Sneaks Of The Union Address: A Tribute to Ashley Davidson and Everything in Life

First post of Two Thousand Thirteen, and I kinda picked the right day to type this.

Traditionally, I would do a recap of the past year on New Years Day, but I didn't do it this time cause I had to care of some personal shit. It wasn't the best of the past couple of weeks and the past holidays was lame as fuck. I didn't receive anything other than some money, but I didn't fucking care. Adults would rather have money so that they can buy what St. Nick would put under the fake pine tree on their behalf, or they would receive a gift that they're not too fond of and exchange it for cash (if it came with a gift receipt) or store credit at a department store, or they can just re-sell that said gift on eBay or Craigslist. As far as New Years Day, well, I'll just say I had better New Years Days in the past. I didn't do a photoshoot with a gorgeous model or partied for 72 hours straight with friends like I did for the past two New Years. After spending January 1st watching overrated Nigerian films with the family at my uncle's and getting cussed at by my pops while leaving because of my disinterest of the holiday spirit, I was then recollected that New Years Day is just another day, same with Christmas.

I stayed away from reading current events in the news and CNN's website and uploading photos on Facebook and several different forums after that. Just like Brendan Fraiser and Eugene Levy from Blast in the Past, I honestly still don't know whether the Fiscal Cliff had gone through or not, or who won best Actress in the Golden Globes and what designer dress she wore while having drunk, champagne-celebrated sex in the following evening. The year 2013 begun a week before it even officially started after Kanye West announced to the world that he was going to embrace parenthood after going raw on Kimberly. Dude just squished alot of Black men's feelings and potential hopes (excluding mine). Yeah, her family is going to keep Ryan Seacrest and the mass media livid and relevant and irritating for at least the next nine months and about eighteen years at the most (21 years if their offspring takes after his or her mothers' clubbing habits in Vegas). If I never went around Beverly Hills and Robertson Boulevard taking photos of her and her fine ass four to five years ago, then that last sentence would've never existed. This is the new version of the Jay-Z/Beyonce/Blue Ivy Carter-expecting frenzy from a year ago (already a year?) but the exposure is gonna be much more bizarre.

Even though I had a rough couple of weeks (which is why this blogsite had been dry for over a month), I managed to make good use of that time. For example, last December, I went all the way on a long drive to Indio with The Orange Rev (now Astral Fractual) drummer Elena Castro, her sister, and one of their friends to a Tamale festival that was taking place there. I went for several reasons:

1)  I haven't seen Elena for about a year
2)  I haven't tasted Tamales for a decade
3)  I wanted to escape LA on that day
4)  Indio is one of my favorite places, and its in the same city where the infamous Coachella festival event is held every spring

The event was great. Tasted so many different Tamales, had some music-related discuss with Elena, took a few photos on 35mm Film, and listened to Eddie Murphy's Raw stand-up comedy movie through her car stereo on the way back while cruising on the 10 freeway. If the holidays wasn't full of shit last month, I would've blogged about this more at the time. Special thanks to Elena and her sister Lauren Castro for the invite.

Now as if I though that 2013 was gonna be set for another predictability-wasted 365 days and 52 weeks, I got hit with a serious bolt of reality this past weekend. I'll divide it into three segments, which are kinda a play on words from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and Pursuit, for Happines.

Life
One of my friends' nieces (withholding her name just out of respect) gave birth to a young baby boy last Saturday. I was invited to her baby shower a week prior to that and another different baby shower a week before that as well. I wasn't in the mood to go out to events and gatherings in public this recent month due to the botherness of personal stress, and after this past weekend, and now I wished that I did attend just to show support and give them my blessings in life for their new life blessings. A simple birth will make an immediate impact of someones life, whether you're a family member, a close friend, or a co-worker. Any female who just gave birth to her child won't be the same person as you knew when you first met her, regardless if she's 17 or becoming a mom for the first time at 47.

Whether having a child is intentional or not, just seeing that newborn is an amazing feeling, especially after being inside a woman's stomach for three-quarters of a year. That's statistic gives me much more respect to women dealing with pregnancy, and the husband/father/life partner that has to deal with her emotional mood swings every night as well. I'm not a parent (thankfully), but I was there when all of my siblings and majority of my cousins were born. Half of the females from my high school graduating class already full time moms, and I got a fortunate chance to photograph some of their children, which is another reason why I like to take photos. Young children grow and evolve mentally at an unprecedented rate and before you can realize it, your son can configure and sync your iPhone5 to your computer or your daughter will learn most of her vocabulary from a Katy Perry or Taylor Swift record.

