Brian Krans's Blog, page 21

Blader Digest: Blood, Sweat & Puke

The identity of man in modern society is not a clear one. It is not defined such as it was for generations before us. Back then, when Pappy was chasing tail, a man was supposed to chase tail, smoke cigarettes, drink whiskey, win the bread, and slap his wife's ass when he got home.

Most of those traits are gone from men today. Some of that is good, some of it is not. However, at least men back then knew what it meant to be a man. A man back then who cooked—not BBQed—was a Nancy. Now, some of the best cooks I know are men. I'm not talking chefs, I'm talking guys that what whip up some tacos that make you so happy you want to stop voting Republican and build a Slip-n-Slide over the American-Mexican border.

But who are we as men today?

Do we do as what we're told by advertisers? Are we to define ourselves as Tyler Durden says? Should larger society be given the authority to say what it deems characteristics of a modern man? Or are we Carlin's Modern Man?

I will say I know some of these men who still have no sanctity for sanity, who choose to rampage in their cages, who decide not when it's time to die, but how long to spare everyone else.

This, my friends, are the men who competed in the Iowa River Rumble. It should be named…

Iowa's Ironman Inferno

I am afraid to call myself one of these men. Yes, I applied for the position and even spent a few days in the office with that title, but at the end of the day, I was the office bitch. People were taking shits on my desk while I was still sitting at it.

During the last weekend of July, when the heat had yet to let up across the country, about 30 brave men sweltered their way through 90-degree temps at about 90-percent humidity (hot and nasty enough to de-core wheels) to skate what is probably the best skate park in the nation. Behold, the Davenport, Iowa skate park on the banks of the Mississippi River.

The size of the park, the temperatures and the humidity were nothing compared to the structure of the comp. Two heats before the final. Each run was…

30 GODDAMN MINUTES!

That's right. The sadists who put this thing on thought that in that time, people could try tricks multiple times, rest up, lace some more hammers, and live on.

Well, my old, chain-smoking, candy ass who has become to acclimated to Northern California weather pretty much fucking died. At least I only threw up once.

Yeah, I didn't sit down, but I sure stood still too much while my fellow competitors kept going. Here's what was left of me after my run:

Photo by Tiffany Wells

If you make it into the final round—which of course I did not come remotely close to—you got to look forward to an open-ended run. That's right. If a half hour wasn't enough, you could keep going, and going, and going.

So, at what time length did these brutes on blades skate for?

A Fucking hour!!!

Keep your fucking 20-stair drop kink rails. If you call yourself a man, you'll blade in the Iowa River Rumble. If you live, you'll be a fucking man.

The Iowa River Rumble is yet another regional competition. It's getting up there with all the other great, yearly comps out there like the Windy City Riot, Panhandle Pow Wow, and numerous other comps. It's not quite up there with Last Man Standing or the SDSF Open, but I feel the park and the tenacity of the endurance-killing strategy can get it up there thanks to the help of the guys that make the drive—like 2011 champ Mike Tiegs—and the organizer, Bruce Bales (and others, of course).

As we all know, there will never be a comp like the Bitter Cold Showdown. The once-a-year battle for glory in jagged nipple-freezing tundra Detroit is the championship. It's the heavy weight title and there's no getting around it. It's the comp that logs more miles traveled to than a small metropolitan airport.

But for those of you that don't want to wait, it appears your blading travel cost just got higher.

The Blading Cup

Hokay, so, if you were like me and weren't there for the first-ever Blading Cup, you won't make that mistake again.

I mean, c'mon, a comp thrown by papa Jon Julio, co-founder of the IMYTA and founder of Valo, amongst other companies.

This is the West Coast's Bitter Cold.

I will write that again:

This is the West Coast's Bitter Cold.

The talent—pro and am—were all over the made-for-the-day course. There were some fucked-up obstacles, some standards, and some that made absolutely no sense.

In it's inaugural session, the Blading Cup attracted the right scene, voices, eyes, and everything else. Next year, it should damn well have the bodies to watch the names you know and love do their fucking thing.

Stockwell and Bailey were cruising around that shit smooth enough to get rid of the wrinkles around your mother's vagina.

Aragon was out there, doing some crazy shit that made emcees and JSF founders Erick Garcia and Kennan Scott sing for their fucking dinner.

Haffey, well, was Haffey and kept vying to find the longest, hardest way to get to something and handling that shit like a baus.

Photo by Jess D for ONE Magazine. Yes, that awesome old school photographer, Jess D.

With the Blading Cup on the West Coast and the upcoming NY Street Invitational on the East Coast, it appears that the U.S. is getting some kick ass rollerblading comps in stereo.

That, my friends, means only great things to come.

NYC Street Invitational Promo from NYC Street Invitational on Vimeo.

AJ

Love him (which I do) or hate him, Adam Johnson will never stop being Adam Johnson.

He'll never sugar-coat shit unless it's your girlfriend's ass crack. He won't ever be shy of saying what he's thinking. He won't stop working. He won't stop going after what he wants.

Of all that talk about the identity of man earlier, I think AJ is close to anything we have right how of some Hunter Thompson/Clint Eastwood/Charlie Chaplin/Pee-Wee Herman hybrid. Part joker, part asshole, part philosopher, he's doing what he's doing and plenty of people support what he's doing. You should, too.

Buy Vibralux. Buy Street Artist. Buy Charg!ing.If all else fails, see what he has to say about what he does, why he does it, and what he has to say about piece of shit pirates. Check out the interview here.

If you don't like what he has to say, so fucking what.

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

P.S. — Don't expect anything from me for a while. I'll be on vacation. I'd tell you to order my book, but I won't be around to ship it to you.

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Blader Digest: Rise of the Rollerblader

Sorry to anyone who reads this.

It's been a hectic few weeks putting out books, selling that shit, celebrating that shit, and taking care of man-business shit. But, alas, in the few spare moments I have had, I have been thinking about what's been going on. Really, with the few remaining brain cells that refuse to die and let me live out my dreams as an unthinking, unfeeling vegetable I have been paying attention to what's going on.

Still, there are moments where people have to fill me in on what I've been missing.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I think, as Bob Dylan said, the times are a changin'. And yes, I'm talking about rollerblading.

You see, things are coming around for everyone.

Yeah, there are lots of people shit-talking on rollerblading, just because it's rollerblading. It's the same jokes from the same people to the same audience. But that's how things work. Something can't become cool until they have someone to hate on.

