Gimme: A Master Debater! And Liberace!

Chas Smith

By

Start your season in style!

Right when I was writing about shitty collaborations…like, literally right (with the Grateful Dead + John Mayer feat. Greg Dacyshyn), THIS popped into my heart!

THIS!

Liberace! Mr. Showmanship! Lee (to his friends and lovers (Matt Damon))!

Do it get any better? Let’s read the press release!

Lib Tech and Travis Rice (in cooperation with the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts) are proud to release the T.Rice Pro Yahnker Edition!
Tonight at the final presidential debate on the eve of November’s election we find out who the best master debater is.

To celebrate the coming of the master debater we are launching the limited edition T. Rice Pro Yahnker boards. What’s a T. Rice Pro Yahnker board you ask? Well it’s Lib Ripper Travis Rice’s (you know… “The Fourth Phase”!!) collaboration with visual artist Eric Yahnker (@ericyahnker) a seminal satirical pop culture artist. Yahnker juxtaposes powerful iconography breaking down barriers using humor and beauty to create a healthy discourse. Such is the power of art in all it’s forms whether it be the art of beautiful pop imagery on canvas or the art of flight when Travis gets the perfect pop off the lip or even the art of the political debate where polarizing titans of American communication butt heads on important issues until eventually spiraling down in to an endless feedback loop of middle school “your mamas fat” jokes.

You gotta just take it in, laugh a little and form your own opinion. The T. Rice Pro Yahnker Edition might be just what you need to stay engaged and stay fun. Featuring two of Yahnker’s most iconic pieces of satire the “Honorable Discharge” on the 157 with blunt shape and the “Soaked Statue” on the 161.5 pointy. Both with a base graphic featuring our master of ceremonies Liberace himself seemingly amused at the current brand of American circus.

You want? Buy here!

But if you bold you can win one! Here’s how!

The election is just around the corner and the choice is yours. Blunt or pointy? All terrain freestyle or big mountain freestyle? Pants suit or toupee? Your vote is part of your voice and we want to hear you! So much so that we’re giving away a set of these the limited edition T. Rice Pro Yahnker boards to one lucky voter!

All you have to do is:

1. Vote.

2. Get the “I Voted” sticker.

3. Take a RADICAL picture of you with your sticker.

4. Post it to Instagram with the hashtag #masterdebater16.

Travis will randomly choose the winner on election day! So get to voting and you too can be a master debater!

Do you feel lucky, punk? Well do ya?

The dream! She lives!
The dream! She lives!

Richards: On the joys of tubing!

Todd Richards

By

Would you like to try a new adventure? One guaranteed to thrill?

As a rule, everything surrounding the tube ride is horrible. The bus is hot, crowded, and (since most of your bus-mates are inevitably high schoolers) ridiculously loud; your tube, while walking, is unwieldy and smelly and chafes your arms; and you have to wrestle the cooler, which has unfortunately taken on the ultra-gravity of enough supplies (chips, jerky, fruit, cookies, drinks) for a mid-sized Super Bowl party, into its own snug-fitting tube, then drag it across the frozen parking lot.

But soon the miracle happens: The tube lends you its magical buoyancy and the slide (if that’s the word for an ambiguous, two-miles-per-hour general trend) sweeps you away. It’s hard to overemphasize the passivity of tubing. It is sloth ingeniously disguised as adventure. Though you are outside, you may as well be in your living room watching television. The tube forces you into a nearly horizontal recline, a posture easily mistakable for someone taking a nap. Nature rolls effortlessly by, and in response you alternately breathe and eat.

You float downhill for about five hours, gauging the length of the trip only by the emptiness of the ice chest. This indolence is broken up by a minimum of functional walking: to the cooler (which quickly becomes the most important member of the expedition) or courteously down hill when nature calls.

You try to keep your distance from the convoys of high-school tubers, who tend to slide in circular formations, like threatened wagon trains, around stashes of illegal beer. Occasionally you wave, with veiled condescension, to a fleet of passing skiiers, trapped in their aluminum handcuffs and actively assaulting the mountain with sticks.

Tubing immediately exposes the hypocrisy of other winter sports: Traditional snowboarding, from a tube, looks like an artificial, intrusive, arrogant, faux-refreshing extension of the landlocked ego; snowboarders use the mountain as a fluid blacktop, another surface to conquer with the aid of a board. (I shouldn’t even have to mention the blasphemous walk-on-water hubris of skiers.) Tubing, on the other hand, is fluvial Buddhism: It asks you to submit humbly to the hill, to meet it on its own terms and have a long talk with it in its native language, rather than just flitting around on top of it.

