Me being on wheels does not excuse you not paying attention

I've been meaning to comment on this for awhile, but here it is: A lot of times on my blades I find myself thinking about how much people in NYC don't pay any attention to what they are doing. These same people seem to ones who complain when I almost hit them on the street.
Now before I start, let me first point out that I know technically I am not supposed to be on the sidewalk. I know its technically against the law, but it is a law that has no basis in any sort objective reality. The bike lanes are just that: bike lanes. They didn't bother to fix any of the asphalt, and to whit, bikers are three times worse than pedestrians when it comes to being dickheads. Second, me being on the sidewalk does not automatically exempt you from paying attention.
Here's what you don't know: When I'm on my skates, I'm often navigating four or five things at once. I am trying to avoid the giant crack in the street while simultaneously watching out for the woman on her phone, and also watching out for the stroller she is pushing and the dog she is walking that she is paying no attention to and might lunge for me if i don't give it a wide berth why simultaneously trying to avoid being hit by a cab that is being hailed by the guy in the three-piece suit into the bike lane illegally as well as the van pulling out two cars ahead as well the old woman three people behind you who you don't see but I know can't move out of my way as fast as you could if you had actually been looking where you were going. And let's keep in mind none of the other people on the street are paying attention either.
So yeah, sometimes skating perilously close to you is unavoidable.
I have often been making direct eye contact with you hoping you see me in time when you walk directly into me and then bitch.
All this is to make a simple point. Doing this is mentally exhausting and I am tired of doing it. And part of me knows this is a hopeless request, but please, people, pay a-fucking-ttention, get off your phone, stop texting and look around you every once in a while. My knees will thank you.
And don't even get me started on the principles of responsible dog ownership, that's a whole other post.

I having one of those moments where I am unable to be surprised/offended/angry by any horrible news story that comes out. This is either a sad commentary on the state of the human race or just an acceptance that we have always been like this and that being angry at it serves no logical purpose. Possibly both. I am also reminded that people forced into situations where they are forced to accept things as normal that in their ordinary lives would be unacceptable (wars, extreme poverty, extreme loneliness, etc), they will eventually begin to do unacceptable things. I think people should keep this in mind when they judge the actions of anyone who they think is a despicable person. And I mean this directed to people of any political persuasion. Repression and denial are two of the begins probably in the human psyche and are the basis for the majority of horrible things that people have done in history.

Lest you think I am being defeatist and/or depressed an/or a cynic. I have also found that the answer to all the "why" questions seems to be contained in bits by Louis CK. Which is what makes all of this terribly, terrible funny

Skate videos

This is a Repost, but meh for now.
Pretty soon there will be music reviews and stuff here...
I think I've gotten to the point where my standards for skate videos has gone beyond the actual skating in the video. Case in point I recently bought the NIMH team video, Charging by Adam Johnson, and the new Ground Control video. Considering there was a lot of overlap with the actual skaters, I started paying more attention to the shooting and editing. Of the three, the Ground Control video was clearly the best.
My expectations for the NIMH team video were really high, considering their team, but they were let down. There is simply no excuse for not having multiple angles and shooting in HD these days. There was also a lot of bad angles in this video too. What happens when you don't have this is that edits end up being inconsistent video-quality wise. You also don't get the full impact of what is being the done, and it hurts the video overall. I think some of this might of have been intentional, too make it intentionally look dirtier, but it didn't work. It just looks like a video made like 10 years ago.
Charging was pretty good, AJ always seems to put together really good tour videos. But this video just didn't have the same quality that the GC video had. You could tell how hard everyone worked on that one. There is a lot of love that you can literally feel in the vid. And I think that's what stands out for me now. Its why I liked Fester so much, there's a joy in it even when the editing/shooting didn't add up.