Mystic Negro dot Com

Hi George it’s me, uhm, George.  I’m writing  this the day after the release of the Star Wars Collection on Blu-Ray to thank you for letting me spend money on camera equipment, shoes and software. It all started a long long time ago (the 80s) in a zip code far, far away (Midfield, Alabama) where my father took his three children to see The Empire Strikes Back.  It was my first movie in a theater and I still remember Darth Vader scaring the living shit out of me by walking in the hangar and just shrugging off laser fire.  LASER FIRE.  I was hooked for life.  Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi; These movies had me.

Sadly these are not the movies included in the $140 Ultimate Blu-Ray Collection of Star Wars Related Items which was released muricuh yesterday (by the way, don’t you live here?  Why the hell did this stuff get released in Europe first?  I’m getting tired of this crap, aren’t we supposed to be the last remaining superpower?  Can’t we use that standing to do something worthwhile like getting the cool stuff first?) Anyway, moving on.  I want to see the movies where Han shot first, James Earl Jones did not phone in one line of laughably bad dialog and the Ewoks stare with cold, dead, unblinking eyes.

I want to see the work of young, hungry, broke-ass George Lucas (Star Wars)  not the movie that old, rich George Lucas wishes that young, hungry, broke-ass George Lucas had made (A New Hope).  However, you’re not giving me that choice.  The idea of “original and directors cuts” which can seamlessly coexist on one disc seems to escape the abilities of a guy who made an entire galaxy in a computer. At $150 give or take after taxes and/or shipping what I’m saying is, I’m not giving you $50  to watch a parody of films I grew up on (also, did you know that when they show them on TV now they remove the incest?  What’s up with that?  OK, kissing your twin sister is gross, but if you’re 19 and you didn’t know she was your sister and you were about to die and she was hot…I mean it’s still gross, if you wanted to add anything to those movies it should have been the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke tries to wash the memory of MAKING OUT WITH HIS TWIN SISTER out of his brain. Twice.).

Anyway, my momma has the original, unmolested trilogy on VHS.  Thanks the the magic of DVD recorders and RCA cables I will be digitizing those and watching the real Star Wars shortly.  This saves me the money I’d have given you and gives me the money to buy a new (to me, if not to the world) lens.

Over forty hours of bonus footage, OK that’s awesome.  That’s easily worth $50 and I would pay $50 for it.  But I can’t, so I will buy new Pumas instead. Look, I like Pumas.  I actually also like Star Wars and I’m a geek who loves behind the scenes stuff so, so, so much.  However…

George, I refuse to give you another $50 for what appears to be a Star Wars related fan-fiction story with high production values where Darth Vader is re-cast as an emo teenager who’s in love with a cougar.  While the original films have their flaws (oh Lord do they have their flaws) these seem to have been written by some fat guy holed up alone in the dark in front of a lap top with no editor or at least a proof reader.

…

Moving on

What I’m saying is that, I can buy an upgrade to my favorite photo editing suite for the money you’re trying to get for three movies that are at best boring and at worst offensive and boring and horrible.  They’re horrible either way, by the way.

So, George, I thank you I only have so much money and you’ve given me the option of spending it somewhere else.  You, my friend, are awesome.

Sincerely,

George

I spent part of the weekend dealing with a dog with explosive diarrhea and part of it filming/reviewing clips for the Steven Nowak 39th Birthday Riding Film Extravaganza (and Ice Cream Parlor). It occurs to me that actually writing about the process behind the SN39thBRFE (and Irrational Hatred of Green Vegetables) makes it seem like this is some serious thing with a lot of thought and planning put into it.

Let me assure you, it is not.

This will be another of a bajillion poorly conceived and edited web videos which will be seen by ones of people all over my house. However, I am full of neurosis and also the owner of one of the best domain names on the planet so, since I’ve been told by people who are both pro and against my new titties on Monday format that I should write more and writing about the creative process seems to be more interesting than telling you about the joys of my super exciting job of sitting in front of a computer, FTP’ing things all day and troubleshooting config files.

Also, seriously, I over think stuff. Which brings us back to the Steven Nowak 39th Birthday Riding Film Extravaganza (and Steve, Seriously, You Should Come With Us to Masago Steakhouse and Thai. A Guy With This Body Knows Food). I’ve been reviewing clips trying to find some narrative thread, where there is none.

——-SNIP——-

So, I wrote that a few months ago, shortly afterwards (like the next day) Mojo died and I kind of lost the plot on the whole Steve Nowak 39th Birthday Video Extravaganza (And Mandy, Don’t Let Indy Ride His Bike in Sandles).  But after some time spent feeling like ass, and then some time spent at work trying to launch a brand new website featuring technology none of us had used before and then some time on vacation after doing that I’m back, and I may have found a song.

