The only fitting way to start out our skate video, after such a bloody intro, is to the sexy skating of Dan Shaw. To start off with, Dan's part was mostly Matt's idea. Haunted by visions of skinless Dan and 80s modeling music, Matt had no problem directing this part and getting it just how it should be. When I came home from Geneva, Matt told me he knew what song Dan would have for his part. Dan hadn't even filmed a single trick for the video yet, but Matt already knew what his part would look like. He told me that it was a song that people always use for modeling (like Christian Bale used it back in the early 90s or something. That's what he told me). Matt played it for me, and I immediately knew it was destined to be Dan's song. Matt had such confidence in Dan pulling through in every way: getting good tricks, striking a pose whenever possible, skating with his shirt off in February, all of it. And that confidence paid off. We secretly planned Dan's part against his own knowing it and filmed him whenever possible striking his poses and seducing us all. Dan came through perfectly for his part, and the footage we got of him was exactly what we had planned.
So filming for Dan's part was a little tricky. First thing you should know about Dan is he's not this skate rat that lives and breathes skating. Don't get me wrong, he loves to skate, and he does as much as possible. But he lives and breathes anything that's fun. He could have just as easily filmed some crazy snowboarding, wakeboarding, scootering, rollerblading, biking, juggling, or sowing video. Yeah, extreme sowing, he's all about it. Speaking of sowing, he made those stripper pants. Yeah, he made them. He wanted to be able to strip whenever possible, so he made put velcro in his pants. And he stripped everywhere he went for a couple weeks, boy did he ever strip... So it was hard to get him to go out and skate with us because he wanted to snowboard during the winter. Then when spring came, he packed his bags and moved back to California. So he pretty much filmed his part in 3 skate sessions over in Paris. These were long, all-day sessions where we hit up the best spots Paris had to offer. Dan loved Paris skating. I think Paris spots were designed for him. Most spots over there are the most amazing thing you've ever seen, and are completely perfect to skate as long as you don't mind weaving in and out of hundreds of people, knocking down little kids that are running on the spot, and dodging cars that are recklessly baring down on you. Dan has no problem doing any of these. The hords of people thronging each spot didn't seem to phase hin one bit, and he got his tricks no problem. Like that statue he did the rock to fakie on, the one in the slug article. You know the one I'm talking about. That thing looks like it's made for skating, and I think it is, but it's at the corner of a 5-street intersection in front of a crowded coffee shop in this business district of Paris with literally hundreds of people walking by each minute. And these aren't 5 little streets that meet up, they're scary paris motorcycle dudes going 80 BMWs hitting old women crossing the street streets. They're scary, unforgiving, ruthless. I saw the statue, rode on it once, almost got smashed by a car, cut my losses, and retired my board. But for Dan, it was different. It's like the cars and people should be afraid of him, he owns the spot, and he just ran between people and cars and skated the spot for a while. I was so afraid of him getting hit, which there were some potential close calls, but he didn't care at all. Not even when his board fell in the water. I told him maybe he should just stop because he had already landed the rock to fakie (not as good as he wanted though), but he said he was fine, rode in the street for 20 seconds to dry his wheels off, then just threw down and landed it next try. He almost got hit by a car too on his ride away. I yelled, "Car!," he saw the car, and jumped off his board a couple feet in front of it. Pretty epic for my standards, but pretty standard for Dan. Or that frontside disaster on that wave thing in Paris. We had gotten kicked out twice already, there were like 20 kids playing on it, and Dan just waited for the security guard to round the corner, threw down for another go, and landed it with people all over the place. The security guard came back a second later because he heard us, but we were sitting innocently on this ledge. He had nothing on Dan...
Dan filmed a couple other tricks with his cousin Brandon in California and sent us the footage. I can only think of 4 times that he came out and filmed with us in Provo. That means he filmed his entire part in less than 10 different skate sessions. That's the kind of skill and wizard board control Dan is capable of, and he can do it with pretty much anything he wants to. Man, don't get me started, I could dedicate an entire blog to Dan and his amazing accomplishments. I seriously want to write a book about him and all the amazing things he does, like riding his bike over a thousand miles in 12 days, sleeping under bushes in Monaco, climbing mountains in Switzerland, and hooking up with Israeli girls while in Europe, or getting chased by sea lions in San Diego. Trust me, the book would be the most interesting thing you've ever read. I'll stop there.
