The Thing That Should Not She: Misstallica!

After an endless series of whining, complaining, bitching and moaning ("boo f*cking hoo"…you got the reference, right?) I'm pleased to report I'm happy about something.

Went to see my friend's band play at the local tavern on Friday but I got there too late and missed their set.

But get this: Headlining the evening was an All Girl Metallica Cover Band. I'm not kidding. In fact, I was so sure no one would believe me that I busted out my phone and took some pictures to prove it.

Yes, I saw Misstallica.

The have a Facebook page where they describe themselves as "an all chick Metallica tribute band". When I walked into the bar, I think they were playing Fight Fire With Fire. Maybe it was Ride the Lightning. It was something from that album. The lead gal, I guess the "James Hetfield" of the operation, was wearing a Death t-shirt. OK, things are off to a great start. I'd also like to add that she was performing double duties, playing most of Hammett's solos.

These girls have pushed the female species forward by about 50 years. While the rest of you dopey broads are walking on a stairmaster to nowhere or looking for the latest deals on Groupon, the ladies of Misstallica are busy learning the dual guitar complexities of Orion and the double bass work of Trapped Under Ice. These ladies might not be Living Social, but they do know To Live Is To Die.

I really had a hard time grasping what I saw. I remember Metallica being hot sh*t with most burnouts in shop class at my high school. In the 1980's! How is it that they've managed to transcend both time and gender and be popular with a bunch of girls that couldn't be older than 20? And believe you me, these girls were hitting all the crazy hammer-ons and odd time signatures like nobody's business. I can grasp the concept of some teenage dungeons and dragons dude sitting in his bedroom getting stoned and trying to learn the solo to Battery. But a bunch of chicks? Really?????? Not that I'm not totally for this sort of thing. Did I mention they performed Orion? How many all-girl ensembles do you think were playing the song Orion on the night of May 6th? And doing it well? Not many, I'd say. The drummer's double bass work was exceptional. Made me feel like a complete idiot.

Now OK, they weren't 100% tight and the guitars could have used a tuning between songs. They hit a few clams (heh heh) but for the most part, things sounded pretty good. They do need to put a little more accentuation (Is that a word? It's a word, right? I'm going with it, spellcheck didn't flag it.) between chorus and verse. Everything seemed to meld together at times like they were just going through the motions. And at first it was like, "Cool!" But at times, the novelty started wearing thinner than Lars Ulrich's hairline.

But honestly, hearing the girls play these songs really made me realize how f*cking awesome and heavy-hittng the original incarnation of Metallica was. I mean, the speedy riffs, tempo changes and occasional odd time signatures….they weren't exactly the laziest of bands, were they? Good memories from the 80's…..let's forget about Re-Load, shall we?

Oh wait, back to Misstallica. I'm reading the rest of the Facebook writeup: "With a slightly different lineup we are also Queen Diamond the (mostly) Female Tribute Band to King Diamond and Mercyful Fate" Oh, come on! We've just gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I'm throwing this request out to the internet world: An all female Carcass tribute band. And be hot, dammit!

Do You Have What It Takes To Be a Worthless Miracle?

Hey dummy, if you can sing/shout, keep reading:

So, my friend Dan and I are in the midst of trying to put together a band. We are tentatively known as The Worthless Miracles. For the last year or so, we've been practicing in my basement. We have about 12 or 13 songs. My friend Steve comes down from time to time and KILLS IT on the bass. That dream has come to a crashing halt now that my wife and I had our second child. Infants and loud, aggressive music do not mix.

Much like when Arnie Cunningham's parents banished his beloved Christine to a storage garage, my drums are being forced out of the old homestead by the wife. But I'm not giving up without a fight. And isn't that what hardcore music is all about? Struggle? Let me tell you kids the sad truth: As a teenager, you rebelled against your parents. Now as a 39 year old man, I'm at odds with my wife over "that noise you guys make in the basement". Nothing changes, such is life.

Oh wait, where was I? Yes, we have a very good lead on a practice space in South Norwalk. NO, not SoNo. This area is much shittier. And grittier.

