SLAP. Button-ups. Stevie.

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Peralta, 1975, by Stecyk.

1. Skateboards are a Cali art form! No fucking way.

Skateboard: Evolution and Art in California is the seven-thousandth retrospective of skate-related photos presented at an LA-area gallery since 2004. Dope!, because I for one cannot get enough of tanned and beachy young blond men being glorified again and again for their originality, adorable scofflaw antics, and free-wheeling whimsy.

Whatever, dude. I might go to this thing, if I'm promised that there will be snacks. Just point me to the Sheffey and Jovontae areas and I'm straight.



My qualifications for commenting on skateboard issues:

a) that's my name, not yours, on a board




and

b) I live right by Lockwood. LOCK-WUUUHD.


Plus there was that time I made blog love to that alluring Mouse soundtrack.






2. The whole idea of semiotics, while amazing and dope, is not something that I found my parents wanted to talk about at the dinner table when I came home from college on break. This was disappointing and enthusiasm-killing for the early-20s version of me. Pass the salad dressing.

Alas, Roland Barthes, my command of your ideas is as tight as the day I turned in that last Literary Theory 101 paper! Can't nothin keep us apart! As I recall, a sign stands for something, to someone, in some way, right? It's a discrete unit of meaning, nothing more than a vessel through which information is communicated, a message from one mind to another. The meaning in the message is expressed through words, images, sound. (Like how the Real Rock riddim says to me, clear as day, "Buy another bathing suit and douse yourself in cocoa butter, love.")

What we have here, semiotically speaking, is the World of Film informing us through imagery that Buttoning Your Shirt All The Way Up is a protagonist's way of saying "I'm Retarded."



a) Yup, sounds about right.

b) Fuckinghell, I never think of obvious things like this until I'm looking at it on someone else's site. Ah well. Nice work, Slate; 'least I still got the whole socially-awkward-bikini-nerd-with-leftist-politics-at-the-record-store perspective covered on my site. We all have our strengths.






3. YouTube's useful for when you have guests over and they want to know why Travis Barker incurs your wrath like few other humans before him or since. If you have difficulty articulating exactly why, just press play and watch everybody in the room go, "AH YES! There it is."

Hit it, Steveland. (Ha! Literally.)






a) You can feel it all ohh-ohhhh-verrrr.

b) You can feel it all over, people.





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