Aug 30, 2010

Ice Cream - NOM

We often make fun of wakeboarding, but really its pretty damn awesome. So heres some Cable Wakeboarding skills for you to eat up.

Ice Cream Teaser from Ben Howells on Vimeo.

Vid Day Monday

The Wonder Lake ski team from north of Chicago in IL. They have a habit of going huge at tournaments and crashing alot. People often say if they could just stand up their show they would win every tournament. Well they stood it up this year and their team motto of "Wonder Laking it" gave the crowd a very good show. Around the 6 minute mark there is a 6 man front flip off the ramp, that is a crazy big jump act. 1 skier off the world record front held by the Tampa Bay ski team who used all pros when they did it.

This vid is a recap of the Wonder Lake teams show, well worth the 8 minutes.

Vid Day Monday - Bad Driving Skills

This is a good example of how not to drive around cop cars. Also a good example of when not to get air born in a car.

Aug 27, 2010

CRB Brings The Sexy - German Folk Style

The CRB crew took a trip to Germany recently and we took some pictures of the great scenery in Bavaria.



We traveled wide and far but our trip seemed to have a common theme...Mountains.



Bavaria is well known* for his rolling hills and scenic mountains.
*no idea if this is true, but it fits the theme.



We traveled wide and far and visited many great mountainous...guys looking down womens shirts...



And we ended our trip in the land of box clothes. Great place if you ask us. And all of the inhabitants of this great place drink huge beers. What could be better?

Aug 26, 2010

More Crazy Good Yumping

So yesterday June busted out a pending world record jump of 188 feet at Hazlewoods in England. And the CRB was the first to bring you the vid...well we stole it from the Malibu twitter feed, but we beat BOS so suck it Horton!! And here is some of the mens jumping from the event.

Damian Sharman with a 228 foot blast, Zack Worden with a 234 foot kick and Ryan Dodd just edging out Zack with a 234.2 foot monster. Just to show how awesome of a jumper I am, the last time I jumped I went about 60 feet onto my head. So ODBF FTMFW...

Aug 25, 2010

New Womens WR in Jump

For years it looked like no one could touch the three womens world records. Kristi Overtons 1@41 set in 1996 held the top spot alone for 12 years and has yet to be surpassed, Tawn Larson set her first world trick record in 1988 and beat her own record 3 times the last record set in 99, that record held for 7 more years, and Elena Milikova booted a 56.6 meter jump or 185.7 feet in 2002. Elena's 8 year old record may have fallen to June Fladborg with a 57.4 meter (188.3 feet) bomb. A few years back when skiing with Natalia Birdnikava it was easy to see that they way the girls like here could jump the world record would fall. I had put my money on Natty dropping it but blowing out a knee does not help. If the numbers hold up from Hazelwoods then a big congrats to June.

June the CRB cooler is open any day you want to stop by and pop open a ice cold PBR tall boy.

Aug 24, 2010

Lake Trout Carry Out - Afternoon Delight

Lake Trout Carry Out is what we are currently calling the random link heap/dump/thing/whatever.

The Wonder Lake show ski team won the national title at the 2010 show ski nationals in Bumble Fuck Wisconsin.

A 17 year old kid towing a wake boarder ran over a rower and killed him on Lake Stevens in Everett Washington. Just another reason why I think big wakeboard boats are stupid. This accident is being blamed on how high the bow of the boat was combined with how low the rowing shell was and the setting sun. I'm going to blame it on a dumb kid with shitty loud music playing while driving a boat that is unnecessarily large while not paying attention because some vapid slut with a tiny bikini was sitting in the boat talking about how awesome that wake to wake jump with about 8 inches of air was. I have no proof to back that up but that is a pretty standard wakeboard boat set up.

Amber Wing and Philip Soven won wakeboard titles in Knoxville TN. The article states that a wakeboard is a "wide single waterski".
Wakeboard??

