Grim markers along “The Death Road” in Bolivia
 
More than 25,000 biking aficionados come from all over the world to ride the North Yungus Road in Bolivia, known by locals as “The Death Road” or in their native tongue, “El Camino de la Muerte.” “The Death Road” starts at a staggering 11,000 feet in the snowy Andes mountains, and takes riders on a 40+ mile, adrenaline-fueled trip through the Amazon Rainforest.
 

Brave bikers traveling the Death Road
 

 
While at times it may appear to be an idyllic trip full of waterfalls and mythical, untouched vistas, the road lives up to its name, claiming approximately 300 victims a year. The grim reminders of those who lost their lives on the Death Road are marked by crosses. And there are entirely too many of them along the treacherous route. Originally constructed by Paraguayan POW’s that were captured during the Chaco War (1932–1935), the road was formed using only picks and shovels. Some ravines along the one-lane route plunge more than 1,500 feet straight down. Naturally, as it is a road of death, there are precious few guardrails, if any at all, to protect those brave enough to ride the road.
 

 

 

Base-jumper on the Death Road
 
Some of the braver (if not brainless) bikers are also known to “base jump” off the road into whatever lies beneath.There are loads of tour companies that offer guided excursions of the road and people who run them have told stories of young tourists showing up to ride hungover (yikes), or of overzealous bikers armed with GoPro cameras on their helmets that only aid in distracting them from the very real dangers of the road.

Of course not every biker that tries their luck on the Death Road are foolhardy or unprepared for the intimidating trek. Many who take on the Death Road are legitimately skilled thrill-seekers in search of their next challenge. While base jumping into a blissful looking rainforest may be appealing those who live to die another day, I’d just rather watch people doing it. So if you just nodded your head in agreement to my last statement, please enjoy the following video of a guy base jumping off the Death Road. Viva la DEATH!
 

POV video of a base jumper on the Death Road

Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol portrait surfboards

By some strange twist of fate in 1968, the paths of eleven-year-old surfer Tim Bessell and pop art phenomenon Andy Warhol, intersected in La Jolla, California where Warhol was filming San Diego Surf.
 

Brillo surfboard (based on Andy Warhol’s mid-sixties work, “Brillo Boxes”)
 

The Last Supper surfboard (from “The Last Supper” series by Andy Warhol, 1986)
 
Although the film would go unseen for 43 years, Bessell had the unique opportunity to observe Warhol and his muses up close during his formative years. According to Bessell, Warhol lived only two blocks away from him during his time filming in La Jolla and that the artist himself even ended up purchasing surfboards from Carl Ekstrom (the inventor of the asymmetric surfboard and snowboard), who was mentoring Bessel at the time.

Too young to understand the sudden culture explosion surrounding him, Bessell was content to be a curious observer, but the experience would go on to help frame his future as an artist. After graduating with degrees in Art and Architecture from San Diego State University, Bessell and Warhol found themselves rubbing shoulders once again at a mid-80’s party at the Playboy Club in New York. Bessell shared his childhood recollections of when Warhol’s “freak show” invaded his sleepy, hippie surf town during the Summer of Love. He says that this chance meeting “opened his relationship” with Warhol and ultimately led to his collaboration with The Andy Warhol Foundation for a decadent line of surfboards, all bearing Warhol’s unmistakable artwork.
 

“Marilyn” (Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe done in the weeks after her death in 1962)
 

“Elvis” (silver tone) and “Gun Metal Elvis” surfboards (based on “Double Elvis” by Andy Warhol, 1963)
 

“Mao Zedong” surfboard (from a series of portraits of Mao done by Andy Warhol in 1973)
 
More after the jump…

 
I was going to post about these clever-as-hell weightlifting skateboards by Russian artist Meisha Petrick a few days ago, but there was too little information about them. There still isn’t, but from what I understand, they are being produced by Meisha and if you’re interested in ‘em, you can inquire about ordering one (or more) at hello@petrick.ru. I have no idea how much they’re selling for as no one has a listed price anywhere.

A strong board indeed. 

With thanks to Jeff Albers!

