fuck and started galloping like crazy. Thank God nobody fell of and had a Christopher Reeve moment (that's how he got paralyzed for life until his death). The only thing I like about this holiday is the history of it, from when Washington gained its own Independence (hence the name) from Britain and had a ballistic Revolutionary war that started the formation of the United States of America. I'm very fortunate to live her my whole entire life.


On one of my posts last month, I explained that I just got a full time gig at Galpin Ford washing Mustangs and Lincolns and other Ford related vehicles. Unfortunately, I just resigned from working there and I was just there for a month. Reason being is that I got another job at the Topanga mall as a studio portrait photographer for Bezold Photograhpy. I applied for Bezold Photography a month before I started working at Galpin. I thought they threw my resume away or something cause I got an email from the manager saying that he wants to interview me. So I went to the interview, which lasted 5 minutes. All I had to do was just set  the exposures on the camera and demonstrate how to activate the strobe lighting. Went by quick. I got there five minutes late and I had some sweat on my forehead when I met the manager. After the interview was over, I then kept thinking that he may not hire me and that there might've been about 20 other experienced photographers that he could've chosen instead. All that nervousness disappeared after I got an email saying that I was hired and that I was gonna start on July 1st.

I'm not gonna lie, but I was happy as fuck after I read that.

That was the only best thing about that day. There were other shit that happened on June 29th which made Friday the 13th two weeks early.

-Katie Holmes filed for divorce from Tom Cruise. She could've been set for life from all the royalties that Tom Cruise made in his films. The worst part is that Katie Holmes also requested full custody of their daughter Suri Cruise in the divorce suit. As a person like myself who grew up next to Hollywood and has experienced two divorces from my parents (true story), this sucks. Well the part with Tom Cruise not seeing his daughter, but everything else about this divorce case is nothing in Hollywood.

-Lauryn Hill get sent to jail for not filing income tax returns. Shows that some musicians aren't that crazy rich. Very sad to hear a talented artist who won a shit load of Grammys back in the late 90s gets thrown into this mess.

-Adele announces to the universe that she's gonna be a mom. Good for her expecting a kid which was unexpected to the rest of us. The bloke who piped her is 12 years old than her.

-Lamar Odom returns to Staples Center. Not as a Laker again, but as a Clipper again. Now those games are gonna sell out and the tickets will increase in value. No surprise if his wife is getting scored on by Clipper Darrell in the Staples Center crowd.

-Magic Mike premieres in theaters. Fuck, no thanks.

-Instagram servers crashed from the storms in the east coast that messed up their server base there. Yeah, alot of scene kids and spoiled chicks with iPhones weren't able to take photos of their dinner at some restaurant or a landscape sunset taken at a place that I've never heard of for a few hours, and that caused them to loose their patience. Not just instagram, but Netflix was out as well. I don't even have Netflix so I can't speak on that. Anyways, it got resolved over the weekend and now its working. It weird cause I used to talk so much shit about instagram for the past two years but now after they launched a Android version of it last April, I then forgot everything I said about it and then got completely addicted to it. Then Mark Zuckerburg and Facebook's corporate ass bought it out for motherfucking 2 Billion dollars. With that being said, follow my black ass on instagram. Screenname: justforsneaks07

-Erin Andrews quits ESPN. I had the privilege to see her in person early last year at The Grove, and she looks better on TV. Her stint on "Dancing With The Has-Beens" and that peephole incident made her exposed as not just a sports reporter. I even blogged about her three years ago. http://justforsneaks07.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-dearest-rachel-nichols.html

So like I said, I'm glad I got to finally do what I like every weekend. Its crazy to actually say that my stint at Galpin Ford was shorter than Kim Kardashian's previous marriage to gay-ass Kris Humphries. But let me tell you what's actually longer than that fabricated marriage.

Myself joining Facebook (my first profile) five years ago- July 1, 2007

Myself joining Flickr- July 1, 2008

Myself joining Blogger (this site)- July 1, 2009

As you get older, you start to look back and notice how much time has went by from when you started on whatever you're currently focused on. I remember when I first launched "Random Shots" on Blogger (I originally had it hosted on iWeb back when I owned a Macbook in 2008), times were somewhat different. Barack Obama was just getting used to the White House. Now his term is gonna be up in 4 months. Michael Jackson just passed away a few weeks earlier. Now they're still doing tribute shows and his Physician Dr. Conrad Murray is locked up. The Lakers at the time just won the NBA title and Kobe Bryant won his fourth ring. Now the Miami Heat won the NBA title and Lebron James won his first ring. My little sister just finished her Freshman year at Kennedy High School then. Now she's about to start her Freshman year in College next month.

Many thanks to everyone (especially the ones who read my long ass posts word for word) for always to stop what you're doing for a few moments of your valuable time just to read some of the thoughts that I type up on here every now and then. I'm still gonna continue writing some entertaining stuff on here cause that's what I like to do, and the feedback of it makes me more confident as I keep typing. Again, thank you for your time.