Touched by a Grinderman

So I'm sure all of you are avid Nick Cave fans. If you're not, then jump on the bandwagon and become one. Even if you don't like his music, just be a fan. Kind of like how you like Bolts of Thunder although you really don't, but you still read this blog anyway. Same principle, just apply it to Nick Cave. We're only like 3 sentences into this post, and we're off topic already. So when I was in Geneva, Matt sent me an email. That shouldn't surprise you as he sent me an email every day and apologized for the days that he missed. Matt is my source of information from the outside world. I don't have a working computer of my own, I don't watch TV, and when I am on the internet, I only read my emails, so I usually don't know what's going on in pop culture. Or in the world. Like I just found out that the great war ended. I'm years behind... Anyway, Matt always keeps up on latest Charlie Sheen news, Dancing with the Stars, and Nick Cave concerts. So he sent me an email saying that Nick Cave was playing with his band "Grinderman" near Geneva on October 4th, my birthday! So I got myself online and bought myself a one-way ticket to Grinderman. I showed up 2 hours early because I wanted to beat all those Euro dudes to the stage. I got there, ate an avocado sandwich (the bartender gave me a huge knife to cut open my bread and avocado and gave me salt. Nice guy...), and staked out a spot right in front of the stage. As people started piling in, I held my ground and good spot next to the stage. I wouldn't even budge for this cute girl that kept trying to push her way past me. I think I even gave her an elbow. She should know better than to get between me and Nick. Then before the show started, this Australian rodie guy came out and told me to keep this big black box that was in front of me clear because "Nick likes to jump on the box..." Wow! I might even get close to Nick Cave. Maybe I could reach up and secretly touch his pant leg or something.... Things were looking promising. The band came out and was as awesome as ever, even better than what I was expecting. Warren Ellis, the violinist dude, looks like the craziest back-woods hillbilly I've ever seen. I naturally respected him for growing his hair so long amidst the evident balding. A true hero... So they started rocking out, I did my little concert dance I do at concerts. Whitny, you know what I'm talking about. Pinback. Yeah, scary, I know... Then a couple minutes into the show, Nick Cave jumped onto the box right in front of me and pelvic thrusted right over my head. Being the stout pelvic thruster that I am, I prize myself on a healthy, stern pelvic thrust. But I can't hold a candle to the obvious on stage pelvic thrusting experience that Nick Cave has got. I got out my camera and took pictures of it, the first picture of this post being Nick Cave grinding right above my head. Pretty awesome... Yeah, for those of you wondering, I secretly grabbed his pant leg, and this girl next to me turned around and stared at me shamefully for a minute. I don't take it back... The show was awesome, but that's not what you want to know. You want to know what happened to the blooming friendship that Nick and I were nurturing on the box. I will tell you. Nick returned to the box several times and continued his pelvic thrusting. Then, without warning or reason, Nick Cave reached down, grabbed my hand, and used my arm and body strength to support him as he leaned over the crowd and did what Nick Cave does: rock on. With my other free hand, I reached into my pocket, got my camera, turned it on, and took a picture as fast as I could. He held me for about a minute, so I just got off one picture before he let me go, but that's the picture you see above. The gold rings are not mine... They're Nicks. All these people, including the girl that scowled at me for touching his pant leg, cheered for me when he let go. That's what birthdays are made of... Yeah, it was super cool, the best way my birthday and the concert could have gone. And not only do I have the story and memories, but I have the pictures to back up my claims. The second picture is when I was taking a picture, Nick Cave pointed at me because he saw the light on my camera for the flash. I'm telling you, we formed a bond... So next to you see me, just remember that I have been touched by a Grinderman. Have you? Then respect me...

Day of Wrath

The crew

The men hitting their women with clubs

The men playing while the wives wish they were at home

Dave trying to explain a strategy to Lauren. She only pretended to listen and hit the ball the other way