Surfing has always been cool, so when skateboards came along, they got hated on by both surfers and bikers. When the sport was new, skateboarding saw a surge of attention because it was new in the 80s. Then, that faded until the early 90s.

That's when rollerblading came along, approaching in on skateboarders' asphalt turf.

Skateboarding was still a young sport in the 1990s, but when skateboarders saw bladers, they had someone to hate on. They still do. Blading, much like skateboarding, saw lots of attention because of its freshness, but, as we all know, that attention withered until it became a punchline.

Skateboarding rules supreme now. They get all the contest money, clothing lines you can buy at the mall, MTV reality shows, and mad bitches just for stepping on some grip tape.

It's so popular, yet still remains the number one status symbol of teenage angst, progressive thought, individualism, and other really neat marketing words.

It's still enough to piss off overly uptight mothers.

But, hey, that's cool, which means stuff sells, which means blah-diddy-blah-blah-blah-blah.

What fucking ever. Skateboarding has so much in common with rollerblading that there's no use hating on it. Shit, we stole some of their trick names to use for ours. Most of the time, they're the driving force between skate parks being built.

Most of the skateboarders who hate on rollerbladers are either:

People who can barely skate themselves, or…
Kids under the age of 20 who have absolutely no idea that shit-talking about someone else will get you no where in this world unless you want to be like some Perez Hilton- or TMZ-esque douche bag.

Let them have their fun because while popularity for skateboarding died long ago before it's recent resurgance in popularity, the die-hards kept it alive. It became underground, underfunded, and over-ridiculed.Those people, most of them over the age of 30, don't talk much shit because they're too busy doing what they love to give a shit about what other people are doing.

Does that sound familiar?

But see, rollerblading shall soon rise again. Why, you ask? Because we have found someone to hate on. We can project all of the negative words we've received and hurl them at someone else. Thanks, scooter kids.

These bike-blade-skateboard hybrids shall rocket us into stardom once again, mainly because we can make fun of them.

Shit, we're already on our way to the X-Games again (kind of).

See? It's all going to plan!

Colin Kelso started doing that a long time ago, but he got confused and threw his fucked-up diatribes in the wrong direction.

But let's not worry about Colin anymore. Sure, he's all cute with his rants and Bret Easton Ellis, trust fund psychopath bullshit. As we all know, burritos are fucking delicious and Stockwell has more style in his fingernail trimmings that Colin has in his entire career. (Whoops, sorry. I forgot the fucked that up, too)

Besides, you know that fight in Philly will never happen. Once Colin's parents find out he's using bad words on the internet again, he's going to be fucking grounded.

Anyway, you see how talking shit on each other is kind of pointless? Colin talks shit about Jerf, I talk shit about Colin, and we're still in exactly the same we started, but no one got any better.

See? If we direct that hate on those little scooter kids, we'll get somewhere. We need someone to talk shit on other than ourselves and skateboarders, or we're fucked.

Actually, fuck that. The kids are kids. Let them have their fun. If they talk shit, let them. Get all Zen-Buddhist in their fucking faces and let the shit go.

You could get into a pissing match with all of them about key differences between all the sports at the skate park, but it'd go something like this:

Rollerblading is gay because they are attached to your feet. So are snowboards, a sport many skateboarders enjoy.
Skateboarding is gay because it's so limited in the obstacles. Rollerblading is better because we do bigger shit. Bikers can do bigger shit than blading and skateboarding combined.
Scooters are gay because they hop on one wheel and call it a trick. Rollerbladers and bikers do the same thing.
Scooters are gay because they use rollerblade wheels.
Rollerblading is gay because…

It's a stupid cycle to get in. The worst parts about going in circles is that you don't get anywhere and you never get to see anything new.

I may have said this before, but I'll say it again: one of the most worthless things you can do is try to explain why you love something. What's worse, is that you should never try to understand something you love.

I would like to think the world is a kind and understanding place, but it is not. Life is a hard, demanding thing. The way the world was beautiful when we first occupied it has been replaced with concrete, steel, skyscrapers, Starbucks, staircases.

Still, we take the world that has been given to us and we try to make it beautiful. We take the hardness of cities and throw our fragile bodies around them. We weave between cars, we fly over staircases, and glide down handrails. We find a way to make the hard and unmovable free and poetic again.

Each city has a heartbeat. We take the love we have for rollerblading and inject it straight into the heart of where we live.

We take the percussion of honking horns and add in strings of whisking bearings and the sound of applause in an otherwise joyless existence.

The next time you are out skating, look around. Look at the faces of the people you see among you and ask yourself some questions: why isn't anyone smiling? Why are there so many people so close to each other, yet everyone feels alone? What has been lost that keeps happiness from our lives?

After thinking of that, look down at your feet. Your skates were designed by people who love what you do. Same with your frames, wheels, bearing, and every other piece of gear you wear. Each piece of rollerblading is fueled not by money or popularity, but love. Each bit of it.

You're out doing what you love because people love the same things you do.

It's impossible to have everyone love you. It's impossible to have everyone understand what it is about rollerblading that makes you love it. You don't even have to understand it. All you have to do is love it, enjoy it, and make yourself happy.

When you do that, you can change the world.

And isn't that kind of the point?

If it's not, it should be.

We should all find something that allows us the opportunity to change the wold in a way where it's a better place because we were here. We should all have the courage to awake every day and work at doing good. We should reflect on what we've  done and smile at our effect for it will have made others smile.

We should work tirelessly to make everything better for one. We should pass on our knowledge, not our nonsense, to the generations after us while taking the achievements of our generation to improve life for the generation before us. We should be educating our young and caring for our old.

We should spread our tolerance. We should express our hope. We shouldn't deny ourselves the opportunity to love and be loved.

We should be expressing in action what we say inside our own hearts.

We should be doing a lot.

But we're not all doing that. We're too caught up in small things we make big. We're too busy worrying about ourselves. We're too busy chasing our wants while we ignore our needs. That has made us sad, angry, hopeless, and distraught. It has dropped us into despair because we're wondering why others aren't helping us when we're only helping ourselves.

That is only making us angrier.

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

P.S. — Here is your required shameless self promotion. Also, so you know, your favorite pro skaters are reading my book right now, and they say they don't suck. Then again, their reputations are based on their skating, not their book critiques. Decide for yourself.

