buy my soul, support a cause

So I've got this friend named Erich, and he's pretty skilled at photography. It just so happens that he enjoys taking pictures of me while I'm skiing among other things. On a related note, Armada team member Travis Steeger tragically passed away a little over a month ago in his native British Columbia. Erich and I decided to take a picture paying tribute to a sick shot of Travis. Now, Erich is taking things one step further by making the picture into a poster, and donating any profits from poster sales to the Steeger fambly. Take a look at the shots he has to offer, they're the perfect way to turn your lame dorm room into a radical hanging pad. Erich's got some sick stuff to offer so check it out, and if you buy the poster on the front page, proceeds will go to a family in their time of need. Hit ze link:

POSTERS!

some skiing related business

First of all, Rest In Peace Shane McConkey. You will be sorely missed by the entire ski community. Shane played an instrumental role in shaping freeskiing into what it is today. I'm sure Shane went just the way he wanted to go, as anyone could tell you, Shane lived to ski just as much as he skied to live. The cliffs and blower pow in heaven have met their match in Shane, and he will remain a cover shot for the sport of skiing forever. RIP

Next up on the chopping block, a speedy end to the winter season. Spring was the name of the game ever since mid February. It seems as though old man winter couldn't quite stand up to the warming breaths of mother nature waking up, a bit prematurely might I add, from a deep slumber. So for all those action sport fans out there, here's a little dose of mountain dew for ya.

Courtesy of Newschoolers.com

Was that not enough? I didn't think so, it was a very hasty winter after all. Well Matthew Milewski, the head honcho and creative guru behind the Moving Mixtapes, is still in the midst of a very busy winter. From filming wannabes like Tommy Shimko and Dan Cardon, to lapping with the likes of LJ Strenio, MM's 08/09 offering is shaping up to be a choice cut of meat. For now, just point your browswer over to MatthewMilewskidotcom until the new MM site drops. Might I add that the forthcoming of a new website from the creative heads up in Burlington is sure to bring all sorts of e-goodies. And now, in the tradition of the fair city of Dallas and the infamous Debbie, Moving Mixtapes does Toggenburg. Be sure to click the HQ button to hear my voice crack in High Def!

assorted pictures of various things

symphonic clouds, hot pursuits, looming bridges, fiery computers....all in a day's work for Me

A few laps from Toggenburg

*with a scratched wide angle and patchy clouds.

..hiatus..

I've been super busy lately, lots of work going into getting the park up and running. Once I start classes I'll have some time to sit down and hammer out some content, but until then....go skiing!

took stock of my future in college

and it looks something like this

hit you with some music

This song is incredible. When Radiohead plays it in concert they use actual radio and tv stations to provide the background noise. You may notice a small tv at the beginning of the vid
The national anthem live- radiohead
the live track is available on the rare but completely worth it "I might be wrong"

...realized how weird it is when...

you go to say goodbye to someone on the telephone and they use the same exact parting words as you. I think the next time it happens I'm going to halt the goodbye, and ask the person on the other end if they ever considered being a little more original. It's just downright awkward

peace
peace

Mint Royale is Singing in the Rain!!

...realized i forgot about this for 9 days

wow, so last time we spoke I was in vermont and it was snowing? Shit lots of things have happened since then; for starters, I can hear it raining outside. You may wonder why it's 2:43 in the morning and I'm posting this. Well there's an easy answer for that, just let me open another package of toblerone....that's better. Anyway, it's 2:45 now because I'm drunk as shit and listening to techno, god what a killer combination. I just got a text message, hold on. OK I'm back now and theres some Toblerone on my screen for some reason, probably going to end up getting smudged in and I'm going to wonder why there's a smudge on my screen for the next few weeks before finally wiping it off with a kleenex. good shit, along with my rambling,
I guess it's only necessary that I inform you dear internet readers (if you actually exist?) of how I ended DAB'ing (drinking and blogging for the acronymically impaired)

I'm sure I'll have some substance to schlep up on here about my whereabouts for the past week, since it's been rather eventful, but since I'm as drunk as I am, its probably better for me to focus on the issues at hand. Headed into the great "city" of Syracuse (read: not a city) tonight for some good ol' Dinosaur BBQ. I'm not completely sure of the spelling of BBQ, so I'm leaving it as an abbreviation so to avoid any loss of dignity on my part. Simply put. DBBQ is the home of the best BBQ around, period. If any of you smart types would like to challenge this, I have friends from several Western States who can confirm the legitimacy of DBBQ, and agree that it is better than any hidden gem of a chain restaurant found in the west (since we all know there's only chain restaurants west of the Mississippi until one reaches the shores of Long Beach). That being said, I was off on my adventure with good friends and a fair amount of Rum which was being hit harder than a joint before a high school dance.
Upon arrival we discovered an hour and a half wait for a table, so we put our names in and left in search of adventure. It didn't take long to find pure gold. In a city park in the center of Syracuse is located an ice rink, and we discovered that tonight was free skate night.


