So far, three contests coming up in the Northwest this September. First up, Dokument is sponsoring a contest inside the Oregon State Fair in Salem TODAY. KGW has a video preview.

Later on – September 19th Ravage is sponsoring a contest in Aumsville, Oregon. That’s right, contests are back in Aumsville. We’ve talked a lot about the lame goings on in Aumsville in the past year, that’s why we decided to get on board and sponsor this one. Time to put up or shut up. Trying to do do something positive here. Aumsville is a great park after all.

That same weekend, Lib Tech is throwing the “Duh-Bowl Trouble” contest series in Port Angeles and the Forks, Washington. Be on the lookout for teenage vampire fans in the Forks…

Fliers after the jump.

Season four of Home Improvement. There’s a Gator board conspicuously placed on the set, looking spotless and unused. ESPN magazine has some sort of feature planned on Vision and Vision Street Wear. They are hitting up the old school bloggers for photos. Paying even. I was going to dig through my archives, but I decided to pass on the basis that I don’t want to contribute to anything that glorifies a company still trying to make money off of a notorious murderer, and one that wishes they would give the royalties away at that. Check out Home Improvement on YouTube until it get’s pulled. It’s from season four, an episode titled “The eyes don’t have it,” circa 1995. The skateboard makes an appearance around the 3:42 mark, but it just sits there, so…. Hold on, that episode is mid 90’s, bso that means that board was sitting around in props for a good 5 years or so before they used it. – Thanks to Jimmy Pills for the tip.

Or the same one, I can’t speak Japanese. Actually, probably a different one than MVP’s Louie. He doesn’t use the cheater binding made out of a shoe.

– Thanks to Stephanie Murdock for the tip.

The time lapse movie of Conahan’s bowl pour was a big hit, and if you like that, you’ll love this secret, behind the scenes video of one of the world’s most famous skatepark crews in action, obtained by covert actions at Skate and Annoy. Sure, we’re going to really piss some people off, and we may be alienating ourselves from the entire Northwest, if not U.S. D.I.Y. skate community, but we feel it’s worth it to bring the truth to our readers. Explore the myth vs. reality, fact vs. fiction, as we blow the lid off “the great” skatepark builders of the Northwest and this secret project. Sit back and enjoy.

– Thanks to Sarib Khalsa for the tip.

Episode 21 of season 20 of the Simpsons, titled “Coming to Homerica” aired last Sunday night. I didn’t catch it, but fortunately Jake Ferranti, AKA Jakeandannoy tipped me off. About 10 minutes into the episode on Norwegian immigrant paranoia, Bart and Milhouse encounter some Ogdenville skaters of Norwegian descent. Jake thought this might have been a tip of the hat to Per Welinder, but Per is from Sweden, so who knows. Maybe it was a nod to the European ski jumpers and not freestylers.

I had never seen, nor heard of this TV show called Sledge Hammer! that ran for two seasons from 1986-88. I watched a clip of it online and it was pretty good, certainly calling to mind the short lived TV show Police Squad from 1982 that ended up turning into the Naked Gun series of movies that ironically came out in the last year of Sledge Hammer. What I really want to talk about is the very excellent Star Trek spoof series from 1979 called Quark. At least I remember it being excellent, but on the other hand I recently tried to go back and re-watch some episodes of another show I recalled as being brilliant, The Young Ones, and found it hard to sit through. Enough about Quark. An episode of Sledge Hammer! features the time-tested comedy archetype of someone jumping on a skateboard without having complete technical mastery, in this case, an nice looking Alva Street Fire.

– Thanks to Mike D for the tip.

I can use “potpourri” right? I mean it’s core, isn’t it? Clockwise from the top left. Tony Hawk shows you how to ollie on one of CNN’s iReport videos. Nice PR move, as if an ordinary citizen gained a private audience with Tony in his training facility and captured an impromptu interview. While we’re talking about CNN, I need to repeat how annoyed I am with CNN’s recent fixation on “iReporters” and call in opinions. It’s supposed to be the news, not amateur talk radio. Next: More pool skating mortgage forclosure pieces, this time via the BBC who took a camera crew out for a very, very short video. Rumor has it that the Reader’s Digest is also working on a rehash. Next: Weird Al Yankovic collects Vans… Err, OK. Lastly, the New York Times Home & Garden section highlights a skater owned property that cost a pretty penny. Who knew that the team manager position for Think Skateboards paid that well.

– Thanks to John Aguilar, Rich Burton, Dean Tyrell, Corey Nelson and Aaron Shims (via Bordistan) for the tips.

The Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! is one of those programs that you either love or hate. Always low budget, it’s like one of those cable network comedy sketch shows, only it’s actually really funny, and at times very surreal. It’s on Adult Swim, so that ought to give you a good idea of what to expect. This video is an excerpt from a parody of MTV style “youth programming” called the “Jim and Derrick Show,” and it’s shot at a skatepark. Hit the ramps! – Thanks to Daniel Evans for the tip.

We’ve posted about this ABC footage before, but the short clip has since been pulled from YouTube. This instance from Google Video is almost a half hour long, and still doesn’t include the other footage. The actual footage is kind of hard to sit through, but the real gem is the audio track. When you get bored watching it, just leave it running in the background so you can listen to the commentary. It’s interesting to note that most of the “champions” are 12-14 years old. There really isn’t any way to tell from the Google page who uploaded this footage, although there are a lot of Burning Flag Press clips on there from the same user, which would lead me to believe it was either Friedman, or a big fan.

– Thanks to K.C. for the tip.

Skateboarding dog float at the Rose Parade! How did I miss this? Oh yeah, I didn’t watch it on TV. This was the battle royale of skateboarding bulldogs, the float featured both Tillman and Tyson the, uh, skateboarding bulldogs… Flickr user theMaykazine actually went there.

[Source: The Skatepark Times]