E.T.: The Extra Testicle

That's right, sister: 33% more. Nothing is more virile and sexy than a man with a third testicle--or extra bottom bracket bearings, I guess. And women dig that, yo.

Speaking of demeaning sexist stereotypes, the weather's been tits in the city lately--fucking finally. I was about to hang myself from Seasonal Affective Disorder. (How rad is a depressive disorder with the acronym S.A.D.?) Fuck you, El Niño. If I wanted to live in Seattle, I'd move there. I'd buy some more flannels first, because I'm old school like that.

Weather finally permitting, I took out the road bike and the new Nikon and fucked about for a bit.
When you're out riding around with your camera in your bag, but you don't really feel like taking photos, life will present you with a junkie nodding out in a wheelchair while suckling a Curious George stuffie in front of a NO PARKING-painted garage door, and your brain will scream, "ART!" Well, mine did. Which explains why I'm on unemployment, huh? I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground with this camera, which is why the exposure is all fucked up on this pic--George's face is whited out. I need to figure out the selective metering get down.

Here are few I took in my backyard, enticed by the green patina on the back fence:

Not sure if cutting the petal on this was a fuck-up or genius. I'll go with the latter--why not?

Once again, something is terribly wrong here: the flowers in the foreground are out of focus, while the background is in focus. I could just say I left the AF on and focused on the wrong thing, but, really, I think it makes it a little less corny to have the foreground blurry. A little.

Fucking with the macro setting. In the expected attempt to justify my failures, I kind of dig the extremely short depth of field and the wavering focus throughout the image.

The mossy fence thing got to me when I was out walking in the rain a few days ago. Here are some cell phone snaps of a wall by the library:
Love the texture and the unnatural/hypernatural color.

More random phone photos:

This is my road bike. I'm supposed to ride it from Portland to SF in April.
Good luck to me and my hopelessly raw taint.

Chris in the office of the Buck, picking up a Franklin with some kind of garbage grabber whilst drinking a Campari and soda. That looks like a jumbo bag of dirty brown weed on the desk, but since no one there would smoke dirty brown weed, I'm venturing a guess it's a bag of cornflakes that we use for the fried chicken batter.

Bo chilling during our run in the park.

This one threw me. I thought someone drew the head on there with a Sharpie. Nope. Part of the decal. Didn't know hair drying/styling was the main purpose of these machines in restrooms. I feel kind of left out, since I don't have hair. I suppose they would've been golden in the years of Knox gelatin liberty spikes.

You know spring is here when the turtles are sunning on the turtle sculpture.

I started doing P90X. Yeah, yeah--laugh it up, fuzzball. I trained to run a marathon around 2003 and I was down to 175--lean like a motherfucker. I weighed 195 when I graduated high school in 1989. Now, seven years after my marathon, and a year after I rediscovered beer after a 20 year hiatus, I'm up to a strapping 225 or so--with 33% body fat (though I don't know if I can trust my Walgreen's digital body fat reading scale on that one). I fell for the infomercial--after checking some testimonial vids on YouTube.

I've got to tell you, this shit is incredibly hard. When Tony Horton crosses his forearms, a la Big Daddy's X Factor, and says "EXTREME!," you'd best believe him. I've spent the last week as sore as I've ever been. Here's my ridiculous "before" video, filmed horribly on my Flip after my second workout, the gut-wrenching cardio clusterfuck known as "Plyometrics." I'm clearly gassed and daffy as shit, hence the Big Daddy-isms like "Barry Bonds triple testicle." (More Balls!):

I'll keep you posted with more magical updates of my soon-to-be amazing physique. I need to go get a tape measure before I get too amazingly ripped, as I was supposed to measure my biceps and all that before hand. Yeah, it's silly.

Speaking of silly, D Block dropped a new web edit. It's packed full of good shit--Nor Cal is still reppin' all these years after the Curb Dogs put Bay freestyle on the map. And we've still got guys with great nicknames like Cheese, Squeaks, and Virus. And, well, D-Block. "And we still smokin'." And, apparently huffing some serious WD40.

