The Golden Gate Bridge was built between the years of 1933 and 1937 and is considered one of the modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Before its construction, there was a ferry service that began as early as 1820. Within a hundred years, the “Golden Gate Ferry Company” had become the largest in the world. Costing more than $35 million, it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of a city in the world. According to Wikipedia, “more people die by suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge than at any other site in the world,” with jumpers hitting the water at 75 miles per hour after a 4 second drop.

This picture was taken from my new favorite photo blog, the Retronaut. Originally this post was going to be about how amazing a destination it is, but perhaps you should just go there now and discover for yourself!

See all the Golden Gate photos at Retronaut

Hello 2012. Your predecessor was not particular easy, so I hope that you are a bit friendlier in the changes and challenges that you present.

I have been thinking about the whole notion of New Year’s resolutions, and what they represent.  The New Year is a symbol of new beginnings; a fresh start with a clean slate. With that in mind it has always baffled me that the time-honored tradition the night before is to “Party like it’s 1999,” eat with gluttonous abandon and see how you trashed you can get on an assortment of various alcoholic beverages. Followed the next morning by…crawling out of bed and stumbling to the medicine cabinet to down 3 Ibuprofen in hopes that the pain will soon subside.

Don’t get me wrong: I love good food, and I enjoy drinking, however I’ve thought for years that the best way to start a new year with a fresh slate is to wake up on January 1st well-slept and refreshed, ready for a year full of new possibilities clear-headed and full of hope. Instead the majority of us start the New Year feeling about as shitty as we’ll feel all year. Honestly, this is not how I want to welcome a new chapter; I do not want to be spending the day nursing a hangover, eating greasy food and feeling like crap. Instead I prefer a quiet morning before anybody else is mulling about, taking in a crisp clear morning (if you live in SoCal anyway), drinking some tea, and spitting out some small creative nugget (like this blog post).

Now, about the resolutions themselves:  Mr. Opinionated Soap-box Guy has also always thought that the tradition of the New Year’s resolution is kind of ridiculous. Resolutions in general are a great thing, but the arbitrary marking of a New Year with the symbolic gesture of “How I am going to be better this year” is invariably doomed to failure. Goals and resolutions should be a constant part of the fabric of our day to day lives. We should always be looking to become better versions of ourselves, take stock in our shortcomings and discover better ways to live more principled lives. I don’t presume to suggest that I know what principles might work for you, but all of us have some internal compass that we live by, a picture of how we would like to engage with the world as we gain more perspective, balance and peace within ourselves.

I have some resolutions –they are the same ones I’ve been working on continuously, and will continue into 2012 (and further) until I feel that I have accomplished them sufficiently, or until they get pushed aside by something bigger. These are some of the ways that I hope to become a better version of myself:

• Leave the past behind and look towards the future
• Be a better listener
• Be less judgmental/be more accepting
• Avoid tension and stress whenever possible
• Avoid anger
• Be meditative
• Disengage when baited
• Stay focused and disciplined
• Smile
• Laugh
• Love

Wow…cool obscure little find: In 1970 Henry Chapier directed “Sex Power,”  a film with Jane Birkin and enlisted the talents of Vangelis to write the score (this was his very first film score after leaving Greece). It played the San Sebastian Film Festival where it won the Silver Shell Award and quickly slipped away into obscurity. The soundtrack however was the only one of Chapier’s films to ever get its score released.

Most of the dialogue is in English, and the feel of the film has a charmingly naive impressionistic, psychedelic bent.

Never heard of Weegee? if not, you have likely seen his work at some point over the years. He was prominent from the late ’30s and into the early ’50s, and is known primarily for his gritty New York City shots from lower east side crime scenes. Looking at his photos it’s easy to imagine that his style no doubt influenced film noir. A new post in the New York Times, entitled Weegee’s Other Naked City, looks into the  lesser-known Los Angeles photographs the  tabloid photojournalist Arthur Fellig  took.

In 1938, he was the only New York newspaper photographer with a permit to have a police-band shortwave radio. Using the police broadcasts, he often beat the police and firefighters to the scene’s thus getting some of the rawest urban imagery for which he is best known. He had a full darkroom setup in the trunk of his car, allowing him to turn around his photos in record time.

MOCA L.A. is currently showing approximately 200 of his photographs taken after 1947, the year that he moved from New York City to Los Angeles. The show is called Naked Hollywood, and is on display until the end of February, 2012.

There is a brand new book collecting many of these photos called Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles and is available from Amazon at a good discount.

