Endless Winter
Did you know there was a snowboarding revolution? Could you kick yourself for missing it? Well, don’t you fret: the story of the snowboarding revolution is right here. “The Story of the Snowboarding Revolution,” First Descent is subtitled, and they wouldn’t lie to us, would they?
Actually, I think they might. I have a sneaking suspicion that First Descent is a huge put-
I mean, how else to explain the film’s hilarious combination of self-
I think by the time the film gets around to its “wackily obsessive Japanese fans” segment, Guest might be saying: You know, we can’t run with this — it’s just too clichéd. But he’d probably have a grand time faking the footage of the faraway days of 1995, with all those crazy rebellious snowboarders getting dissed by skiiers at the resorts and banned from the lifts. My gosh, it’s been a long ten years from those indignities to the honor and grandeur that is snowboarding today, a sport in which megacorporations have glommed onto its rebellious crazy spirit in order to sell overcaffeinated sugar water and plastic fast food to teenagers.
They’re whom First Descent is aimed at: teenagers for whom 1995 really is the distant past, young unformed minds that might be impressed by the gravitas with which the film treats the history of the snowboard, as if it took the genius of an Einstein to make the huge conceptual leap from a board that travels on water to a board that travels on snow and (here’s the genius bit) that you ride like the board with wheels that travels on pavement. Brilliant! Kids are also the only ones likely to be impressed by the adolescent philosophizing of the adolescent snowboarders, and I’m not just talking about 18-
Look, I admit, I’m an old fogey: I don’t get how anyone can pat themselves on the back for being defiant and anarchistic while they take their millions from Mountain Dew and Taco Bell — yeah, you’re reaaaal counterculture. Saying “rad” and “gnarly” kinda doesn’t do it. Is it appropriately teenage-