Kieran Woolley's "Opera" segment

I never heard of him before today, which doesn't mean much.  But this is a really cool skate segment, so check it out.  

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

Steve Emig The White Bear Substack

Women singing Led Zepplin

Listening to something completely different the other night, a video of Heart singing a Led Zeppelin song that was not "Stairway to Heaven" popped up on the side of the screen.  I checked it out.  Then I started wondering what other female singers have covered Led Zeppelin songs.  That's when I found this clip.  I was a fan of Jewel from when she first popped up on the radio, and I knew she could rock.  But this is a great cover.  So I started looking for other hard rockin' female covers of Led Zepplin songs.  After watching a handful on YouTube, it seemed a blog post was in order.  

Heart- "Going to California" on the Howard Stern Show

Miley Cyrus- "Black Dog" 

Zeparella- "When the Levee Breaks"

Beth Hart- "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"

Heart/Jason Bonham/full choir/extra musicians- "Stairway to Heaven" - live at the Kennedy Center- honoring surviving members of Led Zeppelin

This isn't a Led Zeppelin song, but check out this long, live version of "You're No Good" by Linda Rondstadt.  This is some serious 1970's rock & roll.  Just listen, second song in this clip.  

Linda Rondstadt- "You're No Good" (3:55 in this clip)

RGB- New Brandon Semenuk video that just dropped

Beautifully shot and edited, here's another high caliber MTB video of Brandon Semenuk.  As a video guy way back in the olden days, I know that "RGB" refers to "red, green blue," in video tech terms.  And it has a much better ring to it then "Y, R-Y, B-Y."  Just watch it...

One Million Page Views on this blog!?!?!

Out of 15 (yes, 15) ultra low budget action sports videos I produced and/or edited BITD, this is some of the best footage.  Horrible editing, Play-Rec-Pause, machine to machine, while fairly drunk, but the footage is good.  Scenes from Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip King of Dirt at Mission Trails, in the spring of 1991.  This segment was my footage that I edited into the first S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer.

Thank you readers!

I started this blog in late June of 2017, when I couldn't find a job in North Carolina, and literally had just moved into a tent in the woods.  That was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Really.  My FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales Old School BMX blog (2008-2010, 100+ posts, 25,000+ page views), and my follow-up Freestyle BMX Tales blog (2010-2012, 500+ posts, 125,000+ page views) had both run their course.  Both blogs were really popular in those early days of the Old School BMX Freestyle online community.  I deleted both of those blogs completely off the internet during a dark moment in my life, in 2012, a couple of months after my dad died.  

I played around with 50 or more other blog ideas, writing 20 or 30 posts, then giving up on each idea.  I started two follow-up versions of Freestyle BMX Tales, Version #2 on Wordpress, and version #3 (still up today) back here on Blogger.  In this "Addicted to Blogging" post on one of those blogs, there's a list of the most popular of my "unknown" blogs, though the page view stats are totally out of date.  Those years, 2012-2018, were a really depressing time in my life.  

I was living with my mom in North Carolina, couldn't find ANY job, at all, and blogged a lot to fill the time.  I even attempted suicide, in the spring of 2015, with a serious overdose of my depression meds, including a whole bottle of lithium (let's see if this sentence gets me kicked off Blogger).  That led to nearly two weeks in the local hospital.  I came out the other side of that, with the help of a good therapist, and focused on creativity.  Late in 2015 is when I started drawing people in my Sharpie Scribble Style, and selling my drawings on Facebook.  The more creative I got, the more my mental health improved, even if my financial life was still tanking.  

My mom and I never got a long well, and after a serious argument in the summer of 2017, I moved out, and went to live in the woods in nearby Winston-Salem.  I lived in a tent behind Bolton Park, near Hanes Mall, and drew Sharpie drawings for food and day to day money.  I sold them online and through a really cool local record shop, Earshot Music, thanks to Phred the owner, and the art director, Jane Buck.  I owe them both a huge "Thank you!"  It's been a tough decade since.  I never have made a real living since, but I keep blogging, drawing, and putting out creative work.  I've scraped by financially for many, many years at this point. 

