The Jaws of Tetris | Simply Ranked

The definitive weekly ranking and analysis of all the skateboarding and other online things that I cannot stop consuming and how they make me feel, personally.

We all have our things

Rank: 1+
Mood: 🥤

If I can get a good night’s sleep, wake early, have a few cups of coffee, a breakfast that’s filling but not anchoring and involves some manner of fruit(s), do the dishes, catch up on the news, read a chapter or two of a book, sweep the apartment (and clean the tub if necessary), do a bit of stretching while a favourite album plays, track a package of pants that’s making its excruciatingly slow journey to me, water the plants (even the one that might be dead but I keep watering because it feels cruel not to), check my daily to-do list, check off any daily to-dos that I’ve already done, drop into the group chat to see if everyone is still into checking out the ledge or embankment or sort-of-a-wallride in an alleyway in some far-off suburb, start gathering my things, follow-up with the group chat, brush my teeth, attempt consensus on time and place with the group chat, put on my shoes and sit idly by the phone, confirm with the group chat, and then remember to turn off all the lights in my apartment before leaving, I’ll be able to skate much better.

Social media marketing campaign strategies Pt. 1

Rank: -10
Mood: 📱😔

In February 2020, someone behind The Berrics’ Instagram handle made a curious overture towards the Airwalk Instagram profile. At once dismissive and pleading, it seemed like the online content mill was telling the once-storied shoe brand that it was foolish for them to have turned down their help with what, one would assume, was some kind of marketing strategy. A bold, sad public rebuke from one social media account to another.

But by the end of the year, The Berrics would find its own footwear company whose marketing heft it could direct in seemingly any direction they wanted, and direct it they would.

Military-grade takes

Rank: 2
Mood: 👄🗯️

Skateboarders, speaking generally and perhaps generously, tend to overanalyze. We often take our bits of concrete and assumed knowledge and apply them to whatever areas we believe our sometimes dubious expertise lies in. Sure, I’ve never done a kickflip backside tailslide, but if you just torque your shoulders a bit more before takeoff, that’ll help bring the flip around; if ‘X’ skater just loosened up their pants a bit, I bet they’d find some better sponsors; Etc. This, to be fair, is a natural tendency of human beings at large; to talk about something or someone else’s perceived problem as if we hold the answer. To use our precarious footing on a matter to hoist our way towards a truth that doesn’t belong to us—employing thought experiments as entertainment or receipts to claim our reward if we guess right. Because do we actually care if that rando lands their KFBSTS or if a pair of Big Boys extends a career? We just need fuel to keep our conversations running, the machine that carries us through the day.

Social media marketing campaign strategies Pt. 2

Rank: +10
Mood: 📱🙂

The Jaws of Tetris

Rank: 3
Mood: 🟥🟥🟥🟥

As the trend of long-form, lo-fi documentary shorts continues to worm its way deeper into skateboarding’s content ecosystem, we occasionally get to see a more compelling side of the skateboarders these pieces focus on. In Darren Harper’s recent “Out There” for Thrasher, we learned that Harper plays the congas in a local go-go band and has started his own handyman business. It’s a great, illuminating feature that will easily keep your attention over its 20-minute runtime.

Bronson’s latest “Life In The Fast Lane” series, featuring Aaron “Jaws” Homoki, runs double that. For nearly 40 minutes, we watch Homoki and Dakota Servold go on a sightseeing tour of various roofs that the former has made a career of jumping off. However, the most interesting part of the piece is Homoki’s reveal that he’s a fan of competitive classic Tetris, so much so that he has a “shrine” dedicated to the game’s most iconic players. So, of course, this begs the question, who is the “Jaws” of Tetris?

Is it the late Jonas Neubauer, a seven-time champion whose heyday ran parallel to Homoki’s in 2010-2017? Perhaps it’s someone closer to the current defending champ, DogPlayingTetris, a teenage wunderkind whose scores are some of the biggest that the game’s ever seen? Or maybe that’s the wrong question to ask altogether, because really, “Jaws” is the “Jaws” of Tetris. Homoki regularly streams himself playing to over 5,000 followers on Twitch, his beloved techno pulsing in the background as he, much like us, tries to make sense of what’s before him on screen.

Something to consider: The expiration date of some bizarre baloney. “Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins Is Lying About Something,” by Miles Beard for Gawker.

Good things:

Until next week… it’s peak cherry blossom season in participating locales this weekend; you know what to do (round up your friends, go for a walk and watch in awe as delicate pink petals cascade around you).