Sizes announced, skates laced, and wobbly ankles ignored as we took to the ice. Public ice rinks are where washed up high school hockey stars go to reassure themselves of their place in the world. Given the job of ice patrol, these decorated heroes of hockey scoured the ice like falcons, looking for any sign of unfair play.
After skating got old we proceeded back to the car to imbibe several more doses of rum, and then on to Dinosaur BBQ, the best rib joint in the solar system.
Words cannot do this food justice, and neither can grainy cellphone pictures, so youre just going to have to take my word for it, visit a restaurant, or you already know the dopeness of DBBQ because you live in Syracuse, Rochester, Harlem, or Chicago.f

Peace, love, and pulled pork..,

....jumped on a bus for Burlington

and boy is it snowing right now. I had a fulfilling day of mini shred with Tommy Shimko. After a harrowing drive home, I'm sitting in the apartment of Matt Mcginnis watching the clouds excrete copius amounts of snow. Perfect time to head north if you ask me

...read the December issue of XXL Mag

and I found the most fantastic little thing. It's none other than a tribute to the Vocoder! That's right, one of the better things to come out of the 70's, the Vocoder, is versatile in its uses. Having played androids, aliens, daft punk, and serving as a good memory jogger when the question: who the hell is Peter Frampton pops up. And since you probably still don't know who Peter Frampton is, maybe this video will help:

...put my season edit back online

Somehow it was deleted so I took down the original, chopped up it, added a snazzy new electro song (Crystal Castles: Black Panther) and voila!

season edito from Jack Byers on Vimeo.

...pondered the existence of medium.

I was cleaning up at work today and grabbed a scrubby from the dish room. I noticed that the package said: "medium roughness scrubber". I thought to myself, why does the medium level of scrubby roughness exist? Either the job requiring scrubbing is something that's lightly attached, or it's cemented. I challenge anyone to look at a dirty tabletop and say that the objects making said tabletop dirty are attached with medium strength. NO, they either come right off, or you take a chisel to it. I don't understand why the medium of anything exists. If you're getting a soda at Burger King, you either get small because you are paying with change scrounged from under the car mats, or you get large because the worst thing that could happen is you're left with too much drink left over-which I've always found to be quite the tragedy (/sarcasm). I can speak as an authority on this topic because I am surrounded by avid large-beverage orderers, and I myself also enjoy a beverage of the large variety. Not once have I heard a friend exclaim with shear disdain, "I HAVE TOO MUCH SODA LEFT!".
But, due to the bulging of waist sizes, this medium rant has been skewed. What I always knew as a large soda is now the dreaded medium, to which I am happy, as the half-gallon-diabetes-inducing cruiser cup is not a very desirable purchase. Fat people aside, medium still sucks! If you're buying some weed, you wouldn't get a medium strain, if good shit's available, you get it! and if there's cheap, normal stuff floating around, why pay more for something described as....medium. If you're buying condoms, you're either getting big, or small. No one is going to underplay themselves if they can wear magnums, and in the same right if you're not big enough for magnums, well you can just shut up. Again with the offensive stuff, I swear I'm not this offensive of a person. Medium presents a paradox in my mind, the underdog choice that's not quite so much an underdog as small. Yet I know medium will still carry on, mainly as a way to describe poorly though out ideas such as this blog, but will carry on none the less.

I will offer my two sense (I am too broke to provide my two cents): either shut it off, or crank that puppy up to full power, because the only thing worse than a failure is a wanna-be-winner.

...realized my hatred for school buses

I like to drive, and since I commute to school, it's something I end up doing quite a bit. But I don't like school buses. Unfortunately my departure from school is typically synchronized perfectly with the release dozens of yellow bastards of the road. I've never liked school buses. I abandoned them as a means of transportation as quickly as possibe. 4th grade found me walking over a mile to school, leaving almost 40 minutes before I had to arrive, simply to avoid riding school buses. I figured that if I no longer rode buses, they would disappear from my life, except for the punctual nightmare of bus drills. Boy was I wrong. School buses are any drivers' nightmare. Try to tell me that you've never muttered a single profanity while sitting behind a school bus offloading an unending stream of kids. Do it, you wont! And then there's the little kindergartner that's halfway through the door of his house when he remembers he left his GI joe or Blackberry in his seat and goes tearing after the bus in tears. The superfluous blinking dancing stop signs stand up on the side of the bus, telling you to WAIT, there's children on board this vehicle, sir! Since I hate school buses, the drivers can't quite escape my wrath either. They bill themselves as protectors of the children; any error committed on their part can be conveniently covered up by saying "it was some other reckless driver....I was just trying to protect the children!" That's bull-honkey. Go into the town drinking hole on any school night and watch these "protectors of children" talk about the little bastard they wrote up for swearing on the bus.
If any one of these protectors of the children may be having a bad day, like I recently experienced, they can gain complete satisfaction from their total ability to FUCK with other people on the road and get away with it. As I pulled into the left lane to get around a bus of screaming bambinos, the bus driver checked her mirror, saw me, and then threw her turn signal on and also began vying for the left lane. I honked my horn, and she retorted with her air horns, then pointed towards the back of the bus as if to say, "SIR, there are children on board this vehicle, show some damn RESTRAINT!" So I slowed down but never relinquished my position in the left lane. After about a mile, Pricky the bus driver popped on the right turn signal and returned to the right lane. Were it not for bus drivers' handy habit of writing down license plate numbers, each kid on the left side of the bus would have learned a new hand signal or two.

Disclaimer: as many of you may realize, my blog is pretty offensive. I am not apologetic about this in the least. Instead I would ask all offended parties to seriously consider whether they are offended by who I talk about (in this case busdrivers/buses) or how I talk about them. It is not my wish to offend those who aren't deserving, so If you're a bus driver and youre reading this, unless you like to fuck with people on the road like colleague did today, don't feel offended!

I don't hate all busdrivers though: