What’s Jaouen Jonesing For?

Yeah… I could use some of that. A good Sunday activity; something to get my juices flowing but not too difficult. An outlet for what’s on my mind. Yeah… that sounds good. Creative writing can be an enjoyable and rewarding activity. But like all rewarding activities, writing can be difficult and frustrating at times. As any successful writer will tell you, the secret to quality writing is practice and spell chek. I’ve never been one for either of these. Tolstoy wrote without MS Word and I’ve written this post. Therefore neither spell chrck or practice are necessary. Iron clad. This also reinforces my idea that great writers are very insecure and try to throw potentially greater writers off course with silly rules. In conclusion, I’m excited for spring, Ticket Master is a rip-off, I hate the phrase ‘if you think about it’, and the What White People Like website knows me better than most who have met me.

After nearly 26 years of living on the line of cool and lame, I have found a way of getting off the fence. A skateboard. I have decided that a skateboard may be dangerous enough to suit my lifestyle, and cool enough to make me hip again. I have no doubt that I will be able to find incredibly interesting new ways to cover my body in scraps and bruises, and with any luck, I will get a hospital visit out of the deal. There was some discussion as to what type of board to get. Seeing the guys in skateboard competitions grind rails and get big air had me looking very closely at a freestyle board. After about an hour of discussing the topic with various people, our friend over at Airek Publius convinced me that, despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise, I am tall, gangly and too old to learn to freestyle board. After having my dreams of X-Games gold so brilliantly dashed away, I decided to go with the longboard. I will be searching for the perfect board over the next few weeks. As I have almost no experience with skating, the performance doesn’t matter to me so much as looking awesome. If you see a board worth buying, let me know (I really like the one, by Element, pictured).

There are a number of horrible hallmark holidays out there. These holidays are shameless money making schemes for card manufactures and chocolate makers (I’ve got my eye on you, Wonka). I’m talking about father’s day, Valentines Day, and Earth Day to name just a few. These holidays are the result of clever marketing and a need to pacify the mob. We are forced to celebrate these holidays because nobody wants to say, “Sorry honey, Valentines day is a crock of shit so I didn’t get you anything.” It is in this way that corporate holidays have become a mainstay of American culture. There is one holiday that dares to break the mould. A holiday that no religion or marketing monster would dare create. A holiday created by the people, for the people. A holiday called 420. Some say it was started by a small band of hippies that wanted a break from the drudgery of smoking their drugs in their mothers’ basements. Others say that it was the late visionary Jerry Garcia who started the holiday. Regardless of the origins however, this holiday is a celebration of the reefer. Although 420 is recognized around the world as a pseudo-holiday, in few places is there more support than my own stomping ground of Boulder. Every year festivities ensue on campus as thousands of students gather for this fantastic ode to a drug that makes everyone apathetic.

In years past, The Man has done his best to quell the mob. Past strategies have included, but are not limited to, turning on the sprinklers, using riot police to intimidate the mob, use of hidden cameras to capture images of drug offenders, and waterboarding. Last year though, things went off without a hitch. It is possible that the university just can’t think of any effective way to stop the festivities. It is possible however, that the university recognizes the pressure placed on students in an ever more competitive world. It may be easier to let the students “have their Tar-Tar sauce” than to deal with a student body that feels oppressed by work and by an unreasonable administration. Whatever the reasons, this years 420 celebration (which regrettably I did not witness) attracted 10,000 people to the Norlin Quad at CU. Police were again present that the festivities, but this year they made absolutely no attempts to stop the party. At 4:20 a cloud of smoke rose from the crowd and not a single ticket was issued. Police later stated that 20 police were no match for a mob of 10,000 potheads. They were simply there to keep the peace. It is difficult for me to applaud the actions of any police force, let alone the Boulder police. I have made a sport of hating the very air that they breathe. For once they have done well, by doing nothing at all. Congratulations BPD, you handled a situation with cool minds and dignity, keep it up!

If you know me, then you know that I (like Stephen Colbert) like one thing more than anything else in the world, me. I don’t like being overshadowed by anything. Having to type Jaouen.tumblr.com instead of just Jaouen.com has infuriated me from the beginning of this blog. It makes it sound like tumblr is the subject of the blog, instead of that handsome devil, Jaouen. In an attempt to rectify the situation, I have purchased a domain name for the blog, and I will be migrating to a new server under a new name over the next few days. Finding a perfect domain name, that is clever, yet still satisfies my basic love of me, was a difficult task. At first I went simple, Jaouen.com. No Dice; it was taken. I next tried something a little more religious, WhatWouldJaouenDo.com…taken. Plus, the inability of the internet to handle “?” in a domain name was a genuine disappointment. From there I tried JaouensWorld.com, but it sounded pretentious; like something Ike would make. Switchskier.jaouen.com was my next attempt, but switchskier sounds like a move performed by two men in the comfort of a hotel room”apres skiing”. OrangeFootJaouen.com was another option. My feet may be disgusting, but they aren’t orange. AirekPubliusJaouen.com was unpronounceable. Plus I have too much disrespect for dead languages to use something that sounds like Latin. Whitehouse.com sounded great, but it turns out it already exists (and I certainly hope that those pictures aren’t of the First Lady). Another domain that I tried was JaouenIsAwesome.com…taken. I tried all of the different iterations of those words, IsJaouenAwesome.com, which sounded too introspective, and JaouenAwesomeIs.com, which sounds like a library entry. In the end I had to settle on something simple. It isn’t a flashy name, but it does satisfy my main requirement, it contains the word Jaouen. This evening Danny and I will begin the migration process from Jaouen.tumblr.com to TheJaouen.com. The site’s address may be changing, but the premise will remain, What’s Jaouen Jonesing For?

