Broke my own rule.

I’m in Taiwan, bored. Waiting for the rest of the Kink team to get here and it was already damn hot outside when we were pedaling around at 7am. Anyway, the uselessness of this post is only to say that if you’re interested in anything I have to say, then I said of a lot of things over on clickedbmx.com for a webterview with Mikey Hines. That’s all. No photos.

Did you know that all of the other Transworld sites use “Prop” instead of Stoke? We figured that it would be weird since Props is a major company within BMX. We never liked Stoke, but went with it as the best alternative. Now that I really think about the situation, there’s no real overlap and really, fuck it. Oh well. Stoke the fire. How quickly the term “hot fire” got replaced with “swagger,” eh?

This is rather useless. After taking Adam Taylor’s job for the last few days, I’ve been thinking lately how relatively happy I am that I don’t work (soley) for a website. It’s not hard by any means, but fuck me if it’s difficult to stay motivated. Hardly rewarding. You post, it’s there, and you can check back to see if anyone liked anything you did. There’s no reward after a bout of labor, no end, and no real satisfaction that I can get from it. And, every mediocre web video blends into the next…do two good clips amidst a sea of bad ones make a video post worthy? I found myself sending videos to Daniel The Intern (capitalized) to let him decide if it was good or not. For a short while when I first started at Ride, it was hard for me to spend all day looking, talking, and write about the best bike riding in the world only to go actually ride poorly. I got over it…the idea, not riding poorly, unfortunately. But it’s definitely hard to get psyched to go ride after spending 12 hours (going on 14 now) on the computer switching from the Ride site to RSS feeds to Word to Bridge to the Ride server and back again and still want to even look at a bike. Even turning off the desire to look for web content to focus on the stuff I should be working on is trying at times. The last five days haven’t been fun. Fortunately it’s 1am and I’m only on Tecate number six.

The lyrics are half the fun:

oh my goodness
becky, look at her bible it is so big
she looks like one of those preacher guys girlfriends
but who understands those preacher guys anyway
they only talk to her because she looks like Mother Teresa, okay
i mean look at it, it’s just huge
bleh, it’s gross
she’s just so, righteous

i like big bibles and i cannot lie
you Christian brothers can’t deny
when a girl walks in with a KJV
and a bookmark in proverbs
you get stoked
got her name engraved
so you know that girl is saved
it looks like one of those large ones
with plenty of space in the margins
oh baby,i wanna read withca
cause your bibles got pictures
my minister tried to console me
but that book you got makes me so holy
ooh momma-mia
you say you want koinonia
well, bless me, bless me
and teach me about John Wesley

i saw her praying while i was DJing
she got grace..pretty face
she ain’t goin down to the bad place

i’m tired of heathen guy
sayin they like pocket-size
ask the average Christian to take a look
she’s gotta pack much book

so fellas (yeah), fellas (yeah)
has your girlfriend got the book (ooh yeah)
well read it (read it) read it (read it) read that holy book
baby got book

(NIV with a ribbon bookmark)
baby got book
(NIV with a ribbon bookmark)

i like ‘em leather and bound
it’s 50 pounds
i just can’t understand
how it is some weenie want the bible on CD
she wanna get you saved
Amen! double-up A-men!

i ain’t talkin about a paraphrase
cause Paul wouldn’t use those anyways
like ‘em real thick and red lettered
you can’t find nothin better
southpaw’s in love
bibles that big are unheard of

so i’m sittin here thinkin what if
i find me a girl that shows midriff
you can have those bimbos
i’ll keep those chicks that do devo’s
a word to the Christian sistas
i can’t resisit yall i’ll do God’s time witcha
but i gotta be straight when i say, i wanna pray
till the break of day
baby got it goin on like the wife in proverbs 31

we might get engaged
when we finished readin this page
cus it’s worn, and its torn
and i know this girls reborn

so ladies (yeah) ladies (yeah)
do wanna save people from Hades (yeah)
then red it till the paged fall out
even white preachers gotta shout
baby got book

