The first in a series of public service announcements designed to keep you informed and make sure you ain't slippin, courtesy of the Mush Clan.
Fletcher's Breakout Ad
Clan member Fletcher Berryman with his first Monster ad; featured inside cover for this month's issue of Transworld Snowboarding.
Lungie Land
New Lungie Land.. Featuring the Clans one and only Curtis and obviously Deadlung himself.
Lungie Land Vol.16 from deadlung on Vimeo.
Secret Art of Dr. Seuss
Some selections from the "Secret Art of Dr. Seuss" collection, a combination of paintings, rough sketches, and sculptures by Theodor Seuss Geisel released in 1995, four years after his death.
Joey Sexytime n JP Cocker
Yeah. The photo pretty much speaks for itself on this one... no hard feelings joe, we got your back.
RON
If you think RON is a bad name for a skate video then I guess you just need to smoke some more trees before you watch this shit. Edited and filmed but the one and only Butters.
Boulder Backcountry
Vail was closed. Boulder wasn't. Photo shoot sponsored by Monster Energy Drinks, "Providing Extreme People With Extreme Energy". Mushroom Clan riders Keegan Valaika and Fletcher Berryman put Shaun White in his place.
Keegan with a backside dickgrab.
Fletcher finishing off a frontside 720.
Fletcher doing God knows what with his snowboard.
A particularly spiritual backflip from Keegan.
Paintings of Passion
Why Thich Nhat Hanh is the Shit
“Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Though many Mush readers may be unaware of his efforts towards world peace, Thich Nhat Hanh is the shit. As a Buddhist monk he has spent the majority of his 83 years on this planet living in poverty and simplicity, all for the sake of understanding. While tons of us go out and smoke weed and suddenly get why John Lennon was so cool, few of us pro-peace hooligans ever expose ourselves to the writings and wisdom of true experts on the subject. Though revered by locals in his native Vietnam as a true voice of the people, Nhat Hanh's return to his homeland has been negated by the Vietnamese government's continued ban on his literature and peaceful protests. Thus perhaps the most pious and humble man to ever come from this war-torn nation has been unable to return for the last 37 years. If you think Lennon's shit against the Vietnam war was code, this guy shits flowers all of him. Thich Nhat Hanh is a homie, and you are failing in your harmonic stoner lifestyle if you avoid his quaint though wise teachings. Such a homie in fact that in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. (winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize) nominated him for the Noble Peace Prize, sending this letter to the Nobel Committee in Norway (yes, I said Norway. For those of you who think you know everything, the Nobel Peace Prize is in fact not from Sweden, and its bestowing is decided by a committee of five individuals elected by the Norwegian Parliament. These were the wishes of Alfred Nobel, a Swede, who founded the prize with his assets gained through his invention of dynamite)....so anyways, here's the letter:
January 25, 1967
The Nobel Institute
Drammesnsveien 19
Oslo, NORWAY
Gentlemen:
As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964, I now have the pleasure of proposing to you the name of Thich Nhat Hanh for that award in 1967.
I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam.
This would be a notably auspicious year for you to bestow your Prize on the Venerable Nhat Hanh. Here is an apostle of peace and non-violence, cruelly separated from his own people while they are oppressed by a vicious war which has grown to threaten the sanity and security of the entire world.
Because no honor is more respected than the Nobel Peace Prize, conferring the Prize on Nhat Hanh would itself be a most generous act of peace. It would remind all nations that men of good will stand ready to lead warring elements out of an abyss of hatred and destruction. It would re-awaken men to the teaching of beauty and love found in peace. It would help to revive hopes for a new order of justice and harmony.
I know Thich Nhat Hanh, and am privileged to call him my friend. Let me share with you some things I know about him. You will find in this single human being an awesome range of abilities and interests.
He is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. The author of ten published volumes, he is also a poet of superb clarity and human compassion. His academic discipline is the Philosophy of Religion, of which he is Professor at Van Hanh, the Buddhist University he helped found in Saigon. He directs the Institute for Social Studies at this University. This amazing man also is editor of Thien My, an influential Buddhist weekly publication. And he is Director of Youth for Social Service, a Vietnamese institution which trains young people for the peaceable rehabilitation of their country.
Thich Nhat Hanh today is virtually homeless and stateless. If he were to return to Vietnam, which he passionately wishes to do, his life would be in great peril. He is the victim of a particularly brutal exile because he proposes to carry his advocacy of peace to his own people. What a tragic commentary this is on the existing situation in Vietnam and those who perpetuate it.
The history of Vietnam is filled with chapters of exploitation by outside powers and corrupted men of wealth, until even now the Vietnamese are harshly ruled, ill-fed, poorly housed, and burdened by all the hardships and terrors of modern warfare.
