First single off the new Thermals album Now We Can See.  Love it.  Seeing as how this is one of the best looking years for music in awihle I’m gonna start doing a lot more music stuff on this site.  Album reviews, concert reviews and of course non-stop Dinosaur Jr hype.  Seriously though, new albums from so many of my favorites this year: The Thermals, Conor Oberst, Sonic Youth, Superchunk, Belle & Sebastian and of course the greatest band ever, Dinosaur Jr.

Eric and Matt were the guys behind Pat Hickey’s intro as well as some other clips and animations in Null And Void. Go check out their new independent film and support the underground!ps – The Rynull Sheckert update was clearly an attempt at an April Fools Day joke.

Jason and I hit up Valmont for about an hour and we were both pretty tired.   At first I couldn’t even ollie worth a crap.  I was pretty sore from jumping over that ash tray a ton the night before.  The ledge was pretty wrecked too.  Looks like it got hit by a truck and a chunk is missing from the lower part.  Ugh.  After awhile I was almost skating decent.  It helped that I had “When We Were Alive” stuck in my head.  That song hyped me up so much that I would sometimes push too fast to hit the ledge.  This is me we’re talking about, so it was probably 7 miles an hour instead of 5, but it was fast for me.  I didn’t land much but I ollied up onto the ledge at the last set of cracks which is almost a board length tall and I did some fast front 50s.  Fun night, wish I had more energy.

Pretty nice evening and I went out for what I thought would be a solo session at the Steelyards.  I had the new Thermals album loaded on my mp3 player and I was playing it pretty loud.  I thought it would be a mostly flip trick day, but my legs weren’t performing well and I kind 0f just tried to do difficult tricks like ollieing up a curb at speed.  After awhile I put an ash tray after the curb and tried to ollie it about 100 times.  I was just about to finally commit when the wind kicked in and messed with the speed.  Ugh.  I was at my car getting water and Nate called and showed up quickly.  I finally ollied it after a few more tries.  Yippee.  I should be able to ollie stuff like that quicker.  Either way though I’ve been working on my ollies and it felt good to get over something.  I was working on switch front 180 manuals and fakie bigspins up the curb when the fuzz rolled up and gave us the boot.  Doh.

All that’s left is to repaint some area and some other stuff.  But the shower is usable!!The kids were the first to test it out.  Well, the bathtub anyways.Me next.   And once the mirror gets hanged up that means I can finally shave again.Saving the best the Mighty LZA hides her anger at me taking a photo by laughing.

Can you tell I’m sick of the cold? Early April is always the worst time of the year for me as it seems March is always warmer. And well, my birthday is almost here and I’m almost another year older. 36. That’s now “upper 30s”. I think I’ve been pretty bummed on how I’ve been skating lately, but my foot is feeling better and I finally have no excuses. Anways, enough bitchng. Best session I’ve had since I hurt my foot. Nate and I went straight to business and we were landing tricks we don’t normally do right out of the gates and trying new tricks. Nate was doing really good switch front boards on the ledge and put together an all switch run: switch front board, switch heel, switch front 5-0 the curb. SO SICK! I didn’t put any runs together but managed a few weaksauce fakie nosegrinds on the ledge and grinded a few fakie 5-0s on the curb. Oh and I did the two best front tailslides I’ve ever done. After awhile we went to the heated Circuit City parking garage where we had a slow starting game of SKATE that ended as the cops rolled up. We didn’t get kicked out, but it was our cue to leave. Finally, I skated better than horrible.

On another cold and snowy day everyone went to SOL, but I was feeling really lame and tired so went back to sleep. We went and got Ollie some new skate shoes (DC) and he wanted to use them so we went to Red Curbs. Ollie rules. He has the biggest smile on his face of anyone ever when he skates. He had a few ollies up small curbs and pushed really fast and had a blast. I took awhile to get warmed up but started having a good time. Still trying to skate faster and pop more, but when it’s cold it’s tough. I tried a few fakie 5-0s and didn’t get close. I did get into them though and I’m not sure if I’ve ever done that before. A pretty fun session considering the cold and how unmotivated and tired I felt.

Nate, Josh and I left for Denver on a cool morning that was supposed to be super warm. Right out of the gates Josh was ripping and I was sucking. I ended up continuing to suck and having problems ollieing a tiny flat gap or attempting anything on the benches. The saving grace was a decent front board on the bench and doing ok in a game of SKATE.We met up with Mikey and went to a gap that I think I filmed decent enough, but Mikey didn’t get his trizzle tre on the ground.Next I filed Jeffrey jump over a bush and filmed it kinda mediocre. Although there was no filming that would do it justice unless he would have done it multiple times so we could get more angles.Next was a pretty much epic session for others at an abandoned hotel with a very tight pool and a bunch of crackhead squaters. I wanted to skate the pool, but a few dudes were lurking with us and talking incoherently and I had my camera backback and didn’t want to leave it’s side. Josh killed it with a carve over the lightbox, Jeff, Greg, Nate and Mikey killed it too. The locals we’re straight trippin’ when Mikey ollied into the pool. I would have loved to film that, but I should be happy that my camera is still my camera.Then we ended up at a curb going down a long 5 stair and after about 50 tries Nate and I boardslid it. It was super scary to me showing I guess, just how bad I am at skateboarding. Mikey, Josh and Jeff we’re doing whatever they wanted on it. I also almost cali grinded it too, but ate shit instead. All in all it was a fun day even though I skated horribly. I just have to remind myself I was injured for awhile and am getting back in to it.

Wow. No wonder he won 1st place on the Berrics Bang Yo Self contest. There must be some bummed out pros out there.

A virtual pee game?  Only in Japan.