Yum, yum, delish.

Speaking of insanity, Sean Burns has dropped a new web vid for Metal:

Burns is one of the few reasons to even bother watching BMX vids. He's got a well-known anti-web video stance, saving his best stuff for legit DVD releases. And he says that any new parts will have to top Dead Bang, so you can only imagine how completely epic his parts in Anthem 2 and Surfing for the Ugly Broads are going to be.

Surfing for the Ugly Broads premiers in Portland on April 22 at the Clinton Street Theater, so by all means, if you're in the western hemisphere, you should get to that shit.
Defgrip has a collaboration going with the Bicycle Film Festival to curate the BMX portion of the fest, which means all us big kids on little bikes will be stoked, unlike when Joe Kid on a Stingray played at the SF festival and the DVD took a shit midway through.

"I don't know, Betamax?" Did Mat Hoffman die in vain?

For those of us who won't be pushing 25 feet on a mega quarterpipe, the SF Urban Riders are trying to get a bike park in McLaren Park, and they've got an online petition going. They're mostly mountain bikers, so the plan is a jump park with consecutively bigger and gnarlier sections, starting with kiddie and, hopefully, going to mega. If you live in SF and don't know where McLaren Park is, it's that giant green swath on the map between one hood and the next (Excelsior, Portola, Visitacion Valley, Sunnydale, etc.) Not necessarily all horrible neighborhoods, though I'd say Sunnydale leaves something to be desired unless you like getting shot with AK-47s. I can't wait till the bike park opens and the hood rats discover people are jumping around on $2,000 bikes. (Much like they did at the Chili Bowl, where rumor has it they'd corner bikers against the back fence and jack them.) Sessioning with a .45 in your waistband has never seemed so practical.

In more BMX related news, Ramp Rats owner Mike Krnaich is putting on a King of California series with events at The Compound, Fresno Bike Park, Ramp Rats, and Woodward West. Should be awesome--especially the Fresno leg, as that place is fucking insane. Prizes include cash for pros, a week at Woodward for ams, and a free night at Centerfolds for the old timers in the OG class. But, as any old timer will tell you, "strippers" and "free" are words that seldom go together.

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is holding a contest of a completely different sort. In addition to a Prius and a Smart Car (hey--it's San Francisco, what'd you expect? A GTO?), they're giving away a fucking incredible palace in Noe Valley, complete with panoramic views, a hot tub, intercom/speaker system, and a separate apartment. The raffle will cost you $150, but the house costs 3 million. Winners also have the option of taking a cool million and a half in cash. Sounds like $150 well spent to me.


So this guy Conan Neutron (that might be an even better moniker than Virus) put out an awesome compilation called Karl Rove: Courage and Consequence. The title is a piss take on Rove's modestly titled Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. The fight against what? Common human decency? The fight against peace? Anyhow, Neutron showed up at a Rove book signing in Lancaster, PA with a copy of the LP in his hand. Karl, not having his pulse on the post-punk underground, was shocked to see his cartoon likeness on the cover, and even more bummed at song titles like "The Biggest Asshole in the World." (Talk about winning a contest!) Anyhow, you can read all about the culture-jamming hijinks on the Daily Kos. And, if you've got plans for bumming out King Karl when he comes to your town, don't forget to pick up a copy of the album. Neutron will express mail you a slab if you plan on documenting your own "Operation Razz Karl" at a local Border's. It's only available on vinyl, in terms of hard copies, but you can get a free download at the above link. I'm listening to it now, as a matter of fact, and it's damned good. Check these lyrics from Cartographer: "I was born on Christmas day in the great state of Colorado/ In the vagina of a goat and the seed of pure evil/ And every day since my plan has unfurled/ A militaristic nation state and the biggest asshole in the world."