There are no tricks or stunts. You don’t visit, you merge.  It is your motor. Aside from a tube, the only equipment you need is spiritual: respect for the mountain, an instinct for meditation, and a high regard for inaction.

A 1980s arcade game called Toobin once tried to enliven the water component of this sport with danger—your animated tuber threw aluminum cans at rivals while navigating the waterfalls, fishhooks, and crocodiles—but the game was unconvincing. Tubing on a hill is nothing like that. It is remarkably harmless except, of course, for the danger inherent in all winter sports, especially when mixed with alcohol); nevertheless, a friend of mine, who grew up on in Aspen and always acted as our local guide, often tried to spice our trips with danger. She once told us, for instance, that it was mating season for winter snakes, that cottonmouths were copulating in giant snowbanks as we slid by, and that if we touched them with a stray dangling foot they would spring out in all directions fangs-first.

More credibly, a local informant told me that the Aspen has recently taken on the atmosphere of an international border: He said local police set up a dragnet across the mountain, stopping tubers and arresting anyone carrying illegal substances, handcuffing them in their snowsuits.

Driving that train! High on Dacyshyn!

Chas Smith

By

Some things go together like peanut butter and jelly. Some things don't.

Some things go together. Copy and paste. Peas and carrots. Bon and Jovi. Snowboarding and Slayer.

Some things don’t. The Grateful Dead and anything. John Mayer and anything. The Grateful Dead and John Mayer and anything.

It is a mystery to me, then, why Burton’s Creative Director Greg “Bad Santa” Dacyshyn loves them all so much and loves to roll them into bad collaborations.

You may know Mr. Dacyshyn from such hits as last year’s An Open Letter to Jake and Donna Burton:

You have two senior “leaders” working for you that have undermined you, your company, and the entire snowboarding industry for close to 15 years. The damage is deepening, and unless you take action soon, the situation will go from bad to dire.

They don’t snowboard, flaunt their wealth in the face of your modestly compensated organization, lead by intimidation and fear, and pursue countless failed projects under the guide of “being core” and “building a lifestyle business,” which benefits no one besides themselves.

And last year’s Jake and Donna Burton Respond to the Open Letter:

The internet can be a toxic place full of rumors and anonymous trolls. Don’t confuse their rants with facts. And don’t lose sight of this: It’s a good time to be at Burton. We are so excited about the future, about our direction, and about this great team. The rest is noise.

You want to know what that noise is? Do you?

THE FUCKING GRATEFUL DEAD!

Greg Dacyshyn says:

One of my favorite bands is the Grateful Dead, who have created a new version of the band called Dead & Co. They’re on tour in the US so I’ve been catching shows wherever I can including NYC, Boston and Boulder, Colorado.

burton-x-grateful-dead-event1

Do you know who leads Dead & Co.?

John Mayer!

And BARF CITY!

In case you are lucky and unaware of the the Grateful Dead you might look at their skull motif and you might read their lyrics like, “Driving that train, high on cocaine…” and you might think “Metal.”

But you are wrong. The Grateful Dead is not metal. It is hippie bullshit with a squeeze of rot. It is a Baby Boom of disaster. It is a beard worn long and craggly hiding bits of last night’s fondue dinner.

It ain’t good.

And now to cleanse your palate.

Too Hard Squad: Spiking the punch!

Jenna Klein

By

Pour a glass of purple drank and enjoy some jib n shit!

It all started with a Kickstarter. Actually, it all started with a beautifully gifted and simultaneously giftedly beautiful crew of female snowboarders who began spiking the punch right under our noses.

For those who’d been sleeping on Too Hard, Danyale Patterson openly shed her Jibgurl tears via kickstarter back in 2014 with the #goalz of funding her next endeavor. As predicted, the teaser spread quicker than Kanye’s call to T. Swift. The opening sequence featured handrail carnage accompanied by Sarah Mclaughlin’s famous desperation cry that makes us hug our puppies.

If you weren’t bawlin’ out yet, Red Gerard’s wide-eyed baby face and helpless cry for Jibgurls everywhere was enough to immediately place you in massive debt. For ONLY $69, they promised us T’s hats, stickers, authentic Jibgurl tears and a photo of an injured Jibgurl.

A total of $7,536 was sent into the arms of jib angels by adoring fans. Fans of female empowerment. Fans of girls stacking on double kinks. Fans of switch backside tricks AND twerk sequences. Fans who were dying to receive a side of women’s snowboarding best enjoyed over glass of purple drank. This broad squad of potentially questionable mental health status had successfully earned enough green to bring us the best of the breasts again, and these ladies brought it, they really brought it!