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Blader Digest: Read This While High

There's some causes that require a valiant effort, a sacrifice only to do what you think is right. It's the noblest of causes—toil based on conviction. Men who dedicate their heart and character for all they know and love stand above heroes.

Who doesn't believe they're doing that?

Sometimes things don't work. Occasionally, all you worked for falls flat on its face. Most of those times, you say, "Well, at least I tried."

There's a problem with that phrase.

Sometimes, there's no point in trying and the heroic thing to do is accept it and do what you can with what you have. Realizing that there are things beyond your grasp, far from your strength and courage, is tantamount to your survival.

There are some things you cannot explain.

Old memes are people, too!

Take this one for example: life.

You don't know for certain there isn't a God. You can't know for certain there isn't one. You don't know if we're all not a dream of a beetle. You have no idea—with complete certainty—that the moment before the one you're in now even existed.

The only people who know these answers are dead.

All you have is what you think you know. There's no concrete way to prove our existence because all we know is what we're told. History, language, your birth, religion, and the rest of the world that you've never experienced on your own could all be a lie.

The only people who know that answer are probably lying to you.

You could be in some really messed up Truman Show-like experiment. You could still be hooked into the Matrix. You could be doing some kind of dumb version of Quantum Leap.

You be on drugs right now. You might be a coma. You may be sleeping. You could have such significant brain impairments that you began imaging life as it would have been, but one day you forgot where it started and kept on not knowing the dream wasn't real. You know, some Inception shit.

The only person who knows that is hallucinating, or may only exist in your mind.

You may be God Himself.

The only person who knows that thinks he's God.

See? You'll never be able to figure out all of that.

The only way to understand life is to know everything from beginning until end and you're nowhere near either.

So, if you spend your entire life trying to figure it out, you'll fail.

It is impossible to figure out life. Anyone who thinks they've got it all figured out is either dead, lying, a figment of your imagination, hallucinating, or God. So, before you become distraught that you can never solve the puzzle of life—including most things contained in it—know that this is fact, not fiction.

This isn't a movie.

If you're spending all of your time trying to understand things, you can stop right now.

Life isn't a car that won't start. It's not how fast you need to go to clear those stairs. It isn't what you did last night. (NOTE: Not knowing what you did last night means you might have a life, which is important)

Life isn't something you can figure out.

There are problems in life you'll never be able to solve.

There's no point in trying anymore.

Really, there isn't.

Kurt Vonnegut, a great mind with a great man attached to it, wrote that "we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." He's absolutely right.

If there are so many things in life we can't reason—although we delude ourselves into thinking we have—no matter how much time we've devoted to it, why do we worry about them?

Fame. Money. Power. Validation. Respect. Pain. Love.

No wait, take love off that list.

Love is worth the effort. Love is worth the trouble, but only a fool would ever waste a moment trying to understand it.

Another great mind, Andew W.K., wrote (on his Twitter account) that "you don't have to understand something to enjoy it, and you don't have to like something to love it."

Trying to understand anything we love, or why we do the things we do for it, while we're in it, and when it's gone is pointless, tiring, and the closest thing your damaged/faulty/drugged mind could be to a hamster in a wheel.

Asking someone to explain why they love someone or something is only asking for the impossible. Trying to answer the question is equally impossible.

These aren't things we should worry ourselves with.

At least we all know now.

The time, patience, and dignity you wasted on such things in the past was in vain.

Yes, you tried, but there's no point in chasing after things we'll think are good for us. There's no point in longing for things we'll never have. There's no point in trying anymore.

But before you go and do something stupid like kill yourself and ruin your parents new carpet, know this: there's no point in trying if—and only if—those things are causing you pain.

If they don't make you smile once a day, get rid of them. Cut their barbs from you and toss them into the dirt. Let them rot until they fertilize something better. If they come back just as bad or as worse as the original, you can always squash them under your boot.

You can either keep trying something so you can say you tried, or you can face the alternative of a life wasted in vain to seek knowledge that cannot be obtained without certainty. Even the most solid scientific proofs are backed in research because you choose to believe the rules they follow.

Keep searching with the certainty of uncertainty and you'll forget where it all started and keep going until the end.

Still yet another great mind, Louis C.K., said "Every day starts, my eyes open and I reload the program of misery. I open my eyes remember who I am, what I'm like, and I just go 'ugh….'"

The things we keep doing and we don't know why because we neither understand, enjoy, like, or love them, yet we keep doing them every day and we don't like who've they've turned us into, those should be left rot into the dirt.

None of this is to suggest the things you love are worthless, but rather to illustrate one thing: if you can't understand something, don't worry about. Don't worry about understanding it, but also don't worry about the thing at all.

Do what makes you happy.

Don't try to understand it.

Love what you love.

Don't bother trying to explaining it.

Or maybe I just sit around too much, thinking of unimportant, insignificant things and blow them out of proportion.

Or maybe I watch too many movies.

Or maybe I read too much.

Or maybe I'm high.

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

P.S. I can't thank the rollerblading community enough for reading what I write. Not just this column, but for my next book, Freeze Tag on the Highway. The response from the blading community has been awesome. Thanks to everyone who ordered the book, because it was written by a rollerblader, has a photo by a rollerblader, was designed by a rollerblader, and has a character who is a rollerblader.

Also, thanks to anyone who shared around this awesome trailer for the book, made by awesome rollerblader Chris Bjerre.

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Blader Digest: Rollerblading Isn't Cool

One night in San Francisco, a van full of rollerbladers walk into a bar. They're having fun, getting drunk, and doing things drunk rollerbladers do.

A blader you may know is casually talking to a young lass.

Female: So how do you guys all know each other?

Fish: We rollerblade.

Female (laughs): No, really, how do you guys know each other?

Fish: No, really, we rollerblade.

Female, looking extremely confused: Wait? You guys really rollerblade? Even that cool guy over there?

Fish: Yes, he, just like the rest of us, are rollerbladers.

Female, still confused: Whatever.

The female walks away. She returns minutes later.

Female: Okay, are you just messing with me, or do you guys really rollerblade?

Fish: Google me, bitch.

See, we as individual rollerbladers can be cool. Shit, Stokley's cool. Fish is cool. But as rollerbladers, we're not cool. And it's not just some random bitch at a bar that thinks so.

You know the jokes. You've seen the Dos Equis ad with the Most Interesting Man in the World on his view of rollerblading.