As I look as at my close friends' kids, I realize that these children will never get to select a movie to rent at an actual video store on a Saturday night, or purchase stamps for less than 50 cents so that they can write in their best, awful cursive to a another kid their age in Thailand or Lebanon as a pen pal, and those kids will probably never know what a smog check or an oil change is now that 100% emission-free automobiles are starting to exist now (unless if they treat maintaining modern day Honda Civics and Cadillac Escalades in the future as we treat maintaining Ford Mustangs, Dodge Challengers and Plymouth Barracuda's from the '60s and '70s today). If you were a parent not too fond your kid's legitimate decision of having a kid (say she's over 18 and still living with you for example), you may not like it, but from a challenging standpoint, its best if you respect her decision so that she may be more comfortable and less stressful while she delivers her new part of life. The bottom line is this, however way its put on or viewed, the birth of a living being is the greatest moment in life.

Liberty
As I'm typing while listening to every Sade album on Spotify, not only is today Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but also the day that Barack Obama gets sworn in for his second term as President of the United States  again. The last (or First) time that he got sworn in was back in 2009. I know that day very well cause that was the day I joined Twitter, without realizing how much it would have an immediate impact it would have in the years to come. I've told the story before, but the reason why I created a Twitter account was because my Facebook profile at the time got suspended and deleted, just for hitting on a random girl (I was 20 at the time) and she had ovaries to report and flag me. I thought snitching was just a kids thing. So then, just to get over this, I joined Twitter as an alternative to Facebook while they were televising Beyonce performing at one of the inaugural balls that The President was at. Here's the screencaps from exactly four years ago today.

Now a days, its kind of hard to imagine a time when this wasn't possible since we're used to a kind like Barack running the show in this country, let alone the entire world. But there was a time when people were specifically limited to exercise the options and opinions. Today is being recognized for a person who went out and did all he can physically and mentally to show that people are just people, regardless of their appearance and their beliefs. If the Civil Rights act never took place in the 60's, then I would've never lived in the Valley, where at the time its was mostly populated by affluent middle-class Whites. The whole purpose of Dr. King's vision, to me, is not just only about race, but there is more into that. People's hopes shouldn't be put down just by an opinion of another person with a higher authority.  That's like barging into a foreign persons home at their own time and telling them that they should not be practicing their everyday traditional rituals, even though YOU have nothing to do with it. That is was the purpose of this country is.

Many of the views and ideals here are either forbidden or not used in other parts of the world. They're certain places where you have to like something or listen to whatever the media there want to put on the news in that said country. Many people want to take advantage of their lives here either because, no offense, they're fed up with the rules from where they came from and they want to have their kids not deal with the shit that they dealt with when they were growing up. Dr King envisioned this. He didn't want to see the segregation and discrimination for those who have similar interests or achieving the same profession. They are some people out there in America who still don't agree with having Barack in the White House or stuff with that nature, but to each its own.

The impact that Dr. King made from his time done in jail for taking a stand in equal rights, to that march on Washington back on August 28, 1963, being part of the Civil Rights Act the following year as well as receiving the Nobel Piece Prize influenced so many people and activists that it lead for Dr. King to have a legal holiday created after him every Third Monday in January, which is around the time of his birthday. Its one of those type of days that should be respected, which is why a lot of public schools and federal/city offices are closed today. What threw me off was when I saw club promoters posting flyers for their events on the Sunday night before Dr. King day since there is no work or classes on that Monday. I mean, its cool to celebrate Dr King's life, but leave off the VIP lists, the $800 bottles of Cirocs and Grey Gooses, the thick chicks in mini-skirts, and the house DJ mixing the music with his iPad. Anybody here is fortunate to do whatever they want (except take people's lives away) and exercise it. Just respect their work and let them do them since you don't have anything to do with it or have any part in it.

Pursuit, For Happiness
I was gonna label this last segment with the word "Death" instead of "Pursuit, For Happiness", but I though it kinda sounded too dark.

