dedleg.com

The great thing about amateur skateboards is that they usually put forward a lot more effort than their professional counterparts, and you don’t even have to pay them for it! It’s almost as if… and this sounds crazy… but it’s almost as if they actually still like skateboarding. I know, I’m scared too, so I’ll give you a second to collect yourself.

In fact, what better way than to gaze upon the almost-ten-minute visual pleasure that is Lakai’s Am I Am. The fact that it’s shot and edited beautifully should come as no surprise, if you’ve been paying attention to what comes out of the Crail camp for the past, like, decade. On that note, nor should it be any wonder that the skateboarding contained within is beautiful as well — after all, Vincent Alvarez is doing a lot of it.

Some points of note:

1) Riley Hawk is on Lakai. And he’s a gangly string bean of a lad, just like his old man. I guess that’s what happens when you’re raised on a diet based entirely around a lifetime’s supply of Bagel Bites and Mountain Dew. Mostly, his addition to the team intrigues me — was it a power move, or merely the long-delayed result of a blood pact between Tony Hawk, Rick Howard and Mike Carroll to repay McSqueeb for stealing Rick McCrank from Birdhouse years ago and turning him into a much, much better skater?

2) Daniel Espinoza is clearly incapable of closing his mouth. I’d say it’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t appear to be negatively affecting his skateboarding. In which case, I’ll simply make fun of the poor little mouth-breather as a thinly-veiled attempt to disguise my seething jealousy.

3) Vincent Alvarez gets more awesome every time I see him. I can’t wait to see how awesome he is by the time the Chocolate video comes out in 20 years! I know I’ve made similar jokes a few times before, but remember that we haven’t even seen an ad for the fucking thing yet, and you know we’ve got at least another four years of deadline shuffling to sit through after that. Plenty of time for VA to win Skater of the Year twice.

I watched this video on Monday night, stoned, and forgot most of it, so I watched it again on Tuesday night. In that time span it went from 351 views on YouTube to 28,991. I don’t know how many thousands of those people are included in dedleg’s audience. Nonetheless, at the rate this thing’s going, by the time this post finds its way to your browser window, your mom’s probably already called to say, “You know, you’ll always remember exactly where you were when you first saw Lakai’s Am I Am.” So what if we’re not timely… that’s what bloggers who don’t have real jobs are for.