So, over a decade ago Bill Gates refused to have a PDA, which Microsoft produced, because he claimed that tablets were the future and he wanted to dedicated MS to figuring out the tablet paradigm a year or so ago Steve Jobs invented the tablet out of whole cloth, creating something that no one had ever seen or thought of before, as is his way.  Steve proclaimed that tablets will replace the traditional laptops the way that cars replaced trucks.  Back in the day, you see, you used to see a lot of trucks but now you don’t see so many (This is, of course, pure, unfettered bullshit, the Ford F-Series has been the most popular passenger vehicle in America your entire life, selling 528,349 copies in 2010 an increase of 27.7% from ’09 the best selling car, the Toyota Camry, sold 327,804 copies a loss of 8.1% from the previous year which puts it in the number three vehicle spot.  The number two vehicle was the Chevy Silverado at 370,135 vehicles, an increase of 16.9%, which apparently outsold the F-Series when you lump together all of its platform mates.) Being charmed by Jobs’ earnest and truthful analysis of world events I ran out and bought an iPad.

I could barely finish writing that sentence.

Actually, I grabbed a Nook Color and rooted it and had a fine old time until I found out that Cyanogenmod doesn’t support the default Nook Reader program and you have to use the good, but not as good Nook Android app, so my rooted Nook is kind of stuck in rooted nook limbo for the time being.  HOWEVER, in what has got to be the greatest act of prostitution ever, HP spent almost two billion dollars for Palm and then screwed them vigorously.  So, I ended up with one of these for $150 + shipping.

My Expensive Ass Cheap Tablet

Well, now that I have a relatively powerful tablet, with a relatively robust (and much cleaner) OS I guess the thing to do now is to see if I can actually use it to replace my laptop (which I will refer to as “The Beast” as it weighs in at 1.5 metric tonnes of high end gaming goodness) for all but serious photo and video editing duties. First thing’s first, though, impressions.

I’m not sure who at HP decided that it would be a good idea to build a laptop out of Teflon and finger prints, but that’s exactly what they did with the TouchPad.  It’s back is covered in some super high glossy finish that has almost had me drop it multiple times.  A case is on its way, it cannot get here soon enough.

One of the many ways that HP screwed Palm (including doggie style and reverse cowgirl, natch) is that they promised that the wouldn’t ship the TouchPad until it was ready.  They shipped it about two months before the  ready for primetime OS  was ready, then killed it 48 days later.  Which is to say, the first thing any TouchPad owner should do is go and update the OS, the new version is by all accounts more stable and responsive than the shipping version.  I wouldn’t know, I only used the default OS to upgrade to the new one.

Once I got that done I started with the process of trying to do some basic things with the touch pad like syncing my phone and MP3 player.

Wait, you can’t do that?

At all?

Well. Crap.

Henry Rollins said, “I like the government, they protect me from the free market.”  Sadly, nothing can protect us from people going to see Michael Bay movies.  Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon pulled in 398 million dollars worldwide over the (in America long) weekend.  Which is bad.  Michael Bay has proven that he doesn’t care about plot, acting, story, narrative arcs or pretty much anything besides ass shots and explosions.

With those two pictures you’ve now seen every movie that Michael Bay is capable of making.

But he will make more.  Despite being universally reviled, Transformers 3 managed to rake in almost half a billion dollars this weekend.  There will be a fourth movie and it will be terrible.

I think Judgement Day DID happen on May 21st and we’re in the “Hell on Earth” portion of the post judgement.

Several years ago I went to see Michael Bay’s Transformers with occasional running buddy, recovering angry, young man and all around all around guy, Sean “Diesel” Reid.  While I expected it, I was not prepared for what would happen next.  Without getting too deep into it, Michael Bay walked up behind part of my childhood, clubbed it unconscious with Shia LaBeauf and proceeded to anally rape its unconscious body.

Then he shat on it.

A man just doesn’t get over that.  Which is why I skipped Transformers 2.  Thankfully, I was nowhere around the Step-n-Fetchicons and I have no desire to see the current big budget, cinematic abortion which features the good guys shooting people in the back and killing people Mortal Kombat Fatality style.

Spill.com gave it “Some old Bullshit.”  Listen to the full review here, they were being generous. They also pointed out something funny.  All three movies share the same basic plot.  Which is to say that, three movies in with (more or less) the same cast and crew (they did replace Megan Fox with a girl who’s not as pretty, but is also a worse actress) they’ve rebooted the Transformers franchise three times.

