11+1+11 +/- 11+11+11 =/≠ log sin cos

Ever since the skateboarding industry rebounded from its early-90s revenue nadir pros and companies alike have dreamed of releasing a video in November 2011, to reap the branding advantages of the 11/11 dateline that would occur only once in this thousand-year span. But several challenges arose. First several pros became drunk and forgot their plans. Later, California radio preacher Harold Camping predicted a rapture event occurring May 21, 2011, prompting several other parties to abandon their effort as sales were widely seen slackening after the end of the world. Then the Rev Harold Camping postponed his date further to October 21, 2011, and several more plans were waylaid. But that did not happen and now there are dueling video parts from Walker Ryan and Nyjah Huston, the only two with the sheer gumption to grasp hold of these powerful dates after so many others lost hope, and each laying claim to one of the all-ones dates that we are to see in our lifetimes, 11/1/11 vs 11/11/11.

True as it has been, there can only be “one” and the contest is rightly joined. Immediately Nyjah Huston rises to the level of advantagor because he has more letters in his name, and understood the ancient power of claiming runes. Nyjah Huston’s youthful mastery of alphabetics and numberology carries power over to him that allows him to jump down more stairs than the average person who is five or ten years older and several hundred six-packs heavier than he is. Nyjah Huston has chiseled these handrail tricks many times over in the walls of the Maloof caverns and soaked them for 50 days in some cauldron full of Monster Energy Drinks. His reward is to bathe in vats of gold pieces, gathering even more through the sale of an exclusive video clip on Itunes.

Walker Ryan was cursed with an over-functioning brain that burdened him from a young age, kidnapped by G-men and enslaved at a secret government facility known as “the Shop” where specially gifted individuals are studied. The curse drives Walker Ryan to spin rapidly in a switch backside direction, into frontside tailslides and bigspin flips. He has rejected society and bombs more hills than Nyjah Huston, creates a greater number of lines and more peculiar manuals like the switch wheelie switch backside flip, or the kickflip up onto the table at the new spot. This part is given away for free, signaling that Walker Ryan has rejected material objects.

The twin video sections clash because either one could be the same title of a terrible Kanye West CD, with the edge going to Walker Ryan because it actually was. The two clash at Rincon, with Nyjah Huston risking more limbs by kickflip backside lipsliding on the railing. Nyjah Huston’s backside flip nosegrind edges the one done by Walker Ryan, but Walker Ryan battles back since he never cried after losing an expensive contest on TV.

But in the ultimate end Nyjah Huston turns in an aggressive last couple of tricks (if that sequence wasn’t pieced together), but even still Walker Ryan turns in a lesser-hyped volume that applies a greater tax to the mind and has not already been ladled out over a thousand and one street courses, thereby defeating Nyjah Huston in the great battle to release video footage on either November 1 or November 11 of this month. Each man’s thoughts and dreams are now his to know.

Dispatch From Tod Swank’s Island Of Misfit Toys

The realm of the seven-ply maple stick these days is definitely not too real to resist the redemption formula, if ever it was — there’s a “Behind the Music” ring to certain of the “Later’d” series and the heavy 90s nostalgia trip ensures at least one more visit to the trough if you’re any kind of a name, let alone a Mariano or a Muska or a Penny (who I think may actually have attempted to mount his second career revival in the Play-Dough powered “Xtremely Sorry”). Earlier this year TWS tried to portray Nyjah Huston, at 16 years young, as a comeback story.

It’s all good if substance and fame took you out for a while but what if your vice was youth, or personality clashings, or both? Outfits like Cliche and Almost and Santa Cruz have garnered deck sales by scooping up other teams’ supposed dead wood but few have done it like Foundation. In the volatile van ride-making trio of Corey Duffel, Sierra Fellers and Nick Merlino Foundation may have cornered the market in relatively high-profile (if early career) flame-outs from other teams, and these dudes load up the back half of last week’s new video offering from the magic F — distilled for the internet age into a “Brainwash” sort of minimal presentation complete with a keystroke-saving acronym title.

It’s weird to think of Corey Duffel as any kind of elder statesman, of anything, but for Foundation it seems like he now counts. He employs his boardslides, 50-50s and big jumps with the help of some extra flannel and facial hair, and Sierra Fellers seems kind of on auto pilot a lot of the time, manufacturing flips-heavy ledge lines in a shortened part. He does put out one of the more ridiculous tricks of the whole video, a kickflip backside lipslide shove-it on one of those California grade-school rails previously leased out by Mikey Taylor.

But this vid is Nick Merlino’s big moment to reintroduce himself and his large-seeming beanies of varying colour, and he goes hatchet-man, opening up a firehose of stacked footage and exercising some degree of restraint since I saw only one of his famed switch backside 360s included. Drama rears up at various points, like when the camera pulls back on the big switch ollie and when the friends race down the hill to mob him after the kickflip closer, but for this peanut gallery member’s nonexistent price of admission Merlino’s best stuff came in lesser-seen handrail tricks like the nollie backside tailslide, kickflip backside noseblunt and its cousin the kickflip frontside noseslide, which flashed me back to Justin Roy’s brief tenure on the F.

The best parts in “What The Fuck!” though wind up coming from the dudes with probably the least to prove, namely kink chomper Dakota Servold, extra push-taker Ryan Spencer and tall drink of water Taylor Smith who is for sure going some places with those slick backside tailslides and his undercover mall spot. Ryan Spencer’s got a whole menu of tricks over the backs of rails and a pretty muscular bluntslide through a kinked hubba, plus a genuine internet-going-nuts taildrop move. Handsomest trick of the movie earned by Marquis Preston for the tailslide 360.

Graveyard Chamber

There’s any number of things that pretty much guarantee (eventually) a blog posting in this blog space, including but not limited to skateboarders throwing away lucrative sponsorship deals in favor of paying Don Cannon American dollars to shout slogans on a 75-minute mixtape, switch backside noseblunt slides, and various situations involving Fred Gall, moving vehicles and open containers. Another has been Jake Johnson skate footage, even recycled, it shines like a diamond-studded DVS logo pendant: the imitable Quartersnacks has fused a couple youtube clips’ worth of 3-4 year old video, some of which I’d seen, some not — like the couple runs near the end of the second clip incorporating some 180s up and down a median curb that zoomed me back to the one all those Zoo York/World guys used to skate with the turned-over trash can (or not, as the case may have been). That and the kickflip f/s tailslide in the first clip. Quartersnacks claims to be sitting on a long-form interview with Jake Johnson which will be worth reading. He seems to have come up with a healthy baked-in sense of disillusionment which tends to complement East Coast skating, and his off-the-grid movements are refreshing paired up against Twitter shouting matches between kids and pros closing in on 40. Pulling for the rumored Alien promo with Gilbert Crockett or at least some Gravis one-off to come next year, which will go some way towards offsetting the European sovereign debt crisis and the bad feelings that will come should AT&T Mobility lure away all of Boost Mobile’s best riders.