S T R I P L A N D . Z A C K . H E R R E R A

I think Stripland is a fitting name for Los Angeles, especially the Valley . . . the flat expanse where I grew up. Valley-girl or not, though, I think these photos would remind anyone of someplace they grew up. They remind me of what it felt like to be a newly licensed driver--seeing how different your neighborhood looked late at night for the first time. Taken by my friend, Zack Herrera, a fellow Art Center grad, this series reveals amusing ironies you wouldn't notice in 105 degree traffic during the day.

S N A P . C R A C K L E . P O P

After a week of late nights at work, I couldn't summon the brain power required to think of what I felt like for dinner. I knew I didn't want to go out, and I knew I was too lazy to go to the market. Then it dawned on me. Breakfast. Breakfast always sounds good, and I almost always have enough in the fridge to pull it off. And if I need eggs I can get them from the Mobile snack shack across the street. Laziness intact. Why is breakfast is so comforting? Because it reminds us of being little. It reminds us of a time when our meals were dictated by our parents, when we weren't too busy for breakfast, when we begged our moms for the multi-pack of small (sugar-loaded carbohydrate) cereal boxes. Why did they put Smacks in those? Who ever liked Smacks? And raisin bran for that matter. Perfectly good flakes, polluted with chewy, black grape remains. I digress.

No other meal has it's own fantasy culture, complete with fictional characters,  nutritionally bogus claims, and catchy jingles. Breakfast is how we met a charmingly vexed leprechaun, a rabbit with an identity crisis, an encouraging tiger, and a toucan prone to psychedelic hallucinations. Only breakfast offers a toaster strudel of the 'Smores variety. Only breakfast creates dried up little marshmallows that become soft in your bowl full of milk. Only breakfast tells you that a big bowl of cereal is incomplete without four pieces of toasted and buttered wonder bread and a tall glass of OJ. So if you haven't bought non-Kashi cereal since you lived with your parents, or if you can't remember why you used to eat Eggo waffles or strawberry pop-tarts--indulge your inner seven-year-old and have breakfast for dinner. Trix are not just for kids.