Meet Ben Lean:

This is awesome, perspective is one hell of a thing. The city looks so spectacular and vibrant through his lenses.

This world is so filthy: war, poverty, disease. Why add hate to the mix? I’m not talking about your petty jealousy/envy over what the hotter girl is wearing or the car your girlfriend’s ex is driving while you push a ’94 whatever. Although that’s not cool either, you need to get that in check. I’m talking about that deep seeded disregard for the fact another human being has the same rights as you. The thing deep down inside you that would make you, fight, defame, or destroy another person. Why do we want everybody to be like us, isn’t that just more competition? You don’t have to like everyone or agree with everyone’s opinion but you cannot hate someone for something they cannot change: ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, height, eye colour, face shape, sound of voice etc.

I live by ‘ames siempre’  – love always. Through love of the other greatness can be achieved. Check out the fckh8 campaign. I learned about it on Saturday at a seminar on diversity where radio personality Mike Chalut spoke about the intolerance of homosexuality in areas outside of large cities. This mantra applies to every kind of hate. Let’s abonish it. Check out the Love is Louder movement.

I must take issue with the way some media outlets have reported this story from the very beginning. The misleading headlines are cause for a pause. I understand that on Saturday intial reports were not clear Tuesday, we know he was not the driver but if you read the headline that Globalgrind  and other media outletsjust ran, you would have no idea. If you were new to the story, you would think it was another Brandy incident.

This is TMZ’s headline: Victim Dies After Crash Involving Lamar Odom’s Driver. No confusion there. “Details…(Photos)” incinuates that there are pictures relevant to the story. The picture above is what they delivered.  The picture of Khloe with a big smile on her face doesn’t help the tone either. But for the fact that Lamar was in that car, the story would not have spanned outside of the NY area. But it’s not his crash, if you are in the car with your parents when they have an accident is it your accident? The blame is attributed to the driver.

Other misleading titles:

Lamar Odom Car Accident Leaves One Dead – Gather

15-year-old boy dies from injuries suffered in Odom crash‎ – NY Post

We want the catching headline but don’t go too far.

Now  the question is, how did I know he was an artist? Was it a good guess? Intuition? Or do all successful artists have an innate presence about them? It’s not just the clothes someone wears and how they style their hair. I don’t ask everyone with swag if they are an artist. In my experience, most people with creative and most times public careers exude an air of confidence or importance that draws people towards them. Is this taught from experiences in their careers or lives or is it one of the factors that helped them to get to that position of success in the first place?

In true Twitter spirit, celebrities and the rest of us collectively had a voice/picture to contribute to this topic.

Pop phenom Justin Beiber’s old school (pre-haircut) plank.

New York politician Myers Mermel. I like this one because of his status, his attire, the position of the plank and that the people in the background seem to have no idea or not care.

I’m not surprised to see Flava Flav participating

More celeb plank pics here.

The most interesting planking experiences are the ones done on unusual objects (like between two railings) and in groups, which are probably themost dangerous attempts.

Alicia Keys is set to release the album Songs In A Minor – 10th Anniversary Edition next week. The album features unreleased tracks like Typewriter. When I first heard about this song I was excited for something new from Alicia. Listen:

Sources are saying that Alicia Keys wrote Typewriter in 1997 and simply never released it. She should have kept it in the vault! There is too much going on instrumentally on this track. It detracts from the lyrics, which are OK. It doesn’t feel like one of those songs that grows on you either.

Lifestyle Entertainment is a Toronto based event marketing company headed by one of my great friends. I was recruited to capture the Good Fridays experience on video. This is the promo video for the series of parties that run from June 24 to August 26 this summer.

Run The World singer Beyonce and The Voice judge Christina Aguilera are featured on the double cover of the August 2011 issue of W Magazine.

What strikes me about these covers is how unrecognizable the two are. The angles and what I’m confidently assuming is touch up work are a bit much. Christina Aguilera’s butt is hanging out and all I can look at is her face and what they did to it. When I look at Beyonce, I picture some little black girl looking at that sitting on a magazine rack thinking she’s inadequate because her face isn’t perfectly shaped like that.