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Skateboarding sure loves fire. The Girl camp in particular has formed a bit of a pyrotechnic legacy at this point, between the board-on-fire skit in Hot Chocolate, the explosive intro to Fully Flared, and now this, Lakai’s blazing inferno of an entry for this year’s Transworld Skate & Create contest.

The part has the level of quality you would expect from a Girl Films production with Ty Evans at the helm, and god damn if the 50-50 on the rainbow rail wasn’t impressive, but I’ve got to say I’m a little disappointed with the concept. And god, it’s dark. Like, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem dark.

Compared with DVS’ entries from years prior, which had a different look and feel from your typical skate film, this is all just a bit too familiar. Considering this is a contest that’s supposed to promote creative skateboarding video projects, I just wish it had been a little more, well, creative. Sure, Lakai’s team has talent leaking out of their vulcanized insoles, and setting shit on fire is always at least pretty cool, but I’ve gotta say, doing something we’ve never seen before would have been a lot cooler.

Am I just a jaded grump? Probably.

This post is going up a bit later than usual because Comcast can suck my balls.

Many of the headlines on this website are references to movies or songs. Today’s, however, is also the title of an incredible LucasArts computer game from the early 90s. Day of the Tentacle was an old school adventure game, which focused mainly on talking to weird characters and clicking every conceivable object in the frame in an attempt to solve puzzles that progress the storyline. Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sick amount of time I spent trying to figure out the game’s puzzles as a child is to blame for my ongoing obsession with tentacles and tendrils of all kinds.

And look, it doesn’t make me a nerd because I played Day of the Tentacle when I was a kid. What makes me a nerd is the fact that I was born in 1985, when cool video games where you could dismember people and swear didn’t exist yet.

Despite how low resolution the graphics were, they were actually really well illustrated — full of humor, style, and detail. Which was nice of them, considering how long you could get stuck staring at a given screen, hopelessly trying to figure out one of the game’s puzzles.

Another big selling point? This shit had time travel. Time travel, tentacles, and uh… funny jokes. Who needs more than that, am I right? Sure, “funny jokes” doesn’t start with a “t,” so that kind of fucked up the thing I had going, but whatever.

And of course, the choices you made in the past could affect the future (i.e. your present)… you know, just like in real time travel. Unfortunately, it seems nostalgia is the closest I’ll ever come to traversing the temporal superhighway. And I know it must get annoying for me to always gripe about how things from our youths were better than things are today, but come on, it’s kind of true.

Amidst all the exclusivity contracts, million-dollar bonuses, and other generally jockish shit infiltrating the industry, this Roger Skateboards part featuring the Wiskate dudes is exactly what skateboarding needs right now — a fucking dose of reality.

This is just solid, down-to-earth skating, with all the stuff that made skateboarding so attractive in the first place — camaraderie, creativity, and that little thing called fun. Sure, this type of skating might not land you a whirlwind affair with a coked-out supermodel or make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, but it probably will make you happy, and for a second there, I kind of thought that was the point? Anyway, it certainly looks more enjoyable that competing in the contest circuit, at least as far as Nyjah Huston’s tears over his loss at the Maloof Money Cup are concerned.

Remember when skateboarding was just something fun to do in the parking lot with your friends instead of going to class? These dudes never forgot. And clips like these make me feel good inside, not just because I can live vicariously through them and experience what having friends might actually be like, but also because it’s reassuring that not everybody who steps on a board these days is so single-minded about getting sponsored and learning how to backside 360 kickflip first try. Skateboarding is alive and well.

Every day that goes by that I don’t put up a photo of a sunset, a little piece of me shrivels up and dies. I try to restrain myself for the sake of not getting too redundant, but you know, sometimes I just can’t stop myself.

Whoa, that’s a one-quarter rainbow, all the way.

Also, could we have a moment of silence, please? Because I think I just killed — no, beat to death — that joke. Although, it’s not like I didn’t have help… like, from the entire Internet. Nonetheless, it’s important to not forget Hungrybear9562’s true message amidst all of the mockery. Nature is beautiful, and yes, sometimes so intense, and yes, sometimes you can’t even capture it on your camera. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth trying anyway.

Because the world sure is photogenic sometimes.

Sure, it’s no Piranha 3D, but I thought this short video a SUP surfer shot of a shark circling his board was pretty scary in that Home Video Open Water kind of way. And the video isn’t short because he gets chomped, either. He lives to upload the tale.

A minute and 40 minutes would probably feel like an eternity with Jaws sniffing around underneath you, sweat running in your eyes, warm urine soaking into your wet suit…

Oh well, everyone pees in the ocean. No biggie.

Movie trailers from the 80s were far superior to today’s mind-blowing, chill-inducing, demographic-targeting previews.

Also, I had to share this… from Ace Show Biz dot com (The Ace in Entertainment Zone, btw), an incredible summary of the film:

Considerably one of the most scariest movies ever made, the original “Poltergeist” tells the creepy story of a family home being haunted by a band of ghosts.

And now, the most scariest parts of Poltergeist in five seconds…

Oh, sorry, that last one was equally scary but it’s actually from Junior — the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger gets preggo.

