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I Are Influenced 2: The Tall Edition

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Brobomb Ski Blog Soap Boxin

Just before last season I wrote an article in response to the dropping of an outerwear company that I judged to be somewhat uninspired. The gist of the thing was that the terms “rider influenced” or “inspired by riders” are excellent for your street cred, but really shitty if you’re looking to make something unique. You see, that particular company seems to have gotten input from riders who wanted nothing more than a Saga suit with a Siver front pocket. Nobody stopped to ask why “the riders” didn’t just buy a Saga kit or go shopping for Siver on Getboards.

I’m revisiting this theme because I just got done reading about a new company that is “bringing something different to the table” by being, you guessed it, “rider driven.” The impressive thing is that “the riders” are so predictable. Every time anybody asks them for input we end up with taller-than-normal length, bright neon colorways, and asymmetrical block designs.

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Of Divas, Jocks, and JOSS

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

What happens when you gather a handful of athletes that take themselves too seriously, throw in a gaggle of media personnel that would never dare deflate the egos of those they so proudly call friends, and one bizarre Swedish diva event host? JOSS, of course.  Add a once-in-a-century volcanic eruption that strands all those chuckleheads in Europe, and you’ve got a volatile combination.

jon_lambo

Just by writing this I run the real risk of giving you the impression that any of this matters. It doesn’t. However, the situation with Team America releasing their edit too early, Jon writing a strongly worded letter, and then Tom and Simon’s agents writing a pretty silly response for them has really helped me understand what is so annoying about our sport’s primadonnas.

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Jon Hartley Probably Hates This Already

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

Jon and the gang would never post this video because it contains:

1. Big clothing

2. Rap music

3. Simon Dumont

But that being said, I have a nifty login here at BroBomb and damn it, I’m using it. Enjoy the 2010 Team America JOSS Edit. God knows Jon won’t.

-Rogge

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Jockfest Rests For A Weekend: Orage Masters

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

orage masters

It’s been a long season of competitions, and let me tell you—ignoring them all is really hard work. We can all sing a happy song now that the Dumont Cup is over, and that ego-fest out in Sweden will be wrapping up in the next couple months. I’ll keep praying that those two budgets get rolled into one massive Jon/Simon strokefest DVD, making them easier to ignore, but in the meantime we can all bask in the pink glory that is the Orage Masters.

Orage masters teams matt phillipi

Skiing’s only no-trampoline-required competition is almost upon us. It’s a sad state of affairs that we only have one anti-comp style event, but for this weekend it beats the shit out of pretending to care about who is lipsliding Jon’s cannon box. This is the sentence where I’d like to say that I’m hopping on a plane for Whistler tomorrow and I’ll be live streaming the event using some technology I don’t know about. However, until the iPad reinvents the internet and makes me a millionaire, the BroBomb travel budget is tapped for this winter. I hear user-generated content is the new thing, so feel free to film the event for us. We’d love that.

For the uninitiated, this thing goes down in a team format and the following will be represented: Amplid, Armada, Line, Volkl, K2, Surface, and Salomon. Each team has provided some hints towards their themes, and Twitter tells me that Surface will be rocking it Dead Head style. For those still unsure what to do for a theme, let me help:

tiger costumeThe topical theme always wins at Halloween parties, and the Masters is no different. So what you do is go with the all-too-obvious Tiger Woods theme. You’ll need one fuzzy tiger outfit, one angry-blonde wife with a golf club, and a gaggle of backup bimbos. It’s cheap, easy, and even Canadians are likely to get it.

Telluride Tuesdays with Garrett usually runs in this spot, so we’ll end it with a quote from our favorite person who is banned from Canada:

“I don’t really have the connections, but Pat Bridges hooks me up and I can go ride any snowboard superpark, but yet I don’t get invited to any ski shit, you know? I don’t get it. I would love to see what would happen if I got invited to something like the Orage Masters. I think Jay (Levinthal) and those guys are like, ‘No, no Garret you don’t compete, we don’t want you to.’ But on the inside I’m like, ‘I want to show what I can do.’”

