YoBeat: Making Fun of Snowboarding Since 1997

MAN the Associated Press is AWESOME at shooting snowboard photos!

Holy CRAP, what a weekend!  For those of you living in a cave, the Winter X-Games went down from Jan. 22 to 25 in Aspen, Colo.  And yours truly, the n00b was [not] there for every minute of it!

The excitement in the air was palpable [I assume].  There were people all over the place, bundled up in their fancy coats and hats, ready to get X-treme or get X-treme’d on.  I couldn’t believe how many famous people I saw [on TV while I was channel-surfing during commercials].

Up on the slopes, [it looked like] it was a mob scene [on TV].  Cameramen clambered left and right, trying to get the best angle possible to show what kind of amplitude Shaun “The Flying Tomato” White was getting while he “beat Scotty Lago by two points and Norwegian Mikkel Bang by five points, rewarded for covering 75 feet on a maneuver between tables.”

It certainly was a sight to behold [I imagined as I washed my hands after a quick piss break during a featurette on snow-cross].

I can only imagine the great photos to come from an event like the X-Games!  You get the top snowboarding talent in the world [that bothers to sign up for televised live ESPN competitions anymore] all huddled like sheep into a pen, where you can watch them spin and flip like monkeys in the zoo. It’s an X-treme shooter’s wet dream!

In this photo from the L.A. Times, we see that contest coverage can be summed up with a portrait of “the coolest competitor on the planet” waving his medal around for everyone to see and making a really douchey face. Honestly, I don’t expect much more from L.A. Everybody knows Hollywood loves its douchey portraits.

So, back to the Games.

This year’s big story [based on the Google News search results] was the intense competition between the Ginger and up-and-comer Kevin Pearce. Now, watching these two powerhouses go head-to-head was, without exaggeration, completely riveting [or would have been, had I watched it].

Twenty-one-year-old Pearce, who is aspiring to qualify for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, took the lead in the second round with a score of 90.66. His routine included a frontside air 18 feet high, a McTwist, back-to-back 1080s and a frontside 900.

Pearce held his lead until White concluded the contest with a technically difficult backside rodeo flip, a 900, back-to-back 1080s and a McTwist, which essentially is a 540 rotation while back-flipping.

It could have gone either way, but judges gave White a 91.66.

[At least that’s what I was able to copy and paste from this article.]

Now, I know you all are asking, “What about the girls? Who came out on top …no pun intended?” And I know why you’re asking […I didn’t watch the girls events, either.  Boooooring!]. Some cute Australian girl named Torah got epic in the superpipe.  She probably did a backflip.  Kelly Clark was kicking some ass, but she took a face-dive in her second run  and “sketched” on her third run [shouldn’t L.A. dudes know X-treme slang?], so she had to settle for second.

On the plus side, [I read Monday morning on the Internets] she got a big shiner, so she takes the X-Games medal for most bad-ass loser. [I’m actually working on making the medal right now to send to her. Maybe she’ll like it so much she’ll go out with me. I mean, with a black eye like that, she’s not going to have a ton of dudes coming up all smooth, like, “Hey girl, what’s good?"]

Well, by now your attention spans have probably led you to click on something else. I hope you felt like you were there [on my couch] watching [not watching, but drinking Pabst] the X Games [because thanks to HBO On Demand, I can watch Flight of the Conchords whenever I want]. I’ll see you in two weeks [if Geery doesn’t fire me for sending her a detailed expense report “from Aspen" with “receipts"].