‘I’m in the spirit of Ali Toure, as I target more heads than a priest on Ash Wednesday’

So says Zack.

Today’s travellin’ music courtesy of these guys:



Though THIS is the best music to walk over the bridge to Southbank at sunset on a cold evening. For me, best song of the year so far.

Poems are never finished, only abandoned.

(to paraphrase someone or other...)


Sanity: £1.99


It is always raining
As old men and
Old women slink out of their holes onto the grey streets
They jump at their own shadows
And pass each other by to run towards the money
Eyes clamped like a big cat just hours away from
Starving to death
Weakness

Not even the raindrops can muster real strength
They are pathetic and dying
Useless as they come to rest upon eyelids and cheeks
I walk past a pile of clothing on the pavement
2 shoes
Police tape
And feel the walls around me grow higher
There is no one here worth a damn

And the best we can manage is to be
Pleasant and agreeable
Nice
Blending in to the point of fading
Away

Nice is a blunt razor
Nice is the death howl of a cat under the car tyre
Nice is grit in your eyes
Cremation dust thrown into the air
It is walking a fine cotton thread long past
Breaking point

Yet here I am still balancing
No clue as to how or when or why
It is always raining
And the paving stones and warm soft tarmac
Treacle black
Dissolve within the monstrous winter

A bite is taken out of the moon
And the smiling crescent looks down at me
Sipping my expensive coffee
And hiding away to keep dry
There is no one else left to prove anything
To.

Quote of the Day

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
Albert Camus

MAKE

Forget the slam - this is all about the make. 100% commitment. Sick.

NASA

Yes another YouTube clip - apologies. But when someone writes a really heartfelt piece, I like to acknowledge that by passing it on to everyone I can...

Wax on - Jacket off

GOOD:

RUBBISH:


After a few days of pondering to avoid any rash statements, I have produced the worlds shortest ever movie review:

The 'new' Karate Kid tries to be too deep, has a love interest plotline with kids so young it borders on uncomfortable, and has been (sorry about this) urban-ised.

Mr Miyagi, the final fight and everything else aside, the original Karate Kid had Cruel Summer on the soundtrack. Which is a massive tune. The end.

I hate wall rides

I hate trying them - FS or BS - and not even getting high enough to slam properly, just running off them and feeling like I only started skating a month ago instead of 20 plus years... pah.

OutOfStockwell

Check out the Out of Stockwell blog, for updates on everyone’s favourite South London skatepark. Cheers to Adam for the link up.

So, the 24 month countdown to this begins

...if you believe in that sort of thing. Though I suppose it's no less fantastical than a guy with a beard turning water into wine - or a guy with a beard landing reindeer on your rooftop. Today's 2 commuting albums were a bit infra red/ultra violet:

And to see if I can get my synapses firing back into fiction mode, I'm going to start tucking into this at lunchtime:


And unless someone wants to donate me a whole new setup so I can actually get out of the house and skate, that is all.

Quote of the Day

'Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.'
Bucky Fuller

Because the Wire has nothing to do with Xmas...

Some lesser seen Omar and Prop Joe action -

TWS

Apparently some people don't like Transworld - not sure why because I don't really hang out with the cool kids. Anyway, they have a nice link here of best online skate vids of 2010.

There's classic and there's CLASSIC

Aside from 2 or 3 songs - Yo Bum Rush the Show is possibly one of the greatest albums of all time. And not just in Hip Hop, but overall.
It could be argued that if it was just a recording and not performed live - or if PE didn't have that particular image and 'mainifesto' - the record could really just be a Chuck(y) D solo album produced by the Bomb Squad, for all of Flavor and Terminator X's input on it. But that would be enough, Hank Shocklee did things on that record that were/are just minblowing and literally timeless. And Chuck has rhymes for days that, due to his particluar style and subject matter are real genius and massively original for 2010, nevermind the 80's ('...the po-etical / -itical / lyrical son...'). All of this is obvious and 'yeah yeah yeah' when you say it out loud - but people tend to forget, have shit on their I-Tunes forever and maybe skip over it. But listening to it again on my way in this morning (something about hearing it while on a train through a city covered in snow just fits perfectly) you fall into the sound of it and wonder how they even came up with some of those ideas - the 'chorus' of MiUzi Weighs a Ton for example seems simple but the overall structure of the track is crazy. Maybe because of this album alone I rank the Bomb Squad up there with PR and Primo etc etc, in the best Hip Hop producer list.

This is all written off the top of my head so excuse any ramblings within - just trying to express my thoughts on something while it's fresh in my tiny brain.

I had this on tape back in 88:

Jeffers

Why does insanity always twist the great answers? Because only tormented persons want truth. Man is an animal like other animals, wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind Tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness: then it hates its life-cage and seeks further, And finds, if it is powerful enough. But instantly the private agony that made the search Muddles the finding. Then search for truth is foredoomed and frustrate? Only stained fragments? Until the mind has turned its love from itself and man, from parts to the whole.

'...that's the trouble with my stories - they always seem to build up to something that never actually happens.'

Geek points

Saw this guy sitting down to breakfast in Soho this morning:

I literally glimpsed him through a window for a moment and recognised him right away
Unremarkable until you consider this is how he's better known:

The idea of Pinhead sitting about to tuck into eggs benedict or somesuch did make me giggle.

Isaac crawl

Quote of the Day

To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards of men.
Abraham Lincoln

old stuff.

Some sketches of ideas of things I never finished. Hence the low-res. I'm trying to find the original files to re-post, but put these up in the meantime as - well - I'm impatient.

nine-zero-zero

Been killing the free download made by these guys over the last week or so:

It's been the perfect soundrack to my zero degree, red-sky, white ground travels.

'Comedy is acting out optimism.'

- Robin Williams

Some actors, scenes and quotes - especially comedy quotes - feel like they're always around. From first seeing Police Squad on late night TV (and for the first 10 minutes not knowing it was a spoof) to Airplane and Naked Gun... and later realising he actually used to be a straight actor in such classics as Forbidden Planet - Leslie Nielsen was one of those guys who was just always - always Stupidly funny. As usual AintitCool have the best article.
RIP.

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.

- Henry Miller.

With hindsight and considering my current mood, maybe listening to The Fragile while reading Tropic of Capricorn wasn't the smartest move. Or maybe it's just right.

Ink Sweat and Tears

Ink Sweat and Tears once again posted up some short pieces of mine - you can read them HERE.

Quote of the Day

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
Raymond Chandler

smooth

A Perfect Circle live, Nov 2010, Arizona

EXCLUSIVE: Watch A Perfect Circle's Tour Kick Off | SPIN.com

Good Stuff

Happy Friday...

Quote of the Day

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan

Illusions

'Is everything we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?' (no of course not you idiot, if it was I'd be able to fly...)

BDK once again

Still want that grey Yo MTV hoody...