So Dan filmed his part in just a couple skate sessions, and did it in style, too. What I love about skating with Dan is he's never afraid to stay on his board. I was skating with him the other day on a 6-foot half pipe, and he was trying back lips across it. On one of them, he totally missed the back lip, got into some kind of off-balanced backside nosegrind to coping hang-up disaster strike, and he just muscled his way through it and rode it away. I think his trucks got caught up like 5 different times on the coping during the entire thing, but he refused to bail and just rode it out. I would have been off my board the second I saw I wasn't going to make the back lip. But that's how Dan is, he's not scared to stay on his board, even in the most dire of circumstances. Speaking of being scared, turns out that my mind doesn't react well to scary movies. I've always known that, but I thought I might be a little more brave now that I'm married. But just the contrary has proved to be true. Being with a woman has opened up a sensitive, softer side in me. A side that is afraid of the dark, spiders, and ghosts. So we watched "Insidious" (a scary movie) the other night at Matt's house, then went home. Rachel had no problem walking around in the dark, but I was checking under the bed for hands that might grab my ankles, planning my ju-jutsu combos in case an intruder came in, and staked out a nice sweaty spot in the corner of the bed against the walls. Then I had a scary dream about this ghost lady trying to get me, so that didn't help when Rachel had to get up at 5:30 in the morning to go to work. My heart started pounding the second she got out of bed in fear of that ghost woman coming after me. I got in fetal position under the covers and hoped I could just fall back asleep. When it came time for her to leave, she asked me, "do you want to pray with me?". The only words I could utter out of my trembling lips were, "I'm scared..." My friends, grown men have to do years of counseling to recover from episodes like this. I have never been brought so low in my life, never been so humbled, never been the need of so much pity... I stayed awake for the next 2 hours with all the lights on in the house, listening to classical music to get my mind off my impending death by ghost woman... Something else that's scary, school starts again next week which means the streets of Provo are flooded with thousands of college students, spreading their annoyingly enthusiastic and artificial sense of bro-ness and team spirit, horrible driving, crappy guitar and wooing skills on the lawns of their apartment complexes, and in general getting up in my grill. BYU campus is swarming with freshly weaned 18 year olds on tours of campus, learning how to navigate their way from class to class, call home when they run out of money, tie their shoes, wipe properly, and call the cops when they see skaters defiling sacred campus property. What this means for Bolts of Thunder is there is a huge influx of potential good samaritan students that will rat us out and get us arrested for skating on sidewalks. Think I'm crazy? Think I'm paranoid? You would be too if you'd seen what I seen! It happened to Dave last year, and it could happen again. It was a student that ratted us out, and they could just as easily do it again. Here's a third scary thing. I looked up on the stats for our blog, and it shows the keywords people type into google search to find our blog. One of them was, "Teacher Sam Milianta". General public, Sam is a great teacher and we hold him in the highest regards. We give you our letter of recommendation for him. Another key phrase that someone typed in to find our blog was "faces people make when poop." No joke. These are the kinds of people reading our blog. That's what scares me. What are we doing to attract recognition like this?... Man, I'm way off topic.
So Dan's part pretty much illustrates who Dan is. If you know Dan, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know Dan, watch his part, and you will know Dan. His part bleeds Bolts of Thunder all over the place, it is the embodiment of Dan's very essence, what makes him tick, and it is one of the crowning achievements of Bolts of Thunder Gone Wild. That's what I really love about his part is his personality is everywhere in it, it's not just another skate part. Dan's been in town the past couple weeks, and it's been amazing skating and hanging out with him. He's one of my best friends, the most unique people I've ever met, and over all great people of this world. He's off to dental school on Monday and a new career of shoving his hands down people's throats. Once again people, take your hat off for our boy and his part, it's one of the funnest things I've seen in a long time, and it deserves some Thunder Bolt love. Best of luck to you, Dan!!!!
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