dedleg.com

Ah, Friday. A happy ending if I ever knew one.

That’s all for today, chums. What, you expect me to actually do work or something on this sacred and blessed day? People who work 9-to-5 jobs don’t work on Fridays, so you’re sure as shit not going to catch a bum-ass freelancer like myself breaking a sweat, unless I have, like, a really hard time opening a beer or something.

Here’s a quick batch of photography to help keep at bay the Internet’s nearly insatiable appetite for new content, which can only barely be matched by my own capacity to produce incredibly awesome shit.

It’s a hard job, keeping the Internet from tumblring - I mean, tumbling - into chaos every day, but hey, somebody’s got to do it, and I don’t see any of you assholes stepping up to the productivity plate. If, however, you are, then you have my sincere apologies for doubting your own personal ability to be awesome. I’m willing to accept such a quality might exist in other people, and if I didn’t see you, well, I probably just wasn’t wearing my glasses.

I stumbled across one of Batman’s weekend rides downtown last weekend.

And that’s not all I did last weekend. Look, I’m not going to say I met the Dark Knight and he took me for a spin on the ol’ Bat-Trike, and I’m not going to say we got Icees by the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, all I’m going to say is, it could happen.

Batman must have stacked these chairs to leave himself an escape route. Only someone with training in multiple martial arts would be agile enough to get back down without breaking their neck! …Always the master detective.

Well, it’s no Bat-Trike, but… it’ll do.

If you knew what I’ve been cooking up all afternoon, you’d be psyched. At least I hope you’d be psyched, because I didn’t stand here slaving over the stove all day for nothing!

Anyway… I have some more “baking” to do, you might say. More later.

This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d want to try twice, but hey, what do I know.

Mark did this same ollie over Max a while ago & we used a sequence of it in an ad. But being the brain surgeons everyone knows we are - we didn’t think of filming it. This time though, Dan & Gabe reshot it & got it on film. Now we can say “See it in the Video,” & mean it. Sorry for the redundancy, we’ll try to get everything right the first time from now on. ‘Real to Reel’ Out Now.

Much can be learned about how to properly ride a skateboard from The Gonz. Although from the looks of this video, it appears somebody has much to learn about VCRs…

Here’s the original sequence for comparative purposes:

I prefer the angle / style points of the second attempt, but if you really take a look, I think the sequence is just a little gnarlier. He cuts that landing perty close. Of course, “gnarly” is a pretty relative term when you’re jumping a moving motorcycle with a skateboard. Ultimately, there’s really just “you didn’t die, and you’re awesome,” or… splat.

Man, if you didn’t go skateboarding this weekend, I bet you’re regretting that now! Because I sure am

Anyway, here are some kind of misty photos for a kind of misty day.

Shit ain’t even finished yet and it’s already the tallest building in New York.

Interestingly enough, upon completion 1 WTC’s actual roof height will still be 82 feet shorter than the Willis Tower in Chicago. It will earn its “tallest building in the Western Hemisphere” epithet with its spire reaching an uber-patriotic 1,776 feet… basically, by cheating and coming up with a good excuse for it. It’s the American way!

Let us not forget that the very first “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel was, in fact, human life. Which path do you think I’m on? Personally, I think I’m on less of a direct route in either direction — I prefer a meandering, Family Circus-esque detour through the Town of Self-Destructive Behavior and its nearby neighborhoods that ends with me getting a boo boo on my knee and learning an important lesson about why grandpa is in heaven.

Personally, I think it’s a pretty huge oversight that they didn’t include the finish line where these two paths both intersect — a cold hole in the ground to rest for all eternity, regardless of how you spent your mortal days. So the real question is not “what will the boy become,” but rather, “how much fun did the boy have?”

Okay… I’m just gonna say it. THIS IS THE WORST. If I honestly believed this is what my future in skateboarding would look like, I would have quit this shit and started rollerblading years ago.

[Tony Cenicola/The New York Times]

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article that almost made me embarrassed to be perceived as a skateboarder. And it wasn’t one of those “a few dumb skaters did something terrible that made all skaters look bad in the eyes of the mainstream” types of stories. Well, actually, it kind of was, but not in the way you might think.

The article doesn’t start off well. Indeed, their side by side comparison of the “pioneering skate punks” of old and the “delusional middle-aged wannabes” of today is so woefully clueless I don’t even know where to start. Okay, actually, that was a lie. The thing is, minus the legitimate skateboard the young man on the left is toting along with his Twinkie (???), both of those dorks look just like longboarders I saw in Prospect Park yesterday. In fact, the majority of the article isn’t about skateboarding at all, it’s actually mostly just about how popular longboarding is with total fucking losers now, and that’s the embarrassing part I mentioned before. The trouble with this unyielding longboarding trend is that the general public can’t see the distinction between the cornballs and people who don’t wear plaid shorts as soon as it’s above freezing, i.e. “real” skateboarders. In essence, they’re making us look bad. And that’s simply unacceptable, since skateboarders are the only ones who should be allowed to make skateboarders look bad, as far as I’m concerned.

It’s hard coming up with a proper analogy to describe the difference to the average know-nothing, but this is the best I can do:

A bunch of frat boys playing t-ball on the quad : prison league baseball :: longboarders : skateboarders

Although, while slightly less accurate, this next one is probably easier to understand and gets the point across more effectively:

Utterly hopeless doofuses : extremely cool and attractive people :: longboarders : skateboarders

Exhibit A: Mr. Barnhart’s “skate gloves.”

