The Groundhog Nation

This week I went to another skatepark… Are you starting to see a pattern here? My wife suggested that I should try to write about something more interesting than going to skateparks. So I made a list of other things I do that I could possibly write about:

Sit at a drawing table all by myself and draw pictures
Look at skateboarding websites
Stare at myself in the mirror and wonder if that's what I really look like
Change diapers
Talk about how I need to clean the garage
Talk about how I need to mow the yard
Talk about how I need to clean my studio
Google image search my name
Think about tacos

So, another skatepark it is.

This week I went to the Cedar Park skatepark and met up with some dudes who skate for my little skateboard company named Roger. This is Ryan Holloway. Ryan told me that one time he entered a high profile skateboard contest and walked away with the "Worst Dressed" award. I'm glad winning that award didn't make him self-conscious about not giving a shit. It's really refreshing to see a young skateboard kid who isn't dressed up in a costume of his favorite professional skateboarder. You do you.

It's always been my belief that there are essentially two types of skateboarders. Those who can catch radical air and those who are land locked. Ryan definitely soars with the eagles. I, however, have always been a member of the groundhog nation.

This is Max Taylor.

I give Max free skateboards and in return I expect him to perform stunts on my command. "Kickflip that pyramid!" I yelled at Max. And just like that, Max kickflipped the pyramid.

It was a proper Maloof flip. (If you don't know what the Maloof Money Cup is… well, basically it's just a big skate contest that has the best designed logo ever. More iconic than Nike probably. I love how busy and confusing their logo is. It definitely speaks to the now generation.)

See what I mean?

Uncanny, isn't it?

Just messing with you, Max. Here's a proper nosegrind photo to un-ruffle those young feathers. Max rules. It was about this time that I noticed the low battery indicator was flashing on my camera and shortly thereafter it shut off. Damn. But I still need a few more photos in my column to hit my minimum word count for this thing. Guess I'll just dig through my photo library and grab a couple of random photos to ramble on about.

This is a picture of a Texas sunset. I like it because of how beautiful it is. That's the awesome thing about nature. Sometimes it totally looks like a cool TV show or a good movie.

This is a photo of my new roommate, River. He moved into my house earlier this year and he's probably the worst roommate I've ever had. He makes crazy messes and doesn't clean them up, he parties super hard in the middle of the night and wakes up the whole house, but probably his worst habit is crapping his pants and expecting me or my wife to clean it up for him. It's pretty crazy stuff.

This is my buddy Dave Wattigny, and this might be the most terrifying photograph I've ever seen. It actually makes me feel kind of uncomfortable having this photo so close to a photo of my kid. Gross.

OK, movie review time. This week's movie: RAD!

Unfortunately RAD! was never released on DVD so I was unable to rent the movie to watch it. I heard you can watch it in segments on youtube, but that just sounds miserable so I wasn't willing to do that. So I'll just review the movie from memory. It's probably only been about 15 years since I last saw it, so it's still pretty fresh in my mind.

OK, so some poor paper boy thinks he's all hot shit at bicycle jumps and then a crazy BMX track (Hell Track) gets built in his hometown and he thinks that he should get to ride the Hell Track with all of the famous professional BMX dudes who are being flown into his crappy town to race the Hell Track. Yeah, why not let the paper boy ride? On that note, why not let every kid who has a basketball goal in front of his house play in the NBA? That's what people pay to see, right? A bunch of no name assholes who think they're awesome.

Anyway, at some point he and a man wearing a wig do a really weird slow dance bicycle freestyle routine at the prom (maybe there's a smoke machine?) while that song "Send Me An Angel" is playing.

OK, so later in the movie a dude does a backflip off of a big spoon that's sticking out of a big bowl of cereal and then the paper boy wins the race. Because somehow he got in the race in the first place. So it's basically The Karate Kid except not a good movie.

The end.

P.S. just kidding about my roommate. Dude's awesome. I just wanted to try to figure out a way to sneak a picture of my kid into this blog. Because that's what Dads do. They annoy people.

Next week: hopefully not another skatepark, and Breakin'!

MICHAEL SIEBEN

http://www.msieben.com/

http://www.rogerskateboards.com/