Whatever you're doing right now, stop and ask yourself: am I being cool right now? It's important if you want to fit into society. So yeah, always do what other people think is cool.

The public is fickle. We, as a collective society, have a limited attention span. We fall in love with something and immediately forget about it. Love and attention are fleeting things. Love what you have while you have it because soon — POOF! — it's gone.

But love, in the terms of what the public wants so badly and then immediately despises, is all about saturation. The public loves something until it's had too much. Then it moves along, passing judgment and washing its hands along the way.

When it comes to the idea of public opinion, I firmly fucking disagree with Mark Twain.

Remember kids: Just because not everyone loves it doesn't make it bad.

Think of your favorite song. Not your favorite song right now, but your favorite song of all time. Now think what would happen if you listened to it all day, everyday. You'd get fucking sick of it, right? So that's why you only listen to it when you need it, like getting ready to lace a huge hammer or you finally have the best edit ever and need the right fucking song.

Well, skateboarding is the song that's being sung. right now Unfortunately, everyone's signing it and society as a whole is getting a little tired of hearing it. Maybe not right now, but soon.

The same way blading was everywhere in the 1990s, skateboarding is there now. You can buy a T-shirt with Justin Bieber skateboarding. We've all seen the ads with MC Hammer kick flipping a skateboard. Advertisers are all about taking their product, adding in a skateboard, and calling it "edgy." Skateboarding, right now, is being used as a tool to link popular culture with a fringe culture. It happened with rollerblading. That's where the mainstream exposure, sponsorships, and attention came from. It's gone now, and it's in the hands of skateboarders.

Skateboarding is cool… for now.

That is changing. People are seeing skateboarding less as a hip thing, and more of a thing that everyone does. That's why when you tell someone you skate, they automatically think skateboarding. Or, when you tell them you rollerblade, they'll still think skateboarding. The collective brain of society has had skateboarding mashed into their skulls for so long that they can't separate it from something else. It's like we're all suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or something.

It's not skateboarding's fault. Yeah, everyone who rides a skateboard (which is completely different than a skateboarder) thinks they belong to this uber-chic subculture that still maintains a pure soul.

Skateboarders are the dudes that live for what they do. People that ride skateboards want to be part of the culture. They see what's out there and want a piece of the action, yet they can't get their board off the ground. It's a fashion statement more than a way of life. I'm old enough to remember when rollerblading was that thing.

The difference for us is that when people think rollerblading, they think of people awkwardly clomping around on rec blades. They think spandex, and clumsy movements, and fanny packs.

You never hear about "recreational skateboarding" although I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the money poured into corporate contracts for skateboarders come from that money. If you carry a skateboard around, the general impression from others is that you're more like this:

Than this:

Then again, the vast majority of society thinks about a rollerblader and get this mental image:

Instead of the vast majority of people who are rollerbladers are a wee bit closer to this:

Okay, now that we've separated rollerbladers from people who rollerblade and people who skateboard from skateboarders, let's move on.

Still, that doesn't mean the most badass motherfuckers on boards aren't the sickest dudes to share a skate spot with. These are the old school cronies that can shred a bowel at 30 mph, the guys who love when you wax everything up, and the guys with more scars than tattoos. Those dudes are awesome. However, they're also the image of their sport. They skated for decades not giving a fuck what greater society thought of them. They just skated.

That's who we are.We keep doing what we're doing and most of us don't give a shit about what society has dictated as the cool thing for the moment.

There are thousands of people who rollerbladed, loved it, and now talk shit on it. Why? Because it's cool to hate on things that lots of people think are uncool.

Even if they're doing Superman front flips.

That being said, it's about time we become cool with being uncool.

This idea of cool is largely dominated by the mass media, mass culture, and mass consumption. Whatever people are buying is cool. Whatever is on TV is cool. Whatever is being said by the people who own the magazines, TV stations, and multi-million dollar advertising budgets is cool.

Therefore, since we don't see rollerblading anywhere any of that, that makes us uncool by the means by which all else is cool. It's simple math.

So people say we're uncool. Now, maybe rollerblades are becoming cool again, the same way Grunge is slowly making a comeback. So get ready to see more people taking off their Doc Martins to put on rollerblades while they wear their flannel shirts tied around their waists.

See, we're just getting through the 80s neon color phase, so that means the 90s are next. Rollerblading went from cool to the gayest thing since AIDS and now it's retro.

That's right. Most of us old dogs have been blading long enough that we went from its infancy to being retro. Let that shit sink into your head.

That being said, we need to seriously lighten the fuck up.

People talk shit. That's why the internet was invented. It gives a voice to those who have the courage to say, but not to do. No matter what you do, someone is going to hate it. Now, we can either keep our calm, let people say what they want, and keep them in their ignorance.

Or, we can try to say something when we're feeling overly-emotional, but there's a good chance our angry words will fall on deaf ears. Worse yet, they'll fall on ears who could hear our response coming a mile away.

Let's take this week's fun in mass media. Oh yeah, there was rollerblading mentioned somewhere, so people gotta freak the fuck out.

It all started when Vice magazine did a light-hearted piece about slapping some skates on a dude who's never bladed and having him roll around the city. There was no research into market trends, rollerblading as it is now, or anything like that. It was just a simple, funny piece.

The article title, I imagine, was the main thing that pissed everyone off.

Okay, sure, I could see how those little pot-shots in there might irk a few people. But, hey, we're secure with ourselves, our passion, and our sport, right?

Yeah, you know the answer to that one.

The response was SO big from the Vice article that it warranted a follow-up  based on the reaction of skaters and bladers alone.

Man, oh man, I can't believe they brought Mitch Goosen into this bitch. Now they're really pulling some serious shit. That kind of shit really tugs at every nerve along Devil's Backbone.

Why man? Who, besides anonymous commenters could spark such ire that they had to throw off the gloves and strap on the Boneless?

Oh, yeah.

Justin Eisinger — like me — has never been shy with his opinions.

See, these are all golden opportunities to go in there, drop some links to some great edits, act like members of a civilized race, and represent rollerblading as something that's secure with itself.

You could be all cool and say something like:

You should check out what other bladers are doing since we were 'laughed out of the public domain'.

Okay, it's not the most riveting comment in the world, but if you leave it to a fucking cool edit like the one from Mark Wojda, you'll get a lot more people to pay attention to blading.

