A Gordon the Gopher pin, complete with creepy picture of the the host of the Broom Cupboard, the BBC show where the puppet lived. Straight out of 1987. On the badge he looks like a fully formed Muppet, but the actual puppet looks like an amorphous blob of fur stuffed in some doll clothes.

No, this isn’t an outtake from an episode of The Prisoner. It’s a June 6, 1978 press photo from Leicester Polytechnic School. Yes, it will soon be framed on my wall.

Three models wearing the latest in Skateboard fashions designed by the Leicester Polytechnic School of fashions and textiles. They are L-R Cindy wears multi-coloured knitted stripped sweater, shorts andd leggings. Stephanie wears Navy jumpsuit with velour stripe trim and bolero, and Debie wears multi-coloured two-piece in striped velour.

I’m going to hop in the old time machine and see if I can get a date with Cindy and tell Stephanie to get a damned skateboard and stop lurking. Maybe I’ll bring back her jumpsuit for GVK.

A Secret History of the Ollie by Craig Snyder is here, and it’s a whopper. It’s two inches thick and 912 pages! It’s going to take a long time to sift through this for a proper review, but in the meantime you can get yours at OllieBook.com.

Here’s an 80’s era token or coin with the Kool-Aid man riding a skateboard as well as skateboarding in a 70’s era Kool-Aid commercial. Unfortunately, Kool-Aid Man doesn’t ride the skateboard, and the kids spend more time talking about skateboarding than actually riding. Video quality is craptactular, if anyone has a better source let me know.

Who is this guy riding a Madrid skateboard in mid ollie over a banana in this OP ad?

A horrible screen grab from a good video. Sometimes I like to put a little “skate” in Skate and Annoy. Check out this very short, very ready sequence.

This is Cool Frozen Desert from Epoch. Just like Cool Cuts Carrots before it, although slightly less descriptive, and packaged with all the enthusiasm of one of those nutrition drinks for the geriatric set. Put it on a plate son, you’ll enjoy it more. Cool Frozen Desert features Rector knee pads in an illustration that was clearly vectorized from an old photo of someone I’m betting our readers can identify the source.

– Thanks to John Aguilar for the photo.

The Kilwag offspring have been trained well to enable my OCD act as spotters for potential content for Skate and Annoy. One of them pointed out an anthropomorphic carrot shredding on the packaging of Cool Cuts Carrots from ready Pac. Carrots with ranch dip? It should say carrots with attitude!

You’re looking at a 1990 painting by Claude Harrison titled “Magic Skateboard” that sold at auction by Christies for about $4,500. Claude Harrison was a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters who lived from 1922 to 2009. He painted straight forward portraits, but he eventually developed a sort of fetish for harlequin figures. So this is Magic Skateboard, but it’s not this magic skateboard.

– Thanks to David ODK for the tip.

Impact Reduction Apparel has a kickstarter campaign for their product which is essentially a soft insert for a baseball cap made out of a substance that hardens on impact, much like we profiled back in 2007. Quicksilver had originally licensed the technology for snowboarding beanies, but then not much was heard about it. It remains unclear if this is the same technology or not, but it appears to do the same thing. It’s soft and pliable until microseconds after impact, after which the outside momentarily hardens into a shell. The idea being, maybe you secretly want to wear a helmet but are embarrassed. Or maybe you just want a little bit of protection. It’s a good idea if it works, although the short nature of the back of the ball cap might make it ineffective in real world situations. Does it cover enough skull to help if you wilson? I don’t want to find out. It looks like they did some not too scientific tests with fruit and vegetables before taking a more credible approach. The product has not been certified as a helmet yet, which is part of what they want your money for. They’re going to have to rethink the “IRA” name if they want to sell this in the UK…