Beverly Hills High Fire

Just recently a bunch of us headed out to go skate on a Sunday. The Santa Maria homies, the Oklahoma dogs, and then some local heads that I shred with! No joke, our pack was like 15 deep and it was so damn fun.  With a crew that big we didn't last too long. We got some stuff for sure though and Dylan got his banger right as security rolled up! So that was amazing! My boy Shane also got a pretty cool trick, hurray.


The funny thing though is that while we were getting kicked out an apartment building next door to Beverly somehow caught on fire! This is what gave us the extra time needed to get the tricks. Of course the fire was more of priority than us skating so the heat got taken off us real quick. Sometimes you get lucky. Once we finished our plate and wiped our mouths clean of the rail that everyones touched I snapped a photo of Clint and Dylan thanking the fire for the extra time.

I've been shooting a lot of photos as of late. Nothing serious, just putting the DSLR to good use is all. I recently went up to Watsonville to visit the family and shot more photos up there in a few days then I had in the whole rest of the year up to that point!

This is my friend Carlos' girlfriend's dog YUM YUM! Cute dog that Yummers.

Derek Rydquist playing John Cougar Mellencamp songs.

My cousin Ramon's daughters on Christmas Eve at his place.

Christmas Eve with the family at my parent's house!

My dad shot this photo of Derek, myself, and Tiger before I left back to LA.

I took the PCH through Big Sur back to LA this time around...what a view huh?

Swallow the sun.

That is all for now.

Norman Woods Day In The Life

A while back I meet up with Norm Doggie and had no idea that he was going to be shooting a "Day In The Life" video until we actually met up. Dylan and Norman had already gone to war with this curved rail in Culver not too far from where I live and we had plans of going back and handling some business!


Before going there though we met at Stoner in Santa Monica (my favorite place to meet up now because I can get some skating in before mishing out). My boy Dirty was the one filming the piece with Normz so he let me get a few clips for his little video! Too bad I had the weakest clips, blah! The other dudes killed it way harder. I still had fun though. And Dylan got a clip too...plus one we're keeping under wraps ;)

All Hail Collin Hale.

The skateboarding world doesn't really know the extent of Collin Hale's finesse and ease. There are so many people out there who are great skateboarders. We all know this; it's a fact. We see them everywhere we go. When I think of great skateboarders or "the best skateboarders" Collin always makes my list.


Amazing skateboarder, a likable character, a knowledgeable person, and a great cook.  These are just a few of the ways of describing Collin. When I was working for Hurley I always looked forward to having Collin come out to stay with me. Not only because we got to go skating and filming, but because he was fun to hang around with and spend time with. I haven't seen Collin in a while so when I saw him skating in this years Tampa AM you can bet that I just about screamed to see him on his skateboard in a contest and getting into the highlight reel! Contests are good and bad ways of seeing skateboarders. Super controlled environments filled with hundreds of peering eyes burning holes through the very surface of your skin can push one to the limits of greatness, or break one down to the point of not making a single trick.


I love and hate contests. I hate having to film at contests because it's boring as fuck. Witnessing the events through my own eyes and not through a panel of pixels in a viewfinder is a lot more enjoyable. However, I'll do it if I'm getting paid to do so. Go figure. I also hate them because I don't think that they properly display ones talent as much as you'd think. But who cares about that (money hungry kids and their parents), so let us move on.


When I am not squinty eyed and looking through a viewfinder at a contest I am loving hanging out with friends, mingling, and watching people stress and have fun on the course. The stress is almost more entertaining to watch for me than the triumphs, ha. But I do love to watch my homies have a good time on the course and score high. I feel like Collin always does pretty damn good at contests but has yet to come out on top. Judges you need to stop being dipshits and acknowledge a powerhouse when you see one. All those gross kids out there doing perfectly, uncool tricks suck. When Collin Hale shows up at a contest show a homie some freaking love!


I somehow digressed from talking about how rad Collin is to how I feel about contests. Welcome to the mind of yours truly. A million thoughts being centrally fused into one ambivalent...thing? Back to what I wanted to get across:

COLLIN IS A BEAST

I'm very stoked to have been able to have you be a part of "Skate Movie." Even though some of this footage may have been in "Family Tree," or in other clips I had a great time cutting this all together. Watch that video if you haven't! Dave Abair also havs a banging ass part in the video.

Collin, I love you buddy. I hope to continue watching you skate and also wish you the best of luck in any and all endeavors that you may pursue. I also hope you all had a great Christmas and are safe! Til next time :)

Anti-Social Networking

About a month and a half ago I deleted my Facebook profile, and I must say that it is rather refreshing and liberating in a way. I had been thinking about doing it for some time now. The decision to actually go through with it though was a little more spur of the moment than I thought. I think that's kind of the way that it had to be done though because thinking about it and stuff kind of just kept me from actually doing it. That old saying "actions speak louder than words" applied to the situation.

I doubt that I am gone forever. I may be back tomorrow. I could have been back yesterday. Or who know, I may just give it another week or two. I don't want to sound too lame or anything here but : shut the fuck up.

I say this because that's what I wanted to yell at people when I'd sometimes see these 10 second incremental updates about stuff that doesn't matter to anyone. The bad thing is that when I'd catch myself doing it (not every hour by any means, but I'd post things that I felt were unnecessary or of no importance) I felt like a complete loser. We do it because everyone else is doing it. Do we yearn to feel important? Do we want people to think that we are far more busy than we really are? Do we do it to try to make people think we are cool? Who knows...I'm sure the answer is out there buried in some psychology book that's outdated and horrendously true in nature.

