February 28, 2009

Count Heckula

Photo by Sam McQuire

"More specifically, we wondered just how different Heckula was from the real Brian Heck. 'He’s different, he was an arrogant asshole, and all of his friends hated him. He was pretty much looking to party all the time, he really had no time to do anything else, because he was too drunk or hungover to do anything.' Going on with Count Heckula’s general M.O., 'He drank a lot of Keystone Lights during the day, and fire water after the sun went down at the Colonial Lounge, Mandan, North Dakota.'"

-TSM #48

February 27, 2009

You Dis Sk8 Mafia You Dis Yourself And All That is American And Proper

Hating on Sk8 Mafia is just like trying to hate on Santa Claus, Lebron James, chips and salsa, hot Jewish girls, shower beers, Tokyo drifting, good friends, the internet, and going to Mexico: it just ain't going to work. A snowy night and no motivation led me to this mini Sk8 Mafia Vid, and damn, it's satisfying. Hammer out a good 20 minutes or so to watch it, and enjoy. Speaking of snowy nights, that video makes it that much harder to deal with these snowy nights. We're almost there.

A note on the video still chosen above. Daniel Jackson frontside 180'ed that same wall in the Road Warriors Blitzkrieg video, many moons ago. That spot is right by Dave Stanke and Mike Ohman's old crib. Welcome to the Plat guys.

They use Brotha Lynch Hung in the aforelinked video; the dude(s) abide.

"And groovy but smoother than moves by Villanova
You're still a soldier, I'm like Sly Stone in Cobra"

Nas, "It Ain't Hard To Tell," Illmatic

February 26, 2009

The MinneapoBloggoNet: Loving Davis

I can't help but think of that Ghost Face song-"We Made It!," but this time it's more like "He Made It!" Yeah Davis. What started as Best Year Ever in 2006 has been revamped, molded, bent, and nollie frontside hurricaned into a threepeat. And now, like Nas asked, "Whose world is this?"

Davis' latest interview got linked all over our fine World Wide Web, but let's look at what the local webspots have to say: Familia came out strictly sincere, noting that the coverage meter is going up, also noting Nesser's sortee into journalism. Handjob jobbed the kid a little bit but showed discretion. Ryan hit the nail on the head, no backing down here. All four female readers of the Plat, Davis is adorable, he's big on the internet, and upwardly mobile. Get some.

PS: is he on Etnies?

Kill Fee: Peter Ramondatta Connected

Photo jacked from C1rca

The following is a piece that I did for The Mag just about two years ago; at the time it was one of the longest things I'd done, prose style, with someone I'd never really met. It was an interesting process for sure, though, it sat in limbo forever for want of a photo to go along with it. Eventually, it befell the same fate of the previously posted Keegan Sauder interview, and never got published. Therefore, here it is, the Peter Ramondetta Connected that never happened. Totally.

My girlfriend thinks it’s ridiculous that I try to avoid, at all costs, conversations with people that I went to high school with. Of course, I still have a group of skate friends that I hang out with regularly who toiled away with me for those four long years. However, by and large, unless someone was a part of an ever smaller and smaller circle of friends and acquaintances that originate in my secondary education years, I will stop at nothing to not be noticed by them, avoiding any and all contact.

I think everyone can relate at some level to this anti-social behavior of mine. Coming up skateboarding through high school in the late-90s wasn’t exactly the best plan of action. It’s been said a thousand times over and will be repeated for eternity; skateboarding wasn’t always as cool as it is nowadays. What that means is that there was plenty of people who gave me shit back then, and now, having years to have gotten over any grievances of the past, I still don’t need to socialize with them. These folks, lo and behold, aren’t really the problem. We weren’t friends before, and we won’t be now, so the awkward “what have you been up to” conversation isn’t a factor. My problem is with the people who would find it rude if I gave them the cold shoulder. They range from guys that skated for a couple of months, chicks you had a couple of classes with, and probably the worst out of the lot, the kid who hated you for the better part of three and a half years of high school, who then had a change of heart, and now, years on, has a much rosier recollection of events than is actually true.

