This past week I had the amazing opportunity to Host the Hábito Fashion Line Launch Party at Hill and Dale in the Lower East Side. Through my acting class I was introduced to the Director of the line, Tim Cordell, who then introduced me to his wonderful and talented wife, Nicole Melendez, who created Hábito. They gave me a fantastic opportunity to host the event, which I was honored to do. According to their website,

Nicole and Tim succeeded in their vision. The designs are classy, sleek, functional and versatile. I was so humbled to be invited to be apart of this launch. I was also so proud of  Nicole and Tim for taking a leap and making their dream come true. They are such a great team and such genuine, beautiful and inspiring people. As an up and coming actor and host, to be surrounded by such positive role models is a blessing. Check out a few pics from the event:

This is my second non consecutive winter living in NYC and it has been quite challenging to stay active in this damn cold! Therefore, I have spent a lot of time indoors writing, re-writing, starting from scratch, writing, getting constructive feedback, writing and re-writing again a comedic web series I am developing called Shaw. This little idea started back in the Fall after being inspired by working in the production office of the USA television show White Collar and wanting to produce my own work sooner rather than later. I've always enjoyed writing everything from plays to movie scripts, poetry, lyrics, I even remember back in the day I wrote a pilot for a teen drama series and got all of my friends and co workers at Starbucks to do a reading of it on a Friday night at our local Starbucks. However, I am that writer who gets a great idea, works on something non stop for days or weeks and then eventually gets bored and has to move onto something else. So I figured, writing a web series would be a great way to accomplish finishing a project because it's short, concise, creative and allows me to tap into another side of myself artistically. But it sure has been challenging!

I have been watching a lot of awesome web series like Awkward Black Girl and Hit Man 101 amongst others that are self produced and of high quality to really understand the logistics of producing something of similar quality. I also shot a pilot of a new web series called Retail Purgatory back in December, that will continue shooting this spring *fingers crossed*. Anyway, I won't give away too much about Shaw, but basically it centers around a guy named Shaw in his mid 20's, struggling to live in the post college world with his crazy theatre friends and spending most of his days dodging calls from his arch nemesis Sallie Mae. They say write what you know, right?

I am looking forward to sharing this with you all this summer, so stay tuned!

~J

I had the privilege to spend about five months working at the 9/11 memorial this past year. To meet so many people affected by the huge tragedy was a truly humbling experience. Today is the anniversary of that terrifying day that changed the world and I just want to give my respects and honor the almost three thousand men, women and children who were murdered twelve years ago. God bless them and their families. Also God bless America. We will never forget, so make sure that we try to honor those lives lost by doing something genuine every day, especially today. Life is too short folks.