But they seem pretty clever. I’ve never seen the show America’s Got Talent or even the UK version that I have to assume exists and the original idea was licensed form was licensed from. That’s OK, one good “homage” deserves another. From this clip, it’s apparent that a group of frat boys got together to make their own version of BMG, and it looks surprisingly good.These frat guys are called Defying Gravity. They’re ex-frat guys actually, I guess they dropped out of school to be on the show. I hope it works out for you guys, but you need a new name. I guess it’s at this point that I’m going to need to add some sort of “circus” category, seeing as how this isn’t the first time we’ve had skateboarding mentioned in conjunction with the circus. Defying Gravity takes on a bit of skateboarding in this segment that reminds me a little bit of some of those fingerboarding videos where they skate on turntables with fixed obstacles.

– Thanks to Seth Levy for the tip.

Two comics with skateboarding, one is Cyanide & Happiness and the other is from a Imperial Valley, Ca paper, as featured on a crackpot’s blog The Snake on the Flag.

Thanks to Boy Ipoh and Ryan Mann.

Kids meal toys at Taco Bell are (were, most likely) really cheap Weird-Ohs brand fingerboards. I am officially losing my mind now, because I swear I already did a post about some Weird-Ohs branded magnetic figures on a skateboard, but I can’t find it anywhere on the site. I can’t link to it, but the figures were on skateboards that were kind of crappy, so it’s no surprise that the freebie kids meal toys at Taco Bell are even crappier. It’s a shame cause the Weird-Oh legacy is pretty cool. If they did it right, a lot of people would really dig them.

Did anybody see the 2005 remake of Bad News Bears? Anybody? Anybody? I wonder if there is any skateboarding in the movie. I believe skateboarding surpassed baseball in youth practitioner #’s some time in the new millennium, so nowadays if you want to be an individual and be a rebel, you gotta join an organized sports team.

I gotta believe this is coincidence. I’d love to claim inspiration, but I would think if someone got the idea from our zine they would have let us know. This was found in the mugshot section of the Smoking Gun. Don’t get any ideas, an S&A tattoo will get you absolutely nothing but my eternal bewilderment.

– Thanks to Ben Reese for the tip.

I snapped this photo out the window of my car on the same day I saw another one on a bus bench on my way to work too. This one is a half a mile from Conahan’s house. Before now, I had only seen this image online.

Kelley Deal from The Breeders and Kristian Svitak sing a jingle for Landshark wheels. There was a cool band in Illinois circa 82-83 called the Breeders. They had (among other things) some really good songs like Zen Punk and Uncool Slamming. You can download mp3’s of their 7″ with the band’s blessing from this article on Maximum Rock and Roll.

I saw a whole mess of Toyota marketing money that looked like it was trying to bite Jim Phillips’s style, but it’s probably legit.A quick search for Jim Phillips and Toyota reveals that he appears in a Toyota commercial that airs in Japan, so it’s highly believable that they also hired him to illustrate for the Extreme&trade:! sports market.

I went last night and had a blast. There’s a live band but the cast doesn’t sing, so musical is a bit of a stretch. It’s a fast and loose production filled with a “special” effects bonanza, including the infamous scene where the Ramp Locals ramp gets burned down. The Corey Webster character is cherubic, if not down right portly, but it’s played to perfection. Also worth mentioning, the ladies are representing. Pretty much the only actual skating during the production is handled by an enthusiastic crew of female rippers. Highly recommended at Dantes, tonight.

Dang, we were supposed to help out with this. I started to get involved, had a couple email exchanges and a phone call, then they never followed through. It’s a conspiracy I tell ya… Oh well. No hard feelings. Check out the live musical version of Thrashin on stage at Dantes in Portland this Wednesday through Friday. There should be a ramp on stage and a live band too. The production company’s last effort was a gay version of Top Gun called Hot Gun, so this should be pretty fun. I mentioned it to real life Dagger Dave Duncan last week, and he said he’d be there for at least one performance, hinting that he may be a part of the production. Flyer after the Jump.