So we are on the hunt for a singer. We play hardcore music in the style of our favorite groups from the 80's. Some bands that come to mind to describe our style and influences would be Dag Nasty, Gorilla Biscuits, Leeway and Dag Nasty. But of course not limited to these 3 bands. That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. Dan would have a completely different list, I'm sure. I also like the stylings of Rush and Dan is a big Yes fan. You got a problem with that? Go f yourself. Don't worry, we are not good enough musicians for any prog rock talents to shine through in our music.

We have a PA and are pretty much ready to play as soon as we get this practice space thing taken care of. We like to jam on Saturday late mornings and possibly we'll be able to do one weeknight a week. We drink beer and will no doubt at the very least have a dorm-style mini-fridge full of coldies. Maybe a full bar, I'm not sure that's in the budget.

If you are in our age bracket (mid thirties/early 40's….I'm assuming anyone outside of that wouldn't be interested) drop me a message here. Or dammit, if you know someone, just forward them this link. We'd prefer it if you weren't in 17 bands already so you could focus your talents on what we're doing here. I know…this is like needle in the haystack, but I figure I'd get this up on my site before having to (heavens no!) do the Craigslist thing.

All we *really* want to do is play a few shows with great local bands like The Boardlords, District Allstarz, Arcane Malevolence and Sonic Supercharger 66. Namecheck! The scene is pretty good right now, we want to be part of it.

Graci!

PS-We may be looking for a 2nd guitarist as well.

Forgotten DVDs: ¡Oye Esteban!

I am what you would call a "casual" Morrissey fan, if there is such a thing. Usually his music/persona is met with either violent outrage or extreme super-fandom. I'm somewhere in the middle. And only really familiar with his work in the 90's. I've seen him in concert a few times but don't know anything about his later albums such as Age of Quarry or Ringleader of the Toreadors. But there is something about this kindly English gentleman and his music that united everyone from new wavers to hardcore punks to even metalheads. (OK, maybe not the metalheads so much)

Last week, a friend posted a cryptic Facebook message with a Mozzer lyric, which inspired me to bust out the old DVD ¡Oye Esteban! which is a collection of 19 of his music videos. I had not so much as listened or viewed this DVD since the year 2001. AND good God, some of these videos have to be well over 20 years old. Time flies!

The first thing I've noticed is that music videos from the 80's and 90's don't move as fast as their 21st century counterparts. Less shots, less quick cuts, less pomp and circumstance. Nowadays with cheaper production crews and better editing equipment, you can cram way more sh*t into a five pound sack. Plus kids today have a very short attention span, so it's cut, cut, cut, cut. Things move along in a more relaxed pace in these here vids.

So the weekend is almost here and I know a lot of you are ready to party. On that note, here's a few thoughts on select videos from this forgotten DVD. I have a limited window and don't have the time to review everything. I can only let my kid watch the Fresh Beat Band for so long…..

Let's talk about the DVD itself.

First off, about the lamest authoring. Just a scan of the cover and the videos start playing. No extras, no cool menu. And I'll be damned if I can find any supplementals or Easter Eggs. Oh, these videos are classic 720X480. No widescreen 16X9. Hello pillarbox. The dancing Warner Reprise logo is vintage 80's though.

Everyday is Like Sunday: CRUELTY WITHOUT BEAUTY Ha ha, the vegetarian girl is terrorizing old ladies wearing fur coats. Oh look, she has those vintage yellow Sony Walkman headphones! Then her mom picks her up and takes her home. I love European dashboards. Nice, they have carpeting in their kitchen. Name of show on the telly?

Suedehead: The stuff that 120 Minutes dreams are made of.

Last of the Famous International Playboys: OK, this slipped by me the first time I saw this: Moz and the band are on some kind of green screen set. But they ain't keyed out. Did the producers and editors decide it wasn't worth the work? It would have been a bitch for the editor to key this with all the handheld shots and zooms. Plus all the wrinkles in the screen….absolutely maddening.