Nope. Instead it's all:

Fuck your dead mother's vagina with a broken off broom stick like Jeffrey Dahmer in a prison shower. — John Bolino

We out here and shit. Fuck all you pussy-ass bitches. We'll rain paper because we getting paid here at the Razor's House! — Sneaky

Please don't mention rollerblading again. If rollerblading became popular, we'd stop making skates. Because, you know, we're hipsters and shit. Also, we don't like Bon Iver anymore. He's too mainstream. — Team Valo

I imagine everyone would prefer all stories end up like the one that was on Slate this week:

Hey, look, we're cool again! Yaaaaaaaay!

Nope.

Please don't take any of this the wrong way because I fucking love blading. I think it's the sickest shit out there. But, since I'm a blader, I'm not cool. I don't do cool things like skateboard, or ride fixies, or wear Ray Bans, or all sorts of other shit really cool people do.

We're uncool.

We have to admit it, or we're going to keep looking like pissed off little children when we go crying to places that say even one single ill word or attempt to throw some kind of humor in the situation.

I rollerblade. I wear rollerblading clothes. I go to Detroit in the fucking winter to hang out with my rollerblader friends and watch some badass rollerblading. I fucking love it.

No, I'm not cool. And I'm fucking cool with that.

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

P.S. — If you found any reason in any of these ramblings, you might want to check out my next book, Freeze Tag on the Highway. Yes, one of the characters blades. Deal with it.

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Blader Digest: No More Rollernews

I haven't been writing on rollerblading much because, well…

Actually, there are a lot of reasons. I guess as I get older, there's more to experience and do. Some of it has to do with rollerblading, some of it doesn't. Some of them are distractions, others are steps closer to doing what you want to do. Personally, I've been working my ass off on my book, which has a few rollerblading references in it.

Then again, the main reason I haven't been writing about rollerblading is because I haven't checked Rollernews once in months. It feels really good.

Does that make me ignorant about blading? No, it just makes me lazy.

Still, somehow without that aggregate site, I end up seeing the new shit, like this…

Rollernews reposts shit they find on the internet, just like I do here. However, if you'll look around, you'll see not one bit of advertising on this site. (Of course, other than me trying to whore out my book.)

Why? Because if anyone in rollerblading should get paid, it's the actual people who put on the skates or work as a business owner. Those are the real people in blading.

Sure, Soul Skating is where it's at, but if some chump is making money off of your blood, sweat, and sacrifice and you can't afford a post-sesh cold one, you're a chump.

Besides, Rollernews fosters laziness. I wonder how many people on there commenting are too lazy to put on their blades, yet are still prone to spit out some of the dumbest and most ignorant discourse and disinformation in the sport.

Seriously, I'm sick of celebrating people's ignorance and loading up the internet with even more shit talking. I'm fucking sick of it to the point where even scrolling below an edit or photo makes my balls creep up into my belly button. Half the people there are just trying to get a reaction from people like some retarded high school bully.

Sure, ignoring the comments is easy enough, but for every click on Rollernews, the dude who owns the thing makes even more money. Just the way the real ways consumers vote is with their money, the way you support something on the internet is by visiting it and clicking around. All those clicks mean more money.

The companies that advertise should save their fucking money. That money should go to their riders—or at least hooking up some random poor ass little kid with a fresh setup once a month—instead of some jerk off aggregate site like Rollernews. Seriously, it's the Huffington Post of blading:

Little original content
Steals web hits from the original poster
Has little to do with actual news other than what'll drive traffic

Sure, fans of Rollernews will argue that it provides skaters exposure. As a guy who tries to make a living doing a full-time job and freelance projects, I warn you to always be weary of anyone offering "exposure."

That's the magical word they use for using people. They take YOUR talent and make THEIR money off of it. If you ever see your shit on a site with advertising, demand your fucking check and never settle for exposure.

Exposure is for film in cameras, not for people looking to be known.

At least the SHOCK guys had some fun at at the expense of the guy who runs Rollernews. Then again, since it's the SHOCK guys, I have no idea if it's real or not, which makes it all the better.

Besides, it's not like you're going to learn anything new from Rollernews.

Basically, Facebook has remedied a lot of the problems there were with Rollernews.

Mainly, if someone is going to say something, you have some kind of idea who's doing the talking.

See what I mean. Those things next to the pictures are names. Real names, of real people, saying real things they can be held accountable for. And before I go any further, yes, I know it's just Facebook.

Then again, you can customize Facebook. You don't have to see p-rail edits by little kids if you don't want to. You don't have to hear the word "swag" used over and over like it isn't a cliche already. A few clicks and you never have to see shit from a certain person if you don't want to.

You can follow the brands, shops, and skaters you love.

You can add people, you can ignore people, you can see what people are talking about, and you can leave direct feedback to the people in the edits.

The most important thing is that Facebook is free to everyone. People won't have to pay for advertising for "exposure." Advertising on Facebook is free because all anyone has to do is drop a link on your wall and it's just as good as an ad.

It sucks that we have to give Mark Zuckerberg more traffic, but fuck it, you're on Facebook enough already. Either way, you can't put Facebook out of business, no matter how hard you try, but you can get rid of Rollernews. Just stop going there.

Start going here instead:

http://www.be-mag.com/
http://irollny.wordpress.com/
http://stabyourselfintheface.com/
http://www.rollingupdates.com/
http://www.valo-brand.com/
http://www.shimamanufacturing.com/
http://vandownbytheriver.tumblr.com/

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

P.S. — Seriously, you should check out my book, Freeze Tag on the Highway.

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Blader Digest: Listen Up Now

This is all I've got for now.

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

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Blader Digest: Jesus Rollerblading Christ

Aww shit, son! It be all mother fucking June. That mean it all be nice out  and shit for months.

Get them fucking blades out, son, it be mother fucking June!

Or not.

Maybe if it's raining where you are like it is here in sunny San Francisco, then you've got too much time on your hands. Or, if you're like me, too much time with your hands.

Then, so long as you're busy killing kittens by disgracing our Lord with your masturbatory filth, might I suggest a lovely little pornography title from an era before our time.

No, I don't know where you can see the 1976 porno with the title, Rollerbabies. All I know is that someone thought a futuristic fuck fest on roller skates was a good idea. Well, it fucking was!