I realized shortly after graduation that I was way better off avoiding face to face contact with another Hopkins High School graduate. I ran into a girl while skating on the University of Minnesota campus, who was half of a pair of twins. I never could tell her and her sister apart, and now she was confronting me, alone. After a five minute conversation of completely un-interesting catch up boredom, I was snapped out of my passive nods and “uh huhs”, after she came to a very accurate realization. “You don’t know who I am, do you,” she shot point blank. Tactlessly, I lied to her face and told her, “Of course I do. Well, see ya,” I said, as I skated off to safety. That incident made me acutely aware of how important it was to never again be caught off guard.

Since, I’ve refined and honed my skills. One of my most recent successes occurred while sitting in a bar quite conspicuously, avoiding an ex-girlfriend of a high school friend. Having passed her multiple times on the way to the bathroom, I was rewarded for my hard work when I overheard her telling friends, “That guy looks just like Mike Munzenrider.” My companions for the evening couldn’t understand why I was so ecstatic over this, but it was perfectly clear; I had become something of a social ninja, with the ability to blend into the surroundings of any social situation, even when in plain view.

When it came to asking Peter Ramondetta about his run-ins with former high school classmates, I was sure that he’d share in my neurosis a little bit. Peter is 24 years old, which means that he and I would have graduated about a year apart, and both of us are from the Midwest, from cities of similar size. With all of this supposedly going for me, the line of questioning ended being a total non-starter. “I don’t really run into anyone, I didn’t really have any friends from high school anyways,” he replied to me, with little pause for thought. He went on, “Even if I did run into them, I wouldn’t know them.”

Right off the bat, I found his bluntly honest admission somewhat amusing, though, upon further thought, it made perfect sense. Shortly after graduation from high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Peter was put full on Real Skateboards, and shortly after that, he made the move to San Francisco, where he has lived for the past five or six years. It seems logical that Peter, ripping so hard just out of school, wasn’t as concerned with getting to know his fellow students as he was with getting out and skating every possible moment.

So what of Peter Ramondetta’s time in Tulsa, and his wider upbringing in Oklahoma? “I was born in Wichita, Kansas, and when I was one we moved to this little town in Oklahoma called Guthrie.” Guthrie is a town of about 10,000 people, half an hour out of Oklahoma City. “I started skating in Guthrie,” Peter told me. When he was ten, Peter and his family moved to Tulsa, the second largest city in the state, behind Oklahoma City. To put things into perspective, Peter explained, “I think, area wise, {Tulsa} is bigger than San Francisco.” In fact, having asked Wikipedia, I found that Tulsa is in indeed much larger than The City, almost four times larger, based upon area in square miles. “It’s pretty much like coming up anywhere else,” he said, “There’s spots everywhere, there was a lot of skaters in town, and I had plenty of people to skate with.” The stereotypical letter to the editor about mid-western skateboarding life didn’t apply to Peter, except on maybe one level, which is often not addressed. “The only thing, just being in the middle of the county, I guess it’s a lot harder to get noticed than living out in California.”

One of the things always on the mind of skateboarders from warm climates is the strange and enigmatic thing called winter, and Tulsa felt its affects. “It didn’t snow too much; there would be two or three bad snows in the winter, but it would only stay around for a week, week and a half, and then it would dry up and be good,” Peter said. However, snow isn’t winter’s only inconvenience. “It used to get cold, really cold. We used to put on thermals, wear like three sweaters, jackets and stuff, and go out and skate, trying to stay warm.” At the time, Tulsa had no real indoor skating options. “Occasionally we’d go to Joplin, Missouri, they had an indoor park down there. That was the closest park to Tulsa, and that was like an hour and a half drive.”

Even with the inconvenience of winter, Peter is quick to say, “There’s a pretty big scene out {in Tulsa}.” When asked about what shops were around, Peter said, “For the majority of the time, it was just two shops, one called The Market, in the mall, which was kind of like a skate shop slash head shop. There was another one, a bike store slash skate store, and that was it.” Later during Peter’s Tulsa days, a couple of his friends, Rob McNair and Scott Bennett, opened a “core shop” (as Peter put it), called The Board Shop.

