+ Friday, September 30th - 12:16am +

Fifty years ago today James Dean was on his way to an auto race in his 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, traveling west down Route 466 towards Salinas. Donald Turnipseed, driving a 1950 Ford Custom Deluxe, was pulling out of rural Route 41 South turning left on 466. It was dusk and Dean's grey Spyder was difficult to see on the horizon. The two cars hit head on, with the Spyder traveling over 50mph. James Dean's neck snapped across the steering wheel. He was dead at 24.

I've read quite a bit about Dean in the last year or so...I guess it's because I bought a grey Porsche and started racing it , or maybe it's the Moz connection, or just the hype surrounding the 50th anniversary of his death. In any case, he was a pretty interesting character. It's safe to say that Dean has had more influence on pop culture than any one else in history.

Here's some info if you're interested...

Official Website
James Dean Gallery

BBC Radio program featuring Johnny Depp - very well done and a good intro to dean's life story.

James Dean, From Passion for Speed to Immortality - Phillip Defechereux . A new book released this year that focuses on Dean's racing career and love of cars. Lots of details on the crash as well. Good photos of Dean at the track and behind the wheel.

Boulevard Of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean. An excellent bio book. This one focuses on his homosexuality more than some others. I tend to agree with this theory. Many claim he was straight and a womanizer...but I just don't buy it.

It would have been interesting to see himnow at 74...but then again, maybe not. Look what happened to Brando. For better or worse Jimmy Dean will always define cool...


+ Wednesday, September 28nd - 7:28am +

- I got this in my in-box yesterday morning. Good stuff. If nothing else it's a great collection of Bush speech clips. Man, what a total moron.

- These BMWs are pretty interesting. I have to say I'm not too impressed with most of these

- Finger Mustaches...the hot new trend. Pretty lame.




+ Saturday, September 24nd - 5:35pm +

16+ travel hours later I arrived back home yesterday at 6pm. It's a great country, but it's too damn far. I'm still catching up.


+ Thursday, September 22nd - 4:46pm, Zurich +

It's annoying to read someone complain about being too busy to post, but damn it...I've been busy.

I'm typing this from a Wi-Fi location in Zurich, Switzerland. I was asked to attend a last minute meeting here and arrived Tuesday morning after flying all day Monday. The trip from San Francisco was hell (three hours to Dallas, 11 hours to Zurich) but I have to admit that this is a beautiful city. Super clean, small cobblestone streets, and the lake that runs through the city is amazing. Not so good on the food front. I haven't had a decent meal since I've been here, but I'm surviving on veggie sushi and snacks I brought along. I fly back tomorrow morning...which is an even longer flight. 15 hours. Fuck.

Last weekend, before I left, my parents were in town for three days. My father and I drove the Autocross at Candlestick, which was pretty fun. It was a very fast course, so I didn't do as well as I would have liked. I was told by the course timer I was up on three wheels more than a few times, so I can feel good about that.




+ Wednesday, September 14th - 6:03pm +

Here are a few more Melee photo Galleries: Gallery One and Gallery Two. I'm liking this one and this one of my car and this one of Silvia and Brent whizzing along.


+ Tuesday, September 13th - 8:56pm +

We're back after three days of driving over 800 miles on the best roads in Northern California. Yup, it was the 2005 California Melee three day weekend. Perfect weather and unbelievably fun. It's hard to imagine driving over six hours a day and having a good time, but damn it...it was great. Too many amazing people to list, and 50 great cars. I took over 150 photos but I'm swamped with work...they will all be up here at some point. Until then here are someone else's shots.

Props to Silvia for winning the 'Best Female Driver' award (or something like that). That bug eye was flying.

---

AND Congratulations to Tony Guerrero and Lisa on the birth of their son, Paco Guerrero, born this morning, September 13th at 9:50am. I wish the new family all the best! This kid will be shredding boards and guitars in no time...





+ Thursday, September 8th - 1:08pm +

- I'm certainly not into adding advertising to my site, but I felt compelled to add the Humane Society banner over on the left (a 'gif'mation no less). After all I've seen on the news this past week detailing lost and suffering animals, I felt I had to. Please support the great work they are doing.

- Stephen Street talks about being the engineer on 'The Queen Is Dead'.


