RIPPLE.

WALL STREET GOT NO SKEET

NEW YORK - "Stocks retreated sharply and Treasury bond prices jumped Monday as investors reacted to a stunning reshaping of the landscape of Wall Street that took out two storied names: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 300 points."
What does this mean to paintball? Honestly allot! I will explain a 2 year ripple effect that generated in paintball that I have argued before that the industry has to make legitimate stands before things go in the shitter.
Before I start off, Brandon Lambertson went on a cruise over the weekend to build brand recognition and smooch with the bigger-ups like financial wizards, models, men who have to pay there way to get laid and so on. Anyways, what an ass.

This weekend I played at the world famous SC Village to get my sweat on, watch players and see how paintball progressed in the this nature. I found it still moving but not as grand as it was in the past. People still play with no mention of sport, but camaraderie and all around good fun. As we were divided into teams, I began to try to mix with the regulars and not get picked on or typecast to help alleviated a awkward balance of how the groups are divided. As usual, I got to the side where the other group looked to be outgunned, out equipped, and out-experience. My little group of 6 ninjas decided to come out of hiding and said that we will go on the other side. I began to hear sigh of reliefs and groans as we walked to the other side. My buddies are trying to wonder why we are led to sheep-side and i said, "We all need to have fun, we all need to have a good story of paintball when they go back to their lives on Monday. Plus its paintball, we all can play again." They agreed and we let our 6 mingle in with the 75 or so to involve them in to slaughter.
Ok, back to ripples. Not allot has seen what had happened over the two past Christmas seasons, but there has been a huge explosion of online games and other game formats to help generate the "in-house athlete." Everything from Halo 3, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and so on has making its way to help "forget" playing outside, forget paintball. Now, I'm not saying this is a conspiracy to defeat paintball, I'm stating the fact that a 60.00 game can go along way than a case of paint on a Sunday. Now seeing this, stores begin to feel the noose on their necks as people are slow to come in stores. What begins to happen next is obvious and cowardly. Stores begin to slash prices just to get people in the door realizing that it is now getting into the margin of paying the electric and employees. Industry decides to do the same because of manufacturing also needs to get paid for new products and overhead and so forth.
Then stores begin to die. They carry way too much product, not enough demand. The buyer becomes aware of cheap deals, and more stores literally giving away product to make ends meet. So now here comes a wave of great valued products at lower than wholesale prices and can be delivered with free shipping and it keeps... rippling. The stores that are surviving, are merely surviving on paint. and now there great inventory is not moving. which means more sales. I use to have a 500 dealer base around the country and now down to 200. We thought it was just us telling people we are slowing down and knowing that our competitors kept pushing the "Hybrid is dead" agenda in hope to create a better demand for their product. Call it smear tactic. Remember in high school when the girl your trying to mix- it-up with wont give it up so you later on to make your self feel better, you promote to the school that she is a whore? Yea, I'm the whore. So back to ripples!!! industry is now fighting for the same store giving them whatever to make sales and quickly for get because we are all on survival mode, to promote paintball as a sport, a sport of leisure, a sport of release, a sport of team efforts, a great sport of all ages.
So hear is a sport with their demographics wrapped around their finger. A group that expands to even senior citizens and now slowly, dying. While skate boarding is steadfast because they see future and future is bright. As skateboarders get older they stop skating. So they promote more on youth organizations and media attention. As a paintballer gets older, fuck we still play!! As other industry looks at their demographics, their future, they work on awareness and stability. Not the quick buck which will lead to countless issues of disaster. Its like paintball player of old, the sport is so great, we lose jobs, girls, even opportunity for it.
So now sales are down, industry is down. Mags cannot keep advertisers in. Magazine went from a plus size chicken grease wearing big booty model, to a 85 lb. toilet paper-eating, bulimic crack-laced wannabe 50 yr old who now cannot figure out how she got where she is now... Now the magazine dies... no media, no spectacle....ripple continues.

Now the banks you use that you put your hard earned money in, uses that money to work on special interests to help make banks make more money. This can be from real estate to private international wars. Don't believe me, look it up. For this, they give you, interest. Allot of people don't ask what happens to their money as they give it to their banks because they assume it just stays there.
Now, investors are putting money in media frenzied events and or people. More exposure more they want into what you are doing. For example: Monster.
Its all about media, exposure, fan base, news, spectacles, information, longevity and commitment
With no news, no exposure, allot of politics and no future for newer business to make money, why would anyone be part of it. Maybe the Marine corp, but they too have an agenda bigger than ours.
Where is your money now? What do we do? For now, just play.

