We recently held a Sales contest to see who could make the most sales phone calls in a week. The winner was Brad Oates. Brad reps East Coast, Rocky Mtn's., Southwest, Hawaii, and Guam. Brad won two sweet Creature Decks. Stu Graham's Evisceration and the Chupacabra Ltd. Here is Sr Sales Manager Holly Anderson presenting Brad with his winnings:
The rest of the office was very proud of Brad:

Congrats Brad! Keep slaying it son!
P.S. Hey Lee, "Make That Money!!"

"I don't have any wittlers on my team."
- L. Charron to a proud R. Whaley
in regards to L. Barletta's wood-shaping skills.

LA rep Chuck Rich:
Creature TRMF John Ponts:
and Jr. Sales Director Holly Anderson:
got mental in Baja, Mex on their motorcycles on the third annual El Diablo Run. The whole ride was about 1500 miles on their Harleys from Nor Cal thru Mexico,
where dirt track racing, burnouts and tequila drinking were in order.
A few memorable events included, HMC’s Dyna gettin' in a fight with a mini van (and losing), Holly Crap trying to do a burnout against Chuck’s highway peg, and Ponts’ bout with a Mexican farmacia. The crew posse'd up with Sonora’s DTMC and showed that Harley Riding isn’t about old farts and Eddie Money.

Last Saturday the new park in San Jose opened. TC and I took his steam boat of a truck with a car full of local talent. Don't worry, TC's gas guzzler is Bio diesel so everything was green. We took Raven-creature AM, Tommy Warner-SC flow, Lil Cody Chapman-SC flow and Miss Kelsea Campion.
We got there at around 8:30am which is the perfect time to go skating on a Saturday. Your body is all stiff and you start sweating profusely from all the great toxins you fed yourself the night before. We managed pretty good though. We brought our pad bags and Salba stretches to the table that day. Yes pads. Its probably been 20 years since I last wore knee and elbow pads. You might want to at this place. Dude, that park has the craziest security system I've ever seen! They have Camera's everywhere.
I mean everywhere. I think they have hidden micro phones in the tree's and bowl's so they can hear your every conversations.. I might of just made that up but once you go in there you'll probably think the same. I heard they have a guy stationed in a look out tower on the other side of the lake just waiting for you to take your helmet off or you just not even having one. That I didn't make up. I don't know how you could of even got in with out one. In a nut shell, "Bring your pads and some money cause that's the only way your getting in!"
Here's Booger putting on some Hannah Montana knee pads.


"Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to ride the dew!"

Check out how sick their security system is!


They can dial that thing in so good they can see if you need sun tan lotion or not. "Hey lil buddy, your face is getting a little sun burned. You might want to cover up."

Grip tape of the day award goes to this little guy! Check out the old roofies grip from back in the day.
You guys pick this up yet?

Here's ole Tommy boy mid picker in the backyard pool.

How to do a smith grind by Raven.
The cradle was worth rocking inside and out.



Later that day they had a vert wall contest. Who ever got the highest, won. All I remember was Raven didn't win and Steve cab flew all the way to the top and Almost dropped in. I think he would of did it if he had pants on and not board shorts and yes that's mister Air Speed himself, also known as Mike Mcgill.

Oh, you bet Knox was there!

Here's Cab ripping in those board shorts again!

Tommy Warner slurah caining. He wanted to get this shot with out his helmet but he was picked up on the infra red sensors... Maybe next time T-Dubs.?

The ladies all day where like "Hey when is Lee going to get here?"

Booger over the stairs...... first try.

You best believe Black Schmedel was in that piece rocking the midnight polka dot Krux!
What's you got on this pivot fakie Whaley?

All in all, good times were shared by all. Just remember when you go you'll need these key elements, full pads, sun tan lotion, money to park, money to get in, money for the soda machine and spider repellent! I saw some brown recluses in the full pipe! I swear! They were huge, ask Raven.
I could of had heat exhaustion though...
Special thanks goes out to Viet for holding it down on such a crazy day and TC for driving us down there and manning the NHS tent with Jono.
You guys rock!

The awesome dudez from Rebel8 came through last week and posted up a sweet blog about the tour on their site.. go to their site and buy their stuff. It's all awesome!

After about a year and many High Life meetings Creature Lee and I put the finishing touches on the never ending Creature website. You should go look at it..

try to find the glowing donut.

Lee said we might get bonuses for it but I'd settle for just not being fired.

Last Wednesday, March 12th NHS hosted its first ever Open House. The event was freakin' gangbusters. We invited a mess of our top retailers, bros, & pros to come hang out, eat, drink and be merry. Here's what went down:
Some insane skating on this wicked street course we set up:

We even set up a quarterpipe in a moving truck

Whaley set up a Krux Rainbow Rail for the kiddies

Tommy Werner bomb dropped off of the truck, dude is savage.

