gorilla flicks

where are they now: kendra gaeta

For all of its poop, boobies, and dicks, Big Brother wasn't entirely a "boy's club" affair. In late 1993, we befriended Kendra Gaeta, an honest to god girl who wished to contribute articles and be our friend. Bear in mind, few if any girls wanted to have anything at all to do with skateboarders then, especially our socially inept sort, so this was indeed an oddity. But in a small span of time, tours, and adult diapers, Kendra quickly became "one of us" in that Tod Browning dysfunctional extended family kind of way—although she was actually much more functional than many of us—and joined the pantheon of personalities to be featured the pages over the magazine's 12 year lifespan. This is her story of our history together…

Sean: Do you remember the first time you encountered a Big Brother magazine?

Kendra: Oh, the very first issue. It might have been that Walter [Sims] came down and delivered advertising copies to Foundation, but I can't be sure. So many video grab sequences! I was 17, in high school, and doing sales at Foundation. There were a zillion little companies back in those days and I was just cold calling shops from around the country, winging it. The people I talked to either took themselves and skateboarding so seriously that they were offended "a girl" was trying to sell them boards, or, in the very spirit of their sport, recognized I was just another kook making it up as I went along. Big Brother was a great foil against anyone who took themselves or the industry too seriously.

How did you eventually get involved with the magazine and its staff?

Tod [Swank] was supposed to have answered the letters in one issue, but flew out for Dave Swift's wedding before he wrote anything. I think it was Rick [Kosick] who called looking for Tod, wondering where the responses were. I was a big fan of the magazine and talked him into the idea I could do it, with my credentials being that shop people knew me even if the kids didn't.

where are they now: heather lee jones

When Heather Lee Jones first started working at Big Brother magazine in 1996 she scared the shit out of me. Not that this is unusual, most everyone scares the shit out of me in some manner or another, but maybe it was because she was always trying to force me into communicating and social interaction has never been a strong point of mine. Regardless, Heather fast became one of us over the years on Big Brother, maybe even a "mom" of a sort, as she tended to take care of all us boys and anything we weren't man enough to deal with in a responsible manner. Kind of like when she figured out the food and drink bill recently, when a few of us gathered for a dinner the night before the DC Shoes x Big Brother extraganza and we couldn't tell our assholes from our elbows with all those numbers on the receipt. Heather didn't get an opportunity to say her piece in the new Big Brother book—I'll take the blame for that—so here's an official update on what became of "Heather from Big Brother" and her former alter-ego "Hubdur" (both of whom are shown at right with a shellshocked me in 1998). —Sean Cliver

SC: How did you first get involved with the Big Brother crew?

HLJ: I met y’all at a party in Hollywood. I was a Camel cigarette girl at the time for a marketing company. Me and a partner would go around to bars in Hollywood to give the bartenders cigarettes and trade people half empty packs of other brands for Camels. I was already promoting bad things, so Big Brother seemed perfect for me. I met Jennifer Brandon [Ed. Note: Big Brother’s first official Advertising Director] at the party. She was really drunk and puked—my kind of girl. I developed a crush on Natas [Kaupas] that night, so there was that, and I pursued Jenny for the job. I became a part-time ad sales rep then moved to full-time sales when we were sent away from the World Industries office space to live at the Franklin Ave. board screening warehouse. Jenny moved into doing all the financial stuff, Danielle Saxe was our receptionist, and I did ad sales—the girls of Big Brother! Marc [McKee] and I were talking about that recently. He said he always wanted to do something with all the girls ’cause he didn’t think people believed girls would actually work for the magazine. Kendra [Gaeta] paved the way. When the mag got bought by Flynt they did not need Jenny to do financials, so she went back to sales and we agreed that she would take Blunt and I would keep Big Brother. I worked there from April 1996 until January 2004 when Flynt shut it down.

last call: the dc shoes x big brother shit show

Before we get shit deep in a photo mix from this past weekend's DC Shoes x Big Brother skateboard magazine launch event, check out that fancy-ass banner at right! Tremaine and Kosick really knocked it out of the online ballpark. So if you want to buy the book, go on, click the image and be whisked away to a magic page on Gingko Press to do so. Should you have any reservations about doing so, please put them aside because the Big Brother book is a best, worst, and who fucking cares collection of content from the magazine with all-new editorial blurbs by former staff members Marc McKee, Earl Parker, Sean Cliver, Rick Kosick, Dave Carnie, Dimitry Elyashkevich, Chris Nieratko, and Chris Pontius. Bonus: It is guaranteed to not fit easily onto any bookshelf, thereby by forcing you to leave this shit out on a coffee table for all to see and roll upon. Now onto the potpourri of people...

Left to right: Big Brother managing editor Chris Nieratko and pro skateboarder Mike Carroll; Pro skateboarders Brandon Biebel and Bill Weiss; The one and only "master journalist" Earl Parker with Big Brother contributor Johnny Knoxville.

Left to right: The original Big Brother staff members Sean Cliver, Earl Parker, Marc McKee, Jeff Tremaine, and Rick Kosick; Contributing photographers Dennis McGrath and Tobin Yelland with the welcome wagon for the party.

happy birthday to bam margera!

