Quitting Time!

My Road to 5K is over, for now. I could handle the shin pain and the shin guard really helped. But the knee pain was getting to be to much. I officially threw in the towel today. I'm hoping to pick up a treadmill and pick back up where I left off. Or maybe a gym membership is in order. We'll have to wait and see. But first I need to sell my Monte Carlo. booo!

Just Another Day at Work

As the Shop manager for Tattoo Revolution I always have to come up with interesting ways to get the shop name out there. Of course having a friend like Lowlife Mike makes it easier for me, because after all he has a great talent. I knew that Mike liked getting tattooed so I figured why not use his talents to help us out, and help him out at the same time.

I asked Mike to help me make some clips and so far we've made two. The first was a clip for Marc Jackson; it was a hand Tattoo. On 2-23-11 he came into the shop to do the second clip and had Aaron Funk tattoo a portrait of his daughter on his ribs. It was about a four hour process and we filmed the whole thing. We did take it a step further and did it live also. Sure, it wasn't as awesome as we envisioned but we learned a crap load of things through the process. First we learned that we need to turn the audio on and we should probably use a station that has a better vantage point for placing the cameras.

Aaron Funk doing work!

The finished product. (picture courtesy of Lowlife Mike)

Aaron Funk Portrait on Ribs teaser clip 

Marc Jackson, Tattoo Revolution hand tattoo

Check out some of the shots from the shoot and I'll be sure to post the video when it's finished. And be sure to stop by Tattoo Revolution and check out the work we do.

Lowlife Mike Tattoo Revolution Shoot - Photobucket

BREAK DOWN THE WALLS.

Banksy is in town! The dude is amazing, follow the link below to read a great blog on his impact.

BREAK DOWN THE WALLS.

Week 3, Day 2 of Couch To 5K

I'm not going to tell you that today kicked my ass, because you probably can assume that. Today was the first time that I had to stop and take my breath. It was the same jog as a few days ago, the same route and the same weather. I'm afraid that I won't be able to finish the nine weeks. My legs are taking a beating.

I'm not a quitter, so we'll just have to wait and see what Sunday brings.

Today I ran 2.01 Miles in 30-minutes and burned 356-calories.

Gorilla Tactics

Once upon a time in a land far, far away Lowlife Video was founded by Mike Venegas. Those days were before me, and if you ever want to hear that story, buy Mike a beer and let him tell you all about the "Early Shitty Days of Lowlife Video."

When I first met Lowlife Mike, their really wasn't a method to his madness. He already had a site setup and he wasn't really selling too many DVD's online. Most of the sales were through friends he had and people he had met at various shows. Selling DVD's at a show wasn't something that was happening at the time. Times were definitely different then.

Today you go to any given show and you'll usually have a few DVD booths set up, but back in '04 that was unheard of. Selling these DVD's was impossible, I remember people asking if we had them in VHS, no joke! Imagine trying to ask people for $20 dollars for something they'd never heard of or seen. To make matters worse we were selling them out of an old Jansport backpack, or the trunk of our rental car. (Indy Truck Bash 2005) Mike would film and I would walk around behind him with a stack of DVD's in my hand trying to sell them. Sometimes show promoters would even ask us to stop. I can totally understand why, they didn't know who we were or what we were doing, as far as they were concerned we were solicitors. But we didn't give up, we kept at it show after show. Eventually we came up with the term Gorilla Tactics. We would go through whatever means necessary to make a buck even if it meant carrying around a backpack full of stickers and movies.

Unreleased Lowlife Video Artwork circa 2005-ish

Gorilla Tactics came about because a lot of times we were so broke we even had to sneak into shows. (Sorry show promoters) But as a new company we had to do what we had to do.  Nobody was going to give two unknown dudes press passes for a video company.

Somebody had to pave the way, and I'm glad that Mike and I were a part of that.  Lowlife Video wasn't the first, technically, but nobody can deny that it wasn't innovative and ground breaking when it comes to Minitruck videos. And as far as LLV is concerned, I wouldn't count us out just yet, but please, don't send me a million questions asking about the next video, when it's time you'll know.

Who needs a table and a canopy when you can flip a trash can upside down. Believe it or not I sold over 100 DVD's this way in only a few hours.

1000+ Hits!!!

Wow, so in less than one month my blog has already hit more than 1000 hits! I'm super excited and motivated to keep blogging. But what I can't believe is I've only recived two comments lol.