She's not unatractive, but Megan Austin Green is Way Hotter.

One of my best friends called me from Tuscon after checking an early morning, Saturday showing.  His words, “Don’t waste your life.”

If you want to feel like your mind’s been shat on, but don’t feel like spending the money to see the movie you can go and read Topless Robot’s FAQ.  It’s pretty much a full rundown of the movie, without the visual.  A quote:

Really? Why?
Presumably he’s one of those folks who worked at NASA, but it could just be because Ken Jeong is a weirdo. Anyways, Laserbeak, having completed his mission of making it look like suicide, sneaks into Shia’s office as a copier and then attacks him, finally bringing him into the main plot.
None of that last sentence made any sense. If it was supposed to look like a suicide, why would Laserbeak then instantly reveal himself? How could he sneak into a busy office as copier? Why does he attack Shia?
I can’t answer the first two, but as for the last question, I assume the Decepticons saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Okay, I’ll buy that. So what’s this main plot you speak of?
Well, while the movie focuses on important things like the Beef’s employment search, the Autobots, along with Josh Duhamel and other unimportant humans, go to Chernobyl on a tip that Decepticons are hanging out there. There, the Autobots discover a piece of the Ark which the Decepticons somehow apparently had. Also they get attacked by a giant robot sandworm thing which kills countless humans and zero Autobots, of course.
What Decepticon is the giant robot sandworm?
Uh… Sandwormicon? Fuck, I don’t know. It doesn’t transform or anything. Anyways, it doesn’t matter, because this is all a Decepticon ploy for the Autobots to find the Ark piece and then go to the moon.
If they just wanted the Autobots to find the Ark piece, why have the giant robot sandworm attack the Autobots at all?
Look, you have a giant robot sandworm, you might as well use it, right?

Yeah, this is terrible. You should just avoid it.  I know the three of you who read this don’t care what I think and this movie has probably already made several gajillion dollars.  But, really, stop reqarding Michael Bay for this shit.

Ahhh BMX.  I would imagine that my relationship with you is somewhat like a guy and his ex who gave him herpes.  He mostly doesn’t think about her, but every so often he goes to pee and it feels like someone has shoved a lit match up his wang hole and thus it is with BMX.  I’ve pretty much not cared about BMX for the past however long, but my wife’s co-workers kept asking me if I knew what Vein was.  Had no clue.

Then they launched.

So, Vein is a “mail order company.”  But not so much a mail order company like, say, Dan’s or Albe’s.  It’s really more of a direct seller.  This isn’t the first time a company has tried this.  That was basically Nirve’s hook ten years ago.  Eventually they started selling through local shops and finally they just dropped the entire damn brand and started over using the name they were using everywhere else, anyway (I always kinda hated that they re-structured before introducing the Voxom two piece cranks which were supposed to be revolutionary I wonder if they actually paved the way for Wom/Twombolts).

So, there is a precedent for what Vein is doing.  While Nirve was, in the end, a failure (they did bring the world Stephen Murray) they were also way ahead of the curve.  a decade ago Amazon was really just starting to be a profitable business.  The fact that on-line would be a long term, valid, sales medium was really just becoming obvious.  So that’s a feather in their cap. Unfortuantely, hating on anything that Eastern is even remotely involved in could replace both Flatland and Dirt in the X-Games as a legitimate BMX discipline.  So that doesn’t look good.  Me, I like ‘em as well as I like anything else.  I do like that they just straight up say “Look, this is the same thing everyone else sells you, just cheaper,” so they get points for honesty.  They lose some points for having some eyeseeringly ugly, Carolina specific, color combinations (and I don’t care if you miss the Hornets, there’s no excuse for this). Overall, if I’m going to give my money to this guy or that guy for the same product, all things being equal, I’m pretty much going to give it to the guy who’s going to charge me less and since my local shop closed down on-line is probably the way to go.

Time will tell, I guess.

Meanwhile…

Nike is shuttering the 6.0 brand.  Of course, every time Nike does anything the chirrens on the internet get up in arms about how Nike is evil because they use sweatshops (note how that article is from five years ago, finding current information takes more time than I feel like spending) and how you should wear BMX rider owned shoes (when challenged, none of the kids screaming about sweatshops can tell you where Loteks and Orchids are made).  Everyone is excited, Nike’s dead, they’repulling out of BMX, now people will magically buy XXXXX and Nike’s going to lose a ton of money also Nike was only in BMX for the money and left when it was gone (yes, those previous two statements directly contradict each other, but really). Also, if you have anything good to say about Nike you’re equivalent to someone who turned over Jews to the Nazis.

