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POPEYES

Want Some Popeyes?

I Randomly got a call from Pacsun, a very popular clothing store, and the manager had told me she was looking to hire more people and found my application. The funny thing is that I turned in that application about six months before hand so I had lost interest awhile ago. I simply told her that I already had a job working at Mod pizza. This place was paying me 10.50 an hour and for an 18 yr old boy that’s a gold mine so I definitely wasn’t looking for opportunities at the time. But she really couldn’t take no for an answer and insisted to come for an interview just to see what would happen. Even after telling her it would be a big issue scheduling shifts for me, she still insisted for me to come in just to be interviwed. apparent she was desperate for associates. Considering this was basically a guaranteed position and generous discounts to all their clothes I said to her: “Fine, ill come in for an interview”. I mean hey, maybe I’ll Get to meet some new people.We finish the Interview and I would say I had a blast meeting the store manager and was excited to meet the rest of the team in the upcoming staff meeting. I looked forward to it seeing that this was going to be the most fun ill be having all year. It was the middle of June and I had just got done failing the hell out of yet my second semester at NOVA. I wasn’t doing much outside of school even when only being enrolled as a half time student in the spring. I couldn’t land a decent paying job . I was at the age where I wanted to have fun but had no money and little friends. In the summer time, That isn’t a good place to be in. I quickly I took this job as an opportunity to socialize and make friends. Making friends can usually lead to a bigger picture, and the fact I had horrible luck with females for the past two years made me a little more eager to make something out of this. To be honest, I think that’s actually why I took this job. Given the fact that it only paid minimum wage didn’t really kill the mood because my schedule would only allow me to work a day or 2 at the most per week.Being an associate at pacsun also gives you access to great discounts off the store I attended the staff meeting and not only was I excited to make friends, but I was excited to see who were the friends I would make. I was 18 and single so working with a staff consisting of girls my age and my taste in just about well, everything, got me pretty excited. Not only were they pretty cool people but I got to admit, they were gorgeous! I didn’t interact with any of my new team members that meeting untill my I got scheduled for my first shift working an over-night floorset. Floor sets aren’t regular day shifts working with sales and customers. Its basically rearranging the store, building new shelves, and changing displays around for brands to showcase their new collections working with less than half of the total staff. But for me, it was also a chance to for some 1-0n-1 time with a lucky someone. Who it would be though, I had no clue.I arrive just a good ten minutes before the store closed for the day. The staff arriving for floor set settled down by the cash counter and some bringing food for the long night shift ahead of us. I sit to the side of the crowd because I haven’t got to know them yet, and also because of my slight social awkwardness. All of a sudden, a young, golden skinned Middle eastern girl, with possibly the most luscious waves of hair you could see, turns around and says“Hey, you want some of my popeyes?”. I’ve had zero luck with girls ever since my last break up about a 2 years prior to this moment, so I did not see this gesture as any kind of move and immediately panicked in my head. “No, im good but thanks!” I regrettably said as my stomach continued to growl.I always had this issue with anything that has to do with food in front of girls so I try to stay away from eating in front of them because I actually do believe I am fat. The irony of this is that she had no shame on punishing her 3 huge pieces of thighs and devoured all her fries,literally within a couple minutes. At that moment I knew she wasn’t any ordinary girl. After thaT generous offering, she was the only person who gave me any attention all night during the shift. We talked just about the whole shift and even built an entire display board together. At the end of the night, I got her snapchat and continued to talk to her going forward. To be honest, this went better than I expected.As i was frequently talking to her I realized she turned out to be a lot like me. The more Igot to know her the more we got close. It was so perfect that we both had issues with our love life and we quickly knew that maybe we should give each other a shot at love. I can honestly say that it was a very wise decision because we have both learned a lot from eatch other up until the present time. We have been making tons of memories through out the duration of our relationship and I am happy to say that July 28th, 2017, will be our year anniversary.

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DAMN.