In more Poltergeist-related material, however, there’s a remake in the works, although no cast has been announced. Which is nice since now I’ll have plenty of time to brace myself for the announcement that Carol Anne will be played by Justin Bieber. Personally, I don’t see how a remake could possibly improve on the source material in anything except the effects department (and likely at the detriment of the plot/acting/everything else department). Still, it might be interesting, in the “let’s get screwy and watch this on a lazy Saturday night” kind of way, at the very least. Maybe this time they’ll just tell Carol Anne to stop acting like a crazy person, talking to TVs and shit, and everybody can get on with their lives.

In honor of the cause of my indolence yesterday, and the coming weekend… my latest achievement in doodling.

Depending on your level of tolerance, which is often directly correlated with experience, blunts and booze can sometimes have ill effects. Ill meaning a variety of things here — “totally awesome”, and “nightmarish carnival ride” included. Unexpecting tokers, more willing to take part in recreational drugs after several inhibition-debilitating cocktails, will often get swept away by the spins. At this point, holding on tight really is the only option, whether it be the cushions of the couch, or the rim of the toilet. And chances are everything in between will be clawed and grabbed upon as well — walls, doorways, inexpensive yet pointless Ikea space-fillers, unlucky house guests, pretty much anything more stable than the wiped-out party goer, which actually happens to be pretty much everything.

Tolerance, and — you got it — experience has told the Dedleg faithful that the only way to beat the spins is by deliberately poisoning yourself with these aforementioned substances, at the same time, as often as possible in order to fully master their precarious combination. Just don’t tell the guys at the ER where you got that advice when you’re giggling uncontrollably after projectile vomiting all over the attending. Life lessons, that’s all I’m trying to give you guys. Now get out there and get stupid.

In 2000, Danny Wainwright set the current high ollie record, at 44.5″ off flat. Monstrous pop can get you far in the skate game, just ask Mr. Hufnagel’s new shoe company, but you need more than height to be a stand out these days. That’s not a problem for Danny Wainwright, and one viewing of this video of him skating in Barcelona for Clan, filmed and edited by Rich Smith, should dispel any opinions to the contrary.

Dude skates fast, picks creative lines, and he’s kind of got a British Rob Welsh thing going on, so that’s obviously pretty sick too. In case you were still trying to figure out the math, that’s really all you need to be a great skater (trade Rob Welsh for your stylemaster of choice, it doesn’t particularly matter) — should be easy, right?

Busy week here at the Leg. My routine’s all infected with social obligations and it’s really fucking up this workaholic thing I’ve got going.

Speaking of legs, and infections I’ve got going…

The smell of the band aids could put a dog to sleep.

I’ll have something better tomorrow. Stay tuned, ghouls and gals.

Hey dudes, check it out! Real life Gymkata!

Actually, it’s called freerunning, or parkour, in case you haven’t heard of extreme gymnastics before. And honestly, I can’t decide if “Gymkata” even sounds any dumber than either of those.

Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK), or l’art du déplacement (English: the art of movement) is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment.

The term freerunning is sometimes used interchangeably with parkour. While freerunning is more to do with expressing yourself within your environment, parkour is aiming to get from A to B the fastest.

I also can’t decide if this is cool or unfathomably lame. Obviously it’s super impressive, either way. And, granted, I’d love to be able to run up a wall, but I’m kind of wondering about the practical purpose of being able to flip backwards through a hole the size of a morbidly obese three-year-old. Then again, I suppose a grown man who spends hours most evenings in dimly lit parking lots, flipping a four-wheeled piece of wood with his feet shouldn’t be criticizing anything for its lack of practicality.

Here are some selected visions from my recent travels.

This week is the first real break from the oppressive, ant-under-a-magnifying-glass type heat we’ve been enduring for the past month or so. But a couple weeks ago, when it was consistently above 90 degrees every day, in addition to wondering if that liquid that just dripped on you was condensation from a window air conditioner or spit lobbed by a bored, zit-faced high schooler, Chicago’s sweltering citizens also had to watch out for melting tar, dripping from elevated train track overpasses like asphalt stalactites.

Anyway, that was a long and confusing sentence, when really all I had to say is, “Doesn’t this drippy shit remind you of Robert Patrick’s character in Terminator 2?”

Clearly, we don’t have much time.

Speaking of creepy villains, aren’t these some fucking sinister-looking eyes? This shit is straight up scary, and not only because it’s horribly designed. Shouldn’t this make Chicago’s commuters feel safer, not like they’re being spied on by a shadowy mastermind? Maybe that just depends on how you use the train system. Personally, I’m going to have to find somewhere else to buy drugs.

Then, I discovered Nirvana in a 7-11. Not sure how this little bird feels about Combos, but I can tell you he likes Chipotle almost as much as white people from the suburbs!

Getting a decent shot of this badass motherfucker weaving his web was an exercise in patience. Fortunately, I was able to snag one right before my train pulled in. I had to get uncomfortably close (both in terms of neck strain and proximity to huge, horrifying spiders) to get the picture, and I wasn’t about to stick around to see if he liked white people from the suburbs as much as white people from the suburbs like Chipotle.