A LAMB IN WOLVES CLOTHING

I have been into paintball since 1989 and over the years I have been apart of some really great historical paintball moments. I witnessed pump guns go from 12 gram CO2 and ten round tubes to constant air and full size loaders to being modified into semi-auto guns which lead to the actual production of semi auto guns. I saw loaders go from gravity feed to home made motorized self feeding loaders and then into actual production loaders by ViewLoader. I saw masks go from shop goggles to the first JT protective half masks to full face protection. I watched and was apart of the EPIC battle for the title of the best gun in paintball, between WGP's Autococker and AGD's Automag, which gave birth to some of paintballs greatest airsmiths/tech who went on to create some of the greatest products paintball has ever seen. I was working in a paintball store in California when the first Spyder debuted. I saw the dawn of the electronic gun age with the Angel. Hell I owned one of the first Angles to ever make it's way to the United states. I was apart of the movement when paintball came out of the woods and stepped onto the first HyperBall fields. I watched as fields became inflatable when Sup Air made fields where the bunkers were inflated and connected to each other by tubes. I played the last ten man game ever played by the NPPL/PSP with the SC Iromen and I won the World Championship title that same year with them. I watched as two leagues became separate and started their rivalry. I played the very first Xball game and thought I was going to die from exhaustion. I was apart of the team (Miami Effect/Infamous) that broke the rules and the contracts and walked away from the NXL to play in the NPPL. That single act broke the divide between the two leagues long enough to allow the NXL teams to be able to play both leagues and compete against the other pro teams again like it had been in the past. Ive worked in stores, at fields, at manufactures and distributors. I owned my own paintball store for ten years. I had my own line of products out for eight. I played pro for six. I have came up with and contributed to some of the products that helped make the industry what it is today, like the present day weight belt style harness, the first bolt redesign of the original Matrix to what became the now DM series, the "screw apart" two piece barrels as well as many more products. I am fortunate enough to be able to call people like Rich Telford, Chris Lasoya, Matty Marshal, Davey Willamson, Adam Johnson, Billy Wing, Yosh Rau, Andy Kopcok, Jon Richardson, Travis Lemanski, Mike Paxson, Ron Kilbourne, Josh Davey, Zack Long, and many others, not only past teammates, but friends.


I have witnessed some of the greatest things in the history of paintball, but I have also witnessed some of the shadiest, back stabbing, two faced moves you could ever imagine. I have a lot of dirt on a lot of people and I have always, for the most part, kept my mouth shut. But there comes a time when enough is enough and people need to know what is going on not only behind their backs, but for the most part, right in front of their face. I have always been a loyal and honest person. Other than when I left the BushWackers (who were amatuer at the time) to play with the pro team, SC Ironmen, I never left ANY of my teams for better offers, even when I wouldn't have been looked down upon for doing so. I always stuck it out through the good and the bad and trust me, there were some SERIOUSLY bad times. I believed in the concept that everything happens for a reason and that people are rewarded for their good acts and punished for their bad. While that may be a novel concept in the real world, it does not apply in the paintball industry. It seems that in paintball, the good die young and the bad....well lets just say the bad seem to make out pretty damn well. I am somewhat guilty of being apart of a lot of the bad that has happened in this industry simply due to the fact that I have known about it and I didn't say anything or try to change it, even though I was not reaping any benefits by doing so. I just thought it was better to go with the flow and not cause any waves for myself, my teams, or my paintball related businesses. Now that I'm not involved in the paintball industry anymore, I have no loyalties to anyone but myself and the players left behind in the shit storm that is modern paintball.

Many people have come and gone throughout the history of this sport and I can't honestly think of one of them that made a significant long term change for the better, something that continues to this day positively. People have tried, but nothing has stuck. Now if your thinking about people who made an industry changing product that positively changed the way the game is played and the way things are bought and sold, then your not talking about what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a revolutionary product. I'm talking about why paintball isn't really growing and why it hasn't been received well by the public. The same public in which every single one of us came from. Why have other extreme sports like skateboarding, bmx, snowboarding, motocross, and MMA to name a few, had such immense success in a relative short amount of time? Paintball has been around for about as long as most of those sports and longer than others, yet those sports have all gained greater public acceptance, status, growth and financial stability over paintball. All we get to hold onto, is a couple years worth of having the numbers show we were growing faster than other sports, but where did that fast unsustained growth actually get us in the big scheme of things.

We are still a self sustained industry with very little true outside interest or help in the form of sponsor dollars. Why is that? Is it as simple as just not having the right industry infrastructure, the proper game format, or media outlets? If so, who's fault is that and why isn't it being fixed? Why have we not really done as well as those other sports in the over 20 years that we have been around? Why after 20 years are the same main companies, for the most part, still the ones that "control" the industry? Is there a correlation there? Why haven't more outside companies come into this, "near" billion dollar industry? Why isn't paintball on TV because of its own viewer strength and not because its being paid for by the industry? I mean, if every paintball player in the U.S. tuned into a show, those numbers alone would keep a show aired. Why don't players support the shows on TV? Why do we waste money playing paintball in the parking lots of football stadiums pretending that its making a difference in the eyes of the public and drawing in outside interest? Why are there two leagues spending so much time and money fighting each other in a battle to be the premiere league that the world will recognize as such when paintball goes mainstream, when there is so much ground work still left to be done before we even get there? Why is the ENTIRE referee organization completely unorganized and inconsistent? Why aren't more than a hand full of the best players in the world recognized and promoted for all the hard work they have put in and continue to everyday? Why cant you look up your favorite pro player and find out his game statistics and see for yourself that he is seen as a great player because of the numbers he puts up, not because he has a cool catch phrase or sweet headband fashion and is good at getting himself in front of every camera that it clicks off a shot? Why is being a total dick to other people on the field, cool and becomi ng the norm? Why is cheating considered "just part of the game"? Why do manufactures and distributors help open and then sell products to two rival stores, less than 5 miles apart from each other? Why do dealers slash their prices and devalue products because their stores are slow due to their own incompetence.....and why does the industry allow that?