DAMN was exactly the first word that came out of my mouth after listening to the album when it dropped. Kendrick Lamar is a rapper who comes from Compton LA. Growing up in a city where gang violence and drugs is your regularly scheduled program, the average black man was expected to be institutionalized and confined to the expectations that society gave people of color. The expectations consists of living in the streets, gang banging, jail, violence and murder. It was just to easy for people like him to get carried away with the surrounding influences and end up amounting to almost nothing. But Kung-Fu Kenny found something special, more like a gift.In high school, he began going to the studio and making music. People around him praised the fact he was staying away from the streets and doing something useful. “Stay in the studio bro” is what he always heard. Listening to the positivity soon paid off when he rose to the top 5 rappers in the early 2010’s with notable albums like “To Pimp a butterfly” and“Untitled”. Now, Kendrick Lamar has released his best album yet and probably the album of the year of 2017 when he dropped DAMN.Kendrick Lamars style of rap is lyrical, classic hip hop flavor. He tends to flow with complex rhymes and surprising punch lines. You can also classify his lyricism as poetic or storytelling. A good example of that is in the song “FEEL.” And “FEAR.” In most of his work, you can hear the soul and rhythm put in each beat. But in his latest album, “DAMN.”, he adds a twist of new age rap/trap music this type of rap can be described as a generic upbeat tempo consisting of primarily electronic sounds. rather than a slower tempo old school “Boom bap”beat. Some examples of new age rappers are people like “Lil Uzi Vert” and Lil Yachty”. but again, Kendrick doesn’t lose his vision and manages to keep his image in a new project. A good example of this are in the tracks “DNA” and “XXX”, where you can easily tell he switched it up a little bit but still managed to keep his vision of staying true to his original sound.K-Dot comes with fire in all of his songs. but where I think he lays down some pure gold is when he creates classic hip hop sounds or AKA “Real hip hop”. A way to visualize the sound of real hip hop would be a constant flow of words and punchlines, with unique lyricism over a hip hop beat that has more of acoustic sounds to it, rather than a pure electronic sound.Surprisingly, he doesn’t have many tracks representing this idea on his new album, but he did it best with what I think is his best song of them all titled “DUCKWORTH”. This song sticks out tome because it really is a representation of what “Real rap” sounds like. You could easily say this track could hold up a long with some other successful tracks from the late 90’s, Early 2000’s.Aside from what his songs sound like, lets get into his talent as a rapper. Kendrick Lamar uses his life experiences growing up in Compton to tell a story about his life and to push others to be great no matter the strong surrounding influences. In a way, you could say he is a storyteller kind of rapper. Going back to the song DUCKWORTH, this song is about how His father came close to getting killed in a robbery by the guy who would later be the founder of Kendrick Lamars label he is signed to right now. His songs aren’t just about experiences in his life, he also teaches lessons and sends messages. He represented this vision on his older album TPAB in the song “You aint gotta lie”, where he explains you don’t have to act hard to be cool. However in this album, he teaches us a lesson in the song “XXX” where he explains that your friends and family are sacred, you should have no mercy on anyone who dares to lay a finger on them, at least that’s his way of thinking. “I’ll trip a n**** then throw the blower in his lap, walk myself to the court like B**** I did that!” is the one line where that main idea is basically expressed.DAMN. Has already reached platinum status in less than a month after being released in April 14th, 2017 beating Drakes most recent album “More Life” in platinum status and total sales. However this isn’t Kendricks’ first big accomplishment. His very first album “Section .80”has officially reached gold status as well. In my opinion, Kendrick Lamar is possibly the greatest active rapper alive right now and the numbers are speaking volumes of his talent. Whether you want to get hype before a game or sit down and listen to some intellectual vibes in the form of poetry, Kendrick Lamar is the go to artist for just about anyone with a good ear for music. Don’t believe me? I recommend you sit down and listen to the entire album once, you will not regret it.

