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…Not to be confused with “Slammer of the Year,” which is a prize they give out at the Annual Pog Convention.

Annnd I bet most people under 21 won’t even get that joke. Moving on…

Sure, it might not seem nearly as prestigious as the thrashin’ American version, but earning Skater of the Year in any book is a heck of an honor. For example, when I was a sophomore in high school, I wrote “Dedleg is skater of the fuckin’ year!” in every single page of my geography book. Of course, my geography teacher, the principal, and even my own parents failed to recognize the considerable distinction. Idiots.

Needless to say, Nick Boserio winning SOTY in Australian mag SLAM is not only well-deserved, but it’s just a little more illustrious than my award. Did the fact that he takes brutal slams more than most tip SLAM’s scales in his favor? Maybe. I honestly don’t have a clue how things work over there in Australia. Toilets flush the other way for chrissakes. Shit is absolutely insane.

Anyway, be sure to check out Mr. Boserio’s part for Alien Workshop if you didn’t catch it last year when it came out. Maybe one of these days they’ll even put him on the American team instead of relegating him to the Aboriginals table. It’s a sad commentary on the American skateboarding media empire that you probably don’t even know who this fucking guy is, but I guess that’s what happens when you don’t drink the Red-Bull-flavored Kool-Aid.

Mmmm… Red-Bull-flavored Kool-Aid. That’s a good idea… gotta remember that one.

As a quick disclaimer, the following video features a soundtrack that will, in all likelihood, induce feelings of suicide in the average viewer. Dedleg cannot be held responsible for any suicides that happen as a result of this video’s soundtrack, even though those suicides would be completely understandable. Thank you.

I don’t know about you guys, but as far as I’m concerned, the biggest news from the skateboarding world last week was the fact that somebody actually landed a motherfucking 1080. A 1080! Three full spins! I’m only bummed that I didn’t get the chance to land one first. I was close, I could feel it.

Jokes aside, there are two important points to note: this particular radical maneuver was performed by 12-year-old Tom Schaar. Rumor has it, he was landing 720s before he could even walk. Second point: It’s actually a really full cab, as he does it fakie. Not sure where everybody’s feelings are on that — good, bad, who cares? I would have to imagine fakie would be harder in general, but maybe the laws of skateboarding change when you’re skating vert on this level. Backwards though, the whole time? Sheesh. Who really wants to fluff the landing after actually managing to spin around that many times?

I got into skating many years ago, in a previous era of skateboarding, really. Tony Hawk had just landed the 900 at the Xtreme Games, no doubt one of the pivotal moments in the history of this whole thing we call skateboarding. It was a big deal. Am I off base in assuming that literally everyone who has been skating for longer than 10 years has heard “do a 900!” at some point? The game had changed.

The thing is, there’s still some childlike attachment to spinny tricks inside of me. In all of us. It’s a simple concept — spin around a whole lot of times. The more times you spin, the better. Obviously, this is a task easier said than done and therefore spinning a whole lot of times becomes that much cooler due to its highly elusive nature. In many ways, the 900 was the “coolest” trick ever done on a skateboard before we landed in this era of an NBD “every week” or at least often enough to sustain our increasingly contracting attention spans. So now I wonder, how will Tom Schaar landing a 1080 change skateboarding, particularly amidst a veritable transition revival thanks to the likes of Grant Taylor, Raven Tershy, et al. Will there be a heated contest amongst the rest of skateboarding’s legendary vert gods to see who can land the next one? Will Danny Way do a 1080? Will Bob Burnquist? Fuck, I kinda hope so!

And then, part of me wonders if some dude with a ramp in his back yard landed one years ago and never said a thing. Does that sort of shit happen? Fuck… I kinda hope so!

Saw these flicks of Ed Templeton fucking the shit out of a very sizable bump to bar on Burnout this week, and had to post them up. Just to bask in the glory of it all.