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first time we met Bam Margera in the streets of Philadelphia (memorialized at left in the photo above)—not to mention his father Phil, too. Little did we know then how big a part of our world Bam would become (no pun intended with his role as a Fat Fuck at photo right), but then again there was little that we did know back then while living and breathing the silliness of Big Brother magazine. Now before I limp off to the water closet whistling the All in the Family theme song, let me say, "Happy Birthday, Bam!" and re-present this montage of his skateboard career. It's a good one:

(Photo at left by Dimitry Elyashkevich, circa 1995; photo at right by Rick Kosick, circa 2002)

art show alert: ed templeton's synthetic suburbia

We've known Ed Templeton since, oh … maybe 1993? I'd known of him previous to that, of course, first as an up-and-coming amateur street skater on Schmitt Stix, then as a full-blown pro on New Deal in the very early '90s, but I never really met him until he started running ads for his company in Big Brother skateboard magazine. What made Ed stick out from all the rest of skateboarding then? Well, aside from the fact he could whip impossibles out, over, and onto pretty much any urban obstacle or park formation, Ed was very much a nonconformist in a crowd of conformists. He had beliefs, opinions, and thoughts unlike many others. He was an aspiring artist. And, okay, he occasionally shot a photo or two of his penis. So of course we got along super well with him and he was always a friend to us at Big Brother—even if we neglected to ever once give him a cover and, I guess, made the ridiculous declaration that if he did want a cover the only way he could get it was to boardslide a handrail buck-naked with a boner. He never did. Regardless, Ed is still our friend, and he has since gone on to become a worldwide art star with his most recent show, "Synthetic Suburbia," opening this Saturday, April 25, from 6-8pm, at the Roberts & Tilton gallery in Los Angeles.

 

What’s your process like when it comes to prepping for a new gallery showing, is it a bit like cramming for a final exam?

 

It has both elements. I knew for quite a while I was going to do a "painting only" show, so I started early because I'm sort of slow and I have other responsibilities, like I might have to stop painting for a week to do a graphic series for Toy Machine or have to design a book for Dennis McGrath. When it gets closer, the last two months, I start ignoring all emails, and it's just painting from 1-10pm, breaking only for dinner. The last big painting I did for the show took over two weeks, and I was freaking out a bit because I thought I wasn't going to finish in time. But I did and ended up doing two more small paintings this last week, each one taking only two or three days. The main prep is looking at the space and figuring out how many you need to make to make it look good. So I had a number in my head that I needed ten paintings, with at least six of them being bigger in size to fill the space properly. I ended up with twelve.

the legend of johnny lee countee

Today's guest editorial comes not from the lens but rather the pen—okay, keyboard, whatever—of longtime Dickhouse/Gorilla Flicks cameraman Rick Kosick, who hit me up with the uncontrollable urge to recount the story of our Big Brother magazine encounter with Johnny Lee Countee. Take it away, Rick!

I wanted to share a story about one of my favorite Big Brother magazine assignments: The Johnny Lee Countee interview, circa 1996. Mark Oblow, who was the owner of Prime Skateboards, had received Johnny’s sponsorship tape. I guess he was trying to get on the team, or at least get some free boards, and that’s when I realized he was the perfect fit for the magazine and I should go shoot an interview with him. I’m not going to lie; I was a little apprehensive, because I knew I’d be going into a rough neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. But I figured if this was going to work out I had to show up to his house early in the morning and go by myself.

bret banta: from scan boy to stand up comedian

It's not easy being socially awkward. Trust me, I know. I make myself uncomfortable in most any social situation, so I can well imagine what it's like for anyone around my inept epicenter. But enough about my rad issues, let's talk about Bret Banta and his human condition. We first met Bret in ... shit ... 1995 or '96? He came to us at Big Brother skateboard magazine then with aspirations of an internship while enrolled at Cal Arts in the graphic design program. Bret was awkward as all hell. Twitchy. Hair trigger nerves. Constantly on edge and apologizing for shit that he'd imagined he'd done wrong or was about to do wrong. So, naturally, he fit right in amongst the rest of us misfits.

big brother: rick kosick's vintage t-shirt collection

Well, that's not entirely true. This is only a portion of his collection, but it's the only portion I have photos for, so roll with that I shall. In a historical nutshell, we all came from skateboarding, met each other on a dodgy little start-up magazine titled Big Brother in 1992, and we somehow made it out of the '90s alive and onto jackass in 2000. But the whole thing about Big Brother is that it can be summed up with that one design above: Wiggedy Wiggedy Wack. We were making a skateboard magazine that was more about skateboarders than skateboarding, or, at times, neither of those things, and when it came to the ancillary merchandise, primarily the ridiculous excuse for a T-shirt line, we purposely made crap—which, eventually, we really did make.

happy birthday to danzig!

Okay, so yet again I'm a day late and several inches short, but when celebrating the birthday of Glenn Danzig should it be anything but? And while it brings me no small amount of enjoyment to imagine Glenn in a black, pointy party hat in the midst of blowing out Satan-knows-how-many candles on a birthday cake, I remain a tad perturbed that he didn't totally Don Draper his personal history to be born on a flat sacrificial stone in the middle of cornfield at midnight on All Hallow's Eve. Visions of a bouncing baby Danzig being born in June are like, well, Hitler figure-skating in Springtime, or something so totally not apropos to the overall painstakingly manicured image.

By the by, there was an article posted online a few weeks ago that mentioned a proposed statue of Danzig on a dragon be erected within the Austin, TX, city limits. I shared this with Dave Carnie, who somewhat shares my fascination with Danzig, though perhaps in a different veiny way, and while he liked the idea of a Danzig statue he felt it would be better suited to anywhere but Austin, given the tongue-in-cheek hipster nature. I agreed, of course, but must set aside the city of Durham, NC, too, because we're reserving that location for the hope and dream of a grand erection in the name and face of Jeff Tremaine.

This Big Brother cover is brought to you via an inside joke, a Twilight Zone reference, a Stephen Stickler photo, and an average skateboarding kid from El Segundo, circa 1993. Nick Bennion, where are you now?