CRITICAL UPDATE!

I updated the review of The Man Who Souled the World below.
Thank you and happy new year.

The trend that is worse than tight pants:

Carroll was right: listening to an mp3 player/ipod while skating is lame.
I suppose it would be acceptable if you are skating somewhere by yourself, or skating down the street to go somewhere. But when 10 out of 20 dudes skating a park are listening to mp3 players, pulling them out every few seconds to select a song or whatever, the world has gone insane. We truly are living in some kind of FUTUREWORLD.

However, it's a retro-future world where everyone wears sneakers and jeans that look like they're fron 1965.
Maybe I am just an old Jewish guy. And I will admit that I used to listen to magnetic cassette tapes while skating flat at Union Square. However, I was usually the only individual skating there. Besides, I needed a walkman because I used public transportation--specifically, a subway. If you drive to a park and then listen to your ipod while skating--you can't go without listening to music for any amount of time? What about just listening to the ambient noise of skating (see Listen video)? If you insist on listening to an mp3 player while skating, you are indeed saying to everyone skating the spot, "don't approach me! I'm in my own little world! meh!"
This occured to me while, as often happens at small, semi-crowded public parks, I was waiting to try something on the ledge. Out of nowhere I hear
"He's the only one they call FeeeeeeelGoooooooooooood, YEAHHHHHHH!!!!!"
Some kid was listening to "Dr. Feelgood" loud as fuck. I almost said "Bro, is that "Dr. Feelgood?" but I opted not to because he might have thought I was clowning his taste in music. Everyone's so sensitive these days. I would never clown anyone's taste in music; it's way too personal and subjective. It's one of the three things I will not criticize or even discuss at work: musical taste, religion, or politics.

I'm getting a fucking The Wire tattoo.

I don't give a fuck--I don't even give a fuck that I don't have any other tattoos. It's the best. I wonder what time Monday morning it will appear on the On Demand--8? 10? fuck.
I was trying to think of what to get. I considered a Baltimore police logo, but that looks generic, and might make people think you're some kind of cop. Fuck that shit.
This image from season 3 blew me away:

I suck at screen caps, but you get the idea.

Circles, man--life fucking moves in circles

The last song in MJ's in Fully Flared (extensive review forthcoming, I assure you) is by this hipster band She Wants Revenge. So I read on the SLAP boards or somewhere that the singer is a gentleman by the name of Justin Warfield, and he is "sponsored" by Krew & Supra and some other shit. So thought to myself, "no, it couldn't be..." because I knew She Wants Revenge is some hipster band. I think I heard them on Sirius 26 when my wife was in the car or whatever the fuck.
NOTE: I usually listen to Sirius 23, 45, 19, 24 (the Nineties channel, of course) or 10 now that it's all Springsteen.
So I went diggin' in the crates. I only have two crates left; I sold the others the last 2 times we moved. Lo and behold, I found THIS:


Trip the fuck out. That dude totally switched his style up. Most people do, though from the time they're 20 to the time they're 34 or whatever. If you don't, you're some kind of sociopath. I used to watch that video on Rap City almost every day; I even purchased the cd and reviewed it for the high school newspaper. It was okay for the time, I guess...I don't feel like listening to it though. "Season of the Vic," his single before that album, is a banger, though. Download that shit.

Janeane Garofolo...