That's what's wrong with us now…even our porn lacks imagination. Long gone are the days of complicated dialogue, extensive sets, man vs. nature plot lines, and more. What is porn now? Shiiiiiit…

Lick a pussy. Suck a cock. Stick it in. Moan. Change positions. Suck the dick again. Spit on the pussy. Bang, bang, bang…. come on her face.

Wow. Riveting.

No wonder the birth rate is rising at such a rapid place with the median age of mothers decreasing by generation. Generations, by the way, used to be like 25 years apart. Now they're 14. It's sad.

Anyway, why the pregnancy? I blame the porn. It's not the existence or prevalence of porn, sexuality or nudity — thank God almighty that it's there! — but the fact that porn lacks any kind of imagination, so when some high school dude should be doing all this fucked up fantasy shit to his girlfriend that God also knows she won't be down for when they get married some day, he rabbit bangs her and forgets to prematurely ejaculate on her face. He's still balls deep in her when he blows it, mistaking a money shot for a money hole — a baby.

Yup, so there's more kids raising kids, sending them out in the world to make their own kids, so we can all be confused, misguided, and lost as ever before.

We'll try to teach them things by our own mistakes, but they won't listen and go out and make worse ones of their own. Then we'll have to bail them out — figuratively and literally — because we love them and we're still seeing them as pants-shitting little piles of fatty, stacked straight-don't-give-a-fuck awesome.

The cool thing about kids is they are rarely short in the imagination category.

When they start losing that imagination, the real trouble starts. They start seeing things for how they really are, and they either try to change it or burn the bitch to the ground.

The kids are going to do what they want, live how they want, and fuck up beyond human comprehension because that's what kids should be doing on a regular basis. They're questioning things and are getting promptly pissed off at the world adults have created for them.

This planet and what we've created out of it is weird. I mean, think about, in basic form, all the weird shit we build in the name of fun.

We spend so much of our time thinking about other people, what they're doing, whether they miss us, whether they love us, that we construct these means of communication to reach out to them whenever we want, yet we can never, ever have the right thing to say, but we always manage to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Then there's the awkwardness…

That fucking sucks.

Our messages will get twisted and contorted around from where they start in the neurotransmitters of our brain cells until they land in the proper cortex of the other person. There are too many senses and body systems at play to get those messages right because we're built like giant games of Telephone: by the time the message gets around, it's so far off from what you originally said that you question what you said at the beginning.

We never get it right because there are so many places for it to go so very wrong.

It's the drugs, the sex, the booze, the silence, the seclusion that makes some of it make sense. It make not solve the problems, but it loosens the noose for a little bit.

Everything around us has the potential to drive us fucking insane, yet we construct these lives based on taste in foods, clothing, music, lifestyle, etc. to project an image of sanity in a world run by crazy people dressed not in tan blue robes and house slippers but suits costly enough to balance foreign debts.

The rest of us in sweaty T-shirts and wax-stained jeans know that going crazy in the opposite direction might save us for yet another day.

The world is a confusing place because we humans do some confusing things, things that will dumbfound us all for eons because we, we members of a so-called evolved species in supposed advanced societies can still find a way to alienate those who aren't exactly like we are, and in that alienation, we market envy, we manufacture hatred, and we consume greed. We are so incomplete inside that in moments of lapse judgment, we hurl out the closet thing we can find and hope it sticks to someone else.

We get selfish, but we don't begin to take care of ourselves We look at others and wonder what they do for us. We forget to smile because we're too caught up in the daily bullshit. We're tired, but we're too hyper to notice.

We all should just take a lesson from Bill Murray…

Nothing is ever good enough and we want more, but we don't know where to get it.We'll comb through every land and destroy whatever is in our path because we believe we are so close to becoming complete that we must trudge through the mud and blood to get it. But before we even reach it, we can already see the top of the next hill and want what's there. We blindly pass what we thought we wanted in search for something that could be better.

It's war. It's one inside each of us.

Oh yeah, and before I go, I should let you know about what God had to say in response to what I told him a few weeks ago about the lack of a reckoning.

But of course God didn't tell me directly. No sir, if he did that people would just think I'm crazy and give me tons of money for centuries so I could start a church or something. Nope, God told me everything I need to know through the Oatmeal.

So yeah, here's what really happened with the rapture:

Comic finishes here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/rapture

Wait, what?

Did You say "Jesus Rollerblading Christ"?

What in Your name could you mean?

Yeah, www.theoatmeal.com is awesome.

Fuck yeah. I know the big man was on our side. Teaching that kid right, you know, except for the whole rainbow being the international sign of the gay community and rollerblading is called gay—even in joke punchlines—enough thing.

Whatever.

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

P.S. — If you want to read something else with as many blading and fucking references (and a thousand more drug references) as this column, do me a favor and buy my book, Freeze Tag on the Highway.

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Food For Feet: Injury Food

Missing a truespin grind and splitting a rail, sliding out, earning another scrape on the knee that is visible from the top side of your jeans, as you watch the blood pool, anticipating the sting you will be receiving once you hit the shower.

Bruises, cuts, strains, a sprained ring finger, Blading is not for the faint-of-heart. In any extreme sport, there are days we land tricks and then there are days we don't.  Injuries are all part of the game and being proactive to healing these wounds by having ice-packs, wrist guards, heat packs, and even Neosporin (with burn relief) can have you back on the streets for redemption with the backflip to soul you were initially trying.

Although losing the use of a limb can become depressing, it can also be viewed as an opportunity to grow. Being forced to use different muscles to do our day-to-day activities, allows different use of the brain thus making the person sharper (Injuries make you smarter!).  Nothing lasts forever and like the rain, injury's will eventually go away.  To expedite recovery of the wound, keep it above the heart and try eating certain types of foods that provide nutrients and vitamins that the body can use to repair it.

Eat! - Some people think that because they are injured and sitting around that they are going to get fat.  But, your body needs calories because it is doing extra work to defend your body from illness and now has to repair what was damaged during blading (coitus).

Omega-3 Fatty Acids - Salmon, Mackerel, Flax Seeds, Walnuts, avocados are all high with these fatty acids that act as an anti-inflammatory.

Protein – will rebuild muscular tissue.  Choose something organic, like chicken or Bison meat, or light proteins such as, fish, or shrimp.  Vegetarians have almonds or beans.

Vitamin C - is known to make new skin, repair scars, muscle tissue, tendons, ligaments, and blood tissue.  The antioxidants found in Vitamin C will also aid your body's immune system and can be found in broccoli, oranges, and cantaloupes.

