2011

Philosophy

Go Daddy board contacts

If you’ve been paying attention today, you’ve certainly heard all about how Bob Parsons, the CEO of Go Daddy, posted his “vacation video” where he takes a fun little trip to Zimbabwe and kills elephants. For the second year in a row. And brags about it, and poses with their corpses. You can read more about it here. Or just watch the video for yourself:

Obvious outrage is obvious.

It’s not surprising that people are moving their domains off Go Daddy in hordes today, and some domain registrars are offering deals for ex-Go Daddy customers. (unrelated to this event, my friends at Hover are offering a free service where they will do all the work and move your domains for you. I have my domains hosted there, and they are based in Canada, which is a plus for many reasons.)

Taking your dollars away from the company is a great way to show that you don’t support those kinds of actions, but you can also reach out directly and tell the Board of Directors that you are leaving their company because of the actions of the CEO. Luckily Jill Fehr tweeted their contact info earlier, but I wanted it all in one place so I could give the link out easily. So here you go:

Greg Santora’s LinkedIn profile
Chuck Robel’s LinkedIn prifile
Michael Gallagher – Phone: 508-624-8688

If you are a Go Daddy customer I would encourage you to watch the above video and ask yourself if you want to be paying the salary of someone who does that in his free time. If you decide you don’t, letting these guys know why you dumped their company can probably go a long way.

Articles, Networks, Theory, and the Web

Cobras and Badgers and Twitter, oh my!

There is something awesome happening on Twitter right now, but since as I write this there are under 300 people following this account I suspect you might be missing it. Allow me to shed some light. Here are the major players:

I’ll get to them in a second, first – the back story. Last month I blogged about this video:

Yes, that’s the Honey Badger video which if you haven’t seen it you really need to just stop right here and watch it. It’s lulz. I’ll wait… OK? Good. So now we all know that the Honey Badger not only doesn’t give a shit, but also enjoys eating cobras. Right, so skip ahead to last week when the Bronx Zoo announced that their Egyptian Cobra had escaped. While mildly scary, this isn’t quite the same as a Lion getting out or anything and they likely made the announcement and expected the story to just go away. They tweeted something to that effect:

But there was something about it that caught on and people on twitter started using the #bronxzoocobra and #bronxcobra hashtags to append their original and witty jokes. And actually I shouldn’t really consider @TheBronxZoo a player in this from here on out, as they have completely missed the boat on this and have no further contributions.

But some other imaginative character picked up that lead and ran with it. Enter @BronxZoosCobra. A snake out on the town.

Someone set up this account and is tweeting the tails of a snake checking out all that NYC has to offer. Seeing the sites. Visiting the spots. Spotting the celebs. This crazy cobra is having the time of it’s life. But let’s remember this snake is *supposed* to be locked up in the Bronx, but someone screwed up and it got out. Who screwed up you might ask? @BronxZooKeeper.

This account is full of the tweeted failures of the poor zoo keeper out trying to recapture the cobra. You can’t help but feel bad for the guy. But he’s clearly not cutting it as the cobra hasn’t been captured just yet. Maybe the keeper should follow the cobra on twitter to get an idea where it might go next?

With conventional approaches failing, the internet put on it’s collective thinking cap and called for the big guns. That’s right, @BronxZooHBadger – The Honey Badger.

I have to say, as a bystander watching all this unfold, this was the point this went from amusing to completely full of win. Whoever is behind the Honey Badger account is killing it. Well, attempting to kill it, if you know what I mean. Earlier today the cobra tweeted that it was on it’s way to Ellis Island and shortly there after the Honey Badger checked into The Statue Of Liberty on FourSquare. Of course that’s the wrong island, but that’s an A for effort regardless. And then… the drama!

The Honey Badger is obviously following the Cobra but thus far the Cobra seems oblivious to the Badger’s existence. Regardless, this is completely amusing to watch play out and a tiny news story has basically turned into an ARG (Alternate Reality Game). If you look at the replies to those accounts the engagement is insane and there are over 150,000 people already following the Cobra. Remember, this is a pretend account for a snake that no one even knew existed a week ago. I actually think the Honey Badger account is the funniest of the bunch, but the existence of the cobra’s account willed that into even happening. A company would kill for this kind of reaction to one of it’s brands, but that’s sort of the trick here – this is just fun, and exists only to give something to people who are interested, which is why people are interested. I love it.