Backwater Gamblers of the Quad Cities (Illionis side of the border) placed 3rd at show ski nationals and get an article in the local paper. The article spends about 99.4% of the time explaining that "barefooting" is waterskiing with no skis and not walking around with no shoes on. Thank you for the knowledge Mr. Quad City Times reporter man.

Also in the Quad Cities area was a adaptive waterski clinic for disabled skiers. I have been involved with a few clinics like this and they are awesome. Just to see how much fun these kids have on the water makes it all worthwhile. /sappyness over

Also from the Quad Cities:


Macs Waterski World has stickers...not really waterski related...but wootable.

Miss Mexico got "promoted". Is this waterski related? YES IT IS JUST LOOK I SWEAR IT IS.

Footstock, the largest figure 8 barefoot tournament in the world was held this weekend in some other podunk town in Wisconsin. This year the winner ran over 5 1/4 figure 8s to win one of his runs. Thats something like 10 miles of barefooting. I footed for a about a 1/4 mile the other day and my feet felt like they were on fire. This guy is not going to walk for months.

Wakeboarding is making me care less and less about the Masters.

The Canadian Nationals were held recently (might know the date if I read the article but there were lots of words) and Dave Miller took 3rd in slalom* with 983 points (points?) and got a good picture in the paper. Whitney McClintock continued to dominate womens slalom in Canada and for her efforts got this awesome picture in the paper of a kick ass WHEELIE. HELL YEA WHEELS UP BIZNITCHEZ

*might know his division but again there were to many words

Aug 23, 2010

Full London Night Jump

So instead of posting random vids I guess we could just post the full event from Web Cast TV. Cut and paste embeding makes our life way to easy over here.

Vid Day Monday

Again did not see the night jump this weekend so here is a vid from the event. Night jump events are about as kick ass as kick ass can be. And it looks like a good crowd, so props to Stuart Marston for what looks like another sweet ass sweet event.

Vid Day Monday - Yumping

The London Night Jump was this past weekend and the ODBF was unable to watch as he was busy boat drinking in the middle of nowhere. And it seems that 3G cards to not work in the middle of a lake in the middle of nowhere.

This vid is from the 2005 London Night Jump. So its old, just like the Rowboat Abides.

Aug 16, 2010

Alaska Looks Sweet

Just found this pic on Hortons Ball of Slalom Geeks, this is apparently a guy named Thomas Wayne's site about 30 mins outside of Anchorage AK. Well we looked at this and made a decision that we were moving today. T1he CRB has already bought a house* in Alaska and loaded up the CRB POS wagon to hit the road for this slalom heaven.
/checks average average weather temps in Alaska
/unpacks POS wagon
*room in a brothel


VId Day Monday

We like to rag on the IWWF (damn sell outs, call it IWSF or GTFO) for having a brutally awful website (ugh here). But it appears they have someone that knows how to use a video editor. Its not really worth your time to listen to what they are saying, but there is some straight up awesomeness in this vid. They may be showing their complete disrespect for womens jumping as the only time they show any is when a girl is eating it off the side after bashing her body against the ramp. But then again most pro tournament organizers have shown recently that they don't give a shit about womens jump or mens or womens trick skiing either...so ehhh.

Vid Day Monday - Old School

So this was a very Mid West oriented nationals week. 3 event nationals in Wilmington IL and Show Ski nationals in Wisconsin Rapids WI. So needless to say the CRB crew packed the cooler up and headed to the midwest and drank way to much and ate way to many cheese flavored crackers. We would put up pictures and a run down of all the fun we had, but no one can remember what we did. We are pretty sure we saw skiing but its quite possible we never left the airport bar in Chicago. So instead of a recap of the fun here is a a video from some showski team in Southern California from the early '80s.

Aug 13, 2010

Malibu Open Pics


Here is a link that to a "smilebox" that was made by the Milwaukee County Park system and sent to Dana Reed. CLICK HERE FOR THE AWESOMENESS (music is bad) They show lots of love to the free style guys. Which rules cuz that stuff is dope.