When I started this blog, I really didn't know if anyone would ever read any of it.  But I wrote more stories about my days in the BMX freestyle and skateboard worlds in the 1980's and 1990's.  I also wrote about anything else I found interesting.  This blog had 150,000 or so page views by 2023, when I jumped over and started writing mostly on the Substack platform.  I've added posts now and then since, but just left this blog, sitting there on the web.  Around that time, the blog started getting big chunks of views from obscure locations like Hong Kong or Singapore.  For real.  This was about the time VPN's showed up, so I thought that might be what was going on.  Those big blocks of views from all over the world just kept coming.  I still don't know what's going on with them.  Whatever the case, the blog just rolled over one million total page views last night.  

Thank you to everyone, anywhere, who has read this blog, or any of my blogs, over the last 19 years that I've been blogging.  

There are over 600 Million blogs online, and the vast majority of blogs never even get 1,000 views.  One stat says that 96.55% of ALL blog posts get ZERO traffic.  Every single post on this blog, more than 1070 total, have views.  Blogger (owned by Google) is a tiny part of the worldwide blogosphere.  I can't find any specific Blogger blogs with one million views, but there are some that get 1 million views a month.  Technically, Huffington Post, and similar websites, are blogs.  There are many news and mainstream blogs that get a million views or more a month.  A few may get millions of views a day.  But that's not true of personal, niche blogs.  So this is a really cool milestone to reach.  

Just for the record, I write all my posts myself, and don't use AI.  I've written somewhere around 3,000 blog posts in 19 years, though I deleted all my blogs (maybe 1,500 poststotal) in late 2012.  Then I started all over.  

Also, I have never made money on my blogs, at all.  From a monetary standpoint, all of my 50+ blogs are financial failures.  I don't blog for money, and haven't put ads on my blogs, except for trying Adsense for a couple months in 2009, but I never got the money.  I've never done affiliate marketing, either.  It just doesn't really work with my style of blogging.  Ads clutter up blogs, and the money isn't worth it on niche blogs.  Now, most of the sales of my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings have been to people who read my blogs, so I have made money, but not much, indirectly, thanks to my blogs.   

Like I said, I do most of my writing on Substack now, so while I'm stoked on the views on this blog, check out my Substack for my more recent writing.  

Steve Emig The White Bear Substack

(Click "No Thanks" on the first page, and then scroll down the list of posts, see if anything sounds interesting.) 

Creeping up on 1 million page views...

 I started this blog in late June, 2017, when I literally had just moved into a tent in the woods, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  I had no idea if anyone would ever read this blog.  Now it has 989,459 page views as I write this.  Crazy.

I pretty much gave up on this blog, and started writing mostly on Substack in 2023.  But here we are, May 7, 2026, and the blog is creeping up on 1 million total page views.  That's freakin' mind blowing for a personal blog, on Blogger, where I wrote mostly about Old School BMX freestyle in the early years, then about whatever I happened to find interesting after that.  

When this blog had about 150,000 views, three or four years ago, I started noticing big chunks of views, 2,000, maybe 4,000 or more at a time, popping up.  I don't know where those views came from.  I still don't.  This started happening about the same time that VPN's started getting popular.  I don't get post by post stats for these views, just overall numbers.  So is it VPN's?  Bots?  Aliens?  Or just people finding random posts (out of about 1,070 total posts), and blasting them to their followers.  I still don't know.  This blog has about 250,000 "normal" views, and 3/4 of a million of these chunks of views.  Whatever is going on, the blog is within a couple days of rolling over to one million views.  Thank you to everyone who has checked out my blog over the last 8 1/2 years!  

These are the numbers on my analytics, from the last 7 days (May 1-7, 2026), they're coming from all over the world, all different browsers and all types of phones and computers.  It's been like this for 2 1/2 or 3 years now.  I never, never expected this blog to be at this level in 2017.  I just wanted to blog about the things I found interesting, as I drew Sharpie pictures for food money at the local library, day after day.  Crazy.  Thanks everyone...