Thich Nhat Hanh offers a way out of this nightmare, a solution acceptable to rational leaders. He has traveled the world, counseling statesmen, religious leaders, scholars and writers, and enlisting their support. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.
I respectfully recommend to you that you invest his cause with the acknowledged grandeur of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1967. Thich Nhat Hanh would bear this honor with grace and humility.
Sincerely,
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Powerful stuff. I'd like to end with another powerful insight from Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment.
Only this moment is life.”
Clan Member of the Moment
NATE BOZUNG.
Here at Clan Headquarters, deep within the twisted and fantasmic Land of the Mushrooms, PO Box 42069 Gumdrop Lane, we've got lots of shit to take care of, lots. Unfathomably large, ineffably sized loads of shit. So we just don't have the time to post "Babe of the Month" every month on the hour, or "Video of the Day" every day at 6:43am exactly. So we post our stuff by the moment. And at this particular moment, one member seems to stand above the rest. So without further ado, we present the ever-so-coveted Clan Member of the Moment Award to Nate Bozung. Congratulations Boznutz.
Image used without permission at all whatsoever from gnarlyclothes.com
Birdhouse's "The End": Jeremy Klein & Heath Kirchart
For those of you tight-panted feather-adorned groms born in 1995 who were still sucking your moms tits to stay alive when Birdhouse took a shit on skateboarding with 1998's "The End"...The unabridged Oxford English Dictionary cites this skateboarding video under its entry for the word "passion": [pash-uhn]
A strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything; see Birdhouse's "The End".
New Member of Da Clan
Newest inductee Neil Young is here and wants you to know....
"Mushroom Clan Aint Nuthin Ta Fuck Wit!"
My Frustrations With The Laguna Beach Police
I wrote this letter after years and years of putting up with the Laguna Beach Police Department. So far it has been sent to the Laguna Beach Independent, the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot, and the Orange County Register. Who knows if it they'll have the passion to publish it; all I know is that the Mushroom Clan most certainly does. Enjoy.
"My Frustrations With The Laguna Beach Police"
I've lived in Laguna Beach my entire life. I went to preschool downtown at the Presbyterian Church, elementary school at Top of the World, middle school at Thurston, and graduated from Laguna High in 2008. And ever since I met "Officer McGruff" in 1993 and was introduced to the D.A.R.E. program, I've been very aware and familiar with the Laguna Beach Police Department. I'm proud to say that I love this town, and admire all of those who work hard to ensure that our community remains safe and intact. Yet I feel torn when I was raised to view the police as role models and witness firsthand otherwise. As a student in the Laguna Beach Unified School District, I was warned of the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse and learned of the stark reality that is drunk driving. To this day I appreciate wholeheartedly these lessons among other contributions the LBPD have brought into my life. Still, there are aspects of the police force that trouble me greatly. For example, in late August 2006, while lighting candles at the shrine dedicated to my friend Max Caputo on PCH below Upland Rd., an LBPD officer driving one of the force's SUV's made a U-turn and accelerated northbound at what I would estimate to be at least 60 mph. Now many of us often drive at 60 mph or more down the highway, and I myself have been more than guilty of such at times. But this instance put me over the edge. When the officer sped out of the U-turn and proceeded northward, he made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to slow his speed as he passed the crowd. For those of you unaware of the makeshift memorial or its significance, I feel compelled to indulge in a slight though necessary tangent. On August 19th, Laguna Beach High School student Max Caputo was struck and killed by what has been assumed by many to be a drunk driver while riding his bicycle along Pacific Coast Highway. I make this tangent intentionally; the efforts of the Laguna Beach Police Department in finding the suspect, though unsuccessful, were nothing short of exceptional, and are forever appreciated by myself as well as the hundreds of friends and family that were fortunate enough to experience Max's life. What kills me, however, is the fact that the very same force working so hard to solve a case involving a hit and run narrowly avoided hitting several of my friends as this aforementioned officer swerved towards the crowd of mourners. And I simply ask this: what in the hell could possibly demand such urgency at 1:30am in Laguna Beach that an officer felt it necessary to approach a crowd of young adults and parents at high speed and avoid collision by mere feet? I simply cannot find even the most miniscule dose of reason in such an episode. And this occurred in front of nearly 20 or more individuals, who I can assure will act as witnesses to my claim should they need to do so. Sadly, this remains only one of many times where I've been disappointed with the behavior of a Laguna Beach police officer. One particular example stands as so ridiculous that I often struggle to convince people it ever even happened. In late 2007 I was driving down PCH in the right lane near Pearl Street with my younger sister and a friend when I was cut off by an LBPD Crown Victoria. The officer had made no effort to warn me of his fast approach, and even failed to use his indicator as he swept violently across the road, nearly forcing