On the streets

I recently stumbled upon a link to the site Epoch Times....

And look at who showed up on their website...... I totally forgot that I did a street interview that lasted about a minute.

Back in April, I was walking out of work one night and this guy looked at me and politely held up his camera. He asked softly, "Can I interview you? It will take a few seconds."

I immediately started adjusting my hair and I told him sure.

I know how hard it is to get people to participate in a project when it comes to filming or taking photographs.

This little interview reminded me of how there are times that I feel very comfortable being the person behind the camera instead of being in front.

So, this online reporter named Ross LaHive asked me:


Should President Obama let all American's fly directly to Cuba?

My response was:


'As long as it's safe, I would like to go. I hear that the landscape and the people are beautiful there.'

Back in April, President Obama started making steps to end restrictions on Cuba Americans traveling to and from Cuba.

Hopefully, the next time I am faced with an "on-the-street" interview I'll be less nervous and better prepared.

You can see the full article and others answers at Epoch Times Q&A

Surreal Sundays

Happy Sunday All,

I hope everyone had a great weekend and a fun 4th of July.

I just wanted to share this video that was passed on to me... it's from some geeky kid's youtube page. His name is "Pruane2forever" (I don't even know what that stands for) but he was being the internet gangster that he is - yapping on and on about rapper 50 cent and street cred.... next thing you know someone flew this kid to NY to meet 50 and as a result we now have internet gangster and street rapper gansta in one video.... the power of Youtube is incredible... you know this was the highlight of his life!!! lol check it:




And for kicks.... look at another one of this kids videos, this one is about him getting braces....hilarious... ***SLURP***

On a roll....

As I mentioned a few posts back, I've been collaborating on a video series project with artist Chris Cortes.

We just completed Part 3 of 6. We are on a roll. 2 videos completed in 1 week. We worked really hard on putting these videos together.

Each video is it's own journey.

With this one you'll get to see Cortes painting at night. The wall he painted was across the street from a popular club in Rio Piedra.

His work has and will be seen by some of Puerto Rico's party crowd.

Check it out:

Cortesnyc's Puerto Rico Graff Tour - Part III
Recorded by John Smalls
Edited by Tameeka Ballance
Original Music by Christian Cortes



If you haven't seen part's 1 and 2 of the series click the links below:

Cortesnyc's Puerto Rico Graff Tour - Part I

Cortesnyc's Puerto Rico Graff Tour - Part II

A very uncomfortable situation... on the train

I thought getting saline injections in your face looked uncomfortable... wait until you watch this youtube video... (by the way I love the subtitles)

A black girl is on a train yelling at an old woman!! I can only imagine everyone being baffled by this scene unfolding....

I just want to know....

-Who was filming this?
-Who hit the girl (yes the girl gets hit)?
-Why does she start rapping?
and
-What did that poor old lady ever do to her?

Source: Iheartchaos Youtube

The Most Uncomfortable Thing of The Week 7/03/09

Yesterday I was checking out a new favorite site... Iheartchaos and I saw this photo:



My first reaction was "wtf? why? wwhy would you do that to your self? but then I thought... "well it is a form of body modification and I have no right to judge being someone with tattoos and body piercings..."

So I followed the link that was attached to this photo and whoa!
There's a whole scene for this... it's called Body Inflation... (there are probably many more names for this that I don't even know about) and people have been getting saline injections since the mid 90's.

Medically and for fun.

Medically, saline supplys extra water to dehydrated patients with the daily water and salt they need.

But saline for kicks is big in Japan and unfortunately the inflation is not permanent.

I've never seen this type of bod mod before. There are so many forums, groups, clubs and fantasy type of inflation art all over.

I personally don't think this looks cool, and I feel like people are just doing it for no reason - what could possibly be the meaning behind this deformation?
There should be no reason you would want to deform your face. In the picture above, the guy on the left reminds me of Hell Boy (I guess thats what he was going for)
and the one on the right has blood on the collar of his shirt... that just spells out infection to me... :-/

Here are 2 more pics from Bizarre magazine's site.

ahhhh it just looks so uncomfortable.....