OK folks, 2007!!! Wow, it's been quite a year for Independent. We're talkin' some serious roster additions like Eric Koston, Mr. Haslam, AVE, Drehobl, Harmony, Szafranski, Bobbier, Kirchart, Hoffart, Ponts, Olson, Ramirez, and I'm sure more I'm leaving out...

So to finish off the year with a bang, I thought I'd review 2006 with Indy's videos from the year. So here we go folks, it's time to grind!


Next up is Clint Peterson's Day in LA commercial... Feels good baby!


Getting a little more Savage here with Trujillo's guitar commercial for his jeans.


Oooh, next we have little ripper Grant Taylor's Movin' Up. Little f#@%er rips...


Other kids that rip? Baby Lamb does...


And speaking of Ams... did you know that Indy sponsors the Tampa Am contest? It's comin' up on Jan. 19-21st at Skatepark of Tampa. Here's last years trip with Whaley, Satva, myself, Matty C., Tanner, and Brian Heck. Arrests were made.


Indy sponsors Tampa Pro too... I took the red eye through Miami by myself for that one and filmed it with our little Sony. Lutzka kills...


Speaking of Lutzka, seriously folks... they'll grind your bitches ass off!


Next up... this video was the #3 most watched on StrangeNotes.com this year. And it's funny because it didn't actually make the DVD. In the Park - Burnside with Tony Trujillo. Some kid on YouTube left a comment on this, asking, "where's that park? It looks sick!" Get with it kid.


From under the bridge to Mormon country, we've got Mike Plumb disgracing the family name as Lizard King.


From the scaled creature to the hairy animal, Haslam hooked up this Stupid Trick... stupid sick, including some puke and diarrhea at the beginning.


This year's Battle of the Shops was fun as hell...

Ahhh, the Faction.

So Cal has the biggest population of rippers for sure, including Eddie Craig who came in from nowhere with this Movin' Up.


From that same DVD came this montage from the Baker / Indy guys (although I think Herman is the only one who doesn't ride Indys) ... Meyhem ...


To finish off this 2006 a year in review, yup, it's the #1 most viewed video on StrangeNotes.com ... ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!!!!????? ... Peter Hewitt's Checkin' In! Amazing, seriously since Lee and I just threw it together with some of Navarrette's extra footy... It goes to show you though, Peter fuckin' rips is one funny ass character!


HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Starting with the ground breaking news and ending with something no one cares about.
1. "Mayhem with the Independent Team" is the featured video on StrangeNotes:

2. Kdub ended up having an awesome Xmas.. something he would have never predicted!

3. The SC Skatepark is starting to show signs of life.

4. It's really windy here and this is what happened at my house (60+ MPH). Note the power lines hanging and the tree on the lines.. it was a little crazy but exciting. Photos taken at 7am this morning:

5. Independent Team Guys Dressen, Knox and Jessee are all coming into the office today to tear it up.. photos coming later.
6. And finally, the last bit of news is I'm in a really good mood today. I'll let you know if it changes. Oh ya, I drank 711 coffee this morning and Kdub asked me to blog for him because he's got "Truck Work" up to his ears.
thanks Wils!

So it doesn't really seem like Christmas much to me this year... total sob story that I'll spare most of the details for you... One of the great things about living in California (deep sarcastic tone here folks...) is the rental market. Our house recently sold and the new owner decided to go ahead and give us 30 days notice on the 15th of December. So stoked!

My wife teaches kindergarten so she usually gets really into doing some decorations around the house. No big decorations or a tree but I guess the saving grace this year is that we have great people to support us through difficult times. Jen always has a bunch of gifts that she brings home from parents and students and teachers and administrators and that's no different this year. They're all so good to us. So we have that going for us which is nice...

My point here is that I was really bummed about the holidays this year... not really feelin' it. No real stoke. Nothing that's really pumping my nads if you know what I mean.

So I got on here to give you my weekend watch and was super bitter... and immediately found this>
Fear Fuck Christmas
"thank you, thank you, thank you, fuck you." Fear was a rad band... I bought their album the first time my best friend's sister drove us down to Wax Trax in Denver. Must have been around 1985 I guess... great store. Fear the Record on vinyl which I am proud is one of the only things I own from youth. I pretty much destroyed everthing else. Lee Ving, the lead singer to Fear went on to try his hand in acting to little avail but he was one hell of lead man.

Next thing I found was the Ramones I don't want to fight tonight it's Christmas which really cheered me up... I'm serious.


I then moved on to this lovely video of Santa Claus teaching all of you kiddies out there how to ollie and ride a ramp. Good job Santa! You rip!

Good stuff... oh and nice Krux Santa... Jeeze.

I thought about my depressed view of the holidays a little more and almost felt like Charlie Brown which brought me to ask myself, "what does Christmas mean?"

I feel much better now... So much so that I think I'll go home and bring in our half dead tree we bought last year (live), go up to the attic and find some lights and set that thing up, Charlie Brown style. Now all we need is a little snow.

Happy Holidays to all of you and may your 2007 be filled with luck and joy. Good health to you and your families from all of us here at Strange Notes and NHS.

I'll leave you (if you even made it this far!?) with this video of Lizard King who was in town this week for our sales meeting. We did some bowling...

OK, this week in tribute to the upcoming Tampa Am on January 19th-21st, I thought we'd bring you Strange Notes & Indy's coverage of last year's Am and Pro events. Enjoy!





...and last but not least on the music front we've got a show clip from the Circle Jerks in Tijuana Mexico, 1990, performing Fortunate Son and Nervous Breakdown (in case you don't know... Nervous Breakdown is a Black Flag song - Keith Morris left Black Flag in 1981 to form the Circle Jerks), 2 of my favorite songs by the way. There's some hot pit action in there...


On a side note a few months back I was wearing a Circle Jerks tee and we were downtown at the Red (trendy college student spot) and this guys like, "dude, did you know that the DJ tonight is the drummer for the Circle Jerks?" That's just hard to believe considering there was a disco sort of song playing at the time. So I walked over to the DJ and he looked way familiar. I had seen them play a few years ago... He saw my shirt and said something... Long story short - Kevin Fitzgerald... no, not the original drummer but nonetheless a noteworthy addition to my blog here...

Have a radical weekend folks!

As I mentioned last week and exclusively Press Released this morning via Epicly Trife, Dan Drehobl is now on Independent Trucks:


Corpsey is Built To Grind putos!!!

"Your boy finally saw the light" -Dawes
"Bad Shit's next song is gonna be Corpsey's on Indy!" -Trujillo
"Stoked on that fucker gettin on Indy finally." -Keith Wilson
"Im gonna teach him 540's" -D. Way

via Schmitty