So Canada, stop being so lame and let bygones be bygones. LINE, you need to find a way to get Garrett to the Masters, skiing needs this.

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From my POV

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Do you have a grandpa who likes to show everybody his war pictures (any war will do)? Or perhaps a crazy aunt that likes to snap shots of her cat dressed like an English dandy? Have you ever seen a slide projector, or even a Windows slideshow of somebody’s vacation pics? They’re all boring as shit, aren’t they? Want to know why? All of that shit is only interesting to the person who was behind the camera. It was what they were seeing, and they captured that as a frozen memory. It’s special to them, because they lived it; to everyone else it’s fucking BORING!

dandy cat

Fast forward to 2010 and you’ve just strapped on your fancy new helmet cam. You rip it down a pow-covered slope, or take a truly epic lap in your home park. You think to yourself, “Damn I’m cool, I’m going to go home and put this on Youtube.” Guess who cares? You and nobody else. That shit is boring and nobody wants to see it. I don’t care if you’re a kid in the Midwest or a pow bro shooting with Nimbus; the front of your skis and a shaky ass view of snow flying by is coma-inducing dull.

POV for the water ramps.

POV for the water ramps.

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Rogge Gets on the Soapbox

Friday, March 12th, 2010

mike rogge brobomb

Mike sent me this email yesterday. He’d probably prefer that I exclude the initial note, but that’s just too bad.

“So I’m sitting in an airport and I had a few thoughts I’d like you to post on Brobomb. Feel free to post them under my name. No aliases on the Bomb. That shit is for pussies. Anyway, here goes:

European X Games is never going to work and here are three reasons why:

1. Sure, it’s great for the twelve up-and-coming Euro skiers to compete in the “X Games” but a majority of European skiers will always be racers. ESPN wants ratings and when it comes to Europeans, we all know they could give less than half a shit about a bunch of no name North Americans that make less than $100,000 and throw down in a U-shaped stunt ditch. Unless, that is, their homeland heroes win Gold and Silver to beat those no name North Americans. Viva le Bertoni! Viva le Rolland!

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Are Trainers Taking Over?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Just the other day I was sitting on a bar stool next to Mr. Chris Casula discussing the state of competitive skiing. It’s a pretty popular topic of conversation these days as it seems likely that ski superpipe will make it into The Games if the Mayan calendar doesn’t get us first. The particular topic of debate wasn’t Mount Olympus, per se; it was whether or not we saw a new class of skier emerge at the 2010 X-Games and subsequent Dew stops.

I broke the field into two groups: trainers and regular skiers who just happen to be athletically gifted. It seems to me that Bobby Brown’s victories exemplify the emergence of the “trained” skier. Tom Wallisch, on the other hand, was the last remnant of the amazingly gifted kid who loves to ski and can also win comps from time to time. I don’t know either person, so I have absolutely no idea if this is accurate, but the way I imagine it Bobby goes to the gym everyday and does 1000 reps of every spin he’s capable of on a trampoline. He then goes to Breck and lays down flawless slope run after flawless slope run. These images get blended with Ivan Drago’s training sequence from Rocky IV, and you get the picture.

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Internet Drama Goes Skiing

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The boys here at BroBOMB have really been milking the SIA coverage. I get it, it’s a big deal and you worked super, extra hard, but come on dudes, it’s snowing in the real world. (And by Real World, I am talking about DC, even though on the show it’s magically summer and not the midst of the storm of the century. There is also some bitch who is complaining that she needs to go home cause she can’t last 6 WEEKS without her boyfriend, or something. Anyway, I feel like I may be getting off track.)

I ventured over to this Wordpress back end as opposed to my own, because while my hate mongering towards skiers is mostly for show, I felt the video submission YoBeat received recently and the attached story may better be suited for the BroBOMB readership. Allow me to introduce Jeremiah Paquette, aka Jermagain.

