The MIMS News Just Keeps Pouring In / Terry Kennedy Inadvertent Cameo

"This Is Why I Rock." MIMS answers the other question America needs answered.

YouTube labelers have been more helpful, indicating it's the "(Rock Version)" of "This Is Why I Rock."



By what appears to be sheer serendipity, the video's graphic depicts professional skateboarder Terry Kennedy (no relation to Jamie or JF), known to people who watch Viva la Bam (by the way, adding to Bam's use of mascara, his heart-a-gram tatoos, and the sorta metro/emo steez of his sex tape is the use of feminine article "la" to as the article in the title of his TV show--sup Bam? U fem? Bi? What're you saying here?) as "Compton-Ass Terry." The image comes from a Krew skateboard clothing company ad appearing in Thrasher and Transworld Skateboarding magazines across the country.

Kennedy rose from obscurity during his teenage years when the Baker team was mining L.A. County for teenage amateur riders. They included Evan Hernandez, Knox Godoy, Brian Herman, and Terry. It was a bit over-hyped; neither Terry nor Knox have really roughed up the skating world in a while, but like most things skate, these guys were hot in their day.

Last I checked, Terry was riding for Element, but there's some news here that he now rides for Baker and Pharrell Williams's vanity skate shoe project called Ice Cream. I don't really know much about this but here's a Youtube promo of sorts.



According to a brief scan of Wikipedia, Kennedy has been featured in some rap videos and was even shot in the jaw in '05. So maybe the connection between Terry Kennedy and the world of hip-hop and MIMS isn't so astonishing as it first appeared.

BTW: As with most skate-related vanity cross-promotion projects (the Bam thing, the Fuel Network), the Ice Cream video is pretty boring: not enough skating, too much self-commentary. Terry Kennedy's never been a standout skater, but his ability to market himself as one "from the streets" has proven remarkably successful. I mean just check out those fronts! Maybe later a post about the respective virtues and vices of cross-polination between skating, hip-hop, punk, TV, etc.

Ice Cream Skates
TK Krew Ad
The Brief Terry Kennedy Wikipedia

Kids Get Paid to Do What I Do for Free

At least I'm not alone with the MIMS situation. Harvilla goes deep into it, even concluding that "This Is Why I'm Hot" is a good song.


Village Voice MIMS Article

Village Voice. More like VaVaVa Voom!

Renee's

Last time I paid for a haircut, I was laughed out of the salon. I’m going bald (slowly—there’s still some good years left, ladies), and had made the unfortunate mistake of covering my peak with an early-Beatles shag, hiding its recession from all eyes, including my own. I asked Jennifer, the hairstylist at the outlet mall to make me look like an E.R.-era George Clooney, who for those of you unfamiliar with 90s TV looks like a Roman Empire-era Julius Cesar. Trimmer in hand, Jennifer complied, at the end of the process leaving me not only balder than when I started but with an uneven peak that made me look like I’d been hit on the top of the dome with a baseball bat. When I asked her to shave the other side so the ‘do would look even, Jennifer laughed.

I’d never been derided by a hairstylist before, and I haven’t since, because from that day on I’d gone DIY, giving myself a 50’s “Buzz” with a Wahl Clip’N Trim, which is a powerful, if not entirely delicate, means of haircuttery. This continued for over a year, until I was tending bar at Meconi’s Pub and Eatery when Renee of Renee’s Salon walked in and ordered a beer.

At this point, I was sporting a more rugged version of the Clooney I’d asked of Jennifer, albeit with about a six-day beard to round out the edges. After some idle chitchat (Renee’s something of a regular), she eyed my ‘do with a concerned look, and after a pregnant pause, informed me that it was “Industry day” tomorrow, and I could get the full Renee’s treatment for around 20 dollars, which I assumed must have been a substantial discount.

The next day, I wandered down to Pacific Avenue to try to find Renee’s. It was difficult, and I was stranded at a traffic light when I saw her walking down ninth street with the sun in her California blonde hair and a little lapdog at her leash. She invited me to the Fireman’s Park to help Mi Shu do her business, and soon after we were back at her salon to let the haircuttery begin.

After giving me a trim that left the conical nature of my head more understated and the billowing plooms of sidelocks held better in check, Renee moved on to my beard, an eight-day affair that crept down from my sideburns onto my lower neck. She trimmed off the neck hair, leaving me with a well-kept beard, then asked if I wanted the rest shaved off.