In a way, Scott backed up my earlier hypothesis about Peter, and had this to say, “Pete was always that kid that kind of kept to himself; kind of quiet. He came onto the scene out of nowhere.” Scott also explained how Peter, who was hooked up so quickly after being noticed by the larger skateboard world, first came onto the Tulsa radar. “When we first saw him, it was like, ‘Who is that kid,’ you know what I mean?” Scott continued, “He kind of caught us off guard with his clean style. So that would be the best thing to describe Peter, clean style, good attitude. And camouflage shorts, I think he was always in camouflage shorts.”

I’m always interested in how successful skateboarders from the Midwest started on the so-called “road to glory”, and of course, I asked Peter how it went down. “I started going down to Houston {Texas}, because I met this filmer guy Eric, everyone called him Big O”. Peter explained further, “Big O had a small company out of Texas called Instrumental, and I started getting boards from them. I was down in {Houston}, and I skated some rail that I guess the Real team went to, or Mic-E {Reyes} went to. He thought it was pretty hard to skate, and none of the guys wanted to skate it. This photographer shot a photo of me skating it and sent it Mic-E to say, ‘Oh yeah, people skate this rail, people skate these spots.” Evidently, Mic-E, Deluxe team manager, must have been impressed. “Mic-E just gave me a call, at home, maybe like a couple of months after that. He started sending me boards, I went to Tampa Am and met him there. After that, he took me on a tour, and after the tour he put me on.”

Peter is one of not even a handful of pros to come out of Oklahoma. Between Peter, Rob McNair and I, we could come up with two others: Don Nguyen, and Peter’s Real teammate and fellow Tulsanite, Ernie Torres. Before moving out West, Peter hadn’t even met The Nuge. “Don Nguyen, he came out of Oklahoma City, but I never met him. The first time I met him was out {in California}, I never met him or saw him when I was in Oklahoma.” Peter thought of one other skater who could be noteworthy. “There was this guy that used to live in Tulsa, Troy Eckles. A long time ago when he was like 12, he used to ride for Human.” Nowadays, it seems like there’s hope for more professional skateboarders to come out of Oklahoma. As Peter said, “Last time I was out there, it was like a whole new generation of skaters.”

Peter still makes it out to Tulsa, though not too often. Most of his family has moved back to Kansas, though his brother still lives in Guthrie. “I usually get out there around Thanksgiving, like once a year, unless a tour randomly goes through there.” He still has some friends in Tulsa, along with the guys at The Board Shop. “I still know a few people, that when I go, it’s cool to see them, and go skate with them. One of my good friends, Dane Hale, he still lives there, he was one of the few guys I used to hang out with everyday.” Even if Peter’s ties to Tulsa have loosened over the years, and he is in no way planning on going to his ten-year high school reunion, no love is lost on him. “I want to get {an Oklahoma tattoo} pretty soon, I’m trying to think of a cool one to get. I was just recently thinking that it would be cool to get something that represents Oklahoma, where I’m from. I’ll always represent Oklahoma.”

February 23, 2009

Platinum Movie Club: Man on Wire

Ah, the Oscars happened last night, and while at one point in my youth I was able to force myself to somehow be interested in the hype, that is no longer possible, and I'm easily content to allow myself to watch the Wolves lose a hard fought game against the Lakers instead of sitting through the ballyhoo, back-patting, and general Hollywood masturbatory spectacle that the Academy Awards is, and always was. (Not even a heartthrob of a host like Wolverine can make me check in, and wanting to see what Miley Cyrus is wearing makes me feel creepier and dirtier than normal.)

I did however take a peek last night to see who won and who didn't, because I had my eyes on two of the few movies that I had seen, the amazing Waltz With Bashir, and the equally awesome Man on Wire. Bashir came up empty handed, but Man on Wire came through with the Best Documentary. Now this introduction has gone way too far into Oscar talk, and I feel as dirty as I did when I google image searched Miley Cyrus. Enough digression.

Man on Wire, as the photo above might have clued, is about the balls out barging of the Trade Tours and the ultimate tight rope act that ensued, lasting some 45 minutes or so. The film details the planning, preparation, the actual go at it, and then the resulting events. Simple enough...My reasoning for bringing it up here, is that even though it centers around a rather eccentric and egotistical French-man, his lover, and a bunch of stoners (at this point I was trying to contrast...), I couldn't help but find some sort of veiled skateboard element to the whole "heist," that being the word I shall use. Barging for the sake of it, doing something just for it to be done, or documented or whatever...all the cheesily grandiose reasons that deep down inside maybe we skateboard for; not sure here. Watch the clip: Yes, while it's much, much larger scale, it's doing something for the sake of it being done. That's cool. Here's a an interview from NPR's Studio 360 with Phillippe Petit, high rope walker extraordinaire. I'll try to make my next post make sense.