This guy took a day off from taking pics of bike riders to take some sweet pics of much cooler athletes CLICK HERE NON BIKERS. Check out the last pic on page 3, awesome shot of the site with downtown Milwaukee in the background. Stupid copy righted pics not letting us steal them!
We can hear you all here yelling "MOR GALLRYZ PLZ!!". And we answer you with

BAM Gallary #3

Aug 12, 2010

OFF TOPIC INTENSE - REX F'ING RYAN

If you watch this video of Rex Ryan running a team meeting with the Jets and you do not flip out and kill things, quit your job by hitting your boss with a chair and then go run 45 off on a Maharajah then you are either dead or some sort of sissy from Connecticut.



oh and the language is NSFW for all you that care, which you don't need to worry about the job thing as by the time you read this you have already hit your boss with a chair.

Aug 11, 2010

Malibu Open - News Vids

After returning to our home in the Al Gore's basement we have been searching high and low throughout the interblags to find fun stuff about the Malibu Open. It appears that the city of Milwaukee was on board with the 'bu. News reports, front page of cities main newspaper, parks system loving it and so on. Pretty cool stuff all around.

Aug 10, 2010

In Praise of Tom King


A week or so ago, we don't remember exactly, Malibu Boats posted on their twitter, @malibuboats, something concerning who takes their photos, and they tweeted back that it was Tom King.  Here is the link, linkypoo.

It was funny, because, this was a name that we all knew growing up, we saw all the really cool pictures in waterski magazine and, being a young buck, just wondered "how the hell does someone take pictures like that??"

Its amazing.

So, naturally, we cruised around Tom Kings site, www.tomkingphotography.com, to see what this cat has been up to.

Naturally, he has been killing it.

We have much love for Mommer photography as well as some other people that really get the photog itch and do good work, but, there is something to be said for what Tom brings to each photo.

Maybe its just us being older, but, there seems to be a bit of knowledge behind each shot.  If that makes sense, for example, in some pictures you can sense that he has total command of the image that he is shooting, whereas in others the unique angles and images and how the light is reflected/used/etc off the image shows a person who has totally mastery of their subject.

For example, this picture (note: we own the same pair of shorts.  whoa!!)


Its just such an awesome picture, but, it appears as if there isn't anything really highlighted, just an overall great looking picture.  You get the sky, the ski, the reach...you don't know really who it is, its not overly aggressive in its framing, its just a clean, beautiful shot.

One of the main things that makes us like the shot though, is that, our first impression is not "how did he get the camera in that position", more just, "wow, thats cool"

Does that make sense?  It is in your head, like, how the hell, but, its not the first thing on your mind.

With the advent of highly tech'ed up camera's, the basic shots are easier to do.  I.e, we can take sweet pictures on our cell-phone camera, and you can take near-pro style shots with a thousand bucks or so invested in a nice canon digital camera.  Not those cheap ass ones we all have, but, a good digital real camera.

But in the hands of a master those shots we thing are sweet, turn into something more.

Its the same concept of never blaming your equipment for your skiing, old trick ski, new trick ski, its still your talent on display.

For example, we skied on a friends goodman trick (hence that analogy) and were able to nail a couple tricks that on a previous (a mid-80s combo trick) we couldn't get.  Our skill wasn't better, just the results...and we won a couple drinks for making the famed double-twisting-revert-side-slide that only you have read about never.

It seems the same with Tom King, thanks to Malibu for reminding us and thanks to Tom for all the pictures and work put into to elevate our sport on the various website and magazines and wherever.  As we have always said waterskiing is a very image based sport.  Its hard to write words to describe, you have to see it, feel it, experience it. Its like sex.  Sure you can read all about what, how and why to do what you do, but, until you get wet it doesn't make sense.

Skier Vs Other Guys On Skis

This is some cool stuff. Pretty much a bunch of water skiers went out and showed snow skiers that we are way cooler then they are. Not only can we water ski better then them, but most of us can snow ski at a high level as well. I can't, but then again I drink Mountain Creek beer and bass fish all day long. I could totally show them up at beer drinking and gutting a fish.

