It is not a Houx..well, yes it is.

Leonard is not your typical skateboarder…he is one of those educated types into philosophy and the art of reading. This is most likely the explanation for his methodical approach to skateboarding (resulting in some high-tech maneuvers in miniramps). I took an attempt to get into the mind of this character in this interview. Who is Leonard Houx? Actually what is a Houx? According to Wikipedia, it is a common holly. Let’s delve into that a bit. Holly is used around the holidays…they call “vacation” holiday in the U.K….Leonard lives in the U.K. Hmm…I must say, however…he is no common variety. Read on.



You have related skating miniramps to the likes of gentleman's sports (yachting, archery, fencing, etc.). How did you feel when Daewon and Haslam jacked your association and titled their miniramp massacre video 'Cheese and Crackers?'

Daewon and Haslam also jacked my hopes and dreams of doing anything new on a miniramp since they pretty much blew miniramp skating completely out of the water.

But if they were going with the gentleman's sports association, they dropped the ball. For they could have taken the theme a way farther and it would have been sick. Instead, they seemed to only allude to a very awesome motif and mixed it with a bunch of unrelated stuff. Like, the whole Rube Goldberg machine theme. In the end, they should have called it Capes and Tires. Or maybe something aggressive like just Eat Shit, Bitches.

But one of the many things I like about miniramp skating is that the whole social dynamic is different compared to street skating. People tend to be friendlier, more talkative, more encouraging. Maybe its because when you skate a miniramp, it is this enclosed space. You just go back and forth. It's like a 'courtroom drama' style movie like Hitchcock's Rope where the characters stay in the same room the whole time.

Incidentally, last weekend, Caireen and I went to a friend's cottage in Somerset where we watched the village's yearly match of cricket. Talk about gentleman sports. They wear all white, play on a beautifully manicured field, and mostly stand around. They even have an orange juice break planned into the game. Caireen (who is Glaswegian) told me "this is definitely the most English thing you have ever seen, because this is the most English thing I have ever seen."


Frontside wallride - Brooklyn Banks

Speaking about things gentleman-ly, you seem to have been in higher education schools for half your life and your career choice is within the education realm (library industry). What's with the sophistication? Is it the means to an end, or do you just get off on learning/knowing things?
Well, I do like reading and learning. But some of it was accidental. After my first degree in Theology, I went into Seminary (three years of graduate school) because I really thought I was going to be pursuing ministry in some form in the 'Eastern' Orthodox Church. I finished the degree and was even accepted at Princeton and Yale for further study, but I bagged the whole thing and opted for couch-surfing at my friend Jason's in B'burg as I had come to the realization that I had been pursuing something very crazy. It was crazy for a number of reasons, but the most important one is that there is no God.

So, anyway, newly liberated, I still thought I would go on for a PhD, so I got a job at Columbia University which allowed me to take classes for free. I took serious advantage of that and completed over a year's worth of coursework. I was really very fortunate to be able to do that.

Now I am finishing this MA course in library science. I chose this as a way to progress in the work I have been doing in libraries and as a way to get a visa to get the UK so I could be with Caireen. This is now my fifth year of post-BA study. Teh course was not as academic as I expected, and most of the teachers were embarrassingly bad. Even then, I am glad I did it since I can move on now into a more professional stage of my career. I actually just got a job offer from Ravensbourne College. I am really excited about it.

In any case, for someone who has studied as long as I have, I don't feel like I have become the amazing educated person that I might have imagined. It is still painful to write papers and my marks in my MA course were not as good as I would have hoped.

A lot of the effects of my education have been negative. I think it freaks people out that I studied to be a priest and the fact I studied so much tends to make me have irrationally high standards for teachers, writing, and my own life. Also, if you tell people that you feel intellectually understimulated you sound like an asshole.

Then again, I have a few friends who have been in PhD programs for over five years without an end in sight. Other guys I know finished their PhDs but cannot find any decent jobs. So it is not an easy game.