Check out “Weegee’s World” at: http://museum.icp.org/museum/collections/special/weegee/

1968 NY Times article re: Weegee’s death in 1968: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/73758206

I woke up at 4:00 this morning and was not able to get back to sleep. I became preoccupied after reading the recent Boing Boing post by Xeni Jardin the night before describing her positive diagnosis for breast cancer. It is an honest and poignant piece. I think it was also brave to put it all out there for all to see, but then she may not think so. This is a woman who lives so much of her life digitally (seemingly in public), so maybe it just seemed like an obvious thing to do.

She and I have never met, although I have always wanted to: I’ve followed her in Wired and Boing Boing (one of the best blogs ever) for a number of years and have always enjoyed her posts and articles. She is a smart cookie with a sharp mind and a clear and unfettered perspective in her missives. She is also a music head, so that pretty nails it for me. I guess I have to admit that I have a little web/blogger crush (don’t worry @Xeni, I am not a stalker, I promise).

Her diagnosis piece hit me square between the eyes and left me feeling sad, frustrated and angry. Perhaps because it was so unexpected (like news of cancer ever is –unless the news comes from the mouth of a chronic smoker), but this was from a person who I do not know. Perhaps it is because I am in the middle of reading the intensely fascinating The Emperor of All Maladies, so talk of cancer is top of mind right now. Most likely though, is that it is still an emotionally sensitive topic, more than I had realized. I experienced the loss of an important person in my life to breast cancer less than a year ago and I still live with that weird sensation of disbelief, like it’s something that didn’t really happen –just a bad dream that continues to stick with me because it was so vivid and visceral.

This last few years though, I have begun to be confronted with the odd reality that many of my friends are (also) getting cancer and this disturbs me to no end. I lost another dear friend a couple of years ago to liver cancer. She was in her early ‘40s. Another friend of mine in Austin is undergoing chemo for her breast cancer diagnosis.  A friend who played in one of the bands on my old label informed me that he’s been dealing with pancreatic cancer while another friend from the old music biz has just finished her final round of chemo. Every one of these people are younger than I am and it just seems…abnormal ….as it does with Xeni. She is –I believe—41.  The probability of a positive diagnosis at this age is still statistically low, but it seems like I am witnessing more and more people dealing with this sort of news at earlier ages than they should be. Am I simply getting to an age in my life where this is just par for the course? I hope not. I will be thinking good thoughts that Xeni’s post from Dec.1 will indeed be the case: “There is a long road ahead and it leads to happiness and a cancer-free, long, healthy life.” For her and for my friends as well.

Take good care, you are loved by many.

Maybe it seems like it’s only been a couple of years, maybe it feels like ten, but the fact is that it’s been a bit over five years since Twitter opened up their now ubiquitous micro-blogging information network (July 2006). Here’s a nifty flow-chart infographic from Flowtown that helps you answer the question, “Should YOU Be Using Twitter?”

I don’t have the answer to the question, but I am gay for infographics,and I particularly enjoyed this one!

If this is too small to read, click HERE for a bigger, louder version

Slowly finding its way around the web is some of the most stunning and incredible time-lapse photography you’ve ever seen, taken by one remarkable Dustin Farrell. Every frame of this video is a raw still taken with a Canon 5D2 DSLR and processed to create the breath-taking landscapes you see here. The quality of these videos is jaw-dropping. Full-screen them on your computer and you’ll see what I mean. WOW:

Very cool…I am delighted to be able to share this with you, a stream of TKOL RMX 1234567 a new as of yet-to-be-released remix record from Radiohead taking songs from The Kings of Limbs. Thanks to the fine folks @ Soundcloud for making this litte treat available for the masses!

I am a pretty sick lover of dogs; however I’ve only been a parent to a dog twice in my life. The first one was when I was eight years old. He was an Irish setter, and his name was “Branch.” Branch was a rich reddish brown – you know the color of a branch. Leave me alone – I was eight. Ok, so anyway, I loved that dog like any kid has ever loved another animal, so when he was “stolen,” my heart was broken, and I felt a pain like I’d never known in my life. The word “stolen” is in quotes because I’ve always suspected that Branch was in fact sold by my junkie mom and her junkie friends (another post for another time) so that they could get some quick cash to get high.

