Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Preparing for Travel is Gloriously Stressful
I wouldn't say I don't travel well, because I have fairly low standards for comfort. However, I'm not very good at dealing with anxiety, and so I get stressed on the night before a trip. However however, I exhibit strong avoidance behavior, so I constantly fret about small details of life that become huge problems because I avoid doing anything about them. The glorious part of pre-travel stress is that I can completely, totally ignore those problems now. I can happily focus on the stress of the moment.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
I Hope Noone I know Reads This
Dear Mr. Grosso, I Don't Agree
Because I am a curmudgeon, I agree with you that skateboarding videos are terrible. I fully support your statement that skateboarding happens in real time. I don't like sports much, but I am watching some europeans play soccer, and it is full of replays of events that don't matter, and that is what almost all of skate videos are. Skateboarding is a participatory experience, and watching it in highlight form should be considered as shameful as watching pornography. This isn't to say I don't watch pornography, it's just that it's not something that I would discuss with anyone, at almost any level. There are exceptions, but for the most part, skatevideos are a masturbatory aid for the real activity.
To return to Mr. Grosso, editing is the problem with skate videos. Skateboarding does not happen in slow motion. I blame Transworld, and Fully Flaired in particular. It is the least authentic skatevideo to the actual experience of skateboarding ever made. It's like airbrushing pornography to the point that it's creepily blank and robotic. Editors in skateboarding tend to jerk off all over themselves and slow down tricks in the middle of the trick. This is why we have such hideous tricks going around. Stop that shit. People should skate how they want, but no one would do tricks that only look good (ok, not good, but barely tolerable) in slow motion if the final product is shown in real time. Lurknyc does it right. Skateboarding happens in real time, preferably in person. Like sex.
Because I am a curmudgeon, I agree with you that skateboarding videos are terrible. I fully support your statement that skateboarding happens in real time. I don't like sports much, but I am watching some europeans play soccer, and it is full of replays of events that don't matter, and that is what almost all of skate videos are. Skateboarding is a participatory experience, and watching it in highlight form should be considered as shameful as watching pornography. This isn't to say I don't watch pornography, it's just that it's not something that I would discuss with anyone, at almost any level. There are exceptions, but for the most part, skatevideos are a masturbatory aid for the real activity.
Skateboarding itself is the same way. I don't care how other people do it. I am my own favorite skater, not because I'm good at it, but because I do it the best way I know how, to the best of my ability. If someone else doesn't like the way I do it, it has absolutely no consequence whatsoever. Eitherway, I sure as fuck wouldn't edit it with slow motion. We have a duty to make ourselves island universes.
To return to Mr. Grosso, editing is the problem with skate videos. Skateboarding does not happen in slow motion. I blame Transworld, and Fully Flaired in particular. It is the least authentic skatevideo to the actual experience of skateboarding ever made. It's like airbrushing pornography to the point that it's creepily blank and robotic. Editors in skateboarding tend to jerk off all over themselves and slow down tricks in the middle of the trick. This is why we have such hideous tricks going around. Stop that shit. People should skate how they want, but no one would do tricks that only look good (ok, not good, but barely tolerable) in slow motion if the final product is shown in real time. Lurknyc does it right. Skateboarding happens in real time, preferably in person. Like sex.
The biggest problem of all is the internet telephone. Mediocre skating, and even terrible editing and production used to be fine, because footage wasn't available. The first videos I ever saw were worth watching hundreds of times, because I had never imagined anything like it.
TB run. Should take 3 min or less. I love living in Taipei.
6 minutes. That's what optimism gets me. They were out of TB, and Busch, so I got Cass, because it's on sale. Restockers are sloppy here in the hood. That shit wouldn't fly down in Xinyi.
Dozens of people are outside, smoking, talking, letting their dogs shit and piss all over the sidewalk. A pair of police on scooters (yes, Taiwanese police wear bullet proof vests and ride on 125cc white scooters, with red and blue roller lights on the back) were doing some paperwork at fami.