Wallride nollie shuv out - Downtown Portland


Tell us the best and worst of: Portland, New York, London.

Portland Best: Stumptown coffee is the best coffee in the world as far as I know. Beautiful pine trees. Access to nature. Biking everywhere. Burnside. Department of Skateboarding. Outdoor parks everywhere. People who are seriously, seriously down for skateboarding. Dunes bar. The fact Pat Smith lives in Portland now. Kyle Reynolds. Hornbecker. Scott and Heather Anderson. Jason Wilson. My mom.

Portland Worst: Shit economy. Commercial art pawned-off as fine art. College-educated types who have no idea how folksy, under-educated, and parochial they really are. Passive-aggressiveness. Kids wearing helmets when they skate. Snowboarders. Burnouts. Shyness. The fact it is my hometown and I know so few people anymore.

New York Best: Seriously, if you are a guy, I think your odds of getting a girlfriend where you wouldn't have had a chance with her in nearly any other city have to be the best here (just look at me). People who are actually smart, fun, and serious about their lives. Brooklyn Banks. Chinatown generally. The TF (sorry, Eby). Anna Maria's Pizza. KCDC. The Union Pool. Rad people like Alan and Eby. All my Lacanian homies.

New York Worst: Non-skating skaters. Drugs. Rent prices. To be honest, I still miss NY really badly.

London Best: Tate Britian. The V&A. The Barbican. The ICA. The library consortium scheme SCONUL. Ravensbourne, where I am going to work. The University of Greenwich where I had been working. Socialized health care. Politeness! The economy. The fact only one person has tried to give me a speech about the US since I have been here. Seriously down skaters. Cantelowes park. Caireen's family. Caireen.

London worst: Loud drunks. Expensive public transportation. Shitty lectures at City University. Implicit arrogance. Social conservatism. The Guardian (newspaper). Little space for bicyclists. The fact
everything that was cool about 5 years ago in Brooklyn is finally surfacing here now.


Banana Slide - Upper West Side, NYC

When I met you, you were rocking a sick 'stache like my uncle used to have and mustaches weren't even trendy yet. You seemed to have cut it once it hit the Billyburg (Williamsburg, BK). Is there any chance of it re-emerging anytime in the future?

I did kind of like it. Hmm. Maybe. I think it is just, conceptually, like, too ironic still. I would want to it for serious and not as anything anyone would take as a joke. BTW, you know that the 'stache style is hitting Portland just now?

Talk trash on your least favorite thing/person in skateboarding right now.

Hmmmm. Well, I think the sad thing is that skateboarding is so fucked now that nothing bothers me anymore. I used to get a little sad about cool-guy-ism, but now even the cool guys don't seem so cool, which makes me even more sad. I am thinking about epiclylaterd and that whole thing it represented. this idea nowadays is, well, impossible to believe in. I think this idea was that people who skateboarded weren't just meatheads: or, more precisely, skateboarding allowed for this open space where people could act however they wanted because they were a part of something creative. It's that whole idea of the skater-artist, the skater as artist. Now that skateboarding is mainstream culture, there are only cool people who happen to skate. But the idea that there is some connection between being interesting and skateboarding is pretty well ruined. In any case, now this blog which had at first so amazed me now just looks like some desperate softgoods promotional and my teenage hopes have been dashed.


Bigspin - Lower East Side, NYC

Who are your top 5 skateboarders and who would be their character equivalents from books you have read?
I will match skaters to philosophers

Chris Fissel — Plato, in the sense that Whitehead said all Western philosophy was more or less a footnote to Plato. A lot of modern skateboard, likewise, is just variations on the tricks Fissel did 15 years ago. Late flips, shovit late flips, all the pressure flip variations, lipslide to kickflips, 360 fs shoves. Fissel did so many things first. He was a skater obsessed with new tricks, with bringing new tricks to skateboarding. Total pioneer. People may not remember Fissel, but they are doing his tricks.


