Girl, I got a bike, so don't ask me for a ride.

Wassup rockers. It's Brian a.k.a. Emcee Oz a.k.a. Flow Jackson. Those are all names i made up for myself. Here's my bike as of late. I've been putting some good mileage on it lately. On friday I rode to Union Station, took a trian to Riverside, then rode to the college there to watch The Roots play and my new friends U-N-I (www.myspace.com/unimuzik). Super dope show, and i don't say that much. A couple nights ago Liam and I spent a few hours at the Bike Oven in higland park and finnished the conversion on his bike. Now we're poised to hit the streets at midnight much more often. I wanted to do something to motivate me to ride some more, so I just cut up one of my keffiyeh scarves and re-upholstered the thing! I've been meaning to re-cover my seat for a while, but never had a wolf shirt I was willing to cut up to put on there, so this will suffice.
We're trying to figure out how to bring our bikes on the next tour (we've all got nice ones now) so i made these spoke cards! We'll just hand them out to anyone who comes and rides with us whenever (Thanks for the help Kirsti). The text reads "I rode my bike with the LYLT Posse! CD Release Mini Tour Oct 2008. Word up! come out and ride with us fools! Now Kirsti and i are going to some vintage shops to sell some clothes so i can get enough money to buy some new bar wrap. yeah!

Family Outing

We went to Zion's National Park for Labor Day weekend and it was amazing. We met Alex and Morgan in Southern Utah and then carpooled into the park. We got a nice campsite right next to the visitors center and tram station. The weather was nice; it was really hot, which made the freezing cold river feel really good.

The first day, we hiked to Angels Landing. It was crazy scary! Some parts of the trail have cliffs on both sides, and the final half-mile ascent is frightening. But it was so beautiful and peaceful at the top. Definitely worth it (considering none of us fell off).





The next day we tried to get permits to hike the Narrows, but were unsuccessful. There are no regulations governing the Narrows from the bottom side, so we started there instead and hiked in for a few hours. It was beautiful.




We saw lots of deer, a few turkeys, and tons of foreigners. Nobody got hurt and we all had a blast. Hopefully we'll have more outings like this soon.

Sally and I hit up the swap meet last Saturday in Huntington Beach and bought a few things that we hadn't expected to. We fell in love with these bikes though:



Can you blame us? Sweet rides, huh? We're excited to hit the paved trails of the Long Beach canal system. We've been playing a lot of tennis lately and this will give me another form of exercise that doesn't actually feel like exercise. I don't like doing exercise that feels like exercise. I like when it's disguised in the form of tennis or smash ball on the beach. I guess you could hardly call that exercise, but it's fun and it's as close as I'm getting for now, so we'll call it good. No offense to those of you that love to exercise. Exercise is good. Just not for me.

Word to my dawgs.
Shane

Leatherheads

Don't even act like Sally didn't meet George Clooney!

That's the photo taken of him when he was shaking Sally's hand.  We had our digital camera there, but of course, it was wigging out, so you're getting the camera phone on a few of these.  This was our first time going to a move premier.  It was at the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd for the movie Leatherheads.  We were across the street from the theater and the red carpet; no civilians were allowed over there.  We saw quite a few celebs though.  The first was Renee Zellweger, then John Krazinsky (who plays Jim in The Office), then Gorgeous George.

All of the stars were let out across the street on the theater side, then the three I just mentioned walked through traffic to our side of the street and signed autographs all the way down.  There were a lot of people standing there with us behind the barricades; I'd say 500 or so.  Renee, John, and George  were all really nice; they shook hands, took pictures, and made small talk (very small talk) with as many fans as possible, then casually dodged cars and walked back to the red carpet.  

There was a guy named Mike standing next to us that goes to premieres all the time.  He knew exactly which stars would come across the street and which ones wouldn't, and you could ask him about any actor out there and he'd tell you what to expect from them at an event like this.  I was surprised by a few.  According to Big Mike (as I started calling him; he brought a step stool to stand on which put him up to about Sally's height), Tom Cruise and Will Smith will both sign autographs for an hour, but Will Ferrell and Keanu Reeves won't even cross the street.  He had names for the one's that don't sign autographs, but I don't say those kinds of words.  Mike was cool and gave those of us around him the "Intro Class To Movie Premiers".  We also saw a few of the ladies from The Office including Jenna Fischer (Pam),  Angela Kinsey (Angela), and Kate Flannery (Meredith).  Here's a shot of Angela on the other side:

I was REALLY, REALLY hoping to see Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute, but no luck; maybe next time.  Here's one of Sal and George just for kicks:

Good Friends and Family

We just happened to be in Utah for some concerts on Easter weekend and got to spend time with the fam.  We had a nice dinner at my parents house and then watched Owen and Gavin scramble for eggs.  They were racing around like there was a real threat of not getting a million eggs each, but there were only two of them so they both acquired quite the stash.   It was fun to watch.

 On Monday we drove to Mesquite to see some friends on our way back to L.A.  About two miles past the last exit in St. George we ran out of gas on I-15!  We had a gas tank in the trailer (this isn't the first time this has happened), so I ran to the other side of the freeway and hitchhiked back into town.  Luckily Layth was behind us to pick me up at the gas station and take me back to the van (muchas garcias).  Then we cruised down to Mesquite and hit up our favorite mexican restaurant with Layth and Lou, and Rusty and Josie.

We really love hanging out with these guys!  Unfortunately it doesn't happen often enough.  But we do our best to keep in touch and always have a good time when we get together.  Mad love to Russel C. for picking up the tab.

