If you’ve been wasting your time Googling “nude winnie cooper,” than you are officially bored. In our current era of constant stimulation, it’s hard to stay focused on the things that really matter. How many times has your girlfriend complained during Top Chef when you watch with your computer on your lap and your iPhone in your hand? Theses ADD sports are officially terrible.

MMA Motocross

Finally Backflips and Beatdowns has finally skewered the market of motocross and MMA fans with one $15 event. The insurance for my friend’s small retail store is mind-boggling so it’s probably pretty affordable when you have hundreds of pounds of machinery flying over the heads of the audience while cagefighters try to make each other lose consciousness.

Check out the ATV flying over the cage at 1:17

Someone will always try to reinvent the wheel, despite the wheel having a pretty good track record for millenia. No doubt, you’ve probably come to the outer reaches of the Information Superhighway if you’re familiar with this gem.

Ultimate Tazer Ball

This brings a new level of chromosomal deficiency to participate in(whether player or spectator). Invented in Canada(shocker), the tournaments for this “sport” are held in Thailand and California, because Tazers are illegal in Canada.

SLAMBALL

Cheeseless rice, do we really need a basketball spinoff? Doesn’t basketball suck enough already? If the WNBA can lose money for  15 years, do you really think SlamBall has enough Mountain Dew and jizz soaked into it to make a profit?

Ultimate Ball

Ultimate Ball is such an unwatchable abortion that you should fast forward to the 1 minute mark to just get a taste of what this competition is about. Soccer/basketball/MMA/rugby in a cage is about the dumbest fucking thing I’ve seen British dudes do since the movie, Ali G Indahouse(Dictator?).

It doesn’t get much better than night time longboarding with your bros. Remember the last time you felt like this? It was pretty awesome wasn’t it?

Not everyone remembers this, but after Katrina, New Orleans became the hottest place to drop in for vert skateboarding because there was a new frontier of hundreds of abandoned pools. Similarly, the abandoned parking garages gave the city with no hills a new arena for longboarding.

If you’re interested in joining these dudes, hit them up:

PEEP THEIR FACEBOOK GROUP PAGE.

Their page is covered in photos and videos and they even have a cool tshirt. Skateboarding is not a crime.

After being in the car for a few hours, it’s good to get out and stretch your legs while gandering at that falls. Sometimes in the  winter, it’s barely more than a trickle of water falling 90 feet to the pools below.

With the help of some tiny HD cameras, these 3 guys made Old Noccalula a little bit gnarlier.

Watching that vid makes me think of how taking on big whitewater is more about staying calm and having huge nuts than being a skilled paddler. We can all agree that it doesn’t take much skill to get to the edge. Then, while in the middle of the drop, he ditches his paddle. What?!

The water has more control over us than we have control over it. Stay loose and keep your head up.

In 1926, this was one fancy place. As Canal Street declined, the theater started hosting concerts and raves throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. In fact, after the storm, the marquee still read that Lil Wayne was to perform in November 2005 for 5 years.

The place is basically a rat hotel crossed with rat cemetery. There is still standing water in the basement from Katrina. Obviously, the water is not potable for humans, but it’s perfect for rats. The rats live here, die here, and eat whatever crap they can find as well as each other. Pretty disgusting place to work.

Here’s a quick tour that I edited down:

If you don’t know the history of Metairie Cemetery, it was once a horse track. Legend has it that a wealthy Northerner wanted to join the private horse racing club. The Southern members told the guy that he couldn’t join(as it was a private club). The Yankee swore he would buy the club and turn it into a cemetery. And that’s what happened! Look it up.

Famous people buried in Metaire Cemetery:

William Claiborne(first Governor of Louisiana)

Al Copeland(chicken pimp)

Jefferson Davis(later his body was moved to Richmond, VA)

Ruth Fertel(founder of Ruth’s Chris Steak House)

Andrew Higgins(inventor of WWII’s Higgins Boat)

Al Hirt(jazz trumpeter)

Harry Lee(Chinese cowboy)

P.B.S. Pinchback(Louisiana governor and first black governor of a US state)

Metairie Cemetery was also the location for shooting the first music video for westbank puppet superstar Lil Doogie. Familiarize yourself with Doogie:

Anyway, Bec and Sharky came in top 10 for race walkers. Not too shabby. Oh, and after the race there was jambalaya and Abita. Always good to run and then drink. Always.

BUT, because of the windy conditions, the skipper declined to take it out. We had to spring into action. The backup boat was a familiar 22 footer that could hold 8 lads. We were 7 deep. Game on.