John Motta — Richard Rorty. I just want to put someone semi-analytic in here. Basically, Motta is like Rorty because Motta is really tech, but also really smooth. His part in PVWHL is just such a pleasure to watch. Similarly, Rorty can write about the philosophy of language and make it a totally easy, relaxing read.

Matt Beach — G.E. Moore. Wittgenstein said that what appealed to him about the Oxford philosopher G.E. Moore was the honest, almost childlike simplicity in the way he approached philosophical problems. Similarly, Matt Beach skates with the simple, childlike faith that he will actually land everything he tries, which turns out to be the case.

Daewon Song — Slavoj Žižek because Žižek is one of the most synthetic philosophers out there. He can talk about Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Politics, or Movies. Really, whatever you want. An example of one of his earlier works was Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). His idea is to generally combine the high-brow and low-brow as radically and distastefully as possible. Philosophy-wise, Žižek invented the remix. Well, at least, he mastered it. A lot of people try to copy his style now (The Simpsons and Philosophy) or whatever, and it just comes off horribly. To me this is what it is like when you see Daewon doing a blunt tre-flip on a highway divider.

Dan Drehobl — Kierkegaard, because Kierkegaard wrote in a method he called "indirect communication" where he would communicate some conceptual point through something else entirely. Kierkegaard could write a fictional comic-satirical diary, for example, and, in a secretive way, hit you with some totally life-changing question. You basically experience philosophical surprise-attack. That is a similar experience to when you see a fat, slobby looking guy roll up a transition a do a tailslide, which he then pops up into a backwards 50-50 to fakie.



Frontboard board snap - Portland

What is the best trick you have ever seen a skateboarder do in person? What was the worst?
Brett Marks used to do stuff like double inward heel to 5-0 on ledges. That was pretty serious. Also, Jayme Fortune did a halfcab kickflip into a noseblunt slide. Also fairly serious.

Incidentally, you know that Dave Hupp was the first to do the rock to kickflip? He did one from a halfcab to bs180 out. Tony Magnusson told him that he couldn't put that and a couple of other tricks in the video because it made the pros look bad. Then Alphonso Rawls copied Hupp's tircks in his section.

Speaking of, you were supposed to film a video part for my video, things happened and it never happened (still could, btw). What would your ender trick be if it happened?

Something with an overflip, probably, like blunt to overflip (shhhhh). Maybe some unspoken wall ride or manual variations. I have a bunch of tricks in my head. But I feel like I have a responsibility to land the blunt overflip in some form or other.


Blunt shuv blunt fakie - Autumn Bowl, Brooklyn

Your mom is pretty cool and says some funny things. What is your best mom quote?
"It all goes down the same" (I was a kid and had broken my candy cane)

What would your lifestyle be like if you were rich? I assume nobility. Describe how you would live.
I would basically be a part-time grad student in philosophy and/or comparative literature. The rest of the time I would spend skating, trying to land tricks like blunt to overflip. I would also own a house and get my girlfriend pregnant. I would also consider living on the continent somewhere.


Switch frontside rock - Autumn Bowl, Brooklyn

This is where I would ask for your sponsors, but since you don't have any, make up your ideal sponsors. Book publishers? Brooks Brothers? Robe designers?
I think my ideal sponsor would be maybe the University of Middlesex's philosophy department for a fellowship where I get funded for half the typical amount of work for about twice the typical amount of money. I think that sounds reasonable. Maybe also someone to buy me a house. Stumptown coffee while we are at it. Skateboardwise, I am too old and over it to ever aspire to skate sponsorship, but I am always psyched on Coda, 5Boro and Tribute.


Switch wallie - Portland

Shout Outs:
Department of Skateboarding. Dunes bar. Ravensbourne College of Design. Eby. Billy Rauscher. My brother Damon. David Senior and Rene. Caireen.

