JUNK FOOD
welcome to the first rendition of JUNK FOOD, a weekly series of lukewarm commentary and half baked thoughts on some of the best skateboarding in the planet, from one of the worst skateboarders in the planet. so without further ado, here’s week 1:
it’s never been more evident that we’re living in a post-blobys society. the all black converse with black socks and cut off jeans, the board well past its expiration date, the need for chapstick, the wallies, nollies, and inexplicable combos. this is my video of the week.
there’s also a lot of things on fire in this video, just as one last reminder that he’s french.
Amin Sharif in "slept on psyxXxo +MIXTAPE+" by Mohkie
This is the exact type of shithousery and skating that burberry.erry thinks he brings to skateboarding, but, like, good. i can’t believe i watched a mf get smoked while skating to “bubbly” by colbie caillat. if this is the direction we’re going to go with when the mid 2000s trends resurge, then i’m here for it.
also, i was telling one of my friends this week that i got a book on che guevara guerilla warfare in Bolivia and he asked me if that was the dude with the hat. Amin wears the same hat in this video.
A YEAR WITH THE HOMIES - GODSPEED 2020 by Davonte Jolly
alex “mid” midler proves once again that he’s an incredible skater, and also one that i really never want to watch. seeing these behind the scenes clips also makes it seem like he’s also the jester of the Davonte Jolly group, which is pretty tough for a guy who backside 360-ed the sunset car wash bank. the “they got my back like jansport” from him proves that he’s pretty good at that role, too. kevin bradley is doing jason dill in blessed numbers when it comes to high fives vs. clips. ishod wair is god. noe is ridiculous and gets almost no press.
on a more serious note:
this video made me feel ANCIENT. they were some of the early things i remember watching that kept me skating when i was younger, around my senior year of high school. now i’m 23 with my own apartment and bills to pay. just like real life, skateboarding is somewhere where you see your own growth at such a minute level that the differences aren’t apparent until something forces you to take a step back and see for yourself — this video did that for me, and judging by the comments, for countless others as well. it’s essentially a 50 minute rough cut, but it’s every bit as enjoyable, if not more so, than Godspeed itself.
TJ Rogers - TJIF
tj rogers spent the majority of the 5:15 of this part doing tiago llemos karoake, right down to the unnecessary switch mongo pushes. truly we’re just lucky that this part was filmed in HD. also - the gold watch. i see a lot of people dressing like tony soprano on my tiktok feed, usually with the pique knit shirts and front pleated olive trousers, but you don’t see a hefty gold watch like this very often. you have to wonder if that weighs you down.
we here at discotheque are here with the final verdict on wired headphones - take that shit off. and tj, no one (except heitor da silva - we love you heitor) is above the law. it looks so contrived. you’re telling me you felt comfortable lipsliding a rail that big with wired headphones that fell off as soon as you landed? the music was that good? the presence of the camera equipment at the top of the stair set ruins all the chill vibes you try to force through this video.
The Necessary Evil 002 - Davonte Jolly
Before Nak and TJ left FA, I was praying that Jolly and Nak would branch out and start their own company. Jolly is so clearly well respected by the best skaters in the industry, and the chemistry between him and Nak is undeniable. I’m also over illegal civ’s bullshit, and the best parts of that brand over the last few years has been Jolly bringing in the skaters who aren’t actually on IC (although zach saraceno is also sick). this video is 8 minutes long, but it’s as smooth as a 2 minute video. i can’t wait for the next jolly video in 2023.
Kevin Braun - Pier 7
A lot of people hated on this part because he isn’t really one of the guys you think of when you think of pier 7, so there’s a bit of stolen valor going on. but i’m from the east coast, so i don’t know too much about all that, would this video be cooler if it was dennis busenitz? sure. but what video wouldn’t be? mark suciu also decimated this spot in his SOTY videos. as i keep writing, i think i’m starting to understand the haters more and more. but in a vacuum, this vid is sick. he fakie tre flips the manny pad. there’s a seemingly never ending stream of flip in-flip out manual tricks. and to kevin’s credit, this video made me want to skate this spot more than anything suciu or busenitz put out. getting a whole part out of one spot is pretty creative, and i want to see someone like max palmer do that at the canal fountain.
Finding Purpose by Recreating Mark Wahlberg’s Daily Routine
Post grad life is hard. I’m graduating with no job lined up, and as I search for purpose in my early 20s, it’s becoming more and more obvious that I need some direction in my life. I’m ripe for a cult, or a multilevel marketing firm, whichever comes first. And since I’m not exactly searching for Jesus, the most likely source of structure in my life is self help TED talks and inspirational bullshit like this. I think a good rule of thumb is to only try routines like this if you actually want to be like the person you’re imitating, and who wouldn’t want to be like Mark Wahlberg? Do you remember when they added him to Transformers as the whole franchise went off the rails? Really the best introduction to Mark Wahlberg I could have had as a youth. I came across this list two years ago back when Deadspin was still kicking, and as much as they shit on it, I really wanted to try it and see what would happen if I undertook it within the constraints of college living.
