For less than $5 a month you can have space on a web server. For a few bucks a year you can have your own domain name. With a computer at the public library and a plain text editor you can then publish a website that can be seen more or less all over the world. THAT IS POWER. It just requires a tiny bit of knowledge and effort to do your own thing. You should do it.
Disposable, cleaner-infused cleaning heads, shaped where they can actually get under the rim of the toilet and get all up in that nasty splatter matter that wants to hide from you. You know what I’m talking about. That stuff that comes out of you and defies the laws of physics like the JFK magic bullet? Yeah, that stuff. This thing cleans like a glorious bastard!
When you are done, you pull that cleaning head off the wand and throw it away, and put the wand in its handy holder. No nasty brush that has just cleaned up pee and dookie (in all its forms), sitting in a nasty holder full of nasty pee/poop water.
Now, is the disposable cleaning head wasteful? Yes. Good for the environment? No. Do I care? Yes. Do I care enough not to use this device? No. Not even close. Not – even – close.
The Clorox Toilet Wand, sitting cleanly in its clean holder, after its first use, not a shit particle on it. GENIUS! Yes, those are cleaning heads inside the older.
When I was a kid my parents brought home a beat up old B&W television from my grandparents’ house. It might have been from my aunt Trish and Uncle Don. Whatever. Looked like it was from the early 1960s or even late 50s. Probably an RCA. We had it back in the “recreation room”, so-named because of my dad’s original plan to put a pool table back there, which never quite happened, so it served the same purpose that a basement does in many homes up north. By that, I mean it was where all my shit was. My train layout on plywood. My 2 gerbil habitats. My aquarium full of goldfish and my other fish bowls, all with a network of aeration tubing, my supplies and card table for building plastic models.
The Spindrift spaceship from Land of the Giants, under attack!
The TV sat on the “old” coffee table. The one I had carved on and just generally messed up as a small child. Theoretically we had five normal channels and at least one UHF channel in North Dallas. In practice, with a 20 year old television with rabbit ears, the number of channels available depended on a number of factors, including tuning, position of the rabbit ears, the weather, and how I held my body.
Sunday afternoon was typically a sci-fi afternoon on Channel 11. In no particular order, one could watch Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, the Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants. Yes, the great Irwin Allen owned the airwaves in that glorious time.
The Time Tunnel, which I’d realized years later drew design inspiration from the classic SF film, Forbidden Planet.
At risk of using the word “shit” again in this post, let me simply say that TV was a piece of shit, but I was lucky to have it. LUCKY. And APPRECIATIVE. As many of you “sports fans” are aware, Sunday afternoon is also a big day for televised sports. In fact, while I’ve not done my research and have no empirical evidence, I’d guess that there has not been a Sunday afternoon in the last 70 years (maybe more) without televised sports on all afternoon. So regardless the time of year, there was exactly a ZERO percent chance I’d be able to watch any of these shows on the color TV. So that black & white TV was my lifeline to true culture (space ships and creatures and weird ideas).
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The Flying Sub leaving the nuclear submarine Seaview.
So I’d sit back there, on the floor, and periodically reposition the antenna, curse (quietly), and watch those shows and/or various monster and science fiction movies. I was compelled. That’s how human beings are. What we dig, we dig, and we don’t really care about much else. I have been drawn to science fiction and imagination since I was a small child. The cartoons I liked when I was really young, like 4 years old, tended to be SF-related. Might have something to do with the decade I was born into. Space exploration was starting up. All that stuff was big. Frankenstein Junior and the Herculoids were my favorites. Robots, alien worlds, and creatures.
Frankenstein JuniorThe Herculoids
In retrospect, it was actually great.
That room was my domain. It was, indeed, a recreation room, but it was MY recreation room. When I started skateboarding, in the winter I’d practice tricks back there on the linoleum floor. My mom never even got on my case for it. Even then, I still used that TV. There was still a lot of SF to watch, and still a lot of sports on TV.
This is our cat, Lefty. He was once part of a duo known as Pancho & Lefty, but Pancho met his fate back in 2015, at 7 years of age.
Lefty is now 12. None of our other cats have lived past 7 before, so for the first time we are in senior-cat territory. He’s a good boy. Kept me company during the lockdown. Sleeps with us every night.
He is a little under the weather. Has the sniffles. Took him to the vet today and he got a shot. Heart and lungs sound good. No signs of any major problem. Antibiotic shot as a precaution.
I’m not posting on social media this month, but when I return to it (maybe) in December, I’ll post this. I love posting stuff like this that a lot of people will hate. I’m that guy sometimes.