My Love Life: The boys go to Vegas and drive around in a Rolls Royce. Classically great.

Sing Your Life: I've never seen so many cuts from the lead singer to…the lead singer. The hair was at an all-time high.

Seasick, Yet Still Docked: Production values & stylization started picking up around Your Arsenal. Great lighting, depressing vintage home movies. Good.

We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful: Good video with a few odd editing choices. The steadicam work would get better in videos to come. It's a little wonky here.

Glamourous Glue: Not much to say about the visuals. I would like to backtrack and say what a great career move it was when Morrissey picked up this backing band and "heavied" up his sound. Not that I don't like the earlier hits, but damn, these guys are good.

Tomorrow: Great steadicam one-shot video. I always loved this. Would today's youth possibly have the attention span to sit through it? Sweet Jesus! An IMDB search tells me that Zack "300" Snyder directed. Could this music video possibly be more different than his seizure-enducing film work?

The More You Ignore Me the Closer I Get: More excellent lighting. If anyone can find me a room with those lights suspended from the ceiling I would be appreciative. I want to rip this look off for a video of my own!

Dagenham Dave: The mere shot of a classic English pub has me fancying a pint. Unfortunately due to old age, failing health and the onset of children, I can only drink about one beer before getting a hangover. Ugh, getting old sucks. Back to the video, I love it when Moz ruins their game of snooker!

The Boy Racer: One of my favorites of all time. We begin with stylized, strobed shots of some amazing instruments and amps. WTF, is this an AC-DC video??? OK, no, there's the Mozzer. Great lighting, great performance shots, slightly marred by a stupid subplot. Wait, what did that guy just put in his car stereo? Oh, it was a cassette. OK, it is funny when Morrissey gets pulled over. Play this one at loud volumes.

OK, that's it. Moz fans. Leave your kind thoughts in the comments section. Grazie!

My Paranoia Continues!

I'm more confused than my father-in-law at a TV on the Radio concert about the latest development with this blog.

As you recall from my last post, my AdSense privileges were revoked because I allegedly abused the system. You can read all about that here.

Which leads me to today's discovery. If you go into "Stats" on the tabs bar or whatever you call it, you can see which posts people are reading. The stats show absolutely NO activity on the post where I talked about my experience with Google, Blogger and AdSense. Now I know from talking to people in real life, they've read the article. So whycome Blogger won't acknowledge that people are viewing this specific post?

BTW, these numbers are an absolute toilet dump. I need to boost the ratings. If this blog was a TV show, it would be Outsourced. Well at least someone is interested in all those Boardlords videos I shot.

So back to topic, what is going on here? The post appears to be nonexistent. I'm starting to fear I will be too if I keep poking fun at the Google empire. (even if it is in a comical, lighthearted manner!)

So if they come and take me in the middle of the night, I'm putting Bunny in charge. Tell the world my story.

On a totally unrelated note, I see that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard have joined the cast of the 'The Dark Knight Rises', directed by Christopher Nolan.

Holy cronyism, Batman!

What, let me guess, is the Caped Crusader going to go into a dream world….within a dream world???? Zzzzzzzzz…….

I guess while I'm waiting I can tide myself over by going to see Thor. Or this one:

Excuse me, what in Heaven's name is going on with this new X-Men movie they're hyping up? All I know is that January Jones (that miserable, but very hot housewife from Mad Men) will be in it, and she looks like a 70's porn star. For that, I might watch.

I'm reading about fake movie posters, fake trailers….Now that every 13 year old kid with a computer is up to online nonsense, I don't know what is real or what to believe anymore.

Some Euros Ruined My Record Auction! Part Two

Alright, picking up where we left off yesterday: Let's get into the financials. As you recall, I said that I bundled up the albums into groups of 6 and 9. I think I had 13 or 14 auctions going, give or take. A few were a bust. In the chart below, you can see my winnings for the week of April 3rd.



So, not terrible. I mean, I was really happy with the results. Here's where the problems start, hence the title of this post/article.

My counsel suggested it.