(Don't ask about the monster, I just googled 1000+ hits and it's the first pic i found)

I guess two positive comments is better than negative feedback lol. At any rate, thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed your visit.

Here is a great family photo I wanted to share with you guys before you leave, Enjoy!

And Don't forget. You can email the Mind of Macias at mailto:mindofmacias@gmail.com

Back in the Day with Lowlife Video

How is this for Nostalgic? This is from a shoot with my buddy Dustin or Deebo as he's more commonly known.

This is one of the earliest shoots that I can remember doing with Mike. We were actually in Vegas for the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly weekend show. I think Mike shot some other hot rod stuff this weekend for a video that he started to make that never got released. I actually have the artwork for that video and ill post it up another day. (It has Sabina on it) Let me tell you it's a rough draft but it would have been just awesome.

The thing I remember the most about this shoot, besides the smoking hot model, is this crazy foreign lady that stopped by to take some pictures with the caddies. I think she's actually the reason why we parked them nose to nose and took some shots, but I could be wrong. I just remember she came up out of nowhere hollering about how cool the cars were. She might have been crazy but she left a hell of an impression that I remember to this day.

Check out the links below for a few more pics from that day.

Deebo Shoot - Flicker

Deebo Shoot - Photobucket

Week three, Day one of C25K

Today was tough,  I think I start with that every post about the Couch 2 5K. Today I ran with some new kicks, some Nike's to be exact and they contributed to my first running injury. They killed the back of my right ankle, I'm talking blood and all. But hey; no pain, no glory!

I also ran with the leg wrap today and the only thing is doing is making the shin splint hurt longer lol.

So today I ran/walked 2-miles exactly and burned 356-calories in 30:48.

A Look Behind the Scenes with Lowlife Video.

Ok, so I'm obviously not going to be able to write a blog everyday that pertains to something cool, but because I recently found some cool pictures I might as well share what I got.

While looking through a hard-drive I came up on a folder labeled LLV; it's full of totally random and awesome pictures from shoots and what not. I know I won't be able to post them all, but I did find a few that I will be sharing over the next few months. After all what's the point of blogging if not to share with the world. Now, I'm not much of a writer, more of a talker but I'll do my best not to bore you with thousand word blogs. We'll just get right to the pictures.

The first picture here is from a clip we did for Lowlife Mikes truck that he was building at the time at Bio Kustumz. "Project Lowlife" it was dubbed. I'm not even sure which lowlife it was in, but it might have been Borrachos. Don't quote me on that. We went to Bio Kustumz to shoot that day, actually I think Mike was living there at the time. So I went there. We set up early because we knew we were shooting with a girl that day. This girl (I forgot her name) was a friend of Max Fish the owner of Bio Kustumz, which I'm sure you all know; very pretty girl, but had never done anything like this before. So it was an eventful and long evening.

As the time went on, we decided to test the lighting in the shop so we took our "yearbook" picture as we called it. We actually took about ten, but this one really stuck a chord with me. I don't know what we were thinking, I know we weren't drunk because nobody drinks at Max's house.

The last picture as you can see is the "un-named girl" and Max doing some grinding in the background. I always had a camera in hand in those days so I took about sixty shots that day. I even got some shots of her friend "oiling" her up, (maybe I'll post those later) with some real grease from the shop. So rad! Such a tough job but somebody had to do it. That's it for today, but I'll be sure to post some stuff in the upcoming weeks.

And I'm sorry to say that it won't be all minitruck talk in here, this is a blog after all, but for those of you who have been checking out the blog, be sure to leave a comment and say hello, let me know you stopped by. Thanks and see you soon!

C25K Week Two, Day Three

So I just finished Day three, week two of the Couch to 5K plan. Not as tired as before, but I did take an extra day in between. It really helped two because I've come to the conclusion that the pain on the side of my leg isn't from the way I'm running, rather it's shin splints. Which by the way, are very painful. The good thing is they only hurt for a little bit. I'm going to go to a sporting goods store today and look for a wrap, if that doesn't help then I'll have to stop running. BOOOO!!!!

I really enjoy running but at least I still have my bike. I'll most likely swith to the bike until I can pick up a treadmill.

Today I ran 2.01-miles, in 31-minutes and lost 357 calories.

I'm an Archeologist!

I was digging up an old feature I shot a few years back in an old hard-drive. And I ran into some goodies. I found folders full of photos from days passed, some good, but mostly bad. It's amazing how far digital photography has come.