It was a season opener for the Gulf and a bit chillier than it has been in recent weeks. Nonetheless, we took advantage of the high seas and cheap waterproof cameras. Keep your eyes peeled in the video for the infamous harbor tower from the NOAdventure sticker.

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Local fave DJ Tony Skratchere has been a large part of keeping the DMC presence here in the city for years. The DMC battle atmosphere of DJ competitions takes me back to my college days when skills were flexed.

BUTLER’S anyone? SHILOH?

Competition makes people get better. No one breaks a world record speed in a time trial – it’s always in competition.

Here’s a little video sample of some of the best wrecking it.

And our locals Tony Skratchere and Beverly Skillz in a scratch session:

Here’s a video from the Harmkhana obstacle course from BEW3 a couple of years ago.

I couldn’t make it to BEW this past weekend, but I found a video online that covers the whole Gymkhana event.

I know this video is incredibly long, but you can kinda scan through it and get the gist of the activities and crashes. It starts with the slow race(last one across the finish line wins, but your feet can touch the ground).

Lot’s of new posts in the weeks to come including an the exploration of an urban ruin and of course, the 120 RAW OYSTER CHALLENGE. Stay tuned.

As we approached the island, I commented to Beck that it looked like there was a mountain on the horizon. I didn’t think the hill was real, but rather an illusion from the treeline. I was wrong. The 152′ tall “mountain” was indeed real and it was made of salt. More on that later.

The tour of the Tabasco factory is not really a tour so much as it is somebody talking for 5 minutes and then showing a ten minute movie. Be sure to try the Tabasco ice cream in the gift shop too! It’s colossally terrible.

The real jewel of Avery Island are the Jungle Gardens across the street from the Tabasco Factory. These gardens are home to hilly terrain, beautifully kept flora, and a creepy old McIlhenny mansion with about 40 vultures chilling out on the roof.

Nothing weird about all of these monster vultures hanging out on this roof. Not a thing.

Inexplicably, the Jungle Gardens also houses a 900 year-old Buddha statue that was sent to America in the 1920s from a Chinese warlord. Two friends of “Ned” McIlhenny sent it to him from NY as a goof in 1936. This spurred Ned to build an Asian-themed garden befitting the Buddha.

FREE MONEY?!

There’s also this area of the gardens called bird city. It’s kind of empty in the winter due to migration, but here it is buzzing with activity:

Little did I know, the island is also the site of one of the world’s largest salt mines. Salt extraction has occurred on the island for at least several hundred years, the first benefactors of its salt deposit being American Indians who boiled briny spring water to extract the mineral. In 1862, during the Civil War, the Avery family discovered extremely pure solid rock salt just below the island’s surface. Because of a Union blockade, the South had no reliable source for this valuable commodity. As a result, the Averys mined the deposit to supply much of the lower South with salt.

Here are some amazing photos:

Today, mining occurs down to the 1300-1600 foot levels, but the dome extends to 40,000 feet in depth! The salt used to pack Tabasco’s barrel-aged peppers comes straight from the mine on Avery Island. How convenient!

I’m no stranger to mushroom hunting, but I’m also no expert on wild mushrooms. I know what 3 types look like: morels, liberty bells, and chanterelles. Fortunately for me, my neighborhood is rife with chanterelles.

Chanties, as I call them, are delicious but deadly(much like lead paint). This is not a joke SO BE WARNED, I have poisoned myself TWICE(yep, twice) by eating chanterelles. Apparently, even though I scoured the internet for chanterelle information, I failed to see the 2 or 3 instances where some samaritan warns that they should be dry-sauteed before consumption. YOU HAVE TO COOK THEM TO DETOXIFY THEM. Get that moisture out of them and they are ready to eat. The poisonings were not fun, but they were an important lesson in living off the land and the limits of what Pepto Bismol can do.

Here’s the first batch of the season that I got straight from my backyard:

Dry those suckers out on a paper bag. Coincidentally, you should use a paper bag when collecting them, because they could get mushy in plastic. Just saying.

Also, bring a scissors so you can cut them from the stem. Before you cut ‘em, ding the bell with your fingers to encourage the mushroom to drop spores. We’re trying to go sustainable with this bitch, yo.

Here was an even bigger score I got later in the week. Holy chanties! I found these suckers around the corner under a water oak. You can usually find them under trees where dead wood falls. For a long time, Rebecca hated me eating these things, but she has sine come around to the idea since I prepared them properly the last 4 or 5 times I’ve had them. Forage away, holmes.