I don't know how many of you have been exposed to the interweb sensation Die Antwoord, but the South African rap crew is poised to take over the world, so you'd better expose yourself now...or they'll expose you. I've been writing a lot about the fine line between self-esteem and believing your own bullshit, but they've clearly taken it to another level:

To quote the Ninja himself: "Fuck all of you who said I wouldn't make it. They said I was a loser. They said I was a no one. They said I was a fuckin' psycho. But look at me now: all up in the interweb. Worldwide!" I'm not a hater here, for once--I think it's amazing. One day dude woke up in a Cape Flats ghetto and decided he was a fucking ninja. He went back to bed and the next time he woke up, his site had 2.2 million hits. That's some PMA right there, friends. I know nothing about zef, which is the type of SA hip-hop they indulge in and has a meaning loosely akin to "redneck" in the states (dirty South Africa?), but their music is an intriguing mix of drama and comedy, English and Afrikaans, the über intense cutting verses of Ninja juxtaposed with the airy-fairy counter phrasing of Yo-landi Vi$$er.

Visually, Die Antwoord (Afrikaans for "The Answer") are just as compelling as they are musically--maybe more so. The video for "Enter the Ninja" is like Keith Haring as a Cape Flats ghetto kid directing a speed-addled version of "Parents Just Don't Understand." Here's a photo of the pair in a spif NYC hotel room, taken by Clayton Cubitt:
What were they doing in New York? Getting signed to Interscope, it seems. To top that, their next video will be produced by District 9 mastermind Neill Blomkamp. I like to think I don't bite on every meme that gets crammed down the internet thoughtpipe, but that should be positively epic.

While checking out Cubitt's blog, I came across this documentary on jihadist vigilantes PAGAD, or People Against Gangsterism and Drugs. They're a cross between a Charles Bronson movie and Al Qaeda. But when you kill and maim children while terrorizing gangsters, what makes you any different than they are? You're just a gang that doesn't make any money. I was also intrigued by a Cape Flats gang called the Americans, who plaster themselves in red, white, and blue and venerate the Statue of Liberty and the White House. Bizarre.

Clearly, Africa, like Wu Tang, ain't nothin' to fuck with.

While on the subject of Bizzaro World, check this out:
I stole this from my homie Sam's Facebook page. And while I love skateboarding and would never personally choose to vibe out a skater for skating a "bike spot," I have to admit I find it hilarious. It's a perfect mirror image of "hey, you're going to fuck up the coping." Sorry, fellas, 101 duro urethane is just too danged hard for tender Quikrete. You'll have to go to another spot...like that half million dollar park two blocks away. I have to think that whoever painted this knew full well it was bullshit, but just wanted to turn the screw a bit. 98% of the skaters at parks are cool, and if they have a beef with me riding at least they shut up about it. (Maybe if I was a skinny 14-year-old some of them would be more vocal.) The skaters that are the loudest are usually teenage kids who've never been kicked out of a fuckin' spot in their lives. I think if the haters woke up in Bizarro World where bikes were allowed everywhere and boards almost nowhere, they'd show some humility and learn how to share. If we can walk together, why can't we rock together?

Before I disappear into the ether of the interweb for another week, I'll leave you with the newest in street sculpture, Australia's Crate Man, seen here climbing up a wall:
And having a cold one:
And, while I'm no enemy of graf, so much of it is just worthless tagging, desperate attempts at self-aggrandizement by talentless nobodies (who will on day, no doubt, be all up in the interweb). Crate Man, on the other hand, really is grand.

Now, for the random:

Vic Murphy, King of Tabletops.

Flight of the Bumble Bee

Dream girlfriend?

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Well, mostly it was the raddest of times.

And getting rad is a thirsty business, as shown here by Scot "O.M." Breithaupt, Jeff Kosmala, and Perry Kramer, who know that after pulling the tab off a steel can of Schlitz, it's best to keep it cold, and hide the label from track officials and little kids with uptight parents. Too bad O.M. didn't stick to brewskies, eh?

Mmm...Golden Gaytime is treat time, any time.

Here's an incongruous thought: imagine this super psycho Salvatrucha slowly slurping on a Golden Gaytime. I'm not trying to insinuate anything--he clearly loves the putas. Says so right on his chest.

Keep Rippin'.