2:30 am: Wake Up
I didn’t prepare well enough for this, so since I normally go to sleep around 2, I only got a half hour of sleep. Maybe that’s why I need the structure of this plan in the first place. Alas.
2:45 am: Prayer Time
Again, I don’t believe in a higher power, which is kind of how I got it in my head that doing this task would give me a sense of direction. Typically in this situation I would pray to Based God, but the last thing I remember hearing from him is that he was soliciting feet pics from minors on the internet, so I decided to pray to a nondescript, vaguely Christian god instead. Still waiting on results, but my prayers for the deluxe version of Whole Lotta Red may not be at the front of god’s queue, so I’ll give it time.
3:15 am: Breakfast Time
Marky Mark blocks out 25 minutes for breakfast, which is precisely 24 minutes longer than it takes me to toast my Pop Tarts.
3:40-5:15 am: Workout
I live in a college apartment with four other guys, so the closest thing we have to workout equipment is a pull up bar and a singular dumbbell that keeps the door to our laundry room open. I don’t have much upper body strength, so I do three pull up sets alternating with that one starting-the-lawnmower exercise with the dumbbell. I forgot to alternate my hands, though, so maybe now my right arm will look like a tennis player’s. Or someone with a chronic masturbation problem, if that’s more your thing.
6:00 am: Shower
The schedule is a bit ambiguous here, but the showering starts at six, and there’s nothing else on the schedule until 7:30, so I decided to shower for the whole time. Unfortunately, my bathroom has motion sensor lights, and because no one is coming into the bathroom on account of the fact that it’s 6 am, I spent the last hour of this time block showering in the dark. Also, the hot water ran out after 15 minutes. I don’t even know what else to clean, and there’s still 15 minutes left.
7:30: Golf
I don’t have golf clubs in this apartment, and I don’t even know where the nearest golf course is in Ithaca. Also, who plays golf for 30 minutes? The closest thing I have to golf is the Wii Sports version, which required about 10 minutes of digging through various CDs to find, sandwiched right in between a Hot Chelle Rae CD and a bootleg copy of the Incredibles my neighbor made from a Blockbuster rental. The disc was scratched, though, so I spent the remaining 20 minutes taking practice swings with the remote.
8:00: Snack
The snack block of the schedule is an hour and a half long, so maybe the snack was meant to be, like, a hot dog on the turn or something while he golfs? I’m not really sure if I can do another hour and a half of swinging a remote in my living room in complete silence while also choking down a veggie dog, but this day is about doing what Mark Wahlberg would do, not what I would do.
9:30: Cryochamber Recovery
As soon as I saw that he starts his day at 2:30 am, I just knew we were in for a treat, which would inevitably come with some pseudoscience bullshit that’s just the rich person equivalent of Facebook health conspiracies, and luckily I didn’t have to wait until the afternoon to get it. Real cryotherapy involves completely submerging your body in liquid nitrogen, but somehow the amenities in this apartment don’t include access to a cryochamber. To simulate it, I wrapped my body in a blanket and had my roommates dump ice water on me, which ended up feeling more reminiscent of the ALS ice bucket challenge than anything.
10:30 am: Snack
For whatever reason, the only food that comes to mind when someone says “snack” is those Scooby Doo fruit snacks we used to eat as kids. I don’t think that’s what Mark had in mind here, but a boy can dream.
11:00 am: Family Time/Meetings/Work Calls
I’m unemployed, which again, is kind of how I ended up doing this schtick. I also live 600 mile from my family, so to microdose family time, I tell my roommates about how many jobs I applied to today and how I plan on getting started on my LSAT prep sometime soon. They play their part and nod affirmatively.
1:00: Lunch
One time my local Aldi sold Wahlberger sauce and I bought it because any burger sauce that’s orange is destined to hit. That was also the same time I was scraping rock bottom in terms of my mental health and I refuse to see the connection between those two things. I do miss that sauce sometimes, though.
2:00: Meetings/Work Calls
People aren’t exactly lining up to have meetings with me because, again, I’m unemployed. My brain is completely rotted by social media, so rather than doomscrolling Twitter like I normally would around this time of day, I decide to doomscroll LinkedIn. After the third post from a Linkedinfluencer I went to high school with doing their best Jordan Peterson impersonation, I decide to take a crack at it and post my graduation pictures to remind everyone I went to an Ivy League school, just for 10 likes and two “Congratulations Dan!” comments that are clearly auto suggested. My self worth sufficiently destroyed, it’s time for the next part of the day.
3:00: Pick Up Kids From School
So since I obviously don’t have real kids, the next best thing I have on deck is my family in Sims, from a save file that predates the last two presidential administrations. Miraculously, my two children haven’t starved despite going 13 years without any food, love, or attention. The house, however, is a mess, full of rotting food and shoddy decoration, with a fire going on in the corner that I can’t remember how to put out. Honestly, not too far from how I’m currently living, so it really feels like home.
3:30: Snack
This man Mark eats so many god damn snacks, and is really pushing the breadth of my grocery shopping to the limits.