I agreed with it.

US buyers only.

In general, I love my European brothers and sisters. They have fantastic taste in music, hence their infatuation with all things American Hardcore. But it's those mother-fing shipping and customs forms that queers the whole deal. Have you ever filled out a shipping form to Germany? I'd rather be back in school writing an essay! It's absolutely miserable.

So on one of my typical listings, I would have it laid out, US bidders only:



But that certainly didn't stop European bidders from asking me questions about how much to ship. And then the auctions started ending. And the offenders started rolling in: Germany. Canada. Peru. Oh God. Have you ever seen a Peruvian address? It looks like a chalkboard in that movie, A Beautiful Mind. Anything with this in the address: (Por altura de la 16 de la Av. Velasco Astete) spells trouble in my book when you have to transcribe it to a tiny customs form. In the US it's easy: 12 Main Street. Done.

It was recently brought to my attention that if someone is, say….German, they should not have an Amercian eBay account, rather they should be going to ebay.de So essentially, they are jumping through hoops and breaking the rules to establish an American account. A lot of work to be a pain in the ass to us American sellers. And something you won't realize until they win your stuff.

Back to my auction: Now, I am *reasonably* a nice guy. I was only charging 4 dollars to ship out lots of 6 or 9 records AND offering a reduced rate on multiple wins. Despite inflation running rampant in the United States, you can still ship things fairly cheap. But Christ almighty, you should have seen the rates to ship international. To ship a small box of records to Canada (or as I call them, the Euros to our north) was over $30! Are you kidding me?? This wasn't a bag of golf clubs, it's 9 lousy records in a small box. So I got hosed on that one.

I believe I promised you a pie graph. Now, my math is absolutely terrible. I'm sure this isn't dead-perfect, but it gives you an idea of the the distribution of funds. (not to mention the corporate swindling) Let's break down the numbers.



Yes, thanks to a Canadian and German bidder, I had to tack on over $60 to the shipping fees. And fill out painfully long customs forms. My problem was that I only made up slightly inflated shipping charges when I sent them the invoice. "Oh, just add $9 instead of $4." When in fact, it was a hell of a lot more. My fault entirely.

Actually on that note, here is a much more accurate pie graph of the process on a whole:



So it was a lot of time & work for about 500 bucks. And I don't really feel like I purged our house of anything substantial. If you are in the boat that I was in, take this as a lesson. You want to ship to Europe, fine…they do pay top dollar for records. Just find out up front what postage is going to cost and make sure you pass the buck to them. On second thought, I just would ship within the continental US.
Or put the records here. -->

Some Euros Ruined My Record Auction! Part One

eBay: What was once a sure-fire way to drum up some extra cash has become a deluge of fees, new rules and general aggravation. Compounding the problem is the fact that eBay is in cahoots with Paypal, thus giving them the rights to double-dip on your winnings. Greedy, scum-sucking bastards.

Now this article is geared towards a very specific demographic, and by that I mean there are probably only several hundred people that this will be relevant to. (wow, way to alienate your audience in the second paragraph, Scott) But you can continue reading it if you want, especially if you like the promise of pie charts. And Euro bashing.

But before we go any further, we need a backstory.

I'm writing this for the benefit of men like myself: Americans who were avid fans of hardcore/punk music in the 1980's and somehow managed to save the records they collected at shows and trips to various record stores. You are in your late thirties to mid forties. You are probably married. You may have children. You most likely played in a band. You are what snarky little internet kids would call an "asshole". This post is not geared toward the uber-serious fanboy record collectors with online trade lists who take their game seriously. But if that's you, you are more than welcome to keep reading and go, "What an asshole".

I mulled around with the idea of selling off my vinyl collection several months ago. Specifically, December. Heeding the advice of my consul, I held off on the auction until after the holiday madness. Hold on, why selling? The long and the short of it is that I have no real use for a record collection of any size. My turntable is long gone and iTunes has replaced the once-popular hi-fi stereo system that occupied my living room. If I want to listen to Youth of Today's "We're Not In This Alone", I've got it in mp3 form. I have close to everything I love listening to from my youth on a Western Digital external drive. Including YOT's longtime nemesis: Half Off. And why bother putting a record on a turntable when I could much easier get into this with a few clicks of the mouse?

