Kill List: your school

My brother who's going to Portland State sent me this text message yesterday:

There's a tent event on campus: Organic Yerba Mate. And they have a guy playing a didgeridoo and beat-boxing. I really hate this place sometimes.

Fast forward to my day here at Lewis and Clark:

Just looked out the library window and discovered that the school ukelele club is putting on a little performance on the steps of the commons. They're all dressed in flannels and super cute matching beanies and swaying and singing along to their shitty songs. Thankfully I am guarded from this unholy cacophony by the wall of sound-proofed windows I'm watching through.
The 100 or so person crowd that's formed is a veritable who's who of all the people that I've never talked to, but still viciously hate based entirely on their appearance. Most of my least favorite people are in the audience, and the audience just started clapping along. At this point, all of my suspicions have been thoroughly confirmed.


You know who gets to use Ukeleles? Fucking Elvis does. Elvis can play ukelele until my ear drums bleed, because he is the fucking king and he can do whatever he wants. There's only one king, and he is not you.

So unless your name is Zombie Elvis and your overweight ass rose from the grave to haunt us with songs off the Aloha from Hawaii album, you either need to put that shit down, or prepare to eat a hand grenade courtesy of TEAM ROBOT.

As for you Digereedoo-playing PSU Yerba Mate guy, let's take a quick look at your qualifications to play that traditional Aboriginal tribal instrument. Just for the record, I've never seen didgeridoo guy, but I'm about 99% sure I've got a lock on didgeridoo guy's program. Let's review:

White? Check.
Dreads? Check.
Toms? Check.
Kucinich, Coexist, and "Keep Portland Weird" bumper stickers on your didgeridoo case? Check.
Decided to hate your rich parents at age 15? Check.
Only time in Australia was on a family vacation with your rich parents when you were 11? Check.
Didgeridoos are "really spiritual" for you? Check.
You talk a lot about "going back to the roots" but you have no clue what that actually means? Check.



Yeah, I'd say you are a perfect candidate for co-opting someone else's culture in order to make yourself feel worldly and hip. As a side benefit, your "music," like that of the ukelele team, will help guide TEAM ROBOT's league of killbots to your exact location when the mechanized apocalypse comes to Portland.

Remembering a friend that's gone: Lear Miller

Lear Miller will be in Seattle next weekend, and not a day too soon, as he will be just in time for the funeral service being held in his memory.

TEAM ROBOT wants to announce the upcoming funeral service of bike rider Lear David Miller, 22 of Phoenix, Arizona. During his riding career, Bike Lear was known by many as a fun loving rider, famous for his textbook style and effortless bike handling skills. Many regard Bike Lears greatest accomplishment as becoming one of the only mountain bike riders to ever actually scrub, a feat claimed by many but achieved by only a select few.

After struggling with a multi-year addiction of bailing on rides to go "work on his photography portfolio, bro," the bike rider that we all knew passed away on Monday, November 26, 2012. The official cause of riding death listed on the riding death certificate was "Posting a professional quality self-portrait of himself clearly posing while pretending to text on the cell at Chipotle, all like 'oh hey I didn't even know my photo was being taken' and shit."


The presiding doctor supplied this photographic evidence of Bike Lear in his last moments. The doctor also went on to add "Hey dude, you're not fooling anyone. Like, I bet you took AT LEAST five test shots."

The doctor told us that Bike  Lear probably didn't suffer in his last moments as a bike rider, because "at this late stage and in his degraded state, he probably didn't remember what riding was."

Bike Lear will be replaced in his familial, academic, and work duties by his clone, Photography Bro Lear:

Photography Bro Lear could not be reached for comment at the time of this story, but friends of Bike Lear reported that Photography Bro Lear was planning to continue many of the familiar traditions that friends of Bike Lear remember, like shamelessly living on Facebook, buying cars with stupid looking body kits, or always taking his shirt off in inappropriate situations.




Bike Lear's friend, photographer Tim Zimmerman, met Bike Lear on a photoshoot for Dainese at Blackrock. "I always thought Bike Lear had some of the best riding style around, and when I met him I was really excited to try to capture it. He seemed really interested in photography during the shoot, but I didn't really think anything of it at the time."

Timzim with Bike Lear and fellow photographer Cory Tepper, shooting for Dainese.

"I guess I thought Bike Lear knew his limits with photography. I mean, I ride bikes on the side, too, but you've got to be responsible, dabble with it, you know? Bike Lear just hit photography way too hard, and I guess he just couldn't hang. I was totally stunned when I heard Bike Lear was gone. I feel... responsible in a way, as crazy as that sounds," said Zimmerman, 49 of Ballard, Washington.

Friend Bob Stenson had this to say about Lear's passing: "You know, we all noticed the collared shirts and the cut off jorts, and all the weird emo photos going up on Facebook, and we all thought 'it's a phase.' We all had a wild phase, right? But then he started spending more and more time with that camera, and he was always too busy to ride or 'something came up.' You know what that all means, but you don't want to butt into someone else's business, you know? We could tell he was out of control, but we couldn't figure out how to help him. We held many riding interventions for Bike Lear up at Whistler, but even then Bike Lear would want to hang on the side of the race courses and check what angle Hylands or Sven were shooting or, like, F-stops and shit."

From all of us that still ride bikes, Lear, you will be missed.


-TEAM ROBOT

Raw speed

Raw speed:





Winning:

Amazing and Amazing-er

Morgan Wade is still certifiably nuts:









But as amazing as that Morgan Wade blind huch-a-chuck around some random, slippery full pipe 500 miles away from medical attention was, this is amazing-er:



To the "mystery" terrorist, we salute you. As full time other-people's-fun-ruiners, we at TEAM ROBOT are just pissed we didn't think of this first. Film comes from Paris Gore, who promises that there will be more soon: "That's just a little bit of what's coming."


From the CEO of Strava:

Strava CEO

- November 12, 2012

Mr. ********,

Thanks for the heads up. We have now flagged your Strava Profile:http://app.strava.com/athletes/640238 for inappropriate use and specifically for violation of our terms of service.

Strive on,

Strava

Chase Hawk

Still better than you.

A haiku

ROBOTS ARE METAL

WE CRUSH HUMANS FOR PLEASURE

SQUASH GOES THE HUMAN

These things are stupid

All of these things are stupid, and you people know who you are.


The only ones who will die happy will be the ones who die early in the ROBOT apocolypse.

Mind = blown

Unfortunately this video is ineligible for VOD on Pinkbike because when Petr's poppin wheelies with the horses he's running a Red Bull hat instead of a helmet.

But I hope that doesn't disbar it from Video of the Year, because this is the best 3 minutes you will see in all of 2012 and 2013, guaranteed. Whoever made this video for Red Bull should get hired as their lead creative director, because he is a straight up genius who is transforming cinema.

Like the recent Van Steengerburgeners video "RISE," or "SRAM: Reece Wallace: Versatility," even mediocre mountain bike web edits are getting EPIC names to show how SERIOUS they are. Somehow this video masterpiece escaped without a name, but if it had one, it would obviously be:

"PETR KRAUS: WHITE STALLION"

 


I've already watched "White Stallion" fives times, and as I'm watching it it's slowly dawning on me that I'm gonna have to start canceling plans for the rest of the weekend so I can free up some time really marinate in this masterpiece. I can't put my finger on any one thing that makes "White Stallion" so good, but here's my top ten impressions, in literally no order whatsoever:


8. The auto-tuned eagle "caaaaaaw" at 0:30. Inspired. 

9. That eagle caw is immediately followed by a sweet, slo-mo skid that would make Clay Porter shit himself envy. ONE TWO PUNCH, I CAN'T HANDLE THIS UCH AWESOME RED BULL.

4. "White Stallion" probably cost a lot to produce, but whatever they spent it was worth it. Thousands of dollars, maybe $10000+ to produce, but this is worth millions. People are going to be kicking in the doors of their local 7-11's to buy Red Bull after watching this. Since watching it, I've already started boiling red bull in a table spoon and mainlining it between my toes. After "White Stallion," I need Red Bull now.

7. Whatever the breakdown was that happened at 1:13, with the lightning and the rocks falling and the leaves rustling and the water, that was amazing. Like, I think I just reached a new spiritual awakening. 

2. I like to imagine that the filmers, riders, and the guys back at the editing sweet are all stoked on how this turned out. Like, when they watched the final cut together they all leaned back in their chairs and talked about how badass they are.

5. Eastern Europeans dig the shit out of this video, guaranteed.

1. Straight up burnout laying down the power on the MTB at 1:30.

6. I could watch this twenty times and I'd still see new stuff every time. The details are what make "White Stallion" so good.

10. Red Bull really should just rename themselves "White Stallion." I would drink "White Stallion" day and night. What? That doesn't sound gay at all.

