Neckz/Facez

Not exactly as promised, a non-live blog of Disk 2 of Krooked Kronichles...

Rarely does a special-features disk actually outweigh the actual product in kilos of entertainment. If it weren't for the annoying problem of playing the disk on my roommate's slow Compaq without a remote control, having to get up and mouse over to the next segment, I could say that the special features, possessed of a shotgun, would put Disk 1 into a trap-and-skeet machine and send it sailing gracefully over a river, granting it glorious flight its life shortly before disintegrating it into pixie (more like fairy) dust.

Why? Well, apologies again to Mark Gonzales. But Disk 2 confirms that he ruined Krooked Kronichles his creative input. The initial segments of the special features include guest edits by punk rock shitshow/incredible Australian talent Dustin Dollin and others. And they're much better than the flimflam the Gonz put together on the first dvd. The skating is better showcased, there are more bails that make the viewer realize how fast and injury-prone skaters really are, and we havent even gotten to the actual "extras."

But now we have. Neck Face's segment of the "arty graffiti vid-features" dominates (in terms of power but not time, because it's less than 5 mins long) the entire disk. We see him throwing a molotov cocktail at a tag, skating a full pipe messily and falling, bonelessing a sketchy bank not seen in any other part of the video, and otherwise being a nighttime menace to the sleeping squares. My friend, whose driver's license was recently revoked and who has done enough stretches in jail to slightly improve his flexibility, walked in when this segment was playing and said "This guy breaks so many laws!" He sat down until it was over, and then went to put on his pyjamas.

He did this because the remainder of the DVD focuses on the dubious artistic achievements of Krooked's friends. They also do graffiti, but their graffiti is boring, a bunch of photorealistic eyes smattered on some plywood and set against a wall (probably so they won't offend anyone). One of the guys wrote a good song on the piano but it wasn't worth it to be subjected to so many photos of sunglasses piled on each other.

Essentially, the artistic "vision" Krooked mounts together is subverted effectively by the contrasting elements of the DVD. Every time a punk upstart takes the helm at the editing booth or at the molotov cocktail vending machine, the video springs to live. Krooked makes you want to watch videos by more interesting skateboard artists, whether, like Neck Face, they appeared in short segments or, like pornographic alien designer/noseblunt slide popularizer Ed Templeton, they didn't appear in the video at all. It's not the fact of Krooked's cerebral elements that destroy it outright; it's the fact that the cerebral elements are boring and distracting enough to take away from skateboarding's primary allure: visceral thrills--cheap, illegal, and explosive.