Young Adults and skateboarding. So hot.

Eww.. gross. Get your mind out of the gutter. Joining Blake Nelson’s Paranoid Park is Nick Hornby’s Slam. You might recognize Nick Hornby as the writer whose books get made into good movies like High Fidelity. Slam’s protagonist is skateboarding obsessed and regularly holds imaginary conversations with Tony Hawk who answers in not always relevant quotations from his autobiography. Sounds like an amusing premise actually, if it weren’t written for young adults. Actually, if you can enjoy Harry Potter, why not Slam?. It’s interesting to note (OK, maybe not) that Tony Hawk is so pervasive that his status as a cultural icon can now be a bit supporting character in books much like Elvis was in the movie True Romance. Hornby’s had a few of his books made into successful movies, so maybe we’ll see a Tony Hawk cameo that’s a little better than what he did in Thrashin. While it’s unclear whether or not royalties were paid to the old 80’s wrist guard company of the same name (Haw!), it is clear that skateboarding is a hot topic for those trying to sell to the young adult market. Speaking of being in the market for young adults (what is this Perez Hilton?) the Gus Van Sant adapted Paranoid Park for a movie before it was even properly published. We heard rumors that Paranoid Park the movie was doing well overseas, but we haven’t heard squat about it in the states, or even in Portland where the damned thing was filmed. Hornby’s Slam comes out on October 16th, and for some reason the cover on the US version is skateboard-free while the UK version is what is shown above. There’s a spoiler heavy review of Slam at The Guardian.