Bring back the draft

Bill Moyers should be required viewing.

Louisiana Skate History

Vance Carlin, infamous skateboarder, interiewed at Lafayette Correctional Facility for "Old School: An Oral History of Skateboarding in Lafayette, LA"

Carbon Offsets are a C.R.O.C.

Thanks to Scott Bieiben for the facebook post.

The Best Quinoa Salad

On a totally random note, I wanted to share an awesome recipe I found. It's healthy and super easy to make. It also keeps pretty well, so it's nice to take for lunches.

1/4 cup parsley (I leave this out because I'm not a fan of parsley)
1/4 cup currants
1/4 cup chopped raw almonds
1/4 cup diced carrots
1/4 cup chopped mint
1/4 cup scallions- cut thinly diagonally
1/4 cup lime juice
1 tsp agave nectar
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup olive oil (I don't use this much, but it's up to you)

2 cups cooked quinoa
Salad Greens

Mix all the ingredients together, toss with the Quinoa, and place on top of Salad Greens.
You can put steamed/grilled chicken on top for a fuller meal (or tofu for you veggies)

Hope you enjoy!

This recipe is from Alejandro Junger's CLEAN book (I edited the video below):

Spirit of Service

On October 20th, 2009 Spirit of Service goes on sale. I'm seriously really excited about this one. If you've ever wanted to volunteer or just make the world a better place (I know, that sounds cheesy... but you know what I mean), this book is perfect. Plus, I created that video above and worked with my friend Erik Jessen who created the awesome website (SpiritofService365.com). So go buy a copy, or at least browse inside it... and then you can go save the world.


More about the book:

The Spirit of Service is a dynamic daily devotional that offers a full exploration of 365 aspects of service, organized into seven topics, presenting one from each topic every week for 52 weeks. The reader can start the book at any time of the year. The guided experience allows you to look at a full complement of ways that you can get involved in service to others, from serving the person sitting next to you to your community as a whole, from national service to actions that impact the world. The book is created to offer a daily fifteen- to twenty-minute experience that can prompt you to open your mind, your heart, your pocketbook, your calendar, or your contact list and engage. The book features unique opportunities for involvement in all sectors with every age group and every concern. Throughout the year you will read inspiring stories about what others have done, and discover efforts that you can passionately get involved in. The book also guides you to recalibrate your own awareness of the needs of others, taking you outside yourself and into the joyful state of truly making a difference.

The seven spirit of service topics are:

Money (Donate)
52 ways your money can make a difference - the best organizations where your money can keep paying it forward.

Energy (Volunteer)
52 ways to physically show up and accomplish something - incredible opportunities to put intention into action.

Focus (To bring to the attention of others)
52 explorations that put you in the driver’s seat to create interest or support in order to bring about change.

Influence (Use your personal equity to help others)
52 great ideas that utilize your existing resources and goodwill allowing you to gain momentum and get something accomplished.

Compassion (Open your heart to needs of others)
52 meditations on compassion in action - daily kindness, love and humble service.

Support (Be emotionally available; get involved and stand up for those without a voice)
52 challenges to act on what you believe in and be there when it counts.

Passage (Join someone on their journey as a guide / mentor)
52 passages that inspire you to serve as a guide, companion, mentor, guru or helpmate on someone else’s path.

Leland on the Radio

I think we're officially syndicating the John Doe Zine podcast. But hey, it's funny, and they keep interviewing people we know. Listen to Leland Ware of 48Blocks and Dwntwn.

Faces of American Healthcare

Healthcare and skateboarding, this was made for our blog. Watch it and learn about greed in the healthcare industry, and also how MS took out a great skater. (Props to Lowcard for the original post.)

Gang of Fourstar

Reading Boil the Ocean has become at least a biweekly occurence for me. You've probably noticed the many topics I've borrow from them, and this is yet another.

Gang of Fourstar is a brilliant example of art direction in skate videos (if you can even call them that anymore). ...I don't mean "art" in the way that Workshop vids (which I love) scream Koyaanisqatsi. There aren't any elements in this video that shout "we totally, like thought super hard about how to make crazy interstitials and trippy montages." It's just shot well... really well.

The direction presents itself through thoughtful compositions and portrait b-roll that leans heavily on the long lens, and plays to the strengths of those HD Panasonic's that Ty Evans ushered into skate film vernacular. ...Or to put it another way, the video is pretty... and it has a more real than real, film quality that comes from a combination of that brilliant HD and sparse usage of the fish angle.

Good job to Meza and Bagley. I've enjoyed watching Girl camp quality push skate video production. I get psyched when I see how far we've come from the Century death lens dominated VX1000 days of the 90's.

On a side note... Are we seeing the death of the death lens? I hope so.

If you can't get the vid to play at Fourstar, try this (via the Boil the Ocean comment section):

Sean Says:
October 13, 2009 at 8:03 am | Reply
Some smart cookie at Slap posted this:

open up quicktime
go file > open url
and paste http://www.fourstarclothing.com/videos/gang_of_fourstar.mov_disabled_due_to_saturation_DreamHost_JK
click ok

Hopps Commercial

Awesome Hopps Commercial. We know this already went viral on the skate web, but today we found out that our friend Dave has a cameo in there somewhere. Link via Theories of Atlantis.

Fire Extinguisher

Our homie Rachael Joy goes to bat for Climate Action. She's calling out all those lobbyists/ and politicians on the hill trying block climate change legislation. The planet is melting and she needs your help.

...Love the music, so retro 80's PSA.

Magnet on the Radio

...And in the spirit of promoting interviews with our homies... enjoy.

Lowcard is ReadyMade

Obama's War Episode One

Looks like another good series on VBS.

"In the summer of 2009, Ben Anderson travelled to the Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan to document the first military campaign ordered by President Obama. Anderson provides an inside view of what life is like for Echo Company’s U.S. Marines – including getting ambushed by the Taliban and hit by a roadside bomb."

(I tried to embed the video... I don't know if VBS sucks, or if it's Blogger that doesn't work, but somebody needs to handle that.)

Johnny on the Radio

We should have posted it this a couple of weeks ago, but we had to get through all the BART Tour action.

How Would You Feel?

This is a great way to ask for money. We hope it works out for him. Thanks to Allison Davis for passing this one along (via facebook).

Schmoo'd

Some of our former Current TV peeps have started "a creative cooperative of multimedia producers with the intention of advancing the causes of rebuilding media, stable employment and fulfilling work for all." It's called Schmooru. Expect to hear a lot more about it in the weeks and months to come.

In the meantime, Schmooru has started a youtube channel for the purpose of showcasing pilot projects from Schmoos. We shared Make It Happen: Lowcard with the crew. So please watch it again, and give us some hits... also enjoy these other Schmooru related videos.

Supercharged SF

Last night was the S.F. Premiere of Supercharged. You probably missed it.



Congrats to Pete Koff.

I'm going to break your arm like a twig

I love San Francisco. In what other city would random pedestrians argue with a cop over mistreating a skateboarder? (Thanks to Marika for the heads up.)