Anyway, skate videos used to be bullshit, because they weren't in person, and weren't in real time, but now they suck even more because there are so many of them. Each successive video erodes the value of those before it. That being said, a very select few new videos are actually very, very good. I won't list them here, for the similar reasons that I won't mention pornography that I consider actually very, very good. It's embarrassing. And it should be. I'm not saying don't watch it, I'm just saying participating is way more important than watching it.
The best skatefootage is completely unedited. What if golf was edited like skateboarding? Multiple day tournaments over several years, edited down into 35 min collaborations of fast/slow/fast highlight clips. Golf is already unwatchable, granted, but it would be so much more intensely lame. With the unlimited storage potential of ordinateurs, I hope that we can start to show skating in real time, although I certainly hope, never to show it live. It's what makes the berrics so shitty, it's been chopped into clips. And it's just a fucking game of skate. It's already not interesting. Emerica b-sides are the future. I can watch someone try a trick for ages and finally make it, and want to go skate so much more than fast/slow/fast editing of a putt makes me want to go golfing. Just because you have a hammer doesn't mean you have to hit things with it, editors.
Update on Cheap Korean Beers: y'all do it right. I will buy more cheap korean beers.
Update on the Update: cass is so sweet, it's like drinking a beer with waffle house syrup poured into it, but with any maple flavor, which shouldn't be there, and also with a lot of tin can flavour, which also shouldn't be there.
Update, much later: cass is making me feel sick. I have to work in a few hours. Iceland is my favorite nationalism team of all time. More people live in my neighborhood in Taipei than in their their entire country, which is, I'm guessing, bigger than Taiwan. I'm not going to share this until way later, when cass isn't make me feel like puking. If I were a real alcoholic, I wouldn't be about to throw up after a six pack.
The best skatefootage is completely unedited. What if golf was edited like skateboarding? Multiple day tournaments over several years, edited down into 35 min collaborations of fast/slow/fast highlight clips. Golf is already unwatchable, granted, but it would be so much more intensely lame. With the unlimited storage potential of ordinateurs, I hope that we can start to show skating in real time, although I certainly hope, never to show it live. It's what makes the berrics so shitty, it's been chopped into clips. And it's just a fucking game of skate. It's already not interesting. Emerica b-sides are the future. I can watch someone try a trick for ages and finally make it, and want to go skate so much more than fast/slow/fast editing of a putt makes me want to go golfing. Just because you have a hammer doesn't mean you have to hit things with it, editors.
Update on Cheap Korean Beers: y'all do it right. I will buy more cheap korean beers.
Update on the Update: cass is so sweet, it's like drinking a beer with waffle house syrup poured into it, but with any maple flavor, which shouldn't be there, and also with a lot of tin can flavour, which also shouldn't be there.
Update, much later: cass is making me feel sick. I have to work in a few hours. Iceland is my favorite nationalism team of all time. More people live in my neighborhood in Taipei than in their their entire country, which is, I'm guessing, bigger than Taiwan. I'm not going to share this until way later, when cass isn't make me feel like puking. If I were a real alcoholic, I wouldn't be about to throw up after a six pack.
A Voiced Opinion of KTV
People who are attracted to music feel the same way about karaoke as people who are attracted to women feel about drag queens.
Free Chiropractic Session
I slept a couple of hours and had to go to unpaid training at work, which is a Taiwanese tradition. It absolves them from any need to be efficient, since it's not costing them anything. I got out and was so tired I didn't think I could manage to skate, but I thought I'd go get sweaty after my Mandarin lesson, since it's right by the bridge. I'm glad I did. It stormed violently this afternoon and everything was still wet except there. It was mostly empty, just a handful of friends. A new American showed up, and SenioreC. I was really excited to see another old friend, for whom I don't have an idiotic name yet. I hadn't seen him in a while. We were all tired, and ended up skating until a little after lights out. I fell several times, small ones, but cracked my back nicely a few times for me.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Runner's Nipples: the Sunday Night Club
I wore a mesh wife beater to the bridge tonight, and it made my nipples painful. I heard this happens to marathon runners. I bet they don't drink TB while they do it.
RMJ found this blog. It's a seachange in approach to think that someone might read this. He mentioned Burroughs, which I will use to wrap up this post.
It was 27 degrees at the bridge. I drank a stack of beers last night, since Lzyk was gone, and since I wanted to, and I ate nothing but garbage shui bao. It shouldn't have been a good session, but it was.