 
According to “WhiteFang,” who claims to have “the world’s largest collection of the Who records & CDs” and also has a good deal of other stuff, these amusing pictures of the Who on the ski slopes date from 1966, which figures just to look at them. The magazine that ran them is unknown, but “Naar de Wintersport” certainly suggests that it was Dutch.

Notice the playful typeface selection and the fun borders—I must say I admire the Dutch approach to teen fan magazines!
 

 

 
More after the jump…

If you’re young, male and you live in the city, how do you prove yourself in the most materially comfortable country on earth?  How do you show courage, daring, skill, strength? How do you prove you’re a man? If you’re a Masai Tribesman in Africa you kill a lion. If you’re an Aborigine boy, you go on walkabout, if you live in Dogtown, Los Angeles you ride a skateboard.

Hilariously, this is how this vintage documentary from the golden age of skateboarding begins.  At the time of its release in 1978, the sport of skateboarding was still a developing endeavor that a lot of people outside of California might have looked at with simple fascination. While the sport was growing, with skate shops and parks popping up all over the country, it was by no means as prevalent and integrated into world culture as it is today. Skateboard Kings, produced by Horace Ové for the British Television series The World About Us,features early pioneers Tony Alva, Ray Flores, Shogo Kubo, Stacy Peralta, Billy Yeron, Paul Constantineau, Jerry Valdez and Kent Senatore among many others. It makes them out to be this sort of new kind of rebel on the fringes of a faddy phenomenon, with a “No really… kids are actually getting paid money to do this for a living” attitude. Interviews with parents in a skate shop are particularly chuckle-worthy as they try to rationalize letting their kids get involved in the sport despite its inherent dangers from overly crowded “skate courts” and whatnot. If parents really wanted something to worry about, imagine what they would think if they knew anything about the legendary Dogtown party world.
 

 
There’s very little of a taste of the party here, however, but it’s still cool nonetheless, and despite some of its stiffness, there’s great footage from early skate parks, pool skating (and draining), and Tony Alva narrating tricks and using still early terminology like “aerials” and “grinders.” Tiny boards, traffic cone slaloms, flat ground 360’s and rolling handstands were the cutting edge at the time. There’s also a skateboard safety clinic featured which is really funny and mike just leave modern day skaters shaking their heads. 

The last five minutes of the film are great, showing Tony Alva and others skating 21-foot high pipes soon to be installed in the desert.  The infamous “Arizona Pipes” should be legendary to anybody interested in the history of the development of skateboarding as a sport and as a creative endeavor.
 

 
Did you all see John Oliver’s takedown of the NCAA on Last Week Tonight last week? If you are in any way concerned about the rapacious nature of collegiate athletics today and you haven’t seen it already, you really must. (I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post.) It’s tempting to say that they took it too far, but they simply didn’t—the NCAA deserves exactly that much vitriol and then some. They’re just that bad.

I’ve been a sports fan all my life, baseball football basketball, but it’s getting more and more difficult to reconcile any kind of progressive or left-wing identity with the cash-grab, bully-cities-into-building-expensive-stadiums, jockish wife-beating etc. mentality. It’s difficult to watch the Last Week Tonight footage of coaches abusing their charges on the court and not think that this is some sanctioned equivalent of slavery, much as (say) the nation’s prison complex is similarly enforcing a very nasty form of Jim Crow. The NCAA is so bad that it’s increasingly becoming a moral imperative to oppose it. I’ve recently made a similar decision regarding the NFL. (I’m hanging on to baseball for now, but we’ll see where that goes.)

If you’re on the Left and you can’t reconcile your love of sports with your progressive principles, then you should look into Marx Madness, the clever online bracket tournament that pits Gilles Deleuze against Angela Davis, Terry Eagleton against Mao, Louis Althusser against Slavoj Žižek, and Vladimir Lenin against Ulrike Meinhof.
 
Here’s the blank bracket:
 

(For both brackets on this page, you can click on the image to see a much larger version.)
 
The winners are decided by user votes—that’s right, you can have an impact on who wins this thing. The voting for Round 2 is open until Friday, March 20. The crowning of the champion will take place on April 20, so smoke up a doobie and invite your friends over for the Big Show (which will probably be anticlimactic because it takes just a few moments to find out who won it all).

