I was edging down steep blues in falling leaf (albeit textbook falling leaf) when I was nine. Maybe I wasn’t that green, but I for damn sure wasn’t cruising the park spinning off boxes while slashing up everything in between. With that in mind, nine-year-old Hiroto Ogiwara very much is cruising the park spinning off boxes while slashing up everything in between.
It is funny thinking about how these sorts of edits coming for that young of riders are so common these days (see everyone from an 18-month-old to siblings straddling the decade mark to our favorite 15-year-old prodigy), so much so that the surprise has kind of left the reaction; granted, the reaction still contains amazement and each of our fair share of envy. The thing that really stood out about this edit was the raw, throwback quality of it. I don’t know why, but it reminds me of our grittier heyday before shot selection and overall camera quality, as well as editing, made everyone look like a full-fledged genius of GNAAARRR.
You know what it reminds me of? (And I don’t know why as there are not that many, if any, parallels between the two.) This edit reminds me of Peter Line’s part in True Life as he jammed to Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio.” Maybe it reminds me of it as an excuse to include what is one of my all-time favorite parts in this post. You have to love when he goes all Hunter S. Thompson in the middle — it might have felt contrived or forced with anyone else, but Peter Line is awesomely weird enough to make it seem natural.