She suggested chops, and the results were just hilarious enough to keep:



Renee offered me a discount if when she walked into the bar that night I was still sporting my Ambrose Burnsides. After several minutes of waffling I conceded, and have since oddly received numerous compliments on my ridiculous hypermasculine facial sculpture.

On my way out, I asked if bikers and tattoo artists came into her salon asking her to help them look the way they did, and she said yeah. It’s too hard to do something like that yourself, I guess. Interesting think-piece material: Hardcore guys and their attachment to the girly “creative” types (be they sexed male or female) who actually have the artistic skill to rend them as menacing as they sometimes look. Further thought: Is the tattoo and the piercing and the long hair still a commitment to self-mutilation and therefore “taking a stand,” or simply too conformist and specific in its message to mean anything at all?

Three Hundo!

Reviewed a gnashing movie called 300 for Your Local Review. Check it out. 300 thumbs up.

Link

MIMS “It’s Alright,”

This song makes a lot more sense as a message than “This Is Why I’m Hot,” but does little to make sense of just what space MIMS occupies.

I picked this up from allhiphop.com, it’ll be there for a little while longer. Further search for the track, which must just be a mixtape dumper, reveals a realraptalk.com message board thread indicating that the beat was jacked from an unknown Fabolous song, or at least sounds enough like it to appear jacked. Meanwhile, Grape_Rom, djpositiv, kartoon, and kolizon2003 an argument about as apathetic and unresolved as “This Is Why I’m Hot,” albeit more concise:

Grape_Rom: this beat sucks…
This song sucks…

Djpozitiv: yes…SUCKS to me!

[. . .]

Kartoon: yo lay off dude

Kolizion2003: thanks

Perhaps MIMS’s semi-success has to do with little more than rhyming mediocre over jacked beats and just making songs that lack internal coherence. “This Is Why I’m Hot”: “I can sell a mill saying nothing on the track.” He knows what he’s doing but not how.

Last Call, Bar Band

Not last night, but the night before, I was working at the empty bar, making “funocopters” with the coasters by flinging them around like frizbees, occasionally landing one in its proper place, on the bar, in front of a chair, where an imaginary and buxom patron would gratefully glance my way, order a PBR, tip me fifty dollars, then lean over the counter to kiss me. I work at a divey place.

After fifteen minutes of coaster-tossing, the manager, D, came in from some work in back, ordered a Red Hook, didn’t pay for it, and said “follow me.”

He broke out a ladder from the utility closet, climbed into a crawl space over the game room, and proceeded to hand down to me an Ampeg amp head, a dual-15” 400-watt speaker cabinet, a patch cable, and a lock-nut Ibanez metal shredder with tuning knobs on the bridge and a mint-green Corvette-style paint job.

We set up shop in the corner and D quickly blasted off to Volume Level Ten, picking away some Metallica riffs and occasionally stopping to flex his fingers and stare at his hands. “Hurts to bend the strings,” he explained. He had been cutting metal to repair some element of the bar six months earlier, the machine blade slipped, and hot, sharp metal nearly sliced the fingers on his left hand clean off. These Metallica licks were the first notes he’d played since the accident.

Soon he graduated to some “Eruption” and some Nuge, a real 80’s wailer. He’d moved from the East coast to LA, Axel Rose style, with big dreams. Woke up at 30 with a bad hangover and no record deal, shucked north and started a restaurant. The details of the trajectory are unclear, but the arc suffices.

After some abortive Hendrix “Foxy Lady” efforts and a few more beers, D passed the guitar OVER THE BAR to me. In what must’ve been the luckiest stroke of fate cast on me in at least four days, just at that moment a dude and a chick walked in. They work at the restaurant next door, a Texican high-end meat market type joint. I whammed out a big E-minor chord and gave the whammy a little shimmy. I was in business; the Ibanez played like a true axe, hardly any action, easygoing frets, just begging for a shredding.

“What’s going on here?” asked the dude in what must be the only possible reaction to a bartender who just stroked a dipped-out chord.

“Nothin much, just jammin’,” I punctuated this last with some Blues-Box wheedles. “What’ll it be?”

She ordered a Citron shot with a sugared rim--and he--a vodka with a Coke back. I passed the guitar back to D, who jammed some Dokken riffs into the couple’s ears. The couple tried to sit through the onslaught, but they just couldn’t hang. I knew from previous conversations with the dude that he was into techno music and DJing, so it didn’t surprise me that D’s guitar heroics didn’t pass his muster.