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Bye Bye Howard 

On July 22nd 1997, I was born in Los Angeles, California. It was in a hospital by the name of “City if Angels”. My brother and I were the first generation of my family to be born in theUnited States. of course, as a newborn baby you don’t feel the pressure being a first born U.S.citizen and having many opportunities provided to you for just that. My family originates from the country of El Salvador so coming to the states, My family didn’t have an entire life plan forus. Back home, there isn’t many opportunities to live a dream of sustain a family. The good thing is my family was able to live in the US for several years before my brother and I were born. Achieving high school diplomas and my dad being the first with a college degree, they atleast had the knowledge to guide us growing up but what we wanted to do with our lives were up to us. My parents had no idea what we would become as adults. All I know is that when I was born, my dad wrapped me in his old jersey to take me home.One day when I was 2 years old, my dad brought home a toddler sized blue uniform and a ball that looked like it had spots on it. I started throwing it in the air and he quickly disciplined me to never touch that kind of ball with my hands again, and I didn’t know why. As soon as he put the ball at my feet, it never left. It felt too right. A few years later when I’m able to endure a little more intense exercise, I began playing at my church’s little league. The only practice I’ve ever had was watching my dad play at my local field where the play pickup just about everyday. That and playing with the ball on the sidelines getting some touches. Going into my first season, I actually knew how well we would do because my team consisted of some of my cousins and my coach was my dad. We were probably the only group of people who were into soccer and had a competitive edge. The other kids were random families with nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than be here to have fun, but we didn’t come to fuck around. My team single handedly beat every team with a sweep of at least 5-0 every match and of course, we went undefeated. We would do this for a couple of seasons and at this point. My dad knew we were ready to step it up a notch and play in a real league, with better kids.Shortly after a few seasons, I moved on to play house league in my area. I played for Reston but for an age above me so that I could get better and get more aggression quick this way, and I had continued to play in this league till I was in middle school. I had a few good seasons here and a few bad ones there but that was primarily because I wasn’t always with the same players. My dad was my coach every season in house and we even managed to get more of my family to play for my team. We were pretty good! We went undefeated one season and had mediocre ones as well. All that mattered was I got to have fun and play with people who actually played a game of soccer. The thing about house league was that I was good but the competition wasn’t that hard. So again, I continued to search for a challenge There is a more competitive version of this league and people call it “Travel”. I joined this level of competition at around 8th grade not because I wasn’t good enough to play at a higher level before, it was mainly because these travel teams costed several times more than house league teams and we couldn’t afford near $500 registration fees. The reason for this is because the players are better and the training is more developmental. This kind of league is for players who are just a cut above the rest and have potential to be great players. I started out at the very low level because I was new to the competition. Then there’s my brother, who has already played on the top division of his league as a keeper for about a couple years before I came up. My brother is a little over a year older than me and he was the one making noise with his talents. Always being a starter on every team and always being wanted by others. I eventually got up to his level in high school but he was still the one putting stats on the board and being a productive member of his teams.So in high school we ended up playing varsity together by the time I was in my junior year. The year before we had one our first district championship but I wasn’t pulled up to varsity until the district tournament. My goal after high school was to play college ball somewhere because I did not want my passion to die. The cutoff age for club is usually u-19 so once you’re in college there isn’t that many clubs to play for. My brother managed to get a scholarship to a D2 school in West Virginia by the name of “Alderson Broaduss University”, but due to some coaching issues he returned after one semester and continued his academics at nova. When my graduation came around my brother had mentioned that NVCC actually has a few NJCAA sports team