Thursday, November 05, 2009

WHEN SCOOTERZ ROOLED

Razors were the original Segway.

Thanks to our buddy John Gross for this video!

23 comments :

Greg said...

stadius once said it was douchbags that sold us a lot of shitty scooterz.

Unknown said...

My brother and sister and I all got scooters for Christmas in second grade. It was pretty tight.

Gotta say, that segment with the grandpa at the end really got my heart all fuzzy.

evan b jones said...

Kick ass Impossibles soundtrack

Unknown said...

Sure the kid can take an old man on a Rascal. But can he take on Josh Brolin from Thrashin'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbXud_OpypY#t=03m01s

DS3M said...

That lab hat is somethin else gramps, I'm in for 2!

Krampus said...

Why'd he let that old man in his house! NOO!

Unknown said...

That made me nostalgic for my Razor, although in retrospect it wasn't much more faster or energy efficient than walking.

Also, I got a bit creeped out at how Grandpa Lab was laughing at the passed out child.

Adam said...

I'm not amused, but I am concerned for those kids' safety. They really should've been wearing helmets.

Heather said...

I was hoping that Grandpa would sideswipe the kid. Eat pavement, punk!

Christopher said...

0:24: Ah, yes, the 270 degree inverted kicktoss, also known as the "Don't throw your scooter in the driveway! You know how much I paid for that thing?!" is truly one of the finest, and most demanding, tricks of the sport. I hope the video had step by step instructions.

airport.whiskey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Grrg said...

Interestingly enough, it seem that when Statius uses the phrase "fear first created gods the world" (Primus in orbe deos fecit timor) in Book 3 of the Thebiad, he seems to have been quoting an earlier poem of Petronius (now known only as "Fragment no. 27"), although some commentators suspect that the phrase was simply a commonly-repeated proverb of the time. It appeared in the fourth-century grammarian Servius' Commentary on the Aeneid and from there appears in many medieval texts. It shows up in Middle English in Book 4 of Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, one of the the sources for Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

Here's the Statius in context (sorry for the archaic translation). Capaneus is shouting down the priest Oeclides, who has just declared that the oracle of the gods predicts bad outcome if the army of Argos attacks Thebes. Capaneus dismisses the gods' warning by saying:

"Dost thou forbid the Greeks to make fierce war? [...] Pitiable in sooth are the gods, if they take heed of enchantments and prayers of men! Why doest thou affright these sluggish minds? Fear first created gods in the world! Rave therefore now thy fill in safety; but when the first trumpets bray, and we are drinking from our helms the hostile waters [...], come not then, I warn thee....For then shall I be augur, and with me all who are ready to be mad in fight.”

So Capaneus claims the that the army shouldn't be afraid of the oracle's warning, since the gods themselves are merely the inventions of cowards. Of course all of Book 4 of the Thebaid is ENTIRELY ABOUT proving how very WRONG Capaneus is, when the Army is defeated and everyone dies just as the oracle predicted. (It usually works out that way, in these things.)

Here is Chaucer's version, in which the phrase is presented pretty much as an example of a vapid truism that Criseyde might say to excuse Troilus' hypothetical desertion from battle:

For goddes speken in amphibologyes,
And, for o sooth they tellen twenty lyes.
Eek drede fond first goddes, I suppose,
Thus shal I seyn, and that his cowarde herte
Made him amis the goddes text to glose
Whan he for ferde out of his Delphos sterte.

That is: "Gods speak in ambiguities, and for every truth they speak, they say twenty lies. Dread first made the gods, I suppose. That's what I'll say, and that his cowardly heart made him misunderstand the gods' text when he fled in fear from Delphos."

Thanks, Everythingisterrible, for allowing me to waste an hour writing this comment. In other news, that scootering douchebag is a idiot and I want to shove his sunglasses down his throat.

Airwave Ranger said...

No THANK YOU Grrg. You are the most insightful commenter a .blogspot could ever dream of having.

scamps said...

Scooters are the Special Ed of extreme sports.

Nicol3 said...

Grrg, that was the golden Hummer of blogger posts. Not to suggest you're compensating for anything.

And the child proceeded to drink the drugged water the old man had prepared for him. The end.

Michael said...

That was oddly satisfying at the end when the old man beat the kid. It only could have been made better if he had jumped on his old great-depression-mobile from the flashback and beat the punk using his superior nostalgia for days gone by.

Padraig said...

Believe me when i say i bought this vhs for a toonie five years ago and loved every second of it.

Unknown said...

Nice one, Grrg. Me loves when knowledge be dropping. And quotes, fuck I love quotes.

Still, why is this scooter shill with a mark harmon haircut namechecking Statius? That doesn't seem like something that should occur in our existing universe.

Also, was the implication that the oldster won the race? I thought the kid won easily and then fucked around in the garage for a while before going inside. But then the old man is cackling triumphantly? Puzzling that.

Unknown said...

I have this video downstairs, came with my scooter back in the day. I still pull it out now and then. It morphs into an extreme sport video once they run out of tricks with the scooter e.g. 3-4 minutes in. The sunglasses guy remains a douchebag throughout.

Cody said...

It's like Reese from Malcolm in the Middle wearing one of Jerry Seinfeld's oversized sweaters. Also, fish-eye lens.

Anonymous said...

They filmed part of that at Temple City High

Anonymous said...

boy this takes me back, if only we knew how shitty the "new millennium" would turn out to be

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