Hopefully you enjoyed that little vid, as Jeremiah made it to prove a point: Snowboarding is easy, but skiing is easier. Apparently this was his first day shredding on two planks this season. But don’t worry, that’s not the good part of the story, or the reason I posted it. No, the real reason Jeremiah made this video is out of pure spite! You see, as Jermagain, he is a frequent commenter on REELcomp, a sort of extreme Youtube where kids post their videos and make fun of each other. Apparently, the kids trying to show off their skills don’t appreciate Jermagain’s subtle brand of hate-filled humor though, and he recently received this letter:

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Let’s Be Honest

Friday, February 5th, 2010

About three weeks ago I was in Burlington, VT with Mike Rogge. I was going on the Ski Show that night, and the timing couldn’t have been better. I was sitting on the couch, checking out the latest edits, and I came upon Tanner’s now-deleted rant at the Linecatcher event. I heard Rogge coming down the stairs, so for dramatic effect I held up my laptop and said, “check this shit out” as I pushed play.

Those of you tuned into the Ski Show that night already know that Rogge drinks a special brand of Kool-Aid that renders him blind to all of Tanner’s miscues. You also know that I’ve been known to sip the Haterade a bit myself. Mike and I went skiing at Smuggler’s Notch the next day, and spent a great portion of those long lift rides discussing/debating the issue.

Tanner makes for good conversation—his mannerisms, outbursts, accent, and ever changing self-identity are like a case study in being famous too young. At some point in the conversation I used Mike Tyson as a comparison. Little did I know, the comparison would only get more compelling.

The trailer for Eric Iberg’s new Tanner-based documentary, “Like A Lion,” dropped yesterday. This is the point where you expect me to shit on the cheesy monologue about skiing as a “means of survival,” but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you figured that part out on your own. I actually think this project has a ton of potential, if it takes some cues from Iron Mike’s recent documentary- “Tyson.”

Tanner isn’t as famous as Mike Tyson, and he hasn’t come close to the career implosion that befell him either. That’s just the point though; that documentary was honest about Mike’s mistakes, and thus it restored the humanity of a man commonly portrayed as a monster. If “Like a Lion” can be unpretentious and honest about Tanner’s amazing achievements and at-times bizarre behavior, then all the petty hate will be put to rest. It’s a lot less fun to point out that somebody’s crazy if that person just said on film, “You know what? Sometimes I’m a bit crazy.”

Is that the type of movie we’re likely to see? Hopefully, but probably not. It’s unlikely for one reason: Eric Iberg is Tanner’s close friend. It’s really hard not to protect your friend, and this movie will suck if it’s just a bro-fest of Tanner accolades. I’m hoping we see a human, not a bizarre Rasta-robot, but the tag line “the true story of legendary skier Tanner Hall” might have already tipped their hand.

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It’s all OK, Snowboarders Do It Too

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Pictured below is what may or may not be Tom Wallisch’s new double-tongue ski boots. I don’t claim any trustworthy sources, and for all I know they’re a regular boot with a boxing glove fastened over the buckles.

wallisch boot

I’ve heard some uproar over this alleged boot. It seems that fashion tongues are usually associated with rollerblade boots, and we all know how horrible it would be if skiing were equated with its forward-facing bastard cousin. I’m usually more than willing to jump in on a hatefest, but this time ol’ Jonny is going to assuage your fears. You don’t have to worry kids; snowboarders did it too. Behold, the Danny Kass fashion tongue pro model:

Photo stolen from Yobeat.com

Photo stolen from Yobeat.com

I bet you’re relieved. Don’t thank me, this is what I’m here for. You can buy yourself the same (alleged) boots as Mr. Wallisch and not once worry about whether or not that backside grind you’re calling a lipslide looks like a rollerblade trick. Then again, if ideas must be bit, couldn’t we give something like this a try?

xsjado skate

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