Duos of Four

I guess I'm late to the party, but consider presently the nugs coming out of the geographical underbelly of the elephant to our south. It's strange to think that the skateboard industry has permeated all aspects of the modern teenage brain to establish a media so pervasive that it's self-referential to the point that you can title a video exploit thusly: "Don't Inhabit Your Mind Bag While Flaring More in Texas."

Banquet eaters take note, henceforth the profundity of said prose will be reduced to garbled musings on the state of this and that. Therefore, besot to you all and commence with the breakdown of this 4 Duos video...

Deep in the Heart of Texas




Hossenfeffer, what an introduction to this here satchel of video effects cobbled together by a desperate fellow surely plugging away at a computer for hours on end. Godspeed fathers of revolution. Underwater family vacation poolboarding fantasies turn nicely into the late night tv viewings of a troll mutant twisted on bad crank. They turn the hose on the "B" and pay the price for a job well done.

Is it wrong to refer to Michael Tang as a poor man's Jerry Hsu? These videomakers make the comparison, not me. You're the one that's racialist, man. Don't foist your white ideals on me, I'm into organic patchouli spiritualism.

There's a grip of familiar spots in this vid that have been in some flicks of recent years, your Fully Flareds and what have you. I wonder how Texan locals feel about that? I never had a bunch of sacred shred homes that were to be overly coveted (aside from West Coast Video in Ottawa), so it's hard to comprehend the localism I'd imagine could warrant some resentment on their part (at least I might). How hyped would these 4 Duos fellows be to have the "scoop" on all these concrete havens? Is that what skate videos are today? Competitive spot searchers jockeying for position in the favor of the most cynical vid crid. A fresh canvas never hurt any bench sanding artist, that's for sure.

In the vein of a full video's worth of Sloppy Lou Barletta footage, this 4 Duos video pumps the good time vibe, like trying to squeeze the last hour's enjoyment out of the fading sunlight of an East Houston parking lot for all it's worth. Feel the powervader and cop the wave of the ransack of Turkish delights.

As juicy as poached Sheckler footage is, I must here call attention to the marvel that is Guru Khalsa. Truly upper echelon nu-buck status. Tasteful blend of Jersey bun deliciousness and fearless Zorlac burl generational Texan spillover.

Luke McKirdy is another one of those well over 30 gnarlers pushing his business into the outer realm of what seems possible for a progressively used skateboarder's body. Dudes like him and Bro Gumpright give me some measure of optimism for what lies ahead as the osteoporosis sets in. Indeed, a sight to behold.

Conclusions must be drawn, and they shall be drawn accordingly: Not Too Shab, Babs.

Hats off to Roy Harper, Stephen Harper, and hell, even Ben Harper.

Evergreen and Gasoline

Time for spring cleaning all my bimbos and bambinos. Dust the couch lint out of your backside and prepare yourself for the return of the new energy dreadlocked park dwellers to the streets of our fine city. Disregard their spirited "jamming" on alternative rock relics that aged poorly and keep walking with your eyes averted and your nasal cavity pointed skywards. As we emerge from our dank winter basement caves to embrace the sun of another outdoor year upon this hurtling turd of a globe through the vast quiet confines of our galaxy, we are filled with a new zest for activity.

Delights of the 4 wheeled persuasion combined with the false hope of the fatman that another baseball season brings comingle and dance on the palette of the pleasure receptors to instill a general calm to quell the tempest of the cooped up mind. No longer imprisoned in the stifling dens of unsavory weather, we're free to do as we please.

Fling off your clothes and embalm your pale privates in the cancerous solar flares that bake your leather pants to a perfect crisp.

Bloomin' Onion

Bumped into this clip on the re-roll. Tasted it again for the first time.



Pretty legit shit in terms of the whole "creative urban exploration" thing that so many pursue these days. Just to inflame your blue waffle vagina a little bit, I'm going to claim he could out cruise Poppalardo any day of the week.

Phatman's Lament

Burger vs. Burger. Battle of the ages. Lasorda on Slimfast is like Samson cutting off his hair.

Saganic Worship

Huddle round the cauldron of the village elder and gaze at the images he conjures in the puddle reflections you can't look away from.

He speaks of celestial matters in a such a soothing tone, it's liable to peel the panties from even the staunchest foe of the space program. He will fill you with a sense of eternal new-minded wonder, able to make you feel as small as a gnat and as lucky as a rabbit-footed mutant child of the next millenium.