They left in a hurry, and as soon as the door closed, D jammed out on some more minor pentatonics, business be damned, pausing only to yell, “You don’t like it! Fuck you! Don’t come back!”

I had to kick D out of his own bar at about 1:45 a.m. FYI George Lynch is from Spokane, WA. Maybe the West isn't as soft as I thought.

This Is Why I Blog

MIMS “This Is Why I’m Hot”

Looking for some hot metal to pour into the moulds for the grand re-opening of the ideelz factory, I hit up the Billboard Hot 200 to see what was at the top of the charts.

I’d actually heard “This Is Why I’m Hot” in the car a month and a half ago driving with my friend Jeff from Sea-Tac to downtown Tacoma without realizing, or caring to remember, that it was called “This Is Why I’m Hot.” I listened all the way through, withholding judgment for maybe a guest verse or a change in the beat, but before I knew it the song was over. I didn’t hate the track but I wasn’t sad to see it go, either.

Seeing “This Is Why I’m Hot” at the top of the charts a couple days ago, I didn’t recognize it at first. The title conjures up images of a Pussycat Dolls–like group, a breathy chorus enumerating the various reasons why the hot singers are, sexually speaking, hot. Maybe in more ways than one, i.e. turned on as well as pert of breast and pouty of mouth . . . or maybe there would even be a couple lines saying something like, “I’m wearing a parka / In your apartment / But you’ve got the heater on / Turned up to one hundred and one / (CHORUS) This is why I’m hot.” The name of the performer, MIMS, didn’t provide many indications otherwise. Maybe each letter stood for the first name of the hot girls that sang about why they were hot? Monica, Irena, Michelle, and Serena.




Thanks to Google Images for help assembling the MIMS supergroup.

Anyone who has seen the video and read some Wikipedia and some Yahoo! Shopping understands that MIMS is not an acronym for four hot women who sing in breathy voices, but rather is an acronym for Music Is My Savior, which is the title of his album. Anyone who has taken this much time with the song, trying to find a reason to care about it, is probably only a little more “meh” about the whole thing than really disappointed in the song’s failure to provoke any reaction whatsoever.

Is there anything to be said about this? I thought “This Is Why I’m Hot” worthy of an easy write-off; of course it’s Number One. Remember Daniel Powter? Gargabe-y riff-raff write vacuous tunes all the time and they nevertheless become the "hot"test chart-toppers of their day(s).

In the shower this morning, though, a couple thoughts hit me. First, unlike with Powter and other boring groups that crack their way into everyone’s drive-time and therefore the top of the Billboard Hot 200, I had actually made a conscious decision to NOT have anything to think about MIMS. With Daniel Powter, it had been more of an involuntary reaction the songwritery garbage that I’d dealt with since I was eleven, sitting by the radio waiting for the Gin Blossoms songs to end, hoping that I would be able to cue the Record Button on the tape deck in time when the opening riff to Smashing Pumpkins’ “Today” would start. That is, Daniel Powter faded easily into the background for me, like other people’s conversations at a restaurant; they simply don’t matter. I only think about Powter when I see his name on the charts or at Yahoo! Launch.

For whatever reason, though (maybe simply because most Rap songs manage to deliver), I feel a need to find something exciting in radio rap, and can usually content myself with at least a couplet of clever word-play, a pun that has been dragged from far enough back in pop culture or the animal kingdom to merit discussion or at least quotation, or a brag so ostentatious it is actually just a joke. I didn't find any of these things if "This Is Why I'm Hot."

Structurally, the title of “This Is Why I’m Hot” suggests a sort of middle-school five-paragraph-essay structure that revolves around a well-articulated thesis. Thematically, it suggests that MIMS should at some point state that he is hot for one particular reason.

In Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” Juvenile's “Back That Thang Up,” and many other instances, a hip hop song’s titular deictic has an obvious referent or at least gives the listener a chance to guess. Snoop Dogg gives us context clues like “When a nigga get a attitude,” so we know that the “It” we’re supposed to drop is likely a heavy object, and we’re probably supposed to drop it on someone’s head. If you bought “Back That Thang Up” with the Explicit Content sticker on it you know for certain that “Thang,” to Juvenile (in this particular case) means “Azz,” but “Damn you look good [. . .] You’s a fine motherfucker” gave radio-listeners enough hints that “That Thang” was more likely a body part than, say, a pickup truck.

