As another winter envelops us in white puke, we look forward to those dreamlike days of bottomless powder, hoping that the powder is snow and not real puke. Those epic days provide us with a reason to keep on keepin’ on. They give us something to look forward to in an otherwise dark and drearily cold season. We also giddily anticipate the great times to be shared with family and friends, the hot chocolate with mounds of whipped cream, and the cliché Christmas sweater parties where people sip nog from little mugs while sticking their pinkies straight out like an elf stiffy (legal note: we in no way endorse or non-endorse any specific religion’s winter holiday—it’s just that we’ve yet to be invited to any Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, or Festivus sweater parties, but once we do, we will neither endorse nor non-endorse the hell out of them).
In an effort to betterize the best of the new year, we feel it might be helpful to dwell on the worst of the past year, thus reminding us and you the difference between awesome and being stupid. Only by understanding the difference can we truly enjoy (and exploit if possible) the great things in life. So we present to you in reverse alphabetical order 2008’s floppiest failures, hatedest happenings, and dumbest debacles:
Monoboot
10. The Monoboot—While the monoski has been around for way too long, the monoboot has not yet broken into the mainstream mono world. Much like kite-rollerblading, the monoboot has made several attempts (beginning in 2003) to penetrate the sports world, but fortunately flopped again in 2008. It would probably have a better chance if it didn’t force users, once disconnected from their monoski, to hop around like a kid trying out for the role of worm in a school play.
9. The Economy—If it were a comic book character, it’d be SuperFlop. Oh yeah, it bombed big time—both here in the US as well as in several countries around the globe. Ain’t no denyin’ it. The silver lining, however, is that you won’t have to fight as hard to get first tracks off of Snowbird’s Cirque this President’s Day Weekend. If you can figure out how to make a lift pass in Photoshop, that is, since there’s no way you can afford $72 for one day of ripping. Hell, you can barely afford pork ‘n beans.
8. $1200 Spyder Jackets—Yeah, ok, we get the whole idea of wanting to wear something that says “I’m a badass mo’fo’, if you mess with me I’ll vaporize you with my glare.” We are often guilty of it ourselves. But spending 1.2 G on a ski coat is just excessive. If you want to be a true hero, buy a $280 jacket, then show up to the ticket office and buy a day pass for each of the ten poor college kids standing in line behind you. They’ll probably hoist you up on their shoulders, chant your name, and—if you’re lucky—blog about you.
7. The Overly-Scripted Presidential Debates—This last year’s presidential race was so intense that it drew the attention of people all over the world that normally care less about politics than they do about the weird rash in my pants. Millions of people gathered around their televisions and radios to listen to what should have been the Holyfield-Tyson fight of rich and powerful politicians, only to be disappointed by something so pre-planned and scripted that it was more comparable to The Evolution of Knitting, book on tape. Where we hoped to see these guys blast each other with real opinions, solid plans, and system-changing ideas, we were sleepily bombarded with answer-dodging, pathetic pandering, and circular responses. Nobody even tried to bite the other guy’s ear off.
6. The So-Called Green Movement
Outdoor retailers are truly mastering the art of marketing. By riding on a magic carpet of supposedly green practices, they convince suckers like us (who are sometimes willing to dump more money into a pair of ski boots than we are into our kids’ schools’ fundraisers) that they are sincerely concerned with protecting the environment, while in all truthfulness are continuing practices that cause nearly as much harm to local water sources and already-impoverished living conditions as ever. Giving one-percent of your sales to charity or making a couple products out of partially recycled material doesn’t do much convincing when you continue to use extremely toxic dyes and pay your third-world factory workers such that they still have to live in a cinder block and corrugated aluminum salvage shack. But hey, these pants are waterproof!
5. The World’s Biggest Belly Flop—It’s hard to imagine anything worse than belly flopping into a foot of water from a height of thirty feet. The only thing more damaging would be growing up with the name Danny Higgenbottom, which is the dude’s name that pulled off this daring feat. Sure, he bent his knees a bit at the end, but that doesn’t mean that everything we see on the internet isn’t real. To the contrary, it means that if a knee-bending belly-flopper can pull it off, then you can too. If you do decide to pull it off, however, we ask that you put it back on before any children see.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN4pdDIhpBY[/youtube]
4. The BLM’s Security/Registration Process at a Utah Land Auction
BLM's Security Thugs
Whether you’re in the “Drill, baby, drill, we still don’t have our fill” camp or the “Save the endangered dolphins from nuclear hairnets in the soon-to-be extinct ocean of human rights for baby frogs with no taxation without representation” school of thought, you’ve gotta admit that the Bureau of Land Management looked pretty silly at their latest land-lease auction in Utah. I mean seriously, how did they let some granola-looking university student wearing a puffy coat and a beanie into an auction intended solely for oil and gas business peeps? He must have stood out like a sore thumb sitting in a room full of a bunch of Texas oil suits. If I had known that any yahooligan could register and bid, I would’ve tried to win a chunk of land near Moab and open up a little diner or something. I’d call it the Oil Rig Café and sell black sludgy coffee, bacon strip mines, and shale burgers to all the tourists.
3. The Big Foot Hoax—Two dudes from the backwoods of Georgia told the world they had a frozen corpse of Sasquatch in their refrigerator. It got me excited, since I also have a dead corpse in my freezer; it’s been in there so long, though, that I can’t remember what kind of animal it is. It’s either some elk meat that my uncle scored on a hunting trip in Idaho a while back, or else a 36-pack of pork chops left over from my roommate’s bachelor party. I think I can speak for most people when I say, “Shame on you, two Georgia dudes, for lying to a nation seeking desperately for truth, hope, and 2-for-1 Arby’s coupons.” And to think I almost felt bad for you guys when Russia invaded you.
2. Alta’s No Response—Alta Ski Resort announced possible plans to build a ski lift up to Flagstaff Peak, one of the Wasatch Mountains’ most popular backcountry ski spots. The word is that the Department of Homeland Security is revoking Alta’s permission to use an aged Howitzer gun as part of its avalanche control process, thus forcing ski patrollers to have to physically go up there for cornice stomping and grenade chucking. Many people question the sincerity and even truthfulness of that statement, and the whole thing has caused a wave of heated controversy as of late so we tried to contact Alta to get to the bottom of it all. Here’s what Alta had to say about it: “ .”
1. The Guy at The Canyons Resort That Promised to Bring Back Snollerblading
Don’t worry, he has been taken care of.
Permanently.
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Tags: best of, humor, top 10 list
I should say I was not as much offended by the post, as I was disappointed. I get the joke, and would find it funny if not for the bad press ski boarding gets in general thanks to cheap products like the Solomon Snowblades and the fact that it was sent to every customer. Blog post sure, e-mail newsletter, meh it just feeds the fire.
It seems to me that snow sporters should stick together and not create, albeit unintentionally and in jest, any kind of hierarchy in the sport. I also admit I’m a big fan of your editorial staff and the funny way they describe products, it’s one of the reasons I shop so much at your site.
Thanks to your explanation I don’t feel it was a personal dig, and I’m satisfied that your organization responded to my concerns. I will remain a customer.
I would, however, maybe suggest that your editorial staff use their keen wit to maybe explore some of the offbeat activities that your customers enjoy and write about them. I mean no one really needs to read a story about another guy who works in the rental shop so he can ski power every morning, but I bet many of backcountry’s customers use your products in interesting and offbeat ways that other customers might enjoy reading about.
For example until a year ago I never knew ski boards existed, and I recently saw my first “Snowbike” and thought – wow that’s cool how does that work? I am sure there are many other sports out there I don’t even know about that backcountry customers partake in, maybe by learning more about them, even in an irreverent way, I might just find a new sport to try and buy more stuff from your site to do it.
Just a thought.
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Thanks for the info, I’ll keep checking back for more articles, bookmarked!
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Hrmm that was weird, my comment got eaten. Anyway I wanted to say that it’s nice to know that someone else also mentioned this as I had trouble finding the same info elsewhere. This was the first place that told me the answer. Thanks.
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