Here's the third installment in a series of old skateboarding VHS tapes, the first two can be found here and here. On the Prowl is a video that I recall from the olden days by name only. After watching the first five minutes, I couldn't remember any of the footage, because it's really fucking boring.

With as much credit as the Alva team got over the years, their style was always clunky brute force that doesn't make for interesting videos. The first segment of On the Prowl is Chris Cook and Jeff Hartsel doing kick-turns on a tall quarter pipe and simply riding over a medium height jump ramp. Sometimes they attack a parking block with as much grace as one of my uncles eating an ear of field corn at an Ohio summer BBQ. I can assure you, that's graceless.

A band called Bad Reputation provides a majority of the soundtrack for the video, which is mostly limp mid-tempo metal. My favorite part of this tape is being reminded of some horrible fashions, like those hideous Vision Street Wear light blue skull berets and double (and sometimes triple) hip sacks. Oh, and if you pause the frame at 10:36, you can see my friend Paul Tempest and I on the right side of the screen. That footage is from Dayton, Ohio and the first pro competition that either of us had ever been to. Paul's father was kind enough to drive us there and back as we were 12 years old at the time. Mr. Tempest was always an admirable adult, I hope he's doing well today.

As a sequel to the earlier post of Thrasher's A Blast From the Past and Present, here's another "gem" from yesteryore. Curb Cruisin' is from 1987 and features some of the lamest scooter (!?) footage that I've ever had to watch. The skits are pretty bad too, at one point a l'il shredder rescues a lost pet and is rewarded by a kiss from a grateful skate betty. Seconds later, he bumps into a fellow shredder and knocks a pie into his face. Oh, and there's a skinhead.

Also included are a few (vaguely) interesting R.E.M. inspired songs as the soundtrack. I watched part of this video with a friend (who was three at the time of its release) who couldn't fathom why it was even made. I can only assume that the wild popularity of the Bones Brigade videos caused a gaggle of sub par imitators, many of which I hope to post here in the coming weeks. If you haven't seen Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, I highly recommend it.

Here's a generous description from Videmarketplace.com:

Action-packed footage as the scooter dudes get chased by the local skateboard punks through the alleys and streets of Hermosa Beach, California. Features exciting mini-scooter demonstrations.

Seattle, it's sunny outside! Get shreddin'!

One of my favorite things is getting lost in Scarecrow Video. Every room and small cubby seems to hold something forgotten and exciting, I usually end up renting an armful of things that I have to race to watch within a week before returning them.

For the first time last week, I stumbled onto the sports section, which has a row of skateboarding videos from all eras. There are a lot of videos from the 2000s, the 1990s, and a whole bunch from the golden age of the 1980s. I rented several and watched with a mixture of glee and horror the wretched fashions and skateboard stunts of yesteryore.

Certainly one of the best videos is this one, Thrasher Magazine's A Blast From the Past and Present. There's a slew of clunky skateboarding footage (early Mark Gonzalez, Steve Rocco, and (I think) Jesse Martinez) and musical performances of varying quality. Agent Orange, Dicks, and the Drunk Injuns have always been faves of mine when it comes to skate rock, but here you also get Condemned to Death, Screamin' Sirens, and Tales of Terror. Enough about me though, if you're into this kind of thing, I present to you the following video to enjoy:

I'll probably be posting some of these artifacts as I dig them up on the Interweb. I first thing I looked into was the 1978 four song EP by Chinas Comidas. This five piece genre-bending group played a compelling brand of triumphant PNW no-wave that has refreshingly original rhythms for that area. It was so easy to write songs that sounded punk back then, but to blend Pere Ubu and Nina Hagen without maybe even knowing it is so excellent.

Another Chinas Comidas 7" a year later and a CD compilation in 2006 seem to be the only releases on the Exquisite Corpse Records label. Miraculously, this excellent single can still be bought at a decent price!

In response to K-Fenn's enviable mug collection, I'd like to submit a favorite cup of my own, and the brief history of how it came to exist in my life.

• DEREK ERDMAN
• How do I like my coffee? Black, motherfucker!

Unlike a lot of my friends, I never really fell in love with the music of Superchunk. Sure, they had some hot jams, but I never really dug into their catalog. Well, except for Indoor Living, which became the unlikely soundtrack to my summer of 1998. Around that time I was working at a record store in Chicago under the masterful management of Scott Rutherford, who published a great car/music zine of that era called Speed Kills. A version of the mug in the above photo held pens on Scott's desk at work, the same desk where I ate Subway sandwiches while on my lunch break. When ownership of the chain of record stores shifted a few years later, Scott left the job and the Superchunk mug pen holder somehow stayed behind. I adopted it into my home.

The Superchunk Hyper Enough mug is a high quality mug. It's not like the modern transfer printed mugs made of thin ceramic. It has weight and depth and the image is superb. It became my main mug for a few years. Eventually, I gave it to my best friend who is a huge Superchunk fan. She also had the hots for singer Mac McCaughan, I figure she deserved it more than me. Fast forward a few years later to a going away party that I was having for another friend. I was living in a big house with the same best friend who now owned the mug. For some reason, I decided to invite all of MySpace (?!) to the party. Most of MySpace accepted the invitation and the party devolved into a total disaster. I knew it was going to be awful when I spoke to a giant older man wearing an over sized Marvin the Martian t-shirt. He was eying a shelf of CDs and didn't know that I lived there. "There's no way that I'd have this many people in my house with this much stuff," He said. "There's a lot of expensive things here." Hours later, the bathroom was covered in blood. Somebody strung dental floss webs around most of the house. The kitchen faucet was broken. Somebody stole the oven knobs and some random dishes. After all the dust settled, the Superchunk mug was missing. Somebody took it! What a dick!

Public appeals for the return of the mug went unanswered and my best friend was heartbroken. Somehow, miraculously, it turned out that a friend had the same mug and she was willing to send it to quell the sorrow. In another stroke of luck, the person whose going away was the reason for the party knew the drummer for Superchunk and was able to procure another mug! Two mugs!

Here's where I paint myself as a total worm: I never mentioned to the other person that we had two mugs coming. I just accepted both mugs so we could each own one. Today, they mean a whole lot to the both of us. And Liz, if you want yours back, I totally understand.

• K.C. Fennessy

This weekend, while doing some housecleaning, I came across an item I had completely forgotten about: a KCMU mug. Because I drink coffee out of the same Touch & Go model every morning—I prefer black to white—I never pay attention to the other ones in my cabinet, but I was reaching for something at the back of the shelf, and discovered an object I haven't thought about for over 15 years.

It reminded me of the other promo items I amassed during my KCMU days (1988-1992), where I served as DJ, promotions director, music director, and specialty show host ("Straight No Chaser"). I left before the University of Washington station established an alliance with the Experience Music Project and became KEXP, but returned to volunteer between 2008-2009 (despite their current South Lake Union address, the UW still holds KEXP's license).

The Urban Dictionary informs me that "schwag" also refers to "low-grade marijuana." There was some of that floating around, too. More pics below.

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