3. Whoever picked the music nailed that shit. Sometimes when I'm just browsing the web, I'll start "White Stallion" on another tab just so I can jam to that music.

Flow

Words can't even describe how jacked I was when I found out that they're still doing Flow Shows:




Technically the team coach at Diamondback is Simon Lawton, and he's been great and all, but I've been talking to the higher ups at Diamondback to give Simon the pink slip and bring in Dangerous Dan. That's the sort of progression we as a company need. The man is downright inspiring. So watch that clip and prepare to have your mind blown.

"Blah blah blah cornering... blah blah blah foot position... blah blah blah..." WHATEVER SIMON, that cornering and momentum stuff is played. Thanks for the input Captain Old News, but it's almost 2013 and it's skinny time in mountain bike world. You better start packing, cuz you're on the way out.

The man, the myth, the legend. Diamondback is in talks to bring Dan on board as our new skills coach. TEAM ROBOT is currently working with Dan to start an annual TEAM ROBOT North Shore Skinny and Hawaiian Shirt Festival.


Plus there's room for a lot of valued input on bike setup as we dial our line in for 2014:

So much dialed in one single picture. That new V10 has nothin on TAG wheels.

Brian Lopes Air Downhill

Lopes has been winning air downhill at Crankworx since the first time Bush II said "strategery."

This year Blopes got beat, but in all the hubbub about Steve Smith's threepeat I never saw photographic evidence of the chosen one's run.

UNTIL TODAY:

The light can get pretty spotty in the trees during Crankworx, so I'm sure Señor CincoCinco really appreciated the fans trying to refract that harsh sun light with those off-white convex diffusing lenses to improve visibility for him. Plus greenshirtassoutguy is blocking out the bad line on that jump = team player!

With Lopes being a perennial crowd favorite at Crankworx and all, you know the other top ten riders didn't get the same level of support from the fans.

TEAM ROBOT salutes:

Lars Sternberg

Things Canadians love

Everyone is losing their shit over the new Tom van Steenbergen video, and I am too. It's pretty exciting when a video comes along that perfectly captures a popular film genre. Like "Double Indemnity" was to film noir, or "Rebel Without a Cause" was to the coming-of-age drama, this new film from director Harrison Mendel truly represents the high water mark of Post-Klassen Canadian Mountain Bike cinema. It's an instant classic, and I'm sure it will be heralded as one of the greatest films of this generation of film makers.

Tom van Steenbergen :: Rise on Pinkbike


Here are some other classics from the Post-Klassen Canadian Mountain Bike film genre:

 Life Cycles; 2010.

Life Cycles; 2011.

Strength in Numbers; 2012.

"Go On," Canadian actor Matthew Perry's new irreverent, offbeat NBC comedy; 2012.

Together, let's explore some of the defining elements of this burgeoning new genre as they appear in the new critically acclaimed work from Mendel:


1. Shades on while rollin in the whip:

Mandatory.

2. Color-matched ano parts:

Also, clearly mandatory.

3. Straight line dirt jumps with bumpy ass run-ins:

Based on MXDN,  even Blake Baggett can't handle that much sand between jumps.

Going 900 mph into your first ever double backflip? I hope you like multi-tasking, because your brains gonna be pulling double duty, putting all your downhill skills to work between the landings and the next lip. It probably took five days to make this video, but it would have taken five minutes to make that run-in look halfway decent.





4. Getting the sun in there and blowing the shit out of the shot:

Is that a 360 barspin, a flip whip, or the second coming of Christ?

Fun fact: most UFO sightings are actually Canadians overexposing their shots to get that Star Trek lens flare look:

5. That music. 

Holy shit. But seriously, what was worse, this song or the soundtrack of From The Inside Out?





TEAM ROBOT says, "AIDS or cancer."

Turbo/Hucking

Turbo:








Hucking:

Procedure of Competition on Pinkbike

Fellow Diamondback rider Carson Storch and his trip down to AT's. I always thought my pre race routine was pretty dialed, but then I saw this video and saw Carson shooting guns before driving out. Gonna have to hand it to him: genius. So Patrick, we're gonna have to start working more guns into our TEAM ROBOT pre-race routines.

Whenever Carson does flips he does this weird thing with his head where he tucks it into his body during the first part of the spin and then looks back and finishes the flip, so it was pretty rad to see the wholde shebang from a helmet cam. Gnarly stuff in there.

