LonnyGomes.com

On the night of Friday, December 18th, 2009 it began to snow in the DC metro area. The snow for the entire next day and didn’t stop until night fall. In some areas, more than 20 inches of snow was recorded. At the end of it’s furry, this storm set the record for most snowfall for December in the District of Columbia.

I had the “pleasure” of experiencing this historic event by effectively being snowed in my neighborhood. The buses were down and the Metro soon came afterward and already having 2 incidents with my car in the snow I definitely wasn’t going to be driving! Being that I did most of my growing up in a middle-class New England town where there never was a shortage of snow come winter time, experiencing winter snow storms in the city is truly a unique experience. I had a similar experience in 2003 where I was stuck in New York City in a huge snow storm and one thing I noticed both in DC and NYC is that when the snow starts to fall in the city, so do people’s inhibitions. People forget about their age, about their differences or social standing and all come together to make snowman, slide down hills on improvised sleds, and have snowball fights.

With the advent of social networking and smart phones, collaboration is much easier to achieve. Some people organized a snowball fight to take place on 14th & U. I wasn’t aware of this plan but I happened to be walking on U Street and heard people laughing and screaming in the distance as I approached 14th street. It was actually quite a site and I took part in one “battle” for a bit which was timed based off of the red lights. About 10 or so minutes after I left the scene, a few of the “snowballers” threw a snowball (or two) at a hummer driving by. The driver got out of the car and proceeded to show his gun. He didn’t point it at anyone but the gesture definitely was an abuse of his power.

The one thing I do feel that many people haven’t been saying in regards to this situation is that the kids really shouldn’t have been throwing snowballs at moving traffic. The cop’s reaction was unprofessional and although it may fly in the hood, it’s not gonna work with the U Street crowd who are armed with iPhones and youtube accounts! Below is footage from the incident. After the detective pulls out his gun there is a kid that still nails him in the face with a perfectly placed ball of snow!

Despite the snowball fight incident, it was beautifully refreshing to see DC covered in generous layers of white fluffy stuff. For that one day, the snow covered the harsh realities of life and for a moment brought joy to an otherwise politically charged and divided city. Below I captured some images and video of the snow storm, or as it was referred to on Twitter, the #snowpocalypse of ‘09.
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It’s sad really … www.lonnygomes.com has sat dormant for quite a while.  Since my last post I  have gotten side tracked with moving, getting my car stolen, getting locked out, having my apartment flooded … the list goes on.

In the midst of all the drama I have gotten a few things done.  I’ve made a mix tape, done some demo recordings and started research in developing applications for the iPhone.  I’m going to work at being better with updating my site with upcoming projects so stay tuned!

It is almost 2 AM and my friend Jerald and I are ready to brave the cold and the estimated crowd of 2 million to experience the Inauguration of our 44th President.

The plan is to head to DCA (Reagan National Airport) to pick up out other friend Ethan.  This is a start of what will be a long day.  By the end of it, our patience will be tried and as well as our endurance to the elements.

I will be making periodic updated throughout the day and I will also be trying to capture much of the experience on video.

Today I watched the Martin Luther King Jr. “I have a Dream” speech.  The King foundation allowed CNN to rebroadcast the speech at noon today.  I never actually saw the footage in it’s entirety, and I found it very interesting.  Much of the b-roll footage showed the diverse crowd of people who were in attendance, and in the background the weathered visage of honest Abe looked on.

I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial several times — often playing tour guide to those visiting DC — but never really stopped long enough to think of all the history that has taken place on it’s steps.  Yesterday, we were watching the free pre-inauguration show, which took place on the same very same steps.  

Some of the biggest names in politics and entertainment were sharing the steps that King did 46 years before.  It definitely brings another perspective to the monument and the man it remembers.

Today, Soledad O’Brien interviewed a few people who were in town for the inauguration who were also in town August 28th, 1963 to hear Dr. King speak.  Some say, King was the Moses and Obama is Joshua generation.  Continuing with the bible reference, some have even said from the death of King to the election of Obama represented 40 years of walking in the wilderness and it now is time to see the promise land.  I’m not sure if I’m ready to go *that* for with it, but one thing is for sure, I will be in DC tomorrow to share in the experience of history.

A couple years ago, I made a “tribute” mix to MLK … it’s actually more a commentary on freedom.  It’s a bit long (about 10 minutes), but check it out when you get the chance.

I haven’t made many posts since I’ve gotten back from the Caribbean.  Between that time, I’ve gotten input and suggestions from more experienced bloggers in efforts to improve my site.

I will be making updates within the next couple weeks, including my inauguration experience so stay tune!

First, I will have to say that I’ve been really bad lately about getting things done. I think I’m still suffering from the lingering effects of PVLS (Post Vacation Laziness Syndrome). I’ll get back into the swing of things hopefully by the end of this week!

Anyway, my parents found some old video footage of us from way back in the day and my dad got this little video camera for Christmas. So putting the two together, some of this footage ended up on you tube! Below is raw footage of my short-lived career as a child rock star. We were it back then, but then my brother and I started to have creative differences and the pressure got to me … I gave it all up!

“Life is just not fair”

Overheard a preppy highschool girl (dressed in North Face and Uggs) saying this while sitting in a Panera Bread in one of the most expensive areas to live in Northern Virginia.