I Left My Heart In Saint Paul...

Familia's last day in St. Paul is tomorrow, Tuesday. Go holler at them one last time or jet over to Uptown on Saturday.

February 19, 2009

Hating on Facebook and Babes

By now you've probably seen the Spanish language Snickers Commercial that is such an obvious rip-off of Fully Flared that no discussion is even necessary. Yeah, it's been all over the interweb, here, here, here again and even here. So is there an original spin to put on this thing? Sort off... Here's the dude Mexico City Max who was in town to skate the Damn Am a year or two back. He was a ripper and cool and shit. And then a screen shot from the ad in question shows... The same dude? I don't know, but it seems more than possible. Gotta get them pesos hijo!

While I was trying to read last night, I heard my loud as neighbor that lives upstairs come home. I overheard him say something like, speaking about me, "The guy downstairs, he's like an adult." That kid bugs me.

As the title of the post suggests, someone was thinking that I was hating on babes, as said in the comments on the previous post. I'd never hate on babes, but, those Facebook date-ad chicks look like internet porn chicks. Look: And then I did some "research" and managed to make the following for some compare and contrast:

With that out of the way, let's move on. Luke stumbled upon this page, which appears to be the archive of some blog that Sam had at some point. Like Luke mentioned, there's a ton of gems on there from roughly three years back. G'times!

Finally, I'd like to think that the fact he got banned contributed to this: Rashad McCants traded! May we never speak his name again.

February 18, 2009

Yet Another Reason To Quit The F-Book: Goddamn I Don't Want To Meet Them

Goonie on the left and KissyLips on the right are way too corporate looking, or internet porn looking. Probably both. No homo*.

*That's like the second time in my life that I've used that phrase.

All The Pretty Colours

Legit dunk from the free throw line, and dude is in the NBA D-League. In an alternate universe homeboy started skating and can kickflip a picnic table the long way, off flat and shit. I'VE BEEN THERE.

We should not go skating more often--Sam went fishing the other day.

More please...Tha' Tap has been posting up some "Old Shit" as Meza so eloquently puts it, and the latest offering features the beauty pictured above. Scroll through the randoms and track down more Gino. Is chrome ball incident #224 at all related to the nollie 360 above?

Mind boggling as always, these aren't the droids you are looking for to fuck wit. CREAM!

Someone was talking about hipster porn the other day. Don't remember who, but, as a reminder, look no further.

And finally, Luke killing it in the blogosphere, with proper British spelling. Flavorful indeed.

February 17, 2009

Poo-tee-weet?

Jake Johnson was the almost unanimous favorite from Mind Field, and he had another banger part in the Chapman video, above. Mark the switch flip backtail on a rail off the list.

On A Boat!!!, via The Hesh. That's some fake life to the fullest.

Yet another cameo of Cha' Boi over at The Berrics, this time with a quick flash in the surrogate clip of Berra vs. MJ. Cha' dig?

Yet another reason that your 17 year-old girlfriend needs to stop texting naked photos of herself to you. Among others of course, but this time it's not for your child-pornography-ass-holding-self, but for her distributin'-of-child-pornography-ass-self. Simply put, if you're a minor and shoot a naked photo of yourself and forward it on, you too can become a registered sex offender. It's a scary world out there folks, Manga fans beware too.

From that to this. Fish Pussy!!!

February 16, 2009

Mike Munzenriger: Pro Skater

The summer of '04 or '05 I did a little thing for the now defunct Industry MPLS magazine; you might remember it, it was small, about one quarter the size of a normal magazine, but it was cool. It was for a section called "People You Should Know," I'm pretty sure I was lumped in there with some DJ and a performance artist chick.