Saturday, May 9th, 2026, 1:29 pm Pacific time- Here we go, 999,142 page views, and this blog is averaging 4,000 to 5,000 views a day.  So it should roll over one million views today.  Again... thanks to everyone who has ever check out this blog, or any of my other blogs, over the last 18 1/2 years!  

I do most of my writing on Substack these days, long form posts about art, writing, creativity, poetry, the histories of classic BMX/skate spots, and other stuff I find interesting.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear Substack

6 great songs that sound religious but aren't...

Morgan James singing "Take Me to Church," accompanied by Scott Bradlee on keyboard.  Performed and recorded at the Paste Studios in New York City.  A while back I made a Morgan James playlist on YouTube, and I added this song, even though I had never listened to it before.  Then I listened to it, and it blew my mind.  This song is a Hozier cover.  

In the course of researching and writing blog posts nearly every day, I listen to a lot of different music on YouTube while I'm working.  Because I listen to several different types of music, I get some cool clips popping up on the side to check out.  Over the last couple of days, I realized there's a cool theme with a few of the songs I've been listening to recently, and one outstanding song from decades ago.  

Personally, I think that on a good day you can learn more about God from a really soulful and well performed song than you can from the average church service.  But hey, I'm weird.  You're free to disagree.  In any case, here our six songs that I think are all great pieces of music.  They all have titles that sound religious, but contain lyrics that aren't actually religious, but are really powerful.  Enjoy.  

The Big Push- "Personal Jesus"- Depeche Mode cover

XTC- "Dear God"

Susan Tedeschi/Tedeschi Trucks Band- "Angel from Montgomery"- John Prine cover

The Big Push- "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"- Bob Dylan cover

K.D. Lang- "Hallelujah"- Leonard Cohen cover.  She performs this song with Leonard Cohen in the front row, and she goes down to talk to him afterwards.  

I can't make a post of these religious sounding songs without at least a couple of kickass songs with titles from the dark side...

Popa Chubby- "Sympathy for the Devil"- Rolling Stones cover

Bad Religion- "American Jesus"

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

Steve Emig The White Bear Substack*

* Canonization applied for

February 28, 2026- U.S./Israel attacks on Iranian targets and Pakistan declares war on Afghanistan

This is an NBC News report on the U.S. and Israeli military strikes that began overnight on multiple targets in Iran.  This news report includes the statement by U.S. President Donald Trump released early this morning.  According to the reports, Israel and the U.S. are beginning an extended military campaign against Iran, and they are seeking regime change.  

I'm documenting this news here on my blog, because these strikes are obviously the beginning of a set of actions that will have many intended effects, and undoubtedly, a lot of unintended effects.  These effects could very likely affect much of the world, in a variety of ways.  In addition to the human consequences of all the places being hit by the initial strikes, and Iran's counter strikes, a major rise in oil prices worldwide seems inevitable, affecting millions or billions more people to some degree.  The United States Congress has not declared war on Iran at this point, and their response remains to be seen.  

At this point, about 12:30 pm Pacific time here in California, we don't know how long these military strikes are intended to last.  No one knows how long the unintended effects will last, and ripple through the rest of the world in many ways.  This is a major action, and not a whole lot is known about where these military strikes will lead in the weeks, months, and years to come.  

In addition to the strikes in Iran, Pakistan has declared "open war" on Afghanistan, over the past day or two.  Pakistan is one of the nine known nuclear armed nations, which makes this conflict even more potentially dangerous.  

As of today, we have three conjoined countries involved in two different wars in the region us Americans refer to as "the Middle East."  See the map (Google Maps still shot) below for reference.  Again, no one knows now all of the many effects these actions will have in the future.  

Here's a You Tube video from geo-political analyst Peter Zeihan with more information on what we know so far about the current military actions.   "... A lot going on... more to come..."- Peter Zeihan

Today, February 28, 2026, is one of those days which will have major historical consequences, however these two wars, and the coming actions by all parties, play out in the future.  I'm posting this to mark this day in time, and it may become something to look back at, months or years from now, as the many consequences play out and continue over time.