Way back in the 90's when things were less lame, Big Brother magazine ruled the world. During this extended period of domination, Dave Carnie was the king. This was during the days before Twitter, Facebook and emoticons, when people still liked or were only mildly apathetic towards words. As such, Carnie was afforded the freedom to tell tales in full sentences, paragraphs, and pages. The result was fairly awesome. Big Brother was an infamous, groundbreaking publication that paved the way for Jackass, Vice, and countless other mainstays of the slightly counter culture.

The complete writings of Dave Carnie from the Big Brother days have been assembled into a 712 page monster, Boob. Where as a copy of Big Brother was fairly decent at swatting spiders and cockroaches, Boob is sizable enough to smack rats and/or small humans around. Though I have not tested this theory, I have tested reading it in various environments such as the car (both while driving and passengering), in the bathroom, and on the couch. All have resulted in me literally laughing out loud (LOL). I want to stress that this is the literal translation of LOL, not the figurative one that plagues our internet. Since there are so many pages, I haven't read it all, but I feel I have enough of a grasp to recommend it. Here's a little sample plus some random videos.

Get the book now

"Cab's on the way," the bartender said as he placed a frothy pint of Guinness down in front of me. I took a long tug and turned around to examine the rest of the bar's decor, which had just begun to attract my attention, and there, right behind me, stood an old man with a little basket. We made eye contact, and he gave me that, "I'm sad and poor, won't you help a brother out?" look. I hate that look. He tilted his basket so that I could see what was inside. I leaned in to look out of politeness. Guess what was inside.? Yup. Ham.

Can snowboarding, or skateboarding for that matter, ever return to the good ole days? Does anyone but jaded old fucks care? I don't think it can and that's nothing to complain about. Because in the beginning, it was a blank slate. No one knew what the fuck they were doing, so they could do literally anything. Innovation was occurring daily. But every system is going to reach equilibrium at some point and begin to flatten out. I don't want to sound like a pessimist and say "Everything's been done," because there is still room for progression and innovatiton. But not much. And that's because it's turning gay.