I was wrong.

Which leads me to item number one: If we are now in a heightened state of a terrorism warning, weren’t we better off with this boogey man alive. I’m not saying that the dude deserved to have a happy life with a harem of middle eastern whores taking care of him. But what did we gain by assassinating him? We’re still burdened with the Patriot Act, the TSA, and the legacy of two Bush-Cheney terms.

Then we also got deal with crowds of people out in the street chanting “USA USA!” Consider this: If anyone of those crowds would have had Bin Laden’s body, what would have the scene looked like? Would the people be body passing the corpse, ripping the clothes off and waiting for him to land on the ground so they could spit and piss all over it?  That seems way too much like what has been done to the bodies of American soldiers by the crowds in the countries our military is occupying. We are trained to believe the people of the middle east are savages and we need to make their lives better. But it seems the only difference is our crowds are lacking a corpse to desecrate.

I keep thinking that people are better than this, but humanity keeps letting me down.

Part 2: New tunes

Get with this pleasant sound coming out of Minneapolis:
Edmund by fatheryouseequeen

C’mon, the band’s name is Father You See Queen. I can get down with this.

In other music notes. The new Beastie Boys album is out today. You should probably all get it. If for no other reason than it’s the Beastie Boys. Go get it now.

Part 26.1

I was up in the northland this weekend because my friends EDK and Hinx were running a marathon. So much respect to them. In all honesty I watched the crowd of 1800 take off and never once saw them. I also had to duck out before they finished. What I did see was people who could barely walk, crossing a finish line. Including one  dude who had to squat down and walk across the finish backwards. Why would people do that to themselves? Weirdos.

I saw their kids too. Rad kids for sure.
I also ingested two of the worst cappuccinos ever. It seems people from the norf don’t know how to pull espresso shots.

I also gave a dollar to this Riverwest looking broad:

All she told me was, “You’re fucked.” At least when the Chinese tell me that, I get a cookie to chomp on.

Fuck a roof rack:

I took this photo at 80mph.

I’m going to let you decide what caption to give this nest image, but I’m giving three examples to get you started:

1. This is where we keep the horses.
2. Last time I saw something like this I woke up with it in my bed.
3. They used to have another very similar to this, but it was a full length one of Solo.

Part 4: Snowboarding

I thought for sure Volcom being sold to the parent company of Gucci was going to be the biggest news in snowboarding yesterday. Then I saw this:

Fuck. Good god.

I’m pretty sure the pants shown at 3:58 are what Keylo wears to summer shows at Alpine.

Part 5

Speaking of Keylo, check out the new shirts the boys just put out.

They actually put out a whole new spring line-up, I just happen to like this one the most. Check ‘em out and order ‘em up here

I also hit up my old stomping ground bike and snowboard shop. Twas good. Always nice to see the guys who have backed me in skateboarding/snowboarding/biking since I was like 12. Not that snowboards, skateboards or bikes were invented when I was 12, but you get the point. And I got connected with a slick, new jersey. That’s a new jersey, as in unused, not guido. I swear to christ the Vosko family is that state’s only redeeming quality.

Friday night SASMETS instructs me to attend a music show with him. Shit. I haven’t seen live music in several minutes. He described it as good old Americana jug-band music. Sheeeeeit. MFer I once waited in line for 3 hours, with 400 40-yr old women to get Lyle Lovett tix, so I can hang. The band was the Gentle Guest. That’s a pretty garbage barge band name for a couple reasons: 1. I forgot it about 50 times already. 2. I personally don’t like it. Anyway, it was The Gentle Guest’s CD release party and to celebrate they organized a pub crawl, during which the band carried their instruments and threw impromptu shows in bars. Pretty stellar idea. I only made it to the last bar.