While my neurotic ass put the actual shoot off to no end, when all was said and done things turned out fine. Got booted from the sculpture bank before heading up to those full-pipes off California St. in NE to do one of those fakie thruster knee knock things. That turned out and I think the BS I wrote about skateboarders and I-pods was the first thing I ever got published. Sick.

Though, why'd they have to call me a cringe-worthy "Pro Skater?" Man...maybe I'm just old, but you're either pro, or you're not; you have to deserve to be pro. They also spelled my name wrong, and most people would be more bummed on that, but nah, not me. That stuff happens. "Pro Skater" shouldn't.

February 14, 2009

Next Level Shit

True, the Half-Cab has been ripped off to no end by just about every shoe company out there, but Dekline is on some next level shit. Trust me. C'mon Swank!

February 13, 2009

The Great American Blog Post

Today is Friday the 13th and it makes for shitty movie remakes and ghoulish possibilities and a whole host of other sketchy shit. Nobody, fucking nobody, can hear you scream in space. Nobody.

More to the point of things in this Great American Blog Post, it seems that yesterday was Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday. It would be really jacked if dude showed up as a zombie because his face was essentially shot off when John Wilkes Booth got him; he was shot in the back of the head and the exit wound took place on his cheek. JWB, posthumously banned from the Plat. Anyways, like three people actually care to read up on Lincoln but I did, so here are some links for you fuckin' nerds out there...How Lincoln would vote today via Salon, and Lincoln on the laws of war, via Slate. Also, I learned today that West Virginia exists because it broke off of Virginia because Virginia seceded from the Union. I've got proof!

Anyways, after that ejaculation of history and excitement about really being a nerd, here's the meat and potatoes of the post: Brian Wenning.

As much as the American Dream is all about the rags to riches story, i.e. my boy Abe mentioned above, there is an equal fascination in America with the fall from grace. Cue chaboy Gatsby at any time. The rise and the fall are both so fucking American it hurts...cue Britney Spears, chick's got both on lock. Think of that mark Chris Brown, who just got banned from Plat for raising a hand against the imminently hot and amazing Rihanna. We get the picture. Anyways, Wenning. Please view: Barely short of Kalis and Dill, Wenning had the best part in Photosynthesis, but beyond that, he'd single handedly hearkened in the era of the backside nosegrind pop-out, still legit today. But that was pretty much it...

My boy Boiler put it pretty well at some point that Wenning's intro to his DC part was all too telling...: Yeah, that part is still hecka sick, and he's on point, but there is no doubt about it, and I felt the same way when I first watched the video part above: Something is missing.

And then fast forward to right now: Yeah. First of dawg, you're no R. Kelly. Kellz has got Patron and cigars and shit, you got Marlboro Lights and plastic cups of Hennessy and Coke. Just chill. No need to mention the hand tats. The crux of this thing comes down to the question of three ads a year. The video above is like watching a car crash.

And so there you have it, The Great American Blog Post. Abraham Lincoln and Brain Wenning; the American Dream and the Fall From Grace. Both oh so American. Call Gatsby, tell him I'm not coming over tonight.

Bonus: A couple of areas in Mind Field let me down, especially Kalis's song. Let's just settle the fact that custom songs for video parts are never as awesome as found songs. I just wish that Kalis had reprised Bumby Knucks...really, would you have been mad?

February 12, 2009

February 10, 2009

TREND FORECASTING

Me, from Weekend Warriors, clip filmed in 2005. COVERS BABY, 2009. Drug rug triumphant, we da best!

February 9, 2009

ATSMYDAWG

Should have clued ya'll in earlier; the above is from the consistently amazing riot rite right clit clip click...right? It's not always apropos for work, but there's plenty of awesome, gross, interesting, shocking, great stuff on there.

Like a punch in the gut. I tuned into the T-Wolves last night with 45 seconds left in a tie game against the Hornets. 30 seconds into my viewing, and Al Jefferson comes down off a blocked shot a little crooked, the knee buckles inwards, and he's out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. Couple that with the fact that I got served on Friday...welcome to Monday.

Asphalt Anthology, lifted from Crailtap a couple days late, but if you're into nerding out on Girl/Chocolate, well then, you're into it. No more is your homie's basement the place for skateboard nostalgia, what with his VCR, and boxes full of magazines. Welcome to the internet age! Proof, proof, evidence, and more proof.

