Mongo man, from the mind behind Machotaildrop. I don’t know if this is just a teaser or a one off. UNRELATED WARNING: Grover and I have a green screen in the works. [Source: 80’s Brigade] – Thanks to Matthijs for the tip.

A day in Battle Ground with Merde Sakteboards: Jesse McDowell with some local BG skaters: Austin, Chris, and Old School Ken. Didn’t catch Austin’s buddie’s name, and I don’t know if people call Ken “Old School Ken”, but it seemed like he needed a nickname. Who doesn’t. I always wanted a cool nickname like “Skeeter”, or “Tony Bologna”, even though my name isn’t Tony. Either way, nice day in late October, so HAVE to take advantage of that, and BG is just that fun. Catch it after the jump.

My sons are obsessed with Star Wars. My eldest came home from the book fair with Darth Paper Strikes Back by Tom Angleberger. It’s in the vein of Diary of a Wimpy Kid (You’re familiar with the genre, right?) I’ve been reading a little bit of it each night to him, and as far as kids books go it’s pretty good. One of the protagonists is an antisocial kid with an origami Yoda finger puppet who dispenses sage advice to the middle school kids. His nemesis is an annoying kid who makes a Darth Vader origami finger puppet who is not content to destroy his paper foe alone, he tries to get the other kid kicked out of school. It’s irreverently amusing, and filled with references to movie dialogue and scenes. It also has illustrations mixed throughout and scribbled in the margins, which is why we’re here. One scene takes place in a skate park. The illustration isn’t really about the story, it’s meant to look as if the storyteller was inspired to doodle in the book after reliving the details. Poor R2 D2 is on rollerblades, while Jabba the Hut has multiple boards. He would have fit better on…

This week’s Shot of the Week is an Andrew Adams kickflip taken at Burnside by Elias Parise. It’s also the image used in the flyer for his show currently on display at FOCO Gallery in Portland. – Thanks to Ted Schwallie for the tip. He’s got photos of the opening on Facebook.

It’s funny that in this day and age of conformity to the popsicle stick there are more vanity shaped boards available than there ever were in the money bumps era. I don’t think there ever were any “goof” shapes in the 80’s with the possible exception of those Mutant shapes that were skewed, and I think those were supposed to somehow be for the sake of performance. I think Epic Skates also made weird skewed shapes too. Anyone? NHS is the uncontested King of the gimmick boards. They’re back again via Creature with a Neil Heddings wrench cruiser, which despite the odd shape is apparently fully functional. Video after the jump. Neil Heddings: Great skater. Great actor? Not so much. Product placement video after the jump. – Thanks to Seth Grossman for the tip.

From Legoland in California. – Thanks to Marek Litinski for the tip.

Sure, his boards have been reissued in life size and on fingerboards, and they are always very active on eBay, but you don’t hear about Rob Roskopp the person anymore. I had heard that he was heading up the mountain bike division of Santa Cruz, but had never actually read anything confirming it. Leave it to a mountain bike site inexplicably named Pinkbike.com to tie it all together. Find out which old pros are hitting him up for mountain bikes, what exactly is the connection between the companies, and exactly how much crack Rob was on when he chose his graphics – that’s an actual question from the interview. Biggest shock? Roskopp used to look like the epitome what the rest of the world thought California surfers looked like. He’s still fit, but those golden locks have moved on. What about the body jars? Check it out. Interesting aside, I’m fairly confident one of the images used in the post is from an old eBay Watch, and yes I realize we lifted it from eBay…