Monday, November 24, 2025

The Many lives of a Great Song- Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"


The Big Push, from the U.K., covering "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," live on the beach, in the fall of 2025.  This has become my favorite cover of this song, eclipsing the Guns N' Roses version from 1990 on a soundtrack, and 1991 on the Use Your Illusion II album.  

Bob Dylan wrote this song for the soundtrack of the 1973 movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.  Dylan even played a role in the movie. The song was released a couple of months later as a single, and became one of several songs Dylan is best known for. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has been covered by all kinds of people, in several different styles, ever since.  Here are some of the best versions over the years.  






















I have question marks on a lot of the dates because I'm going by the year it was loaded onto YouTube, and the performances may have been recorded earlier.  


I do most of my writing on a platform called Substack these days, it's a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out: 

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

My Funeral Music Playlist (just planning ahead)


OK, there's a story behind this post, I'm not trying to be totally morbid.  I was at McDonald's the other day, talking to a friend, and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" came on in the background.  I said, "I want this song to play at my funeral."  He replied, "You're crazy."  I agreed, laughed, and said, "Yeah, I want the hearse to be bumpin' this song really loud as they drive to the cemetery.  He just shook his head. 

But I was serious.  OK, I'm homeless (living in a "tiny home community" at the moment) and basically broke.  If I don't get my shit together at some point, there's a pretty good chance I'll just keel over on the sidewalk somewhere, some day, and get cremated or put in a potter's grave, with no funeral service.  But on the chance I get my shit together, and someone actually has a funeral for me, or some kind of memorial service, I want people to remember the times I made them laugh, or the times they laughed with me, or even the times the laughed at me.  I truly do want to put the "FUN" back in funeral on my way out of this life.  

With that in mind, I wrote down two or three songs that I'd want to play at my funeral or memorial service.  I started thinking about those songs this morning, and wound up with a list of 21 songs.  To be clear, I'm in no hurry to kick the bucket, but I figured I might as well go ahead and make a funeral music playlist.  I like to plan ahead.  I just put the whole thing on my YouTube channel: Steve Emig's Funeral Playlist.  So it's there, for anyone who wants to check it out.  

Here are the songs I selected, in order.  I lined them up so that if this music was playing in the background of my memorial service, or the hangout meal afterwards, most people probably wouldn't really catch the theme of the playlist until about halfway through.  Yes, I have a dark, fucked up, sense of humor.  It's served me well many times.  This is another example of that.  






"Fire on High" - ELO (listen to the backward masking in the intro)















"I'm Free" - The Who  (Wishful thinking)

I do most of my writing these days on Substack, and most of it is less morbid than this post.  Check it out:


Saturday, September 27, 2025

AFA Masters flatland- Austin, Texas- 1987


Has anybody done a podcast with Don Hoffman (Pipeline Skatepark/Unreel Productions/Vision)?  Somebody should.  Same with Frank Scura and Bob Morales (who started the AFA).  On camera we have Frank Scura in the intro, and Don Hoffman behind the camera.  Bob Morales put on the contest, and I was a roadie at it, and rode in the comp as well.  This is the third video I produced and directed in 1987.  Nearly an hour of 1980's flatland.  Officially, this video is titled Texas Pro Flatland.  Enjoy.  

I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack these days, it's designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

Friday, September 5, 2025

Colby Raha drops an amazing short film of FSMX/freeriding


This isn't a video, this is a short movie.  Beautifully shot, produced and edited, crazy action, and he breaks a couple of world  records, just for good measure.  Just watch it... like three or four times.  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Chinchilla "Ok As I Am"- new music video


Chinchilla's music keeps getting better and better.  I first heard of her a couple of years ago, after an old BMX friend's post turned me on to Ren's "Hi Ren."  Within a couple of days, I discovered the Rex X Chinchilla videos, "Chalk Outlines," and "I Forgot How to Be Me."  Those are still my two favorite songs I've heard of hers, along with her rendition of "I Put a Spell on You" on the British version of The Voice.  

I think there's a song out there with her name on it, something big and orchestrated, that will really let her show her skills as a singer and performer.  When that song comes along, she will quickly blast into the ears of millions of more listeners.  I'd love to hear her cover a Meatloaf song, or anything written by Jim Steinman, but that's just me.  Anyhow, I clicked on to find this video with under 6,000 views, and it's my new favorite solo video of hers.  It will have many, many more views by this time tomorrow.  A LOT more views.  Check this Chinchilla video out while it's brand new. 

5,700

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Illegal skate contest in the L.A. River bed


This event happened on the DL about a month ago, somewhere in the L.A. riverbed.  This informal contest video just has a lot of damn good skating in it, and apparently was sponsored by Gorilla Energy Drink (never heard of it) and Keen Ramps.  It's just a cool, solid video if you're into street skating.  