ADVENTURES IN RESEARCH

the below are some of my library cards:






They are from London School of Economics, UCL's Senate House Library, Birkbeck College, SCONUL (the British Interlibrary Cooperation System), Canterbury Christ Church, CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), City University and Greenwich University. Of all these, I would say that the Senate House is the most amazing for the sheer density and number of books. LSE comes second for having such a beautiful, open interior space. Not pictured are library cards from the University of Portland, Portland State University, Columbia University, and Kent University. Those I lost. Another card I will receive soon is from Ravensbourne College College of Design where I will be working next month. Both David Bowie and Stella McCartney went there. Shit is serious.

Behind the library and library-oriented cards is my dissertation. So far, it's 60 pages, which is not a ton, but not exactly small, either. It's about information. The philosophy and history of information. It's a media-historical reading. I finish it in about a month. It's all I do anymore. After that point I will become a normal person. By a normal person, I mean skateboarding and being social again. I have a ton of new tricks all planned out in my mind. Super tech.

OK. also, this is a view from outside my balcony. You can see the Barbican apartments off at the end. They represent a high point in the history of what is called "Brutalist" architecture. I suppose you can't see it that well, but it's a pretty rad building.

anyway. wish me luck.






















Uh, ok, last thing: you should listen to this song. It made me wish I was from Oakland, even though the fact they have a street called "seminary" kind of freaks me out.

dudes

ok, well, i just finished my coursework for my masters in library and information studies. my second masters, mind you, (and my fifth year of post-bachelors education). i felt pretty beat afterwards. For my one of my classes, i, among other things, designed this website:

http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abdc175/WAD/noteboxx_div2.html

it seems to only work on internet expolorer, and there are some navigation problems besides, but whatevs. It uses HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. what do you want?

Ok, btw, the picture is from Vienna. Caireen and I went there for a long weekend on a package deal. behind me is the secession building, which was an important center for--you guessed it--the vienna secession movement. On top of the building is a golden cabbage. I don't know why. Here, below, is Caireen in this amazing Vienna fleamarket. I bought a straight-razor and caireen bought two miniature seals with seal fur(?) and a little purse for change made of rabbit fur.



Vienna was pretty rad, i have to say: nice people, super-efficient public transportation, and culture up the ass hole. (I separated the words "ass" and "hole" there for emphasis.) This fairly small city produced Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gustav Klimt, Karl Popper, Egon Scheile, and Sigmund Freud. Like, what did Portland, Oregon ever produce? Matt Groening and the Dandy Warhols. Did Portland ever produce a philosophical, psychological, or artistic movement? No.

Then again, did Vienna produce Chris Stuker, Matt Beach, Jayme Fortune and Mikey Chin. I mean, there are certain levels of steeze that can only be produced in certain specific, controlled environments.

I mean, just look at this, will you?



Ok, anyway. As you, Eby, predicted, i have been in a pit of reading. not much interesting to report. I have become a huge fan of Friedrich Kittler, and All the Pretty Horses is a very good book, as you probably already know--even if Blood Meridian is better.

i haven't been skateboarding much. saying it makes me feel kind of ashamed. when i tell friends who don't skate they seem really sad for me. perhaps it's that i let school and whatever worries take over my life to that degree. i think it is that i feel ready for something amazing to happen, and i have the irrational belief that performing well in a librarianship course at City University would lead to this amazing thing happening. Well, some good shit has happened. I got a library supervisor job at the University of Greenwich. And I think my dissertation will turn out well. What I would really like is to publish it. That would count as an amazing thing, in a way. So, like, put me in your thoughts or whatever.

Also, did you know what the hot shit in London is right now? Track bikes. That's right, basically everything that was cool in New York, like 5-7 years ago is just now hitting the streets of london. The British also seem to believe that social networking websites just suddenly appeared six months ago. Seriously.

in any case, um, i like this song.