I try to warm up with every flatground trick I know, but if I can't get one in about ten tries, I give up and move on, because I am a lazy slob without standards of perfection that make a good skater. Today, I got them all, and a couple of new ones. New tricks aren't that meaningful anymore, since I've learned a few, but it's always a nice feeling to land somehting for the first time.
Soon after, my first Taiwanese homie showed up, I'll call him ZW. He is one of the best people in this country, and it's a country full of good people. He rides a scooter for 45 min from well outside of Taipei to skate at the bridge on Sunday nights. ZW is, to put it charitably, the second largest man I have ever seen ride a skateboard. I am by no means skinny, but I'd have to wear a large backpack with two cases of TB in it to make a game of skate fair between the two of us. If I understand correctly, he first started skating about the same time as me, around when Jump Off a Building came out. I include that caveat because his English is only marginally better than my Mandarin, which he only speaks when he's in Taipei anyway. Everyone here knows him, and everyone is happy to see him.
Tonight, there were only a handful of us there. It was basically empty. This meant a lot more skating, and only time to catch your breath if you make the time yourself. As fatigue set in, it became more of a Taiwanese language lesson than a skatesession. Most importantly, I learned that the word I thought meant "pussy," actually means "pussy and asshole together." Pussy is another word entirely. Happy Birthday Mr. Burroughs.
RMJ found this blog. It's a seachange in approach to think that someone might read this. He mentioned Burroughs, which I will use to wrap up this post.
It was 27 degrees at the bridge. I drank a stack of beers last night, since Lzyk was gone, and since I wanted to, and I ate nothing but garbage shui bao. It shouldn't have been a good session, but it was.
I try to warm up with every flatground trick I know, but if I can't get one in about ten tries, I give up and move on, because I am a lazy slob without standards of perfection that make a good skater. Today, I got them all, and a couple of new ones. New tricks aren't that meaningful anymore, since I've learned a few, but it's always a nice feeling to land somehting for the first time.
Soon after, my first Taiwanese homie showed up, I'll call him ZW. He is one of the best people in this country, and it's a country full of good people. He rides a scooter for 45 min from well outside of Taipei to skate at the bridge on Sunday nights. ZW is, to put it charitably, the second largest man I have ever seen ride a skateboard. I am by no means skinny, but I'd have to wear a large backpack with two cases of TB in it to make a game of skate fair between the two of us. If I understand correctly, he first started skating about the same time as me, around when Jump Off a Building came out. I include that caveat because his English is only marginally better than my Mandarin, which he only speaks when he's in Taipei anyway. Everyone here knows him, and everyone is happy to see him.
Tonight, there were only a handful of us there. It was basically empty. This meant a lot more skating, and only time to catch your breath if you make the time yourself. As fatigue set in, it became more of a Taiwanese language lesson than a skatesession. Most importantly, I learned that the word I thought meant "pussy," actually means "pussy and asshole together." Pussy is another word entirely. Happy Birthday Mr. Burroughs.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Previous Session
RMJ, SenioreC and I met up at the bridge and had a nice, long, tropical heat warm up. Then we went out towards mainstation and on to Ximen. We skated the bullring, and the big plaza. It never cooled off. My favorite thing about the plaza, aside from the skating, is that the fami there is about 3m wide and 10 m long, so when you get refreshments, you have to scrape your sweat onto a line of Taiwanese hipsters waiting to check out with their milk teas and guave juice boxes that contain 2% juice. At that point, it's just sugar water and laboratory flavoring. Also, they have double boilers of tea eggs. I got a pair of them, wiped my sweat on the back of a ximen person, and had some TB's. SenioreC dipped out and RMJ and I wandered across the city back to our hood. We stopped at the Shangri La OK Mart in Datong for more beer. It is so quiet in Datong.
Notes on Main Station
The first place I ever stood, realizing American bombs had fallen there, was Geelung Harbour. RIP. Classic spot. The first place I actually ever stood where American bombs fell was at Main Station, but I didn't realize it until RMJ pointed it out, because he is better at history than me.