I’m not sure how many Black collaborators there were during WWII, but…

The usual arguments apply, of course, it seems silly that major corporations should treat BMX as a charity on which they lose money.  All companies leave when the money’s gone, usually we call this “going out of business.” People wear what they wear, I wear adidas almost exclusively, have for years the existence or lack of existence of an adidas BMX program means nothing to me or, and also Nike isn’t killing its BMX program, just the 6.0 brand.

From my understanding Nike 6.0 worked something like this.  A dump truck full of money pulled up to Bubba Stewart’s house and started pouring money into his garage.  Any money that didn’t fit was split up among all of the other alternative sports athletes.  Except for skaters, the skaters got their own dump trucks full of money to divvy up. Folding what was 6.0 into the larger Nike Athletics organization directly probably doesn’t change a whole lot of anything except instead of wearing “6.0 Swoosh” shirts their athletes will be wearing “Swoosh” shirts.

Non story, nothing to see here.  Move along.

So, there has been a request that I film a BMX web edit for a buddy.  I kind of left the request up in the air as here is my complete knowledge of video production:

• My phone shoots 720p video
• My point and shoot shoots 1080p video
• D got me a pocket video camera that shoots 1080p video

You may notice that nowhere in that list was any knowledge of shooting or editing video.  Also lacking is a proper video camera.  However, I am intrigued by the idea of shooting video, especially since I recently bought a computer that can actually handle editing HD video (unlike my previous laptop which could barely handle displaying HD video).  As is my way I am intrigued by the idea of shooting a video and even more intrigued by the conventions of the BMX web video.

Not really, however, after throwing myself into The Come Up and its comments section (also Ride and its comments and Vital and its comments) I have come up with a list of what to expect if I masochistically go forth with this whole video thing.

1. You Must Have an Encyclopediac Knowledge of All Videos Which Came Before You
This is the most important rule.  If you don’t know every video by every rider who is more or slightly less famous than you you may end up recreating a move done by someone else.  This is bad, Freestyle BMX thrives on individuality (as long as you dress properly, ride parts by one of the handful of approved companies, don’t ride parts by one of the many unapproved companies and generally behave in a way that fits in with the prevailing fashion).  The last thing you want to do, ever, is recreate moves done by someone else in a video.  To be fair the number of people who can pull of a 100% original video can be counted on one hand, but that’s just details.

You also never want to use a song that anyone else has used in a video section, ever.  The “song jack” – even if completely unintentional – is like showing someone a bukkake video that you shot with their mom.  Actually, I’ve never seen someone who’s been “song jacked” actually care, mostly its other people who get all worked up about it.  The “song jack” is like showing a bunch of strangers who have no communication with the person in question a bukkake video you shot with a woman that looks kinda like their mom.

2. You Are Homosexual
As BMX is dominated by 16 year old boys and grown men who act like 16 year old boys the worst thing that you could possibly be is attracted to other men (if you’re a chick and attracted to other chicks, that’s hot).  Beware that, if you are the subject of a web video the performing the following will be roughly the same as admitting that you bottom for George Takai:

• Riding park
• Riding street
• Riding vert
• Riding trails
• Racing

I was going to say riding flat, but I think we’ve all come to the conclusion that riding flat is very, very hard and nobody cares.

3. Your Music Sucks
Let’s say you manage to get by without actually song jacking anyone (which given the proliferation of BMX web edits vs. the creation new music is almost impossible) what the hell do you do?  Every good song ever written has already been used by someone, this is just a statistical truth.

NO!

Remember, 16 year old boys.  You know what teenagers hate more than anything?  Music that came out before they were teenagers!  There is a wealth of music to be used and since BMX is all wiggafied there is a wealth of music made by White people which has never even been heard of by the vast throngs of middle class caucasian males that make up the sport.  So my suggestion is go old or go metal.  For instance:

 


Jesus is Love is arguably the best song Lionel Richie ever wrote (Alabama represent, bitches!).  It has the dual advantage of being completely unknown by your average BMXer and pissing off half of them (remember, if you actually are a Christian the worst thing you can do is be a Christian because the act of existing means that you’re trying to force your beliefs on BMX even if, uh, you’re doing no such thing).

 


Or you could go the exact opposite way.  Here’s some porno-grind from Cock and Ball Torture.  I have no idea what the lyrics to Enema Bulldozer are, but do I need to?  It’s a song called  ENEMA BULLDOZER!!!!