So I turned to a good friend and former hardcore frontman for some guidance. He said, "My advice? Just consign the records to Malcolm at Trash American Style." (you know who Malcolm is, right? Because I don't have time to get into that) My friend said I should save myself the headache of dealing with:

1. A bunch of stupid hardcore kids and adult-kids who will be bidding on the records...

2. And asking incessant questions about pressings, wax colors and matrixes

3. And who will be whining "where's my stuff?"

4. And will potentially leave me negative feedback over minute details

5. And shipping them out a pain in the ass (Oh, more on that coming up)

Now those all valid points. BUT, I sold a ton of 7" records to Trash American Style in the late eighties. 100% my decision, and a dumb one at that. I didn't get the money the records were worth (didn't care at the time) and I was to be damned if I was going to make that mistake again in 2011. No, I was going to sell these discs myself and try and reap as much profit as possible.

Now, no slight to Malcolm. He is a great guy and has alway run a fantastic business. But guess what? I like MAKING MONEY as well.

How about Craigslist? No f-ing way. Over my wife's dead body is some weirdo dropping by the old homestead to peruse my vinyl collection. Oh and at this point, let me establish that the records I had were for the most part, nothing great. About a milk crate's worth of stuff from New York, DC and the like. A few Cro-Mags albums, Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Beyond, Rorschach, Dag Nasty. 7" from Warzone, Slipknot, Metallica, Rollins and Collapse. Not the rarest offerings, but musically, they kick mucho ass.

My first move was to test the waters with a few CD sales. Yes, if you didn't know already, the right compact discs are worth money. For example, I sold Leeway's 2nd album for like 30 bucks and I hear it can fetch up to $50. I also had good luck with the Into Another unreleased LP.

So one fine Sunday morning, I motivated myself to start snapping pictures of records and drawing up item descriptions on eBay. And I was f**ked if I was going to list & ship each record individually. No, for the most part, I put the records into groups of six and nine.

Oh look at that, we ran out of time. In Part Two I'll tell you how much money I made and if the whole damn thing was worth it or not. And of course, we'll get to the bottom of why this article is titled: Some Euros Ruined My Record Auction!

Today's post is brought to you by McGuinness Brand Ipecac. "If your roomate is keeping you from getting nookie, put a little McGuinness on his cookies".

Netflix Movie Roundup

You know, there was a glut of films that came out in fall and early winter. I realize your time is valuable, so I've taken the trouble of doing some capsulated reviews. Hope this helps with your Netflix queue or trip to the Redbox:

Get Low-More like Get Slow.

Easy A: Easy F if we're handing out grades
It's Kind of a Funny Story-It's kind of a crappy story. Whycome that Zach Galifantheopopoulaslisakis is in like EVERY movie that comes out?

(more importantly, why didn't spellcheck flag "whycome"?)
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps-Money may never sleep, but I passed out at the 35 minute mark
The Town If I wanted to see a bunch of people shooting machine guns at each other w/o a kill count, I'd watch the A Team
I'm Still Here- "I'm not", said the audience

Unstoppable- Unwatchable

Skyline-How about a plotline? The film's creators deserve a thorough alien probing

True Grit-True shi…ahhh, too easy

Stone-Stupid

Twelve-On a scale of 1 to 10? Zero

Love And Other Drugs-I'd love it if there were a drug that would make me forget I saw this crap

Cyrus-Marisa Tomei does another indy, but this time doesn't get topless. Avoid

Tron: Legacy-This generation's Ben Hur

Morning Glory-Like Network, but with more montages of Rachel McAdam running in high heels

Faster-The Cleveland Cavaliers of action movies

The Tourist-Worse than a New Orleans timeshare

Grown Ups-The actors must have used this as an excuse to go on vacation, no joke

Eat Pray Love-Eat Pray Puke (Review stolen from the NY Post….Zing!)

