*shit, the big brother book*

[*Credit: co-written with Sean Cliver.*]
Collab with DC Shoes that included:
1. *shit, the big brother book*. I don’t even know what to call it? A tribute? That’s stupid. A history? Not really. Uh. Well, there are 106 spreads, one for each issue, arranged in chronological order. On each spread there’s a cover, some quotes, and a collage of various selections from the inside of each issue. In addition, there is a short blurb, written by either Cliver or me, about the issue—or not about the issue. Sean did the first 53, I handled the last 53. There are also short prologues, prefaces, forewords, epilogues, etc. from various ding-dongs throughout.
2. Various apparel: t-shirts, hats, jackets, merkins, etc..
3. Two Big Brother shoes, one of which was the groundbreaking Dave Carnie Signature Pro Model. (See below.) The other isn’t even worth mentioning.

Big Brother Issue #85

I think Mike Vallely said it before me: female skaters embody the original spirit of skateboarding better than anyone else these days. They’re punk rock. And they’re like Rodney Dangerfield: no respect. At best, no one gives a shit about them, and at worst they’re hated. Which makes them all the more attractive to me. So when the opportunity arose to go on a tour of Australia with the Gallaz team (Globe’s female division), I squealed like a little girl. Some of my friends thought that I should try and bed as many of the young ladies as I could and then detail and rate my encounters with them in a tour diary, but I decided to take the opposite approach and become one of them: I wore a dress the entire trip. But first, I had to buy the dress. I hate shopping for my own clothes in the men’s section, so you can’t imagine how stupid I felt stumbling around in the women’s department, but I managed to emerge with a conservative navy blue and white flower print dress, as well as a cheetah-print miniskirt for more racy occasions. The trip was a little awkward at first. The girls didn’t know what to make of the bearded man in the dress, but once they warmed up to me, it was like we were family—a very dysfunctional family in which I became known as “Deadbeat Mom.” While Mom was more interested in female pursuits like shopping and taking pregnancy tests, her daughters were too busy skating like champs and behaving like fucking pirates—literally: one night they stole a boat. They were gnarly. Daggers through and through. They made me so proud.

Big Brother Issue #64

From my “Santa Cruz Wheels Product Review”: I went out with this girl, Laura, in Santa Cruz a long time ago. Chris Pontius and I would drive up from San Luis Obispo and party at Laura’s house on the weekends. Chris had developed a code word for sex: insomnia. Laura and I had only had insomnia once at the time and it wasn’t very good, and so we were nervous and shy around each other, wanting to try again, but too scared to initiate it. It was in this vulnerable and bashful state that Chris point-blank asked us, “Are you guys gonna have insomnia tonight?” We blushed and did everything in our power to ignore the question, but it was true, neither of us wanted to sleep that night. Chris laughed at us and left the room. We sat there picking at the carpet or whatever the fuck we were doing when Chris came back into the room. “You guys don’t mind if I read the paper in here do you?” We didn’t object. He spread the paper wide open and on the back, scrawled in green crayon, was the word, “INSOMNIA.” After we got through laughing, Chris left the room again. When he came back, he had a plate in his hand. “Do either of you want a hot dog?” he asked. On the plate were two hot dogs with the word “INSOMNIA” written on them in mustard. Chris left the room again. When he came back the third time, he asked us, “Can I eat my soup in here?” Of course, sit right down. Sure enough, he had found a can of alphabet soup and taken all the letters out except the ones needed to spell, “INSOMNIA.” It wasn’t long after Chris finished his soup that Laura and I laid down to take a nap, but neither of us could sleep. We had insomnia.

The original concept was: design the worst shoe EVER. (Original design is below.) The cobblers at DC did a pretty good job of duplicating the original. It’s without the Coors impact bubble and it’s not made from the skins of endangered animals, but it’s close.

We tried to make it “worse” by requesting that they either misspell “fuck you” or put them on the wrong feet—you, fuck—but the people at DC are too smart to get with our brand of stupid.

You don’t know how many phone calls it took to get the penis right. First it was way too small, then it was grey, then it was brown and looked like an ax—I think the designers at DC were intentionally screwing up just to hear me call and complain: “What the fuck is wrong with you guys, have you never drawn a dick before?”

This is the original design (cobbler: Jeff Tremaine) as it appeared in issue #30 way back in 1802. Thanks again to DC Shoes for making it a reality.

Dave Carnie Signature Pro Shoe From DC Shoes

The book was nothing more than a garnish for the main course: the DC/Big Brother footwear and apparel collection. I think one pair of shoes was designed to sell (ha!), while the other is a replication of the Dave Carnie signature model shoe from Pool Of Blood Shoes (designed by Jeff Tremaine) that originally appeared in Issue 30, “The Shoe Issue.”

I’d like to thank DC for getting their shit together and finally awarding me my first signature pro model shoe. It’s about time. “Husky, Middle Aged Man Finally Receives Signature Skate Shoe!”