Stuff I Hate

(This post is blatantly stolen from about 8 other places, most recently Voz 37’s LiveJournal)

* People who have no concept of what they’re doing with their bodies: this includes: hair flipping, foot shuffling, gum chewing, grunting / throat clearing, gross eating, etc…

* People eating their lunch at their desks. This is heinous! Get up, walk around, breathe some air! Besides, your lunch stinks!

* Shared food areas at work, especially dips. The Refrigerator, microwave, and sink at work are simply bacteria traps.

* People who try to badger me into accepting their ‘Free’ meals, T-Shirts, or other things I NEVER WANTED IN THE FIRST PLACE

* Surrogate pets: People who’s animal is treated like a child. I’m gonna extend this to all small dogs, save beagles and weiner dogs.

* People eating cookies, cake, or soda before noon.

* PEOPLE ON CELL PHONES IN PUBLIC! THIS MEANS YOU!

Inevitable War Post

Let’s just get this out of the way quickly, shall we? I’ll try and be brief so we can get back to the usual nonsense.

There exists a school of thought in which war is seen as inherently bad, in which the act or thought of war marks some sort of barbarism that we, as a society should have progressed beyond by now. This viewpoint, typically known as pacifism, holds deep roots amongst liberals and leftists.

I believe that war is innate and in many ways essential to the human experience. War, specifically agressive/defensive combat (not so much the political crap) has a very real and necessary purpose. And let me just summarize those in bullet points!

War:
* Demonstrates Power in a tangible way.
* Establishes a system of boundaries and repercussions among differing factions.
* Is a *physical* manifestation of rhetoric (put your money where your mouth is)
* Is immutable- because death is immutable- causing death *will* create change- beneficial or not.

Now- as for this war:
* I believe that the climate of the Middle Eastern region has emerged as a threat of similar nature to the pre-WWII Nazis.
* Saddam Hussein should probably be removed from power. His government and those that identify with him need to be *shown* that we have the power to destroy them. They need to understand this. The French understand this. The Germans understand. The Italians understand. Russians, Poles, they all remember WWII.
* The UN and European Nations have shown, time and time again, that they are unwilling to engage in combat to enforce their international law. WWII was not *that* long ago.

Given that, here are my misgivings about this thing:
* Regional, country-to-country combat will only work given targeted, extremely short-term conflict.
* Conflict must be followed by education, and an embrace of a truly disheartened and discouraged populace.

Eventually, the Middle Eastern populace will be dragged, kicking and screaming into an age where poverty and fanaticism no longer dictate their lives. When those poeple learn to condemn terror in their hearts, the threats against us will be diminished as well.

Sometimes, the only way to teach is through pain.

A Challenge

This is a challenge to headphone manufacturers:

* Make a pair of headhones that can survive 6 months of use.
* Make a pair of headphones which are not entirely held together by miniscule plastic clips.

Another pair bites the dust.

Vid Review: Label Kills

This weekend it rained, so I had no choice but to sit in the pad and download skate vids. Anyway, I’m gonna start out the week with a video review of Label Kills, the latest from Lucero’s hesh crew.

The copy I had doesn’t have any sound- so I can’t review the music, which I’m sure is pretty hesh. So we’re gonna have to go on skating alone here.

I don’t want to say that this is a bad video- it isn’t bad. And I wouldn’t want to say that these are bad skaters- they’re not. But in a testament to how competitve skating has become- this video just ain’ that interesting. Skating is not just about tricks, or clothes, or styles- to be a big baller in the 2k3 you gotta have the whole onion- an elusive combination for sure.

The lineup is:
Jason Adams
Jim Gagne
Mike Vallely
Salman Agah
Matt Hensley
Pro-Mar Hassan
Neal Hendrix
Kristian Svitak
Patrick Melcher (am?)
Jub (am)
Wes Lott (am)
Adam Alfaro (am)
Ben Gilley (am)
Ricky Espinosa (am)
Pat Smith (am)
Jeff Grosso

Obviously this is a big team. The first thing that struck me about this vid was that it’s really a ‘hardcore street’ team- I was expecting a lot more mixed terrain. Ultimately I think this is the demise of the vid- many of these riders just don’t stand out as street dogs. Yeah, Pat Melcher wears a cool hat, and they all seem to fall a lot, but how can anyone get jazzed about a handrail nosegrind when little kids like Paul Rodriguez are doing em’ in their sleep?

Rather than bash the weak points (except Vallely, I’m definietly gonna bash him), I’ll skip to the good stuff:

Jason Adams: I’ve never really seen a full part from ‘The Kid’, but this was what I expected. He seems to be genuinely having fun, skating 1000 miles an hour, doing curb slappies and skating weird trannies. Just don’t think he can’t do a FS noseslide on a hubba, cause he can and does.