Here’s the description of how Marx Madness works:
 

Marx madness relies on the power of the people. Click on the image of the bracket ... to zoom in at high resolution and see the match ups. Thinkers were randomly seeded into the first round. Each week, there will be a public online vote to determine which individuals move forward. Be sure to visit the site each week before Friday at midnight to cast your votes.

 
After the votes are tallied, the winners are announced and each matchup gets a little writeup in the breathless mode common to sports reporting—this is easily my favorite part of Marx Madness. For example, here’s the summary of the first-round matchup between Antonio Gramsci and Jacques Rancière:
 

Gramsci over Ranciere
In a clash European theorists of civil society from different eras, Gramsci strolled to victory over Jacques Ranciere in round 1. The little Italian theorist, dissident, and long-time prisoner quickly made the transition from war of maneuver to war of position, overwhelming Ranciere’s vaunted ‘police’ defense. Gramsci moves on to an Antonio derby in the round of 32 against Negri in a classic 20th vs 21st century match up.

 
Here’s the same bracket as the one above, with the results from the first round already filled in:
 

 
More Marx Madness after the jump…

 
Ladies and gentlemen, Prince the jock.

Remember that sketch from Chapelle Show where they reenacted Charlie Murphy’s story about meeting Prince with his brother in the 80s? The one where The Purple One and his crew beat everyone from Eddie Murphy’s crew in basketball, and then served them all pancakes? I remember thinking the show had taken some artistic license, not because of the pancakes (I’m absolutely sure Prince is a very hospitable host), because of the basketball detail; Prince is a massive personality, but he’s physically really tiny.

But apparently, he’s got game! Who knew?

Not only was that story, in fact, true, Prince’s athletic prowess has been well-documented since junior high school, as you can see from the Afro-tastic photo above. Yes, young Prince Rogers Nelson was quite the baller despite his diminutive stature, and a recently recovered article from The Minneapolis Star Tribune archives has the quote from his coach to prove it.
 

 
I understand the disappointment of not making the starting lineup—especially when you’ve managed to work around that kind of height disadvantage, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say I’d rather have made Purple Rain.
 
Via UPROXX

 
According to the YouTube uploader, this is very rare footage of a young Prince Charles skating in a double-breasted suit and dress shoes. Now since it’s on the Internet, it ain’t that rare anymore. I’ve never seen Prince Charles showing off his stellar skate moves before, but that doesn’t mean diddly-squat. (It’s an excerpt from a short doc about Charles visiting an inner city youth organization.)

But here he is in all of his future-King-of-England glory at a skatepark showing all the kiddies how it’s done. (Not really.) His feeble attempts at conversation are amusing (“So you’re an expert on that? Ah, yes. What about looping the loop?”) He claims that had he known in advance that there would be skateboarding, he’d have brought along a helmet and “the other protective paraphernalia.” Because all royals are big on safety. At least he might’ve left the wing tips at home.

 
via The World’s Best Ever

 
Japanese juice company Kagom have done the impossible; they’ve created a wearable 18 lbs. robot that fits comfortably on your shoulders and dispenses succulent tomatoes into your pie hole whilst you go about your morning jog. The robot, called Tomatan, holds up to six medium-sized tomatoes. When you feel the need for a snack or suffer from hunger pangs while on your run, just pull the lever and a lovely tomato plops into your mouth.

This is the solution we have all been waiting for.

“Tomatoes have lots of nutrition that combats fatigue,” says Shigenori Suzuki of Kagome.

If you feel the 18 lbs. Tomatan is just too heavy, never fear, there’s also the “Petit-Tomatan” (which is half the weight of the Tomatan). The Petit-Tomatan will be tested out at Tokyo Marathon on Sunday. Should be interesting.

Watch the Tomatan in action, below:

 
Via Death and Taxes and IB Times

 
The title of this post pretty much says it all. Is it corny? Yes. Did it make me laugh? Yes. Do I wish something like this really existed? Yes. Should national treasure Richard Simmons make this thing? Most definitely.

 
With thanks to Jeff Albers!