Now, more than ever, Americans aren’t happy with the way this country works.  The constitution has become a joke, political parties have long forgotten what they once stood for, and bit by bit, our freedoms are being taken from us under the false idea that putting the government in control of our lives will protect us from terrorism.

Four years ago, I didn’t feel like I could make much of a difference.  What does my vote matter?  I’m one of millions.  My vote will get swallowed into the sea of all the other votes, and won’t even make a dent in the political machine.

Four years ago, I was also a big fan of George Bush.  “Just wait,” I said.  “We’ll find those WMD’s.  We’ll stabilize the Middle East and all you naysayers will feel stupid for not believing.”  Well, thanks for making me look like an asshole, Mr. Bush.  As time goes by, I watch this power hungry administration grope for more control over the citizens of the United States.  I watch the cries of outrage over the state of illegal immigration and healthcare fall on deaf ears.  I have a hard time finding even one thing that has come out of Washington recently that has improved the quality of life in America.

I used to earnestly believe that Bush was a better president than Clinton was, but my God, I’d rather have a president who screws his intern than a president who screws his country.

And perhaps it’s this resentment that makes me feel like I finally can make a difference.  We can all make a difference.

If you’re at least 18 and you’re not registered to vote, go register.  As soon as possible.  Make room in your schedule tomorrow and go do it.

If you’re not yet old enough to vote, raise awareness.  Kill the apathy that lives inside your friends and family.  Spread the word about what you believe in.  You are not useless if you can’t vote. 

And this goes for everyone:  Stop playing Halo 3 for two seconds.  Read.  Learn about what issues we face as a society today.  Learn about what each and every one of the 2008 candidates stand for.  Look through the bullshit that the mainstream media shovels at us.  There are things much more important than Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Brad Pitt at stake right now.  There are more candidates in the race for president than Rudy, Romney, Clinton and Obama.

I don’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, or a pirate.  Register to vote.  Attain the knowledge to vote for what you believe in.  Raise awareness about what you believe in.  Vote.

It’s been an interesting half-week, to say the least.

Jessica and I were down in Chino Hills for my sister’s graduation. At 11:08 PM, we were heading north on the 210, doing 70 in the carpool lane. There’s a section of the freeway, right near the Miller plant, where it pulls hard to the left, causing the center divider to block the view of the left lane more than a fistful of meters ahead. As we came around this bend, my eyes focused on two thin slits of orange. A couple seconds later, my brain finally realized what I was looking at. There was a car facing us in our lane with its headlights off.

I immediately pulled hard to the right. The front-left portion of my truck connected with the front-left corner of the backwards car. The airbags deployed, and Jessica’s half-full Chik-fil-A cup exploded. Jessica screamed as we flew past the other car, scraping sides along the way. I struggled to regain control of the truck, turning the steering wheel in response to the movements of the truck, but when the front wheels finally regained traction against the road, we pulled hard to the left, smashing straight back into the center divider.

There was a moment where nothing moved. I was stunned. The CD player, having skipped as a result of the collision, came back on, jolting me from my daze. I turned the volume down and asked Jessica if she was alright, to which she replied, “My leg hurts.” It was then that I really became conscious of the smoke. As a result of the airbags deploying, the cab was filled with thick, white, putrid-smelling smoke. I suppose it’s a human survival instinct, but the only thing I wanted to do was get away from it. I tried to open my door, but it was stuck.

Swiveling in my seat, I was able to kick it open with my left leg. As I was about to slide out of the truck, I realized that the engine was still running. I reached around the steering wheel, and pulled the key out, killing the engine.
Standing outside, the first thing that I noticed was a big chunk of my chrome rim laying next to the center divider. Glancing over at the front left tire, I found that it had shattered into three or four pieces. The tire was flat, limply draped over what was left. The truck itself had come to rest with the back end in the carpool lane, and the nose sticking out into the next lane over. Turning back to the truck, I encouraged Jessica to hurry out of the cab. She was fishing around on the floor for her shoes, as she had taken them off earlier. She slid out of the truck and wrapped her arms around me. We checked ourselves for injuries; Jessica’s leg was throbbing, but I was fine, aside from a bump on my arm where I had hit the steering wheel.

I’m not sure why my first instinct wasn’t to call 911. I instead called my mother. Several seconds into dialing, I remembered that she had taken my younger sister to a movie, and probably wouldn’t pick up. I canceled the call and dialed my dad. He picked up, and I began telling him what had happened. As I was talking to him, I left Jessica sitting on the center divider and went back to the open truck door to try to make sense of the mess inside. Suddenly, I heard screeching tires, and Jessica began screaming bloody murder. In another half-second, my phone was wrenched from my hand and my world was spinning inside-out.

What had happened was this: A second car had come around the very same bend I did, and swerved hard in an attempt to miss colliding with the first car. It smashed into a third car in the next lane over, and ended up being launched into the air. Jessica had looked up just in time to see the vehicle, turning over in the air, falling straight at us.

Jessica launched herself over the center divider, into the southbound carpool lane, to avoid being crushed. The car flew into the back of my truck, shattering the rear axle (that’s hardened steel), launching the whole truck forward, and tossing me into the air like a rag doll. Jessica turned back around to see me on the ground, and burst out into tears, fearing that I had just died.

I was only out of it for a couple seconds. I immediately jumped back up, and ran over to Jessica. It was then that I realized that I had been injured much more in the second crash than in the first one. My left knee felt like it was bleeding (though I couldn’t really tell through my jeans), both my arms felt bruised and pulled, and it felt as if I had been sucker punched in the stomach.