If you can't do it, give up!

news:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--New: in Portland, most little skater-kids wear helmets when they skate. Old: they also write the names of their favorite brands on their grip tape.

--I Finished The Education of Henry Adams.

--Zizek seems to be on another lecture tour--on how "only atheists can believe." It is mostly at conservative southern colleges. Is it that since Derrida's dead, Zizek can dominate the market for coquettish atheists who want to whore off religion-friendly continental philosophy? Or is the gift of Lacanian/Hegelian thought intended really as a Trojan Horse?

--Transworld and the IASC appear to be backtracking. The meeting of top pros with the IASC has become just a merely heartfelt, authentic sesh with the bros.

--Hung out with Luke, finally, from Life at These Speeds. I met a friend of his who said his parents were in a Christian free-love cult. They travelled the world being promiscuous for Jesus. Some things are apparently even worse than your garden-variety fundamentalisms.

--Using the word "streetwear" will impress your friends. It is best as an adjective. For example, "Ooh, I like that shirt. It is really streetwear."

I have something to AKS you

bsng-bs180

February 18th. In this day in history, nothing really interesting happened. Besides that Eby Ghafarian was born. Happy Birthday, friend. I just started a job cataloging for Portland Public Schools. I work with a nice group of folks. Right now we are at Boise-Eliot. It's auspicously located right next to the dept. of skateboarding.

Boise-Eliot is K-8; so most of the book are "children's" books. Some childrens' books are amazing--like really well-designed magazines, only with one (way better) topic and better pictures. Like this. I think I got this from a book on Cherokees. This girl would be pretty much the coolest girl in the LES right now.

Here is another option for the future of skateboarding fashion. I can't remember where i got this from. Ali Boulala? If you are out there, please take some notes on how to actually be awesome for real.
I think they are trying to take the piss.
um?Now I know these guys are taking the piss! There's a fucking burger in the astronaut's reflection! What does that mean? And why is he wearing slippers?

Other skate-related information: Zimbabwe is all hesh now.
This is from a book called Children of the Yukon. I like these paintings. I am not sure if the Yukon is really this amazing. But who cares? Just look at these for a sec and try to forget about skateboarding.This deer-hunting picture is my favorite.
I like how the illustrator makes the Yukon look so fun. Just simple shapes, mesmerizing colors, and simple scenes. I like the kids running around. Simple physical language. The viewer is spared of any spastic facial expressions.This would be on the other end of the spectrum. Skateboard Renegade, by Matt Christopher.RENEGADE! Never been afraid to say/ what's on my mind at any given time of day/Cause I'm a RENEGADE! Never been afraid to talk/ about anything. (ANYTHING?) anything. (ANYTHING?) RENEGADE!
ren·e·gade [ren-i-geyd] –noun 1. a person who deserts a party or cause for another. 2. an apostate from a religious faith. –adjective 3. of or like a renegade; traitorous. [Origin: 1575–85; < Sp renegado < ML renegātus (n. use of ptp. of renegāre to desert, renege)]

This is the face of skateboarding today.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."--GWF Hegel

gttr.ac.uk

my reference from a former teacher was finally written and sent last night and i was able to send off my GTTR application for teaching programs in London.

Milking a Dead Shark

When I hear the word "culture," I reach for my gun ("Wenn ich Kultur höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning.")--Hans Johst


Saturday I went to the dept. of skateboarding . Despite it's austere exterior, the inside contains the TF of which dreams are made.


I almost walked right past Kyle Reynolds! Kyle is the brains behind the Dept. and Cal's Pharmacy. Besides being one of the sharpest persons I have known, Kyle is also one of the most giving. All he does is think of other people. While we were talking, he noticed a woman outside holding two children and ran to get the door for her.

I ended up speaking with Kyle about Per Welinder's plea to not buy blank boards. Kyle said some amazing things about the state of the skateboarding business. Among other things, Kyle explained how these companies really are having problems. The ways they used to run their companies is not working any more.

