Photographer Jeremy Saffer is selling prints of the photo's he has taken of Mitch over the years. Proceeds from these sales will be donated to the foundation as well. These prints can be found here.
The past few days, there have been many wild fires that are burning out of control all around the state. People in several different counties were forced to evacuate their homes as the fires intensified. The fires are suspected to caused by arson, as multiple witnesses said they saw vehicles throwing pieces of burning news paper out of car and truck windows before speeding away.
Here are a few photo's from various news stations of the fires (i do not take credit for these):
The aftermath of one area
Even the areas that were not in the fire's path were affected as smoke covered the sky and ash fell like rain across the state. All day Saturday, the sky put off an eerie copper glow as if a filter hand been placed over the sun. As evening approached, the clouds of smoke became more visible and began to eat the sun, which had turned into an electric red ball. Before the ash fall got bad, I ran out and took a few pictures of the sky where I live (not directly effected by the fires)
The white and grey "clouds" were actually a mixture of smoke and ash.
Later last night, we were watching television when we heard things blowing violently outside and hail hitting our house. When we looked out the windows, we could smell smoke very strongly. The lights began to flicker on and off and we ran to our front door to see what was going on. When we looked out, we saw something bright orange flash a block from us. Fearing it might be another fire, we jumped in our car (I had to wear a mask due to the fast falling ash and my asthma) to see if it was indeed a fire. Luckily, it was just a street light flashing as electricity flickered on and off. During our drive, we saw that the storm had flipped our dumpster, and thrown many of our neighbors dumpster into the street, and someones basketball hoop toppled over. A street over, people were picking up branches that had been ripped from their trees.
The bright side of this storm is it seems to have helped the firemen put out some of the fires, although there are still a few burning today.
Please keep the victims of this tragedy in your hearts, as the coming days will not be easy.
There have been a few things that have happened with the whole Never Shout Never / Christopher Drew/ Bryan Stars situation and instead of updating the previous post, I thought I would just make a new one!
Yesterday Brian Stars posted a video on Youtube responding to the interview
He explains why he chose to go ahead and post the video even though the interview when wrong. He honestly handled it really well, never saying anything negative or derogatory to or about Chris or the Band.
In other news, Christopher Drew was arrested on June 3rd for possession of Marijuana. Once released, he tweeted:
Although it's really not that shocking, it's still sad.
Some of you may or may not have seen the most recent interview that Bryan Stars did with Christopher Drew and Never Shout Never. After watching it, I wanted to get my thoughts about it out.
I'm going to say know that this is my opinion and only an opinion!
After watching the interview, I was very sad and disappointed about the way Chris and the rest of the band treated Bryan. If you are familiar with Christopher and the group you may know that they claim to be about peace and love and loving and excepting everyone. Those beliefs were not demonstrated here. The interview starts and you can tell that they just are not into it at all. It seemed as if they went in with the a bad attitude and an intention to be rude and disrespectful. As the interview continues, the band members are unresponsive and cold.
Christopher then proceeded to tell Bryan Stars that his interviews are a joke and his questions are stupid. He claimed that the entire interview was focused on him and not on the other two members, Taylor and Hayden.
HOLD THE DAMN PHONE SIR
Questions were directed to all 3 of the members. Taylor did respond with somewhat insightful answers, but Hayden was just unresponsive and uncaring. His answers consisted of "yep" "yeah" and "nope".
Bryan Stars interviews are notorious for being silly and entertaining, but that doesn't make them a "joke". He has a style that incorporates both serious and funny questions. Sure, they aren't the most professional interviews, but they are GOOD. They make people smile and they provide this atmosphere that make people favorite musicians and icons seem really down to earth. His interviews are supposed to be FUN. And he really seems to like what he does. He drives long distances just to be able to do these interviews and I find it really sad that his work was met with cruelty. Also, those questions that the band finds so "stupid"? They were submitted by the bands fans....
If they really didn't like the style of the interview, they could have just said no. They've done one with him in the past and it was really good (there is a clip from it at the beginning of the above video). They knew going in what it was going to be like. There were so many more diplomatic ways that the situation could have been handled.
Chris stated that he was only being "real" because they were "real musicians". I'm sorry but there is a difference between being real and being mean.
I really used to look to Chris and the band. They seemed so caring and passionate about what they were doing. And I'm sure they still are passionate for their music. They just seem to have lost that love and passion they once had for their fans. They let their egos get the best of them.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't like him or his music. This is just my opinion about a band that I've been listening to since my sophomore year in HS.
Maybe Chris should remember his roots. He wasn't always a very well known musician. Once upon a time he was just a kid on Myspace and Youtube trying to make a name for himself. Kinda like Bryan....
Hopefully I didn't babble or ramble on to much in this.
As I was looking through Youtube responses, I found one that kinda sums up how I feel about this interview:
