Trust me. I’m a professional.

Before we get into anything, I would like to extend a gigantic thanks to Jon for recently risking life and limb in an effort to take his Downzig T to heights never before achieved.
The boy’s got some balls.. I’ll give that to him. One set is in his throat, and the other is smashed into his back.

I would also like to thank the supremely talented Ryan Cathrall for the use of this week’s header shot of none other than Mickey Denoncourt of Spooky Bikes. They look good so I look good.
In news of ‘you win some and you lose some’, a recent law enacted in Maryland will fine drivers for passing within three feet of a bicyclist.
Not that any cop would enforce such an outlandish rule, because after all, the only people who ride bikes are either too poor or too mentally unfit to drive a car.
But it’s a win none the less. As far as the ‘lose some’ goes, that title is bestowed upon Minneapolis West, as three years of effort in opening up even a sliver of new single track in the city’s 5,000 acre Forest Park was once again stonewalled in recent meetings, stating that as of now, there are no plans to increase access to the park for mountain bikers.
Now understand that advocates have been working tirelessly on this project for a very long time. Not unlike asking your mom for a year if you can pierce your ear, and having her say, “we’ll talk about it on your 16th birthday. Until then, improve your grades, clean your room once a week, take the garbage out, organize the garage, chop the firewood, walk the dogs and bathe your little sister every day.” Then when your sixteenth birthday finally arrives, you ask again, and she flatly says no.
And for what it’s worth, I’m not speaking from experience. I just stuck a needle in my ear in the art classroom.
Anyway, if Minneapolis West wants to knock the crown off the head of Portland East, they have a far stretch to go.
Until then, Minneapolis West can feel free to use this slogan on promotional merchandise;
“We’re #1 at being #2.”
Hey, it’s been like, 72 hours. Wanna talk about Danzig?
Of course you do.
Within the first hour of my awake time on Friday morning, I had already repeatedly been alerted that to the fact that the Blackest of the Black likes fuzzy buddies;

The level of awesome that those picture possess is so great just due to how mundane it is. You see, Danzig has nobody to blame for images like this going viral but himself. He shrouded himself in this persona, and now he has to live up to it by sleeping in a coffin and eating raw meat or whatever.
As an outside observer, no one cares less if anybody buys cat litter, but when Danzig does it, it’s hysterical.
Something else I find hysterical is Tammie Sue Benson-Whitehead.
For your convenience, I made a revision that you can feel free to print out, clip and pass around to all of your friends to keep in their wallets;

It beats the hell out of a condom.
Now am I correct in assuming that ‘Benson-Whitehead’ is a hyphenated last name? Does this mean she found a mate? If so, has she eaten him yet?
God lord almighty them’s some bad genes.
Finally in closing, on account of because it’s been a while, I think it’s time for a dose of art that doesn’t suck.
This week’s selection comes from the hands of one Kenichi Yokono;


Damn, Janet. It’s hard enough to work monochromatically, but to do it with such depth is nearly impossible. For those who might not be familiar with this style of print making, basically what is occurring is all of the white in the image has been carved out of a flat piece of wood, making a relief. The ‘plate’ is then inked up and run through a press, thereby transferring the image that you see here onto a sheet of paper.
The process of making the relief is a labor intensive process to say the least, though it would appear as though Kenichi has pretty much got it on lock.
As the curtain has nearly fallen on today’s post, I feel the need to mention something that I saw while away in the desert. No, this isn’t the peyote induced hallucination or the teeming masses of the deluded, though those were pretty sweet as well. No good people, that to which I am referring is the TRP mini Vs;

Am I the only one thinking of this song right now?
Though I have long been an unwavering supporter of Paul Components and his full line of wiz-bangery, I have to admit that I am intrigued that TRP has taken this design, which by fixed gear years has been around forever, pared it down, and made them compatible with road brake levers.
Damn skippy.
Well played TRP. Instead of trying to reinvent the mousetrap, they seem to have simply taken the existing one and made it better.
It’s usually about this time that I would make reference to something I wrote at the beginning of the post, but attempting to make a connection between TRP’s apparent genius and having balls smashed into your back just shouldn’t be done, so I will instead sign off with a ‘fine how do you do’, and bid you happy Mondays.