Update:  We have moved!  The old posts were ported over to the new site with a lengthy process involving quite a bit of work by hand.  A few posts were left behind, because they sucked.  They are not gone though, the tumblr site isn’t going anywhere.  You may occasionally find xml code for special characters if you look through old posts.  I have tried to elimenate it all, but it is all over the place.  There are also problems with double spaces being turned into single spaces after periods in the old posts.  The new site may change significantly over the next few days as we experiment with new themes.  Please bare with me as we transition into the new site.  Cheers -Jaouen

I read in the news the other day that a polygamist sect of fundamentalist Mormons was raided in western Texas and over 400 children were removed. These children were being brainwashed into believing their only goal in life was to have ten wives (male) or start having the first of 25 babies at age 12 (female). My first thought was, “Wait, you can do this?” Then after I became a “recovered” Mormon I began to merely just have the urge to have ten wives and spread my seed across the world. Just think about it, you have your own stable of 13-16 year old girls to have babies for you and then when they become too old (say 20) you can put them out to stud. What can be better than that? Oh, I know, I would have to believe in a religion that was completely fabricated and has “revelations” every time the federal government threatens to take away Utah’s highway money.

Riding the lift into the blue sky basin Sunday, a million points of light glittered from the untouched powder below.  As a parting gift, we were given two unforgettable days of powder to share with our friends.  We made the best of our time with the snow.  Not only over this last weekend at Vail, but in all of our days with the mountain.  As the sun slowly sets on another season, we remember the pain and the joy, the frustration and the accomplishment that has consumed us on ivory peaks.  We should remember hiking off the back side of the blue sky basin, through untouched meadows to watch Mike try a front flip off of a 25 foot cliff, only to land on his back with his head downhill.  We should remember watching Brandon butter into fun boxes with the ease and grace of a master.  We should remember watching Mike straight-line into a small band of cliffs, turning mediocrity into majesty as he tripled the size of the cliff and stuck the landing.  We should remember hiking off of the back side of beaver creek to play in untouched glades and fields of powder.  We should remember hitting Area 51′s enormous jump lines; both the joy from a clean line and the pain from a cased landing.  Most of all though, we should remember why we were there.  It wasn’t about getting famous, making money, or trying to win a prize.  It was about our passion and our dedication.  It was about getting up early after a long work weak to drive 2 hours to the resort.  It was about getting injured and struggling everyday to regain confidence.  It was about exhausting hikes to find the perfect line.  It was about lying in the snow, far from the city, and taking a moment to relax.  Most of all, it was about riding and spending time with good friends.  Vail is closed now; the light of the season has faded to dusk.  All that is left are the bruises, the sunburns, and the memories.  Still, the sun will rise again.

Reports put the failure rate of the XBox 360 at 33%. I thought I was immune. I thought, “Failure, no, never going to happen here. My Xbox is a rock, a pillar of strength on a stormy sea of suck.” It would seem that I was mistaken. My poor overworked 360 has told me, “No more” . It may be that I played the crappy game Army of Two on it. It may have just decided that if I am going to play shitty games on it, why go on. Maybe it is because the Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack comes out on tuesday. Maybe the console thought to itself (in binary of course), “Jaouen has been too happy and relaxed lately. The legendary map pack could make him even more happy…well screw that!”   Whatever the case may be, my XBox 360 is giving me the RROD (Red Ring Of Dead for those of you who don’t speak nerd). I will just have to wait two or three weeks to play those sweet new Halo 3 maps. I’m really not sure what I will do with all of this newly found spare time. Maybe I will wander the earth a bit (3 weeks), like Kane from Kung Fu. I guess I could read a book, but as I have said before, books are for chumps.

