Wipeout!

Recommended listening for this post: the Surfaris, of course! The Tornadoes, Lively Ones and Dick Dale would also be acceptable. Anyway, this piece is out now, for Institutional Investor, for a story on the firing of the Chief Investment Officer of the Hawaii pension fund. What made the firing so remarkable was the fact that no explanation was given as to why Vijoy Chattergy, the CIO, was let go. This in turn created a situation where people jumped to conclusions and the rumors started, rushing in to fill the vacuum of information. Sort of like when you were in school and someone from the office comes into the classroom to get you with no explanation, so everyone thinks the worst like you set fire to the library or flooded the bathroom with a cherry bomb and does that simultaneous, perfectly synchronized "Oooooooooo" when all that really happened is you forgot your lunch at home and your mom came by the school to drop it off.

There was also a spot:

I had a ton of fun with the collage for these. Read the story here. Thank you to Kim, my AD!

Trump Dump

You may, like many people, understandably have Trump story fatigue. If so I apologize, but here are a few recent pieces concerning Trump, his State of the Union, his border wall, and... actually the third doesn't really concern Trump per se, but is definitely affected by his policies, as well as previous presidents' policies. This first was a piece for The New Yorker on the State of the Union:

 It's a collage that refers to both party's views on the condition of the country. For Republicans, it's the "American Carnage" they see as a result of the Obama years. For Democrats, the apocalypse happening in real time due to Trump's presidency. Read the piece here.

Next is an Op-Ed by novelist Luis Alberto Urrea, for the New York Times Sunday Review several weeks back, on Trump's glorious border wall. Urrea makes clear that this project is little more than one giant grift that will suck millions of dollars of taxpayer money and provide little in return (due to the fact that the number of immigrants caught crossing the border illegally is already the lowest it's been in decades). Read that one here.

Here's a view of the page:

And most recently, another Op-Ed for The New York Times from last week, on the fact that immigrants being detained and awaiting deportation are being treated like slaves, forced to perform unpaid labor at the for-profit detention sites where they're held. Fortunately, these practices are being met with lawsuits, and the for-profit prisons have been losing. Read the Op-Ed here.

Thank you to all my ADs on these! Hope to get back to posting in a more timely manner. Stay tuned.

Once Bitcoin, twice shy

I worked with AD Josue Evilla for something for Fortune recently. Josue and I go way back to when he was at the Boston Globe. He gave me many assignments over the years, and has always been a pleasure to work with. Anyway, this story concerns the fact that the U.S. government is sitting on millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, seized after busting smuggling rings and other illegal activities. The problem is that this nest egg is largely hidden from public accounting, and has been mishandled and even stolen from in some cases.

See the article, and a very informative video here. Thank you to Josue!

Better late than never?

Should have posted this- along with several things I plan on updating the blog with soon- months ago. It's been pretty busy around here for a while now, and I've neglected the blog. I try to update my website fairly regularly though, so if you've visited that recently you'll likely have seen some of that work already. Anyway, I received my copy of the American Illustration Annual #36 several months ago. It's a beautiful book, and this year the design is such that you can disassemble it to take sheets out, and rearrange as you please. My piece for an L.A. Times' story on recent film releases was included:

More work to be posted shortly. Stay tuned... same bat time, uh, similar bat channel.