Visitors to Taiwan are lazy, and tend to use a lot of footage from around mainstation, because it's so easy to find. That being said, it has the makings of a perfect skate spot. The most important factor is that it has a mostly smooth surface. When you fall, it's like falling on ice, you just slide on your ass and buy new jeans after a few days.
Next, it has weird micro-scale architechure. We don't really care much about the difference between Doric columns and regular ones, but if the designer opts to ruin the skate spot by minute errors or spiteful hatred of skaters, we sure as shit notice architechure. (I'm honestly not spelling it wrong on purpose, but I have to wait another 65 minutes until Croatia beats Ronaldo and I'm too nervous to spell it properly).
Mainstation's post-bombing architect envisioned a skateboarding wonderland. Also, bums in Taiwan appreciate skatespots so much that they sleep on them, hoping to absorb their magic. The area around mainstation is littered with magic spots and bums trying to absorb the magic. The most obvious is maybe inside the atrium, which means "200 m wide room with 200 m tall ceiling, perfectly smooth stone floor, and hundreds of ground dwelling teenagers chattering into their internet phones in semi-circles". Just outside are series of pink ass marble banks with pink ass marble flats on top. Around back are two big round ouija board manny pads and the same distance away is a white tile bank to wall to chest high ledge with a filthy sign saying 'no skating' in several languages, and many, many wheel marks on the tiles from it having been skated until it surrendered.
The bums also try to absorb the energy of hte benches, which have weird loopy thick metal tubes on one side of them. They are really possessive of their benches, and don't appretiate when you land tricks anywhere near them, especially between 2 am and 6 am. This is because the transfer of metaphysical energy is highest just before morning, and they are afraid that in a single trick, you are going to steal the energy that they have methodically been sapping out of the spot all night.
The site has been under construction for at least 27 months. This means lots of wall ride barriers. In Taipei, they are painted in thick black and yellow diagonal stripes. They are at a 50 degree angle for 1/3, and then vertical the rest.
There are marble kickers to ledge, and yellow tiles and piss bushes and many more items and memories I can't hope to put up here. Mainstation is a skateboarding hotbed.
Visitors to Taiwan are lazy, and tend to use a lot of footage from around mainstation, because it's so easy to find. That being said, it has the makings of a perfect skate spot. The most important factor is that it has a mostly smooth surface. When you fall, it's like falling on ice, you just slide on your ass and buy new jeans after a few days.
Next, it has weird micro-scale architechure. We don't really care much about the difference between Doric columns and regular ones, but if the designer opts to ruin the skate spot by minute errors or spiteful hatred of skaters, we sure as shit notice architechure. (I'm honestly not spelling it wrong on purpose, but I have to wait another 65 minutes until Croatia beats Ronaldo and I'm too nervous to spell it properly).
Mainstation's post-bombing architect envisioned a skateboarding wonderland. Also, bums in Taiwan appreciate skatespots so much that they sleep on them, hoping to absorb their magic. The area around mainstation is littered with magic spots and bums trying to absorb the magic. The most obvious is maybe inside the atrium, which means "200 m wide room with 200 m tall ceiling, perfectly smooth stone floor, and hundreds of ground dwelling teenagers chattering into their internet phones in semi-circles". Just outside are series of pink ass marble banks with pink ass marble flats on top. Around back are two big round ouija board manny pads and the same distance away is a white tile bank to wall to chest high ledge with a filthy sign saying 'no skating' in several languages, and many, many wheel marks on the tiles from it having been skated until it surrendered.
The bums also try to absorb the energy of hte benches, which have weird loopy thick metal tubes on one side of them. They are really possessive of their benches, and don't appretiate when you land tricks anywhere near them, especially between 2 am and 6 am. This is because the transfer of metaphysical energy is highest just before morning, and they are afraid that in a single trick, you are going to steal the energy that they have methodically been sapping out of the spot all night.
The site has been under construction for at least 27 months. This means lots of wall ride barriers. In Taipei, they are painted in thick black and yellow diagonal stripes. They are at a 50 degree angle for 1/3, and then vertical the rest.
There are marble kickers to ledge, and yellow tiles and piss bushes and many more items and memories I can't hope to put up here. Mainstation is a skateboarding hotbed.
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