The Bolts of Thunder crew after their epic game

Mimics are all over the place. It's hard to get the real thing these days. I think of epic movies like Ben Hur, then pieces of crap movies like Australia that try and rip it off. That's what this blog is about. No, not Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, but about true epicness. An epic is something that just happens that way because it happened that way. You can't force it, you can't necessarily plan it all out. The right ingredients must exist, the stars must align, and you gotta be just plane lucky. What, you might ask, has this to do with anything at all. Like most of the posts on this blog, it has nothing to do at all with anything. But I'm writing it and you're reading it anyway. So let's get on with it. What I am going to discuss on today's blog is a truly epic day; something that can't be planned for, forced, or anticipated. It's the day that Bolts of Thunder played croquet...  So during the summer, we usually get on this kick of playing croquet at the park. The first couple weeks are just pure fun, then it gets a little competitive, then it usually ends with Matt yelling at Dan for cheating and packing up the mallets and balls for a season. The past 2 summers went that way, I anticipate this summer will be no different. As a side note, last summer's last game ended with Matt ready to shove his mallet down Dan's throat, or up another body cavity. It was pretty awesome. No hard feelings though: TIC (This is Croquet). So one Sunday we rounded up the troops, all fully fledged members of Bolts of Thunder teamed up with a female, and we had a massive game of team croquet. So everyone was with their wife, except bad-A bachelors such as myself and Dan. Dan found himself a woman to play with him, and I found my Mom. She's a member of Bolts of Thunder, so I was happy to have her around. Anyway, so pretty much all the females were there because their husbands wanted to play, and all the guys wanted to play because they wanted to win. It was all the guys against themselves with the women there acting purely as obstacles for the men to overcome in beating the others. We played that men and women had to hit every other turn, so the guy on the team would hit the ball in front of the wire basket, getting the ball all set up, then the girl would hit the ball 15 feet in the wrong direction, undoing all the men had worked so hard to do. What we thought would be a 20 minute warm-up game turned into 2 hours of the refiner's fire on all our relationships. We laughed, we cried, we remained silent as Nick threatened his wife with physical abuse if she missed a shot (just kidding, but I think Nick's mustache did physically threaten other players on the course. We called foul...). 2 hours later, Matt and Hannah came out victorious with Nick and Kim closely behind in second, Dave and Lauren hit their ball an extra 5 feet when it wasn't their turn and others weren't looking because they were so far behind, and Dan juggled other people's croquet balls. It was a true test of friendship for all of us, but I'm happy to say that we came out stronger in the end. The good times, the bad times, we had been through it all together. A team that stays together plays croquet together, is what I've always said. Because of this true test of friendship we had endured, marital bonds were strengthened, and the members of Bolts of Thunder became tighter knit and better able to skate together. You would not be reading this blog if it hadn't been for this epic croquet day, you would be reading the blog of washed up old men who once had a dream. But we still have that dream at Bolts of Thunder because we've been through it all. Like Styx, the only good music to ever come out of the United States... Ok, I have to publicly tell everyone that I'm joking. I don't want to even risk you not understanding the sarcasm in that statement and thinking that I like styx. I don't. Anyway, the last picture there is Nick, he's flying through the air in a half pipe, doing what Nicks and Tiggers do best: Frontside airs....

A New Breed of Freestyle

"I got a real mean look when I pose for my pictures,
I'm one fan less, but I'm 10 dollars richer"

-DJ Bizkwik

My boy DJ Bizkwik has been on the scene for a long time now, so I'm talking this opportunity to put him on our blog and introduce all y'all to him. Rhythm, flow, and vomit flow from his mouth like... well, they just come out of his mouth a lot. He did most of the music for our last video, and he's doing the entire soundtrack for "Bolts of Thunder Gone Wild", coming this August. Bizkwik's freestyles will periodically be appearing on our blog, so embrace yo selves, your gonna need it!

Alice Cooper lied, school's never out at Bolts of Thunder

They say that what you do in this life echoes in eternity, that at the great and last day, all good and bad things you've done will be added together and shown to you. I hope this is the image, and the only image, I see at that day. This picture represents everything good and decent I've done with my life and ever plan on doing with my life. It is the peak of my very existence, and I stand forever eclipsed in the shadow of this great accomplishment. You didn't know I thought so deep, did you? But I do... And I can write deep. Real deep. This is my 9th grade school picture. No joke. It's me at age 15, and not much has changed. This picture sits in my wallet as a constant reminder that when a man is feeling powerful, he's capable of just about anything. You know what, I'm not going to tell you any kind of story behind this picture. I don't want you to think there is any story. Why can there not be a story for once? Yeah, there is a story, but I'm going to give you homework so that I can do my homework now. Your homework is to create your own story of what's going on here. Imagine what a person must go through, what society has to do to a man before he finds himself in this position, staring through his coke-bottle glasses at a mocking world. Then when you have this story, write a comment about it. I'm interested to know what your ideas are...That's your homework for this evening.

