quote unqote

 

--paulo leminski

la sombra

 

murderous

 

skateboard the movie [1978]

 

how the hell have i not seen this flick until last night?!  i was an avid reader of skateboarder magazine in the late 1970s.  i had a banana board [a cheap plastic skateboard that was mass produced & sold everywhere].  i knew who tony alva was.  i even fondly remember seeing the extreme sports movie styled as a documentary go for it [1976] at the drive-ins which featured alva & a few other skateboarders.  but this particular movie?  nope.  

so when i clicked play i didn't know if this pic was a documentary of late '70s skaters & skating culture or a fictive film.  turns out it is the latter but with honest to betsy skating legends like alva & ellen o'neal.  the gist goes like this.  a down-on-his-luck sadsack hollywood agent, played by allen garfield, is in hock to the mob.  he needs a winner.  & at his wits end he finds a group of teen skaters.  one of them even leaped over his parked car.  amazed by these kids prowess on their boards he convenes a pro skating team to compete up & down the pacific seaboard.  hell, even my beloved hometown shows up as a rival skating team.

garfield is not without a kind of neurotic charm.  his charges include skating legends tony alva & ellen o'neal, indeed it is remarkable that the filmmakers included both girls & boys on the same skating team.  i could be quite wrong but i don't recall such teams integrated with both sexes when i was following skating back then.  still, the kids are all right.  even heartthrob leif garrett is in this pic.  but you might not know it for tho garrett gets top billing the real star is garfield, & skating a la '70s style.  

this is a throwback to an era of skating that was transitioning from the carve the bowl, headstands on a board, kind of skating to the skating of vertical walls & wild street skills a la rodney mullen.  even better was the era of the late 1970s captured by the filmmakers which gave me heaps of nostalgia.  indeed, my nostalgia of this era of skating is a kind of soft proof that this is a good work of exploitation cinema.

two kings of horror together in a fight of fright!

 

la ciudad nocturna

 

i got the middle of the week blues so let me put on a record & let us dance like no one is looking to 'i wanna be yr dog'

i was a regular viewer of david sanborn's music TV show in the late '80s, 'night music', which was broadcast very late sunday night.  i was thrilled to see sonic youth on the program & i have not seen this performance since buying my first copy of daydream nation.  sanborn collected a variety of killer artists & the close-out of the show would be all the artists performing one song.  that song here is 'i wanna be yr dog' by iggy pop.  so fucking good that everyone, including folk duo the indigo girls, are killing it.  ah!  such sweet noise!  i fucking love it!

skateboards & retirement

for jonathan hayes

i was asked at work how long i've been there doing this work

long enough to get near retirement

& when you retire will you & the missus [yep, he said missus] buy a RV & travel this fair land

i've traveled a bit already besides we live in the greatest [arguably] state in the country everything is here

then you can travel these californian roads

i have many many times 

then what will you do

i think i will get me a skateboard

then what

learn to ride it again or maybe hang it on the wall as art

for i can never skate like i did when i was a lad but i can imagine the streets rolling beneath my wheels as it once felt like being born again or maybe on second thought perhaps i'll skate like the devil-in-me go for broke at length upside & sideways full bore wu wei a livable death at last