and he was talking to the head coach of the soccer program to tryout for the upcoming fall season. I did not hesitate to email the coach immediately and before you know it we both had our little tryouts in the preseason and without a doubt we were once again on the same team but this time, we wanted to accomplish something.Let me give you some insight on the soccer programs history: The school has been in the NJCAA for only 4 years, every year the team has ended with a negative record and the losses were complete blow outs losing games 7-0 and 8-0. It was hat bad. The weird thing is going into the new season, the new players didn’t have that losing mentality being that we were a fresh squad and we had a lot of talent. I didn’t think I would perform well in college ball but I proved my self wrong on the very first game. The first game we played was against Hagerstown CC,where I scored my first college goal and played possibly my best game of my life. Not only was that a turning point in my career as a soccer player, but it was also a wake up call to this team.Every single JUCO team is expecting an easy game every time we play them because of our history, but we didn’t let that define us. For example, We lost 4-0 last year to Cape Fear CC from north Carolina and this year, they were struggling to break the 1-1 tie at half time. Some of their players were seemingly frustrated and confused shouting to the other players “How are we tied?! They fucking suck! We should be beating them!” and no, I did not make that up. By just over the middle of the season, I scored a handful of goals and we managed to keep our record positive. By doing this, It was clear that we sent a message to all Teams that we are not the old Nova you’re used to, we are the new Nova Nighthawks.We approach the end of the season and at this point we still held a positive record. Now the last part of the season is the regional tournament. In the programs history, the team never made it passed the first round. Well guess what happened, we won our first game and moved on to the quarterfinals with Howard CC. before I get into how this game went, just know that The past couple of games my performance seem to decrease and coach wasn’t playing me for nearly whole games so without surprise he sat me for this game which was very hard to deal with knowing I could contribute to something. If we win this game we move on to semis,something Nova has never done before. This game was immediately tense at the beginning because everyone knows what was on the line. It was a good game with end to end action and little by little, both teams were scoring. It was 1-0 us, then it was 1-1. Out of no where it was 2-1 then 3-1 in their favor. Then out of nowhere after half time we got ourselves together and scored 2 goals and tied it up 3-3. Up until the 90th minute it was a battle to see who wanted it the most but neither team could prevail.We are now in extra time and coach still has not decided to put me in the game. At that point, I nearly gave up on my chance to go in and put my faith into my team because if the result holds we would go in to PKs, and nobody likes having to settle matches that way. extra time is on and we are still battling but not executing anything. Coach was running out of tactics and losing hope of winning with time on the field. The first half of extra time ended and when we all huddled up to talk game plan the unexpected happened. “Joe, you’re going in for second half of OT, lets put it away yeah?”. I could not have been more prepared to go in, I had fresh legs and hungry for a win. with extra time only being 10 minutes per half, I did not expect something big to happen because its very rare for someone to come in and change the game in 10 minutes. It was about 3 minutes left before we settled this in PKs and both teams were starting to accept the fate of the match. But, out of nowhere my team mate/Midfielder named Elvis passes a ball down the line to one of my strikers, his name was romain and he was a player who came all the way from france to be at Nova. He takes it near the end lime and plays it into the middle of the field where I was and I was dead in front of goal but with a defender in front of me on my back, I was facing away from my target. I quickly dropped my shoulder and went left to the near side of the goal and powered it low and hard in the goal. We did it, we beat Howard and moved on to the semifinals. We didn’t win the whole tournament but we did make history. We went out of that game with a positive record in the books, and the first time the team has ever made into the semi finals of the regional tournament. It felt really good to be a part of something and make history. I learned a lot about myself and the sport. One thing I learned is that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, anyone can do great things with the right passion. And by the way, there’s a highlight video of the entire game on youtube.

