Shred or Die

I’m exhausted. For the past few nights I’ve been glued to Shred or Die, watching pro and regular extreme sports enthusiasts get their skate/snow/surf/BMX/moto on, and as a person who isn’t accustomed to the quick energy burst from these types of short clips, I’m having a pacing problem. I went from watching pro skateboarder Bucky Lasek squeezing blood clots out of his elbow earned from some gnarly incident and Ryan Sheckler manualing around Tony Hawk’s backyard pool (for that one I tapped the video player’s slow-mo and frame-by-frame viewing options) to surfer Joel Parkinson coasting along in a barrel, and then I voted at the end on whether each video shredded or should die. It’s a ton of fun, not to mention addicting. The site depends on user participation to weed out anything that sucks, so the most yawn-worthy videos get stuck at the bottom of the list. Last night’s session got me into the Bails section, where viewers can watch skateboarders eating rock or concrete; and the inspiring Tips/Tricks sections, full of good advice I’d take if I could just even learn to ollie. Unfortunately, like the sports themselves, this site practically encourages me to go play instead of work, so I think I’m going to be up tonight again.