Category: Me Myself&I

Back in the days when I was young, in 2007, I was actively reading about cannabis. We had hit a crazy drought in France for a few years and no good weed was available. Some was laced with piled glass (to make it look like it’s full of THC crystals), that’s how bad shit was. I was looking to grow some ganja. I was looking at the absurd laws in place. I bought a whole system with lamps and all and asked my parents if I could grow some at the family house: no one says nothing, I’m gardening and smoking clean stuff, everybody wins. My dad was fast to say no (him: “it’s illegal!” me, under breath: “you a bitch”). My mom was kind of alright with the idea. She’s the OG gardener. Moms always show up at some point.

Anyway. 2009, California. Weed problem solved.

2010s, I see two indie game developers quit game development to start weed businesses on the west coast. Both are white men. Happy for them, personally annoyed.

2018, I see billboards about cannabis. I see new, white people-owned cannabis dispensers with VALET PARKING. Soon they’ll have bottomless mimosas for when you buy over an eighth on Sundays.

You can’t understand how hard that shit hits. I’ve read so many stories of black and brown people getting their lives fucked upside down for a joint in a car on a Friday night. I’ve been ostracized so much for smoking weed and not indulge with beers. I’ve probably been judged as a drug addict, soon to go down the path of some other shit because that’s what black and brown people do: they do drugs until they OD, right? The amount of shame carried by all of us, the absurd tactics to hide, minimize what society is telling us is really, really bad but is in the reality of facts, absolutely not. Even a HBO show about black LA barely mentions marijuana but has the cast drink alcohol day in day out.

And we’re *all* aware of that bullshit. It’s so weird when you  think about it.

So for years you play that stupid game of hide & seek and all of a sudden, it’s legal and Forbes has articles on those white ladies in Colorado making mad money selling buds. The same ladies that would call the cops on us when we were smoking too close to their front yards. It’s not like “oh, the irony” it’s more like “what the actual fuck is this, fuck everything”.

How come weed isn’t fully legal in the entire country when it is in a growing number of states AND Canada? At this point? How come?

How come they haven’t freed all the people in jail for possession right the fuck yesterday?

How come it isn’t legal in France, the biggest consumer of cannabis in Europe? The president is fucking 40 years old, he smoked “when he was younger” and he’s acting like he can’t legalize. Fuck that president. And fuck all of y’all out there, minimizing this massive societal problem while downing bottles of booze.

How come Portugal, which legalized everything and has great results from it (reducing ODs by more than half), is not the poster child of what the fuck the whole world needs to do?

It’s hard not to be mad at this disaster. All of that for a fucking plant. An awesome, armless plant.

I was thinking about the future of bicycles. I saw that spokeless prototype and was super into it. But the more I read about it and the more it became obvious that it doesn’t work. It’s a beautiful concept and it looks rad as fuck. That’s it.

Spokes exist for a very good reason. Bicycles are old. Tons of very smart people tried to make them better and in 2018 we’re still riding on wheels with spokes and air in tires. It simply is the best balance between performance and cost.

I bought my bike in 2009, nine years ago. I changed the handlebar because I’m a bullhorn typa dude but I haven’t changed anything else besides changing tubes and tires when needed (maybe every two years when not riding over glass/getting shit stolen).

I rode around 14,000 miles (22 000 kms) without an issue AND about zero maintenance. That’s how good the current bicycle technology is! That’s how reliable it is. Excruciating heat, rain, super rough concrete, hills, potholes, my weight, every single day. No problem. Designers need to listen to the real world and what previous designers and engineers created.

I want some Kaneda bike-looking bicycles with built-in lights and spokeless wheels with airless tires as much as the next hipster or whatever. But the reality is that they’re kind of just a dream. Our world’s physics is telling us that we can try but 200 years of collective experience (first bicycle, 1818) is telling us that we already have the best tech.

And that’s pretty beautiful. We can just enjoy riding and only care about enjoying.

When I was skating my old place, a few months ago.

That sudden displacement was rough. I needed some good memories. This is a good one.

Virtually five years that I haven’t seen parents, family and friends outside listening or watching them on a monitor from time to time. What it does is that I want to touch, grab their faces so much. Make sure that they’re real for real. Did this shit actually happen? Adopted by white people and shit?  It’s so weird now. It’s hard.

Things are not going so well over there. Family disputes, conflicts that I don’t get. It’s whatever. My parents describe the sad state of the little neighborhood that I grew up in. There was many stores. You could buy vegetables, pencils, tools, toys, salami, horse meat, fabric, potato salad. A thriving boulangerie where people would line up on Sundays for one of the best baguette on earth, I’m not kidding. The boulangerie hold the fort for a while other businesses where disappearing but now it’s basically gone. All that is left open every day is a drug store, a pizza joint used as a front to sell cannabis and a bar tabac which sells cigarettes and alcohol. I told my parents on Skype thinking about Alfred in Atlanta, “hey, drugs are lucrative”. They nodded like they hadn’t made the connection between what was sold on that corner of one of my hometowns.