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Picture by Renee Neoh.

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Yeezy 350 V2 Core Black Red.

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Common Projects.

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NMD Custom by Randy The Cobbler.

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Picture by Oki-Ni.

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Represent.

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LV x Supreme is actually happening. (Picture by @ @rod.muller on IG.)

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fog for Pacsun.

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If there’s one thing I really know, it’s how to make pizza. Since July 1st 2016, I began working at a fast casual restaurant called “MOD pizza”. MOD is a pizza place that specializes in 11 inch not-so-thin crust pizzas. you choose the size and from there you can add whatever you want starting from the sauce and cheese, yes the toppings are unlimited. Coming to MOD and having no line/cook experience, I knew I was in for a wild ride seeing that the business is usually booming at each store and the squad members are always moving in a fast pace. I feel like each position you are trained in you can pretty much teach you self because the mechanics are self explanatory like using the dough press or ringing up customers. But the one thing I knew I would actually learn that would require a unique approach and a touch of art, is assembling the pizza itself.At each MOD store, there is usually a top dog on one of the positions. You might see someone who is the best at cooking with the oven, or someone who’s good at expoing the pies,which is basically giving the pizza to the customer. But what I really love about making the pizza is that nobody really puts a spotlight on the assembly line people. All the love, precision, and execution starts from a well assembled pie. So of course, what’s really making the money is the pizza. And the one thing that keeps customers coming back is the concept of creativity with their order, and the pure deliciousness of each individually crafted pie.Anyone can plop tomato sauce on a flat sheet of dough, throw some cheese on it and send it down the line to move on to the next person. But what makes someone a good pizzaiola is treating each pie with love and detail. How pizza is started at MOD, you must first grab the dough skin off the rack and set it in front of you. There are a variety of sauce bases to choose from but most people prefer the standard red sauce. Now here is where it gets technical: How you apply pizza sauce is actually different to what unexperienced pizza makers would assume.Instead of spooning out sauce and pouring it all over the dough in weird directions, the secret is to pour one scoop of sauce directly in the center of the dough. Then use the bottom of the ladle to spread the sauce outwards by moving in a spiral motion from the inside out, leaving about a half inch space around the outside of the dough to form a small crust. Where more people fallout of love with this process is how evenly its spread around the pizza. Most squad members are only concerned with how fast they can get sauce on the pizza rather than how well it was applied. Whenever I’m on sauce and cheese duties, I always make sure there is a smooth even layer of red sauce, and you might be surprised to hear that I’m one of the only member in my store who does that. Even though this is just the saucing part, it’s really important to get the distribution of the sauce correctly because although each pizza is unique, there are certain expectations from MOD that we have to adhere to. One of them is having the correct portions/distributions of all the toppings. But also, that’s the other reason why I love making the pizza,I like seeing the outcome of a pizza that’s made when you actually give it some care. It’snot ALL about speed here if the quality isn’t right.Once the sauce is applied, next is the cheese and toppings. using the giant spoon, you portion out one scoop, then with both hands you spread the cheese from the outside, in leaving a flat surface of ingredients. Now when it comes to the toppings you can never really make a perfect pizza because customers love to take advantage of our unlimited toppings, so they never hold back. But there are certain procedures to evenly distribute the ingredients and not make a huge mess making a mountain: you first start with the flat meats first. Things like salami, Canadian bacon, and pepperoni would be first down so that it wouldn’t be a hassle to put everything else on. Then you ask for anything else like sausages or bacon, and now you move to the veggies. Another thing about mod is to not over stuff the pizza. If a customer wants a lot of toppings, then you simply apply a little less of everything. The key here is to make sure each bite of the slice they have has a little of everything they wanted. One thing I can tell anyone who doesn’t work here is that my biggest pet peeve is someone who chooses to get literally every topping. We get it, you’re hungry bro but you might as well have gotten a salad if you were going ask for every single veggie in our store on to your pizza. Not only is it annoying but the pizza usually doesn’t cook right. If there’s too many veggies and meats there is a good chance the bottom will burn and the pizza will be soggy. That is not something I would be proud of serving.Once everything is assembled on the pizza, it finally goes into the oven but the work isn’t over yet. Cooking the pizza is very important because there is a certain color you want to look for on the crust and pizza itself. keeping the bottom from burning while maintaining other pizzas in the oven requires a bit of practice and skill. Once the pizza comes out, you want to have a nice golden color on the outside and a slightly dark but crispy bottom. You’ll know what a perfectly cooked pizza sounds like when you cut through the pie and you can hear crispy crunchiness along every slice you make. The reason why I know I can make pizza is because I always get amazing feedback from my customers and I also haven’t been fired yet… so I guess that’s a good sign!!!