me to swerve off to the right and collide with a parked vehicle. I was so infuriated that I drove after the officer, and as I pulled up to him kindly asked that he use his indicator next time. After this I made a turn up Bluebird Canyon, bound for a friend's house on Santa Cruz St. behind Bluebird Park. I as I made my turn up the canyon, I saw the officer's vehicle flip an abrupt U-Turn ahead of me, and as I drove up Bluebird was surprised to see the very police car that had practically thrown me off the highway minutes before now pulling me over. I promptly grabbed my insurance and registration from my glovebox and removed my driver's license from my wallet. At the time I was unaware of the system established to allow local citizens to place complaints with the LBPD, and greatly regret not retrieving his name or badge number. He took one look at me and said, with great fury, "Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? I'm a police officer. And now I'm having to deal with you when I could be off saving someone's life". I calmly replied, "Yes sir, I see this" (thinking to myself, realistically, if I were scheduled to be saving lives at a particular hour, I wouldn't instead put aside the time to confront a 17 year old on the issue of my lane change indicator). He then explained to me how he could ticket me for "disrupting traffic flow" by slowing down and pulling up beside his car in order to ask him to use his indicator next time. This, in my opinion, was nothing more than a sorry attempt by an enraged police officer to remind me that I am always in some way breaking the law. I said nothing and allowed his ego-fueled fire to slowly burn itself out, dowsing its flames with courtesy and silence when I had the chance. Yet he kept going on, trying to scare me from ever standing up to "the law". And frankly, I had seen this before, and was content with waiting for whatever ticket he wanted to throw at me. But then it came. Out of nowhere. In the middle of his largely unintelligible rant, the officer pointed at the lights affixed to the top of his car. He then said, and I am willing to put myself on the line in the local paper to have this quote heard, "You see those lights? You see those lights? Those mean I can do whatever the f**k I want." My mouth dropped at that point. I could not believe that a guy who had probably spent the earlier portion of his shift at El Morro teaching children how to live respectable and drug-free lives had just dropped the F-Bomb in front of my 14-year old sister. Since that day I have been unable and unwilling to respect the Laguna Beach Police Department. Police departments were created to protect and serve their communities. I wish that I could say this is the case with our own, but I can't. I won't. The fact that our safe and quaint town provides officers with less action and hero moments than a inner city ghetto in no way justifies the need of some officers to take down citizens out of shear boredom. And I have found that this false sense of entitlement that has infected much of the LBPD to still be flourishing even now as I return home for my winter break from my sophomore year of college. The other night I was driving into town on Laguna Canyon Road, completely sober and in compliance with the speed limit. Yet an officer felt the need to follow me for several miles, down Broadway and up PCH in North Laguna. I'm past the legal age for curfew, all of my tail and brakelights have been recently checked and are in perfect condition, and I had been obeying all traffic laws the entire night. So why the need to intimidate me? Surely there is something more important for a police officer to do with his shift than follow a law-abiding citizen around for kicks. In the last week alone, I have noted five separate incidents in which local police officers have found it somehow necessary to pull someone over in the middle of the road, typically on PCH. Today on the way home to write this very letter, I almost crashed my car as I came up the hill from Aliso towards West St. when an officer's vehicle was parked in the middle of the right lane. Of course, if the sidewalk had been lined with parked cars and he was provided no alternative I would understand entirely his parking in the center of the lane. This was not the case, however, and the whole side of of the highway was in fact clear of parked vehicles. Yet for who knows what reason, the officer thought it much more logical to park right there. And in typical fashion, his fellow officers soon parked behind him, blocking the lane further (I witnessed this build up upon my return the opposite direction approximately twenty minutes later). Even worse was an incident a week ago when I turned off PCH onto Forest Ave., only to have the entire street blocked by a LBPD vehicle, which appeared to be unoccupied. I was forced to literally back into PCH, something generally not taught in Driver's Ed. And the list goes on, and on, and on. I think I've gotten my point across. I must emphasize that I am not writing this as some flaming liberal college kid who thinks the world is out to get him. I worry that older readers may see this and think, "Oh, just another 20-something out to change the world". I write this as an irritated young adult and fellow member of this community, who has real issues with the current system and wishes to be heard.What pains me most is that there exist officers in the LBPD who I respect beyond measure, and it is disappointing that my view of the department as a whole has to be skewed and tainted by the behavior of only a portion of the force. I would like to end by again declaring my love and respect for this wonderful community I've been blessed to grow up in, and the hardworking men and women who do there best to hold it together. Yet my frustration stands.
