Over the years I’ve met and spoken with some interesting people that I otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to, were it not for Skate and Annoy. Sometimes I search them out, sometimes they find me. We’ve got a gallery of 70’s skateboard bubblegum trading card stickers, and what better excuse to bring it up than some correspondence with the Jesse Crumb, son of legendary 70’s underground art icon R. Crumb. Jesse runs the official R. Crumb web site, as well as being an artist in his own right. Here’s part of what he had to say:

MAN! I have been looking for those cards/decals for 30 years, at least. I grew up in Northern Cal., near Ukiah. There were a few of us into injuring ourselves. A piece of gravel could throw you 10 feet, as you know anyway. So at the local corner store these cards arrived, but in very short supply, and they were COVETED. One guy who got a pack was a really feral kid, parents were complete hippies. My folks were back to the landers, but some of them.. MAN..the kids were just..ON THEIR OWN at, you know 7 years old?? Jeezis.. ANYWAY..So..he climbs the rope at the gym. Potter Valley High school gym. We were Hippy schooled at that time, but years later when I would enter “Public School” that decal..”Sidewalk Warrior” was STILL up there, and I would gaze at it. 50 feet in the air..every time I was in that Gym. It finally disappeared in the 80’s, but it was up there a good 10 plus years, more maybe. It’s hazy. Whelp! thanks for the Posting..took along time to find those images..Thanks for the Mental Image Update..

So check out the trading card stickers and the R. Crumb site while you are at it.

Microsoft has some brand new interactive technology called Silverlight. The good news is that they are developing a Mac plugin, and since it’s Microsoft, all those TV station and other promotional web sites that have various semi-functioning Windows Media or AVI video clips up might finally have a cross platform solution. Heck, I can’t watch half the embedded WMV files on my Windows machine. Of course a popular technology solution to these problems already exists, and it’s called Flash. So how do you generate buzz for a competitor? With trendy skateboarding visuals. Ahh, but what sinister motivation lies behind the innocent act of skateboarding? Find out the answer to that question as well as where you might be able to win a Microsoft Silverlight skateboard after the jump.

Everyone was worried that the pool coping at Pier would get trashed by bike use so for a while people were always giving bike guys a hard time about pegs. seven months later this showed up in the big bowl at Pier. I haven’t said anything in a while and things seem to be pretty mellow. I asked a bike guy aqbout the pasteup and he said it was a joke from the peg-enthusiast faction. It was pretty funny that they dug up a photo of Rick James. What? Is he the patron saint of BMX?

I took two of them down during the Pier Park cleanup over the weekend – which is my excuse for not posting more by the way. I put in about 8 hours on the cleanup not counting driving over there twice. Today I skated.

The rest of the, err, staff seems to be on strike while I’m on vacation. So this is the best I can come up with. If you hear “Blondie” and “skateboarding” in the same sentence, you’re probably more apt to think of the band. The rest of today’s Blondie had nothing to do with skateboarding, and wasn’t funny anyway. What can you expect from a 77 year old comic strip? Click to enlarge.

I was going to title this post “It’s reigning Jesus” or “It’s raining (religious) men” but instead I used a quote from an article in the Anchorage Press titled “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.” It’s a heartwarming tale of an 18 year old kid in Anchorage who is fighting the Alaskan weather and racial prejudice on journey to become a professional skateboarder. Sounds like a Hallmark movie. Oh yeah, the whole point of this post is Stephen Baldwin in Russia (!?!) holding a religious-themed skateboard [Source: Perez Hilton] and even better, (Is that possible?) a series of Jesus action figures engaged in Extreme!™ sports, not to mention panhandling (?!) , bull-riding, and in army fatigues(!!?!?!). All this plus a Jesus in skateboarding roundup, or hoedown, if you will, after the jump.

Oops. Too late. Our civilization is doomed if these are our future leaders. The video is called “mitch hittin himself wid a skateboard” [sic] and is described as “mitch tryin 2 be like jonny knoxville off jackass.” Oh wobble94, I don’t know where to start. Let’s hang out together.

We haven’t written about Claus Grabke for at least a month now, so I had to go searching on my computer for this fantastic piece of work. You can believe the words from Grabke’s mouth, or see the utter truth that is this video.

PR Inside reports:

Hip-hop producer PHARRELL WILLIAMS has hit back at his critics in the skateboarding world, accusing them of being ungrateful for the publicity he has given the extreme sport.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we have a chain called Fred Meyer. It’s a combined supermarket and department store: food, clothes, plants, hardware, electronics, film processing, pharmacy and sporting goods. I had a good laugh in the sporting goods section one morning. Did you know Flowboards were being sold under the Kryptonics label? Get yours for $60. $19.99 completes! I actually picked up a couple of those plastic helmet mohawks because they once came to me in a vision.

That’s no typo in the the title, it’s editorial commentary. The April 20th issue of Entertainment Weekly has a “Style” page with this breaking news: “The latest hip-hop style trend? Skateboard Chic.” Apparently, the style is called Skurban. The layout features a couple DGK decks in the layout, and assorted trite skateboard culture observations. If you can stomach it, you can see and read it all after the jump.