MIMS doesn’t give us any such help. “This Is Why I’m Hot” doesn’t yield anything so direct or obvious as the help Snoop Dogg and Juvenile gave us. The line “This Is Why I’m Hot” does not, in itself, explain why MIMS is hot, and the surrounding verses aren’t any help. What is the antecedent of “This”? One might suppose it is the smattering of imagery and directly stated instances of hotness contained in the verses, the structural ingenuity with which MIMS put together his rhymes, or, if MIMS assumes that people are watching his video, maybe he points to his face, his balls, his chain, anything to give the listener a clear answer to the central question of the song: Why is MIMS so hot?

The verses aren't super, a monotonous rhythm over and over again, and the rhymes about cars etc. aren't really spectacular or even particularly convincing. Do we even really believe MIMS when he says he's hot? MIMS makes brief efforts at rectifying his argument: "I'm hot cause I'm fly / You ain't cause you not." MIMS’s best defense of his position is a combination ad hominem and weak tautology. I most vividly remember a song’s failure to address its central question from Wee Sing in Sillyville, a video I watched in middle school and high school:



Those four yellow guys, the Yellow Spurtlegurgles, sing an adaptation of “Auld Lang Syne” that, like MIMS, leaves the listener dissatisfied: “We’re here / Because we’re here / Because we’re here / Because we’re here” ad infinitum. There are, however, numerous mitigating circumstances that don't apply to MIMS.

For one, the Spurtlegurgles are singing for kids age 3-6. Furthermore, they are at least trying to answer their question, and one feels, through their unending repetition, a certain level of commitment to resolving the issues at hand. MIMS, on the other hand, can’t even endear himself to us with his preoccupation with the issue. He hopes his “This” will suffice: that’s the way it is, it is what it is; Do not pay attention to this song.” MIMS probably got bad grades on his five-paragraph essays in middle school, too distracted because the heater was on too high and he was wearing a parka, or Monica, Olga, Serena, and Eve were beginning to blossom into womanhood.

MIMS’s failure to write a good five-paragraph rap song really isn’t as frustrating as it is boring, in part because no one really asked MIMS why he was hot in the first place. MIMS is just a hard-working hip-hop artist who owned NYC for a couple weeks with “This Is Why I’m Hot,” which in turn yielded him a record deal, major airplay, and his current position on the pop charts.

To wrap this up in a somewhat cute fashion, we’ll quickly address two final problems with “This Is Why I’m Hot.” First, like Eminem’s “Smack That,” "This Is Why I'm Hot" song presupposes a future in which its own existence will impact its structure. For anyone to ask “Why is MIMS Hot,” people must know MIMS. How do people know MIMS? Because he’s on the radio, explaining why he’s hot.

Second, it is for precisely this circular logic of its own existence that “This Is Why I’m Hot” finally merits attention. Imagine yourself stranded on a scorchingly hot desert island. At first you tried merely to physically escape, sending smoke signals, writing “HELP” in huge letters in the sand. As you got used to the island, though, you set up shelter, found food, and otherwise adjusted to the environment, so you turned your efforts toward maintaining your sanity and your sense of self. You started painting, creating masks, and searching for signs of other life on the island.

You’re digging for roots one day when you strike a bottle. There is a message written on a piece of paper on the inside. It bears only the words “This is why I’m hot.” Hope wells up inside you. Someone has been here before. No answer is proffered because the important thing is not the answer but the fact of asking it. No meaning is conveyed by the immediate structure of the language, but on a higher level, an immensity of meaning emerges. Someone has been hot! They knew why! And they want you to know, too!

MIMS's "This Is Why I'm Hot" similarly contents itself to be an artifact of MIMS's existence more than a testament to any particular topic or idea. "This is why I'm hot" amounts to "I'm here," and, like a bunch of starving, scraggly Robinson Crusoes and Tom Hankses, America listened, but not really very carefully.

Shaw Recreation Center

The long-awaited cinematic re-up of ideelz.

The Schmaltz and the Smooth

From "In the Street, Today." _Thrasher_ 1.1 (January 1981):

"A curb is an obstacle until you grind across it. A wall is but a ledge until you drop off it. A cement bank is a useless slab of concrete until you shred it. A street is another downhill to be tucked. A multi-level garage is built for cars until a gang of skaters discovers it. You've got to give the streets fair due, rolling is way cooler than walking. Don't restrict your boundaries, skate architecture is everywhere, grind every edge--You've gotta find all the lines you can."

