On Hold and The Douchiness of Kanye West

So… things aren’t going as great as they should be. Since I quit my job, I haven’t been published and no tours have happened (many emails, several cancellations). But everyone keeps posting “follow your dream” bullshit things on social media. We are supposedly a generation that does whatever we feel like and make a living out of it. Which means I am doing the right thing and I should not worry about money. I have many ideas in mind, but the process is slow. I have sent three stories and they are all on hold. Wish they could just reject me or publish right away, instead of just waiting forever.

My college friend, Drew, is still visiting (for two more weeks). This weekend we are going to All My Friends 6th Edition. Not really excited for the line-up, but the fest should be a blast. The location is perfect, the food will be great and I’ll be doing some work. If you are in Los Angeles or San Diego, my competition and good friend, Tony Tee, has a tour package on his website Algo Bien. If you have seen the Anthony Bourdain episode in Tijuana, Tony is the chubby mustachio tour guide that takes Bourdain through Tijuana’s nightlife.

Around minute 9 to see Tony Tee. I recommend the whole episode, though it is a lot of Baja and not much of TJ. And Tijuana has changed a lot since that tour. So you can either go on Algo Bien with Tony Tee or you come with me on a Tijuana Adventure, I don’t care how you do it, this city is amazing!

Anyway, Señor Antonio Ley, I nominate you to pick up next Monday’s celebrity. This week, my friend Drew chose Kanye West. I really thought I wrote about him before, my encounters with him were bizarre. I really don’t give two shits about his music. I know people love him for his beats or what not and I can say that I accidentally listen to his songs at a bar or something and didn’t think ill of his music. But I have never on purpose played a Kanye West song for my own listening pleasure (my friend James from Michigan loves him…)

My first story about Kanye involves my brother and my very early days as a paparazzo. It was probably my second week in Los Angeles in the summer of 2007 when I accompanied my brother to LAX because Kanye was on the list. My brother have heard that Kanye was a dick and that it was better just to not be seen. We were waiting at the bottom of Terminal 5 at LAX (Delta flights), when my brother spotted Kanye. He made me turn around so I could hide the camera, so I never took a look at Kanye. My brother said he was accompanied by two super slutty girls and they were going to baggage (with no assistants or help).

Then I saw Chance frolicking around LAX. This is 2007 and my college roommates loved shitty reality TV (I’m looking at you Daven). I am referring to fucking Chance from the fucking reality show “I Love New York,” the spin-off of VH1’s “Flavor of Love.” For no reason I yelled, “What about Chance?!” and he responded “WHADDUP WHITE BOYYYYYYYY!”

My brother was all nervous trying to be super sneaky to take pictures of Kanye when I finally look at who he was taking pictures of. It was none other than Chance’s brother, Real. MY FUCKING BROTHER CONFUSE KANYE WEST WITH REAL! This is not the first time my brother confused celebrities, he once thought Jason Schwartzman was Justin Long and interviewed him about his Mac commercials….

Some quick research informed me that Real died earlier this year. I never got pictures of him and I am sure my brother deleted the ones he got when he thought it was Kanye.

On my hard drive, I only have one folder of Kanye, though I saw him more than 5 times. He was always a douche, even attacking one of my best friends from Los Angeles on 9/11 (2008), smashing his camera. I quit my job before he started dating Kim (or around that time), so I am glad I was not there for the whole North West baby and shit. His pictures were virtually worthless before he started dating Kim, sometimes I would ignore the tip that Kanye was in the airport. Many times I didn’t never bothered to take his picture, much less save them on my hard drive, except this one time that my friend Kat followed me for a day for a college assignment.

This one time, Kanye was nice, way too nice. He was so nice, that it was weird and felt completely fake. Of course it happened after his 9/11 incident, so he had to play it cool at the airport. These pictures were taken on March 10th, 2009 outside Terminal 2 (Air France flight I believe). He kept telling us to take picture of his shoes and then stood there awkwardly….The first picture is by Kat, you can see me taken the other pics on the left of the frame.