Although I have many job titles — CEO, Executive Producer, Senior Consultant, Foundation Chairman, Bad Actor — the one I am most proud of is ‘Professional Skateboarder.’ NPR has a series called This I Believe which is basically a soap box for people to get on the air and foam at the mouth. Soetimes they have regular joes, but sometimes like on July 24th 2006, they have famous people like Tony Hawk.

Reader MC pointed out that there was a Gratuitous Tony Hawk Appearance (aren’t they all?) in my post on Flyaway Helmets and concussions. It’s buried at the end and not really that visible, so I separated it. The article is from the October 05 issue of Thrasher covering the Skaters for Public Skateparks convention in Hailey Idaho, where Tony made a surprise appearance in connection with his foundation.

There’s a kick ass web site called spamusement.com whose description is “Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!” Tony Hawk just happens to appear as a reference in one of the cartoons. At this point he has entered the collective subconscious of the non-skating public and has become a pop culture reference. This cartoon isn’t one of the best or worst from that site. There are some that are laugh-out-loud funny. I highly recommend it. This one is currently 164 out of 323 which would date it at approximately 2005 according to the copyrights on the web site.

Kicking off the inaugural post of Gratuitous Tony Hawk Appearances is Deck Dogz, an Australian movie out on DVD. Here’s Tony greeting the protagonists towards the end of the flick.