I found enough pictures to fill this blog up for a year. Of course I'm not going to dump them all in a day but rather a few here and there. The first pictures I wanted to share today is of me and Mr. John O'Neil. I distinctively remember taking this shot. We were shooting Jamie Jordan's feature for Lowlife Video in front of an old gas station. The picture was taken by Yankee from the Georgia chapter of No Regrets. He took several and this was easily the best one. This was the last Showfest in Greenville and this is just one of the memories that I have from that town. I know many people visited the correctional facilities over the weekend. I sure am glad I only visited the sign lol.

5am Photo Shoots!

This morning I woke up at a very early 5:30 am, not because I wanted too, but because I knew I had too. The sunrise was scheduled for 6:33 am and I was shooting not one, but two black trucks. Ever since I set that time, I couldn't stop thinking about one of my all time favorite stories that includes my good friend Mike Alexander from my days at Mini Truckin' Magazine.

This story takes place at my first SEMA as the Associate Editor at MT magazine. I thought that it wouldn't be business as usual for me since this year I was here on a job. Normally I party until sunrise, crash till two or three in the afternoon and hope to catch an hour or two of SEMA. I figured this year, it would be all work, work, work, go to bed early, do photo shoots, and walk SEMA for eight hours a day. But I should have known better. The partying was insane, hanging with Mike only meant more booze than usual. Good times as always and before you knew it, it was easily passed three or four am. Of course, we had stayed up all night and knew the sun was coming up shortly. We finally decided to stumble back to our hotel room which happens to be the same hotel shared by all the Editors of most of the truck publications including the ones we work with. As we were walking in, we happen to run into the guys from another truck publication. They don't look tired and they've got all their camera gear in hand and ready for work. "Are these guys going to work right now?" Is what I'm thinking. A quick thinking and very witty Mike, quickly tells them "Hey guys, good to see you. Off to do some shoots huh? We'll see you there!" I started cracking up in my head. Off to bed we went (separate beds of course) and it was business as usual for us the rest of the week.

I couldn't believe how crazy we were. We were barely showing up for bed, when the rest of the world was off to work. We still managed to shoot all the trucks we had scheduled to do so, we didn't miss a day of SEMA and still managed to hang out with all our old friends and make some new ones. The times I spent at MT mag were simply amazing and the stories only get better and better.

Oh, Man! This diet water sure is good.

When a friend of mine mentioned diet water on Facebook today I about fell over in laughter, I mean i literally "LOL'ld" (is that even a word)

A few seconds later, a simple google search only proved how completely idiotic people have become. First of all the person who made this, thanks for helping ruin the enviroment one more plastic bottle at a time. And second of all to all you idiots that buy it. I hope you choke on it!

C25K Week two, day two

First of all, sorry to all of you newbies who may be expecting nothing but truck stuff here. For now this is my personal blog and minitruck blog site. I probably will split it up at some point, but that will probably be later on.

For now let me tell you that I ran the second day of week two on my way to running a 5K without stopping, and what a day it was. First of all, it's sprinkling outside which made it for an interesting start. I'm not sure if the water slowed me down (I'm sure it didn't) but man, that run was a lot harder today than usually. I found myself having a difficult time breathing and my right leg is burning up. For some reason, I have one muscle that is driving me nuts. I should probably go see a doctor, but who has time for that.

Right now I'm off to RCC to try and see a counselor, which me luck.

Today I ran; 2.03-miles in 30:16. And I burned 360 Calories.

Bring The Noize 2011, Hosted by Art Of Noize

Today I'm officially posting my first show coverage for this blog. Maybe someday I can turn this into a real website and add real coverage. But for now, this will have to do. And what a great show to start with. Bring the Noize, hosted by Art Of Noize Phoenix is the official start of the show season here on the West Coast. The show was held February 13th at Victory Lanes in the Phoenix area of Arizona. No Regrets took about 5-6 trophies or less, I'm not really sure. I was too busy preparing for my photoshoots that I really didn't catch the results.

The show was awesome, it probably had about 300 vehicles and a few thousand spectators. I can easily say this is one of the best shows that I love to go too. The weather is awesome and I love hanging with the AZ No Regrets guys.

Enjoy!

Bring the Noize 2011 Show Coverage, Photobucket

Coverage on Flicker, Art of Noize 2011

2nd Week Day 1 of C25K

I just finished my first day of week two. It just destroyed me, but I'm also taking into account that I was already exhausted from this weekend. Being at a show all day in the sun, with no liquids is killer, then to ride home for 5 hours, get bad sleep and have to wake up and run two miles, is nuts. But I'm so glad I did it. I almost took the day off and that would have messed up my whole routine.