Articles, Me, Myself, and this blog, Music, Philosophy

It’s not just in my head it’s in my heart…

(pic H2O soundchecking, 2/6/11)

I haven’t been to many shows in the last few years, certainly not that many punk / hardcore shows. I’ve seen some bands play here and there but there’s quite a difference between standing in the audience bobbing your head to a catchy tune and maybe tapping your toe if things get really bouncy, and jumping and clawing to get to the front of the room so you climb on top of someone and scream the lyrics that you know by heart into the mic that the singer of a band is holding out into the crowd. There’s quite a difference between a band thanking the people in the room, their fans, for coming out, and a band rattling off the names of half the people in the room, expressing their love for them, and treating everyone there like brothers and sisters, like family. I’ve been to a lot of the stand around and get thanked shows recently, but not so many of the jump around and get hugged ones. This is only really noteworthy because I spent probably 5 nights a week at those kinds of shows until somewhere around ’98.

I quite working at Victory Records in ’98 and when I walked away from that job I walked away from a group of people that meant more to me than I can ever explain. If you grew up in the punk and hardcore scenes than I don’t even have to try because you already know exactly what I’m talking about (I started going to shows when I was 12 – my formative years revolved around this world). I didn’t realize I was walking away at the time, but in hindsight that’s exactly what I did. The problem for me was the music that I loved had become fused with a job that I hated. My feelings for one spilled on to the other and rather than think of shows as places were all my friends were and where I’d be surrounded by people who knew me, loved me for who I was and would always be there for me, I began to think of shows as places where I might run into that someone from that band that said that thing in that one magazine or who went with this label instead of that one, or whatever. It became a nest of business politics instead of a positive comfort zone. I let that happen without realizing it, and when I had the chance to get out of the business I left the scene and the people behind as well.

Not one of my better decisions I might add.

Sure I’ve been to a handful of real hardcore shows over the past 13 years but mostly friends bands, and I mostly just stood around to see them and support them, and soaked up the mellon collie of what used to be but no longer was. I missed it, but it was the past. That’s kind of how I think I felt about it, without having actually consciously been thinking that at the time.

Twitter has helped me reconnect with many old friends and I’m glad they still remember who I am and want to talk to me from time to time. Over the last year I saw that Toby from H2O was talking about a new project of his called One Life One Chance – something like motivational speaking, but for kids in schools, and really more of a sharing stories and trying to set a good example. I often talk about things I’m doing in my own life, knowing full well that most people won’t change their lives because of it, but if what I have to say inspires a few people to change their lives for the better it’s worth it. Toby’s project was like that but on rocket fuel. By talking to school aged kids he was really reaching out to people who it might really make a difference to.

There’s no question to me that punk and hardcore, and straight edge specifically, saved my life. No question at all. I was a pretty depressed kid with a fairly bleak outlook on life. I didn’t see much of a future for myself, and didn’t get along with most of the kids in the schools I went to. I tried to get along with them, but for whatever reason it just never clicked. I was trying to be something I wasn’t, and it was obvious to everyone. And then I found punk rock and a group of people who didn’t want me to be anything other than me. I found hardcore and a group of people who treated me like family and I knew I could count on for anything. I found straight edge and realized that every day, every moment was a chance to do something positive. These things changed me forever and I’ll never forget that.

Lately I’ve been feeling old. I’ve been wallowing in missed opportunities and failed attempts. I try very hard to be positive and sometimes that is easy, but sometimes it’s harder than others, and sometimes the weight of the world gets really fucking heavy.

Toby has been doing OLOC for a year know and spoken at a ton of schools. Looking at the videos and photos of the students he’s talked it, it’s pretty clear he’s making an positive impact and I think that’s amazing. Some schools can pay to bring him out to talk, but others can’t afford that, and those are likely the ones who can use this message the most. When I heard H2O was going to play a benefit show for OLOC I paid for a ticket right away, without even seeing if I’d be in town when it was happening, just because I knew it was a good cause and I knew that was money well spent. Turns out I was going to be in town and as the date got a little closer I saw Toby put out the request for some people in LA to give “testimonials” on film for a mini doc they are working on about OLOC. He was looking for people who had positive things to say about how hardcore impacted their lived. I offered and was asked to come in and, I said yes right away.

