Sure, it’s an old joke and an easy target, but The Hardest Part of Rollerblading from MTV’s The Human Giant is well executed and without malice. Aziz Ansari’s performance makes the clip. Give that man some sort of award. I thought he looked familiar, he also appeared in an epsiode of Flight of the Conchords, which is the funniest show on TV right now, with the possible exception of The Venture Brothers.

Shoes are an important milestone in our short history as humans. From mobility, protection from the elements and the droppings of dogs. We wouldn’t be where we are without shoes, we owe our shoes for everything. Including the (alleged! – K.Ed) 14 hour work day in sweat shops making Adidas fashion footwear designed by Michael Sieben. I’m a starving artist myself so I give no discredit to Sieben’s capitalism. Michael Sieben has been illustrating in the skate world for some time. From the pages of Thrasher adorning his artwork throughout numerous articles to the whimsical bottoms of Bueno skateboards (the gods of the interweb currently are smiting their website). Probably the most bizarre bit of advertising video can be found here. Image curtsey of Adidas.

Three pages of skateboard-related tattoos. BME zine tattoo gallery. Over a year ago Kilwag called for submissions or a SnA tattoo gallery. What ever became of that?

This edition of Saturday Starrs features Skateboarders from Hell which is a spoof of one of those old biker exploitation movies, although stylistically this is half 1950’s and half early 70’s. I can’t actually tell when this was made. The fashion on some the extras could be late 70’s or early 80’s. It looks like it was shot on 8mm film, but the titles look like really clean digital work. Maybe they were added years later, or maybe it was shot on old stock. I feel like I should know who some of the “actors” are. It’s kind of hard to tell via YouTube, and it’s further complicated by the presence of an advert for Tail Devils tacked on the end. Hopefully Scott Starr will shed some light on Skateboarders from Hell.

Not that anyone should be interested in the lives of aging, but once hot television starlets like Christina Applegate. It was in the news recently that her skateboarder boyfriend Lee Grivas has died. In every article I found the news states the same phrase, “26-year-old skateboarder Lee Grivas”. In reality he was an Alaskan fisherman… but skateboarder somehow got to supersede the title of fisherman in all the trashy journalism out there. Perhaps we’ll see a sudden influx of value added to the H-Street Jason Rodgers model on eBay… I had that board, I never got to have relations with Christina Applegate. My only failure in the formula is that I never fished commercially in Alaska… that and a lot of pressure flips performed on that board. Forgive me. [Image: VA Skateboards]

I don’t know why MC hasn’t really publicized this, but he’s had a little side project going on for quite a while called The Skate Comics Depository. It’s a collection of his own H.O.M.O.S. work as well as highlights of other items related to skate comics. Even though I hate to encourage outside web authoring interests for our “staff” because it makes them uppity, you should check out SkateComics.com. I think I would have gone with the Skate Comics Suppository instead. In a related note, guess who just registered SkateZines.com?

Joesf Heffner sent in a few pics of a backyard project he is working on. Looks like a concrete quarterpipe with a little run up. Hopefully he’ll chime in with the approximate costs and time involved. Enlarge those pics after the jump.

The Gorge Games went off in Hood river last weekend. We didn’t cover it – Estes, this was your time to shine! Looks like it will be broadcast by Fox Sports Networks August 18 – 22. The Gorge Games featured slalom and and bowl-riding skateboarding, plus wind surfing and a bunch of other Extreme!™ sports you’re not interested in. It’s kind of like a localized X-Games for Hood River, Oregon, which if you didn’t already know, is supposed to be one of the premier spots for wind powered water sports. It’s a major event in Oregon tourism. I heard legendary skater Tom “Wally” Inouye was heavily involved in the Gorge Games this year. So far all I have is a little slalom coverage. The photo above is from a Flickr stream belonging to Carvethebowl. There’s also video footage after the jump where you can see one of the Fox cameramen following the action on a skateboard. The announcer is mildy amusing. It’s almost golf-style reserved, polite and quiet, except broadcast over a loudspeaker. – Thanks to Judy Oyama for the tip. That’s her on the left.

Someone asked how to do an Andrecht invert in the comments a while back and I suggested that Rich Burton might have a sequence we could post. Sure enough he did, so we put together a little tutorial here. The trick is named for David Andrecht who first popularized the back-rail-grab invert.

The Baltimore Art Examiner reports that city workers “accidentally” destroyed a skate ramp known as the “Pants Ramp” that was part of a year long outdoor art exhibit called “Outdoor Lounge.” The City’s story might be more believable if it weren’t for the fact that the demolition took place at 3 am in the morning, and it was apparently the only part of the exhibit that was harmed. No word on if Baltimore favorite skater hater and golf cart driving police officer was somehow involved. Get the full scoop. If you can put aside the skate harassment angle for a second, it’s intersting that the Pants Ramp was designed as a prototype first hole of a putt-putt golf course where each hole would be skateable. Yes today is mix an match skateboarding with (slightly more) mainstream sports. – Thanks to Stephanie Murdock from S.O.B. for the tip.