I stumbled upon this video, while checking out a BMX video.  This came up on the side, as things do on YouTube.  As some of you may know, I worked at Vision Skateboard's video company, Unreel Productions, way back in the olden days.  We did a street skating video shoot back when street skating was a really new thing.  It happened in an empty parking lot, right on the corner of 17th and Placentia in Costa Mesa, caddy corner to the bar that had once been the legendary Cuckoo's Nest.  

In this Vision Street Wear commercial, one of the obstacles was a 4 foot high quarterpipe up against the wall of a building.  You can see 3 or 4 quick shots of that shoot in this commercial.  Kele Rosecrans was doing loud, wheel squealing, six foot high, front side power slides above that tiny ramp that day.  It was amazing.  So the quarterpipe against the wall, under the bridge, reminded me of that Vision shoot, way back in the day.  

These skaters go off, and it's great vibe for the jam/contest.  Check out the video.

For most people of Generation X, this location looks familiar because the L.A. River bed was where they filmed the iconic race scene for the movie Grease.  

Thursday, August 14, 2025

$10,000 Investment Challenge- Update 8/14/2025- Down big time at the moment

 

All in on Apecoin since January 2025.  Am I an idiot?  It sure looks like it... for now.  


Way back in December of 2023, I tried to open up a crypto account, but was unable to, because I had a cheap Obama phone.  I thought it was a good time to hop into some crypto, but couldn't open an account.  So I decided to do a paper trading experiment instead.  My question was:

If I had $10,000 to invest on that day (12/11/2023), what would I invest it in?

This is, and has always been a paper trading exercise.  It's an imaginary investment account, making imaginary trades, based on market conditions at the time of each trade (including adding in gas fees, etc.). 


I picked a handful of cryptos, and have traded in and out (again, purely imaginary- paper trades) since.  In a few months, the paper trade fund was up 40%.  I've traded in and out of a handful of cryptos, mostly taking profits on those that were up, and re-investing in others.  As of January of 2025, this was my paper trade account:

8,685.31 Apecoin

$392.81 in cash 

Right now, on August 14 2025, Apecoin is at 60 cents per coin.  Total value of my paper trading account currently is:

 $5,211.19 in Apecoin, plus $392.81, for a current total of $5,604.  

At this point, this paper trading experiment is down 44%, over 20 months.  But, my investment window, when I expected this to be a worthwhile investment, has been late 2025 or early 2026 from the start.  

My bet was that this Apecoin would rise to a solid investment between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026.  Yes, it's down big right now, but we're only 6 weeks into the window I was aiming for.  As of right now, buying Bitcoin, Eth, or Solana over this time period would have paid off more at this point.  Buying Nvidia stock would have paid off more at this point.  Even buying gold or silver bullion would have paid off more at this point. 

I thought gold was going to go up some in late 2023, but honestly, gold has really surprised me since.  That's mostly because this whole scenario is playing out much slower than I thought it would.  But it's still playing out.  

Here's why I'm hanging onto the Apecoin in my imaginary paper trade account, and riding it out.  I think we are dramatically overdue for a major correction in both stocks and crypto.  I don't think $121,000 Bitcoin is the peak of this crypto cycle, but I think we're near the short term peak.  

I believe we will see a major financial crash this year, that's already overdue.  I think a huge ($5 to $10 TRILLION) bailout will follow, over the course of several many months, after a major correction, we will see a huge liquidity wave, which will send stocks and crypto back up, gold and silver down.  The now expected decline of interest rates over the next year is lining up with this idea, as is the massive slowing of real estate in the parts of the U.S. that boomed over the last several years.  There's also the commercial real estate collapse (see my Simulpocalypse Series on Substack for more on that).  Anyhow, when the bailout money surges into financial markets, probably in the spring of 2026, we will see a prolonged surge in crypto.  I think in mid to late 2026, maybe early 2027, we will see $150,000 Bitcoin, and over time, huge rises in many other cryptos.  That is the scenario I was betting on from the start.  

My assessment may be completely wrong, of course.  It's already running somewhat behind the timeline I had in mind, but I'm sticking with this overall assessment.  So I don't care that I'm all in on Apecoin when it's at 60 cents a coin.  This time next year, we'll know if my $10,000 Investment challenge was sound thinking or not.  

Checking this today, I decided to write a post, even though it's down, and I'm making no changes, because I should show when things are not going well, as well as when they are going well.  



The Many lives of a Great Song- Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

The Big Push, from the U.K., covering "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," live on the beach, in the fall of 2025.  This has becom...