Just this past weekend, I learned that a mutual friend of mine named Ashley Davidson has lost her life from a car accident at the end of last week. That really got me by surprise. She was close friends of the members of Aftergloam and I met her only once at a Christmas party that Aftergloam drummer Tianna Edmonson hosted back in December 2010. After that, she added me on Facebook and we spoke a few times. I wanted to meet up with her and get to know her more. I even wanted to do a photosession of her cause I thought she looked beautiful. But she was always busy and didn't have the time to get together. Out of all the great people that I met through Tianna and her Aftergloam bandmate/vocalist/lead Guitarist Elvis Galvez, Ashley was the one I wanted to meet the most. Afterwards, I stopped messaging her to see whenever she's free, and I don't blame her since many people around my age during 2011 didn't have the time to go out alot. Earlier, wrote that I stayed away from Facebook since New Years Day, but I only went on just to message certain people, not upload a photo or to "like" some random status. After I read that one of my homeboys posted about Ashley's tragic passing, I was surprised. I'm talking "NO FUCKING WAY!!!" surprised. I felt kinda cheated. Its like a business you wanted to work for so bad, that you had to go to a number of years of schooling and invested so much money from your parent's savings to pay for it that when you just a few steps to start your goal, you get stamped on the face saying that the job you deserve to earn is no longer valid since its operations are no longer in existence.

That's just shows that nothing is forever, regardless if its a person, place or thing. Its just takes a few unnecessary words and a slight lack of honesty to lose your girl to another person. You can make out without the rubber to some female you just met at the club in second only to find your swinging days are gone for the next 18 years (even after all the legal custody shit, you'll still be labeled as a father). Also, that $200 21'st birthday money you got from your grandparents will be dry off your wallet after experiencing a Vegas casino for the first time, where "The house always wins" as they say.

What I'm saying is that anybody can obtain anything, whether is cold hard cash, a nice beautiful girl to their desire, the hottest whip, the flyest job, and the bad-ass doberman to guard your crib. However, the hardest part is keeping and maintaining it. People can tell you how to raise something and give you pointers about it, yet its your responsibility to find the answers and resources to keep your possessions active. If not, then its gone just like that. The part that sucks about it the most is that even if we were keeping and maintaining that said possession, sometimes, just out of nowhere, its can disappear just like that. We have no control of it, but the only thing we can control is our emotion and reaction to it.

I feel very sad and disappointed that I'll never get the chance to meet Ashley again. If I knew her alot more, then this portion of the blog post would be five times longer, if not, the whole entire blog post. I'm not used to experiencing losing someone that you have a connection with aside from Steve Jobs' death, a celebrity you saw getting slimed at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards back in the day or a sports athlete that hung over your bed in a poster when you were a kid. From what I heard and talking to her a few times on Facebook, she seemed like a very nice woman. Not to sound like an overused Wiz Khalifa/Drake inspirational-type quote on Tumblr, but whoever you have in your life, hold on very close to him or her. Whatever you have in life, hold on to it. Living is precious and fragile, and everything else is secondary and materialistic. These are the only photos I have of Ashley Davidson from my first and only encounter with her back in December 2010.

Ashley on the left with the homegirl Julie Canizalez. 

Two photos of Ashley with my good friend Christina Campa.

I really hate to post this, but out of respect, this screencap image is one of my last conversations I had with Ashley on Facebook.

I can't think of anything else to say other than to take good advantage of your life and everything about it. Cause once its gone, its gone. In closing, I just wanna say thanks to the little brother for going to church with him over the weekend and to Jim Mcdonald (http://www.jimmcdonald.org/) for taking over the service with his singing voice and his stories from living in Normandy, France. Also, special shoutout to Vanessa Cuenca and Cecilia Navarrete for the luncheon yesterday in Northridge, even though it was rushed, it was all about spending time together and another shoutout to the De La Torre's for a interesting quality time on Sunday Night while watching the Baltimore Ravens get the AFC Championship over the New England Patriots in Gillette Stadium (where the Patriots play at) and reflecting on Ashley's life as well as getting to know some more stuff about her. Finally, my condolences go out to the Davidson family and very close friends of Ashley. 

I really wanted to get to know her more, but that'll never happen. Rest in Paradise Ashley Davidson. 

  

Never Leave Your Jobs

You know what, I haven't been on this site in like forever.

Around this time one year ago, I would write an average of about 9 to 15 posts at least per month. But since the last time I was here, which was a month and a half ago, there were way too many things that were stuck on my mind and things to do list which prevented me from typing on here. Also, I was on Tumblr more than usual, and I know it looks gay and shit, but if you're a photographer and presenting your work as a showcase to future potential clients, then its necessary to have a Tumblr account aside from re-blogging photos.

