Name: Tim Keenan

Age: 24

Home: Hawthorne, NY (but my heart's in West Virginia)

Sponsors: None

In it: 5 Years

The Local: The Gunks, NY / Cooper's Rock, WV

Memorable Ticks:

Here are a few for different reasons:
Crouching Dragon V11 Personal Breakthrough, first double-digit boulder problem
Final Fantasy (FA) V9
Favorite all time Tick
Four-Ton Mantis (FA) V4
30ft Highball Slab

Dream Trip:
Mallorca for deep water soloing. I'd also like to spend some time in England at the Peak District.

The Five Year Goal:
In Life - I'd like to travel more, and hopefully hit two new continents. There are so many places to go and so little time. I hope to paint more frequently and get some of my work shown in a gallery or two. As far as climbing goes, I think it would be cool to do some aid climbing...And I'd like to go to Hueco and work Diaphanous Sea.

The Insider:

Name: "The Claw"

The Claw hates Tim Keenan. It's a simple matter of jealousy. For instance: Tim Keenan climbs much, much harder than the Claw. Tim Keenan climbs harder than Chuck Norris. Tim Keenan has crimp strength that belongs in a martial arts movie where he single handedly crimps 10,000 angry ninjas to death, and then sets their dojo on fire just by crimping a piece of rock so hard that it bursts into flames.

Tim Keenan is also skinnier than the Claw, svelte even. This may be the only reason he climbs so hard, and doesn't even diet. Tim Keenan doesn't run, workout, or eat well. Tim Keenan just sits around drinking Mountain Dew and wearing fancy sneakers and lots of other fancy stuff. Tim Keenan went to college to learn how to be fancy. The Claw is serious. Tim Keenan has a goddamned Bachelors degree in fashioning. He has newer Verve pants, a bigger Mohawk, and a more authentic 80's rocker outfit with checkered pants, suspenders, and ten times as many safety pins.

Tim Keenan has better taste in music. He is an indie rock god. Tim Keenan is the winged shark demi-god of indie rock, breathing fire on small villages of American Idol fans. All the bands Tim Keenan knows are more relevant than the bands the Claw knows. If there were any justice in this world Tim Keenan would be a fat, pimply music dork that lives at home and has no friends. But Tim Keenan has a swank studio apartment where he makes beautiful abstract paintings and watches anime, and plays with Kid Robot models (which is a little lame, which is why the Claw is bringing it up. F*#k you Tim Keenan).

Tim Keenan is so svelte, well dressed, and hip that when he goes to New York City to play pool with the Claw, they get free drinks at bars in the East Village until 4:00 in the morning. Then Tim Keenan makes out with the sexy blonde bar tender, in the cab, while the Claw (stuck in the backseat with them, face against the window, fighting motion sickness and generalized existential angst) suffers the indignities of the loudest make- out session in the history of NYC Yellow Cab LLC. The Claw suggests that the Reader makes the most exaggerated, lip smacking, tongue wrestling, face sucking sounds the Reader possibly can, and then imagine how much worse it would sound if the Reader had been drinking for eight or ten hours and summarily lost all the inhibitions that differentiate humanity from some species of monkey that just sits around making out all the time. The Reader cannot possibly conceptualize the depth of the Claw's hatred for Tim Keenan.