+ Wednesday, September 7th - 8:08am +

This quote is all over the interweb this morning...but it's still totally insane.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them." - Barbara Bush

Wow. That's a weight off of my mind. Here I was concerned for the well being of tens of thousands of people who lost everything. Fuck, they were poor before, so how bad could this be? They've got cots and food, what the hell are they complaining about? I mean, none of these people are used to living in mansions and dealing with the problems of having money...so they should be fine. This whole 'losing-everything-you-own' thing brought them to the great state of Texas...those lucky bastards.

That cruel-hearted bitch should be ashamed of herself.


+ Sunday, September 4th - 9:36am +

"George Bush doesn't care about black people" - Kanye West (video here)

While I applaud Kayne West for voicing his anger with Bush, I think he was a bit off with this statement. It's not a color issue with Bush, it's a class and money issue. Bush could care less about the lower class and lower middle class in this country. Why? Two reasons. First, he has no link to these people AT ALL. This man grew up weathly and powerful. He never had to work and his father was the head of the CIA, Vice President, and then President. Everything has been handed to W. He knows nothing about stuggle or suffering in the least. Second, he sees no value in caring about such people. They don't help win elections and they don't support him in big business...at this point they make little difference in his career as a politician.

It's also this same class of people who are fighting and dying in Iraq. He certainly doesn't seem very concerned with those numbers.

Yes, the tragedy in New Orleans is effecting the African American community but many other races are suffering as well. It's a shame that Kayne West chose to call out one group ofpeople, rather than call out the complete injustice of the system.

We need a leader that is a person for the people...all the people and not just big business and big money.Right now our system doesn't allow that, and that's a huge part of the problem.

(Re: Kanye West. I also have to give him TONS of respect for speaking out against the homophobia in the hip-hop community! It's about time someone fucking did. )


+ Friday, September 2nd - 11:38am +

- Happy Birthday to my lovely wife Jessica

- This is great to hear...people who are close enough to the victims and are getting things done: Tattoo shop owner is organizing his own relief effort. "I just want people to know that just because we're tattooed, we're not a bunch of dopes," Damn right.

- Not looking good for CBGBs...

- New Propaghandi song. Amazing and smart concept. I got chills. I can't wait for the full record. Site and idea explained here.


+ Thursday, September 1st - 2:33pm +

This hits the nail on the fucking head...George Bush, Katrina Is Calling.

We've added multiple links on SKATEDAILY.net if you would like to send money online to aid in the relief effort.

+ 11:21am +

This is one of the most horrible stories I've read in a long time.

"You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

Hey, Bush...are you fucking listening? Let's get some real help down there. And where are the other countries? How about officially asking for some foreign aid? Man, are you completely clueless?

+ 9:20am +

- What can you say about Hurricane Katrina. Unbelievable. I can't even imagine it. I lived in Connecticut in 1985 and experienced Hurricane Gloria. Luckily our house was fine (neighbors had roofs caved in by trees, decks crumpled, etc.) but we were out of power for two weeks. We showered at the YMCA. That was no fun...and that was NOTHING. It's like the old west with looting, firefights, and roaming gangs. Chairty links are everywhere...just make sure they are creditable.

- Oh, and if you're wondering where we are going to get the money to clean up this mess, it was just reported that the war in Iraq is now costing the US $5.6 BILLION DOLLARS A FUCKING MONTH! That's more than the monthly costs during the height of the Vietnam conflict. And here's a nice bonus: the deaths of an estimated 23,000-27,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 2,000 U.S. military personnel and civilian contractors; the social costs of domestic programs slashed to meet the budget shortfall; the loss of income to reservists and National Guard troops who spend long periods away from their careers and businesses as well as the anticipated costs of treating returning troops for mental health conditions as a result of their service. FUCK.

- It feels good to be here in Northern California...until they report that this is the SECOND worst natural disaster in American history. The first being the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. I try not to think about it.

- And now back to trivial crap...

- Bridge 9 is releasing a book containing all three issues of the classic Schism fanzine in one book. Also available is the good old Project X 7". I always thought that the line 'I'm as straight as the line that you sniff up your nose' was pretty weird. Are lines of cocaine that straight? It's powder, so my guess is not very. Listen to the e-card...

- Cocaine and straight edge reminds me of a story. My pal Chad and I visited an old T-Shirt shop many years ago and ran across some vintage iron-ons. He purchased a nice design which featured the offensive/humorous ,"Coke is a joke...and I can't wait for the next line." Unreal. He then decided to apply it to the back of a Youth Of Today shirt. Fucking awesome. (Holy shit...you can actually still buy this shirt! Chad, you listening?)


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