These and many more, are all questions that not only need to be addressed, but that I believe I truly have SOME answers to. I know I don't have all the answers and I don't pretend to, but I believe I have some, and I welcome ANYONE to add to them or even correct mine. That is the type of thinking that has been lost in this industry. There is too much inner fighting and little to no cooperation. Everyone thinks they have the only answer. People aren't willing to swallow their pride. If they would stop fighting each other over all the little scraps that paintball has become and started working together, then they would all have a much bigger piece of a much bigger pie.

Brandon Lambertson

THIS is FUN!!!! But I should not laugh..

Since i have been doing this... well, as long as i can remember, the story telling is a lot more unique knowing that it may never be on the pages of a magazine or a prestigious internet website. Hangin out this past weekend with MMA industry folk and attending x-treme sports seminars... i have begun to realize when the panel brings up moto-x, skateboarding, bla bla bla then MMA, i have begun to realize that paintball was never and is never part of what these people as the general anti-established-felt testosterone, anti corporate industry. Hmmm, I thought, why is that? Did we believe to ourselves in our own world we were kings of something? Did we all forget to be out of the box and produce the media attention that made the X-games industry survive?? I remember talking to Adam Gardner and his mission to put XBall on TV and made some great success and advancements in the forward progress of paintball. He tells me there quirks of making it better however, he invited everyone to participate and put there teams and industry brands together so it was worthwhile. Through it all, no one backed the brothers and show still went on which made to look like they were monopolizing the TV and sport. People simply did not want to involve themselves because if it failed, they want to point some fingers. Unity, like the xgames with their sanctioning committees and industry committees have involved everybody to get a grip on the future of their sport build strategic foundations with group foundations to help the awareness of the industry to the rash public and its own media. College paintball is sick!! That is what paintball should look like and we all should support it.Rock music was said to never survive, but here it is. Skateboarding in not a sport in fact its still called a crime in some cities, but here they are, a sport, an X-treme spectacle, on fuckin TV. Remember that this billion dollar industry makes shirts, shorts, shoes, and a damn board that has not been but wood, bearings and wheels. After all that, they pay their dues to promote the sport. What have we done?? Kill the industry, Slash prices to kill stores, false advertising and promote false agendas. Law suits to monopolize and or reduce the plan of another manufacturer. Provide no sanctioning guidelines and yearly meetings for all manufactures to provide goals.

Infamous beating the Russians (5 tired vs 15 fresh comrades) should have been glorified as well as Rashad Evans putting the beatdown on Chuck Liddel

Later i got some bad and good news about our paintball but remind you that once read we all can laugh and be judgmental but at the end... Lets make it better. If I name names like Todd Martinez or Keely Watson before news gets out I really dont know what might happen.. I'm just a reporter with rights that involve the truth. Seek the truth, dont click and paste what is told you to be the truth.

WHY WE DO....

Alright alright alright.. so i here the biggest, best, brightest mag has fallen or at least gotten a lot smaller as said on our biggest forum of paintball "Pbnation." So after hard thinking and working with friends and shit, I decided to produce a blog related to the real news. What paintball needs is real news and with legitimacy. Our ESPN of sports commentating and related paintball news have fallen!! 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation fucks must know that this is ultimate!! As of right now anyone who has not been playing or been in the industry for at least 15 years I don't necessarily give a fuck because what you don't understand is the our beloved history and story telling is vastly disappearing!!
Rock Cagnoni!!!!! Are you fucking kidding me!!!! The Angel wings and 50% of all your tatts on your Italian body is built around the WDP camp!!! Shit I understand that money is involved for you to be involve with Dye and Proto but shit!!! You my friend have been a JT WDP REDS supporter for years and I will not let our past be the forgotten. The kids these days think to re manufacture you now makes you a follower of one. Your past is where its taking you in the future. Your past shaped what paintball is today. I feel the strain of how the monsters of our industry has to market but lets be real. I don't know who the new Jt dude is doing the marketing but please pick up the now super skinnie ass apg and remind yourself how we thought this mag was a bible of the sport from advertising, stories and information. Jt brings back old shit!! The pics in their add was sick!!!. Every one from old Image with Travis and the Twins, to Hunter Bob Long and his Captain Morgans pose. To the inconspicuous pics of Dave and Shane in there JTMX gear. And of course.... Rocky Cagnoni. yes yes yes i understand sign of the times bla bla bla. Mags are going to disappear like Rose from Unique and all us ballers will be dust.

Since we now have bloggers hoping to create the buzz of our not so imaginative and unfruitful future, I will deliver the past. The greatest time of the Industry. I understand now there is going to a rat race to make news from anyone... and i like that the more news of our great sport good, or bad is still worth reading and working with. This we don't have to compete and stab each other with. TIME TO START GIVING A SHIT