The day of the show, as I was driving in for my scheduled filming time I was thinking about all of the above and all the great things I could say. I could talk about directions my life could have gone without it, I could talk about amazing friendships I’ve made thanks to it, so much I could say. But then I got in front of the camera and blew it. I froze, totally blanked, and likely gave the worst testimonial they have recorded yet. I don’t even remember what I said, but I think I spoke for about 20 seconds. Maybe. It was bad.

I’d been trying to channel the positivity so much but it just happen. Which was kind of a bummer. The dudes said it was great, but I knew they were just trying to be nice.

Does it sound like I’m feeling sorry for myself? Well, just you wait.

With recordings done and sound check out of the way I had a few moments to walk down the street with one of my super old friends from the hardcore world. I hadn’t talked too him much in many years and that sucks, so I was really happy to catch up with him a little bit. But it reminded me, hell kind of smacked me right in the head with the reality that there are a ton of people out there who I really care about, an entire scene of people I really care about that I had been completely out of touch with for a really, really long time. This is simultaneously a good and bad thing, bad because I feel like I missed something I shouldn’t have, and good because now that I’ve identified it I can try to correct it.

When the first band played, I saw them and the kids who came out to see them so filled with everything I remember once being filled with. At one time I would have felt perfectly at home in that crowd, but I felt like an outsider. I didn’t know the band, I didn’t know the songs, and I didn’t recognize a single face around me. This used to be my briar patch, but now it was kind of jabbing me where it hurt. I felt out of place, and after the stellar performance on camera earlier I thought maybe I should just go home. I stopped myself when I got to the front door and thought about it a little more.

If I was going to wallow and feel bad for myself, I could do that anywhere, and if I went home now that’s certainly what I would be doing. Or I could stay and see what might happen. Hell, I have PMA tattooed on my wrist, it’s there for a reason. It’s a reminder and I needed it right then. I reminded myself that giving up was a guaranteed loss. If I stayed I at least had the chance of turning that around.

So I stayed.

Toby showed some footage before the H2O set of previous OLOC talks at schools and it was inspiring. I could see the kids it was inspiring, and I could feel it inspiring me. This was a good thing that was going on, and this was a good thing to be a part of. Through out the set there was constant talk, both in the songs and between them, about the positivity, support and friendship that makes up the hardcore scene. Seeing Toby, now 40 years old, thanking his wife sitting off stage, and his 6 year old son standing right there on stage really hit home for me. I thought about how I’d been feeling so old before, and who I’m turning 36 this month, and how my own son Ripley is turning 1 next month, and how not only does this world which means so much to me not have to be just a part of my past, it can actively be part of my future. I just have to make the decision for that to happen. I was kind of floored by that revelation. And a bit ashamed it wasn’t obvious to me before this.

I didn’t go to this show to be inspired. If anything, I just went to say hi to a few friends and show some support to a cause I thought was a positive influence for other people. Turns out it had a pretty positive influence on me too. I realized I was smiling when I was walking back to my car to head home. I liked how that felt.

Articles, Me, Myself, and this blog, Travel & Adventure

2010: The year in review, in photos

For the past few years I’ve been recounting the previous 12 months by skimming my flickr stream and seeing what I was inspired to take photos of during that time, and seeing what that all ads up to at the end of the year. I’ve found it to be pretty therapeutic. Check it out if you want to, and if you want to walk further down memory lane, here’s the photo reviews of 2009, 2008 & 2007.

To recap I entered 2010 in LA which was something I hadn’t done in many years. I’d been making a habit of being in Berlin for New Years (looks like I’m missing it again this year btw). The CRASH space folks and I had secured a space and we’re moving in, and we started having real meetings in January…

January was also when we (Tara and I) started facing up to the fact that “we” was going to include another person before too much longer and threw ourselves a little baby shower.

January was also a point where started thinking that I wasn’t just going to keep snapping a million photos and posting them all online. I wanted to create images that looked a little better, and started really thinking about how to do that. My initial steps just included iPhone filters.

But I also picked up a real camera that shot on real film and started down an interesting path with that.

Luckily for me, living in Venice Beach provided some pretty regular and pretty interesting subject matter with which to try and improve those skills. Before the end of January I was making pretty regular visits to the new Skate Park.