MC Oz on The Jimmy Kimmel Show

Liam, Oz, and I went to the Jimmy Kimmel show recently to watch the show and the outdoor concert afterwards.  Before the show officially started they asked if anyone wanted to come up on stage and display a talent, so Oz jumped up, grabbed the mic and told the band to give him a beat.  He did a freestyle rap about the show and our band, and the crowd looooved it!  It was really funny.  I happened to snag a few pics with my camera phone.  

I really wanted to get a picture with Guillermo but he didn't come out until the show started.  However, I did get one with Uncle Frank and it's a gem.

Sunny CA.

It's called Pinkberry and it's delicious. Another bike ride in Long Beach today led us to the frozen yogurt establishment known as Pinkberry. When Sal said it was frozen yogurt, I figured I would know what it tasted like, but I was way off. Pinkberry was much better than expected and not like regular frozen yogurt. Kind of hard to explain, so you'll just have to try it when you come visit us. We split the medium sized dish, with original flavored yogurt, plus a few toppings (fresh kiwi, strawberries, and oreo crumbs). A little expensive for us poor folks to frequent the joint, but worth the indulgence on a nice, sunny bike ride in The Beach.

LBC

Wussup, Peeps. Shane here. I finally know what all the fuss is about. It's mid March right now, and Sal and I have been going to the beach for the last two or three weeks! No wonder real estate is so expensive in California. The beautiful weather more than makes up for the ridiculous traffic. We live in South Long Beach and I've loved every second of it. Our apartment is on the Pacific Coast Highway and about a five minute drive from the ocean. Sal has recently taken up surfing with the help of some borrowed equipment (thanks Morgan and pals). I've recently taken up laying on the sand, reading a book, and watching Sally surf. I mean, the weather's nice, but the water's still too cold for me! On Sunday we went for a drive and a bike ride along the coast north of Long Beach and bit south of LA (that's where the picture comes from). We were on a peninsula that had rolling hills, beautiful cliffs that dove into the water, and some enormous houses. We talked to one gentleman, on his Sunday stroll, that told us he purchased his house in the 70's for around $100,000 and that it would now go for about $1.9 Million (I'm saving up). His house doesn't even have the ocean view. He pointed to one house on the street next to the ocean and said it just sold for $4.8 mill. That one's a little out of my range. It was fun to cruise around there and see some more of the Long Beach area. It was a nice, beautiful day with my nice, beautiful wife.

Fashion is lame, style is eternal.

So i'm really into shoes. I haven't been for that long however. It was the summer of 2006 when i went into one of those vintage (expensive) thrift stores and picked up my first pair of Dunks (Nike Hi-Tops). About a month later i walked into a room and one of my friends almost fell out of his chair. "Sea Crystals!" Turns out the shoes i bought, which i just thought were super dope looking, are crazy rare and expensive. This opened my eyes to a new world of shoes and live hasn't been the same since. I know, I know, it's crazy materialistic. It's my biggest vice. I'm really battling it lots of the time because I kind of stand for a person to not need something like that to feel good about their self. For now, however, it's a hobby and i'm obsessed with it. Here's some pics of my latest additions:
These babies right here are in my top 2 favorite pairs that I own. They're called the Undefeated No-Liner Stussy World Tour LA Dunks. Long names make things sound fancier. So Stussy did this collaboration with Nike a couple years ago and released a different pair of Dunk Hi's for about 5 cities across the world. Paris, London, New York, Tokyo and LA were some of them, I'm exactly sure of any others. So these ones are the LA ones, which I thought fitting, because in my mind it's kind of cool that I live in LA. It's always been kind of a fantasy of mine to have an apartment in a big city and do the cool things there which i'm now doing.

Next pair:

These babies are my first pair of Air Max 1's. These are the very first shoe that Nike made with the air bubble showing on the outside of the shoe. The inspiration for their design came from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. It's a bulding that has seemingly no exterior walls and it's pipes with which it is covered are painted bright bold colors. The running department didn't want to put these shoes out, but the designers won the battle to get them on shelves. These 2008 remakes of this shoe were designed on nikeid.com. Air Max 1's are available in lots of stores but in pre-made colors and fabrics. At nikeid.com one can design their own shoes with their choice of color and fabrics on each specific part of the shoe. DOPE. Okay, my disclaimer is though, that I got these shoes in China. Some kid must have chose some rad colors, because i bought these there, not from the website, from a sort of catalouge of shoes that a certain vendor had. It took me 3 weeks of searching for the perfect pair. It was 4 days before I was to leave the country that I found this guy in a shopping place I'd never been to. He ordered them for me and we picked them up right before I left, along with the 11 pairs of laces that come with each pair of Air Max's from nikeid. Bayam! I still wear them only on special occasions.

Okay, i love you bye!

MC OZ

China Long Time

Howdizee!

MC Oz here. We've decided to start a blog for the band (Love You Long Time, www.myspace.com/loveyoulongtime) just for fun. We all live pretty different and eventful lives and decided this would be a fun way to share them with our peeps online and all over the world. Our myspace page is where the band is really showcased, so this blog will be just for fun and a place for our friends and fam to see what we've been up to and what we're into at the moment. I guess I'm starting it off. Kirsti, Navy (that's my wife and daughter) and I just got back from Beijing this morning. We spent 3 weeks with my family there and had the time of our lives. It was much colder than sunny LA but being with our family is priceless. The food was so dope, the shopping was even doper. The pic up there is of a trip just after Navy's first birthday on the Great Wall. It's less than an hours drive from my parents house, and we wanted to get pics of navy on the wall. She'll thank us when she displays them at her wedding. What a party. We got the idea for doing this blog from our friend Heidi Swap (http://www.heidiswapp.com/). She's a scrap booker extraordinaire and her blog is pretty entertaining, so i thought we'd give it a try. party on.