It wasn't that long ago that his finals run would have won any competition anywhere. The things people are pulling out in contests these days are pretty wild.

TEAM ROBOT salutes:

Photographers that ride:

Photographers that crash:

Concussions are rad.

Photographers that moonlight as Strava terrorists crushing your local KOM on their CRF50:

The BROS:

The Hoes:

And all the other life winners out there:

TEAM ROBOT salutes you.

Kovarik

Chris Kovarik - Summer of Summit - The Dirt Chronicles Ep. 4 - The Karver on Pinkbike

Lines for days. There is no way you rode New Joke and said "hey I should gap onto this bridge." And that super cross double/table thing at 2:59? Yikes.

In recent news

While the Benghazi and Petraeus scandals have been the dominant news story coming from the Pentagon's ongoing struggle to contain Islamic Extremism, today marked a new chapter in the War on Terrorism. Officials within the Pentagon are calling this development "The Microsoft Era."

As Google, Apple, and Samsung have risen to prominence in the tech world, they have left behind a wake of failed Microsoft programs and hardware that once great computer titan Microsoft had hoped would compete with their far more user friendly rivals from Mountain View, Cupertino, and Seoul.

Realizing that no one in the world ever uses Bing, terrorists the world over have seized on an opportunity to search otherwise critical "trigger" words like "build your own nuclear bomb," "Anthrax," "biosurveillance," and "holy shit can Hillary's butt get any bigger," free from the purview of U.S. intelligence agencies.

In a recent Homeland Security Congressional oversight hearing, Janet Napolitano, head of DHS laid out the critical threat poised by the new "Microsoft Era: 

"We have been trying to get our people up to speed on the new Microsoft software, but they're all like 'what's this Bing shit?' and then they go back to analyzing potential domestic and external threats from Google."

When asked about the DHS monitoring agency's preference to analyze threatening search queries from Google instead of Bing, Napolitano stated that more funding might be necessary to control the threat poised by Bing and other shitty search engines like Ask.com, Yahoo!,  and MSNsearch:

"At this point in time our resources are insufficient to properly monitor and neutralize security threats emanating from these alternative search services. Our IT people can't keep up, because everyone keeps changing their default browser back to Google faster than our IT dept can reset it to Bing. Our people will monitor threats on Bing for, like, maybe five minutes after I leave their office, but then they're back on Google because reportedly Bing "sucks a dead dog's balls on a hot day in July.'"

Terrorists are also reportedly excited for new phones and tablets from Microsoft coming out in early 2013. The terrorists expect that these platforms should be totally abandoned by consumers and businesses no later than Fall 2014, making them available for unmonitored and unhampered use by the world's freedom-hating Mujahideen.

When reached for comment, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said:

"this comes as sweet vindication for my 5-year plan at Microsoft. In 2010 the board of directors said we needed to find new markets if we wanted to stay relevant in today's tech market. We've done that here, and frankly I think we knocked this one out of the park, connecting with the world's terrorists one year ahead of schedule and building what I think will become our biggest future demographic."

In a related story, terrorists have reportedly begun using the outdated music storage device from Microsoft, the "Zune," to store important documents, threatening videos, and other sensitive material. In a statement released to AP reporters last week, Terrorist master mind Makeen bin Miftaah ul Jannah was all like "Honestly, who uses a Zune these days? If you saw someone using a Zune, you wouldn't give two shits what was on it. Probably Rob Thomas or some shit like that. It's like, 'welcome to the 21st century, bitch.' Plus, we have been picking them up on the cheap, too, bro." 

Puberty happens; Congratulations Kevin!

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Kevin-Littlefield-World-Cup-Aspirations-video-2012.html

Follow this link to watch a rad Kevin Littlefield edit. This is the 17 (or 16?) year old kid who got 5th place at National Champs IN PRO this year and then proceeded to get NO PRESS WHATSOEVER.

Getting highlighted on Team Robot might seem cool for Kevin, but in the grand scheme of things that still amounts to NO PRESS WHATSOEVER.

Kevin on a podium with some pretty heavy hitters. I mean, to be fair, he did get beat by all those heavy hitters, but it's still pretty cool, I guess.

Kevin totally not getting the shot in Austria during practice for World Champs, 2012. I mean, good for you for still being in the frame Kevin, but you know the photographer threw away a bunch of frames of you straight-airing this jump, and then when he saw McKay Vezina in the background cranking that table/thing behind you he decided to run that shot. You gotta make hay while the sun shines, Kevin. If you're Greg Minnaar you can straight air for days and still get cover shots, but the rest of us hacks have to do a little something something if we ever want to get press.