This rhapsodic quote, which, like excerpts from many skateboarding editorials, is both endearing and cheesy. This nostalgic approach to skate aesthetics often provides room in skate videos and other places for a particularly schmaltzy soundtrack that both enthralls and repulses. Part Husker Du, part lost 80s never-rans, this music occupies a strange place in that it would seem out of place anywhere but as the soundtrack to skate videos. Here is an example from Transworld's _i.e._:



The song is by Built to Spill, which I guess people listen to without skate videos, but I really don't see how. It's sort of evocative of the controlled-noise, you-can-do-it attitude exhibited in the _Thrasher_ editorial. Especially "I got the words and the music wrong / but life goes on."

Both works (that is, the Thrasher editorial and the Built to Spill song) break the normal rules. They're both self-conscious and blushing but nevertheless touch a nerve with anyone familiar with skatboarding. The works become yet more endearing when the reader approaches each as an artifact of human labor, not as a piece of inspiration that fell from the heavens. The same way people enjoy their friends' bands, blogs, and books even when they break the rules of good lyiricism, writing, journalism, or even compelling diaryism.

By the way, _Thrasher_ has published its first twelve issues online at this url: [http://secure.thrashermagazine.com/index.php?SCREEN=articles_1st12]. Good for both nostalgia and a peek into the longest-lasting, most far-reaching codification of the skateboarding-punk connection. Found via boing boing. (wah wah.)

I'm Not a Yeti Yet

I'm just heavyset. Get it?
Just get the jet ready.
I'm a snow beast.
Call the police.



Get it?

The Collapse of the Englishlanguage

At my previous copyediting job, publishers and editors would sometimes lament a current (or perhaps enduring) trend: Compound words are continually being replaced with a one-word amalgam. Dictionary.com offers the following explanation:

"The trend in English is for frequently used word combinations to 'grow together' from two words to one, sometimes passing through a hyphenated stage. The two-word phrase 'data base,' for example, is now most commonly written as one word: 'database.'" (http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g22.html)

This appears alarming in part thanks to George Orwell's _1984_, in which havoc is wreaked in part because of the condensation of English words into a limited and difficult vocabulary. The Party created ridiculous-seeming constructions like _doubleplusungood_ to limit possible uses of language, thereby stifling dissent.

My first (and obviously not my best) thought was that the URL was a corroborater in this Orwellian trend. For some reason you can't put spaces in a url, so I figured that this spaceless block of information was responsible for the continued condensation of our compounds.

Not so; people have been making word mashups before either the Internet _or MTV_ existed. In the age of Old English, people would take concepts from foreign languages like Latin and enunciate them as one word that had formerly been two:

"The words that Old English borrowed in this period are only a partial indication of the extent to which the introduction of Christianity affected the lives and thoughts of the English people. The English did not always adopt a foreign word to express a new concept. [. . .] _Patriarch_ was rendered literally by _heahfæder*_ (high father) [. . .]. For _baptize (L. _baptizare*_) the English adapted a native word _fullian_ (to consecrate) while its derivative _fulluht_ renders the noun _baptism_." (Albert C. Baugh, and Thomas Cable. _A History of the English Language._ Fifth Edition. Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002. 90.)

Baugh and Cable then list the following word connections.

fulluhtbæ[th]** (font)
fulwere (baptist)
fulluht-faeder (baptizer)
fulluht-had* (baptismal vow)
fulluht-nama (Christian name)
fulluht-stow* (baptistry
fulluht-tid* (baptism time) [Like Skating Time!*** I wish the link button were here! Youtube vid coming soon] (90).

The concept of shooting words together to create new ones is not new or even particular to English (cf., for example, Chinese _mei guo_* [_America/"beautiful land"_]). What creates anxiety for me, though, is that we feel the need to eliminate spaces in between words. Maybe we do this to trick ourselves into thinking we've created a new morphological unit where really very little has changed. At the very least, collapsing words is an unnecessary inconvenience for copyeditors.

But maybe it gets worse. At the publishing house, the big headache had to do with policymakers, which has recently entered the lexicon (formerly policy makers, like database/data base). The ostensible justification for this is that policymakers (people who somehow by definition make decisions) are different from policy makers (people who just sometimes happen to make decisions). By this rule, rhyme sayers become rhymesayers, snow beasts become snowbeasts, baked-goods makers become bakedgoodsmakers, and we get a bunch of whole new words, by virtue of eliminating the space. We also get a whole new kind of people--those who were destined to become doers of the various tasks their names indicate.

