Blader Digest: Shockingly Loaded
Whoa. Big things going on. Let's get to it.
WRS Uploaded
If you're awesome, you've been paying attention to the new final competition of the World Rolling series at wrsuploaded.com.
Skaters from around the world having been competing via one-minute edits on spots of their choosing. It truly is awesome to see what people are putting into the peer-judged online event.
As of this writing, we're in the second heat with some big competition in there.
Daniel Prell beat out Dre Powell in his first heat, but he came across one of the best edits ever from defending champion Brian Aragon. Aragon had everything in there and shied away from his spin-to-win reputation. It was the most refreshing edits yet.
Below them was the stylish Nils Jansons who beat Nick Wood, who skated a homemade, makeshift Jersey barrier in the first round. Even though Nils' edit was into its second week, it appeared the fans were heavily leaning on Nils edit against seasoned Valo pro Erik Bailey.
Had there been an office pool to go with this (and who the fuck is down to start one for next year?!), I would have lost a lot of money. Then again, I wouldn't have been betting on talent, but merely how skating as a whole views a blader.
It became the battle of two people with Blade or Die tattoos…
That is one flawed way the system doesn't work.
The peer judging operates on one assumption: we are all rational, calm beings with critical thinking skills that can apply and interpret certain rules to a given scenario.
That's why I've voted for some edits four times because of yet another flaw in the system.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Daniel Kinney and others behind the World Rolling Series did the finals this way, but we all knew something fucked up was bound to pull its head out of its own ass.
Having everyone judge won't make strict judges out of us, it will only turn the whole system into a HUGE popularity contest with rigged judging. The rules go out the window in the name of something-something blah-blah-blah.
(This is an appropriate time to note that I am a very big fan of Erik Bailey. Huge. I have also worked with him on a project due out soon. Fuck, even the name of this site was used because of Bailey's toe tattoos. Please use that information when evaluating the validity of my forthcoming statements.)
No where in the WRS Uploaded rules does it state you couldn't reuse clips, so long as the submission hadn't been posted to YouTube or Vimeo before. Like anyone who's taken Mass Media law classes knows, altering content with the original owners permission (or unless it has been around long enough and considered to be public domain) makes it arguably a new work.
That being said, let's take a look at Nils Jansons's submission…
MAN! WOW! LOOK AT THOSE HAMMERS!! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!
I admit I was first shocked at the level of Nils skating for the edit, but then something came into focus as soon as the last trick was done.
This isn't new footage. It's a compilation of others. I'm not even close to the first person to notice.
Erik's Valo teammate had something to say about it…
Here's some evidence.
This trick in Nils edit…
Was the same trick from the Nils Jansons Best Of 2010 edit on YouTube…
But let's watch what Bailey did wrong…
Hmm. Looks solid. Not his best work ever, but solid fucking Bailey skating that still got my heart rate up.
A big problem with Bailey's edit is that in comes in the middle of filming for FiVe, constantly filming with Erik Bill in Idaho, and creating new content.
Nils filmed for sections too. You just saw parts of his, including a trick he landed sometime in 2010.
It's fucking unfortunate Nils went that route. Fuck, for all I know he could be injured and in a wheelchair right now.
The point here is that no one doubts Nils or Erik's talent. Nils is young and extremely talented, and Bailey repeatedly bangs out big tricks in comps and puts out great sections in ever video he is in.
But this competition in no way is currently a fair one. Nils recycled footage while Bailey did not. It's like they both aced a test, but one was using a cheat sheet. They both hit a home run, but one used steroids.
If Bailey were smart, he could have simply had Ivan Narez piece together clips from 4Life and the upcoming Shred 'Til You're Dead II. Then again, that has nothing to do with smarts. It's about putting in the work.
But wait! There's an independent panel of judges who will judge who will become the true winner and the online votes will count toward the "Fan Favorite." Hopefully, hopefully I hope in my hopiest of hearts that they spot the bullshit when its there and cast it out under the most vile sin on the internet:
Then again, like any competition from girls' high school gymnastics to the Super Bowl, there will always be plenty of bitching about the judging.
The SHOCK Video
If you've never been to StabYourselfInTheFace.com, you've been missing out on a lot more than just the best named website on the internet.
The guys over at SHOCK are a fucking eclectic group. They run from zen master Kevin Yee to the infectiously violent Thomas Bistro, or whatever nickname he's going by this week.
Their content is beautifully summarized in the two-year project that is now available for purchase: The SHOCK Video.
It has almost a worn VHS copy feel to it, which the guys say say is intentional, so the video should be viewed first time in its entirety before going to individual sections. Most sections of skaters are short, fondly reminding me of the scene sections of the early Videogroove days.
There are probably a million fucking sections in the video, but none summarizes the hellfire fury of SHOCK and rollerblading quite like Derek Henderson.
Shit is so filthy. Dude fucking shreds OG killer shit making the video more westside than Hawai'i.
(Seriously guys, I'm trying here, but half the time you speak I have no fucking clue what the hell you are saying. I'm a 30-year-old white dude from Wisconsin. I only have so much to work with.)
The video is sick and at something like two hours long, it's well worth the money.
There's some old footage of big names, lots of new footage of big names, and some seriously brilliant skating on some of the nation's toughest terrain, especially here in San Francisco.
With all of the videos coming out at an increasingly alarming rate, it will be a video you won't soon forget because it's something blading hasn't seen in a while. It is more reflective of our grainy, ill-spent youth than it is of the polished, HD-driven culture we're in now. It's pretty much what blading is about for those that do it the best.
Still, one of the best moments in the video was when Bistro kept hitting some S&M dude in the balls with his crutch in the middle of San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair, a public festival of whips, chains, choke balls, and rubber.
It was a truly fitting moment for the spectacle of sheer shredding, nonsensical antics, and porn slicing that Tyler Durden would approve that makes up this video.
Bistro repeatedly said his only goal was to make the most offensive skating video ever made. I should not be the judge of this considering my first video was Hoax II (the one where Arlo whips his pierce dick out of a moving RV window) and I used to sift through baby autopsy photos and eat lunch immediately after.
Would you want your mom to be in the room while you're watching it? Fuck no. Your wife? Doubtful. Your girlfriend? Maybe, if she's cool.
United World Rolling
If Facebook, Twitter, Be-Mag, and Rollernews (BOYCOTT!!!) aren't enough to keep you incestually invested in rollerblading, there's United World Rolling, a social website that combines the core element of each one into one site.
Other sites have attempted such endeavors, but, alas, they all went the way of the buffalo. Then again, none had the endorsement of skaters like Franky Morales and the "godfather of rollerblading," Mr. Chris Edwards, who apparently has come a long way from his squeaky-clean Man of God image he had back when his name was on a skate.
Join if you'd like. When websites need user-driven content to succeed, they need users first.
The only thing that determines if the site will become anything involves users and time.
Time, after all, is the great decider of everything.
—Brian Krans
P.S. — Books. I wrote them. They are on sale. Buy them so I can continue to write these pieces without the consideration of advertisers.