Nothing new to say

I was so high when I did this trick. High in the air! High on the air... JK! Isn't that the guy's name that wrote Harry's Potter? JK Rowling or something?... Yeah, JK Rowling, he's a good guy. I saw an interview of him on 20/20, he like totally supports Bolts of Thunder. He said if he wrote an 8th book, Harry would have quit playing quiditch and started skating for Bolts of Thunder. Anyway, I have to once again thank Weston for lying on his side in the middle of a parking lot so he could get a good angle on this trick. As fate would have it, when I landed, the board flipped up and got me directly in the gonads. The left one, for those of you who are counting. My stomach hurt really bad after that. But I went back and landed it 2 days later, so we're even, me and that gap. That's one of my biggest motivations in skating, to get even with obstacles that have done me wrong. I personify (very poetic of me to use that word, I know) obstacles, give them personalities and everything. If I land a trick easily on that obstacle, the obstacle is friendly towards me. If the trick is hard or scary, the obstacle doesn't like me. And in some cases, when I take a hard slam, the obstacle down right hates me. Being the vengeful person that I am, I take my grudges seriously, and I go for blood when a spot doesn't like me. That's a good mindset to have I think, and it makes landing a trick more worth while. You prove to the spot who's who. Anyway, my throat's been killing, so I took some medicine to make it feel better, and then I decided to write a quick post. I can feel the effects of the medicine as my mind wanders from random, incoherent thought to the next. I have nothing new to add to this blog other than this picture that Weston took.

Weston sightings

 

Man, I'm so tired right now. That's a good thing. I haven't been able to sleep at night because I think about skating in Paris with Dave, Dan, Garrett, and, of course, Matt. But tonight I should be able to sleep just fine. I did P90X with Matt for 15 minutes, enough time to shred my insides to pieces and make me tough as nails. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that all of you should be really excited, and that's because we skated with Weston today. You're wondering why you should be excited about this. Well would you let me talk? Ok, then I'll tell you... Because Weston's a machine and gets the raddest stuff on film every time we skate with him. He's in his 30s, but you would never tell by looking at him. He lands everything super consistently, and he skates stuff the way it's meant to be skated. We've only skated with Weston a handful of times since our last video came out, but he's already got a good amount of footage for his part. And it's all rad stuff. I'm really excited for his part because I already know he's going to get some more really good stuff. So here are some pictures of Weston skating motorcycles the way the good shepherd meant motorcycles to be skated. I'm looking at that wall in the back and wondering if there's a good taildrop to be had?... Anyway, it's late, but the only thing keeping me going is the disappointed looks on all your faces as you open up the blog and have to read the last post about sharting again because I haven't put up a new post. But if you want to learn more about sharting, be sure to read our last post, it's quite informative and educational. I think informative and educational are synonyms for each other. But it's both.

Great White Shart Attacks

It was just brought to my attention that my last name is in the word "shart". This seems rather fitting since sharting is a part of my heritage. Who are you to judge me? You'd be a lier if you said it wasn't a part of your heritage! It's a part of all of us, and it's what makes us strong. Being able to sit through 8 hours of school when you've sharted your pants will make you strong, real strong. And you won't have any friends at school, which I don't think I do. Anyway, the point of this post is not to confess anything to you about bowel movements. Instead, I just thought Matt told me a funny story earlier today. He told me how he was checking out something from the Orem library a year ago, and the lady had to verify has email address. So when Matt made his email address years back, he put the initials for his first and middle name, MS, then he added "hartattack" after that. So his email reads "ms hartattack". So when Matt was at the library this day, the lady said, "ok, let me just verify your email address. It is.... .... m shartattack...." Matt had never thought of that before, but he couldn't deny it because that would discredit everything he had ever done in his life, and that just ain't his style. So he just looked at the librarian for a minute, then without smiling or looking confused, he simply replied, "yes". Like a veteran soldier who knows how to suck it up and deal with it when he's sharted in public, Matt checked out whatever it was he was getting at the library under his new alias "M Shartattack". since then, several other people have commented on matt's sharting email address, but Matt's holding out strong and doesn't plan on explaining to them what it is or changing it. Next time you shart and don't know what to do, look to Matt for encouragement, that thought will ease the pain of your suffering...