You could also go country, but let’s be honest, modern country is all just really bad 80s pop music anyway.  You may as well just ride to Poison.

4. Even if You Manage To Avoid All of the Above…
Someone will still bitch.  Honestly, just do what you want to do.  BMX is not serious business, it’s grown men riding bicycles designed for 12 year olds.

So, given what I know, can I create a video that pisses off the least most least most a good number of people?  Sure.  Will I?

I’m shopping for a new car. Well, I’m cheap, so a “new to me car” would be more accurate. I’m always searching for a new car, but this time I’m looking for a car to actually buy. I have the field narrowed down to a handful of finalist but they all have something in common. They’re all cars. I find myself looking at a bunch of internal combustion engined conveyances which ride along the ground on four rubber wheels. In a couple of cases they even use technology/marketing jargon from before I was born (Hemi, Magnum) and while 300+ hp from a naturally aspirated V-6 engine was an insane thought even a decade ago, that’s where I find myself zoning in on.

I’m a geek. No, let me re-phrase that. I’m a nerd, which is like a geek with no social skills, I’ve pulled myself into geekdom by sheer force of will, but I always have been and always will be, by nature a nerd. I grew up on science fiction, particularly science fiction cartoons. I thought that in 1994 a runaway planet would pass between the earth and the moon causing cosmic destruction. I’m not riding a horse with my mok and a hot, swimsuit wearing, Asian chick  vanquishing enemies with my light saber mighty sun sword.

Maybe that’s a little too ambitious, that show took place 3000 years in the future.  Still, The Jetsons was set in 2062 and when I woke up this morning I did not have robots shower, shave and dress me.  I just did my own dishes and I started the laundry.  My computer does not have a personality.  Not only will I not work a three day week, but I’ll put in extra hours at least two, but probably three days this week.  Rather than giving me more time for my friends and family technology is primarily used to make sure that I can work 24/7 and never get away.  My phone has more processing power, and memory than the desktop computer I owned when I got married, 8 years ago.  There is almost no way that someone can attempt to contact me which does not flow through it and there is a societal expectation that I have it on me at all time. Not only can I never get away, but I bring what I try to get away from in my pocket.

Well, fuck.

I don’t even have a jet pack.  My car doesn’t fly, my computer doesn’t talk.  My technology seems mostly to revolve around making sure that I can never have an actual moment’s peace and I don’t even have a jetpack to show for it all.

We live in the future and it kinda sucks.

I lied. That totally sucks.

If you only come here for boobies on Mondays, you should probably just stop reading this right now…

I have a confession to make. If you know me, this may not come as a shock, but for some it may be a little odd.

I hate Easter.

Now, I know that as a Christian person (or at least Christianish person) I’m supposed to be all overjoyed about Easter. For God gave his only begotten son and all that, but, yeah, I don’t like it. It’s not so much that I hate Easter for the Easter part of it, the part where Jesus because the universal whipping boy, dying for all of our sins and saving all our souls (and I’m using “universal” in the American way, much like American sports teams can play only other American sports teams and be named “World Champions” I’m not sure of Jesus dying affects extra terrestrials, but let’s say it does). I hate it because at this point it’s really just kind of the “Get out of jail free card” part of the Cliff Notes version of The Greatest Story Ever Told.

In 2011 (well, WAY before that) Easter is kind of just an excuse to be an asshole.

Excuse my French. (I’m pretty sure that word isn’t French)

It just seems to me that so much of Christendom pretty much views Easter like this. “So, Jesus died for all of our sins?” “Yep, on the cross. A Roman crucifixion, one of the most brutal forms of execution ever. You know if he’d lived three days they’d have let him down and pardoned him?” “No. So, by this ‘died for all of our sins’ thing does this mean that I’m free of sin?” “Well, no, but if you have faith in Jesus and repent for your wrongdoings you can, in fact, enter the kingdom of heaven.” “OK, let me get this straight, Jesus died. So I can be a giant dildo, but as long as I believe and repent I’m all good?” “Well, not exactly there were a lot of teachings that Jesus had about not being a giant…” “But I can believe and repent, you said that.” “Well, yes, that’s true.” “EASTER IS AWESOME! I will now party Caligula style!!!!”

So, not to put too fine a point on it, or to again admit that I had a spiritual epiphany based on an Eddie Griffin bit but, “People put too much emphasis on how He died but don’t pay attention to how He lived.” Seems to me that we all know about Christmas and Easter, but there were 33 or so years in between that we kind of gloss over, which is sad, because that’s the good stuff.