Branch was dumb as a rock but sweet as they come. My mom used to let him out in the morning to pee and what have you, and when she’d let him back in, he would have dumped the entire garbage can over so that he could dig through the trash in order to find the one treasure which he would sweetly leave on the foot of her bed as a gift, a token of his love and gratitude. My mom never had the heart to scold him for dumping the trashcan and spreading out the garbage across our back yard because the spirit of the thing was just so sweet…but over time my mom got more and more strung out and eventually Branch just disappeared that one afternoon in the hills of Berkeley…and was gone forever. I cried every day for at least three weeks, every night riding my bike with the banana seat as far as my legs would take me for an hour – sometimes two – everywhere calling out Branch’s name, screaming Branches name, tears streaming down my face the entire time, knowing that I’d never see him again but holding on to that thin glimmer of hope against all hope that just up this next street, he’d come bouncing out, tail wagging so excited to finally be reunited with the boy that loved a dog more than humanity ever knew to be possible.  It never happened, and eventually I stopped searching, and eventually I stopped calling out his name. It seemed that I ran out of tears, but a tiny part of my soul had been crushed and squeezed into a tiny black speck of resentment and hatred for the unfairness that the world throws at you just to spite your very existence – just to see how you’ll react. It’s got nothing to do with if you’ve been good or bad, it’s just a test; a little piece of glass in your yogurt that you only notice the moment after you’ve swallowed.

After that I had cats.

Cats are cool. Cats are independent: they don’t necessarily need you though. They love you on their terms, and if you’re not down with that, well…“whatever dude, I’m a cat – live with it.”

Fast-forward 30 or so years. I’m living in Seattle. I’ve been there for 20 plus years, way too long if I’m to be completely honest. I meet Patty. Things got serious. She moves in and eventually we moved to the City of Angels together in 2003…and she wants a dog. OK, I’m still a sick animal lover, that’s something that’s never really changed. I’ve always loved the doggies, but on some core injured inner-child level was never willing to allow myself to get another dog as that pain of losing Branch was still lurking in the recesses of my psyche.

But she said “I want a dog.”

And I said “ok.”

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, my quest was simple. It was not to find a dog. That is not how I typically proceed in life. The focus was that I needed to find the dog, and so it seemed that Pippa was presented to me…almost magically. I could bore you with that “everything happens for a reason” line that so incredibly annoys me, but I’ll spare you. I’ll just call it a strange form of alchemy, magic, or coincidence. Call it what you want, I don’t care. There she was, special, delightful, in the cage at the shelter, magical little 3 month old puppy amidst all the chaotic noise of the dozens of scared dogs barking, and the smell of piss and shit and fear, because these dogs have mostly been aware of other dogs they’ve been cage-mates with having been taken away to be euthanized. The thin sense of death hangs in the air, and the dogs understand that these people that come in and look at them are in essence their saviors; these are the people that will take them away from this horrible place and give the their life back, a life that is hanging by a thread, all for something that is has nothing to do with anything that they’ve ever done. There is a pureness to their life, and there is no consideration of spite or of malice. In this regard they are like children, and for many of us, they are our children.

Consider this: you are born in a litter with a bunch of other pups. You are born into some shitty circumstance that inadvertently lands you in this place which is in essence, a jail. You haven’t done anything that justifies your unfortunate arrival in this place. You were just born, and now you are in a cage–and considering the statistics of dog euthanization–may or may not make it out alive.

So…Pippa.

I walked into the shelter in South Central, a facility with nine cement rows, each lined along both sides with cages full of dogs, most of whom will not make it out of there alive, a great majority of them Pitbulls or Pitbull mixes. And there in the third cage on the left is this adorable little 17 pound hunk of sweetness who upon meeting my eyes does not get, up, does not start barking, but instead just quietly meets my gaze and starts wagging steadily in a way that felt like she was saying, “there you are. I’ve been waiting for you…I’m so glad you finally came…” It is immediate: I am daddy and she is my daughter. I love this sweet little baby. She is mine. I am taking her away from this terrible place. And so I did.

At the time, I had the good fortune (or maybe it was her good fortune) of being unemployed, so for those first several months, we spent our days together. When I did finally have a job to go to, the hard part was leaving her alone in the house, but she seemed fine with it, and the nice part was that she never had to be crate trained because she could roam in and out of the house into the backyard, or at the very least let me know when she needed to go out. Over those months we developed a deep bond, and our relationship as father and daughter was established and cemented. She re-awakened a place in my heart that I don’t think I’d known since I had been that child that lost Branch. That tiny black speck was beginning to crumble. I was finding what the phrase “unconditional love” truly meant. With the one  exception of my son, before this it was a concept and a theory, but something that I did not necessarily believe actually existed in real life. It does; it was just not something that I was completely capable of until Pippa entered the scene. She’s been here for eight years now, and has been one of the best things about living in L.A. She is not a dog, but simply one of my very favorite people in the world. Her expressive little filo-dough ears (you can’t help but wanna nibble on ‘em) and her zen demeanor…I think somebody needs a little treat…

Today is my fiftieth birthday. Half a century. I am more baffled by these words than I am concerned really. It is strange though to realize that my life is now most certainly over half over. I have been telling people that I was totally freaked out leading up to my fortieth (I was), and that now I am just annoyed. The fact is, from this point the next “big one” is sixty, and THAT is weird. That is officially “old” in my book, always has been since I was a little kid, and that picture still holds in my mind.