I was just listening to German Hip hop and was actually kinda feeling it.  The group is called “Freundeskreis”, I have no idea what that means and  have *NO* idea what they were saying but it sounded hot.  In some languages, I think hip hop works and in other languages it just doesn’t flow.  For instance, have you ever heard chinese hip hop???  Even in portuguese — which I can understand — I feel that it doesn’t flow as naturally.  But spanish hip hop sounds hot and apparently so do German MCs.  All of this, kinda got me thinking … it’s been a while since I made a “concept mix” and I really want to start doing more of them.

My idea is to mix a song from every continent besides Antartica because no one is trying to make music there!  I haven’t decided if I want to keep the genre strictly to hip hop or if I any music genere from the that part of the world qualifies.  I think I would get a much more interesting sound if the genre restriction isn’t there, but if I just focused on hip-hop I think it would showcase the similarities and differences in the genre around the world.

If I wasn’t so tired and didn’t have to work tomorrow I techincally could make the mix tonight.  I currently have music from every continent (besides Antartica) in my iTunes playlist but much of it isn’t hip hop.  In the end, I think the point of the whole mix will be that, music could be hot even if it’s in another that there are more German bands than Rammstein.  In fact, some Germans do hip hop too!

My commute is typically ~45 miles one way. It sucks, but is rather common for people living/working in the DMV (DC/MD/VA). Traffic is always unpredictable around these parts and this morning’s commute is perfect example. It took me 1 hour and 40 minutes to travel ~45 miles!!!!

I’ve learned to try and not get upset because usually when there is THAT big of a backup, it was due to a serious accident where someone has gotten hurt badly. It’s annoying, but I’m willing to wait (as if I had the choice) for them to do their jobs and help the people involved. After all, it could easily have been me in that position a multitude of times over!

I know this is gonna sound bad, but usually when I’ve been in traffic for that long I want to see fire trucks, parimedics or at least some glass or skid marks on the road. Although I wish no harm or ill-will to anyone, I can at least rationalize why there is so much traffic and convince myself that if this accident didn’t happen I would have already arrived at my destination. The alternative — being that there is *NO* reason for the insane traffic — is not even an option I want to consider! That would mean that there were just that many cars on the road and that’s a far more too depressing scenario.

Well, this particular day there was a reason, and the reason was a cop with his lights flashing on the side of the road. It looked as if he had some white utility truck pulled over. And it was just the 1 truck. If it was due to and accident, I would have figured that the other car involved would have still been there. As soon as we passed the cop, everyone accelerated to their normal speed of 70 mph in a 55 mph zone.

You know, at first I focused my anger at the cop. I mean, people are gonna slow down when they see a cop but by having his lights on it was just encouraging rubber necking. But then I realized it wasn’t the cop’s fault at all. He wasn’t out there threatening people with steep fines if they go over 30 miles an hour … no, it was these voyeuristic people hoping to get a glance at disaster or misfortune that were to blame.

Who knows why they do it. Perhaps it’s an effort to bring excitement in their life, or maybe it’s some self booster where they can feel glad that it’s not them in the predicament. It was *THESE* people that were slowing up my commute! These people to blame! As I was thinking how horrible everyone else is, I caught myself applying a little extra break and slowing up to see what really happened with the cop car and the white utility truck.

I was doing a google search today and came across this article about my brother from way back when he was in college. Back then, he played basketball for Eastern Illinois and he currently is still playing basketball, but professionally in Israel.  In the story, it talks about about his childhood and the writer quoted my brother saying the following:

The Panthers’ junior guard remembers trying to outplay his first tough opponent – his father, Lonny.

And during his seventh grade year while he was living in Windsor, Conn., Gomes got close to defeating his dad.

But, he said, his father wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“Me and my dad always had one-on-one battles in the yard,” Gomes said. “He would foul me and push me; he wouldn’t let me win.”

But the following summer, Gomes’ game got the boost it needed to get him over the top against his dad – a seven-inch growth spurt.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a nicely written article and it was true that by his seventh grade year, he really went to the next level, but *BEFORE* the seventh grade it was a different story, but you wouldn’t know that by reading the article!

The thing that got me was when it says “[Josh] remembers trying to outplay his first tough opponent – his father, Lonny.”

Truth is it wasn’t his *FATHER* but his *BROTHER*! As you can see, from the photo, I started my hooping career while I was still crapping in my pants.

Ballin

The rest of the article was good, like I said it was well written. But what the article DOESN’T mention is about the times I would beat my brother so badly in basketball that I would send him in the house crying. It also *DOESN’T* mention how my baseline fade away was the envy of the neighborhood kids. The article also doesn’t mention how I used to dunk on him at will back in the day. Nope, none of that is mentioned. I mean, yeah … we always tried to beat our dad, I mean what kid doesn’t want to be able to beat his dad in something. But our dad wasn’t his *FIRST* tough opponent … it was his big brother (who happens to be much shorter than him now a days!)

The picture below is from back when we were in Connecticut. I am in the far right in the picture my brother is the one wearing the black Larry Bird shirt (which used to be mine!). The hoop in the background was where history was made. It was a where I ruled –until my brother got faster, taller, and better than me!. I may not be a shot caller but I used to be a baller! So Josh, how about you show me a little love in your next article!

Back when I was a still the baller