The Switch-Jennifer Anniston is still doing romantic comedies? Evidence there may be no God

Fair Game-Oh great, they finally made the Valerie Plame thing into a movie, oh and it stars Sean Penn, awesome

That's it for this installment. Take my word as gospel before you hit the "add" button. We'll catch up when they release that next Fast and the Furious movie.

Burning Sensations

So I guess you can upload video straight onto the blog page? Well, I'm giving it a shot today. This a video from Sunday, 8.24.08 at Scalzi Park. The skating itself is nothing impressive (with a few obvious exceptions), but I'm quite interested in the background music I used, "Belly of a Whale" by Burning Sensations.

If you told me this band was English Beat or Ranking Roger or General Public, I would have believed you, until I investigated further. See the video here. The video was light years ahead of it's time. Some of the effects & transitions must have been fairly difficult to achieve (and time consuming) with early 80's technology.

Plus they were parodying other videos, (Jacko, The Motels) which is a concept that got popular much later. And while a horrible, horrible fashion faux pas, the band members had goatees (just goatees, no mustaches) a trend that picked up steam in the horrible 90's (especially with that contemporary swing movement. Ugghhhh)
The icing on the cake was the final shot/album cover which just screams 80's Americana.
Greatest. Generation. Ever.

The "Brews Times"-Narragansett Beer Pt. 2

One might think that I have abandoned my flourishing video production enterprise for a career in beer reviewery. Well, since the feedback for Chinese Takeout was so poor, I may have to do just that.

Anyways, I'd like to report that Colonial Wine & Spirits on Scribner Avenue now carries Narragansett Beer in 12 pack bottles. And the best part is that it's under 10 bucks before tax & deposit. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I brought two six packs to the counter and was enthusiastically informed that 12 packs were now available.

This information is only pertinent to the random Norwalk beer afficionado on the west side of town who somehow surfed onto this site. But for the rest of my friends in distant places, demand that your local liquor store or distributor get this beer in stock. Now.

Speaking of beer & commerce, I found this bit of good news for some local business owners. "Stress buster" indeed. On that note, kiss my ass, tourism. We just built a nice stone patio in my backyard. The number of gallons of gas it takes to get to it: Zero.

Shut Up and Skate

So much whining and moaning on StamfordSkatepark.com Enough already. Just shred!


New skate video up on my Vimeo site. Peep it here. Plenty of boarding this July 4th weekend, including a visit from the great one, Murph. (As seen in the above photo, courtesy of PDA)

The video was literally slapped together so that my fellow Scalzi brethren could have a look, ASAP. Shot with the Canon XH-A1 and edited quickly in Final Cut Pro. Hey, check out the cool "glass bug" title feature that I just learned.

Excellent holiday weekend. I don't want to go back to work.

Seriously Stamford, Get It Together.

Enough with the weekend festivals, parades, marathons and such and such. Alright, I'm not against raising money for charity, but someone has to formulate a better game plan. Traffic this morning (6/29) was a complete cluster f*ck in the areas of Summer, Washington and God knows where else due to some kind of 10K or fun run or whatever. There were more cops and traffic cones downtown than Lindsey Lohan has Page Six mentions.

With our stagnant economy and outrageous gas prices, shouldn't we be making area restaurants and businesses readily available to the consumer? Or is the answer, 'block off every available road and create unnecessary traffic jams?' If you're going to have these events, there has to be a more logical way to accommodate traffic. You can't just block off streets North, South, East and West, forcing people to drive all over creation to get to a simple destination.

And BTW, who are these kooks that are running around in 90 degree weather? What are you, insane??? "Hello, I have dehydration on line one, shall I tell them you're in a meeting with heat stroke?"

Well, we all know the only reason I care about Stamford traffic on a Sunday morning is that I'm trying to make my way to Scalzi Park from Norwalk. So let's take a look at some pictures from this morning's session. Due to this whole traffic conundrum, I abandoned my car at the corner of Bridge and Summer and skated to the park. Which kind of sucked, but it's no big whoop. As you can see, the theme for today was "shirtless". It was REALLY hot out.