The problem, however, with per welinder crying to skateboarders is that he and those like him have done as much as possible to squeeze both the shops and pros. So welinder's 'world without pros' is just crocodile tears. Kyle also pointed out that if anyone were to buy decks to support their favorite pros, how many are actually going to buy a board from one of per welinder's sorry companies (e.g. Birdhouse)? So they can buy, what? a Matt Ball board? Even worse, if we were honestly going to make the skateboarding industry support the best skateboarders, more than half of the skateboarding companies around would not even exist. Who, for example, is even on World Industries? or Consolodated? Or Popwar now? Can you name one person? The days of 'supporting' pros through deck sales is over if it ever existed in the first place.


Shark's not Dead.



Probably the most famous scene from the movie Annie Hall is when Alvy Singer (Woody Allen)and Annie Hall (Mia Farrow) break up. Alvy Singer's break-up speech summarizes the state of skateboarding.

A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.

The ugly business tactics are just a symptom. There is something much more important, much deeper that has happened to skateboarding. The deal is this. As a creative activity, skateboarding has run its course. It is a dead shark.

Skateboarding has ossified into general pop-culture mythology--like punk, or 'old school' rap music. Take for example, a video like Shackle Me Not. At teh time, Shackle me Not was exciting at the time because it blew everything else out of the water. It made previous videos look like child's play. Now it's something that kids need to watch to 'pay their dues'. Take also skateboarding tricks--which is where the rubber really hits the road: they used to be invented. Now, tricks have a 'referential' value. At best, you get some new combos. The map has been laid. Skateboarding used to be an abandoned yard where kids could play and make their own fun. Now it is a high-tech gymnastic training facility complete with workout regimen.

That said, it's not anyone's fault. Any movement risks dying. Perhaps every movement dies in the end. Jazz used to be a living movement; now it's dead as a doornail, and the value of goofball jazz musicians like Wynton Marsalis is not as artists, but as archivists.

In the visual arts, one sign of stagnation is in becoming a type of 'folk art'. In religion, it is dogmatism. In love, it is marriage (um, haha, joke). Another sure sign of the death of a movement is when people have to defend it. As the David Berman sings in the brilliant song Tennessee (click on the link to hear it.):

Punk rock died when the first kid said:
Punk's not dead. Punk's not dead.

One other sure sign that a movement or belief has died is when it is called a "culture". As in: "I do not really believe in it; it is just part of my culture." In his essay, "Passion In The Era of Decaffeinated Belief," Slavoj Zizek suggests that 'culture' is "perhaps... the name for all those things we practice without really believing in them, without 'taking them seriously.'" This is what skateboarding has become in a funny way.

We used use certain slang to mark ourselves as skaters--"rad" "sick" "gnarly". Now we can hardly say these words without a spasmic dose of irony. Skateboarding has become this image, really (more than practice), to be practiced without "believing in it". To be clear: by "believing in it," I mean believing that skateboarding is somehow different than anything else. That was a lie, of course. Skateboarding is not different than anything else. There was a time, however, when that was not obvious. The whole thing was a fantasy. But it was a nice fantasy. Now the dream is dead, or dying.

To refer back to my conversation with Kyle, the question of 'a world without pros' is stupid. Maybe there will be pros, maybe there won't. But with a dead, dying or critically ill dream, those pros will not be John Coltranes. They will be Wynton Marsaleses.

(Not that any of this is going to stop me from skateboarding.)


The dept. in all its dreaminess.

Skateboarding's not dead. Skateboarding's not dead.

Here I am.

So, cyberspace. Dude, it's me, Leonard. [pause] Um, how's it going, bro?

[silence]

You good?

[silence]

Yeah. [pause] Um, so.

[silence]

Um, [little nod] me too.



I am now official participant E_B's final countdown. Play the clip if you haven't already. Feel it.

