This Week - Jul 12, 2015

We are failing to elevate Mr. Mullen’s seminal invention. It is stagnating in the country of its birth. The Japanese, on the other hand, are master kickflippers. Like a pair of jeans from seventy years ago, they give every nuance perverse amounts of attention before creating their own. They probably look for hidden pockets in the concave of a board that we haven’t even noticed yet, or perform sophisticated toe exercises to improve flick capabilities. The average Japanese kickflip is not average.

— Jiro Dreams of Kickflips: How Japan Mastered One of America’s Greatest Inventions (Quartersnacks)

If I like a song (or dislike a song), I have to explain -- to myself -- why that feeling exists. If I’m writing about the song in a public forum, I have to explain it to other people. But my explanation is never accurate unless I flatly declare, ‘I like this and I don’t know why’ or ‘I dislike this for reasons that can’t be quantified.’ Every other response is the process of taking an abstract feeling and figuring out how I can fit it into a lexicon that matches whatever I already want to believe. My mind is not my own. And once that realization calcified internally, there is no going back. Once you realize you can’t control how you feel, it’s impossible to believe any of your own opinions.

— Chuck Klosterman in I Wear The Black Hat