Testing the waters. If ya can’t ollie it, that probably doesn’t bode well for your chances of doing anything else over it. Speaking of…

This was a hundred 80 if I had to guess. What’s the story with those gloves, on the other hand? Well… your guess is as good as mine.

Tre bomb? It’s all in the back foot, or so I’m told.

[all photos by Michael Burnett / artwork by Ed Templeton]

Maybe it’s true. Maybe vegans really are just better than other people. Actually… strike that. Maybe Ed Templeton is just better than other people.

To everybody who ever said all my fucking around on the Internet was a waste of time, that my silly little online “diaries” would never amount to anything, well, they did amount to something, you assholes! They amounted to me nearly getting expelled in high school, and now they amounted to a box full of amazing, free - amazingly free - shit!

Every young skater dreams of one day getting flowed packages of t-shirts and boards from their favorite companies — unfortunately, most of these dreams turn into beer guts and hideously mobbed kickflips over the years. But, somehow, despite incredible odds, this young skater’s dreams actually came true! And yeah, they kinda turned into those other things too, but that’s beside the point.

We now have non-corporate sponsorship

Fun Fact: 5Boro was the first team I saw at a demo when I was but a teenaged husk of who I was to become. I’d like to think the event played a critical role in the formation of the generally incredible human being I am today, if nothing else, just because the guys showed me that it actually was possible to have fun at my town’s sad excuse for a skatepark. An important lesson for any inexperienced skater, to be sure.

Big ups to Ryan at The Berrics and everybody at 5Boro for making this beautiful event in my life a reality and not just something I fantasize about while I’m writing in my online diary.

And now, for your daily dose of skate porn!

[photo via Vice]

I sure wish New York City had something resembling the ditch spots littered across the sunny, dusty promised land that comprises this country’s southwesterly corner. I could comfortably retire, right there, in between those two banks. It might not look like much of an East Coast spot, but a closer inspection would reveal that the rough, gravelly surface, the broken shards of glass strewn about, and the distinct scent of ages-old bum urine, aren’t so different from many of our cherished spots-that-aren’t-really-spots. This, however, really is a spot. Now if only it wasn’t nearly 2,000 miles away.

Cot-damn, that Jake Johnson Gravis ad in the latest issue of “The Mag” — wait… which magazine does that term actually refer to anyway? Thrasher or The Skateboard Mag? I meant The Skateboard Mag “Mag”. Okay, whatever mag mang, the point is, that Jake Johnson ad (which I scanned by the way, and shittily at that, because none of you philistines had bothered to yet) is fucking sick.

Considering dude just went pro for Alien Workshop after a lengthy but often provocative stay in the minor leagues, looks like 2012 is shaping up to “the year” for young Jake. The year, the mag, the fuck?

There should be another big Alien production soon, while the team is at its peak condition since probably the Photosynthesis era. This your moment guys - fuck it - this is “the moment”. Capture it! - and preferably on film!

Also, speaking of this month’s mag… how’s everybody feeling about that Alex Olson Nike ad? Kinda weird, right?

Hot on the tail of their last series of Simpsons-inspired cruisers, Santa Cruz just released a slasher shape to honor The Simpsons’ 500^th episode. Appropriately enough, only 500 of these Rat-Fink-looking motherfuckers will be made, so if you want to make everyone in your wake eat your shorts, you’d better fork over some dough. Just don’t, like, have a cow, man, when you see the unfortunate 85-dollar price tag.

In any case, is this the first time in skateboarding history that a company has sponsored an entire family? I don’t know, but Bart’s got some sick graphics, so don’t just lie there like an unemployed whale — these overpriced skateboards need a good home!

Don’t be turned off by the only fairly jaw-dropping skate park goofery at the beginning of this Daewon Song clip for Spitfire — after a minute of “dorking around” at a skate park by doing tricks that are pretty much unfathomable to most of the world, this opens up into a more-than-legit video part, only because it’s Daewon Song, it’s considered “throwaway”. Skateboarding is hilarious in 2012, man, I tell ya.