In the future, I will try to talk about events in the real world. But before I do, I want to share something: sometimes, in bad moments, I feel extremely pessimistic about the internet. I am not just talking about the fiery abyss from whence come pop-ups, banner ads, spam, identity theft, and fake addresses. Nor also do I mean the massive layer of hard-core porn, which apparently constitutes about 1/4 of internet content, which--although less than some think--is still a lot. I just mean the videos, still images, and text posted by the non-computer-person, the common man. Judging by the internet, it turns out the common man is boring, obscene, homophobic, ugly, lecherous, stupid, pretentious, and racist.

To illustrate the lameness, I considered making each of those words into youtube links ("lecherous" would link to something lecherous, etc.). I also considered google image-searches: looking at the words "sober," "nice," "chaste," and "good" and finding images of weapons, wreckage, and trashy poses of women in bikinis, among other unedifying wastes of time. But my sucess in rooting around for disappointments was too, well, too sucessful (and, hence, too disappointing [=serious bummer]).

Beyond our categories for experience, Schopenhauer posited an insatiable will causing all the suffering in the world. Schopenhauer here was veering off from Kant, who held that the world beyond our categories was unknowable. In an illustrated intro philosophy book I read called Looking at Philosophy, the author illustrated the difference between Schopenhauer and Kant's views by two pictures of a man opening a curtain. In the Kantian picture, the man opens the curtains to see total darkness; in the Schopenhaurian picture, the man opens the curtains to find a huge monster peering over him. Having spent enough time on the net now, I know that there is something much worse out there: the "googlist" picture of the world, where the man would open the curtain to find a picture of a middle-aged woman in a bikini, fishing, storing a 16oz beer in the front of her briefs.

To find it, google image-search the word "nice". I refuse to link it.

The worst are comment and message boards.


This is Norman Mailer. He wrote:

"What none of the editorial writers ever mentioned was that that noble common man was obscene as an old goat."--The Armies of the Night

Mailer then goes on to say that obscenity is what saves the common American man, and that obscenity is deeply American in a good way. This nonsense just makes me think of 1) torture in Abu Ghraib, and 2) commenters on youtube calling each other "gay" and "nigger". Mailer is right that the "common man" is obscene. But what is redeeming about this? That is, when finally given a chance to say his bit, the common man, says something like:

"motherfucking nigger-sucking shit-cunt-balls faggot hole."

Well, whatever. I have been playing some chess. This is the easiest version I could find. Everything else whipped me. Alan Siegler, besides being the best mini-ramp skater I have seen in person, told me once how he was on the chess team in college. I think chess is good for you. I hope it is. I think if you play chess, it will make you feel good about humanity. Or least yourself. It's a gentleman's sport, like mini ramp skating.

Skateboarding--aside from persons, companies, and internets--is also almost always wonderful. My name is Leonard and I believe in skateboarding. I believe in it for me. Basically, I am like the reformed jews at JTS I used talk to: I don't need (or even want) the whole world to follow in my footsteps; I mostly want to be left alone. (But I still believe that my way is the best way!)

In any case, watch this critical mass of righteousness. The kid's name is John Motta. He kills it and he looks like he is having fun. The filmer and editor did a great job on this, too. Best clip I have seen in donkey's years.

Channeling Content

This is the best promotion for a pizza company ever! Meat-lovers" pizza.

This, however, is not so awesome. Conservative old people have irked me for as long as I can remember. I was kicked out of St. Peter's Cathedral for wearing a hat, I was refused admission into the Martha Stewart trial until I took off my hat, I was not let into a club because I was wearing sneakers, etc., but this is ridiculous. How are you going to justify detaining a student that is at a trial for a school assignment because he is wearing shorts? I love living in a country where being a drone is applauded. I am glad the student refused to leave. Who is the tacky one now, Judge?

Kanye West is probably the most humble person I have ever come across.



"Thank you ladies and gentlemen for participating in this serway."