This is the kind of thing Orwell was worried about; when class or politics comes into play, the use of language becomes much more important. Feminists had something to say about _congressman_, and pretty soon we had political correctness as a bandage to put over these psychological barriers created by language. I'm skeptical that anything changes in the space between policy makers and policymakers, so the creation of these new words looks a lot like a falsehood perpetrated by hegemons. Because not much changes in terms of denotation when we get rid of the space, though, I'm also not sure that putting the space back in will serve to counter the political effects of language collapse. Politically correct language failed for similar reasons.

However, an interesting thing happens if we reverse compound-word creation. It is possible to create word phrases that convey new meanings by separating existing compound words into their possible (though nonlegitimated) morphemes. Witness Jay-Z, who was on the right track on the Diamonds Remix f. Kanye West. (Although the actual track listing shows Jay-Z featured, careful listeners really know who was featuring whom.) Jay doesn't exactly follow the scheme I've outlined in this paragraph, but he does transcend the trend and electrify listeners by cutting _businessman_ into pieces:

"I'm not a _businessman;_ I'm a _business,_ _man_!"

It gets even crazier when puns are introduced. Other possibilities, of the top of my head:

Trans former (former of transexuals, from _transformer_ =robot in disguise)
Cross dresser (Jesus Christ [wearer of crosses], from _crossdresser_ =wearer of women's clothing)
Punt er (kick her out [punt+'er], from _punter_ =football kicker in bad situations)
Space bar (watering hole in outer space, from _spacebar_ =the thing you hit to separate words)

I think Urban Dictionary, Juelz Santana, and Young Jeezy have all done a lot of work already in this category, but the possibilities appear endless; we can create new words out of two disparate ones, then separate them at different places to create new phrases. And in the meantime, we get puns, misunderstandings, and end-line rhyme (rapping)!

Subquestionz: Is there a way to prove that there is a finite (or infinite) number of word-combination/separation possibilities, just like the proof that there is an infinite number of prime numbers? Does anyone apply number theory formalization to words to answer such "big questions"?

*I apologize for the lack of accents on OE and other words. I can't figure out how to do em on a mac.

**OE Thorn has been replaced with [th].

***http://sulkynotes.blogspot.com/2006/12/no-joke_27.html

Movie Idea



I haven't been blogging because I was in Upper Michigan with a friend for a couple days to ski, but no matter, because on the chairlift I had an idea for a horror movie set on a ski slope. The rundown is as follows.

The Thing You Would Read about This Movie If You Saw It on the TV Guide Channel:

A group of hard-partying college coeds join some cute boys for a weekend of fun on the slopes in a little out-of-the-way Washington state town, when a blizzard traps them on the slopes. It's all fun and games until they realize there's a killer on the loose. 1/2*

The Characters:

-Stu, the cute boy who parties hard and loves to have a good time. Played by me.
-Eva, the cute girl who parties hard and loves to have a good time. Played by a female actress (or just a friend).
-Jimmy, John, and Joe, Jane, Jeanne, and Jessica, the cute (but not as cute) boys and girls who get killed pretty early (more on that later).
-Carl, the deformed and creepy ski-sharpener who works at the rental desk and sharpens the skis to a razor-sharp point (could he be the killer? or is he just very industrious?).
-Assorted bed-and-breakfast people who also get killed throughout the movie.

Sample Dialogue:

"We're trapped here at this creepy resort for like five days until the blizzard blows over."
...
"Let's Shred!"

Ways People Can Get Killed:

-Someone gets hog-tied to a ski pole
-Someone gets strapped to the cord that holds the chairlift and gets grinded up in the pulleys that make the chairlift go up the hill
-Ski decapitation
-Pushed off a cliff/chairlift
-Fed to the snow machine
-Forced to do awesome tricks in the half-pipe until they die of exhaustion
-Thrown in the fireplace
-Fed to Bears

The Ending:

I will not give away the ending.

[. . .]

Ok so it turns out that there's kind of a 1977 movie called Snowbeast that involves people getting killed on the slopes. At the IMDB Entry, Big Movie Fan from England says:

"Some Sasquatch type creature is butchering people staying at a ski resort and no-one seems to be able to locate it or kill it. Throughout the movie it kills people and causes some carnage. [. . .] I recommend Snowbeast to anyone."

My movie is just like Snowbeast except the killer is not a yeti, it is just a crazy person. 1/2*

Saviors 2006:

The Hold Steady
Heldref Publications (editing)
Shaw Recreation Center
Bud Heavy
Poker
No Resolve
NFL

Saviors 2007:

Big Titty and the Bobbies
Unemployment (writing/blogging)
Mount Ranier
Bud Heavy
Weightlifting
Resolutions
NBA

Scourges 2006:

Full-Time Employment
John Mellencamp's Sunday omnipresence
Parties and Our Forcible Removal Therefrom (?)