Tune in to 1:15 for a little section where Daewon reveals that normal skateboarding terrain has become far too routine for his ludicrous skill level… hell, even Mouse-Trap-like configurations of picnic tables or swinging tires atop a miniramp covered in ramshackle plywood extensions can’t hold his interest anymore. No, now Daewon skates on rocks. This can’t even be called “off roading”… fucking “rock climbing” would be a better descriptor. New York City may be filled with spots that aren’t really spots… but seriously, a fucking rock on the side of the road is not a skate spot to pretty much anybody but Daewon Song.

Also, really can’t believe it’s even possible to kickflip out of a pole jam. But again, if anybody could do it… it’d be Daewon.

Oh, and that frontside flip/kickflip late 180 or whatever the fuck it was up the shitty gap at 2:45 is obviously one of the most mind blowing things I’ve seen a person make a skateboard do in a little while… and by a “little while,” I mean a matter of seconds before that particular trick, because most of the other tricks are mind blowing too.

My dad’s one of those guys who whenever he sees a cute, new consumer electronic, a malfunctioning part of his brain lights up and forces him to buy it without question. As a result, there’s a whole lot of useful-in-theory, but useless-in-practice, crap cluttering my parents’ house. Imagine if SkyNet headquarters was a two-level, raised-ranch house. Now imagine if SkyNet was also had a mild hoarding tendency, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of where I grew up.

In any case, amongst the piles of insanely regrettable DVDs that have never been watched, in the corner, gathering dust, there is also a small fleet of those silly remote controlled helicopters one tends to see flying around the mall, like so many pestering flies. Nobody actually ever buys these things, because, for one, they’re ridiculously hard to pilot if you’re not a doofus who spends 10 hours a day flying them around the mall like an asshole, and for two, their novelty factor wears out pretty fucking quickly considering the aforementioned difficulty in flying them and, well… they’re kind of useless in practice. That is, until now anyway…

Leave it to skateboarding to figure out a practical use for a goofy toy, since, after all, skateboards are, more or less, goofy toys themselves. And I ain’t sayin’ it’s a bad thing! I’m just sayin’, is all. Now, this edit put together by Quintin and featuring Manny Santiago, Danny Supa and Brett Sube skating through the streets of Los Angeles wasn’t filmed by any ol’ Air Hog you’d buy at the mall, but it was filmed by a remote-controlled helicopter all the same… just a much more expensive one.

The footage is really kind of awesome, especially because it’s a different viewpoint than you tend to see in skateboarding videos. Maybe it’s just one more step towards making real-life skating look more like a videogame than ever, but fuck it. I’m done griping about videogames. All of us skaters are partaking in a so-called “childish” endeavor as it is, might as well throw videogames in there too. Who wants to be an adult anyway? Who are you, fucking Captain Hook or something? Get out of here with your no-hand-and-no-fun-having ass.

If my life is going in circles, please god, let it be this one.

Fact: it is immensely hard to regularly update one’s website when it’s not painful and depressing to be outside.

The streets are still wet, but with any luck, these clouds will get fucked and everything will dry up. While you’re waiting, why not watch this? Sure, it’s only 2 and a half minutes… look, I’m only trying to help, here, I can’t solve all your problems, alright?! Get off my case, god.

Zip Zaggers are the chubby cousin of the Zip Zinger, which I have yet to be formally introduced to. Nonetheless, occasionally the Zip Zinger seems a bit like a death trap due to its dainty 7.5″ of girth, particularly if you use it to skate street and not just make beer runs. Although, to be fair, it’s probably most like a death trap when you’re making an inebriated late night beer run, even if it’s just to the bodega down the block. But that’s neither here nor there. While I used to think the Zip Zagger was maybe for the rider with a special affinity for cheeseburgers, it actually seems like a mighty fine alternative to the Zinger, especially for those of you who don’t exactly enjoy regularly pressure flipping your board directly into your shins. I don’t know how popular that is with the kids these days, if it’s coming back like 80s vert tricks or what. I can’t ever keep up with that shit.