In February I started getting my first rolls of film back from the shop, and was pretty excited with the results. This is from the very first roll I ran through a camera in the last 20 years at least.

I also got the filter settings I really liked on my iPhone pretty dialed in.

This was all exciting and I jotted down some of my thoughts about photography in a long winded blog post. Sorry to anyone who read it.

For my birthday I decided to fix some old tattoos and reaffirm my faith in them. PMAxFVK.

Shooting on film impacted my flickr feed as well, with big dumps when I got things developed rather than uploads as things happened. Feb 19th was the first of those dumps. Clearly there had just been a big storm.

I’ve never been big on heros, but I’ve always looked up to Mike Vallely and I finally got to meet him when his Black Flag cover band, By The Sword played in LA. In the past meeting people I’ve looked up to has been disappointing, with wasn’t with Mike.

But not to get all arty here. Normal things were going on as well. You might remember Johannes from previous years in review, and he came to LA and spoke at Crash Space about fun things they were doing in Vienna like Roböxotica and invited us to contribute something next time they did it.

And just like that, I turned 35.

I think getting into photography helped me cope with living at the beach. Venice has a history and can be quite photogenic at times. Forcing myself to look for those moments was a good thing.

Phone: *ring*
Me: Hello?
Xeni: Hey, I’m going to have breakfast with Die Antwoord, want to come?
Me: HELL FUCKING YES!

On March 3rd things got kind of eventful, on the family front…

And just like that, there were 3 of us.

Enter Ripley Ossm Bonner. But enough of this emo crap..

Shit, actually it’s kind of hard to get past the emo crap.

And that was March. In April we started doing actual building classes at Crash Space, here’s some nerds showing off their recently completed TV-B-Gones. (mine’s on the table)

On a routine trip to Singapore my flight was diverted to Alaska, one of the last two US states I’d not been to. We were on the ground for 2 hours. I think that counts. And I could see Russia from the plane window.

Once in Singapore I finally found some cool areas.

Er, area. But that trip was short, and before I knew it I was racing to the airport at 5am…

En route to Tokyo

Where Matt Alt took me around and introduced me to the famous Japanese “Rice Taco” or some shit.

And Brian took me around and introduced me to the Custom Lowrider Big Scooter scene.

Man I love Tokyo.

Then I rushed back to the US, and out to the Desert with Tara and Xeni to take Ripley to his first show:

Which also happened to be the first US Die Antwoord show.

And then to continue my rock and roll whatever, I ran back to LA to see Murder City Devils play.

It was real fun. I danced real hard. Then a guy hit me real hard and I broke a real rib. Really.

But it was still fun.

And then I got more tattoos.

Because I’m living in my youth or something.

Venice remained good fodder:

And Ripley started smiling, a lot.

Maybe because he knew we were about to leave Venice. We ended our lease, put everything in storage and headed out into the world.

We got to Singapore just in time for June, the hottest month of the year. But at least Tara made a new friend.

I worked a lot that month, and Tara hid inside a lot. But we did get out and see some monkeys.

I spent a lot of time at the Hackerspace there, it kind of became my office. And what a view that office had.

I walked around a lot that trip and got a much better feel for the country, at least I think I did.

By the end of June we were ready to get out. And the flight back to LA worked out much better for us, all family size and whatnot.

But we were only in LA long enough to drop off suitcases and grab other, and then we ran off to Europe. France specifically. Vincennes to be exact.

This was the view from the flat we’d call home for the next two months.

Well, Tara and Ripley would call it home at least. Within hours I was on my way to Dublin.

For coffee.

Really good coffee.

But also to see Glen and the opening of his exhibition. Which I’ve seen plenty of times before, but is always worth seeing.

We had dinner and walked around Dublin in the rain, and then a few hours later I was back in Paris.

Where we went on a secret mission to find black market back alley spices

Which was exciting, but short lived because before I knew it I was back in the US, in NYC at HOPE talking to nerds about hackerspaces

But as usual I learned more than I taught. I like it that way.

While in NYC I took some creepy photos of some friends

Completely unintentionally, all of whom are way better with a camera than me.

But man, NYC was hot. Real hot. I picked the wrong cities to spend the summer in apparently.

But at the same time, the right cities as I got tipped off to a secret last minute Forgetters show in Brooklyn. It was pouring rain outside, but rocking inside.

