When I first heard of this book (before it was published) I was skeptical. I couldn’t believe there would be enough material to fill a book of any size. Then I was excited. It seemed like someone was writing a book (or playing a practical joke) just for me. Then I was pissed. Why didn’t I think of this idea? I quietly watched this, because I was not expecting it to actually come to fruition. When I saw that Dr Skaterock’s Vintage Skaterock had been published, I bought a copy without trying to hit the author up for a review copy. I figured the audience was going to be really small, so I wanted to support it. Upon receiving the (reasonably priced) book, I geeked out. It was a lot more scholarly than I had thought. I had assumed it was going to be a small coffee table styler book focusing on album covers, but equal (if not more) attention has been paid to release dates, record labels, alternate pressings and the sort of minutia that made me think, “Man, this guy is a geek!” – fully aware that I am the same caliber of geek. Then I thought, this…

That last post was the 5000th post. Hooray. Sure the quality may have gone down since I actually have to work while I’m at “work” now, but hey, who loves ya baby? I do! I’ve seen some Tumblr sites with way more, but those are just photos and no text, I could do that all day long. So Hooray! Here’s a link to the first post I made after switching to Wordpress in 2006. Please ignore that first post. I should have deleted it. Maybe start with the second. My thanks to those who have helped over the years, namely Neil, MC, and Grover, as well as the rest of the contributors and frequent tipsters.

You might have noticed something missing lately. After lengthy contract negotiations we are pleased to announce that Callin’ on Colin will be coming directly to Skate and Annoy. What does this mean to you the listener? The biggest change is that it’s not going to be broadcast live. Ultimately, this was the main reason he jumped ship in the first place. Getting people into the studio at the same time every week was a pain in the ass. This way he gets to record it whenever and wherever he wants. The second big change is that he’s thinking about making it a video production, but It’s going to be low tech, no post production to speak of. Thus begins phase two of Skate and Annoy’s media expansion empire, gunning for the Berrics. One miniscule step at a time. First episode of Callin’ on Colin 2.0 is a week from tomorrow and the guest is… undecided.

I don’t have anything else for you today. Yesterday the sewer pipe backed up into my basement. Fun!!!!!!! So I spent last night cleaning up fecal matter instead of writing posts. I just happened to have the Factory Made in can and ready to go. I’m pretty sure that the people who sent these items in to Skate and Annoy didn’t envision poop in their viral marketing plans. I got the special edition of the Bones Brigade Video Show, complete with a bitching magic motion lenticular print on the cover and some swag in the form of a nice Cab shirt and some stickers. My first real board was a red Cabellero of the 1984 vintage. Thanks to Skate One. Also in the mailbox, some funky looking PiiQ headphones from Sony. They’ve got another pair of Qlasp headphones for one of our readers. Leave a comment on this post and I’ll pick one at random to win them, shipped directly from the marketing agency, which means you won’t have to wait an obscene amount of time to get them.

[wp-cumulus] Check out this fancy 3D tag cloud. Equal parts impressive and annoying, huh? If you are struck with the desire to view this after it’s been bumped from the front page, you can find the link labeled Fancy Tag Cloud in the sidebar. Oh yeah, without Flash installed it just looks like the regular 2D tag cloud.

You might have noticed I haven’t been updating as frequently as usual for a the past couple of weeks. It’s because I’ve been swamped with things in the real world, and I’ve been spending a lot of my S&A time tinkering with a redesign. I got sick of looking at the old site. It had hadn’t changed considerably since 2006 when I launched the blog part of the site. The old look was cobbled together as I went along. It wasn’t really meant to be long term, but things got away from me and it was “good enough.” I almost went with a prepackaged theme, but that would have been too easy. This new one is a work in progress, you’ll notice a lot of missing items that will start to reappear in the next week or so. Some details may change from day to day for a while too. Eventually all the static pages will be brought into the new look as well, but for now it’s still legacy. I’ve got a few little gimmicks I’m considering, like I might make some adjustments under the hood to allow you to chose from a couple different theme variations, including “Skate…

I have made these improvements to the site. I added long overdue threaded comments. So now you can reply directly to a bonehead instead of having to quote them in hopes that people know who you are responding to. I love how MC’s comic about the inevitability of slamming has turned to an argument about wearing pads. He didn’t even mention helmets. You’ll also notice little square boxes next to your comment. If you don’t have an avatar you’ll see a tiny blue razor scooting kook. If you want to change it, head on over to gravatar.com and you can upload one for free. It will show up on any site that uses gravatars, which stands for Globally Recognized Avatars. I added tags to the posts as well, just another way of linking posts with similar subject matters. I’ve been using them for a while but the whole back catalog isn’t tagged yet. Some day. Let’s see, I also went back and re-uploaded all the old commercials and TV spots that were deleted when I got the boot from YouTube. I spread them out a little and got wise (vague) about the descriptions, so they should be up there for…

I’m excited to announce that I have tricked talked Sean Cliver into joining the fake staff at Skate and Annoy. Basically, we’ll just be syndicating his posts over at the Disposable blog, so you’ll always be able to read the same thing a little earlier over there, just don’t do it, OK? I asked Sean to write up a little intro for those of you are unfamiliar with his work as an artist and an author: Hello. My name is Sean Cliver and I’ve been very fortunate to have had two books published in the past related to skateboards and the related artwork. Well, I guess I’m even more fortunate to be able to do some of this art upon them, but for as much as I’ve been called a skateboard artist I’m actually much more a fan of the art form in general … although that did just sound rather gay there, didn’t it? Hmmm. Anyway, since I’ve pretty much exhausted my ability or means to do any further books about skateboards, I’ve since turned to the Interweb to openly muse about them in a way that would’ve been far too trivial and page-consuming in print. Luckily this whole…

My inbox has been flooded with protests and requests that I ban the entity known as Daddy Yo. It’s not worth all the drama and distraction, and so I am taking the easy way out and reinstating the Daddy Yo ban. You can follow Daddy Yo at his own blog which I assume is going to dedicated to the patent on his mountainboard hybrid. The innovation here is supposed to be that the trucks are mounted on the upturned nose and tail, although I swear I’ve already seen this before, recently, and at the very least, on the Wheelee Board. I couldn’t find the actual patent online, but Michael was kind enough to send me the text from the application.

After a really rocky month and many false starts, Skate and Annoy has been back up for over a week now. It seems like we’ve lost about 40 -50% of our traffic, but the trend is creeping upward. Do me a favor and spread the word that we’re here, (we’re queer- or mongo? goofy?) get used to it. In order to distract you (and me) from my failures, here’s a video of my good friend House of Neil skating in below freezing weather with a hangover on January 1st, 2003. And also, it smelled like sewage. Enjoy!