Aug 9, 2010

Vid Day Monday - Karma

Justin Bieber has driving many of us straight crazy, look at Rowboat Abides for example, he just rocks back in forth in a chair and drools. But one of Justin's "fans" decided to tell the suck ass exactly how good his music is.



Thank you Karma

Vid Day Monday - Post Malibu Edition

So the CRB had reporters all over the place* at the Malibu Open this weekend and there was one concensus: "beer is good". Oh and I guess they all thought the Malibu Open was a great event. A couple of our less lucky reporters sat at home and watched a blank computer screen due to the fact that webcast TV does not understand the concept of testing things prior to an event. But the angry Brit and the fat guy are a different story...because...the ODBF was there and thats all that matters.

*next to the beer carts


But all in all this was one of the coolest events we have seen. Right in the middle of a big city, people all over the place, very big crowds, amazing scores and the ODBF got drunk and hooked up...so it was awesome. The minion was seen getting hustled away by the cops while screaming about conspirecies to put only a Malibu skier at the top of the podium, so that just made the weekend even better.

A couple new names up top in events and the return of freestyle jump had us all on fire. April Coble-Eller won her first every pro tour stop. I know you may all be calling bullshit on this but its true, she told me in the bar that she has never won a womens slalom pro tour stop, she won overall back in the day but never a slalom title. And Ryan Dodd knocked Freddy off his thrown, infact freddy did not even make the podium at all. That does not happen often, but when it does Ryan has shown he is there to pic up the slack.

Aug 7, 2010

CRB Recap of Malibu Open V.1


Two quick thoughts and the Malibu Open isn't even over yet but, here are two quick thoughts.

1) We feel bad for all the people that worked their ass off to make this happen and the web-cast people or whomever couldn't get us video, then couldn't get us audio.

2) God damn it. Those of us unable to go were really really really looking forward to watching. Won't over-react, but, this should not happen.

fin

CRB Brings the Sexy

Keep this one short and sweet. If you are reading/viewing this right now you are lame. We are at the Malibu Open being totally awesome and you are a toolbox sitting at your house like a loser.

Well just to help you feel less like a loser here is a picture of Alison Brie.





Seriously now scroll down and check out the Malibu Open webcast that is linked below. And if that is not working you can view it here or if option 2 does not work try it here and if that one does not work then go find it yourself I'm done trying to help you.

Aug 6, 2010

Malibu Open

The Malibu Open hits the water today in Milwaukee WI. And your sole source for everything even tangentially related to waterskiing, we have copy/pasted the embed code for the Malibu Open into a blog post.  Observe




If the player does not work then check out webcast-tv.


We have reporters on site, another CRB Field Trip, that will be hopefully tweeting some twats

Aug 4, 2010

Malibu Open - Last Year Vid

Last years Malibu Open. If you watch this and do not then buy a plane ticket to Milwaukee WI to go watch this years Malibu Open then I hate you and I'm glad you don't know me. I would not want to hang out with a loser like you anyways. Dork.

Flooding is Not Fun

Just a follow up on one of the Lake Trout links. Waterski show teams run on tight budgets as do most waterskiers except the CRB staff cuz we are hella rich due to the crazy popularity of this site*. One of the only divisions of USAWS to show any growth in the last few years has been show skiing. It seems that guys really like wearing tights...or maybe its the hot girls riding on their shoulders...
*we are all poor and live in a homeless shelter because no one loves us

The following video is from a news station in Wisconsin somewhere. Don't ask where cuz we don't care. Wisconsin is kinda like Texas, it has cows and people...So its sorta the same as how snow is like bowling balls, its completely different

Aug 3, 2010

Morning Lake Trout

Morning lake trout is our attempt at keeping you all a bit more informed of what is going on in the waterski world. We will attempt to post one of these every morning, but expect it to be more like once a year or so. Thats way more our style

Bunch of wakeboarders played some dodgeball at the wakeboard nationals recently. Dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge.



