Medium Happiness » Uncategorized

Stick It To The MTA: Sign The Petition To Stop Fare Hikes

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:44:03 +0000

The MTA has been defiling New Yorkers of their hard-earned money for years. Not all of them, but a lot of the people who work for the MTA, are lazy, apathetic, amoral slobs who deserve to be fired.

Sign this electronic petition to stop the impending obscene fare hikes! Don’t let them punish us, the paying riders, for their incompetence and avarice.

Light The Wick, New One From Teton Gravity Research

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:56:34 +0000

Teton Gravity consistently puts out some of the best ski movies every year. They’ve arguably got the roster with the biggest names and they go to some very cool, gnarly locations to shoot. Granted, last year’s Re:Session, in addition to trying to use a ridiculous metaphor/analogy for the financial meltdown of ‘08-’09, was not their best effort to date.

TGR’s new one, Light the Wick, looks promising. Check out the trailer below. If it doesn’t give you ski fever, you’re not a skier.

Weather.com in 1996

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:14:07 +0000

Weather.com and Accuweather.com recently got face and functionality lifts bringing them up to speed with the rigors of realish-time communication and every other way the internet has changed in the past 5 years.

Weather.com posted a link to what their site looked like in 1996: http://www.weather.com/newscenter/slideshow/preview.html

No Matter What Your Judicial Leanings Are…

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:24:17 +0000

This is nauseating on so many levels. Thank you Slate.

Its Not Gonna Be A Tea Party, People

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:38:41 +0000

I have a very, very limited reader base for this here blog, but once in a while I feel it is my duty to use whatever small Bully pulpit I have to say something actually important.

Please, if you’re a citizen of the United States, do not fall for the mindless, xenophobicly based economic policy rhetoric that the people associated with the socalled Tea Party movement have been promulgating. It has nothing to do with sound economic thought and everything to do with the usual hyper partisan players exploiting people’s incomplete understanding of the underpinnings of global economics (99% of us fall into this category, me included) to further their agenda.

Yes giant deficits are bad. But there is a preponderance of evidence that some times, these times, they are necessary. I caught Sean Hannity the other night and the amount of vitriol and manipulation in his words terrified me. That guy is a snake of A#1 caliber and he has no f^8#in clue what makes good fiscal policy.

And now, your moment of Zen

admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:24:23 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esrqV8IVorQ

Tanner Hall Slams Simon Dumont, Peter Olenick, Colby West, and Every Other Park-rattish New Schooler

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:56:47 +0000

This post is probably a lot more pro skiing-ski scene information than my average regular reader is going to be interested in. Then again, I don’t think I have many ‘average’ readers left, so there. And, even though the subject of this post is skiing, the theme is irony, which is something anyone can relate to.

To summarize, if you’ve been to a ski mountain lately and noticed the kids wearing dumb-large T-shirts, sliding down kinked rails (on a ski slope?) and afterbanging to whatever bad hip-hop it is that’s blaring on their low-riding SkullCandy headphones, you can basically thank Tanner Hall. That’s right, the very guy in the video below–wholesale hating on the new school ski scene–is the one who practically invented it.

It’s hard to beleive that a 26 year old guy from Kalispell, Montana, who used to roll up to ski events seriously blunted with an entourage that wouldn’t have been out of place on the To The Extreme / Vanilla Ice Tour would turn out to be the most influential skier of the past 20 years, but he did.

Two things Tanner had going for him, that only his parents can be thanked for, is being 14 years old in 1998, when Salomon introduced the first twin-tip ski, enabling skiers to land and ride backwards, aka switch. This was also around the time when Johnny Mosley unleashed the 360 Mute Grab in front of millions of people during the 1998 Nagano, Japan Winter Olympics. A new trick that would forever make the daffy, backscratcher, mule kick, and spread eagle uncool tricks only to be broken out in situations of extreme irony, ie spring skiing, or skiing in your dad’s old 1 piece. So, while Tanner obviously has prodigious amounts of ski talent and the requesite Boing quality internal gyroscope all great hucksters seem to have, timing was on his side.

As recently as 2002, Tanner was doing his own thing. His clothes were bigger than everyone else’s, his skiing was more laid back than anyone else’s and he valued the ability to do a trick fluidly more than how high he was getting out of a half pipe. He was also a serious asshole, which kept a lot of peopel at arms length. But then a funny thing started to happen. The whiz kids who were a few years younger than Tanner started wearing larger clothes, doing harder tricks, while oddly, reducing the amount of perceived effort exerted into each trick. Hipsters are very familiar with the trying my hardest not to try philosophy. See, there it is again. An unrelatable subject throughout which I’m insterspersing relatable themes.

In short Tanner was ahead of his time, and now he’s worried skiing is going to overshoot the dropzone. Rather than taking their insane quivers of tricks all over the mountain some of the best pro skiers are staying where they’re comfortable, in the park and pipe.
Oh my god, watch the video. It’s midnight and this is pointless. No more. I also am linking to one of Tanner’s recent half pipe runs at the bottom. It’s worth watching and will give you all a better idea of how crazy skiing has gotten and why I’m obsessed with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfkcScbhNQs

Gnarly Ski Crash in AK, Mark Abma

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:33:21 +0000

Is Spin Quitting On The Magazine to Focus on Spin.com?

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:18:34 +0000

Spin magazine has gone full bore into the shitter. The print version has anyway. I didn’t need any more than one issue of their updated layout that came out this summer to know I didn’t want any part of it any longer. It read more like a freebee you’d find at Urban Outfitters than a respectable news-music magazine.

My guess is that they’re trimming fat on the magazine, which probably doesn’t make much money, to focus on Spin.com , which will eventually be resonsible for making all the money. Maybe not such a bad move. Rather than shutting it down, run it into the ground. Go out with dignity.

I will say, Spin.com has gotten much better over the past 2 years. Whether or not it’s going to be a viable business is still up in the air, though, I think. Sites like Pitchfork and Stereogum seem to have comparable access to musicians, maybe not Bono or Bon Jovi. (Who cares about these guys anyhow. That’s what People magazine is for.) And they feature content that’s more tantalzing and fill comment boards and gets lot of forwards. It going to be tough to compete with them.

We’re Going to Have El Nino Winter Comparable to 1992-1993

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:11:20 +0000

I couldn’t think of anything particularly compelling to write this afternoon but I didn’t want that to stop me from putting finger to key. Unfortunately, according to Google Analytics, my readership has steadily fallen off as my posting has grown more erratic. Part of this could be ascribed to skiing becoming the topic about which I now post most often. Who knows. Nevertheless, I am going to try and get better at posting every day, once again.

So back to the title of this post.

The other day I was fondly recalling the insane winter we had in upstate New York, 1992-1993. It’s generally accepted that the above average amount of snow and cold temperatures were at least partly the result of Mt. Pinatubo erupting in 1991. I do believe it was an el nino year, also. Below are a few cool images I found that show just how much snow the northeast got. We haven’t seen anything remotely close since.

Well it’s an el nino year and I am going to bet that we’re about to have an decently snowy winter in the Northeast. This, I predict, will also bring out even more of the crazies who think Gwarming ain’t for real, but that’s another post all together. Look for at least one big dumper that drops close to 3 foot of snow someplace between Elmira, NY (anything West of there is probably lake-effect snow) and New York City. If this happens, I am going to try and preempt it and hustle my ass to some place with ski lifts and decent vertical.