She used to have this "bit" in her "comedy" act. It went like this--she's walking through Washington Square park with a 12-pack of toilet paper, and all the skaters laugh at her. So she retorts "don't you guys ever land anything?" So my friend Sam (who makes all kinds of videos now with Mark Gonzales for Krooked or whatever---sick, sick shit) and I said that if we ever saw her around, we would call her a "cunt." He saw her once, but didn't go through with it.
I thought about this because she has this "bit" on the Henry Rollins Show on the Independent Film Channel. I have no idea now many people watch this show--maybe 5. Maybe 100. But anyway, I try to watch it if it's on when I'm feeding one of the twins. He usually has some interesting shit to say, like the one time he said that F. Scott Fitzgerald would never make it today because he would have to suck up to Oprah. He also usually has interesting guests, like Chris Walken and Steve Buscemi. So in Garofolo's bit, she goes on and on about how she doesn't have email and says all this sarcastic shit in some kind of 19th century voice that is supposed to be funny. Whoa--what a rebel--no email. Sounds like she's still a cunt.
Rollins, as you might suspect, goes on lots of angry rants that show what an intense guy he is. You can tell he's intense because he wears all black. One night, however, he said that "blogs" were fucking stupid because they make every housewife out there feel like what they have to say is important--something to that effect. First of all, Henry, you're assuming that just because a person is a stay-at-home parent that they automatically have nothing interesting or valuable to say. WELL OF COURSE! Nothing could be as interesting as the life of a touring musician, which you complain about in much of your poetry (the majority of which, I am a fan of). That's your job, bro? To travel around the world and sing in a band? That's harsh, bro. Second of all, you have a blog on you own fucking site! And it couldn't be more mundane! It's all shit like "Had a productive day at the studio today. answered some emails." Seriously? I don't get it bro. Are "blogs" cool, or do they suck?

ps. Rollins is still decent because he appreciates Thin Lizzy. Any gentleman that appreciates the greatness of Thin Lizzy and Phil Lynott is alright. Kind of like how if you like U2 I automatically hate you, if you like Thin Lizzy there's a 99.99% chance we will get along.

reppin' my city...blowin' 100's & 50's...

This is the article in the recent skateboarder about my town. It's fairly accurate, except for the following things:
A) no mention of the Ashland park, which is the only decent, legal, no-pads place to skate in the whole area. It's small, with a decent metal ledge setup and some X-games banks and quarters that are too big.
B) The author neglected to mention that VCU is the local college--so like pretty much any college town, there is a preponderance of sorostitutes and drunk hipster sluts.
The above is critical information. Say what you want about Big Brother--yes, I know--it was CRAZY and EDGY, but it didn't condescend to skaters like the media of today by pretending that they don't like to fuck bitches, etc. Remember when Dave Carnie said Transworld was a "eunuch of a magazine"? That was fucking great. Carnie was the beginning of the end, though, because then the humor became more scatological, paving the way for Johnny Knoxville, etc. If they really bring it back, the whole "nostalgia" thing really will have jumped the shark. Is anyone out there really clamoring for an 'ADI' deck?
I still don't understand how skateboard companies make a profit when boards cost the same as they did in 1988. Oh yeah, they manufacture them in Mexico, but still...
Anyway, I think there are some other spots but they are secret...like some ditch spot and this other ledge spot. Another thing that shocked me about this area, especially moving here from NJ, is that there are 2 ethnic groups--black and white. That's it. No asians, no Indians, no Italians, no Irish, no Polish--just black and Anglo-Saxon white. And recently, some Latin/Central American folk.
Another weird thing, at the school at which I teach at least, is that a lot of the whites are into the whole "redneck" thing--they wear camo all the time and all these "redneck"-themed shirts with confederate flags and shit. And the African-American students aren't fazed at all. I mean, if someone at my school or whatever wore a "swastika" shirt or some shit, I would go apeshit. Isn't it the same thing? I don't get it, dude.....

film review: The Man Who Souled the World

Truth be told, I was not blown away. Believe you me, no one is a bigger World apologist than I--well, maybe the gentleman who operates bobshirt, but remember--I HAVE NO DISPOSABLE (pun intended) INCOME.
First, the bad news: this film has no plot. Most films, even documentaries, have a "pyramid" plot structure, like this:




The Man Who Souled the World is all rising action--there is not really a climax. It's like "Okay...World is getting more and more popular! We're killing Powell and Santa Cruz and becoming more and more EDGY and CRAZY!!! and EDGIER AND CRAZIER!! oh, and then Girl started and that was a bummer. BUT, McKee invented Flameboy so it was kind of okay. THE END."
If you don't skate or aren't a Nineties obsessive, it probably won't be that interesting.
HOWEVER, Here's the good news: the World Park and other archival footage is priceless. Also, the insight into the monetary workings and financial genesis of the company is also fascinating, especially for someone like myself who gets off on Powerpoint presentations. Because when you're a kid, the industry is kind of magical--every week you go to your local shop and there are new boards & videos there, pros get all the money and boards they could ever want and skate schoolyards all day, the graphics are created...somewhere? All the stuff in the film about Rocco borrowing the seed money from a loan shark and his accounting problems was fucking awesome. For example, the fact that World lost a cool mil in 1994 is ironic, considering its astounding productivity in terms of skating/graphics: 20 Shot, Snuff, Secondhand Smoke, all of Jason Dill's first 101 graphics like the one with that "rocket hand" from Yellow Submarine, the Sanchez graphic with the surrealistic painting of the naked lady, etc.
Surprisingly, they left out the part where Rocco fired Henry Sanchez after Rocco (allegedly) fucked Mr. Sanchez' girlfriend, leading to Mr. Sanchez allegedly punching Rocco in the face.
And if Rocco was such a great benefactor to his employees, why didn't he provide them with health insurance instead of thousands of dollars worth of Polo clothing? Oh yeah, only LAME owners like George Powell provide their employees (who are paid to destroy their bodies, day after day after day) with health insurance. There's nothing CRAZY or EDGY about health insurance!
Anyway, here's an old 101 ad. Click to enlarge (a lot).


ps. If you want to watch an effective, captivating documentary, I recommend this:

I know this was on the Tap...

and I know posting "funny" stuff from the internet is lame...but this was so fucking funny...because it applies the nerdy Powerpoint shit I do at my job.
Dude, my fucking Powerpoint presentations are fucking killer.

I AM THE RESURRECTION

I'm listening to "Jungleland" over and over again. I'm not drinking though.
So the wave rolls on--this company has resurfaced. SICK! I think I saw H-Street is coming back too--that might just be for the collector market though. What does this mean? It means that--it's only a matter of time before someone resurrects the Menace brand.

What made the old ADI sick was that it was all some East Coast assassins--Harold, Jimmy Chung...fuck--I can't remember who else. Oh yeah--Keith Harrison, one of the most underrated dudes ever. Paul Leung, too. That dude Alyasha who designed everything killed it--it looked like nothing else. It's fucking crazy that Deluxe even green-lighted it, even for the year or whatever that it existed. Then again--it was the height of EAST COAST MANIA. It was weird--Eastern Exposure III came out, and literally overnight everyone was riding that one Ricky Oyola board (you know the one) and 60mm wheels, trying pole jams and skating rocks and shit. Trends in skating are ridiculous like that. They start literally overnight. It reminds me of the time I worked in a skate shop for two days. Some kid came in and was like "gimme the tightest, blackest pants you got!"
Am I in some kind of bizarro world?

ps. that wasn't why I quit.

turn of the century bgp.

I found this DC "trading card" in a book when I was reorganizing my bookshelf. Check out my awesome Microsoft Paint editing job to mask the huge, garish DC logo and "three sixty flip" caption. Anyway, this is some classic turn-of-the-century shit. I wonder what happened to those mooks in the background. I kind of wish I had gone down to Love Park more often--The Peter Pan bus was only like $25 round trip. Even better, the bus station is right in center city, so it was as if you got dropped like a paratrooper in the middle of an urban skating assault mission! Then again, there were ledges and shit in the city, and BAM was more comfortable in a way.

I try to go skating at least once a week at the park near my job, behind the police station. The last time, the dudes from the local shop were there, filming, including this one dude that was in my fifth grade class TWENTY YEARS AGO. He was like the "new kid" that introduced everyone to shit like skating and the Circle Jerks and shit like that. TWENTY YEARS AGO. How sick is that. This other dude was skating runs the shop and went to the Fully Flared premiere. He proclaimed it to be "the best video ever." I know, I know... everyone always says everything is the "best _____ ever" right when it comes out, and it's hard to compare anything now to Virtual or Snuff or whatever. I think whatever videos came out in your heyday are going to be the best ever for everyone. Or maybe Fully Flared is the best video ever! Whatevs...