My father called yesterday to wish me a happy (pre) birthday. He said that he loved turning fifty. I asked him why that was, and he said that he had spent much of his forties wondering whether he was young or if he was old; when he turned fifty that was no longer a question. Thanks, pops, very reassuring.

I am aware that this is just another number, and that the value we put on these milestones are essentially arbitrary. But I also think that milestones in life are important. They are markers in life that give us reference; markers that we can measure our accomplishments against our plans and the expectations we put on ourselves.

For me, twenty five was the first time a birthday made me take pause and evaluate my life up to that point. Was I happy with what I had accomplished? Was I happy with who I was and what I was doing? When I turned twenty five, I had been living in Seattle for 5 years. I had managed one dream that I had had since high school, that of playing in a band writing original music (I had been in a few by then). The Deep Six compilation had come out and contained the first recordings by Skin Yard, the band I had started with Jack Endino the year before. I was working full-time in a restaurant and was going to school at Seattle Community College on and off, my A.A. still unfinished. I had my own apartment, one half of a side-by-side duplex on the edge of Capitol Hill. Skin Yard was just finishing the recording of our first full-length record. It was a massively creative time in a city on the verge of a musical explosion…though none of us had any idea where we would be over the next several years. The band seemed to be picking up steam. My life was good.

My next “big” birthday was my fortieth. That one was hard. As mentioned above, during the six months leading up to that one, I was completely freaked out. I still don’t know why that one hit so hard, but a lifetime had happened since my previous milestone birthday fifteen years before.  Skin Yard had fully run its course a decade prior, but it had been a good ride. We had stayed together for 6½ years, had released 4 studio records, a handful of singles and had been included on a number of compilations. We had toured the west coast countless times and had embarked on several national tours during our time together. We had shared the stage with Soundgarden, Nirvana, Faith No More, The Flaming Lips, Melvins, The Butthole Surfers, Snakefinger, Redd Kross, Meat Puppets, Malfunkshun, Green River¸ Bad Religion, Alice Donut, The Afghan Whigs, The Goo Goo Dolls and a host of others.

I had worked at Sub Pop for a few of their first years as a record label, had run C/Z records for over a decade, building it up to a company with a full roster of artists and a staff of thirteen. I had released over 90 separate titles including the very first record by Built to Spill and a couple of the first songs ever released by Nirvana. I watched my label crumble due entirely to one of the worst distribution deals ever. I had become a parent, had gotten married, and had gotten divorced. I had seen too many friends die including my grandfather, the most influential male in my life, Andrew Wood, Kurt Cobain, Stephanie Sargent and a load of others whose name may not be recognizable, but were sad losses nonetheless. I had begun working with web media for the previous several years at Real Networks and had just been laid off. I had been on antidepressants for the previous seven years and had been completely done with Seattle for the previous four years. Like a bad marriage, one of us had changed (maybe both?) and it was time to move on.

It still took a couple more. To move on, that is. After the layoff, I went back to school and finished my degree in web development. I was living with my then girlfriend. She had been laid off too and was also back in school. I decided it was time to move to Los Angeles where I had wanted to live since 1997. I sold the house and we moved down to L.A. together. Within 4 months I was off of antidepressants, and haven’t needed them since. I oversaw the development and build of the now-defunct DownloadPunk.com, oversaw the development and launch of ShoutFactory.com, conceived of, and oversaw the development and launch of RocknRollDating.com, oversaw the development and launch of Peer², bought a house, got married, got a couple of dogs, managed to get out of the music entertainment business, and made the shift into a profession in healthcare. I still work in web and social media and project management, but now I have a viable and sustainable future. I have a sense of stability. My son has just moved to L.A. He is here and will be starting a new life for himself. I see him as being in a similar place as I was when I first moved to Seattle. It’s all a blank slate for him with every conceivable possibility at his disposal.

I am settling in, but do not feel in any way resigned. I am back in school again, this time concurrent with my job at the hospital. I have all sorts of plans for after I graduate. I still have a book to write, maybe two. I think I have a screenplay in me, but won’t know until I dive in. I want to create more music, some with my son, some I am hoping with a (sort of) reunion with Jack and Barrett from Skin Yard. I am in good health and I love living in L.A. I have great friends here and a happy life.  I guess being fifty aint so bad. So why do I still feel annoyed?