Fun fact: That’s not a filter or post processing at all, it’s just how my iPhone scrambled to handle the weird lighting in the club. Wild, man. Wild!

And before I knew it I was back in Paris with the fam.

One day we went to the a park

And walked around the city a bit

But the train ride home ended up being a bit more memorable

I have a totally different opinion of Paris after living there for a while. I don’t think it’s any less cold and grey, I think I just found the cold and grey parts that I like.

Yet for all it’s “city of love” flag waving, I think it feels like a pretty lonely place.

Not wanting to waste a European adventure, we headed to the south of France for a week of sightseeing.

Which changed my opinion of France all over again. I like it when that happens too. Then we went back to Paris to re-soak up some of the things we loved before heading back to North America.

We stopped briefly in Toronto and then made our way back to LA, where things hadn’t slowed without us.

We subletted a friends place near Larchmont and checked out a new neighborhood

Well, Tara and Ripley did anyway, because I had to be back in Singapore for an event.

But a had a few days off, and Joi took me diving. From a boat. Me. On a boat. It was crazy. But I loved it.

The Event in Singapore ended up being a little bigger than we expected. But it all worked out.

And Singapore was kind of nuts because that was the week of their F1 race

Which was loud. So I left and went to Tokyo.

Have I mentioned that I like Tokyo? I was there for another event, which was fun. Once we took over anyway. 😉

It’s funny, I dreamed of going to Japan for so much of my life, and now I’ve been there maybe 10 times in the last few years and it’s kinda still just as magical and exciting as I’d hoped it would be. I hope that doesn’t change.

I got back to LA to find a little something in my PO Box:

Did I forget to mention that? I spent most of the time when I was in Paris designing this album. Which was fun, and something I hadn’t done in a while. And it made me sort of realize how much I missed the creative parts that used to be such a big part of my life. I need to do something about that in 2011.

And holy crap, Ripley is getting huge.

And acting like a kid twice his age.

And my coffee obsession wasn’t slowing

We made a quick trip to Vancouver so Tara and Ripley could get matching Tiger hats

And when we got back to LA we moved into our new house. One with a yard.

And I finally got a new computer

And was invited to a super amazing coffee tasting at Intelligentsia

And whoah, somewhere along the line Crash Space got real

Meeting in London, BRB

I got back to LA just in time for an amazing dinner and coffee paring thingy at Intelligentsia in Pasadena with Tara and 30 of our closest friends – who we just met that night. One of the best meals of my life, and one of the most fun evenings we’d had in a long time.

We spent Thanksgiving with more friends, and Xeni tried to turn Ripley in a goddamn hippy.

Mark and I couldn’t take it, so we escaped to his bathroom. For espresso.

Then I flew to Vienna, where it was snowing. A lot.

I was invited to speak at TEDxVienna which was pretty fantastic.

And Crash Space and a robot entry for Roböxotica.

Which people seemed to enjoy.

I met some great new people, and came up with some exciting new plans

And then rushed back to LA in time for Rips to get an early xmas gift.

Speaking of the kid, his 9 month check up was all aces. And our Pediatrician, Dr Jay Gordon is awesome.

And through some weird facebook trickery I got invited to be in an art show. So I drew stuff on post it notes.

Which might like a weird thing to make art on, but that’s what all the cool kids were doing.

It’s kind of hard to believe that at this time last year this guy didn’t even exist, and now he’s deciding which is the best Cheerio to eat next.

And then since he was being so cute we decided to scare the shit out of the little guy by handing him off to some creep in a red suit:

Which pissed him off royally for 5 or 6 minutes. But then he got to play with some new toys so all was good.

And seeing friends from NYC (one of the few cities he hasn’t been yet) worked too.

The year came to a close with the final days having some crazy as hell wind here in LA, which resulted in a black out due largely to things like this:

I didn’t take any photos of the big exciting New Years Eve blow out I went to, mostly because it had a little existence problem. There was a dance party at my house though, but it wrapped up early due to bedtime. Then Tara and I spent the rest of the night doing stuff like this:

And watching movies, which was actually kind of awesome. And now, let’s see what 2011 has to offer…

2011

Go Daddy board contacts

Cobras and Badgers and Twitter, oh my!

It’s not just in my head it’s in my heart…

2010: The year in review, in photos

Hi, I'm Sean Bonner