Top 5 things to do in Grapevine Texas. I guess Steers and Queers were unavailable.

Some kid going to the University of Wisconsin wakeboards. Might know more about this if I had read the article but I sneezed and that was way more interesting.

MORE WAKEBOARDING!! Ok skiers, stop being so damn useless and make some news. If you have to go beat up people with jump skis to get on the news then strap it up and lay the smack down jump ski style. It is really depressing how hard it is to find any news about waterskiing that does not involve Enrique Iglasis getting naked.

Wake Scout has signed on as a sponser for USAWS. The site is interesting, kinda poorly designed but lots of ski sites around the world on there. So get your travel on and check it out.

For the second time in 3 years the Janesville Wisconsin show ski team has been forced to give up their roll as host of the Show Ski National tournament. A quick google search of Janesville WI got our trained monkeys very depressed. Looks like about every job in the city is gone. So losing the money a large event like this brings in is just another slap in the face. If you can slap a city in the face.

Aug 2, 2010

Vid Day Monday - How Not To Hit The Ramp

Take this as a lesson all you early cutting sissys!



That would be Tyler McDermitt doing his damndest to kill himself. Just spit balling here but I am going to guess that was not his intention.

Vid Day Monday - Take That Horton

So John Horton thinks hes a big shot because his site gets all these things called "Hits". Well we here at the CRB are not caught up by going after the latest trend or fashions in the world. And we think Horton just made up this idea of "hits" so he could make us feel bad. But he did offer us a beer once, so we are still plotting on how to make him pay up.

We took a quick poll in the CRB World Headquarters to see what the greatest minds in waterski journalism think.

Dig Dug: Beer and some dirt
Life Jacket: Mojito and some bikini clad babes
ODBF: PURPLE DRANK!!
What the hell is this stuff? Someone please tell me!

CRB Minon: Crack and Hookers
Frank in maintenance: Mad Dog 20/20
Homeless guy in the dumpster: You already asked me...I work in maintenance.
Rowboat Abides: Ensure and a box of depends

So there you have it. The CRB staff is all crazy, well except for Life Jacket, he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. NOT THAT HE POSTS VERY OFTEN!!!!!
/subtle hint



Oh and here is Seth Stisher making fun of Horton. Kid does a good impression.

And yes, we stole this vid as well straight from Seth's website. H2Australia Waterski Tips. Odd name for a site considering he is from the southern US. But to each his own.

***Ed Note: Purple Drank is kool aid, cough syrup, codiene with some jolly ranchers thrown in for good measure. WTF is wrong with people?***

Vid Day Monday - Need For Speed

We like to cover all aspects of waterskiing on the CRB, even if we do hate on some events, but speed skiing we normally write off as just insane. And this video has totally changed our minds. We still believe it to be completely insane, but now that we have realized that it has crazy hot chicks involved we have thrown away or slalom ski and bought a Majharaja and a 40 foot 8 billion horsepower boat. The practice today was a bit sketch as by the time the boat gets up to speed we are crashing into shore and other assorted immovable objects, but screw it, if we win we get to hang out with CRB Girl Lauren Eagle.

So we are in!! LETS DO THIS!!



And yes we stole this vid from Horton's Ball of Spray Guards.

Video Día Lunes

Telemundo may be the best TV station in the history of the world. Not because the programing is any good at all. Acting is subpar, plots are mostly awful, game shows make no sense...but if you turn the volume down and make up your own dialog for the soaps you have some solid soft core porn. So right there they gain 7 stars on the CRB 4 star tv rating scale.*

*we did not rate any other channels

The following is a weather broadcast from some station in Mexico. It says the name of the station in the upper corner but I could not be bothered long enough to actual read what it said.

Its to Dang Cold!

Enjoy this weather you hot piece of ass! Dispatch from the CRB weather desk Guess what???  ITS COLDER THEN A WELL DIGGERS ASS OUT THERE KIDS...