-Fletcher Berryman
THE OFFICIAL STATE OF THE MUSHROOM ADDRESS
The President of the United States has the annual State of the Union Speech, the Governor of California has the State of the State. We've got The State Of The Mushroom, and it's about to drop, right now.
In the spirit of the new decade and in light of a fresh new year, The Mushroom Clan would like to deliver its first message to the masses. In light of the ongoing international economic crisis and subsequent loss of hope across the globe, The Clan is here to bring peace. Peace and blunts. You see, everyone needs a guiding force to direct them towards the path of life. And oh how it is a struggle for even the brightest souls to point themselves in the right direction when searching for the truth. The Clan is ready to show you the key to genuine happiness. Now we shamefully admit that our commitment to our followers has been mediocre at best, posting a photo here and there, maybe throwing out a video clip or two if you're lucky. Yet the age of mediocrity is over. As the new decade begins, we declare that The Mushroom Clan is here, and is blowing the fuck up. Blowing up today, not tomorrow, not the next day, TODAY. We have no plans of leaving you hanging with a clip of Ryan Sheckler beating off to himself in the mirror, only for you to sit and wonder when our next post will drop. Not us. Not The Clan. In the words of the eternal sage Matty Ryan, "You're only disposable if you let yourself be disposable, and give up on what you know you can do". The Clan is forever permanent, never disposable, and will stand as the Voice of Reason until the Internet itself meets its final demise. Yet what is it that The Clan may provide your life that you have yet to obtain or experience? In the midst of wars overseas, an increase in gang violence and intravenous drug use on our own soil, and the recent season premiere of Jersey Shore, many question whether the world will soon come to an end, and what steps may be taken to prevent such atrocity. With the ever increasing influence of the media and its constant insistence that we indulge in more and more grotesque and crude forms of entertainment, it has been suggested that perhaps we as the dominant species on Earth take a step back. Perhaps we as the supposedly most intelligent life forms in the universe, should look deeper. When you find yourself wanting to watch Tool Academy 2 or a rollerblading competition on ESPN 3, consider the simple joys that once kept you content and at peace. Dr. Seuss once said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” So why don't you turn off that techno you're listening to, clear those Baywatch re-runs from your cable box, and go READ some shit. Some really insightful, amazing shit. And maybe see some softcore porn. Here, at The Clan De Mush.
Peace, Love, Weed,
The Mushroom Clan
In the spirit of the new decade and in light of a fresh new year, The Mushroom Clan would like to deliver its first message to the masses. In light of the ongoing international economic crisis and subsequent loss of hope across the globe, The Clan is here to bring peace. Peace and blunts. You see, everyone needs a guiding force to direct them towards the path of life. And oh how it is a struggle for even the brightest souls to point themselves in the right direction when searching for the truth. The Clan is ready to show you the key to genuine happiness. Now we shamefully admit that our commitment to our followers has been mediocre at best, posting a photo here and there, maybe throwing out a video clip or two if you're lucky. Yet the age of mediocrity is over. As the new decade begins, we declare that The Mushroom Clan is here, and is blowing the fuck up. Blowing up today, not tomorrow, not the next day, TODAY. We have no plans of leaving you hanging with a clip of Ryan Sheckler beating off to himself in the mirror, only for you to sit and wonder when our next post will drop. Not us. Not The Clan. In the words of the eternal sage Matty Ryan, "You're only disposable if you let yourself be disposable, and give up on what you know you can do". The Clan is forever permanent, never disposable, and will stand as the Voice of Reason until the Internet itself meets its final demise. Yet what is it that The Clan may provide your life that you have yet to obtain or experience? In the midst of wars overseas, an increase in gang violence and intravenous drug use on our own soil, and the recent season premiere of Jersey Shore, many question whether the world will soon come to an end, and what steps may be taken to prevent such atrocity. With the ever increasing influence of the media and its constant insistence that we indulge in more and more grotesque and crude forms of entertainment, it has been suggested that perhaps we as the dominant species on Earth take a step back. Perhaps we as the supposedly most intelligent life forms in the universe, should look deeper. When you find yourself wanting to watch Tool Academy 2 or a rollerblading competition on ESPN 3, consider the simple joys that once kept you content and at peace. Dr. Seuss once said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” So why don't you turn off that techno you're listening to, clear those Baywatch re-runs from your cable box, and go READ some shit. Some really insightful, amazing shit. And maybe see some softcore porn. Here, at The Clan De Mush.
Peace, Love, Weed,
The Mushroom Clan
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