He told a Melbourne Supreme Court jury the group were taping themselves picking up a live snake and skateboarding down a steep hill while weaving around traffic. “We were pretty inspired by the movies (Jackass) at that time,” he told the jury. Unfortunately they also got the idea from the Bumfights video series to light a homeless man on fire, killing him in the process. Please people, if you have an IQ of pile of dung, please take up scooters or something else instead of dragging us down with you like these murderers in Australia did. Most of us can watch movies and TV shows without being prompted to torture people.

It’s crap like this that leads to skateparks getting closed down, insurance rates rising, etc. Morons! Take responsibility for your own actions. Apparently these two geniuses have never seen or heard of an overhead electric powered trolley car, train, or bus, or even bumper cars at the fair because they climbed up onto a train and got too close to the wire, then suffered electrical burns. Then they sued because they thought someone should have held their hand and told them not to. I don’t know who is more retarded, them or the jury that awarded the verdict. My appologies to retards for even placing you in the same category as these half wits. Klein and Birdwell… …They were skateboarding when they decided they wanted to see the view from the top of the boxcar, according to their lawsuit. Klein was shocked by the catenary wire, which hung 6 feet above the car… …Birdwell was burned while he tried to help his friend. Read all about it on Delaware Online, and the Eagle World News.

The marketing juggernaut for Tony Hawk’s Project 8 video game is already ramped up. Fileshack.com is a site devoted to all imaginable types of downloads concerning video games. In this case they they have a bunch of behind the scenes footage in the development of Tony Hawk’s Project 8. Project 8? How about behind the scenes footage of the guy who green lighted that name getting fired? I don’t think this footage is proprietary to the site though. You’ll have to endure multiple attempts and guilt trips from Fileshack.com to get you to sign up for an account and to get faster downloads. Whatever. Let me download it or not, quit making me jump through hoops. They have a bunch of videos on Project 8 (Genius!) available. The still above are from a motion capture session. Check it out.

MC scanned the Willamette Week’s version of a picture he provided for their article on Pier Park skatepark titled Finding Dreamland. You can find his original in color here and the article on line at the Willamette Week Online. I love pictures with numbers inside dots. Reminds me of old textbooks and museums. The black and white scan also adds a heavy 70’s vibe to it. Dreamland has been getting a lot of Oregon press these days.

My subscription ran out. A while ago. I haven’t bothered to renew it, and they let it slide for a couple of months. Now they want me back. On the same day I received two offers to renew my subscription. One from Thrasher, and one from a magazine subscription place that already knew I had a subscription. The Thrasher direct price, was of course lower per year by about $7 than the magazine subscription company. I don’t care about that, but I do find it kind of sleazy that Thrasher sells their subscription info to third parties.

And a whole lot of corn syrup! Now that I have a kid I have to start paying attention to these so-called fruit snacks, which are usually nothing more than a nominal amount of fruit inside a wad of something slightly less soluble than horse hooves. Mr Jelly Belly Fruit Snacks! Check out the packaging and pointless comments after the jump.

After weeks of faking Grover’s video Korner in hopes of getting him to contribute to the site, Grover finally coughed up this video footage of the skateboarding tryouts for the Guz Van Sant film Paranoid Park which is filming in and around Burnside. His first installment is both hard to watch and riveting. A star is born, ladies and gentlemen. Without further adieu, I give you Steve’s intro. (Ahem, adieu: I hope to get him posting these directly, bypassing my sarcastic comments entirely, but MC managed to get this posted before I could! ) Hello everyone welcome to my blog I will try to keep it current. It will consist of stuff I find interesting. So (tune out-drop-in) and get your blog on as I get my blog on. Peace off Grover. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Paranoid Park Tryouts on Grover’s Video Korner

If you’ve ever owned or frequented a backyard ramp you’ve probably seen the attempts to ride the neighborhood gas powered scooter or small cc dirt bike on a half pipe before. It usually ends in a lot of pain or hole in the ramp. Somewhere there’s a guy in a cube getting paid to send emails to sites like this one in hopes of instigating a buzz about a product. It’s called viral marketing and it’s either ingenious or insidious, depending on how you look at it. In any case, it’s kind of fun to imagine the possibility that there are guys out there somewhere taking Extreme!™ to the next level by freestyle car driving on half pipes. Who knows, maybe some day someone will do something like this on a really basic level. Most of the videos are really well done. The screen captures are difficult cause the car is only is barely ever in frame with the ramp, which is why it sometimes works. When it doesn’t work it looks like crap. The official site is still being coy about what they are really advertising. Captain Obvious says it’s an upcoming video game. You guys owe me a…

The NY Times has a two page article on Bob Burnquist’s backyard mega ramp titled “Huge Skateboarding Ramp Beckons Daredevils.” It has some good pictures and video. I knew they built these things for Danny Way to play on and then tore them down. It was only a matter of time before someone with a lot of land found a permanent place for one. I wonder if he has the traditional crappy chain and padlock on the flat bottom. I’m picturing an amusing scenario where Bob pulls up to his mansion in an SUV and has to yell “You damn kids! get outta here!” to all the groms barging the mega ramp, except they are all laying in a shattered pile at the bottom of the landing ramp. Hope he’s got good homeowner’s insurance. Maintenance on that thing must be a royal pain in the wallet too. How much does a mega ramp cost? $280,000. Well, it was either that or spring for his and her 24k gold plated Plasma TVs. Thanks to EPM for the tip off. Now go read the article.

Motorola is the latest consumer electronics company to use skateboarding to help market it’s products. In this case, a cell phone. I’m not sure which object in the picture they are trying to fetish-ize. Poached from Engadget who poached it from Phonearena.com. Not quite as impressive as a 24K Gold TV huh?