The BBC has a slideshow of some images from the Uganda Skateboard Union. People have been donating boards to the cause. The Tony Hawk Foundation has made some sizable material donations. Someone else even went to the trouble of donating a Mountain Dew shirt so the locals could get extreme! At this point in the post I’d like to point out that Uganda Skateboard Union first came to the attention of S&A back in 2007! If you’re in the mood for a good natured giggle, check out their awesome video, Boardmaster, from 2008. – Thanks to Paul Fujita for the tip.

A couple more music vids with skateboarding. No, it’s not Rob Dydrek launching a rap career. He’s just making a guest appearance in the Mayer Hawthorne video for Maybe So Maybe No. Hey Stones Throw, hook us up. Second up is “Young Forever” by Jay-Z with a guest appearance by Mr Hudson. – Thanks to Brian Baade for the tip.

A giant photo of MC appeared briefly in Times Square, New York, courtesy of the Vans billboard and an excellent camera work by Bryce Kanights. You can see the photo and more from the session over at Antigravity Press.

OK, I know this sort of falls outside of the scope of this website, at least I think it does, but I’m not sure anymore. So maybe this is the first and last time I post a commercial for Tony Hawk’s Huckjam bikes, unless there’s skateboarding in the future ones. Listen for his celebrity voiceover at the end. That almost looks like Tony as the mad scientist. It’ll be hard to tell from the Russian YouTube video quality. I can’t figure out how to delete an RuTube video, much less make it higher quality. My four year old loves riding his bike, and he knows who Tony Hawk is, sort of. He got really excited about this commercial. As he emphatically relayed it to his mom, “Tony Hawk makes bicycles. They’re for boys like me. They’re my size. They don’t have training wheels. They’re just for boys like me.” Come on product review!

Here’s an ABC video from 1987 for a song called “The Night You Murdered Love.” It’s an unlikely pairing, and I never saw this one. This band really annoyed me in their heyday. You could say they got under my skin. However, I found their story as read in Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. There was a lot more to that band than you might think. This was the case with a lot of those types of bands from the UK that I couldn’t stand at the time. The book covers a lot more than ABC, and if you are a fan of “Our Band Could Be Your Life”, I highly recommend it. It’s very similar. Right, check out this horrible video with a wacky ABC licensed skateboard. It looks like a production model, or would appear to be since it’s in shrink wrap still. That’s just the kind of clueless thing you might expect in a video from a band that likely had not step foot on a skateboard prior to the video shoot. Graphics on top of the board too, so that makes sense in the context of a board that has trucks assembled after…

Porky Pig gets r-r-radical with some X-Mas skateboarding action in this 2006 Looney Tunes special titled Bah Humduck!. It’s another adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with Daffy as the greedy owner of a department store.

I’ll take the Chuck Mosley incarnation of Faith No More over Mike Patton any day. According to Wikipedia, the original lead singer was actually Courtney Love! Who knew? I saw Mosley fronting Faith No More at the Metro in Chicago. At the time there were rumors floating around that he had narcolepsy or something, and maybe that was why he was sacked from the band. Although there were also rumors of “substance abuse,” and I suppose a good heroin fix nodding off might have the appearance of narcolepsy to someone very naive. In any case, Chuck did not fall asleep at that show, and Mike Patton is for the birds. Introduce Yourself was a Slash records release, what a cool label that was. Every punk in my high school had a copy of that Slash Records: The Early Sessions compilation on cassette tape. I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story already. I’m turning into one of those doddering old fools/punk. Let me bore you with tales from my youth. I was the best poser out there. I guess they were back in business for a while., but I can’t find them anywhere now. The video for We Care a Lot…

As seen on the Berrics. This is a poster for an adult film from 1979 titled Female Athletes. The folks at the Berrics have not “seen the ‘film’ and have no plans to,” but they did appropriate the image for a t-shirt. Come on. If you are going to rip off the poster, at least watch the movie, or don’t pretend to be so demure about the whole thing, Here at S&A, we’ve got no such hangups. I found the whole thing online and skimmed it for skateboarding scenes, but saw none. I had to skim it, the damn thing is 80 minutes long, and that’s way to long for an adult film. Although you have to admire how they at least try to be like a real film, with a story line, acting and all. Nice original soundtrack too. – Thanks to Mike Estes for the tip.

Two music videos featuring skateboarding of a sort. The first one is for a Fujiya & Miyagi song called Ankle Injuries. It’s stop action animation made with colored dice imitating pixels, pretty much the same technique Michel Gondry used in the White Stripes video for Fell In Love With A Girl, only with Legos. Still, it’s fun to watch, retro skateboard and Adidas shoes and all. It’s brief though, blink and you might miss it. – Thanks to MC for the tip. He’s hip to the kids and thier music, you know? The second video is for an Atmosphere song called You. It’s a fingerboard session at a party. Not that exciting, but it rounds out the post. Thanks to reader Ticorico for the tip.

Wheelhouse Media publishes Carlsbad Magazine and Encinitas Magazine, two free publications serving the needs of their respective communities. Communities, it turns out, that have identical needs in some cases. They both published essentially the same feature on Tony Hawk, until you get to the last couple of paragraphs where they explore what Tony loves about Carlsbad, his long time haunt, or Encinitas his relatively new digs. Some cool photos from Grant Brittain, check out that tweaked air. You can read them online or view them in their original layouts. Don’t bother to download the “offline edition.” For some annoying reason they have chosen a proprietary flash reader with assorted clumsy files. Ever heard of a PDF? Also, you”ll need an email address to read the pretty versions. Seriously guys? Could the whole thing be any more intrusive? They don’t even tell you what they are going to do with the email. At least they gave each magazine a separate layout.