(thompson chain with big red letters)
baby got book

yeah baby
when it comes to a good book
Stephen Kings resume just can’t compare
39+27= 66 books
and if you’re catholic..there’s even more

so your girlfriend quotes bill hybels
but does she got a big bible
cuz that little thing she’s got won’t start a revival
my bible study don’t want none unless you got book hun

..you can read clancy or grisham
but please don’t lose this book

some brothers wanna play that hard role
and tell you that book’s too old
so they toss it and burn it
and i pull up quick to just learn it
so your girl like paperback? well i ain’t down with that
cuz my girlfriends hot, her bibles rockin
and shes got good doctrine
to the atheist chicks who try to dis
you ain’t it miss priss
give me a Christian, i’m insistin’
and i’ll great her with some holy kissin’
some pervert tried to chase
but he didn’t make it past first base
she’s quick to resist temptation
and she loves a new translation
so ladies who were lost and found
if you want the triple 6 thrown down
dial 1-800-reads-a-lot
and teach and those psalms
baby got book

(NIV with a ribbon bookmark)
baby got book
(thompson chain with big red letters)

bible college knowledge but she still got book

This got brought up somehow last night at the park…the letters section, I mean. I mentioned this one letter to Mr. Ardelean that I had that was four pages long (it turns out it was three) and completely unreadable. Well, apparently my girlfriend can read it, so tonight we took nearly an hour (42 minutes of actual typing, then a thorough proof read) to get it typed up. I’m not going to post the letter in it’s entirety, but it’s an especially odd one… Focusing on Craig Grosso in its entirety and using a cornacopia of words I’ve never once used in a sentence, here’s one of the more ridiculous quotes:

“Grasso was part of the rebellious faction of anarchists that hedonistically spearheaded a hell-bent campaign to overthrow the conservative ideals of the establishment, of the then AFA  during the ladder part of the 1980?s stemming from the strict dress code and formalities of wearing a bicycle manufacture?s uniform and towards a more rider-governing control.”

If you keep on the Ride Twitter, then you know a little bit more about this. If not, then you’re about 140 characters short, but I’m working on a really random story for the next issue and experienced a lot of this photo today. Five times, actually. I’m psyched on the outcome, though.

We just sent a new one of those off today. It has a bunch of stuff in it, and to be honest, it’s a bit of a hard hitter since we did something on Mikey and Stephen…and not what most people would expect, either. The issue also has a Darin Read interview and I happened to find this photo that was saved on my desktop for a good month or two that correlates with it. I’m not sure why I shot a photo of it, or why I drew a really bad photo of the infamous GJ naked and looking like Sargeant Slaughter, but it’s there and I figured it was worth a blog post (what is a post worth, anyway?)… After doing the typical interview with Darin over the course of two nights, I found the tape completely inaudible. Try as hard as I may, after sitting there for an hour or so trying to make out each static-covered word several times, I gave up. The whole interview was trashed. Fortunately, Darin’s interview got pushed back an issue, so I came up with the idea to send this little care package his way to let him control his own interview-fate. I can’t decide if it was a cop out, a fresh idea, or an act of faith, but I had never gone about doing an “interview” this way and didn’t know how it’d pan out. Something like this won’t work for everyone, and although I was prepared to go back to the typical style, I’m glad to say I didn’t have to. Darin came through better than I hoped. If you get the chance, check the May Issue for the awesome Stephen/Mikey story, then give the Darin story a read.

I’m still working on the same article and this name just popped into my head. Does anyone know how Jeff Crawn is doing? For those that don’t know, Jeff Crawn was an amazing rider (check the video from 1993) who became paralyzed from the neck down after a pair of SE Landing Gear forks snapped (I never would have had a pair of if I had known about this). This all happened before my time, but I’d still like to know.