[Yana Paskova for The New York Times]

This paragraph is particularly egregious:

Longboards are the luxury sedans of the skateboarding world. They are usually about 40 to 48 inches long, compared with traditional street decks, which are around 32 inches. Fitted with bigger, softer wheels to roll over sidewalk cracks and pebbles, they are built for cruising and carving, not tricks and aerials, and appeal to riders who no longer risk broken bones by grinding rails and ollying curbs, as they did as teenagers.

For one thing, that whole absurd “luxury sedan” metaphor is really annoying. Plus, if anything, longboards would be, like, the Mini Cooper of the skateboarding world. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever done an “aerial” in my life… gonna search for some trick tips about that on YouTube after this. And finally, if you were seriously risking breaking bones by ollying a curb, you were probably never a skateboarder in the first place. No wonder longboarding appeals to you. Maybe you should give your frail bones a break and try a gentler sport, like… say, videogames?

Did they really need 3 pages to say “we don’t really know what we’re talking about?” Although, if I’m really honest… they kind of do know what they’re talking about, in a way - all of this really is happening - and that’s what scares me.

It’s Thursday, and Dedleg’s idle mind drifts to thoughts of beer.

Once again, I find myself awake hopelessly past my bed time. Gone are the days of youth, when I could get 3 hours of sleep in a night and actually somehow pretend to be a normal human being the next day. And to think, this was supposed to be a “quick little project.” For such a little thing, it sure took a long time to do. And I guess this is usually where you’d put one of those “that’s what she said” “jokes,” if you were the type of person who did such things, but… well… I’m not.

Another day, another creepy creature feature.

I was going through my slightly intimidating backlog of photography last night, as I am wont to do when I am faced with the rare free moment, and I discovered these lonely loners. They were relegated as an oddball castoffs when they didn’t fit in, thematically, with whatever else went up from their batch that day, sometime back in 2011. Oddbally enough, this is perfect, considering no other photos are going up today, so I’d say the theme actually is “oddball castoffs” this time around. I mean, that’s kind of always the theme at Dedleg, but I’m speaking relatively here.

For those of you in the dark regarding today’s headline (and I imagine that’s just about all of you), it’s a pretty flimsy pun of “Why bother,” based on “bothria,” the scientific term for tentacles. And if that joke wasn’t funny in the first place, well… I’m pretty sure it’s in bothria hell after that explanation.

So anyway, stripes are pretty in right now, huh? How about tentacles? Not so much? Hm… maybe next season. I know tentacles are going to come back sooner or later, and then… then I’ll be ready. To profit. But also to finally wear my wide array of tentacle neckties without getting weird looks from animé kids all the time.

It seems my newly-formed, post-5pm, blog-update tradition is holding firm. Sure, it’s only been two days, but it’s kind of working out for me. Less pressure. You see… I have creativity blue balls. Ideas just keep on coming, but they aren’t coming out you know? I can’t finish the job, so to speak. I’m not shooting blanks, so much as I’m just not shooting, period. I think we’re all clear here, right? Please god say we’re all clear here.

I’ve long considered myself a pretty big fan of the weekend. Maybe not the biggest fan ever, but I’m definitely up there. Nonetheless, I can say with some certainty that I was not a fan of this particular incarnation of the weekend in the least. I think the problem started somewhere around the time I didn’t consume anything except coffee, beer and some kind of weird, milky Korean sake on Friday, and ended somewhere around the time I got hit by a bus after not consuming anything except coffee, beer and some kind of weird, milky Korean sake on Friday. Anyway, try not to worry too much about me. I am still very much alive, and, if anything, the whole experience actually only reinforced my belief that I possess a mutant healing factor. Now, if only I could say the same for my phone.

In my long history of bus crashes, I’ve learned one valuable lesson: no vehicular accident is without some causalities. Maybe you escape with life and limb intact, but maybe your 32-oz Big Gulp took a tumble on your recently-cleaned upholstery. Maybe your fancy phone cracks under the pressure… literally. Or maybe you spend an hour coming to terms with the fact that you may never see home again, marooned on the side of the road in Milwaukee, while your maniacal driver and her comrades tape a refrigerator box to the gaping hole in the side of the bus caused by said maniacal driver plowing through a traffic light.

So, aside from this weekend, another thing I happen not to be a fan of… buses. They’re just mental hospitals on wheels as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, enough talking, more pictures! Reading is hard! Here are a few crusty shots to better reflect my crusty disposition.

Man, if my photography keeps getting worse, I might as well just sign up for instagram, amiright?

I’m not too keen on posting up photos of myself, as that will only help lead to my eventual arrest, but I buckled under the weight of my own narcissism this time. Just kidding. Well, kind of just kidding. The story behind this one (since I’m apparently in a story-telling mood), is that I pretty much never get the chance to take a photo out of the front of the train and finally did (only to squander the opportunity since this came out a blurry, reflecty mess). Also, I loved that hat and never saw it again after that time I got hit by a bus. So try to live with that on your conscience, inconsiderate bus driver who sideswiped a very dehydrated man and didn’t even stop to check if you had killed him, or worse still, destroyed a very fashionable piece of headwear.

Updating a blog at 10 PM is kind of like screaming into an abyss, but that’s okay, because I like to yell. Also, there’s a reasonably good chance the world will still exist tomorrow - and more importantly, the world wide web will still exist tomorrow - when my abyssal shouting will be ready to be heard anew.