It was about 2 minutes into their set that I realized SASMETS had lied to me. Sure this band might be americana on CD but their live show was kind of like an assault. But not the kind you’re going to call the police regarding. You’re going to hold this assault some place special, for those days when you need some help passing the time, and internet connection is down. But back to the band. The best I can describe their live show is to liken it to a young Waylon Jennings backed by Man-Man. For real, they had a singer guitarist, a slide-guitar, bass, keys, 2 trombones, a drummer, and one dude who just played one drum and maracas. And of the eight members on stage, 5 were shirtless. Of those five, none of them should’ve have been. But fuck it you know, the songs were loud and completely escalated into chaos on stage. The way good, loud, fast music is supposed to.  If you want to check out this band, hear their more subdued studio work, and maybe suggest a new name check them out here: The Gentle Guest.

Day 2: if there is something northern Wisco really loves, it’s ridiculous humidity. I was attending a family reunion. Not the von Rumorstein’s but the side of the family from Jamestown. I spent most of the afternoon slugging Lagunitas and thinking my cousin Maria’s baby has the largest head I ‘ve ever seen on a child. I should have warned him he’s in for a lifetime of poor fitting hats and helmets. Then I played frisbee with el niece and el nephew and some 8-yr old relative who only barked when I spoke to her. Whatever, at least she wasn’t a blood relative. Five minutes into this game I’m sweating buckets. It was probably the most exercise I’ve gotten in seven years.

After that I drove along to the Mississippi to chill out and make jokes about small towns. Por ejemplo:

A couple things about this picture: 1. Cream is the worst name for a collection of people since The Gentle Guest. 2. There is no way you would turn left to get to this supposed community of Cream. I know this because if you go left, you run directly into bluffs. and there are no roads though that shit. How do I know? I stopped at the local outfitters, hired a sherpa and scaled those MFin bluffs. Also, my “sherpa” was rather unfriendly. It could be that he was not a sherpa, simply a man of Lao decent who preferred to be called “Joe.” None the less I called him  Tenzing the whole time and had him carry my shit so I could get the top and snap this picture. Then I rode down on his back.

You see that land off in the distance? That’s Minnesota. Lutheran country over there. There be dragons.

I rolled up on Saturday, the day was hot and sunny. It looked like the perfect kick-off to vacation time. Little did I know know that it would be the last I saw of the sun for a few days. I woke up to thunderstorms Sunday morning and people chanting USA! USA! USA! Because that’s what we ‘mericans do on the 4th of July.  The rain ruined the plan of parking the boat in the middle of the lake with 12er of Pacifico, a pack of smokes, and tanning naked. Instead I stayed inside and finished reading Norwegian Wood, then started reading The Possibility of an Island, again. American authors are for chumps, even on America Day.

By early afternoon the local TV station was calling the day a waste, it was going to be raining all night and through the next day. Fireworks shows everywhere were being cancelled. Americans were pist!

The next morning I was antsy by the time I woke up. I really needed to get out of the house. It was still raining on and off, but I decided to go do some biking anyway. The local bike shop hooked me up with a sweet Trek 4300 hardtail with a garbage barge shock up front. So I immediately took it out to some trails and sloppied the bastard up. I also found this Mountain Bike Skillz Zone which was 75% rad. There were teeter-tottery things like this:

And some larger ones like this:

Then there were the warm up drops. Which were pretty fun to be screwing around on.

After I worked on my skillz, I took it to the trails and rode the shit out of them, getting all sorts of lost. While I didn’t really need to use my skills I did get to rip through the place on some fun-ass single-track. At one point I rode into an area that The Lorax obviously never made it too.

It seems that the people of this area have never read my dissertation, Of People and Trees: Life in Wisconsin’s Northwoods and the Relation to the European Settlers of New England. Do I need to remind people that if you remove the forest the evil gets loose?

Then while leaving this once hallowed area I saw this sign:

But it seems the term “steep” is relative:

By this time the rain was starting to let up. I wrapped up the ride, returned the rental machine and went back to the lake house. The weather cleared for the next couple days and I spent the rest of my time sitting on the dock making fun of the wakeboarders. Man, now I know how skateboarders feel when they see snowboarders. It’s a good lake though.

All of these images were taken with my slackberry, so I will disregard any comments you make regarding my photog skillz.