I know freestyle as what we call it, but I’m working on something for the magazine and decided to check out good ‘ol YouTube to see what other people consider it to be. Obviously there’s the hip-hop version, skiing, snowboarding, quads, MX, razor scooters, unicycles, mountain bikes, and fixed gears, but a few pages in and a few random phrases thrown in with freestyle produced some ridculous results:

This one is obvious, freestyle walking. I didn’t know this was a serious thing until I went to the Stadium in Montreal, Canada, and there were like 15 chubby kids bouncing off walls and one dude that was a living spider monkey. I’d be hunched over about to shoot a photo when some flash of human being would jump across my peripheral vision…weirdest thing ever.  I supposed I can appreciate it in the sense that it’s pure and simplistic, and it’s crazy when it gets to a certain level. But most of the time, it’s just stupid. It also seems to be something that hungover college students like to make mockumentries about.

Chairing. There’s a few examples of this. First off, we have that kid in Vegas that does a bunch of wild stuff at the Pro Park who gets all my respect. Then we have the dude that walks up to a wheel chair, doesn’t do shit of anything impressive (he calls it freestyle madness), but puts it on the Internet for our viewing pleasure?go back inside, take the gloves off, and stick to painting your face and drinking Faygo. Then we have the dude that is just in a chair with a soccerball…for a little while, at least, then he gets out of it and plays guitar. But, it’s “the best ever L@@K ==.” There’s a whole other level of people doing dumb shit in chairs and calling it freestyle, but let’s keep going.

Frisbee. Take one beach activity, add some twirling dance, and you have one of the gayest things you can do with a couple of dudes besides actually sleeping with them.

Freestyle soccer and basketball. This one is sort of confusing to me because it’s deviated so far from the actual sport, but each one keeps the underlying rule of not using their hands or feet (respectively), but it’s all just dancing with a bounching/spinning ball. Things I love about these videos: the soccer dudes always go to some epic backdrop and the basketball kid puts on a jersey and goes to the basketball court but doesn’t even attempt to throw a shot.

Tractors. Nothing like getting your John Deere on two wheels, eh? I can see the entertainment value in this.

Canoeing. This isn’t a joke…this is a competition. I love the outtro thanks, the outfit, and the sincere amount of effort these videos have. Imagine if this is what you were into…how lonely do you have to be?

Motorcycles. Not to be confused with motocross, but dudes on crotch rockets with a death wish freestyle. I want to love motorcycles, but we’ve already seen what these things can do when a rider gets on one. It’s not like BMX where you fall, and you get back up. The whole lifestyle behind this shit seems so overplayed and jocked out anyway, that it’s like watching Nascar…everyone is just waiting for the crash. Fortunately, there’s lots of those, too. I could probably have found some better examples of how stupid this shit is, but I couldn’t sit through it.

And the pièce de résistance, dog freestyle. There’s a lot of this, either involving frisbees, obstacle courses, or just dancing. Also, when you type “dog” into YouTube, the third suggestion is “dog sexing woman,” which gives you a video of a woman getting humped by a dog that’s been viewed nearly eight million times. The world is fucked.

Nobody cares. This NPR report sums up my opinion on Twitter quite well.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101619832

Edit: This also translates to blogging to a lesser degree. See: the conundrum with having my own blog.

We’re just wrapping issue 155 of Ride, marking my 70th issue. Who knows what a scene website and decent writing skills will bring you, eh? I hate to lament (that’s not the right word) over things like this too often, but it’s a wild thought that it’s been six full years. When I first got hired, I had this weird idea that it was all some sort of joke, and Ride’s least memorable editor, Scott Mcewenly (however his name was spelled…sorry, this is coming out more asshole-ish than I wanted), was going to come back, and be like, “What the fuck are you doing at my desk?” So I left all his belongings untouched: stickers, phone rotisserie, and even “The Rick Thorne Experience” written on the white board. It started as some sort of weird paranoid thought, but after a year or so, I realized I was probably there to stay. I ripped off the DJ-whatever stickers on the cabinet next to me, decided to keep the phone book, and when I went to wipe off The Rick Thorne Experience off the To Do list portion of the white board, it wouldn’t come off.

It’s been six years and it’s still sitting there. I don’t even use the white board.