Zinc – This important nutrient helps proteins repair bodily tissues and can be found in whole grains and nuts.

Water – acts like a lubricant transporting all of these nutrients throughout the body, and will make the healing process faster when in abundance.

Here is a delicious and light dish for dinner that has all of these nutrients and vitamins wrapped into a pelvic thrust.

Blackened Salmon, Orange Broccoli, with Ginger-Almond Brown Rice

Yield: 2 people

Photo: Kruise Sapstein

Ingredients                                      Amounts

Ginger, 2 – inch piece                               1 ea.

Brown Rice                                         1 1/2 Cup

Water                                                       3 cups

Sliced Almonds, raw                            1/2 cup

Salmon – 2- 6oz. filets                     12 oz. – 1 pound

Paprika                                                 1 1/2 Tbsp.

Cayenne                                                1 Tbsp.

Dried Thyme                                           1/4 Tsp.

Broccoli, crown                                       1 ea.

Orange                                                     1 ea.

Salt & Pepper                              To Taste

Olive Oil                                               To Taste

Method

For the Rice

1.  Rinse brown rice to remove any possible foreign debris.

2. Peel ginger root (I prefer to do this task with a small spoon, pretending the edge is a peeler)  and then chop finely.

3. Heat a medium sized pot and coat the pan with oil.  Once oil is warm, drop the ginger just to sweat for about 45 seconds.  (Do not blacken ginger.)  Add the rice and toss to coat each piece with oil.  Add water, toss a pinch of salt in, reduce heat to low, top the pot with a lid, and keep on a low boil till rice is fluffy. (refrain from stirring)

4.  In a separate pot bring 2 cups of water to a boil and blanch almonds for approximately 5 minutes to crisp up.   Test an almond ensuring it is cooked all the way through, before draining liquid.  Toast for a few minutes in a dry pan on high heat till golden brown.  After rice has been cooked fold in cooked almonds.

For the Blackening Spice

5.  Mix Paprika, Cayenne, and Dried Thyme together.

6.  Check to make sure Salmon has no bones and remove skin if desired.  (this is actually the location for a lot of Omega-3 fatty acids, but, eating the skin is kind of hard, and if you do, make sure its descaled.  I don't want you choking.)

7.  Lay spice mixture out on a flat plate or surface and pat the filet on both sides

8.  In a Saute pan on low heat, that is lubricated with oil, add salmon filet till blackened.  Then flip.  The seasoning should create a natural moisture barrier locking in all the natural flavors and cooking it faster than it would in an oven.

For the Broccoli

9. Bring a small pot of salted water (enough to submerge the chopped broccoli) to a boil and drop broccoli in for approximately 1-2 minutes or until centers are soft but not mushy.  Drain from water.

10.  Peel orange removing any white rind off of the skin and julienne.  Juice entire orange into a saute pan and reduce to a glaze, syrup consistency.  Right before it thickens toss blanched broccoli and julienned orange skins into saute pan to marry the flavors.

11. Serve Broccoli with rice and salmon.  Enjoy and get well soon.

— Chef Michael Obedoza

(Michael Obedoza lives in Carson, Calif., and is a 2009 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. He is sponsored by The Conference and Eulogy. Check out his blog, Blading with Chef Knives.)

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Blader Digest: Post-Rapture Reasoning

Dear God,

How ya been, buddy? I see you've been busy with that whole Judgment Day/Rapture business. Man, sorry that didn't work out for you. I don't know if you were busy or what, but thanks for not coming down here and beating the living piss out of us.

More importantly, thanks for sending down some reason and common sense to some of us that doubted the whole mess.

B. Smith does not approve.

I mean it's not like I wasn't ready. There I was, sitting on my couch in my underwear (Didn't want anyone to have to pick up my clothes if I vanished.) and…nothing. Sure, there was that little earthquake here in SF, and that volcano eruption in Iceland, but I expected more. You are God, after all, and this was supposed to be the rapture. However, it seems you were a bit rough on people that didn't deserve it…

Owie.

Then again, should you ever swoop on down here—or send your seed, Jesus—I'd like to set a few things straight when you're mulling over who's gonna rise up to heaven while the rest suffer in doubt in despair. If you could, also run these by the Macho Man. I know he and the J-Son are pretty tight and have been up to some cool things in the past couple of days.

How we were really saved: Macho Man called off the rapture with one Flying Elbow Drop

First off, I was born without an asshole. That's right, I was one of those few thousand babies you so cleverly gave no means to expel the shit inside them. While I could have just filled up with excrement until I exploded, a doctor gave me an anus. That's right, I have a man-made asshole. I hope you don't forget that come Judgment. Having a butthole is a pretty important thing, you know.

Butthole, sans hole.

So, if you ever wonder why I let all this shit build up inside me and act like an asshole, you know. So, yeah, sometimes your rules need to go out the window like a cat no one wants.

Aim for center mass.

Second, the people that first told me about you—my parents and Catholic school teachers—were the same people who told me about the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa. Sorry, but if they make up three out of four things I'll never see, but are supposed to be giving me what I want or need, that fourth one might get some skepticism every once in a while.

Too late.

Third, the other people who have gone around spreading your Word are sometimes really messed up. They picket funerals for dumb reasons, they pick arbitrary dates to scare people that judgment is coming, and sometimes they put their wieners into little kids. I don't know about you, but I think you need a new PR agent.

I'm sure that kid wasn't forced into it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think you're a bad guy. Personally, I just think a lot of stupid shit gets thrown around with your name. Still, even if you're just imaginary, you do plenty of good. You comfort people when they are worried, you help us handle tragedy better, and you bring people together to do some great things.

This place is awesome.

Really though, besides the whole universe, nervous system, and all the other cool things you've done, here are some things you did a really, really good job at putting together:

The sense of humor
Calvin & Hobbes
Various types of mood- and mild-altering substances, which include, but are not limited to, weed, beer, whiskey, and Adderall.
Bacon
Pixar movies
Boobies. (Yeah, buddy!)
The three seconds of pure, uninterrupted mental clarity that occurs only after orgasm
And, of course, rollerblading. It's so perfect it could only come from you.

Rollerblade's off-road skates have always been quite dapper.

