4.29.2008

The third-best Bay Area Thrash band...



...according to Meza, released their first record in 9 years today--with the fucking original lineup (except for Paul Bostaph from Forbidden/Slayer on drums). From what I heard on the Sirius it seems to be a more modern interpolation of the Bay Area Thrash sound, with none of the death metal vocals of the mid-to-late Nineties releases. They will assault North America this summer with Priest, Sabbath w/Dio (who call themselves Heaven and Hell for legal reasons, I suppose), and fucking Motorhead. Holy crap.


4.26.2008

Skouse interior decorating tip #4,080

Do you live in a skouse? Does the decor in said skate house scream "I do not live with a woman?" If so, or even if this is not the case, here is a fun project you can do with one of the most common skouse design elements: the pile of old, shredded-all-to-fuck decks in the corner.
First, some background: When we moved here we got some shit from Pottery Barn Kids for our kids' rooms, so I have been receiving the catalog in the mail ever since. So today, I laughed when I saw this spread therein. The funniest part is the description for the deck-shaped chalkboards.
"Fuckin' skate kids--always "tagging" everything!!"
This shelving unit, though, seems like it would be a cool idea if fabricated with actual decks--you know, not the kind from bizarro world that have the (main) graphic on the top. I guess one could get some cheapo shelves from wherever, un-grip the decks, and just drill holes through the decks before one mounts the shelves. Or one could place 2x4's or some shit behind the decks so one could mount the unit on the skouse wall graphics-out.
Fuck, I might actually do this over the summer when I don't have to work.


ps. Just to clarify, if any of my kids get into skating, I will not redecorate with a "skate" theme. I will, though, encourage the classic "wall collage"--the only thing mags are good for now.

4.21.2008

The Smaller the Text, The Closer to G-d.



" 'definitly' considered the 'Nerds' of skateboarding."
Look at how small the text is in that "timeline." It has to be what, like 2 point? Unbelievable.

4.13.2008

Living on the Edge of Time: The Lighthouse Keeper

If you went to high school in this country, you read The Great Gatsby. In that book, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock is a symbol for Gastby wanting to fuck her, thus recapturing the past. The year I read the aforementioned work was the year that Snuff came out. Books, like video parts, metamorphosize over time. The meanings change. For example, when I read Catcher in the Rye in high school, my main reaction was “that’s fucking awesome—he ran away from school and went to nyc and stayed in a hotel by himself and did all this shit.” When I reread/taught it a couple years ago, my impressions were, of course, slightly more nuanced.

Video parts are the same way. Over time, dudes skate slower. Ledges shrink. Pants get bigger, wheels get smaller. More importantly, the psychological connections to spots and individuals change. Snuff, Trilogy, the switch flip over the table, Lockwood, the Cube, the small banks, the passage of time mutates all these places, people, and images.

The other day, while performing a rudimentary search for an illegal copy of Gino’s part in the Nike video (which shares the title with an epistolary YA novel), I found this. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. Who is the documentarian? What is he documenting? Why? In any event, it’s the most mystifying, perplexing, completely fucking devastating internet video I have seen in quite some time. Then I took a step back and viewed it through the prism which helps dudes like me give meaning to the meaningless: literature. Pro skaters are for, us at least, mythological figures in a Joseph Campbell sense. However, This internet film, for myself at least, transforms Gino into a literary figure.

Although Montauk is on the Eastern, not Northern shore of LI, and the lighthouse is an actual lighthouse, not a fucking green light at the end of a dock, the symbolism and characterization are strikingly similar to Gatsby. This is when Gino become a Fitzgeraldian character. Driving around LI, playing hockey, drinking beers, having some kind of existential crisis. Then there is the lighthouse, which Iannucci notes is on the Easternmost edge of New York. Iannucci feels as if he a passenger on a galleon, constantly teetering on the edge of the world. “How many days can I keep this up?”

