dedleg.com

Break yo self fool, she’s way out of your league.

Sometimes you gotta stop… like, really stop. Stop doing this. Whatever it is you’re doing. Stop that.

I know complaining about longboarding is getting old, but that’s only because longboarding itself has gotten old. Well, not so much old as just really annoying because everybody who happens to be on one is a total fucking buster. You’re giving skateboarding such a bad name that even skateboarders want people to stop skateboarding (kind of, but calling longboarding “skateboarding” is definitely giving it too much credit at this point). Anyway, yes, I agree, it’s dumb. Now let’s just ignore them and hopefully they’ll go away.

This drawing is in memory of Memorial Day, a holiday that celebrates, for all intents and purposes, our god-given right to drink outdoors (I think).

Click here for a larger version.

Anyway, no matter how much day drinking and hot weather seem to go together, the summer party monster must constantly be aware of one’s fluid intake, and I mean that beyond how many shots you can take in an hour without falling over. Indeed, dehydration is the grim reaper for many an overeager inebriated patriot, and let’s not forget how dangerous driving while dehydrated is. So remember, kids and people who are actually legally allowed to consume alcohol, pace yourselves and drink a lot of water. Or at the very least, drink Bud Light. That shit’s so watery I think it’s basically the Gatorade of beers. Is it in you?

They come in all kinds of shapes, embossed with all kinds of designs, but that’s about where the similarity to the Flintstones vitamins you enjoyed as a kid ends.

No two ways about it, ecstasy pills look downright cool. Conversely, the way you look when you take ecstasy pills… well, let’s just say, “cool” isn’t quite the word I’d use.

“Undead,” on the other hand, that’s not so far off.

Good god. I think I just discovered the new face of Above The Influence’s anti-drug campaign. Seriously, that’s gotta be one of the worst pictures taken, like, ever.

There was a time in Dedleg’s infancy when a simple picture of some drugs was considered a legitimate update — now that’s a tradition I’ll proudly honor. Other traditions I can get behind: getting the day off in honor of all the people braver than I who died to protect my freedom and America’s interest in foreign oil while I was too busy reading about mind-altering chemicals on the Internet.

Just doing a little weekend reading.

Due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Memorial Day weekend (primarily: fantastic fucking weather and an abundance of beer and bong rips), Dedleg will be taking the day off on Monday to be irresponsible, unproductive, and, more generally, what some would call “a waste of life.” We will return on Tuesday with our regularly scheduled nonsense.

Commercials for skateboarding products, particularly trucks, where a company has a rider deliver a forced, often largely uncomfortable, testimony about the quality of the product tend to be pretty unbearable. But I’ve got to hand it to Thunder for this one featuring Dan Plunkett and Justin Brock — it seems everybody’s well aware of the absurdity of it all and loaded on some extra corn. It’s cheesy but it’s also hilarious in the way that only cheesy things can be. For example, this Cheeto:

Does that make this post NSFW? Maybe if your boss has some kind of strange fetish for snack foods and/or cheese dust. In which case, you are definitely not safe at work. But anyway…

Like I said, humorous. But you know what else is funny? The fact that I’ve been riding the same pair of Independents for years, and they don’t really need to advertise at all.

This week has been a marathon of sweaty, geeky proportions, and it has very little to do with the recent surge in temperatures on the East Coast. In fact, for the most part I’ve been glued to the computer screen, furiously answering frantic emails and trying not to punch myself in the face on an hourly basis. Something about Memorial Day weekend tends to turn freelance clients into a frenzied mob of anxiety-ridden, codependent 16-year-old girls… maybe it’s the elevated pollen levels or something. Needless to say, when I woke up today and the slow realization that it was, in fact, only Friday draped over my semi-conscious body like a cold blanket smeared with dog shit, I wasn’t exactly pleased. Long weekends aren’t for free, people. You have to earn them shits.

Anyway, here’s a quick handful of random photography. And one of them probably can’t even be considered that, since it’s just a picture I took of Marv getting electrocuted in Home Alone. You know, that scene where he absolutely should have died for the 15^th time.

Ever heard of the phrase, “phoning it in”? Well… if not, you’re looking at it.