But blading is a type of religion. Sure, we don't all get together during specific hours of the week, put money into a plate, sing songs, and ask that you help us win the lottery. I'm pretty sure even you, in your almighty wisdom, patience, and awesomeness, get sick of all the people asking you to take care of their stupid, piddly shit. The big stuff, I understand might need your attention, but praying for shit like lightbulbs that never burn out is kind of dumb.

No, rollerblading is a religion in that it brings us together, helps us beat stress from our daily toils, and helps us understand the world you put us into.You made it green. Someone paved it. We're going to skate it. Sounds good, right?

Shit can be pretty confusing at times, and while we might consider taking the easy way out of life, we know that this show is too good to turn off. I, and a lot of other people, were waiting for those Church Rapture dudes to go crazy and take care of what you didn't do, but we're still waiting for them to kick the chairs out from under each other.

Ready when you are

Hell, just like being part of a cult gets you instant family, blading is the same way. Since we all blade, we know we have friends all over the world looking to help out. While people do nice things and say "it's the Christian thing to do" I'm going to say, "it's the blader thing to do." I hope your son doesn't mind. It's not meant in any kind of disrespect or anything.

Then again, if you do thrown down doomsday-style, we bladers will be just fine. We're used to pain, being severely misunderstood, sometimes hated, other times totally ignored, blah, blah, bitchety-blah-blah.

Hey, we're kind of like you.

So, yeah, bring on the fire and brimstone. We'll be rocking this bitch like something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel.

"Call me a blader fag one more time..."

Until you're ready for the real rapture, we victims of the fake rapture will continue doing what we're doing: working, blading, learning, and making fun of stupid shit.

It's nice to be loved.

Blade or Die, Big Guy in the Sky,
— Brian Krans

P.S. — If you want to read more on religion, sin, and other shit, try the Bible. If that's too long, check out my books.

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Blader Digest: Putting Out Fires

As a kid, growing up in a shithole nothing of a town—voted as the No. 3 and No. 4 area in America to raise a kid—I wanted nothing more than to set the world ablaze.

And I did. Trust me, the statute of limitations has expired  so I can admit it in public. I wanted to watch people run around in terror based on the destruction I'd caused. However, most of the fires I set were metaphorical.

I wanted to create pain to match the one I was in. Whether self-inflicted or not, I wanted my pain to envelope everyone and overcome them like the deadly fire in myself.

That was then. This is now. Or so I was getting good at telling myself.

I'm older. That pains some people to admit, but the longer you stay alive, the older you'll get. If you wanna die young, that's fine, but at least give us something pretty to look at….

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But fuck that shit. We waste our best years chasing something—and we usually don't know what—but we'll all wake up someday with either regrets or good memories. If we're smart, that'll come early. If not, that's all good too.

See, the problem people have with getting old is that they believe they have lost their best years. Yeah, it's cool being carefree, doing what you want, dispensing dispensable income, and fucking around, but as you heard Kennan Scott say in WAV3, "Thirty's the new 20, bitches!"

For those of us old enough to remember, but young enough to forget, life isn't easy. The hardest part is learning where you fit in. There are some people—as Haffey illustrated in the beginning of Two Feet—that some people are made to be good at everything. Fuck those people. They're rare, like a Geek Love freak show attraction you saw when you were ten.

The best parts of life aren't when you can do anything you want, but when you find what you love and the courage to work everyday towards that.

That could be a small human being who shares some of your DNA, or as big as the part of society you serve, like the homeless, hopeless, or prideless. You might work a job you hate to provide for those you love (and love you back).

You work at something every day, and although you may lose sight of why you do it, the consequences of losing everything you love would break you.

Still, the hardest part is finding what exactly it is that you want. That might take years, decades, or never come around at all.

Yeah, this shit sounds like a downer if you're 18, but you won't get it until you get it. Frankly, a lot of times I still don't get it.

Some days, that moment of silence you get when traffic outside your place goes blank, and the sun shines just right, and your girl looks at you like it's that moment she first loved you…

They don't come along every second, but when they do, you're alive because you're motivated by love, hope, peace and everything else a 40-minute commute, beige-walled cubicle job can't take away from you.

Any kind of pain you carry around with you is gone because you can't see anything before or after that moment.

Unfortunately, that pain is inside you because you never let it heal in the first place. It's your fire.

So, just like you did when you were young and stupid, you began fanning that fire, projecting all of you inner pain out onto everything else. It pains you, so you have to spread the flames to keep them from engulfing you.

But that needs to stop. The more you burn, the less you'll have.

You need to stand there, in those flames and let it do their worst. When it's all over, you need to scrape the char off and keep going, fueled by a passionate fire that you should never neglect to feed.

When you're not paying attention to what's important, that pain will come and unleash a beast all over the best parts of your life.

Maybe that pain takes your brain and twists it around so badly that the closest thoughts unravel into hot garbage. When those thoughts twist even further into words, they leak out the bottom of the bag and ruin everything.

The only thing that can fix broken words is strong action.

Sure, life is hard work. From the moment your parents let their grasp go for a bit, you have to learn as much as you can, work to achieve a certain level of independence, and search endlessly for happiness. That happiness will never stay as long as you like, so you have to miss some sleep and trudge along to make something, whether that be connections with another human being or just trying to leave a positive mark on the planet you'll be on for a short time.

Again, that shit isn't easy. That's why the lure of booze, drugs, and other vices are so pleasing because even if they don't fix anything, they sure help put your mind in a happier place. Still, that's a dirty place to get lost in and if you're lucky, you'll be able to pull yourself out of it in time.

Or you could end up with an amputated arm, puking in prison mashed potatoes, or going ass-to-ass for a wee little baggie.

These are probably just nonsensical ramblings of an old man who's trying to do something worthwhile, but I see a lot of pain and fatigue in people whose smiles don't last as long as they should.

While doing all that work, you need to stop. You need to pause and realize how good things are, even if they seem entirely shitty and hopeless. The important thing is to step out of your own head so you can differentiate what's real and what you're twisting around in a convoluted bowl of emotions. It's hard, but it's always worth it.

At least we have the opportunity. We have opportunities to fail, fall, and get back up and again. I don't care what anyone says, that's how champs are made.

Life will try to leave you a bloody, scabbed mess, but everyday you can look at yourself, know you faults, and work to improve them, the edge of the knife gets a little duller.

Somewhere in the mess, we'll all gain some knowledge and try to make it easier on ourselves and those we love.

Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans

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