Prologue
to the forthcoming coffee table book: The Collected
Portraits of Sonny I. LaVista
sonny
i. lavista and i have been friends since college. i had a little substance
abuse problem while i was sports editor of the paper and he helped me out
with it. see back then i was pretty broke i was only making $100 a week for
being an editor and i was getting $15 an
article. the problem was that i was discovering the wonders of
chinese cuisine and i was slowly becoming addicted to MSG... an expensive
habit, let me tell you. sonny worked the dinner shift at IV Chinese &
Donuts. i'd call him up around 5 and say, can you flow me some won ton soup...
can you throw in some shrimps? how about a little broccoli beef? he set me
up. soon i made him a staff photographer and we have been close friends ever
since. it was great for a writer to have a best friend photographer with a
fat bag of potstickers. (most of the pictures that you see here on tonypierce.com
are the artistry of my good pal Sonny so let's give him a big hand.)
lately
we havent been doing as much laughing as we'd like, but we're making up for
it with the drinking. in frisco i was solely a beer man. we'd go into bars
like Midtown and NocNoc and they'd have 50-60 different beers on tap and i'd
always go for something new, but now that we're in LA and Dels is a cab ride
from home, im downing lots of 
Bailey's.
when i first started i did it for my nervous stomach. it was a nice liner
for my gut so i could eat slices of pizza and drink more beer. but now it
is my only drink. i used to try to be a man about it and just pour it over
ice but now i throw a couple shots of creme or milk in there and it cuts the
bite. the good book talks about drinking a few times. first off it says do
not drink so that you are drunk. and then it shows a few stories about people
getting really drunk. the stories about people getting drunk in the bible
are some of the most fucked up stories that you'll ever read anywhere. what
do i mean? oh, how about two girls getting their father drunk and fucking
him so that he would get them pregnant for starters? like that one? it isn't
really good direction to the rest of us, who aren't that twisted and usually
dont go to a bar so that we can then commit incest but i think the point is
be careful, this shit can fuck you up.
but, duh.
Good
book doesn't say anything about downing a bottle of cough medicine and going
to the first Tibetian Freedom Concert starring the beastie boys, sonic youth,
rage, pavement, beck, bjork, red hot chili peppers, and a bunch others. the
photo above is one of my favorite pictures cuz it shows you that you really
do look as good as you feel on Robo. thank you, Sonny I. LaVista. I woulda
never known if you hadn't been there.
Now
I know to put on some sun glasses if i ever want to take off my shirt and
walk around wasted.