ron(ye)

every so often you meet someone who defies your ability to prejudge people.  in reality, you don’t ever want to prejudge, it just happens.  it’s a psyche burp.  sometimes it just slips out.  you’re on/in an elevator.   an old lady in a fur coat with bright red lipstick on her teeth holding a shitzu wearing a ralph lauren sweater (the dog, not the lady) gets on/in the elevator as well.  with barely a moment gone by, you think: oh my dear lord this lady is awful on heretofore unimagined scales.  burp.  excuse me.  but i digress…

i met ronye one day when he was sitting at one of the empty desks at work.  he was talking on his iphone.  i’m not sure we had actually/officially met when ronye came into my office to show me something of note on kanye’s blog.  i don’t remember what exactly he’d showed me, but as it was a kanyeuniversecity special, it could have been anything ranging from an almost-naked japanese girl or a new line of eames furniture to a music or music video recommendation, something to do with animation of the asian persuasion or a new line of wristwatches made from elephant tusk and goldfish eyelashes.

all that matters is this: i met ronye and ronye.  is.  amazing.

here is a picture i took of him this afternoon…

this is a picture i took shortly after.  ronye had said: “did you get my shoes?”  i shook my head and ronye followed: “you gotta get the shoes.  they’re prada.”

if you’re still not sure what you’re reading about, let me elaborate.  ronye is wearing a YSL – that’s yves saint laurent, ladies and gentlemen – top and a gucci belt.  the aforementioned prada shoes, worn for comfort, complement the ensemble, yet pale in comparison to the red, patent-leather ferragamo sneakers that really place ronye way beyond compare.

in case you wanted some more, i emailed him the following questionnaire this afternoon.  this is what we learned…

name: ron

nickname: ronye, ronye east or ronyeezy

favorite food: italian

favorite rapper: kanye west

rap lyric that best describes you: “flossing on a blind man in a broken man’s dream” – 2pac

favorite designer: louis vuitton – we have the same birthday!

strangest fashion purchase: prada backpack

if you could have dinner with three people dead or alive: jesus christ, bruno johnson* and jenna jamison

* i googled bruno johnson. i did this quietly, as i was so sure he was someone that i should know.  i thought i’d figure it out and do a “yeah man, for sure.  bruno johnson.  good call.”  but as i searched and made the educated guesses that it was neither this bruno johnson nor this bruno johnson, i decided to swallow my pride and text ronye.

me: who’s bruno johnson?

ronye: my cocker spaniel.

cool scott

my friend scott and i were emailing back and forth last wednesday.  most of it was about some pretty nerdy sh*t.  i asked him about html and pretended i knew what i was talking about.  he knows i don’t, but he humors me.  scott always humors me because scott is the best.  he is married to monica who is awesome and mexican and pronounces her name MO-nee-kah and has a boy named liam who will no doubt be playing in sufjan stevens’ band before he turns seven.  don’t ask me what instrument he’s going to play, the kid isn’t even nine months old.  that’d be a ridiculous question.  he can’t play any instruments.  but give him time.  he’s gonna be playing sold-out shows in los feliz coffeeshops before you know it.

anyway, my friend mark used to refer to scott as “cool scott” because scott is kind of THAT guy (and mark is really lazy with nicknames).  it came from a combination of things.  scott used to ride his bicycle 15 miles to work, where he’d chop it up IT style until closing, ride home and get to work in his studio where he’d be recording all sorts of things.  scott knows more about music than is really necessary and can wax philosophical about the classics and then hip you to ten bands you’ve never heard of.

last wednesday, as i was saying, scott and i were talking about computer sh*t and he told me about the DARK WAS THE NIGHT compilation.  I told him i’d get to it and, as scott does, he sent it to me just because he thought it was great and he wanted to share the greatness and wanted me to have it as soon as possible.  so this is me paying it forward because scott was, as scott usually is, very right.  this rules!

further…

i once saw scott get invited on stage at the echo, where he was handed a guitar, asked the guitarist what key the song was in, and proceeded to kneel before a monitor and shred.

also…

this is a picture of scott just hanging out on the balcony of a hotel room in buenos aires.  it was my birthday.  it was great having him on tour playing keys overall, but on that day it was extra great.

a lot has changed since this picture.  the most immediate being that we left buenos aires that day.  also, scott stopped shaving.  he moved to a place called mount washington, which i think is like the boca raton of los feliz, silverlake and echo park thirty-somethings and he lives with a cat and his aformentioned wife and child.

if you see scott on the street, introduce yourself.  he’s someone you should know.  he won’t look like he did in south america though and, sadly i don’t have any recent pictures of him in his beard.  so, let’s just say that if you see a bearded version of the man above peering through what may be a farm house, it might look something like this:

…and then say hello.  scott probably doesn’t think he looks like ray lamontagne, but i bet he can tell you all about him.