It’s now 2016 and all Danyale does is cool shit, just ask her Instagram. It might be a little early in our relationship with Danyale to use the L word, but we’re unconventional like that, and we’re swooning for you. It’s a Drake x Riri situation, babyjibgurl. We know you might not notice us yet, but when you’re ready, step into the lodge. The fire’s warm and the champagne’s on ice, and we want to cozy up with you.

Now please bow your head in respect and binge on the cinematic greatness Dangy has been kind enough to bring us.

Tres Hard from danyale patterson on Vimeo.

Winning: Mexican dominates Utah!

Mariano Landa

By

Brown people in white snow among white people with dark hearts, warm magic underwear!

I am a sucker for snowpeople of the Hispanic persuasion. I’m especially a sucker for my Latin snowpeople hailing from the state of Utah. Brown people in white snow among white people with dark hearts, warm magic underwear, and 3.2% beer. Talk about an overcoming adversity. That’s why it’s great to see guys like Jesse Martinez crushing the rail game all over the “Industry” state.

Reminds me of a summer when I housesat for my brother in the heart of the Wasatch. Some Saturday morning, I’m greeted with a knock at the front door. At his house, with no less than three temples within a square-mile radius, I was pretty sure that, as the lone confirmed heathen in that mile radius, whoever the fuck was knocking was knocking for my salvation.

Fuck it, turn the TV up.

Another knock, louder, more urgent.

Fuck it, turn the TV all the way up.

Full scale banging on the door ensues. Enough to startle or enrage.

With only the option of putting on porn at full blast or answering the door, for whatever reason, I chose the latter. Hand on the doorknob, count to three, open quickly and hit ‘em with my opener:

“You guys wanna talk about JEEEEE-ZUSSSS???”

The best defense is a good offense, right? Next question, had I gotten there, was which Catholic Saint had the best ass. The right answer would have been Mary Magdalene but…

Nary an evangelist in sight. I was dumbfounded, a sea of juvenile eyes upon me. Before me I found an entire baseball team of Mexican kids in full gear with a “Gracias Señor [Retracted]” cake, a twelver of Negra Modelo and a hefty bottle of El Jimador.

“Oh no!” Moaned a pudgy kid. “I think he joined the church!” Turns to his homie, “Te dije que lo iban a agarrar, mormones pendejos…”

Turns out, only dude in the ‘hood to donate money to the spring baseball fundraiser that year was my brother, recently relocated from the Northwest and happily an outsider to his LDS neighbors.

Rewind to March. Crew of kids were selling candy. The ultramarathoning, 150-snow-days-a-year, vertically inclined backcountry hardass that is my brother could give a fuck about some Kit Kats. As he later recounted, he asked little dudes how the sale was going.

Not good, answered the pudgiest kid in the crew. Our English ain’t so good. The church people only give money to church people. We sold a few down by the college, but we got all this left, flashes a coupla hundred candy bars at him. Season starts soon. Sponsor from last year, dude from the taquería, got deported. Kid over there, plays shortstop, that’s his nephew. No sponsor to get our uniforms made this year. We’re mostly related, all of our parents are from the same two towns, Acaponeta and Huajicori.

Bro asks how much uniforms were. Some nominal amount, less than a full snow rig. Closes the door. Comes back with a check for double the amount. Tells kids to stay in school, not to take no shit from nobody. Don’t eat all the fucking candy, especially you fatty, yeah you, fat shit, I know baseball’s not exercise, but damn, have some self-respect. Nods to the den mother chaperoning the team, good luck, vayan con Dios, and closes the door.

Back to my summer Saturday. Turns out the team of little sluggers from Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos had bested their Cache Valley competition for the under-12 title. The parents wanted to thank their sponsor; they’d made some stylie uniforms. The team name? The “L.N.” Dodgers.

“¿L.N.? Isn’t it L.A.?” I asked. No, they answered. L.N. means Logan-Nayarit. Sick!

They totally confused me for my brother, but the gesture, unforgettable. I offered a drink to the parents, some cake to the kids. They declined, just stoked that I was stoked. Little fat kid looked at me as they left: “don’t eat all the fucking cake, mister.”

The element in common between JM’s season recap, the L.N. Dodgers, and housesitting? That family tip.

JM’s short flick is produced by hermano (¿o primo?) Edson Ramirez. And while I’m not gonna lie, I’d need to be pretty fucked up to be feeling this soundtrack, the guitarwork is by Jesse’s other bro (¿o primo?), David.

Snow’s currently flying here in the Sierra. Here’s to rolling this 2016-2017 with familia like the Martinez crew and the L.N. Dodgers!