That’s all for now, folks. I’m in the middle of a race to the end of this hellish work week and something tells me I’m coming in last.

CGI animation has come a long ways since Toy Story. It seems like just about anybody these days, given the necessary training and a complete lack of a social life, is capable of producing gorgeous CGI-animated shorts without whatever unfathomable technological steroids Disney can afford to inject into Pixar’s muscly ass. Indeed, this is not your typical Pixar movie — no, this is nature, and nature is a mean motherfucker.

For real though, this is mind-melting it’s so good.

And have a taste of some of these stills… holy fuck. They’ve got my fangs watering… venoming? Weird.

Loom was created by Polynoid, a design and animation collective based in Germany. They don’t get outside much, I’d wager. But I guess, who the fuck needs to when you can make a realistic outside on your computer? And if there’s anything pop culture has taught us through the seminal Twilight films, it’s that sunlight is for mortals, ew.

Despite my illustrative touchdown dance yesterday, I’m throwing yet another drawing on the pile. No rest for the wicked, as they say. They don’t tell you this when you sign up, but being fucking awesome is a 24 hour job. And here I thought a 9-5 was rough.

Uh, and speaking of that 9-5 thing… I better get back to it, because the only thing worse than a 9-5 job is no job at all. And also bestiality, but that’s another issue entirely.

Some classic words of wisdom — well, maybe wisdom’s the wrong word — some classic words from the always classic Jason Jessee.

“Who’s Jason Jessee?” you may ask. I suppose the answer would depend on who you ask… pro skateboarder, biker, potential secret Nazi, rumored meth-addict, role model… In any case, I’m the only one answering at the moment, and I’ve always referred to him as one of skateboarding’s finest eccentrics. We cherish our nut crackers in this industry, and when they become as reclusive as Jason has in recent years, even the most mundane, insipid appearances are celebrated.

Jason Jessee and Chris Miller - photo via The Chrome Ball Incident

Q: What ailments or injuries have held you back?
A: Being overweight. I was pregnant once and couldn’t skate for nine months.

Q: Tell me a little about school, did you finish?
A: If my grandma reads this, yeah I finished. If anyone else reads this, no, I dropped out in the 9^th grade.

Q: How old were you when you started skating?
A: How old were you when you took your first dump?

— Transworld Skateboarding’s Jason Jessee Pro Spotlight, 1989

J. Jessee is one funny man. And by “funny” I mean literally funny, but also a little bit crazy.

Something tells me that nobody was keeping count, but yesterday I knocked out my 180^th illustration / design / original visual artifact excluding photography since starting Dedleg back in late September 2009. It’s been a wild ride (not really) but you can’t say that we weren’t productive! Rather, you can’t say I wasn’t productive, in any case. I don’t know what the hell you slackers have been up to while I’ve been working my knuckles to the bone over here.

Anyway, 180 isn’t a particularly significant number, but it conveniently makes a nice, solid grid. Plus it’s one of my favorite skateboarding tricks.

For the record, this took goddamned forever. You go ahead and make an image map with 180 thumbnails — I’d like to be there and see it when your iron will turns into a pile of pudding snacks. I tried color coding them, but then I realized that was going to make me go insane. Sorry guys, but sometimes you gotta know when to draw the line between human and so perfect you must actually be a cybernetic doppelganger of a human, which would be scary and weird.

And don’t you dare make the mistake of assuming we’re not technologically advanced enough that each one of those thumbnails links to its respective, original post. Again, I don’t know what you’ve been doing all this time (although I bet your browser’s history would tell a different tale), but I’ve got so much to do I can’t afford to type with one hand.

That was gross. I apologize.

Of course, you could always just go to my Flickr instead, a widely-used, completely free online service that renders all of my work on this post completely pointless! Go Internet! Yay!

Yo, you seen that new collaboration Vans Vault is doing with cowboy elves from the projects? Gotta cop me a pair of those in kangaroo hide, no doubt.

What’s the word all the kids have been saying these days? Ah yes. “Swag,” if I’m not mistaken. Well, swag on, you sassy swagsters, swag on.

Personally, I find it kind of incredible that it was possible for the dude in the middle to look even remotely cool, but hey, relativity is some potent shit.