4:00: Workout #2
Last week I skipped stones with my friends for 20 minutes and was legitimately concerned that I was going to need Tommy John surgery afterwards, and this Wii Sports golf situation is no different on my arms. Really the hardest workout of this whole day is the amount of mental gymnastics I’ve had to do to convince myself that this is journalism.
5:30: Dinner/Family Time
One of the most prominent family memories I have is of playing rummy with my grandmother when I was in elementary school for a penny a point. When she inevitably schooled me, because again, I was, like, six, she collected. I decided to recreate this memory by learning to play poker with my roommates, who are all expert players.
7:30: Bedtime
I imagine if my antidepressants get all my neurotransmitters firing in the right direction, this is what my life would look like. What I always find quite remarkable in these types of daily routines is how little work these guys do. There’s less than three hours blocked out for work here. Also, does Mark Wahlberg just have an email account? What’s the level of famous you have to be that it’s all handled by your assistant, and are their spam filters more effective? Is Mark Wahlberg getting emails on the Dominos two for $10 carryout special? This day has left me with far more questions than answers.
Playboi Carti’s Merch Conundrum
Christmas Day saw the release of Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red, and it only took the world nearly ending for us to get it. There’s been plenty of discourse over whether or not the album was actually any good — personally I think that any large body of work such as an album or runway show needs time to breath, and so reviewing something the same weekend it releases is premature — but one thing that is absolutely certain is how abhorrent the accompanying merch was.
What really gets me is that both Kanye West and Matthew Williams executive produced WLR, two world class fashion minds, and we still ended up with a screen printed adobe stock cat photo. Now I get that maybe Kanye was busy warding off the devil from this satanic drop, but what’s the point of having Matthew Williams involved if the merch isn’t even gonna slap?
Album merch that seeks to stand alone (ie. separate from just a traditional album cover/tour promo shirt/sweatshirt, and at a larger scale) is most successful when it seems like something the artist would genuinely wear, and thus by buying the merch, you’re buying into their aesthetic. Look at the Astroworld merch; the tie dye shirts and western graphics all looked like things on those Travis Scott fit watch instagram accounts, and all of it felt like an important part of the Astroworld album rollout. He teased it for months, constantly popping up in Astroworld merch while simultaneously teasing the album, making the two almost inseparable. Carti could’ve easily had his own version of that. Imagine all those times he was popping up on the Alyx feed it was to hint at his own collection within the label that released alongside the album. Would avant garde suiting make good album merch? Most likely not in a traditional sense, but maybe in a different sort of promotional way.
The scale and depth of Carti’s product offering — which has 15 t-shirts, five hoodies, a denim jacket, ashtray, skateboard, vampire fangs and my personal favorite, a double cup candle (which is tobacco scented, for some reason) — suggests a real attempt at standalone merch. He’s spent the past two years since Die Lit nailing down his post-Soundcloud look and is without a doubt one of the best dressed rappers. He’s the first person you think of when you picture Alyx, and maybe Givenchy now too. His image may have been too entangled with high fashion anyways for merch to really work (Carti is really best known for leather pants and the Alyx chest rig, which is admittedly a lot harder to sell to people than t-shirts), which is also why I don’t think we’ve really seen Future or Lil Uzi Vert have successful merch drops either.
Still, it’s not helped by the fact that this merch is abhorrent. This shit looks like we held a gun to the head of the artistic director of Slint’s album covers and forced him to make merch for Hot Topic on an Adobe Illustrator bootleg, then blinded him anyways, like how they blinded the creator of the St. Basil’s cathedral for making something so beautiful, except the exact opposite of that. Oddly, purchasing a t-shirt doesn’t automatically include a digital download of WLR, so Carti isn’t even doing this to beef his Billboard numbers, he just believes in it that much.
If we’re searching for positives, though, at least we didn’t get one of those VLONE album release drops.
Sunday Moodboard: The Art of David Stone Martin
What happens when you take one of the greatest saxophonists of all time, put him in a style, and give him the best album artwork designer in jazz history? You get this all time classic. The 2020 Ed Sheeran/Camila Cabello/Cardi B song of the same name really dances on the grave of this one. RIP sweet prince.
Amazing to give Gus Johnson the cover of this Count Basie Big Band classic. Like having a super team with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Kevin Durant and acting like Draymond Green is the glue holding it all together. Wait —
I always wonder when you have a group of immensely talented individuals like this, how they decide whose name goes on it. Do they flip a coin? Rock, paper, scissors? Or is it like when you turn in a group project and the person who hands it in writes their name first?
Years later, all the girls who cut their bangs in their bathroom all post things that look like this on their Instagram. Going to take a guess and say that’s probably not what Martin had envisioned when he designed it, but hey. Congrats on the longevity I guess.
Man, imagine being born with the name Dizzy Gillespie. You just have to be a jazz star at that point. My parents named me Daniel, so I’m destined to be, like, an accountant or something. Really unfair.
All photos courtesy of David Stone Martin.