Once he has you in his grasp, there is no telling the effect he will impose upon your will. Gaze deep into his eyes and let him seduce your body and soul.


Join Senor Sagan on an epic journey aboard his "Spaceship of the Imagination" (not as incredibly retarded as it sounds, I promise) in a 13-hour time burglar found here.

Simply Mad About the Maus

If you aren't hip to the jive bub, you've been snowed. I'm talkin origins, capeesh? When your lobe don't get it and you think what they've been laying down is the real dealio, that's where you're wrong, frankenstein.

Conventional wisdom indicates that one Mickey Mouse, pictured here...


... made his debut to the world in the animated short "Steamboat Willie". The real origins of the character lie several years earlier than the Disney Corporation's proclaimed "birth" of Mickey Mouse in November 1928. Before Mickey, there was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney's main character. After his boss tried to chince him out of some loot, he was strong armed out of the rights to the Oswald character, so he took off and created Mickey. Or so the story goes.

Take a look at this Oswald clip from 1927, before Disney left his contract with Universal Studios. Note the Mickey-esque character that comes onto the scene at 3:00. Observe how much of a little fucker he once was as he gets his ass beat by Oswald:



Before he became the bright eyed everyman that stood for all that was deemed "American", Mickey Mouse was a deviant sociopath with revenge-bent aggression that would make Donald blush. In 1928 when Disney struck out on his own, he brought animator Ub Iwerks with him and commissioned him to create the Mickey design that's become burned into the rentinas of every post-war youth. Yet, before the oft-cited "debut" of Steamboat Willie and ascension to Apple of America's Eye status, a still malicious version of Mickey appeared in Disney's first post-universal short titled "Plane Crazy". Straight up tries to kiss-rape Minnie, dang.

To think what the world would have been like if the character had never changed. I couldn't see the public latching onto him the same way. Who knows what society would have become? Would Times Square still be dirty? Would Florida be considerably underdeveloped? It's tough to put any measure on the impact that Disney has had on the world, and I sure as shit ain't gonna try and quantify it. From massive media holdings to subliminal messages, you know that shit is Xtra large, sonnnnnn.

Trenches!

Castlevanian Creatine?

A smeared reputation, a tarnish that follows an athlete everywhere he goes. How do you react when an outcome you desire has an unfortunate moral dilemma?

It's easy to heckle a juicer. It doesn't take much to join in the chants of "STEEE-RROIIIDS" when the latest disgrace steps up to the plate. But, what would you do if a synthetic goliath showed up to play for your team? Would you turn him away at the principal or would you let him hit home runs for your pride and joy?

Enter Randy Ruiz.



He is pictured here taking a ball to the cheek from Josh Towers. In 2005, he was suspended twice in the same season for steroid use in the minors. He had his major league debut with the Twins in 2008 at the age of 30. He signed with Toronto for 2009 and turned up career numbers both in Las Vegas and in a stellar late season Blue Jay performance. When he reported to Toronto, he led the Pacific Coast League offensively and was was crowned MVP.

What do you make of a player who's prime comes at the age of 31? He only played 33 games with the Jays, which is an admittedly small sample size. But, in those games he hit .313 with a 1.019 OPS, bettering his .304 career average in the minors. How do you contend with that as management? With lots of power pieces in the system looming to take permanent positions at first and DH - i.e. Lind, Snider, and Brett Wallace - how does Ruiz fit into this puzzle?

It was plenty frustrating to see Ruiz get off days so frequently in September considering he was on such a fuckin roll. Depending on who else gets moved before the season starts - Overbay rumours are persistent - Ruiz at first or DHing on Lind's off days seems like a most reasonable prospect until Wallace is primed and ready.

So, how does all the juice-a-ma-tazz cloud your support of the dude? Do you dismiss the benefits and thrills that a power monger like that exudes? Or do you sit back and reap the rewards of the winning-at-any-cost mentality as balls fly out of the Rogers Centre like popcorn?

I'm affeared that there is a tough biscuit to condone. I'm not quite so naive as to place any kind of mantle of justice on the heads of professional sports oxen. How do you expect to cut down on that shit if the league turns a blind eye and team management condones it? Get your priorities straight. A culture of cheating threatens the legitimacy and longevity of all that jazz, so get it straight. That being said, it's a lot harder to hate on when it's doing your team some party favours.

Werk it Sister

I think these dudes had a pretty good idea of how to make a music video for fifty deutschmarks. All you need is an imagination and that theatre school mentality.

