More wind. Ugh. Wanted to skate flat a bit before going out to dinner with Liz and then seeing Black Dots, but it was really windy. Ended up attempting to skate Rampy, but man it felt tight and I was struggling. The new trucks weren’t turning too well for me. It never fails, as soon as I talk trash it haunts me. I make fun of Indys and comment on how Thunders are the best so of course my new Thunders treated me like crap. I did a few basics though (the magic formula for the next 5 tricks is to subtract the kickflip): Kickflip front 50, kickflip front smith, kickflip back 50 fakie, fakie kickflip pivot fakie, kickflip front rock. I gave up after all those flippers and started trying switch flips in flat. You don’t have to subtract the kickflips on this though since I didn’t land any. I did get super close multiple times though and quite a few felt like I knew what I was doing (don’t worry I still don’t).

WOW! PJ vs Albert in this Sundays game of SKATE. I might be routing for Albert.

** UPDATE ** So apparently The Berrics isn’t allowing people to put their free clips up on youtube anymore. So lame. Berra, you suck. Here’s a direct link to the BERRICS SITE. You happy now douchebag?

It’s been a rough couple of weeks since SF. I hurt my foot then I got sick. Ugh. I also had to deal with rebuilding several websites and the in laws were here (which was a great). So I haven’t skated much and I’ve been feeling really run down and not my normally chipper self. I hate feeling run down and I haven’t got much done lately. Ugh, cry me a river. Anyways, it wasn’t cold out, but it wasn’t very warm either. We started out pretty mellow and ended up near the parking block spot. Snow removal messed up the funnest one, but we made due and ended up linking the manual pad down the block into it too. Oh yeah, I had almost new everything. Another pair of bright red Lakai Manchesters, a new Lung deck and the worst of all, new trucks. They are purple Thunder Titaniums though. Purple! They look great on the Dinosaur Jr colored deck! Yes, I am a poser. I did recruit my old bushings though. I’ve never done that before. The trucks still felt tight, but not so bad and they are Thunders so you know they are the best (that sentence is solely for Fuzz’s entertainment and maybe even Jacks. He’s on a Indy kick too. And I suppose even the Fremont dudes might take note since they have Indy tattoo’s and claim “Indy For Life!” and all that. Who gets a logo of a truck company tattoo’d on them anyways? Especially a heavy truck that squirms all over the place). Wow, back to the skating. Carleigh showed me she learned fakie body varials. So rad. I got a line of ollie a parking block (hammer!), boardslide a parking block (hammer!), nose manual a curb high manny pad (hammer!) and finally a noseslide on a tall ledge at the end of the block (boring). Going the other way I tried sw 180 manuals (put my front wheels down everytime) and then front blunts on a parking block. Did a couple where I actually slid. Neat.

We moved on. We hit the downhill brick area a couple times. I was pretty hyped to get manual, back 180 up the curb, sw 180 on flat, ollie the 3 stair, ollie up the 2, front 180 off the two. All basics, but fun. I wanted to go back and spice it up a little, but security was lurking. They didn’t seem to care, but we left after Carleigh made fun of her rocket ollie down the 3 stair.

We went by the manual pad at Wells Fargo. Carleigh tried slappy nose manuals while I pretended to skate like Busenitz with a manual, ollie up a curb, ollie up the ledge in the alley then kickflip off. I had to go super fast (for me, but probably slower than Busentiz (who rides Thunders) has ever gone) on the manual and before the ollie up the curb as I didn’t want to push before the ledge. Even then I still almost ran out of speed when I got the kickflip.

Lastly we went to the white ledge as I was really itching to break in the new trucks. Carleigh looked like she was gonna bail out of trying to grind it, but ended up going for it and getting a front 50 a few tries in. Sick! She also had a pretty bad slam on one attempt. I did lots of bad back 50 dances and would come to a halt and a couple where I actually landed still moving. At the end I got a couple crooks that felt great. Why don’t we skate this ledge more? On the way to the car I was pushing somewhat fast and hit a nasty crack and slammed on my wrist. Ouch. Other then that I had a blast and felt happy skating again.

I LOVE the new album. There is also a good interview here.

Alright, first things first, if you like Broken Social Scene don’t read this. I have no idea why you would like them, but if you do, move along. I’ll also add a disclaimer that I was in a horrible mood all day leading up to the show.  I would never have gone, but Jack went through the effort of getting me on the list so I had to go.  Thanks Jack!!!! I really don’t know much about Broken Social Scene other then the main dude Kevin plays on the new J Mascis album.  I figured they must be pretty good then.  Things started looking up when we found out the No Love crew was in the house!

These dudes are rad.

Plus whenever you are hanging with Fuzz and Leslie you are pretty much guaranteed a good time.  Top it off with lots of lyrics where the band yells “NULL!” and you got the making of something sick.

We were right by the sound booth and the sound was great.

They even had a pretty cool stage, but unfortunately I knew the show was going to suck the second the main singer came out in a poofy winter jacked pumping his fist like he was in Wu Tang.  Add a couple of annoying girls jumping around like idiots and bumping into Leslie and things were looking grim.  They had four guitarists on stage and yet the guitaring wasn’t powerful.

The brief cover of U2’s “With Or Without You” put me over the edge and Leslie, Fuzz and I agreed we’d had enough of this band.  I really don’t see what people see in them.  They were boring, the lyrics were cheesy and their stage presence would be better suited for an arena rock show.

Oh, and yes, they were selling Boring Social Scene scarves.  Wow.

Woke up in a bad mood. Wasn’t sure why at the time, but it turns out I was in the process of getting sick so it makes sense now. Anyways around 11 I took off with Ollie and his friend Gabriel to bring boards to Community and Crisis. We stopped at the old metal park on the way. It was an ok session. Ollie did a front 180 which I’ve never really seen him do before. He thinks back 180s are easier. Gabriel tried to do ollies. I haven’t skated tranny much at all lately and it showed. I felt weird even dropping in on the cement bank to start the day. Doh. I ended up having some fun though. Started trying a line where I would manual the fun box after riding up the kicker, axle stall the cement bank, then nose manual the box coming back. That felt pretty good. Also did a long flip trick run with lots of horribly landed tricks.

After the shops, lunch and a nap Mikey showed up and we went out to do some filming. We warmed up at St Julien. I had fun there and did a line I was kinda hyped on. Ollie a milk crate, crooks, turn around, front 5-0, 360 flip on flat. Neat. The wind was pretty intense so we didn’t get to filming there. We drove around and checked a lot of spots where I didn’t really skate and was definitely feeling weird. We ended up at the double set rail in Boulder that Jack did the boardslide to hurricane. Mikey wasn’t feeling that spot either. I wanted to ollie the flat gaps in the parking lot, but had some type of mental breakdown and it took a ton of tries. I got super upset. Ugh. In hindsight I probably should have realized I was starting to feel sick.

Jock shoes are still jock shoes.

Pretty tired and Liz wanted to hang out after work. While she cooked dinner I skated flat in front of the house. It actually went pretty good. Treflips were pretty consistent, but I didn’t get a treflip, nollie treflip combo that I wanted to get. At the very end I landed primo on a heelflip and it hurt worse then it should. I guess my foot isn’t 100% yet.

The Emilio Estevez photo was a gift from Turkey D and it makes Ned Flanders think I’m gay