Where you been Ellis, Sanji, Pizz, et al? If biumvirate didn't sound so weird and we'd formed one, I'd say the biumvirate is sort of hurting right now.

Slate links du jour: prehistoric cockroaches the size of house cats, and the search for the origin of the 25 Random Things About Me scourge/sensation on the F-book. Yeah, I've read some and the exhibitionism displayed at times is amazing/outrageous, though as I continue my descent (?) into online isolationism, I'll never fill one out. I'm starting to have the same feelings I had when it was time to delete the Myspace, but then again I babble incessantly on here, again. I just don't think the fact that I think gigantic cockroaches are cool is giving up to much information. Whatever.

Almost forgot how amazing Nate is:

Finally, it was emailed to my attention by Sissi that the below looks like me, if I skated in Nikes, and Kauffman Union was still around. I kind of see it... Kind of don't. Opinions?

February 8, 2009

Shit Froze Before the First Marker!

Ice hubba madness over at that other blog of mine.

Good poll ideas, but the person logging in as "Munz" is kinda weird.

Real has a pretty sick thing going on with this MPLS board. Me gusta.

And as for Mind Code Mind Field, Jake Johnson wins, and the world keeps waiting for the return of Mike Hayes, and I scratch my head at Dyrdek's part.

February 6, 2009

Quick Hits

Congratulations to Mr. Steve Nesser and Jessie Bergstrom are in order upon the birth of their baby girl.

Happy birthday to the forever regal Andy Paulsen.

Mind Field at nine tonight.

There's new Glue Factory Decks:

February 4, 2009

Poll Answers Redux

No surprise that Boondoggle took top honors, but it is awesome to see Shitheads get the second most love. My bad on forgetting to get Open Iris or the Roll Series in there; way too many worthy videos have come outta here.

Notice that none of the poll options were affirmative for a forum? That was on purpose.

Put some new poll ideas in the comments section.

February 3, 2009

Twincities Skateboarding Apocrypha: The Fobia Promo

Remembrance of things once forgotten. The Fobia Promo was always one of those VHS tapes that you HAD to pop in anytime you saw it on your homie's shelf, and then one or two days later, you always forgot it existed, simply because the last time you viewed it was the third time that you'd ever viewed it, and the previous times were years apart; Twincities Skateboarding Apocrypha*.

To wit: this promo is more than ten years old, owe it to the time stamp during Caz Helmstetter's section, the zooming in with a wide-angle lens, the wide angle lens itself, or the gritty blown-out black and whiteness of the pre-ultra-technicolor-VX-1000ness of it all. What it comes down to is that this promo is a great testament to how much things have changed and how much they have stayed the same.

Point in case, one knows to a certainty that everyone featured is still skating; assuming that Billy Kahn is still on board. Drop-ins galor, and it should be noted that his indoor park foote is from a skatepark that was erected in one of the ice rinks at the SLP Rec Center, the location of the coveted Rec Center Ledges, and much later, SLP Skatepark. That setup was there for one summer only, and I skated it the day I finished my sophomore year in highschool; perspective.

Olu shows up for a couple of tricks, and strangely, looks not much different than he does today, though I doubt that he'd vault that stack to sidewalk nowadays; knees man. Rada shows up next and does a buttery line where the filmer cannot keep his hype to himself. That kickflip fakie on the Kaufmann Bank is as legit today as it's ever been.

Caz shows up next but he's been discussed; Todd pops up afterwards and gives credence to the phrase "Bratrud's Last Stand," and the search for the drop-in of doom continues. ZED Lives comes after Todd and it shows that his proclivity for jumping off shit and making it look rad was fully enacted long before you** even started skateboarding.

And then there's...Stephen Nesser? The one and only time I take it. The pop-shuvit is intact, and one wonders about a Basilica vs. inward heelflip re-match. Then Clint, still a raw, insane genius on a skateboard; the footage at the Minneapolis Armory is still amazing.

The video rounds out with Peder Mewis and Mike Haugen***. For full disclosure, and since I've seen the promo probably less than ten times now, I must say that both properly ripped; Mewis repped a caballerial stalefish and Mike "Now on Fobia" Haugen repped numerous varials and a noseblunt, all on the old vert ramp at the Lair. Time makes the heart grow fonder, really, and/or appreciate vert skating. Or maybe it's not time, it's age.