(Anticipated) Scourges 2007:

Substitute Teaching
God's Sunday omnipresence
Tacoma, WA

Placebo Girlfriend

The film adaptation of a novel.

Ray Barbee

By the way, here's some newer-than-oldschool footage of Ray Barbee. He does a no-comply at about :50 and another one as his last trick.

He wrote the music he skates to.

The Big Payback*



Yesterday (Christmas), my brother Patrick and I were trying no-complies in the driveway when a cat colored like an alpaca sweater picked its way into our yard from among some pine trees.

"Hey look at the cat."
"Hey yeah. It kind of looks like that sweater I got from Aunt Nancy."

Back in DC, we fed a couple alley cats who would show up in our backyard, climb up on the steel bars that protected our back door, and paw at the glass like a couple of hungry orphans. In DC, I'd yell curses at the cats so they'd leap from the bars and quit smudging the window. But today, hey, we were in Milwaukee, it was Christmas, and this cat literally looked like a gift, so I figured I'd just leave it to the pines and keep trying flatland tricks with my brother.

After a few more laps around the driveway, I rolled up to Pat and told about the buttery no-complies this old-school skater Ray Barbee used to do back in the day, and he was awed. Then, after a few tricks:

"Hey look, is that the cat?"
"Where?"
"By the side of the road."

Over by the cat, there was a small puddle of viscous-looking blood. It lay prone, all four legs stretched out as far as they could go. Its eyes were open, its mouth agape, turned up at the corners in that triangular way that cats open their mouths to hiss.

Pat said, "Oh, God," and we stood there for a minute. A red pickup rolled by slowly, and a woman called out the window:

"Is it dead?"
"Yeah." So she drove away.

Eventually we decided to check its tags. The cat's name was Tess and she had a phone number.

"Should we call them?"
"I don't know. It's Christmas."
"Well maybe we should get it off the side of the road." I grabbed Tess by her tail and dragged her toward the curb. Pat said something about not being able to watch the blood smear on the street.

"I'm going to go get Dad."

Inside, we told Dad. He called the family immediately and left a message. He's good at breaking this kind of news; he's a doctor. He suggested we grab a cardboard box and put Tess inside it so if the family comes back they could pick up its remains in a receptacle. "You know, if they want to bury it," said Dad.

As we hunted in the basement for the box, we wondered where we were going to put Tess.

Pat said, "Whatever you do, just don't put her in a brick wall, like that Poe story about the Masons."

Back outside, three people hovered over the cat. After a second, I recognized one of them. It was Mike, a high-school acquaintance, with his family. Mike had wound up at NYU, studying theater I think.

"Hey Mike. How's it going," Mike asked.
"So-so. How about you."
"Sad," he said, in a sort of theatrical way (convincing, though; not overdone), and he looked at the dead cat, who was still laying stretched out on the grass. "I called the owner." Then he looked back at me. "Well, merry Christmas." And he turned around and walked off with his family.

My dad picked up the cat and put her in the box, taking her around the side of the house.

"You aren't going to put her on top of the recycling, are you?"
"That's what I was thinking, yeah. But maybe I'd better put her in the recycling so the animals can't eat her."
"You're going to recycle the cat?" Patrick was a little freaked out.
"Yeah, they'll just melt her down, re-mold her, and sell her: 'This cat 90 percent post-consumer waste.' She'll be a little browner and granier than the new kind, but it's good for the environment."
"Gross. I'm going inside."

Dad took some time to peel the postage label off of Tess's coffin. Then he opened the lid and set her inside the recycle bin.

I went inside and talked with Mom for a little bit, then checked my bloglines and read the news. A little later I was playing pool with Pat listening on the new Ghostface joint, when Ghost of Christmas Present dropped this down my chimney:

"Like James Brown / It's the big payback."

RIP to all, and to all a good night.

*see also http://riffmarket.blogspot.com/2006/11/hypnotize.html

I had some ideas a-baking in the back of my dome. Unfortunately, I'm on my mom's iMac (complete with single-clicks and apple keys) thanks mainly to my PC laptop's wireless card's case of cold impotence; problems have arisen. Safari, that mac-ganked version of Explorer that even carries on the navigation symbolism with a cute cartoon compass on the "dock," can't handle any kind of google- or blogger-enabled boldface or whatever. All I can do is post pictures (see below) and check my spelling (see all over).



