YONDER BREAKS

You may have seen my last post about my first book, All Roads Lead to Dockweiler , that's out now. (If not, please go check it out !) Well, if you've purchased the book, you've seen that it comes with a QR code for a free downloaded of my first full-length album, Golden Coast Summertime . But I also wanted to release something to celebrate the book launch, as well as a build up to the eventual public release of the Golden Coast Summertime LP, and so the week that the book came out I also released the  Sunrise at Sunset EP !  This one comes with five songs, three of which are from the upcoming album, one is a remixed version off of the album, and the last is a demo I did with my good friend Alex Barker way back in 2015. Starting off is an acoustic version of " More Beautiful ," which is the first song I ever wrote for my wife way back in 2009. Here is the official music video for the original video: Next up is " Luna ," a song I wrote about the moon th...

It's a momentous week as my first published book, All Roads Lead to Dockweiler: Devotions from the Ocean in the City of Angels , is now officially available for purchase ! It's been such a journey seeing this come to fruition, mostly thanks to my friend and fellow writer, Peter , at High Dive Publishing .  Peter and I met in film school way back in 2008. We were roommates and both one of the few folks at our semester-long program who didn't know a single other person there. We quickly bonded and formed an unintentional trio with one of our other roommates Ian, often spending our free evenings watching the latest Oscar-worthy movies (during which I would often fall asleep) and eating Little Caesars pizzas with individual half-gallons of ice cream (because we were young and could do that back then). As the years progressed, we've written films together, shot videos and produced an award-winning post-apocalyptic comedy webseries along with Ian and a few other friends. H...

I mentioned a few posts ago about a book announcement and I am excited to relay that the day has finally come to launch the project! It's called All Roads Lead to Dockweiler: Devotions from the Ocean in the City of Angels , and it was one of the most fun things I've ever written.  Here is the story. I used to blog quite a bit about surfing. In fact, my first paid writing gig was to blog for StoreYourBoard.com , where my job was to make board storage interesting enough to read about. True to form, I wasn't content writing "Top 5 Surf Racks" and "Best Surfboard Rack for Shortboards" pieces (though I certainly wrote my share), so I always tried to tell stories alongside the content, incorporating truth and comedy with the important information. The exercise was fun, and at the time (2013-2014), surfing had become a full-blown passion of mine.  In fact, I was having so much fun writing about surfing and all of the stories and ideas that went along with it t...

It was the tail end of the first winter swell in Southern California. I had caught a little of the first full day, but most breaks weren't really able to handle the size, resulting in huge dumpy waves. As the swell waned, I was hoping to catch a little of the smaller stuff, but still big enough to be fun and challenging. After a couple of failed spot checks, my good friend Russell and I landed at Dockweiler with a little desperation in our decision. You see, Dockweiler isn't what it used to be, so it's a spot I don't find myself at very often. I have memories of massive waves peeling off the main jetty at the north end of the parking lot. If it wasn't working there, we would try heading farther north about half a mile to another broken down jetty, where lefts and rights would break and even barrel at times. Couple that with ample free parking on the main road, as well as firepits right on the beach, and Dockweiler had become my favorite place to surf in Los Angeles....

I've been reading this great book the past few months called Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey . The purpose of the book is to place the life of Jesus in its proper Middle Eastern context, which of course is very different from our Western culture. One of the themes that has been popping up more as I near the end of the book is that we often view some of the parables of Jesus through a capitalist lens, when the culture he spoke through was far from the economics we experience today. This shift of lens changes things, so I'll start by asking, what is the typical American seeking these days? It used to be to work hard, take care of the family, buy a house and eventually retire someplace comfortable. Now it seems to be to develop an app or a business, and then sell it to a larger company for an exorbitant amount of money in order to live easy, or maybe invest in something else. The motivation has shifted from a nice life in a solid community to a huge chunk...