It is with great saddness that I report that world's best skateboaring mag, Big Brother, is no more. Big Brother was owned by the one and only Larry Flynt, and it ruled. The magazine did not give a shit about anything, which made it one of the best mags to read, weather you skate or not. The writing was also consistantly excellent. Not excellent in a "this will impress stupid 14 year old skate punks that love to hear the latest ghetto slang over-used in an ironic way because they think it's cool" (aka anything Transworld does) sort of way. But excellent in a "holy shit these guys should have all been English teachers if they weren't so gifted at writing about completely absurd subjects" sort of way. In fact, I think Dave Carnie (the editor) might have been an English teacher at one point, but quit to do drugs and start working at Big Brother. Punk rock at it's finest. Over the years they published a "Hell" issue, a "Gay" issue, had a penis-enlarger product shoot out, broke almost every social norm and tabboo that you can thing of, and never ceased to make you laugh your ass off. And this is only scratching the surface. Check the old-but-still-up link on the right of this page. Carnie's explanation of the demise can be read here. So please, drink an old, skunked Pabst to the end of an era.

The weekend was less crazy than they have been recently, only in that nothing truly outrageous happened, which is somewhat of a dissapointment. I went to Westfield and hung out with Kenrda, Geoff, Boliv, Matt+Kara, Brendan+Jen, and Kendra's assorted friends. It was great to see the Fine Lady. A high point was a late-night stealth car move with the parking ticket officer writing a ticket three cars away from mine. I'm not sure if this makes sense, but it was a good escape if you were there and saw the situation. Sunday was spent in Hartford riding with Tripp, which was a good time.

After doing extensive benchmark tests against other freely available browers, including running them for trillions of cycles on my 48 cluster Blade supercomputer, I have determined that Mozilla Firefox is the best web browser available. So ditch shitty internet explorer and get it. It's takes less than 5 minutes to install, works better and is more secure against pop-ups and viruses than IE.

Playing on the ipod that I don't own this week:

Modest Mouse: The Fruit that Ate Its Self
The Clash: London Calling
The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy and the Lash


The only other big news this week is that Jon and I finally started to brew our own beer last week. We're making a pale ale, and it should be done for Sully and Kirk's Home Brew Halloween Party, y'all. Look for us there, handing out bottles of our fine home brew for your enjoyment.

Weekend was a doozy. Friday was low key; Jon and I rode bicycles and then played guitar and drank a few beers. Saturday was way crazier. It started off with Festival Express, which I highly recomend. It's a reminder that music is not made like it once was, as much as I don't want to admit it. Then Abbie, Liza and myself went down to Medford to Mercalidi's place (again) and Tripp showed up as well. Beers were drank in great haste while Mercaldi ate his dinner and we watched COPS: Armed and Dangerous. Totally extreme. We kept trying to leave to go to Boston, but someone invariably would crack a cold one just as the group had gained enough momentum to leave, resulting in more waiting. The ride on the T was fun, and I think that we really impressed some Harvard kids by telling them that one of us had recently deficated on their campus. The bar ended up being rather uneventful, except for some hot action that took place in the alley adjacent to the bar. When we got back to Mercaldi's, there was more steamy action then you could shake a stick at, and I passed right out. On sunday Tripp and I rode some crazy trails on private land in Gloucester, and Tripp knocked himself out and chipped a tooth on an 10 foot drop. It was totally gnarley dude.

For a real treat: http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/norway/events/kfahymn.swf

And in general: http://korea-dpr.com/

Check these sites out. Apparently tourism is up in North Korea (according to Michael) because people are interested in visiting the last stronghold of true communism. You can also become a friend of North Korea here: http://www.korea-dpr.com/member.htm

Suge Knight ya heard! 

Autumn is by far the best season for bicycling. The combination of cool, relatively dry weather and beautiful foliage some how illicit an irrepressible urge to pedal. The anticipation of the coming snowboard season (which the Farmer's almanac is predicting as wild and crazy) also adds to a general feeling of happiness in Autumn. And when one considers the plans for going to Colorado in April and the rumors of a trip to Banf, B.C. earlier in the winter, Stephen is all fired up, beotch. Whoooraaah. Now if I could only find a way to teleport to Westfield whenever I want to see the Lady, things would be perfect. Work is also going to start getting real crazy, which means large amounts of real engineering work for me. This is a very good thing, as I'm getting very tired of pushing papers and correcting turnover packets.

In other news, hip hop mogul Suge Knight was recently spotted in the Pentucket area, and was promptly arrested for being black. Holla!

Well I just drove up to New Hampshire after work to ride a skatepark, only to view the brand new "No bikes until further notice" sign. In normal situations, this is not a concern, however, there were waaaaay too many little kids with their parents there to try and ride. For some reason, the parents of younger children do not take kindly to watching rules get broken, especially when their kids are around. This really sucks a lot, because this park is fun, not too far from my house, outdoors, and FREE. I'm sure that this sign was put up because these same crazy and over-protective parents were complaining that their little ramp rats were almost getting hit by the big kids on bikes (and also on skateboards). This kind of thing really bums me out....

On a much better note, this weekend was a fantastic time. Friday night was spent riding with John and then moved on to the Hog's Trough, which is a biker bar up in NH. Sully and Kata joined us for some good fun, and I think that everyone had a good time. Saturday included an extended ride in Exeter with the Horrible, the premier of Afterlame, drinking, free-basing, and defecating on a certain prestigious Boston school with Mercaldi and the Mad Shitter. HAA! We also came across an amazing band playing on the street in Harvard square. The singer was in a security guard uniform (I think he was legitimately a security guard) and was doing the best cover of James Brown's Sex Machine that I've ever heard. There was a decent sized crowd there, and almost everyone was cutting a rug. We slept at Mercaldi's fresh new pad on Saturday night, and then Tripp and I rode Lynn Woods on Sunday.

For some excellent reading, check out "All The President's Spin" by the editors of www.spinsanity.org.

Ahhh yes.....the long over due update. Since the last post much has changed. Stephen went to Europe for three weeks with the filthy Horrible and Geoff, visiting London, York, Glascow, Edinburgh, Olso, and Copenhagen. Great fun, great memories. Since that trip, I have started my new job (maintenance engineer for Wyeth Biopharma), purchased a new bike (Kona Stinky), and slowly began to adjust to the working life. It's not that bad, and i'm still managing to have lots of fun between 8 hour stints of working for the man. This past weekend was spent riding Nepaug with Henry and then spending some time in Westfield. Bars were frequented, lovers were re-united, the cops were outrun, and all was well. Tripp had two spectacular crashes as well, which were great fun to watch. One involved a perfect front flip to ass/back slam that could have ended up far worse that it did. For some reason hanging out with Phi Kapps always leads to ridiculous situations, and I love it. It makes the working worth wile, and greatly aids the personal fight against lameness. I also had the opportunity to meet Tripp's friend that he "recreates" with, Jimmy. A cool dude in a genius uber-nerd hellcat kind of way.

Suggested Listening: Pavement, Brighten the Corners
Secret Chiefs 3, Book M
KRS-One, Return of the Boom Bap

Cheers.