About two-thirds of the world’s manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries, those most commonly used in electric vehicles, is in China, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

People put that on the fact that European car manufacturers were never into electric cars, but I kinda disagree. It’s more complex, yet simple.

To make lithium-ion batteries, you need all the cobalt you can. Who is mining that cobalt? China. Where? In DRC. What was DRC’s relationship with Europe? Colonized, brutalized, terrorized for about 75 years, up to 1960. Do you think Europeans can just stroll in and start mining in the 2010s? Hell to the no. So they have to deal with China. China does business with the US, has an enormous market itself, doesn’t need to cut deals with Europe on scarce minerals. The end.

Simply put, China’s economies of scale and European’s past colonization destroyed the ability for the old continent to compete on battery manufacturing.

I like how karma is hitting Europe in new markets. But make no mistakes, China is not interested in environmental standards. China just does business (you know they build roads and shit all over Africa in exchange of all the minerals they need for electronics, right?) and they think that electric cars are hip, and in demand. I don’t think they think more than that.

Some analysts say Europe’s last hope may be to take the same approach as it did with Airbus (EADSY) in the aviation industry. The plane maker was created by merging a clutch of existing firms and is now the only serious challenger to Boeing (BA) in the United States.

Doing the same for electric batteries "could be a game-changer for the EU’s auto industry," Montgomery said.

If only Europe had been able to replicate Airbus in every segment of the economy… But also, I think it’s too late (it’s about who has control of resources; not Europe). Just continue to make gas-powered cars more efficient but way more importantly: reduce the amount of cooling and heating needed in buildings and homes. That will do great to planet earth and that’s what matters.

It barely makes the news.

I keep thinking about the victim’s grandson. He’s twelve. He was six when Trayvon Martin was murdered. He was eight when Mike Brown was murdered. He already had a sense at that time, that this is extremely scary and wildly unreal with Barack and Michelle up there. Imagine.

Today he’s a young teenager. He simply walked in a store with his grandfather to buy some stuff. He came out running, calling his mom because a white man just shot his grandpa in the back of his head for obviously no reason besides the Reason. I think that would make me, at his age, extremely angry. The kind of anger that never, ever goes away. The kind of anger that will raise hell. Someday. It doesn’t matter when. In the future. How do you trust the world around you when something like that happens and no one really cares? It unleashes so much darkness, and we will pay for it. I’m sick.

Yesterday, Police Fatally Shoot Black Security Guard Who Detained Shooting Suspect. Black people killed by mistake and mass shootings really have become weather news. “Oh, another one” we think, grinding our teeth. “Right, that’s the trial for which horrible killing/hashtag again?” All those deaths are avoidable and facts show that only white people are responsible for them. I’m sick.

WHAT IS GOING ON

YALL WATCH MUSIC

YALL LISTEN TO MOVIES

NBA PLAYERS CANT SHOOT A BASKETBALL FOR SHIT

CABLES ARE A SIGN OF FREEDOM

WHITE PEOPLE WE CANT TRUST YOU FOR SHIT

WHO THE FUCK STARTS THOSE FIRES

I GET REJECTED ON JOB APPLICATIONS WITH MASSIVE COMPLIMENTS

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON

So, with the current life expectancy you can assume that the oldest boomers will die around 2025, on average. The youngest ones will pass around 2043. On average. Many will go up into the 2060s because life expectancy is growing every year of our lives and many boomers will live into their 90s and early 100s. My parents for instance, in far better shape than my grandparents at the same age, are likely scheduled to do that.

2060s. That’s the next eleven presidential elections where boomers will vote and out-vote everyone. And of course, the worst boomers are probably rich and definitely can afford to live until the mid 2060s. That’s 12 presidential elections.

That means that the idea that things will change because older people will die soon, is more than exaggerated. It’s weak. I repeat: starting 2020, eleven straight elections with most boomers still voting. that’s a lot. That’s most of our lives regardless of which generation you belong to. We can’t afford to wait for nature to do its thing. And no, we can’t go on a rampage younglings, calm down.

That means that we need to convince older people getting older to stop being selfish and scared. Because we need them to vote for the right thing: a fair society. It’s not going to be easy as they are clutching their damn pearls so much already, but they have to listen to us. We have to talk to them constantly. We have to annoy the shit out of them until they change their minds. It’s not an option.