Hit up the Lair on a random Wednesday night and you might just see five of the dudes in this promo skating the bowl. Beyond that, it's amazing that another five of them have traveled the entire world due to skateboarding. Without getting too sentimental, booya for the Twincities skate scene.

*Shouts to Boil the Ocean; having jacked the footnote steez and for getting the word apocrypha stuck in my head; "hidden things" indeed.

**Whatever.

***Who has seen Haugen's TV ad for his family's construction business? Yup, I have.

February 2, 2009

Dear Blogletariat,

No doubt, I've nerded out on the Battle at the Berrics as much as the next guy, though I never bothered to and never will bother to fill out one of those brackets, that might be taking this internet vs. reality thing too far; re The Subtle Bigotry of low Expectations for my feelings about the internet...though I still love thee World Wide Web, don't get it twisted; ambivalence is right. Anywho, BATB has been marvelously enlightening; how well some dudes can skate (Benny Fairfax, who knew?), how busted some dude's flatground can be (Bucky), and just how pretty skateboarding can be in the best of worlds (Chico versus MikeMo). With all that said, while Ellington continues to prove way better than expected, and the blueball inducing MJ versus Berra was a let-down (nah dude, I didn't have a raging boner when I hit play and did not end up with testicular pain afterwords, it's fun phrasing), the best thing about this week's installment of BATB was the DVS ad that preceded each video. Daewon! If it's possible for him to actually do that 360 flip fakie, then I can totally use two semi-colons in the same sentence, as I did above. Shit's tight. Final word on The Berrics, WWWWWWHHHHHHAAAAAaaaaaaaaa...?!

Per weekly occurrence, Chrome Ball has some shit to get hyped on, and this time it's Mike Daher. Little did I know, but something incredibly amazing happened almost exactly a year before I started skating. Let's talk about waist high Japans out of taildrop sometime. Daher reminds me of Pat Cook, sans tattoes of course.

Fink has a nice and succinct write-up at The Hesh about what we have to look forward to now that January is over, and I think he's right. Maybe the worst is over...but then again this is Minne. No doubt, though, the Mind Field premiere Friday is going to help, with Familia moving you know they're throwing a party too, and while we eke out some skate-days in March, there's fun ahead, such as O.U.T.. Which brings up the question, should my old ass even enter this year? I'm on the fence, but I do know that I stumbled upon this video of me suspectly (in many ways) losing in the first round last year, and by golly, it's not helping build any excitement. Even if you skate way faster than the other dude in O.U.T., a moral victory doesn't mean shit when I sucked that bad

At first I was like, "Oh hell no, I don't want to watch video of Phelps just talking," but then I realized that it was all for the better. Hooray for Five Days of Hate at Thrasher.

Quit sinn'n.

Booya Will Never Sound The Same

Plat field reporter The Jackyl came up on some hot content. I'm modulating between the Twolves, awesome facts, media critique, a little skateboarding, and now skate porn. It's been a good week.

For more in depth coverage of skateboarding and porn, peep out this totally not safe for work link to You Will Soon.

The Subtle Bigotry of Low Expectations

Two stories on this week's On The Media got my mind going. First, this story about people who have lived their whole lives with the internet being a very, very real thing. The story makes the distinction between so-called digital immigrants, basically those of us who remember a world pre-World Wide Web, and digital natives, those that have known no other world than one with the internet. The transcripts of the story aren't up yet, they will be later today, so maybe just listen for now. It's a good discussion of the different mind-sets people have regarding the internet, and maybe how those digital natives just might have a different world view than the immigrants. It made my ambivalence about being, ugh, "a blogger" seem a bit more rational.

Second, and maybe I'm becoming anti-technology or something, but I'm so over people interacting more with their I-phone than the outside world. Don't take the damn thing out at the bar unless you're communicating with another human being, please? Evidently, this shit is WAY worse in Japan. Real talk, there's 127 million people in Japan and 110 million cell phone subscriptions. No wonder the I-phone I've got is just a paper weight right now. More skateboard shit later; if the post bummed you out, re-read the title of it, it's just for you!