City of Analgesics

I'm sure a heavy back catalogue of spots in the Los Angeles area looms large in the mind of just about any skateboarder. Who's done what. Who killed. Who lagged like a cripple. It's no secret that a small vicinity of land mass has pumped out and played host to a sizable portion of raw skating over the last 20 years (perhaps on a per capita basis that even rivals New Jersey). Gonz to Girl. Menace to Marko Jazbinsek.

It's hard not to feel that LA dropped off the map a little in recent years. Post-Barcelona explosion, shit got way more spread out and international. No longer is LA the top dawg city of four wheels. Outside of Daewon Song, it's common place nowadays for dudes to have half the globe covered in a video part. It's hard to fathom the pull that California and LA specifically had on the skate world 10 years ago.

You could see the cohesive zeal of the region start to slip after the LA County video came out. I'm not trying to write off a whole generation of dudes that came after, but once Chris Franzen's time zone dipped, some of that LA spark faded. I guess kids get tired of seeing the same spots in every issue of a magazine, so the spots go unskated until they're new again. People go elsewhere, and the limelight on the city dims a bit.

Good skaters can come from anywhere, but some real LA street shit has been hard to come by the last decade. That's not to say it's not there. Take a look at Vincent Alvarez. Straight kills. More to the point, take a look at this dude I'd never heard of before, Justin Guillen:

(Disregard the embarrassingly bad intro on this one)






If that doesn't give you some faith for progressive nu-Menace bone thug rawdoggin, you may as well never touch a ledge for the rest of your life. Gone but not forgotten, the city of angels will rise again.

Fat Man Comin Down Yo Pipe

Gather round one and all,

Christmas time is here again
A time to spend, with drinks to blend
A holy day to get new socks
Visa bill ungodly shock

Brandon O Brandon

Look, you can trade Scott Rolen for garbage, you can get a package for Halladay that won't satisfy my immediate and unreasonable desires, but when you get rid of Brandon League, that's just too much.

Brandon League, I mourn for your loss. You can point to all the times that he came into a game and blew up, but when that young man was on, he could've miffed Satan himself. All the tangible qualities of excellence were there, just not at the same time. Never did the stew congeal into a palatable solid to rest upon your bread. Still, I feel he wasn't given the full reign he might've thrived on. Had they thrown him in there instead of Downs or Frasor in the post-BJ ambiguity of the closing curtains this year, who knows what might've flourished. Granted, too many what ifs, too many parallel universes (universi?). So, farewell delicious unpredictability. So long complete dominance offset by wild shit. Goodbye, the perfect closer that never was.

Disco Queen

1977 World Series
Game 666
Dodgy Fuckers vs. Yankee Dude-les

I'm dying for a baseball fix in the off season. As exciting as the Blue Jays filling their bench with subpar infielders this past week has been (I've already pre-ordered my Alex Gonzalez jersey ... not), sometimes the visceral sensation of a game is required to recharge your baseball senses.

Much like a junkie returning to his old ways after a month away from the hard stuff, I stooped so low as to take a DVD out of the public library of an old-time sizzler Fall Classic. Finding full game downloads on the internet is not so common (if anybody has a link to the full game 6 of the '93 series, I would be ever so indebted to you), so sometimes you just gotta make do with watching the fuckin Yankees win.

Perhaps we'll draw some comparisons between the '77 Yankees and the 2009 Skankees as this rambling turd unfolds, but fear not, any analysis will be completely superficial and ill-informed, as is my want.



So, picture it, New York City in the year of our lord, nineteen hundred and seventy-seven. Richard Hell is at the peak of his creative powers, Abraham D. Beame is in the mayor's office, and the city is crumbling. It probably looked something like this (jump to 4:00):



Billy Martin's Bronx Bombers plow their way to within one win of the Series, anchored by the heavy burger bat of Reggie Jackson, showboat extraordinaire. Billy and Reggie's squabbles had come to a head earlier in the season when Martin had to be restrained from dealing some short man vengeance Reggie's way after he pulled him from a game for lack of hustle.

Tommy Lasorda helms the boys in blue and eggs them on towards a brighter tomorrow. The moustaches of Ron Cey and Davey Lopes are invariably laced with cocaine as they hunker down at VIP tables on the sunset strip.

The pantaloons are so tight, mobility becomes limited. Here, Ron Cey hoofs it home with the stanky leg as he begins to resemble a mannequin in motion.



