With John Forté being an influence in my life in the 90’s through his work with the Fugees, coming from humble beginnings, and going through a life-altering event that took him on a 7 year life-detour I find a lot of parallels to my own life in his and it was such a privilege to hear him speak at a recent Creative Mornings NYC session.

When we think of the sound of sports on TV or radio, it’s generally commentary. But sports broadcasts would be nothing without all the sounds that are behind the commentary– the crowds, the kicks, the thwacks, and the grunts.

Although I have never been a big sports fan I have, however, always been an avid watcher of the Olympic games and I had never realized how much sound created the drama and atmosphere that made the games so enjoyable to watch. I found it fascinating that the average Olympic games employs 350 sound mixers, 600 sound technicians, and 4,000 microphones and “The Sound of Sports” tells a great story of how sound is used to design the sports viewer’s experience.

Above the grit and noise of the street, downtown Los Angeles quietly provides some of the most amazing visual detail in its buildings and public art works. This is a selection of those buildings and public arts filmed across some 50 different locations in the immediate downtown area and the arts district. There are many many more locations that are not included and are equally if not more impressive.

Some of the buildings are in disrepair, some have been restored to their full glory while others have been transformed into artworks. In all of them, there is character, color and detail that makes the area a never-ending source of intrigue.

Kehinde has a unique way of exploring the conventions of glorification, history, wealth and prestige by placing young black and brown men and women in poses historically reserved for the social elite, royalty, and Western ideals of beauty. Not one to shy away from the complicated soci-political histories conveyed in traditional Western paintings, Kehinde’s larger than life portrait paintings awaken complex issues that are striking and intriguing. What I find most compelling is how a simple pose can speak volumes and change the conversation around the subject matter.

Kehinde Wiley in his Bejing Studio (Photo: Matthew Niederhauser/Institute)

Here are some additional portraits that I found compelling:

Scenic: “Le Roi A La Chasse”

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An Economy of Grace: “The Two Sisters”

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Rumors of War: “Le Roi A La Chasse II”

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Here are a couple of my favorite stories.

The God or the Man

“Snap Judgment veteran Jamie DeWolf crashes against a towering family legacy with a breathtaking performance.”

Pen Pals

“Storyteller and artist Christy Chan is an American-born Chinese woman. She was confident in her identity until her family moved to a new town and she began getting letters from a mysterious, (possibly magical) stranger.”

J Dilla’s Lost Scrolls

“When record store owner Jeff Bubeck buys an old record collection out of an abandoned storage unit, he has no idea what he’s stumbled across. Jeff learns the collection once belonged to the late great J Dilla, one of the greatest hip hop producers of all time. Along with the thousands of LP’s from Dilla’s personal collection, there is something else that is uncovered, something huge. . .”

Having grown up on Costco frozen foods I have only recently gained an appreciation for finer dinning. But my humble roots often have a hard time connecting with food that I can barely make out its French name on the menu. This is where Roy cooks a home run for me. He took the fine dinning experience, flipped it, and remixed it to connect with 2.5 generational guys like me.

I came across this article in LA Weekly last year where Roy talks about how cookbooks changed his life. I went through and bookmarked all the chefs/books and I have been slowly working through the list hoping to be infused with the same culinary mastery. I’m a slow learner so don’t ask me to start a restaurant, but it has been great to get a glimpse into a world so different than my own.

Roy is coming out with an auto-bio/cook book in November 2013 that tells the “unlikely story of how a Korean American kid went from lowriding in the streets of L.A. to becoming an acclaimed chef.” You can get a taste here: http://ridingshotgunla.com/2013/09/26/l-a-son/

And Roy if you are reading this – mad respect! “El Hermano Serrano” would make a great name for your next culinary piece. Just sayin’…

Cartoons are written and animated by adults—very witty, sharp, intelligent, talented, and hilarious adults. The amount of story information that they fit into any given scene or sequence is incredible and a well done cartoon can make me laugh and make me think. By allowing for exaggerated and amplified narrative little to no dialogue is required to produce a heartfelt belly laugh – you all know what I’m talking about. The downright silliness provides a break from all the other life circumstances vying for total seriousness. And often times cartoons provide an indirect social commentary making them a great piece of pop-culture.

Disney recently relaunched the Mickey Shorts and are worth a watch. Watch the entire series»

Here are some additional shows that are simply cartoon gold:

Phineas & Ferb
Kid Vs Kat
El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera (Does anybody know if this is available on DVD?)
Duck Dodgers

I feel like the term “multi-culutral” has been coming up a lot lately in various conversations over the past several months. I am currently working at a church in West Los Angeles that is located in a neighborhood currently going through a season of gentrification. On the same block you can have a section 8 housing apartment complex next to a newly built luxury apartment complex complete with penthouse suites. As our church strives to reach out to our surrounding neighbors and community I have watched the demographic of our congregation start to change. You can have the working class immigrant sitting next to the wealthy American professional sitting next to the international college student studying at UCLA. On any given sunday we have a clash of cultures as we strive to have one service where we worship together as one body. But of course when you bring several cultures together they tend to want to merely tolerate each other, ask for assimilation, or self-segregate. So I found it interesting when Leonce Crump introduced the term of “trans-cultural” to describe how a church can pursue unity in diversity.

Carlos Corral shared the following video with me that I feel helps illustrate how two very different things can come together to make something new. The type of music in the video is called Banda Music, which was a result of German immigrants in Texas interacting with the northern Mexican rancheros bringing together polka and spanish guitar… together at last.