First up: Adam is really taking those frontside ollies out of the park.



Here I am having some fun in the shallow end of things.



Oh no he didn't! Ben "The French Assassin" Plomion, absolutely killing it with a clean kickflip over the barrel.



Skate photos by PDA.

On a different note, check out these Jeff Grosso Vans that are coming out real soon. (I'm told in a couple of weeks by Old School Skaters Online.) I'll believe it when I see it.

Crucial Barbeque-Scalzi Park

Whew! I'm back from our trip to California. I've got plenty of stories and even more photos. So I'm a bit back-logged, but I'll try and get things up this week.

Moving on...Dateline: Sunday, May 18th. Skateboards. Burgers. Brews. (& sodas for the kids) Here are a few pictures from the barbeque in Scalzi Park. A great morning skate session followed by burgers and hot dogs. Thanks to everyone who provided the food. Sato is the man, that goes without saying.


Roxy and Spike-skatepugs. Roxy is the one on the...ah hell, even I can't even tell which one is which any more.


An overview shot of the festivities. I learned a valuable lesson from watching some hessians that were grilling next to us. You don't need a spatula--A crushed beer can on a stick will suffice.

Memo to the city of Stamford: Is there any landscaping money in the budget? These fields/picnic grounds look like absolute garbage! Normally, I just make a beeline from my car to the skatepark, but yesterday I finally realized the grounds themselves kinda looks like crap.


And a few skate pictures for good measure. Todd and Ben, frontside and backside grinds, respectivedly.


And one more quick note: I am please to announce that I will be working on yet another music video for the Boardlord's new CD release, "Wax Museum". We're going to shoot this week. I'll keep you posted, but I don't want to give too much away. Not just yet.

Touching the Void

It was like the Space Race of the 50's and 60's yesterday. The challenge? To hit coping in the deep end of Scalzi Skatepark.

Dave P set it off with a killer backside grind. Although you can't see his face in the picture, I assure you it's him.

Come to think of it, you can't see anyone's face. Hey, can we get a photographer that can frame up a shot here? (Kidding of course)

After Dave hit his mark, I tried unsuccessfully for about 10 times. No luck, but damn, I came close.


Meanwhile, Sato has always been able to hit consistant frontside grinds in the same pocket, making my attempts look quite pathetic.
To the layman: That's an 11' deep pool. Frontside = Sick!

Photos by PDA

16 MM Madness

The purpose of this blog was supposed to be to document Frosch-Frog Productions. But I kind of got sidetracked with photos & stories of all the great skateboarding as of late. Besides, I don't want to bore anyone with the details surrounding tire shop commercials and corporate DVDs. Zzzzzz....
I'm only reporting on the interesting stuff like music videos and short films. Which brings us to today's post:

With all the filming going on in Stamford lately, we figured we would jump into the fray. Dateline: Sunday, May 4th. Location: The corner of Summer Street and 8th. I had the pleasure of filming with an Eclair ACL16mm camera on the set of Paul David Anthony's new film, "Friendship". Coming from an entirely digital background, I must say it was quite difference than what I'm used to. It's not every day that I get to shoot with some classic film gear, and it was a lot of fun.

Despite a rocky start (I forgot, you have to hold the shutter button down the WHOLE time you're filming--It's not like a camcorder where you just press 'record'! Sorry, force of habit) Well, anyways, despite a few glitches, we were able to get all our shots.....I think! You see unlike video, you can't roll back the tape and watch it on a field monitor. So here's hoping that it all comes out OK. You can't fake the funk: Film is film and nothing else looks like it. I don't care how many Magic Bullet filters you apply to your 24p footage. It's not the same.

So here are a few behind-the-scenes production stills from yesterday's shoot. I'll keep you posted on the progress of the movie. BTW, "Friendship" is the third movie in PDA's trilogy. It should be out later this year.




A sign of confidence. (I think?)