It wasn’t until I looked over and saw the upside-down car behind my truck that I started to realize what had happened. I let go of Jessica and ran over to the car just as the driver was opening his door. I helped both him and the passenger out of the car and asked if they were alright. Surprisingly, no one seemed to be badly injured.
It was then that I realized that I had been on the phone, mid-sentence, with my dad when the second car hit the truck. I told Jessica to call 911 and I began searching the ground where I had landed, and after a few seconds, located my phone. The screen was cracked and the case was more beat up than it had been , but it was still working. I called my dad back, let him know where we were, and he started on his way to find us.

Within a few minutes, the emergency lights were visible heading our way. Suddenly the scene was swarming with at least a dozen firemen, half a dozen paramedics, and six or seven police officers. The freeway got shut down immediately. Everyone was asked if they wanted to go the hospital, but no one did. It was minor scrapes and bruises all around.

The tow trucks arrived within ten or fifteen minutes. My truck, with the front left wheel gone and the rear axle in multiple pieces, had to be dragged off the freeway. It was a sad moment. That truck and I had been through a lot together. Hauling film equipment hundreds of miles, taking girls on dates, week-long road trips. I realize that it’s only a truck, but as Serrita put it afterward: “It fit you so well.” That truck and I were a team. And I was robbed of my partner by some idiot who couldn’t drive and thought it would be a terribly wonderful idea to drive without his lights on.

I do understand, though, that it’s better that there’s one less vehicle in existence than one less human in existence. And I’m still here. Life’s going to have to try a little harder than that to get rid of me just yet. I’m not done here.

I was out and about on Monday afternoon, running some errands with Jessica Honeycutt, when I received a phone call from Steven Green.  Steven had just read that Linkin Park was holding a surprise signing for the release of their new album, “Minutes To Midnight”, at 8 PM in Los Angeles, at a store called “SURU”.

A few hours later, Jessica and I arrived at Fairfax High School, just down the street from SURU.  Hurrying down the sidewalk, we were shuffled into a long line by some event staff.  The way things were to go down were as follows:

-We were to follow the line into the SURU store to purchase the album and receive a wristband.
-We were to then get into a second line for wristband-holders only.
-At 8PM, Linkin Park would arrive and would sign CD’s purchased by anyone with a wristband.

And so Jessica and I began our wait.

All kinds of crazy people showed up.  Little kids, teens, moms, dads, old women, rockers, punkers, rappers, blacks, whites, Asians…

I was soon very glad that we arrived when we did.  The line backed up behind us fairly quickly.

Here you can see the two lines.  The one on the left is for the people still waiting to buy the CD and on the right are the people who have already received their wristbands:

Finally, we inched up to the entrance of the store:

There were a bunch of really cool sidewalk-chalk drawings on the ground in front of the store.  This was my favorite:

We finally made it inside the store.  The store clerks were running around like crazy, trying to get people through as quickly as possible.

Suddenly, amid all the people running around like heads with their chickens cut off, I caught of glimpse of…  Chester Bennington?  Indeed!  Linkin Park’s lead singer was in the store, being interviewed by man with a camera much larger than my own.

Chester was swallowed up by the crowd again, and Jessica and I purchased our CD’s, got our wristbands, and left the store to join the second line.

It was about this time that Steven and Dan Freeman showed up.

The two boys started their routine ridiculousness, telling stories of bathroom encounters with strange men, Vegas adventures, and near-death experiences.  Jessica’s face remained rather consistent during all of this:

After the sun had completely disappeared, I took notice of the Scientology building across the street:

Not too long after that, a woman walked over from the building with a bunch of Scientology newsletters and started handing them out to everyone.  And by “handing out to” I mean “shoving into the hands of”.  When Steve attempted to hand it back, the woman jumped backward quickly yelling, “WHY?!”

As time crawled along, everyone got increasingly restless:

The ridiculousness of Dan and Steve continued:

Jessica’s M&M’s kept us from starving to death:

Dan solicited a salad from a nearby restaurant, but then proceeded to drop his fork, and thus resorted to eating it in much the same way as a dog drinks from a toilet:

Finally, our line inched back into the store, and there they were.  Linkin Park was seated at a long table, signing CD’s as people passed by.

I set my CD down on the table, and one by one, the band members signed it, shook my hand, and passed it along to the next guy.  I thanked each of them individually along the way.

My CD is the one almost touching Chester’s pinky in this shot:

The guys were making all sorts of crazy faces at everyone’s cameras:

After passing by the table, we were escorted through the back of the store, where our wristbands were cut off (I assume so as to prevent anyone from handing it off to a friend, allowing them to get something signed without acutally buying anything).

Jessica and I made our way back to the high school and began the drive home, listening to Linkin Park’s new album.

There are a couple things that I observed during the sixty seconds I was at the signing table.  All six of them are kind of small.  None of them are tall guys, and they’re all very thin and scrawny.  Brad, the guitarist, especially.  I sort of felt like I was going to break his hand while I was shaking it.

The other thing I observed was that out of all six of them, Rob, the drummer, was easily the most gracious out of all of them.  He was the only one I felt had no ego whatsoever (though none of them were being cocky or anything), and I felt like he was the most appreciative of all the fans.  He just came across as being very humble.

The whole day was pretty sweet.  I wasn’t expecting to meet my favorite band when I woke up Monday morning.  I suppose that’s one thing I can remove from my things-to-do-before-I-die list.

The older I get, the more ridiculous I find it that my parents had their honeymoon in Las Vegas.

No offense, mom.