A Big Brother "Trading" card.

I found this in a book when I was reorganizing my personal library. I don't know what happened to the other ones. I also used to have the tape from issue #9 with the Shiloh interview and prank calls to Grosso, but that too flew away with the sands of time. 

East Coast Industry?

East Coast Industry? (after the jump)

research

"...coming soon..."

"An expectation is a premeditated resentment"

I read that quote in some 12-step literature the other night. I suppose whoever wrote it was referring to living with an addict, but it applies to skating as well. You will have a much better time, I've found, if you approach skating, or any venture, with no or super low expectations. If you expect to land stuff, even something you thought you had wired yesterday, you're setting yourself up for resentment:
resenting yourself
too much wax
needs wax
shoes too new--need to be broken in
shoes too old--blown out
trucks too tight
trucks too loose
did I just crack my board?
It's like gambling--if you go to AC expecting to win, you're fucked. If you win? Bonus. You pay for the experience, wherein lies the value. Expecting the worst-case scenario is like the converse of this, and fucks with one's head equally as fiendishly, if not moreso.
That's not to preclude visualization--a crucial technique in any creative realm.

ps. this also applies to women

school's out

Therefore, I don't have to go to work for like two and a half months. Consequently, this site will be updated much more frequently. 

There are a lot of shitty things about my job; however, one thing the payroll department does is kind of rad: They space out my salary over the whole year, so that I get checks over the summer. 

This must be what it's like to be pro. 

Dude, I'm totally milking it. 

So, Maury--do I have a fucking case here?

Exhibit A: post from 2005. author: myself.

Exhibit B: Viacom press release - 2008.





Looks like it's time to hit the law library:

This is the only photo of it I could find in a rudimentary internet search. Truth be told, It isn't as skateable as it appears. That statue thing that Puleo and Razzo skate in Static 2 (3?) is in another library across the plaza or whatever.

therapy. [obscure Infectious Grooves reference]

Truth be told, I have suffered from writers block of late. Like Jack Black once said, one cannot manufacture inspirato.
However, the good ol' SLAP board never fails to supply topics from the well of the modern skateboarding Marketplace of Ideas (tm). Specifically, one thread reminded me of a specific topic on which I had thought about posting but got lost in my mind somehow....

The new Plan B vs. the "old" Plan B.

More specifically, the idea that the new Plan B is a manufactured corporate creation, the riders "bought" by Way, presumably, under the shadowy auspices of "D.N.A."

Firstly, the old. It is my understanding that Plan B was the brainchild of Ternasky, who hand-picked the riders to form an uber-team. Ternasky then employed his micro-management motivational style, the result being Questionable, Virtual, sketchy editing practices, and the beginning of Jason Lee's part in Video Days, allegedly a dig at said management style. The thing is, most of those dudes were already on Ternasky-affiliated companies, with the notable exceptions of Howard and McKay and Rodney Mullen 2.0. Danny Way, however, embodied both the past of Ternaskyism and its radically progressive future, molding the street not-giving-a-fuck-ism and vert majesty of H-Street into a new genre that only he and a select handful of dudes have ever fucked with.


NOTE: This is where the psychological shit begins. By all accounts, Way spent his "childhood" on a compound of sorts in the San Diego area, skating an assortment of ramps, shooting guns, riding dirtbikes on an assortment of dirt fabrications--basically externalizing the Id to the fullest extent. By the way, a variation of this topic was previously covered very effectively herein. Ternasky functioned as the Super-Ego--through his influence, directly and indirectly, synergizing the moral-philosophical aspects of Plan B--a more elite version of H-Street/Life populism-- with raw, inventive, insane, unconscious talent (read id) the likes of which will probably never be seen again. Specifically, it is doubtful that without Ternasky, Way is switch tre-flipping over vert channels in 2004. Note: the above is all speculative.

Enter the rebirth of Plan B. First, the main thing I cannot reconcile mentally, irrational or not, is the fact that it's basically a reconfiguration of Zorlac, which will never be cool. Another notable difference is that Plan B, under the auspices of the World brain trust, by osmosis perhaps, assimilated the creative joie de vivre that characterized the art direction of the time. However, one must be careful lest nostalgia cloud one's judgement here. Many dudes lament the modern-day direction of "billboard" graphics; however, if I recall, most of the Plan B graphics were corporate ripoffs of some kind--as was the trend of the time. I might be wrong here, but I don't recall any of the Plan B graphics or ads taking on the socio-political dimension of, say, some of the LIFE graphics--the Sheffey "by all means necessary" board being the most notable example.



Therein lies another moral dilemma surrounding the "new" Plan B: its image is somewhat antithetical to the Ternaskian legacy--specifically, the austere populism of H-Street that was perfected in LIFE's brief but unimaginably influential tenure. As opposed to the Hensley garage setup, one is privy to dudes driving 300M's to late-night private sessions at private TF's. As opposed to the Civic, the utilitarian, fuel-efficient vehicle best suited for commuting from spot to spot, one sees dudes in Range Rovers with generators in the back, driving to late-night filming missions at some secret location.



However, let us still not let nostalgia cloud our judgment; comparing skating and/or filming now to 90/91 is like comparing...fuck, I don't know. Maybe comparing the 1920's to the Great Depression. Dudes do whatever they have to do to film. My point is that the new Plan B is all id and ego--there is no super-ego. There is organization--a central domicile, ads are clean and innovative trick-wise, yet there is no conscience. There is no overarching philosophy. All is engineered for maximum profit--here's the skater, here's the trick, here's the board with his name and corporate logo real big. If you are a student of The Wire, this should come as no surprise. Data drives everything in 2008-9. Feelings? Humanism? Expression? fuck that shit. Where are the fucking quarterly profit statements/crime statistics/standardized test scores?

ps. Truth be told, I am a fan of Wenning (since he was the dirtiest kid at the banks) Ladd (still one of the most progressive) and Rodriguez (still fucks with shit that no one else is really fucking with, like sw f/s heel 5/0, etc).

pps. when was the last time austere populism flourished? a recession.