There are few things more entertaining than watching a buddy get lit up with paintballs. It seems that I am not the only person who thinks so. The guys at EMT have constructed the first consumer grade, remotely operated, paintball turret. From what I can tell, the turret requires the user to aim the gun from a remote position, via cameras. This is a cool concept, but it can be done better. The price tag on this puppy is a cool $1400, and it doesn’t even track targets on its own. My suggestion, add a few Wiimotes and a Bluetooth enabled microcontroller. Wiimotes operate by tracking infrared points in space. Why not use them to track nearby people with their body heat. Then just program the microcontroller to target anything within a short range. Danny better be careful when he comes out of his room in the morning, one day he may find a surprise waiting in the hall.

After a one year hiatus, the Orage Master’s anti-competition is back. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Masters, it is a day long, team based, jam style, jib competition. All of the major ski manufacturers send 4 of their best to Whistler for the day long event. This isn’t just another competition though. Jam style means that the competitors get a certain amount of time in which to impress the judges, however many tries it takes. All of the teams dress up for the event as well. Two years ago, there was a team of pirates and a team dressed in suits. So, if watching ridiculously dressed men and women throw down ridiculous tricks on skis is your cup of tea, then catch the live webcast on Saturday the 12th. If nothing else, you get to see a woman that the Niffer hates, Sarah Burke.

As many of you know, this weekend marks a bittersweet day for skiers and boarders, closing day at Vail. At 4 o’clock on Sunday, at the top of lift 4, there is a party known as 4 at 4. 4 at 4 is a unique kind of party involving booze, snowballs and hundreds of riders. It is an amazing sight, and enormous mass of drunk people throwing snowballs at one another, all on the very top of a mountain. Not to be out done by those hoppin’ parties in Baghdad, there are explosives. The ski patrol each year lights off a series of charges close enough to the party to feel the shockwave from every blast. If you have never been close to a stick of water gel when it explodes, it is fairly impressive, and it definitely promotes a “Let’s Party” atmosphere. I hope to see you there.

Those of us who have a passion for skiing know the dream. Crisp morning air freezes your nostrils as you stare down line of perfect pillows covering a field of boulders with untracked powder. Conflict rages in your mind as you consider claiming your line through this pristine field, knowing that you will be diminishing its beauty while claiming your glory. The anticipation builds in your body as you prepare to drop into the field. Then, it happens. The world plunges into absolute silence, save for the sound of your heart pounding away within your chest. You feel the rush of air and a falling sensation as your heart races. Powder flows up your body, covering your face, clogging your nostrils, your mouth, and obscuring your vision. You feel your body continue to fall. Just as you think that you will be swallowed by the snow, you feel a gentle push on the bottoms of your skis. This push is almost imperceptible, but itrquote s enough to allow you to ascend for a breath of cool air. As you bob upward you feel your body flow into a perfect rhythm as though surfing through an endless frosted sea. The dream varies, but the beauty, joy, excitement, anticipation, and sheer perfection of the moment are always the same. Often times, these once in a lifetime experiences are relegated to our dreams, never to be fulfilled. Occasionally though, these dreams can be realized vicariously through others. The guys over at Nimbus Independent are allowing us to do just that. Their new movie Hunting Yeti, a 5 part web series, is the closest to skiing perfection ever seen. With incredible lines, unequaled athleticism, and the most flowing style of any movie since Idea, this movie will inspire and invigorate even the most seasoned skiing veterans. The series follows the 07-08 ski season as it unfolds for Eric Pollard, Andy Mahre, Pep Fujas, and Chris Benchetler. Episode one is available for download in HD (in a format that is compatible with Xbox 360) and in a streaming video format at Rip.TV. Expect episode two around April 15. Until then, keep living the dream.

Guest Editor Matt H. writes in to tell us about his passion for unhealthy food in a segment that we like to call, What’s Holmes Holmesen’ for?

A ROCKIE DOG

Now, I know the long history of this blog has centered around technology and Jaouen fighting “the man”. However, I feel the need to bring my first post back to something that I know more about… unhealthy food! In addition, for all of you out there (mostly just Jaouen) who will complain that this does not fit into the spirit of this blog I have a couple of things to say. First, Fuck you…I can write about whatever topic I choose. Second, what can be more technologically advanced than a combination of random pig parts shoved into a casing and topped with soggy peppers and onions? So, in honor of Opening Day and the inevitable mustard stain on my pants I honor thee…the perfection that is the Rockie Dog. Plus, look how happy this woman is after having one!

Our friend Airek Publius has started a blog that I can get behind. Every revolutionary knows that you must first capture the minds of the people and Airek Publius is doing just that. His debut article, Why Bother Importing Your Buzz, is a literary masterpiece, inspiring the hearts and minds of all Americans to support the United States alcohol industry. Unlike other pro-alcohol articles that make you want to get drunker than Melody on prom night, Airek highlights the need, in this time of economic crisis, to come together around a good American brew. As Airek’s blog grows and matures, you can bet there will be plenty of content outlining the growing crisis in America, and what we can do to fight back against the man. Have a drink to the revolution, and check out Airek Publius.