Yeah, so?

I got my first skateboard when I was about ten or, maybe eleven. It was a sweet translucent blue plastic banana board with a raised tail and red wheels. My aunt had it from the 70s, and I got it as leftovers from a garage sale. It was awesome.


There was a little cement patio in my backyard, and I learnt to stand on it and tic-tac around. My father, ever lovin' goofball that he is, stepped onto it to "show me how it's done". Needless to say, if you've ever watched someone who's never been on a skateboard before, the first thing they do is stand on it, perfectly still. Big Mistake. The second thing they do is fall straight on their asses because the board shoots out from underneath them. My dad threw out his back for a few days on that one- and it still makes me laugh thinking about it.

Sometime after that, my parents bought me an "actual" skateboard. It wasn't a pro model, I'm pretty sure they bought it at Zellers or K-Mart, but it didn't matter to me. I didn't know there was such a thing as pro models or skate shops.

The deck was big (this was the late eighties) and heavy as fuck. It was black, and had a picture of a circuit board underneath, with yellow wheels and rails, a noseguard and a big plastic bubble under the tail. I've tried to look for pictures on the 'net, but obviously, there's none.

I loved skating. The extent of my tricklist was what I learnt from the other kids in my neighborhood- tic tacs and pogos. I mostly just used it to ride around on. I eventually gave it up in junior high, because I didn't know anyone else who skated.

In high school, I remember trying acid drops on this kid's skateboard at a party. After several tries, of course, the board shot out from under me and I landed super hard on my tailbone. I had trouble walking for a few days.

When I got married for the first time, I announced to my wife that I was going to start skateboarding. She forbid it. Broken, subjugated man-child that I was at the time, I listened to her.

When I got divorced(here is where the angelic choir sings), I went and picked up the Transworld Buyer's guide, and looked through them to figure out exactly what I needed. Skateboards had changed an awful lot since I was a kid. I went down to the local sporting-goods store(Royal) and went to their skateboard section. (I know, I know...)

I ended up buying a blue powell mini-logo, some Grind King trucks, 54mm wheels and ABEC-3 Speed Metal bearings. I had them put it together for me, because, ah, y'know- I was paying for it, and I'd be damned if I'd get my hands dirty!

So, skating by myself, I began to teach my legs to ollie. Ten years later, and I'm still learning. That's what happens when you start(actually) skating at twenty-two! I can ollie up curbs now(most of the time), and I can ollie quite gracefully out of banks, but my true forte is on transitions. I've never had a problem on quarterpipes, and my bag of tricks include tail stalls, rock and rolls, rock to fakies, frontside 180s to rock fakie, nose stalls, and frontside carves on the coping.

Sure, it's not that impressive, I know, but I'm thrity-two years old and this past summer, while juggling a family and a job, I make time to go skate at least once a week. Without a doubt, this has been my best year skating so far(even though I skate by myself pretty much every time). I've made it a point to hit every park in the city, but my favourite, -MY park- if you will, is the plaza at the forks.

All these pictures were taken by my lovely wife, graciously indulging her fat, old skateboarder husband on a cold fall morning. Now, before you say it, I know I'm not the best skateboarder around- I'm reminded of that every time I go to the park, any park, and see kids half my age back 180-ing down stairs. But I'm still better than 99% of the pedestrians in this city, 'cause most of them will never step on skateboard, and if they do, there's a very good chance they'll end up on their ass.

Quarantine

**SPOILER ALERT**

I'm really glad I went to see the new "Zombie movie", Quarantine. I put 'zombie movie' in quotes because it's not so much a zombie movie as it is a movie about people turned into flesh-craving animals by an unknown disease. For all intents and purposes, the infected people in this movie are zombies.

So, first off, this movie is a shot-for-shot remake of a Spanish movie, 'Rec'. The American version features Jennifer Carpenter and Steve Harris as an entertainment reporter and a cameraman, respectively, who are assigned to follow some firefighters around for a segment on some teevee show. Sure enough, what begins as a simple puff piece quickly turns into a hellish descent into survival horror.

This movie does a lot of things right. It begins quickly, with no credits at the start, no hokey writeups about 'lost footage now recovered'. We are introduced immediately to Angela, the reporter, on camera, doing her intro for the piece outside the fire hall. From here on out, the movie unfolds from the perspective of Scott's camerawork.

The camera perspective brings obvious parallels to Blair Witch and more recently, Cloverfield, but there was only one or two parts in this movie when I thought, "Why the hell don't they put the camera down already?" At one point, the camera is used to bludgeon one of the infected to death, and the effect is remarkable.

I haven't been impressed by an American horror movie in a long time, but Quarantine definitely keeps the faith alive. And like any good zombie movie, this one ends in the perfect way. Everyone dies.