I was invited to visit this… It’s hard to explain. It’s a house. Not really? It’s a cluster of dedicated spaces for living. And those spaces are… I don’t even know, man. But I was The Dude for a minute:

For those of you who are uncultured swine, this is where The Big Lebowski sits when he’s getting drugged in that movie called The Big Lebowski. I can’t remember our host’s name but she was lovely. It’s hard to describe what I felt entering this:

I imagined what it felt like to stroll there a billion times. For years. I’ve read everything I could about Lautner and this house. I know everything that can possibly be known about it via books and internet. And then it happened. It immediately made me sad that I don’t live there. No shame. It’s ultra-bold, low-key eccentric, strong and solid, pure as FUCK. I love the feel of polished or rough concrete everywhere. The beautiful, comfortable and look-alike Belgium carpet (the floors are heated in winter). The wood lines, the polygons all around… Everything is cantilevered if possible. It’s jaw-dropping. And all you hear when you go around the pool are birds. Birds, jungle and shelter. It’s absolutely, insanely fantastic. I can’t.

Dining table, kitchen and straight ahead, bedrooms to the right with sliding glass doors. It’s not a huge house. It’s perfect. Now, James is extending, adding expansions. But wait, look at the master bedroom from the corner of it:

Yes those sliding glass doors close the couch corner. Look. No doubt, when closed, it is hot at noon. When open, it is perfect. there is no AC in the entire house. Fuck AC, go outside under a tree you idiot. Save the planet etc.

Shout out to the landscaping. It’s lavishly gorgeous. You can see the steps on the left leading to the chairs in front of the wall to the right. Everything is hiding behind a ton of vegetation. You can’t see the house from the street, you can’t see it from where this picture was taken, you can’t see it from maps, street view and what not. Privacy through nature is life goal, son. Oh yeah, expansions.

There’s a club now (underneath the tennis court). Left to the TV is the DJ booth. It is of course cantilevered concrete and cantilevered metal, you peasants with supporting beams. Be gone.

It’s mesmerizing. I’m a bit concerned with the sound, though. That’s a lot of reflecting surfaces, this might sound like you are inside a spray paint can; metallic as hell. Maybe not. I haven’t been invited to play there. Yet.

Final Boss Chair and The Office View. I imagine looking at the horizon, pondering, rotating on that chair… “am I happy?” lmao just kidding. It’s the table where checks are being signed. Or maybe where James, the owner, draws vulvas on post-its.

Speaking of him, he was there, playing tennis and reading papers. It’s absurd that I now live 20 minutes away from that man and that I see him later on TV, courtside of the Lakers game. “Hey James, I was hanging out in your bedroom this morning and now you’re like me, shaking your head at those Lakers getting whooped by Serge Ibaka”.

It’s just… I can’t. Now, real talk.

This entire human creation of a shelter was mostly possible because of James’ bottomless finances. They say he invested well in real estate many decades ago and doesn’t need to work. Real estate is a ruthless business that kicks people out of their homes everyday. People, ants like you and I, fight to keep rights against real estate folks everyday. There’s prop 10 right now on the ballot this week (it’s YES on 10, don’t be rude). So, knowing that people somewhere in this country are paying a steep price for ONE dude to enjoy all year long a completely unique home, is hard to swallow. It conflicts me.

On the other hand, I respect James. He worked directly with John Lautner and his firm for over 40 years to maintain and extend the vision. The result is supreme. He also isn’t one of those billionaires who are all over themselves: he only owns this house and his 1961 Rolls-Royce, “that’s it”. He could have a villa in Ibiza, 4 Ferraris, a condo in NYC and an apartment in Aspen. Nope. He also opens his house from time to time to freaking nobodies like me and doesn’t sweat it. He already gave the house to LACMA so it will be preserved and open to visit for certain. He also loves basketball and isn’t the biggest fan of the Lakers. A man of taste (I won’t comment on his fashion; fashion is fashion).

Also shout out to the Sheats family who was able to see something in this parcel of land that was basically a giant wall of dry ass mud. There was almost no vegetation. A nice view over LA, right, but damn. At the same time, in the late 50s they probably bought that lot for like, $49.99. Not hard to try things out.

NOW CRITICS

I don’t really have any besides the decreasing use of wood in the newest sections. Listen: wood + concrete + glass = ecstasy. You take wood out of the equation and it’s not quite the same. Wood brings warmth, naturally. But I understand the reason why James is cutting lumber use down: maintenance. Wood gets hit, needs care, paint etc. You don’t need that with concrete and super-thick glass. That shit is immortal, basically.

If you want to have panic attacks, having kids and pets on that property would do it: there are almost no railing anywhere and it’s the jungle on a hill so say goodbye to your dog the first time he jumps down there chasing a squirrel.

Besides those minor inconveniences, dear Mr. Goldstein I would like to have my name on the deed, sir. I would probably switch the tennis court to a basketball court/skatepark combo but other than that, I would take care of that jewel for even longer than you will. Thank you for opening your door. And thank you John Lautner for being a genius. I’ll be back. Like, tomorrow if you want. Or tonight.

Photo album (60 pictures, no cropping, no filter).

I live a weird life. And sometimes it’s pretty dope.