I know that I lack motivation, and that is what is hurting me the most. Everyday I tell myself the reasons why I need to loose weight and so far they have been working. Making excuses is no longer acceptable.

I will admit however that eating healthy while hanging out at a show with a bunch of my friends is really hard. I don't think I tried hard enough but I will make up for it this coming weekend.

for the record, I ran/walked 2.04-miles in 30 minutes and burned 361 calories.

Day three is done!

Ok so I just completed the third day of Couch to 5k and wow. Today I really felt it in my lower back and calves. I was certain that today was going to be easier. I can honestly say that now I'm really looking forward to taking the weekend off.

Today I did 1.9-Miles and burned 337 calories. Thats an improvement of 40 calories and .3-miles. I really hope that on monday I will break the 2-mile mark. It's amazing that in five more weeks I should, if all goes according to plan, be able to do 3-miles without stopping. Wish me luck!

Big Weekend coming up!

Saturday morning I'm heading to the beautiful and sunny state of Arizona for the AON Bring the Noize show. I'm super excited for this show because it's easily one of the best shows on the west coast. We don't have many left so we really have to enjoy them. Me and several NR So Cal guys will be rolling out and I will have my camera ready to go the whole weekend. I also plan on posting my show coverage here.

This weekend I also officially start freelancing for Trucktrends Magazine from Japan. I will also be shooting for their sister publication of Cruisin'. I'll be working with my buddy Mike Alexander on these features and of course I'll post them here after they make press.

Day #2 of C25K

Wow, today I ran the second day of the C25K and it was great but truely exhausting. I ran 1.65 Miles in just over 20-minutes. Geez! I remember being in High School and running a mile so much faster than that, I'm thinking under 6-minutes but I don't really remember that far back (really showing my age). I just know that it was way faster. I can't wait for day three which will be on Friday. The only thing I can't figure out is will I run day four on Sunday or wait until Monday. If I run it on sunday it will be in Arizona as I'll be there for the Art Of Noize show. It would mean I would have to get up really early and I would have to bring my running "gear" with me lol. I'll just play it by ear.

On another note, I have decided that I will be writing Mind Of Macias on here. Mind of Macias was a column I did for Mini Truckin' magazine a while back. It's not often that I have something to say about minitrucks or the scene but when I do, i'll just post it here. As part of doing Mind Of Macias again I also plan to use this blog to run my show coverage. We shall see how this pans out as well.

I'm sore!

So I didn't have time to get to a computer today so this is my first blog from my phone. i ran 1.5 miles yesterday and today I can definitely feel it. I'm still very excited to run again tomorrow.

Today is also the day I officially pick my classes for school again after a huge absence. Times are good.

Couch to 5k day one

Wow, am I out of shape! I just ran/walked my first 20 minutes and covered 1.5 miles. Killer, I can't even beging to imagine covering the 3 miles in a 5k. But then again this is my first day.

The thing that is going to kill me is the fact that I apparently have not ran properly in my shoes. My right shoes sole is wearing on the inside and the outside of my calve was burning really bad on that side. I tried to correct this by walking right but I think it's too late. And of course I'm far too broke to guy buy new shoes right now. I do plan on throwing these mofos in the trash though since they're like 8 years old. Well at least I'll see if I can pull this off and that might give me the motivation to guy and spend the money on some new shoes.

I'm looking forward to eating healthy this week and I'm already excited about Wed. run.

Couch to 5k! Yah Right! well, maybe.

So today I have decided that I am going to start the couch to 5k program next week. I have decided that enough is enough and this unhealthy lifestyle just isn't for me. I'm tired of being tired. The other day my younger brother told my 6 year old that he could beat me at push ups, and by he I don't mean my 16 year old brother, i mean my 6 year old son. The sad truth is he's right. So Im hoping that by the second week in March I will be able to run a 5k without stopping.

Even though I know people don't read this I'm putting it out here in hopes that it will motivate me to do it. I also plan on eating healthier and giving up soda again. Of course Ill be sure to put up some updates of how it's going.

The website with the program ill be using is:

Couch To 5K

The time has come

I have decided to start using my blog as a personal website. What am I going to post exactly, well pretty much anything I like. And please don't point out my bad grammar and punctuation. Trust me, I know I suck at it lol.

The way I figure is I seem to find myself in some pretty interesting situations and places. And I like to share. Feedback is always welcome.

Ernie