If you don’t take control of your culture, those who only care about the gold and platinum will. That’s the message of this video series called Instant Def, which is a Snickers viral marketing web site. The story line focuses on hip hop being taken over by money-hungry industry types. Ironically, they cast the Black Eyed Peas, a group that will whore itself out to anything from TV commercials to supermarket grand openings. The production design is sharp, but the story, music and most of the performances are weak. On the plus side, Bootsy Collins shows up in episode 2 and again in episode 5. Speaking of taking control of your culture, they use a dog on a flying skateboard and a couple evil midgets little persons, one of them on a skateboard too. Ahh, the delicious irony. Delicious? I love Snickers, but they sure wasted a bunch of money for something lame. I’m not sure about their connection with the hip hop community, but I’m sure the Peas massive street cred will help. Skip ahead to the finale, which has the skateboard action and is also the most entertaining. More screen caps after the jump. [Source: Media Mindfulness]

The last time I had to swing a skateboard in self-defense, it wasn’t against a rapist, murderer, pedophile and escaped convict like Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell. It was against a group of asshole jocks that jumped me and a friend once while skating down a street. It was 6 on 2, and they ended up letting us be. I was in high school at the time. This young man looks like he’s junior high age at best. He clocks T-Bag pretty hard in the side of the head, but T-Bag is like pit bull, he just keeps coming. You have to kill him to stop him. Seriously, he’s not that big, and he’s had his hand cut off, sewn back on by a vet with no anesthesia, and then had to pull it off by hand again, all in the space of a couple of weeks. He should be dead or dying from gangrene by now. I don’t know, maybe my judgement is clouded since I should have better things to do than digitizing a 5 second clips of a guy getting hit on the head with a skateboard on the TV show Prison Break. Watch the video and and follow…

I have a son who is nearing two years old. I hope that I will be the kind of dad who, like this one, decided that if he was going to go through the trouble of risking a divorce by making a rocket powered skateboard for his son, he would at least pad him up in a crash suit and a full face motorcycle helmet. I also hope my son won’t disappoint me like the kid in this video did. Check it out after the jump. That rocket packs more power than it looks like. Lighting it with a blow torch is a nice effect.

It doesn’t snow very often in Portland Oregon. When it does, it rarely sticks on the ground or amounts to much of anything. When we get a snow day we like to maximize it by calling in to work “Oh.. it’s too slippery. I can’t possibly make it in to work today” and then piling into the car with your friends and some beer for a drive out to the skate park. There were a handful of snowboarders dicking around, but we were there to skate. The complete odyssey after the jump.

Denver’s Channel 7 News reports that a skateboarder was attacked by a Coyote. Two different residents said a boy was attacked by a coyote while riding his skateboard. They said he was able to fend off the coyote with the skateboard. A certain Wile. E. is being sought as an animal of interest. Apparently, Wile E. has a history of violence against small birds and skateboards as well.

Hold on to your mustaches, it’s a skateboard safety film from the 70’s. There have been a couple of educational films made over the years that deal with the subject of skateboard safety. I’ve seen bits and pieces of some before, but the full versions have always eluded me. Thanks to the folks at I-Mockery, not only can I watch it, but I don’t even have to go through the trouble of making fun of it. Actually, this kid just appears to have narcolepsy, because that’s the only explanation I can come up with for his randomly falling backwards like that. But who knows… maybe you have narcolepsy too and don’t know it! Are you really willing to take that chance!? The 70’s rule. You can soak up the bad fashions, groovy soundtrack and stylin’ moves after the jump.

At the urging of Old Man Army, Recent Skate and Annoy conscript Elder Skelter (long first time reader, first time caller) sent us this newspaper article scanned from the November 12, 1987 issue of the Valley Times. Things must have been pretty uptight in Geauga county Ohio for the authorities to get that bent out of shape over some innocuous graffiti. Talk about out of the loop! Reminds me of the scene in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School where Mr McGee asks “Who are these Ram Ones?” You can read the very funny (in a sad way) article and see the half-hearted correction they printed the next issue after the jump.

Skateboarding adults are funny. Lulu Maude gives it the old Onion try in her post titled Harriet Miers Quits White House, Wants to Spend More Time Skateboarding Check it out here. Lulu’s profile says she is a “a retired schoolmarm.” What’s a schoolmarm anyway? Did she retire in the 1920’s? Just in case Take Your Medicine folds, we’ve got it here too.

If you are tired of discussing the merits of found pools versus skatepark replicas, you can move on to arguing about when is a grind a grind? Enter this so-called World’s Longest Grind video. Watch the video and we’ll break it down for you after the jump.

Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets. Sent in from EPM – How to clean a turd out of your skatepark: 1. Wall anomaly detected 2. Recon of bogey and turd confirmed 3. Tactical unit activated 4. Precision targeting 5. Enemy neutralized 6. Extraction unit mobilized Your full pipe is now turd free! MC, the Turd Commando also has pics on his site. Me? I would have left it up until Grover showed up with a video camera.