I'm on a diet.

Sort of. I got a little heavier than I wanted to over the holidays, so I decided to do something about it. So far, I have lost a decent amount of weight, and so to reward myself, I got a tattoo of the Empirebmx crown on my wrist. Why? Because I like the design, Tom and Tina have been amazing to me over the years and because I am pretty sure that I can justify it because my name means "the crowned one". It works, fuck you.

I wanted to review "Owned" by Props for this entry. So I will. Stew Johnson filmed most of it. Alex, Tom and Stew stayed at my house for a moment during the filming of said video and Stew used my daughter's pink Hello Kitty blanket to sleep with.

What you need to know:

-Alex's part is so fucking rad. Good song, great riding, fast, pedal, great hair, effortless, fast.

-Tom Villarreal's part is similarly rad. Not as frenetic as Alex's part, but still good. There is some scary shit in there.

-Jason Phelan's part is good, it didn't stick with me. I started to drift here.

-Dan Foley's was also good, but again I wasn't just going nuts over it. He's obviously really good, but I just wasn't feeling it and went to get a beer out of the fridge.

-Drew Bezanson. Fuck it. Quit riding. This isn't even real. Fuuuuuuck. What? That's right. He did that. Oh my god. Whatever.

Next review will be Killjoy. I need to shoot some damn pics this week.

Hair of the Dog...

So this is the 4th video by the Innocent Bystander crew, and to be honest, I never watched the first three. No real reason why, I just never did. But I watched this. Several times. Austin Phillips is blunt force trauma on a bike. He is brutal and harsh and awesome to watch and behold. It seems like he would need to actually take breaks from riding to allow his form to heal so he is ready for the next thing that he wants to assail. I do not know if this is actually the truth, but I choose to believe it.

The music in this thing falls within my circle of interest. And with the song that plays for Jake Hunter, all I could think about was how mellow the track was vs. the frenetic pace with which Jake rides. It probably should have caused some cognitive dissonance, but it didn't.

There aren't "bangers" in this. Rider's parts don't end with dead man shit. Instead, it is more of a "done riding, let's get that beer" feel. Very down with that.

Also, as Wheelie Nelson from BMXBoard points out, footplants need to be done more.

Watch it for free or go buy it for sure.

BUY IT HERE AND GET A SHIRT, TOO.

The last day.

This was the last picture that I took of 2011.


It was of Michael Tetro, and he just happened to show up the park on a day that I went by myself because anymore, I just go alone. I was glad that he was there and I enjoyed having someone to ride with, because riding alone does get old. We talked about going to Austin together in the spring, which would be an excellent journey. Then I had to go because I had to get ready to go get drunk for New Year's Eve. As it turned out, I didn't really get all that drunk. I had some SoCo, a beer and that was that. A low key end to a year that was all over the map for me. My son started Kindergarten, my daughter got picked to go to Finland and my wife decided to learn how to dry, grind up and encapsulate placentas.

Anyways, I'll end this with one of the cooler parts of 2011 for me...



That was pretty neat.