I met Eli at the Paderborn freestyle contest in 2015. She, I, Yoyo, and a few others were in the Masters division. Eli was a long time skater. She competed at the Oceanside contest in the 1970s. How amazing it must have been for her to travel from Belgium to California as a teenager to skate in that contest.
I always enjoyed seeing her at Paderborn, as did everyone else. She was a beam of light.
OK, here is that thermocarbon Boom Box all set up. I took the Paris 180 trucks and 60mm 78a Hawgs wheels off the “dancer” style board they were on and put ’em on this. That particular board, the Zenit Judo, is extremely nice, but I think that kind of longboard is just not for me. It is too bouncy, and frankly just to specialized for fancy prancing. Not into it, so I might sell it.
This version of the Boom Box is a lot lighter than the all-wood version I’ve had for a while. Going to keep them both setup.
I have always been a Randal trucks user. When Paris trucks came out I have to admit I was skeptical, and remained so until my friend Eric sent me these Paris V2 180mm trucks. That are damned good, and apparently (according to my friend Tony) the V3 is even better. They turn like butter. Really good. I’m not going to to replace all my Randal trucks, but I might not buy any more either.
I know I talk a lot about longboards that are just stretched regular boards, but I do like this board. There’s a part of me that enjoys the limitations imposed. Creativity can be spurred sometimes by limiting yourself to certain elements. If you are just going to try to ride a longboard like a normal board, what’s the point?
Me, on the all-wood Boom Box, today. Wheeee…look at me go!
I feel like the death of Brad Edwards as also the death of what I think of as classic longboarding. Gravity was just about the last company to make boards to really rip on. I know they are still around, but since Bream sold the company it just isn’t the same. I can’t think of a single manufacturer of a stretched 40″ – 45″ skateboard. A board you can really ride in a park, ditch, hill, or parking lot.
Clearly if you already have a board, or can find one, you are good for now. I suppose there just isn’t much of a market. A lot of us returned to skating with such boards, but as our skills came back moved to regular sized boards. That’s great, but man, the classic longboard really needs to be available. It has its place.
Anyway, here’s some Brad.
Folks – check your blood pressure, and if you need it, get the medicine. It’s cheap. Even without insurance BP meds are generic and you can get a coupon so 3 month supplies are like $20.
When I get home today my new Bustin Boards thermocarbon Boom Box deck should be here. Not sure when I’m going to set it up. I like my older Boom Box a lot, as I have said numerous times. If this one is a lot lighter though I might just start using it instead.
It’s hoodie weather season, which is much to my liking. Hope to ride this weekend.
During our last podcasts, David Thornton and I decided to do a very short longboarding video clip project. Just shoot 4 or 5 clips each, and he’ll put them together. I think short projects like that are nice. I don’t get bogged down in them. Go out, skate, shoot, and it’s done.
A couple of years ago my friend David Thornton and I started a longboarding podcast called Frontside 360. The podcast is still there at frontside360.libsyn.com.
We both had a lot of fun with it, but eventually we felt kind of constrained by the world “longboarding” in the tagline. Then we both got busy, and a pandemic hit, and I have lots of other projects, etc, etc.
Well, I just got a comment on the previous post from a reader who enjoyed that podcast. He is not the first who has contacted me. I’m not sure, but it seems like that podcast was filling a niche with some listeners.
We started that show because both of us missed the days when people rode boards in the 40″+ length range all over — skateparks, ramps, ditches, etc. These days it is hard to find, for example, a board that is 42″ long but shaped like a normal board — just stretched out.
These days, longboarding has become synonymous to some extent with two forms: the so-called “longboard dancing” and downhill. Now, downhill skateboarding is really its own monster. The boards maybe be longer than a typical board, but I would consider those to be downhill boards first and foremost, and longboards second. The Dancing style and the boards associated with it came about in the early 2000s, when Adam Colton made a series of influential videos on homemade longboards, and coined the term “dancing.” Soon Longboard Larry started making a board called the Oldschool Dancer for Adam, and then Adam hooked up with Loaded Boards and put the on the map, and the dancing thing took off. It has evolved to include staggeringly good cross-step footwork and whatnot. Essentially freestyle on a longboard, but including some ghastly step off your board and twirl the board in your hands and jump back on stuff. Obviously that stuff is not my thing. My point, however, is that longboarding is, in general, not the kind of thing you saw in the old Gravity or Sector 9 videos anymore. Not to the great unwashed hoards, anyway.
I was looking at longboard stuff on the interwebs last night. Checking out the “team” from Paris Trucks. No doubt they are all really good, but also they are just a different kind of skater than those from 2001. I am getting older, and they are young, and I have to admit between the age gap and general stylistic differences, I have a hard time relating.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, David and I are recording tonight. New episode on the way.