A more productive literary prism through which to view this conundrum might be To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Truth be told, I don’t remember much of this from college. However, in a rudimentary internet search for literary criticism, I found the following quote:

“the lighthouse is an instance of the way in which we provide (or project) a sense of order, meaning and purpose to the contingent, provisional and inchoate nature of 'Life' itself: Mr Ramsay's final journey to the lighthouse provides shape, order and significance to his life at that moment.”

www.newi.ac.uk/rdover/lightho.html

At that moment in time, the lighthouse occupied whatever psychic space Iannucci need it to. And it will occupy a new space and perform a new symbolic function in the future. As I'm sure they told Iannucci in rehab, "One day at a time."

Of course, Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American life. Did Guy disprove this?

In conclusion, oddly enough, the only Iannucci deck I ever had:


I literally sold for a beer.

Trip the fuck out.


ps. I am shocked that no one has used the above Islanders logo as a graphic. Apparently, the team only used it for one year (96-97) because it was so g-ddamn offensive. I don't know why--what could be more badass than an angry fisherman with a hockey stick? Another reason to back the Islanders: a few years ago when they had just acquired Alexei Yashin and Michael Peca to become a legit team after a few years of shit, Meadow Soprano sang the national anthem at the home opener. epic.

4.05.2008

"Carroll had Stanford winning the whole thing."


A bold pick. Did anyone else see the Lopez twins' creepy mom in the crowd, with that clipboard or legal pad? Actually, truth be told, if my twins ever ended up on the same Division I basketball team in the NCAA tournament, I would probably be out there with a fucking laptop and shit.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know police informer posted a Jovantae thing yesterday. I could post something else, but I have a theme here--MARCH MADNESS, BABY! I was going to title this post "March Radness" but I think that has probably been used to death--it sounds vaguely familiar.
By the way, does anyone else find Dick Vitale creepy as fuck--specifically, the way he gets super fucking excited about a bunch of college dudes? This dude also looks and sounds exactly the same as he did when I was in 7th grade. Anyway, just like Bird, Georgetown losing to Davidson blew my bracket all to hell. However, I have another one with UCLA winning the whole shit. And when it comes to the enjoyable workplace diversion of MARCH MADNESS, there are three main schools of thought:
First, there are the people that try to be scientific and do hours of internet research and watch all those "bracketology" shows on ESPN. A former co-worker of mine, who knew nothing about basketball, was like this. This never works because college basketball is the hardest sport to handicap. Why? because it's just a bunch of fucking kids!
Then there is the dude that picks strictly according to seeding. That guy is a dick. Don't be that guy.
Finally, there is the "gut instinct" strategy. "Georgetown has that badass image, and I think they have a seven-footer...that's it! they're going all the way, baby!" A corollary to this is that "whitey" teams like Bucknell always lose.
The most important thing to remember is that there is no skill or acumen involved here. There's nothing worse that dudes that brag about how awesome they are about picking NCAA/NFL games, or how fucking amazing they are at fantasy football.
That brings me to another thing that vexes me about modern life--that's it's acceptable for 30-40-50 year-old dudes to get SUPER FUCKING INTO fantasy sports, yet skating is infantile. Also, it's somehow acceptable, with the advent of Sunday Ticket, for dudes to lock themselves in a room every Sunday during NFL season with a cooler of Coors Light and a laptop and internet gamble. Skateboarding, though? infantile.
However, I must admit that gambling makes just about anything more interesting. Without it, I would legitimately not give a shit about this evening's games. I am, though, fucking amped about the impending all-out bloodbath in the NBA playoffs--particularly in the West--a tournament about which Bill Simmons made this particularly hilarious comment:

With $100 million-plus in advertising profits at stake if there's a Celtics-Lakers or Celtics-Suns Finals, it will be interesting to see if the Spurs get a single borderline call in May or June. My guess is that somebody on the Suns or Lakers could use a chainsaw and nunchaku to stop Duncan in a Game 7 and the refs wouldn't call it.


Also, it unfortunately appears that the Warriors are going to get left out, unless the Mavericks further implode. That sucks because they're the semi-official team of these dudes: