With all these celebrity deaths of late, it wasn’t a question of if, but rather when the exploitation would occur. Usually though, I limit my exploitation of tragedy to a few off-color jokes in close company. But when snowboard company Neff put out a Michael Jackson tribute tee, well, it was the first time I sort of cared about Michael Jackson’s death. Frankly it seemed absurd and needed to be mocked, especially since I run a site with the tag line “making fun of snowboarding.”

Then when Awesome Auger spokeman Billy Mays passed away Sunday, the opportunity was clear. Rip off Neff’s design and make a Billy Mays tribute shirt. Jared and I laughed the whole time at how ridiculous it was, but when the design was finished, I strangely wanted one. Though we toyed with the idea of not actually making them available for purchase, we also agreed that no one would actually buy them, so we might as well make it legit. A few clicks and for just $19.95, anyone can now purchase a YoBeat Billy Mays Tribute Shirt from the YoBeat store. I posted the release and figured maybe we’d get linked around a few a laughs.

Then something happened. Someone bought a shirt. And then a few other people did too. So now, not only do we have to make the shirts, but I feel totally hypocritical. I tried to make myself feel a little better by commiting to donate some of the proceeds to the American Heart Association, but man, who would have thought anyone actually wanted one of these? Oh, the irony.

I think I enjoy the graffiti in the office/Sweetpea bathroom more than Lisa, judging by the note at least. But the best part is that this originally read, “How long has it been since your last STD check.” But my favorite graffiti in said bathroom still has to be when someone added “, yet” next to the Peta sticker with a cute little chicken saying “I am not a nugget.” It’s since been crossed out.

Aaron was concerned having his finger on the brake made him look like a puss, but I assured him that was not what was doing it.

For some reason my work day turned into a very brief foray into bike photography. Apparently Jared wanted to know what he looks like on the other side of the lens, which as it turned out, he wasn’t very happy with. He only let me use one photo I shot of him, but since Aaron isn’t here, I get to pick the ones I like of him!

The shoot was filled with Jared telling me where to stand and letting me know I “wasn’t shooting the right thing.” As far as I could tell, there was no point when they were actually “doing anything” but I suppose that’s what happens when you shoot something you know very little about. So take that as a note to aspiring action sports photographers. Even when it seems like there is nothing going on, apparently, there is a “correct time to shoot.” Follow the jump for a few more shots from today’s shoot. Hard to believe, but I won’t be saving these for print.

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I have been trying to write this post for awhile now. Originally my angle was going to be if I thought I was a better writer or an editor, because it’s very rare that someone is good at both. However, I decided that there was no way to write that honestly without sounding cocky while simultaneously writing an appropriate blog for my professional site that would not dissuade people from hiring me. So I’ve instead decided to instead to just talk about doing both and which I like more.

Although I have been “the editor” of YoBeat since it started, the first 10-12 years included very little actual editing. But these days I find myself acting a real editor for that site, as well as Alliance Wakeskate. That means I not only write a lot, and edit the stuff that comes in, but I am directly responsible for the editorial direction of the sites. I am the one who says, “that sucks I’m not using it,” or, “that is good I am using it.” I am also the one who figures out what we can pay and pay for, and deals with breaking the bad news to contributors. I think for the latter reason, I have sort of been missing my carefree lifestyle as a “writer.”

I am not sure when it happened, but I haven’t been working as a “writer” for awhile now. In fact, I just got my first exclusive writing assignment in too many months yesterday and now I am confused. So let me get this straight– I don’t have to decide what I am writing about or how long it should be? All I have to do is put 1000 words together and email it to you by Friday? Man, you writer types have it easy! I kid, I kid. Both jobs have their perks and drawbacks, and I think this video sums up perfectly the plight of a creative professional.

The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations

I have simple needs. Thanks to Aaron Nardi for illustrating my thoughts so succintly.

Down the street from my office is a restaurant called Hungry Tiger Too. It’s sort of a strange place with a jungle motif and over priced food. But we ended up there today and it turns out that on whatever day today is (Wednesday), they have $1 (Vegan) corn dogs and $1 PBRs. So I had a delicious lunch today that cost $2. You can figure out yourself how I split my money up.

This weekend we decided it was time to take down one of the white pines that was teetering somewhat precariously in my backyard. It didn’t help its cause that it was ruining the lawn and covering everything with sap, so before you go all self-righteous hippie on me, it was a total nuisance tree and we’ll replace it with something nicer soon.

I’d never cut down a tree, but the lure of purchasing a chainsaw was enough that we figured we could take care of it. My friend Tony had explained the fool proof way to get the tree to fall the way you wanted, and we were feeling good. Even with the price of the saw and getting rid of the tree, we were going to come out ahead. I also figured no matter what happened, this moment needed to be captured, so we set up the camera and let it roll.

This is what it looked like when we were done for the day (it looks much better now.) But the real magic was in between the two above photos. Don’t worry, there’s a film about it:

Yard Work from YoBeat Magazine on Vimeo.

Check out my full gallery of photos of this kid here.

Today is culminating one of those weeks I feel like I’ve really outdone myself. In large part it is probably because I was out of town all last week so there was a good deal of catching up to be done.  It seems like I’ve been churning out an especially large amount of content, and what better way to create more content with it than to reblog it all!

But when I actually sat down to find the stuff I’ve done this week, it turns out I’d only written two stories on YoBeat (the Art of the Board Hold and Hump day with Dirksen,) and some little blogs on AWS. I shot the photos for today’s On Deck, but most of what I posted was created by others. So I decided it’s time to let everyone in on a little secret. Just because I didn’t write or shoot it, doesn’t mean it didn’t give me a headache.

This week’s behind the scenes tasks included ad sales, accounting, re-writing submissions, answering random questions and explaining mundane tasks to others, posting stuff daily, delegating resulting in hours of loading stuff on FTP, and even helping make physical banners for YoBeat. And of course, I am always thinking about the future and what the hell I am going to post next week. That said, I love my job and could think of a lot worse things to be spending my time on. But this weekend, I am pretty excited to take out some pent up aggression on one of the white pines in my backyard.

This past weekend I found myself in a twitter battle with the WWA’s Shawn Perry. At the first Toe Jam stop I had tweeted all the action, and the kids, as they say, were stoked.

diana_decastro@alliancewakesk8 wow twitter is amazing and u also. thanks for the updates! ;p

lakehippie@alliancewakesk8 I love the play by plays! I am at work but feel like I am right there with you!! Keep it up for us who can’t be there!!

So I wasn’t at all surprised that just two weeks later the practice had been adopted by others looking to enthrall wakeskating’s huge public. Unfortunately for me and my need to be first though, “others” included Shawn Perry, who happened to be judging the event. He claims his work required him to tweet, but I am pretty sure he just wanted to be like me and beat me to posting the results. Anyway, I become obsessed with beating him to the punch, so I started tweeting the results based on  my predictions, rather than the actual facts. And sure enough, I was wrong on more than one occasion.

I would correct myself via tweet and no harm was done, after all, it’s only wakeskating. But this morning this article was brought to my attention.

Irish student hoaxes world’s media with fake quote

Basically, as an experiment to see how fast information circles the globe, this guy posted a fake quote on a recently deceased composer’s wikipedia entry, which was then published by multiple media outlets in his obituary. I was like, oh my god, what lazy idiots, until I remembered, in the quest for speed, accuracy often gets thrown to the wayside, and I am as guilty as the next. We’ll add this one to the list reasons the Internet is ruining our lives. (Complete list or pros and cons coming soon.)

Sidenote: after the Toe Jam, I checked to see how many people we’re potentially seeing theWWA’s tweets. 29. So follow them, I almost feel bad.

I guess it officially took two weeks for this whole swine flu thing to blow over. I was really hoping it would last a bit longer, cause I have gotten a lot of mileage out of it terms of story angles. Of course, when you are traveling to the one state where someone has actually died from the virus, it’s sort of a nobrainer, right? I ended up in Dallas, TX, even though the event I was planning on attending had been canceled due to fear of the Swine Flu. Since the ticket was already bought (and it would cost more to change it than rent a car) I figured I might as well go take care of business. read more »