Red Shoe Diaries

Floyd use to have these red shoes back when I first started Clicked in '08, we finished up our first edit for the site and I really needed a name for the series of videos. Late while asleep in my bed David Duchovny came to me in a dream, he said, "Mike, why not call it the Red Shoe Diaries?" And, so that's how it started. Above is the most recent of the series, and HERE IS THE ONE that kicked it all off. They're not groundbreaking by any means, but they do showcase the homies having fun on bikes.

I should mention that some of the series is split up between Vimeo and Youtube.

Rejection: The Pros And Cons

I've been taking a lot of video lately with this little hand held Kodak Zi8 I got, I think Ed knows the one. It's pretty damn sweet, except for the electronic stabilizer. If you hold it in your hand it looks like Marty McFly is behind the camera. So, I made this cheap steadicam and that pretty much fixed the problem, the shitty part now is I have to lug the damn thing everywhere. Which, totally kills the whole "handy pocket cam" idea. But, since I bought the Zi8 I pretty much haven't touched my camera and that sucks, because I love shooting photos. I'm very amateur at best, but I still enjoy it.

I recently sent the pic above to ESPN to see if they were interested in it for the POTD.... Rejected. I guess it's not "crazy" enough, or "bangertastic", however, if you knew how hard it was to get on that wall from this little wedge, you'd probably think differently. One mans throw away is another mans blog post, on Mr. Koenning's site (yep, you're now in the age of "Mr. Koenning").

It seems that rejection actually works better for me, especially in the BMX world. I write stories a lot, luckily a decent amount of those stories have been published in a couple magazines, though more have been rejected than published. I don't think I would have any published if I wasn't rejected right from the get go. Then there's those times when I make an edit and I send it to the come up and it doesn't get posted, and I'm like "did you get that edit I made?" They're like, "yeah we got it"... Oh, I suppose it's not street enough for you, I guess I should have made Bissell throw them bars, and made Floyd nose wheelie a little more. Maybe I didn't wear a baggy enough T-shirt. Good old rejection has helped me look past the other sites and focus on the ones that are more important, and the ones represent what I think BMX is. I'm stoked to see Mr. Koenning constantly droppin' old BMX knowledge on us and creating this blog. Now, if I can just get him to send me that damn interview...