Here's the edit, but you should really show Kevin some support, follow the link to Pinkbike and leave him some encouraging comments. And tell him to get that red derailleur cable housing off his bike if he doesn't want to look like a complete joey.

Kevin Littlefield - World Cup Aspirations on Pinkbike

This happened:

So did this:

Lone Wolf Productions - Richie Schley Chillin In Laguna on Pinkbike





And this:

Words fail me.

Victoria's Bitter

So, Victoria's secret is in trouble... again. That's right, the Butthurt police are pressing charges in the court of public opinion against men's greatest ally after Craftsman Tools, Victoria's Secret.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/victorias-secret-apologizes-for-native-american-headdress-used-in-annual-fashion-show/2012/11/12/1981ea8e-2d26-11e2-b631-2aad9d9c73ac_story.html

Now, I know you're thinking the same thing I am: the only real tragedy here is letting Miss Piggy out on the runway sporting that muffin top. I mean, you could practically park on bus on that bulge. She's gonna need to lay off the Big Macs if she wants to play in the big leagues.

Anyway, apparently the Native American Community and feminists everywhere are pretty upset about this whole thing. I'm not an expert in this field, so I can't really argue the merits of their nuanced and well thought out position, and frankly I'm even willing to give the feminazis the benefit of the doubt and believe for a moment that the picture above is, in fact, offensive in some way.



So, are they wrong? I don't know. Here's a better question: Does it matter?







To answer this question, Team Robot gave a simple but scientific poll to 20 randomly selected interviewees. We briefed the respondents on the recent Victoria's Secret news story, and then asked three simple questions. Here are our responses:





Question 1:

Question 2:

Question 3:

Red Bull = George Lucas

Redbull has been so successful to this point that they have reached George Lucas status: everyone fears and reveres their success, and thus no one will ever again question them creatively.

This sounds like a good thing, until George comes up with a character like Jar Jar Binks. Or any of the flat, boring, useless characters from "Phantom Menace." And can anyone tell me who or what "The Phantom Menace" is or what it means in regards to the plot of the movie?

Look Redbull, Flugtag is great. So's RAMPAGE!!! But what the hell is this:





Here's me, two minutes into that video:

The best I can figure is that you saw all the Gymkhana videos and said "Snap, we gotta play catch-up on this Ken Block/Monster thing." And if you thought that, maybe you'd be right. But taking all your "best" athletes (sorry, but showing Lolo Jones hurdling sort of falls flat next to Robbie Maddison  45 feet up on a 90 degree hip) and having them each perform their easiest to replicate tricks, interspersed between clips of the most boring Rube Golberg machine I've ever seen...

straight nose manual = SO IMPRESSIVE

I think this all sounded like a great idea back at Redbull HQ, when they brainstormed this gem, sure to be a viral internet homerun- "No, but then when the Skydiver lands on the runway he [sort of] starts this massive Rube Goldberg machine with other athletes involved and then it [sort of] opens a can of Redbull at the end." But then the athletes showed up, and they were told they HAD TO NAIL IT FIRST TRY OR ELSE WE HAVE TO RESET THE MACHINE IN EVERY TAKE, so they did some safe, easy, go-to (read: boring) tricks.

So in the end, the entire potential appeal of the video is destroyed by the producers because:

A) all your star athletes do stuff that every mid-grade pro (and some beginners) in their respected sport could do

B) the machine doesn't even open the Red Bull in the end. It just cranks the layer of ice around the can, exposing it to be grabbed by the waiting snow boarder, who...

C) clearly isn't going anywhere in the end. Like, hey guys, you're not fooling anyone. That helicopter is going to land immediately after the director gives the thumbs up, snowboard bro is getting right back onto the tarmac, and then he's throwing that Redbull in the garbage and going right back to his trailer. This video sure looks like it was taken outside of LA in the summer, which means the nearest snowboarding is here in Oregon, 1000 miles away. That's a long chopper ride.




Well, it just doesn't quite have the same feel as 650 horsepower of rev-limited, backfiring Ford tearing holes in my ear drums as Mr. Block jumps sideways and backwards off the side of a San Francisco street.

It pains me to say this, but in this round:

Monster Gymkana videos   >   Redbull Rube Goldberg machine/Video Sleep Aid






But either way, as guru/wise sage/reallyoldguy TimZim would say, they're both posion.