Game 6 is of course famous for Reggie's power performance. "Hi mom!" mugging aside, what he did here is substantially gnarly. Perhaps it does take an ego the size of Manhattan to go into a pressure cooker situation like this with so much confidence at the plate. You know, him referring to himself in the third person, calling himself "the straw that stirs the drink" in the Yankee organization, and the ineptitude with which he self-promoted himself smacks real similar to what A-Rod could've been without the coaching of one million press relations lessons. But for all the "New Mr. October" accolades that A-Rod got with his "post-season renaissance" this year, I'm sure he would trade em all in a heartbeat for three dingers in the last game of a Series.



Shit gets buck when they close it out. Reggie had just called time to go switch his hat for a helmet as some scummy New Yorkers were throwing firecrackers near him in the outfield. With the last out, he's off like a shot taking fools down like The Fridge on a Sunday. Harsh barge the large Marge and you're off to poison the clubhouse.



Maybe Reggie is just the King of the Nerds. I picture him as a feeble basement dwelling poindexter concocting some kind of suave medicine to get that go-to gumption. Much like the episode of Family Matters where Urkel transforms into Stefan Urkelle, Reggie becomes a muscled freak trotting the bases, knowing that darkness will bring his reversion to his former, lesser self, which might explain why he was in such a hurry to get back to the clubhouse. His puny medecine-free body must never be viewed by the public eye.

Requiem For A Beam

If you watch a few minutes into this opus, you'll witness probably one of the sweetest jobs to ever grace the land. The guy that had the cahones to lay down some of the most savage video effects ever cobbled together with decaying BBC technology.



Watch from 5:00 if your attention span is decaying rapidly.

Imma Slave 4 U, R U a Slave 4 Me?

Personally, I feel that Slave would be a better name for a German company composed entirely of white rastas. That way they could truly get in touch with the oppression of their people. But, as it stands, it’s a name representing a collection of dudes I’ve been mostly unaware of occupying the third string at Black Box.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume Jamie Thomas had little to do with the production of their new vid Radio Television. I don’t know who made the thing, but right off the bat you’re hit with a wall of stock footage that pulls you away from the clip clip bang bang Zero style that spilled over into Mystery and Fallen video productions. Slave brings their own unique brand of brand identity to the table, but I don’t know who they’re trying to appeal to specifically. California scumlords? Next generation all terrain hammer babies? Old dudes who like a little tranny with their stair jumping? Fuck, I dunno.

Complete lack of titles here. Do I know who any of these people are? Maybe, but probably not. Pat Burke breaks off the safety conscious middle aged bicycle enthusiast with proper gusto. Although it might not be sound advice to play dead when you encounter a bear, when the bear is wearing a helmet and you just kickflipped over him, playing dead might be the best option you have going for you. Burke might squeal like an excitable retard when he lands a trick, but his looseball zeal and proper frontside heels are hard not to enjoy.

A bearded goblin with freckles. What will they think of next? If Frecks is around long enough, I anticipate an eventual personal backlash against his own nickname. Kevin Long, Brian Hansen, I don’t know what Frecks’ real name is, but if I was him I’d demand people address me as Mr. Frecks.

One thing that becomes obvious real quick with this vid is that instead of the ultra fast edits typical of the traditional Black Box output, Radio Television gives you a lot more runup and a lot more rollaway. This makes it much easier for my slow gears to process. I’m only half ADD addled at this point, so a little bit of context before the images travel from my eyes to my noodle is much appreciated. Probably why this video is twice as long as say, Misled Youth, but I’m fine with that.

Matt Mumford footage is almost nostalgic at this point as I haven’t seen anything from him in ages. He’s still gnarly, his style is still pretty awful, and he still has the tendency to look like a mannequin standing on a skateboard when he sticks his arms out.



Self styled gearhead Jon Allie blows doors with a banger of a tune and a back to back flip to board rail combo just so you know he still can. “Let me tell you what melba toast is packing right here. I’ve got four-eleven positrack out back. Seven-fifty double pumper, edelbrock intake, bored over thirty. Eleven to one pop up pistons. Turbo jet, 390 horsepower. We’re talkin some fuckin muscle.”



Jon Goemann of Birdhouse fame (is there even such a thing as Birdhouse fame anymore?) closes out the video with some largeness and that’s that.

So, what do you get out of the whole thing? Despite the faux-VHS quality, Radio Television probably won’t adorn your shelf of classic vids, but with a decent bag of not so obvious tunes and a surprisingly unobstrusive cache of greatest hits newsreel clips, it’s a pretty decent watch. Would watch again. One and a half thumbs up yer bum.