Neal Hendrix + Omar Hassan: These guys both turn in plenty of rockin’ pool jammers, with Omar going balls and divebombing off the roof into Chicken’s pool. Neal has lip tricks mastered and I love to watch lip tricks.

Pat Smith: Although probably destined for obscurity, Pat shot his whole part in NYC which leads to plenty of new and interesting spots.

Matt Hensley: Hensley’s part is done in a ‘home video’ style, mixing in his new family and some old home movies. No hammers here, but it’s fun to watch him hit up all sorts of weird homemade obstacles and generally have fun.

Kris Svitak: Kristian’s part is definitely a legit street part, he’s got the skills and style. He gets a mongo ollie over a bank that is totally nutso.

Other that that, the rest of this vid is pretty standard. None of the street dogs have the tech-gnar skillz to compete with the new breed. The main point here seems to be that these guys got really wrecked making this vid, which, to me, says nothing. L’il Mikey Taylor slashed his leg wide open in In Bloom and rips harder than any of these ams. Ben Gilley gets clobbered on every trick he tries, Jim Gagne is old and a goon and gets clobbered, I don’t see why that should make me like them.

Finally I want to mention Mike Vallely’s part, which consists of nothing except him pushing really fast down the street and doing some ollies and stuff. The whole thing seems like it’s trying to show how punk he is and how little he cares. Unfortunately, it makes him look like even more of a caricature of his former self, a guy who’s milking his look for all it’s worth. It’s obvious that Vallely is full of it, just look at this. How punk is that?

Label Kills is not a bad vid, but not a great vid. This is one of those videos that just fails to live up to the image of the team. The whole thing is very calculated and professional, at the same time bland and formulaic. I never got the sense that these were guys who are disconnected from the skating mainstream- it just looks like a lot of average riders with vans and black hair, tryin’ to get paid like anyone else.

Street Rake or Street Flake?


Last week at the pit, the local skateshop goon managed to have a screaming, board-throwing fit after not getting a KF Noseslide in a line. Of course there was NO CHANCE of him landing it. He barely came close.

Saturday, I arrive at the pit to find a youth stomping his board into pieces cause of a 360 flip that wasn’t getting landed anyway. After a thrown shard nearly hit me, I decided it was time for him to “give it a fucking rest” and asked if he was “finished with his temper tantrum”. Soon after, the sullen teen and his posse of slightly embarassed youths decided to vacate the area.

On sunday I returned to the pit to find Black Label am Pat Rakestraw (AKA ‘Street Rake’) and Kiwi FOSKO am Gareth Stehr, along with requisite filmer goons and hangers on.

Street Rake was going for jumper to BS 50-50 to BS 360 out on the Donger ledge (Markovich BS Smithed it). He landed it a couple of times, kinda sloppy, but he was ripping. I woulda been happy.

After a bunch of misses he freaks out, focusing his board by smacking it, griptape-side up, against the corner of the ledge. This has the effect of instantly shattering the board into little pieces.

After seeing all this nonsense I have to ask- how are these people gonna make it through life? It’s simply not OK for a grown man to have a temper tantrum, is it?

BLOG HELL

I tried TWICE today to add a post- first time the damn admin tool session timed out before I hit submit- second time- well lets just say Safari doesn’t support undo in textareas.

F!@K COMPUTERS!

Battle of the Show Snovels ~ A P.Lee Experience


I was shoveling (guess what-more snow), when Old Man Ketcham gets out of his truck and starts ragging on me about putting the snow in the street, because he or somebody’s somehow going to get stuck on it.

I told him to pipe down and go into his house and have a drink. He charged towards me and stood inches away from my face exclaiming “I don’t drink!”

I told him the plow would be through here and nobody’s gonna get stuck and that he was a crazy old man and to go into his house.

He then grabbed the shovel which I was holding in the port arms position and was all red in the face and his beady, evil little eyes were burning a hole in the back of my head.

I told him that if I let go of the shovel I’m going inside and calling 911, and for him to go into his house. That evidently convinced him not to engage me further.

Oh well, it’s all in a day’s show snoveling!

This is absolutely true!

Hi-dilly-ho Neglect-a-rinos!

“For those of you that didn’t know, Neil Hedding’s young son Marty died tragically in December.

The child welfare system, not knowing Neil and his wife Pinky and not bothering to get to know them at all, decided the accident may have been due to neglect.

They based this assumption on a 15 minute visit to their home and, I believe, based it solely on their “unconventional” appearance. They have three other children including a newborn that have been taken away from them.”

– excerpted from http://www.bigbrothermag.com/martyheddings.html