During the finale of Men in Blazers they aired a TV commercial for the Mini Cooper Countryman featuring Tony Hawk hauling his kids out to a waterpark in the middle of the desert. While trying to find the commercial online saw that he had ditched Jeep and signed some sort of extended agreement with Mini USA last year, appearing in several videos. And thanks to longtime contributor Matthijs, I also had some pictures of a weird MINI Skater, which is small skateboard with a built in strap binding produced by the Mini Cooper parent company some time around 2002. And just when you thought you couldn’t get enough MINI skateboard action, MINI released some augmented reality glasses that pair with your MINI to provide enhanced safety and visibility. I am not making this up! Whenever there’s a need to illustrate dangerous pedestrian (no driving) behavior, you can bet you’ll find a skateboard or two, and even a dog.

Scion brings you the worst ever Northwest skatepark tour, featuring Riley Hawk and something called a “Shep Dawg” crew. There’s something to be said for traveling off the beaten path, but given the wealth available terrain in the Northwest, the park selection is pretty weak. They actually go to a good spot (Windells) but it’s raining, so they stick to the indoor section. Let’s face it, nobody wants/needs to see a session at an indoor wooden skatepark unless it’s phenomenal. Then there’s a prolonged, implied commercial for Exit Real World that sticks out like a sore thumb. The contrast and tension between the spots, action and bad soundtrack (which you can download) makes the whole damned thing really awkward. But then here I am reposting it, so it works on some level. The screen capture above is the best part of the video, watch the rest at your peril. – Thanks to MC for the tip.

Here’s a trio of advertisements featuring Tony Hawk that range in date from 1999 to 2005. All of them are for non-skateboarding products and were taken from assorted comic books. Take what you want, but eat what you take.

It’s got big airs, lip tricks, flip tricks, and circus tricks. Tony’s new video part titled “Perched” has some amazing footage as well as an interesting remix of the Dead Kennedys song Police Truck. I can honestly say that I haven’t worked on a skate video this hard since The End. I never want to do some of these tricks again, but I am proud to have completed them and hope that you enjoy the outcome. And thanks to Z-Trip for resurrecting two classic songs from THPS… I love my job. -Tony Hawk I especially like some of the traveling foot plants, not really traveling in the conventional sense of a vert trick, more like sliding. Just watch the video, you won’t regret it. Old man Hawk still has it. [Source: Ride via Kingpin]

From the brand you can trust for all your creepy, electronic cockroach needs, Hexbug brings you Tony Hawk’s Circuit Boards. It’s a hybrid of fingerboards and RC skateboard technology that sounds like a bad idea, but looks kind of cool in the demo videos. The promo footage shows some cool maneuvering, however it’s speculation whether this is due to hours of practice and precise timing or some built in mechanism or inherent design that makes lip tricks and kick turns on such a small scale seemingly easy. It comes with a TV commercial featuring Tony Hawk in one of his least wooden advertising appearances ever. Radio controlled Circuit Boards! Get it? Get it?

Tony Hawk has some inside association with talks to bring skateboarding to the 2020 summer Olympics. He thinks’s it’s going to happen. Meanwhile, poor Larry… It’s painful to watch Larry King try to be funny and hip with Tony Hawk on his show “Larry King Now” on Ora.tv. It looks like his new “network” is online only. You can watch the olympics specific bit as an outtake on Youtube. The entire 28 minute interview is online via Hulu, which means it could disappear at any minute. And speaking of Tony Hawk, I just saw part of a schlocky Billy Crystal movie that featured Tony Hawk wiping out in the middle of a vert run because a small child was peeing off the deck onto the transition during an X-Games practice. I am not making this up! It’s called Parental Guidance.

HuvrTech is some sort of viral marketing campaign in it’s early stages that has yet to reveal it’s true purpose. From the subject matter and Tony Hawk’s involvement, you could make an educated guess that it might have something to do with the Tony Hawk Foundation. Then again, it might be just for laughs. The gist of it is that hover boards are finally a reality. The web site mimics the feel of a tech startup, and shows a fake iPhone app as well as multiple product color choices. They somehow managed to wrangle Chrisopher Lloyd into appearing. He drives up in a Delorean and his byline says he’s from Back to the Future 2. I’m not sure if that was supposed to be intentionally funny or not. Other celebrity appearances include Moby, former NFL player Terrell Owens, and a befuddled looking Billy Zane. The production value is pretty cheap, and they don’t quite pull it off. Everyone floats a couple feet off the ground instead of at normal truck height, and there’s a lot of swaying around. The stunt rider’s foot doesn’t quite touch the ground on the one shot that shows any pushing. The main “production model” is…

I was hanging out at Target a couple weeks ago, because I am a red blooded American consumer. I always migrate to the toys eventually, which is right next to the crappy sports equipment selection. I noticed this Tony Hawk branded “80’s retro Skateboard” and after examining it brought it to the scanner to find out how much they were schilling it for. It turns out a “Gender Neutral Br” costs $59.99.

The Tony Hawk Foundation donated $30,000 to expand the building efforts of Ride It Sculpture Park, located in the wild, wild Midwest of the urban Detroit wasteland. Powerhouse Productions started the original product. I’m sure my friends are sick of hearing me say this, but I swear if I didn’t have kids and a mortgage, I’d move to Detroit. A man could reinvent himself there. [Source: Evergreen Skateparks]

I don’t know what, or why, but here is an illustration by Dana Lechtenberg from the “Grunge Goat” series. Yes, that’s Tony Owl.