Finally among other things, the NFL season survived the "would've been cancelled season lockout" over the off-season which could've cost the league and networks MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS from ticket sales, stadium revenue, sponsorships (Bud Light, Southwest Airlines and E-Trade for example), and attendance at bars among other things. Plus DirecTV would've sucked this year. Andrew Siciliano and NFL Network RED ZONE Channel's Scott Hanson will have nothing to say and nothing to do except attempting to be like Bob Miller by calling NHL games. But I'm fucking glad the NFL is back, and its getting interesting so far this season. Hell, the Detroit Lions are playing with so much impressive confidence, as well as Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers performing as Super Bowl Champions since both of those teams from the NFC North, or as ESPN Chris Berman would say the "Norris Division", are undefeated right now.

On the topic of sports, I watched the overhyped Pay Per View boxing bout last month between Floyd "Cocky-ass" Mayweather and the 805's Victor Ortiz (805 is the area code for Ventura County, where I used to spend the summer at right after high school in 2006) with my good friend Blanca Aragon and her family and friends at their place, with a projector screen and a lot of food. The preliminary fights were MUCH better than the main event, cause Victor Ortiz fucked up by headbutting Mayweather in the fourth round and that's when shit started to fall off. Mayweather ended up retaining his title at the end after turning the daylights out of Ortiz by knocking him out cold. Like I said earlier, the fight only lasted four rounds instead of more. I felt bad for those who payed 70 bucks or more on this Pay Per View from the end result of the main event, unless if you're a serious avid boxing enthusiast who's more entertained from the preliminary fights other than the main event. Thanks again to Blanca for inviting me to the viewing.

So its been already a week since former Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs passed away. I was watching the Apple Keynote presentation video on the new iPhone 4s and then, coincidentally, found out about his death right after I finished watching the video. That shit totally got me by surprise. I mean, I knew he was seriously ill with his heath problems of pancreatic cancer, but I didn't think he would pass on already. I used to look up to him since I was in 5th grade, right after I watched Pirates Of Silicon Valley that aired on TNT that year. Prior to that, I've used Macintosh computers since I was in Kindergarten back in 1993, and around the same week, my pops brought home this Packard Bell home PC set running on Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS, so I was pretty much introduced to two different operating systems at the same time. I lost touch with Macintosh computers a year afterwards and I didn't get back into until I started the sixth grade 5 years later at Frost Middle School in Granada Hills. This was two years after Steve Jobs returned to the company and a year after he breathed life into Apple Computer again by launching the original iMac, with all the different colors on the exterior case. That was the very first personal computers that I saw that didn't have a floppy disc drive, but just only a CD-ROM tray. Damn as I type this, I can totally fond remembering messing around on one of the machines running on the old System 9 back in those days by surfing on Netscape every day at Lunch and Nutrition.

Then two years later in 2001, a shit load of changes happened with Apple Computer. First they introduced iTunes, then the Mac OS X platform which blew me and everyone else away when I first saw it. I remember upgrading every iMac at Frost (except the ones at the Library and the Magnet program) from System 9 to Mac OS X and showing most of the teachers how to use it. Later they, launched the Apple Retail Store by opening two at Glendale and Northridge that year. I was at the Northridge opening and I still have the t-shirt from that day, and I actually thought that the retail store was gonna be there for three months but 10 years later, its still there. That store was absolutely something else. I remember the old theater that used to be there where they would just showcase the different Apple products to those new to the Macs, and I remember seeing the first iPod MP3 player there that launched the same week that the store opened.

Then in 2003, my little brother got an iBook when me and my sisters wanted him to get a Windows notebook, but I'm glad he went with his instincts. We used to be all over that machine. I remember burning SO many CDs of 80's playlists that I made on his iTunes like its nothing during High School. After I graduated I made both of my parents get me the Black Macbook since I wanted to use it for filmmaking, and reluctantly, they did. It wasn't easy trying to get that model, but after we walked out the Northridge Fashion Center with it, I FELT LIKE I WAS FUCKING HIGH AS FUCK!!! This was the first year when they did the "buy a Mac, get a free iPod Nano" deal. My shit came with the Black MacBook, the AppleCare Protection Plan, the HP Photosmart C3100 all in one printer, and the black iPod Nano which I gave to the little brother. Before I sold it cause I needed money from the fuck-ass recession in February 2009, I was shitting on a lot of people with that notebook when I was taking classes at Valley and Pierce Colleges. Hell, that notebook got me the job at the Apple Retail Store in Sherman Oaks Fashion Square in 2007. Here's how that went.

