For me, returning to Los Angeles annihilates the memories of where I have just been with an astonishing speed.
Football is at least as ‘gay’ as rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and the film ‘300.’
August in sub-Saharan Los Angeles is one of the great and awful tests of one’s endurance, sanity and stamina.
You can say, “Well, I have a question,” and someone will say, “Oh, so you hate America.” And it has nothing to do with the discussion at all.
It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back against my stupid school uniform, instructors who called me by my last name and my classmates, who, while friendly enough, were not at all inspiring.
Whenever any great song or album gets lost in the ether, someone is deprived of the joy of hearing it, and the great effort of those who created and recorded the work is damaged.
Airports in major cities, like LAX, are trippy environments. It is at once a national and international gathering of those in transition: The euphoric, emerging from planes, their journey at an end, and the determined, about to depart.
I always took quite seriously the things that Chuck D. of Public Enemy had to say. He’s always been someone I’ve learned quite a bit from and someone I pay a great deal of attention to.
Black Sabbath – one of the world’s universal language of music. I felt proud, for three or four minutes of my life combining my voice with Tony Iommi’s guitar sound.
August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I’ve been listening to in the late spring and summer.
If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establishing shot, the 13th the crowd pleaser and the 14th the ultimate hero scene.
Quite often governments are one way and the people are another.
Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind.
Hating someone is giving them too much, just leave them alone.
I like people. Rightwingers don’t. They like business, they don’t care about people. I like education, they seem not to care much about it.
Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.
I can die anytime I want. I wish I could do the same with life.
Without an education, you won’t have a future.
The easy solution isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.
You have to realize there are other people, other economies, governments, cultures, religions, and destinies going on at the same time as yours. You have to widen the scope of your lens and start seeing more.