This is a top-25 Google Image search result for -=50 Cent Christmas=-. I watched "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" with my lil bro and lil sis to ring in the new baby. But the post has no clever title, because of boldface. So I'm just gonna go listen to Ghostface, cause I got "More Fish" (no italics either) from my brother for Christmas. Be back later with musings on Ghost and the Father from Uganda who delivered the Christmas Mass at 11 am today.

Happy Holidays!

Seth Beckhardt Big-Ups the Mundane World

This appeared in the NYT in response to their article about Bob Burnquist's megaramp.

A Ramp to Self-Indulgence

To the Sports Editor:

Re “A Skateboarding Ramp Reaches for the Sky,” Nov. 1: Clearly, Bob Burnquist can be described in many ways: risk-taker, athlete, committed and passionate come to mind. But the one word that is never applied to his high-adrenaline world of X Games participants and their fans is bored. After all, one has to be really bored — or convinced that the mundane world is too difficult to handle — to conceive of such an idiotic, wasteful and valueless pursuit as the world’s largest skateboard ramp. Seth Beckhardt

A lil reactionary, not to mention the weird supposition that there are two "worlds"--one "high-adrenaline" and the other "mundane"--inhabited by skateboarders and normal people respectively. Would that it could be so, Seth! Skate Planet! I'll write a letter to NASA asking them to keep the Hubble searching. I'm sure they have time to poke around the galaxy; they're probably really bored - or convinced that the mundane world is too difficult to handle - to conceive of such an idiotic, wasteful, and valueless pursuit as the world's largest telescope.

Big Blog Trumps Slutty MySpace Warmup Edition

Apparently there's a new skateboard company called Mentality Skateboards, a company whose only video, Skateboarding Explained, features Dan MacFarlane, a counselor a skateboard camp called Lake Owen. That is, Mentality's pro is a guy who teaches six-to-eight-year-old kids how to ollie.



Mentality's selection of MacFarlane as Skateboarding Explained's featured skater introduces a new and (hopefully) singular type of professional.

Most skateboard companies build up their credibility and mystique by creating videos and ads featuring athletes who jump down enormous flights of stairs, fly upside-down in halfpipes, or get in fights with security guards. The skateboards they sell basically signify the tricks they capture on film, and their brand identity relies heavily on whether their videos feature hip-hop, punk rock, fighting, drinking, weed, girls, grimy spots or smooth picnic benches. The attitude portrayed is all or nothing, land or crash, there is no between.

The more typical companies that do create "how-to" videos for skateboarding like The Basics of Skateboarding or Tony Hawk's Trick Tips have generally relied on the skills and expertise of seasoned pros; when a kid pops in a tape, he still gets to watch Geoff Rowley do a manual or Andrew Reynolds 50-50 a knee-high ledge. It's not amazing stuff, but at least the pros' smoothness teaches the kids to get comfortable on a board. Seeing Ed Templeton, whose parts normally feature noseblunts on steep banks, just ollie onto a curb gives a sense of ease, comfort, and bridled talent. More than that, one gets a sense of the months Templeton probably spent tripping the back trucks on the curb and faceplanting right when his pretty next-door neighbor came out the front door to walk her dog.

Mentality's model is different. They built a company around instruction, demystifying skateboarding, being famous for being accessible, for being the opposite of Greco/Daewon. For Mentality, just landing the trick is enough. MarFarlane doesn't look comfortable doing any of the tricks he lands, and one gets the sense that he is totally letting loose to land a kickflip on the flatground, that he pulled out all the stops just to stick that boardslide on the flatbar. When someone buys a Mentality board, they're buying the brand of mediocrity. And they get a free wallet with every purchase.

The result feels sad, for MacFarlane and for the kids who'll watch his video and might even buy his decks. The message of Mentality is style doesn't matter, just learning the next trick--the end result of a lifetime of skateboarding can yield a mediocre role in how-to videos. "Those that can't do..." "blogger.com," "The Believer," "Lupe Fiasco," and all that. The floogates are open but the filters aren't tight enough, the semen's leaking through the condoms, the editorial department is the news board, everyone's reporting, nobody's hating. In the aughties--the age of TMI--you gotta hack through the hackery to get to the gems.

And so:



Skate More!

Grew Up a Screw Up

This track brings the fuego in the sense that it has Luda rapping on it about how he was as a baby. He was pretty much the same as a baby.

Jeezy and Luda---GUASU Via Still Listen to Gagnster Music.