During the summer of 2007, after I got ousted from getting into an argument with a rookie store manager at the McDonalds on De Soto and Vanowen (pre-McCafe), I spent the last week of June applying like crazy to different places, and this was a year before the job market sucked. I remember filling out applications at Apple Stores in Northridge, Sherman Oaks, Topanga, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and I think the one at Glendale. I went to Fashion Square one day to see a friend a mine who worked at one of the food courts, then walked around the mall and saw that the Bath and Body Works was hiring.

So I went there and filled out an application just for the fuck of it. Then a week later, I went to the Apple Store at the Glendale Galleria to 1.) Follow up on my resume there and 2.) Play around with the original iPhone that just launched. They said that they haven't looked at any so far and what blew my mind was that you can make ACTUAL calls on the iPhones on display. I called my voicemail on one of them and I got a message from the manager at Bath and Body Works for an interview. So I went to the interview a few days later, got the job there over a spoiled twenty-something female college graduate that got me by surprise since she had the advantage. Spent the entire summer there doing stock and around October was when shit started to change.

I got an email from the Apple Store in Sherman Oaks, out of all Apple Stores around the proximity where I live, only THIS Apple Store was right across from where I was currently working at inside the Fashion Square mall. Every other day I had a different interview, then the store told me that I had to be at the Mac OS X 10.6 Leopard event on October 26, which was my official start date. The problem was that I was scheduled to close at Bath and Body Works that night, and the manager at Bath and Body Works didn't know that I got hired at the Apple Store. So I told them that I needed to leave early cause of some emergency or something. Wasn't easy but I managed to get that request approved. As soon as I finished my very final shift there, I ran to the back of the Apple Store, was given a black T-shirt representing Mac OS X Leopard from one of the managers, and the rest was fucking history.

I can't speak too much of behind the scenes from working there, but all I can say was that it was interesting, including the orientation which took place at a hotel in Warner Center. I can't say which one just out of respect, but I met a lot nice people there. But working at the Apple Store was not only an amazing experience, but it made me get to be more interested with the company more, by having Ron Johnson, the former Retail Operations President of Apple Inc, always reminds us of the company's core values and purpose to serving their consumers for their products during the store meetings. For those who follow me on Twitter, you already know that I also met a lot of famous people there, and producers and writers of television shows and blockbuster films that year. I remember working the Black Friday and Christmas Eve shifts there.

I got thrown out of there in May 2008 for a number of reasons that I can't say on here. Thinking that I was gonna return that summer, it didn't happen cause the job market began to collapse and a lot of places were in a hiring freeze since most employers didn't generate much income for their business, and they had to let some its workers go because they couldn't meet payroll demands to compensate its workers. That shit really sucked after it kept getting mentioned in the news. So I was back in the same position that I was one year prior to this, applying like crazy and shit, only this time no one was accepting. A lot of my friends at the time that I used to kick it with at Pierce weren't able to meet up like we used to since the recession caused them to "not have time and too busy to hang out". I spent the rest of the year trying to maintain myself by selling pictures I took from driving to The Grove and around West Hollywood and Beverly Hills chasing rich famous people like Heidi Klum and Kim Kardashian with a Nikon D90. After that ended from a dispute with a paparazzi I worked with, I still found myself not generating any income, and I really needed cash. Plus I hired a job agent to find work for me and she couldn't get me a position at any job since the unemployment got much worse. So I had to sell my Macbook for a very low street price and it took care of me for a while and used some it to start focusing on my photography business that year.

I guess you can that I'm one of the biggest Apple/Mac enthusiasts that you'll ever meet. I know everything about the company and majority of the models that came out, including the Macintosh clones that were released when Apple Computer sucked in the 1990's. New Apple CEO Tim Cook did the recent keynote for the iPhone 4S, and I know he's a rookie and I respect him as a new leader for Apple in all this, but honestly, that shit was boring. I'm used to watching Steve Jobs presenting the latest updated iPhone every year after year, so now we're gonna have to get used to old soft-ass Tim Cook making Apple act like its the 90's again. But I don't blame nobody at Apple cause Steve's condition was not good and he HAD to step down as CEO back in June. Its been SUCH a fortunate privilege to work under his company umbrella, one of the best jobs (no pun intended) in the world.