We all do it. It makes me hate the people I am "friends" with online though. And that's the thing that really bugged me. People I don't really give a fuck about are posting every incident happening in their lives and I end up knowing peoples current life timelines. I don't care about funny thing your cat did. Nor does 99% of people care about what you ate for your late brunch. I hate to break it to you too, but every time you get a new shirt or article of clothing...we really don't need to see it. Geez. This kind of thing is what kept me from wanting to be a part of that cycle of internet lameness. I don't want to be that kind of person without even knowing I'm doing it. That damn website tends to make people strive for attention. As does most social networking sites.

It would appear that these sites are bringing people together, when in fact I feel like they are pushing people apart. Internet chatting is so impersonal! It's fake and I hope people don't forget what it's like to have real conversation with random people out in the streets or in line at a place. Is the next generation going to be socially inept because they won't know how to deal with people in real life settings because most communication is done on the internet?

I like to be in contact with people on a slightly more personal level. A formal e-mail is worlds apart from a Facebook message or comment for some reason. I'm getting to the point where I am calling people a lot more now and it seems like people don't answer their phones. You're more likely to get a response from someone on Facebook or through text now than actually calling nowadays it seems. Or maybe my friends are just lame and don't answer their phones, ha!

I don't feel like ranting anymore. I've had tons of people asking me where I've gone as of late because of my "digital disappearance." You kind of quickly realize who your really good friends are when you take away internet connections between you and the social networking world. For almost 2 months now I feel like I've only talked to 10 friends. They just so happen to be the 10 or so friends I really even care to talk to / want to talk to.  It just so happens to be that they are mostly guy friends of course! The skate homies. The real reason most people are on those things is to talk to girl they're otherwise afraid to really try to initiate conversation with in real life. So yeah, all you girls out there who I'd give a free pap smear to...I'm still here, haha. You just gotta dig a little harder to discover my whereabouts.

So all you peeps out there who lurk all damn day, and waste time doing nothing on social networking sites if you want a real change up and breathe of fresh air I got your answer. Delete your binary existance for a while: liberate yourself. Remember what it's like to have privacy again for once.

On a lighter subject. The SLAM! show premiered the 2 weeks ago. Episode 2 just aired yesterday! My good buddy Ethan Loy had a segment in the show. Dylan Witkin and myself came out in his segment as well. So look out for it, and the rest of the episodes. New episodes air at 10:30 on Wednesdays...or something like that. We're still actually heavily working on the show. We have yet to finish out the season, so that's what's kept me busy the last few months. The lack of personal life is kind of getting to me and it also caused me to ruin my first relationship in 3 years...sweet. I almost lasted 3 months! Too bad I suck though, and have self esteem and commitment issues. Flawed. Broken.

I've been shooting a lot of photos lately...check some:

California : Coast

The SLAM! crew having pre-flight drinks : LAX

Laban stalks himself : Mammoth.

Car dance party : I-80

That is all for now. Have a great Christmas everyone <3

The Devil

My buddy Ben Cabreana came down a few weeks ago with some of the Santa Maria skate crew to shred. You may remember Ben from when he won Slap Magazine's first "One In A Million Contest" :

Anyways, Ben's homie Shane fell asleep at my place while we were hanging out. Earlier, before he had fallen asleep Ben's other friend was looking at some children's book about Jesus that my roommate had on the coffee table. My roommate and I aren't religious by any means so it's kind of silly for us to have the book, but it finally came in handy! Ben's friend found a funny ass picture of Jesus that resembled Shane to a T!!! We laughed about it for a while and asked if we could take a photo of him with the photo in the book next to his face and he wouldn't do it. We could tell he was bummed. He ended up falling asleep because we had been out skating all day and I was able to snap a photo of it. ONE FOR THE BOOKS MY FRIENDS! Hopefully this makes you laugh as hard as it made all of us laugh.

The funny thing is that Shane's nickname (besides Shamus) is "The Devil," so it just makes the fact that he resembles this drawing of Jesus is what makes it all the more funny. And the fact that he's wearing a Judas Priest shirt. Does this mean that Satan and Jesus are maybe the same person? Must we look at the greater picture here? I'm into pondering that further for sure...but for now I'll just laugh it up at this photo ;)

Sextape Video

I rarely get all that excited about music videos for bands that I don't actually listen to myself. However, this one is just a tad bit too hard to not like.  My old roommate Brant recently came over and was ranting and raving about this new Deftones video and how great it was. The Deftones have been around forever and I have never really been all that big on them. Because of this I was kind of wary about watching this video when Brant was telling me I had to watch it. Brant is a super talented, experienced dude and knows how to light the fuck out of stuff (cinematically speaking) so I had a feeling that if he was this excited over the video that I really did need to watch it. I let him pull it up on my laptop and was blown away to say the least. Now your turn to watch:

Deftones | Sextape from ZF FILMS on Vimeo.

(WATCH FULL SCREEN!)

To the untrained, uneducated film school / film making eye one may just think it looks cool. Don't be fooled though. You have yet to hear the crazy part. This whole video has absolutely no color correction, compositing, or post effects whatsoever. It was all done on set with lighting, and color corrected in camera. So the look of the video was all set up during production, and all that was done in post was all strictly hard cuts and nothing else. Just clips being laid out on a timeline with no transitions, no mixing two images together, no tweaking colors...NO NOTHING! You could almost pause the video at any given time and have an amazing still photo. Seeing how it was shot on the Red, you could definitely create a print out of the freeze frames!


If you don't believe me, do a little research of your own and read about the making of this video. It was just two dudes, a ton of lights, military grade ziplock bags, prisms, and some other cool toys. It's very inspiring when something like this comes along. Hopefully some you film guys and girls out there reading this will also be inspired in one way or another. Even if it's just to check out this band a little more. I ended up loving the song in the end and now feel like after all these years these guys are worth checking out.


Sorry for the lack of updates as well. I've been going crazy working on the SLAM! show at work. I plan on updating a lot more though :)