The Shipping Department hosted an epic Mexican BBQ. Best carne asada ever. Baby Jordy loved it

We rolled 3's with Creature Lee


Everyone went on tours of production, R&D, shipping, & the offices


Everyone screened their own "Backdoor Bash" T-Shirt. Even the Phillips boys.

Even our Night Watchman Wayne came by

We raffled off thousands of dollars worth of NHS goodies

Steve from World Of Toys was stoked!

This chick won a signed Kendall board. Psyched!

We cut an Indy 30th Birthday Cake. KDub loves cake.

Bill from Bill's Wheels was presented with the "NHS Retailer Of The Year" award
Basically this was one of the greatest nights in NHS history. If you weren't there you blew it. A big thanks to all the people that made this possible. Especially you. If you are reading this, Thank You! You're the reason we do what we do. Keep skating, surfing, snowboarding and ruling. We love you guys.

Big contrats go out to Independent Truck Company Art Director Mark Widmann and his wife Courtney who welcomed Shaefer Widmann into the world last Friday night, on leap year day February 29th, just before midnight. Shae weighed in at 7 pounds 2 ounces. Little shredder...

Good week @ Strange Notes headquarters!
I saw some dirty pictures from the Indy sewer tour, had a meeting with accounting and broke my chair!

I reclined one too many times I guess... R.I.P. buddy..

in closing I'll leave you with a video I stole from another blog

enjoy!

The other day we bro'ed down with Cisco and they filmed us as we worked on our new Thunderskate line!


They partied with our director..

it was nice of him to hike up his sleeve so everyone got to see his ink!

then it was a trip over to the art dept.. here's Lee finishing up a new top graphic..

peel off your griptape sometime and check his work out!

finally it was over to R&D..

no board left untested holmes!

thanks for the dlxmb duds for finding this link... and thank you Cisco for having your finger on the pulse!

hey check it out! I totally invented this thing called embeddable video.. well not so much but I did make it so you can now embed all most of our past videos on your blog, myspace, facebook, shred or die, vital skate, ice lounge, vitally shred or ice, some messageboard or wherever else you party... for instance here's this classic...

remember how popular that series was around here Lee?
anyways there might be some bugs in the system but we're not exactly working with youtube's budget here..
to get the code check out the video page
strangenotes.com/video/
have some good times with it!

Ok not really but people from all corners of the internet seem stoked on Chalmers' Checking In

Good stuff!

While on the topic of popular webclips we have Skate Mum..


Krux Kickflip Challenge plans are being made for the 2008 season. However, my suggestion of having Crunk Energy Drink/ be a sponsor seems to have been met with some silence. Sorry Lil' Jon!

You can officially download the full DVD of the Independent Trucks Northwest Video and print out your own cover artwork. Last week we weren't really sure if we'd be able to keep our "Make Your Own DVD" promise but it looks like we may have done it. Does it work? I think so. Will it blow up our server? Maybe. Go give it a shot and see what happens...

Before we announce the big winner lets do that annoying thing that every other countdown thingy does.. here's the re-cap!!

10 Greg Lutzka - Checking In
09 Jon Nguyen - Movin' Up
08 Independent in OZ - On The Road
07 Taylor Bingamen - Movin' Up
06 Creature - Black Metal
05 David Gonzales - In The Park
04 Arto Saari - Favorite Things
03 Santa Cruz Skateboards Euro Enduro Part 2
02 Andrew Reynolds - Checkin' In

and now finally our #1 Clip

Congrats for to Chris Haslam who's "Checkin' In" was the most viewed StrangeNotes clip of 2007...


nicely done Chris! Thanks to everyone who read, clicked, downloaded, hated, linked and/or blogged on StrangeNotes.com this year.. we appreciate it! Happy New Year!!

countdown back on!

second runner up (AKA #3) finds the Santa Cruz dudes on the second half of their "Euro Enduro"


first runner up (#2...) goes to Mr Andrew Reynolds and his "Checkin' In" clip


the most watched StrangeNotes clip of 2007 will be announced tomorrow better just stay on the computer until then...

3 videos of the year today! I won't be back till next Thursday so I had to front load the countdown a little.

#6.. Creature coming in strong with the "Black Metal" Trailer


#5.. David Gonzalez is "In The Park" ripping as per usual..


#4.. Arto Saari get all cribs-esque and listed off his favorite "Favorite Things"..


top 3 will be coming in next week! So make sure to check back..

so now for the second half of my post about how I am the winner. Lee and my battle to get written up has resulted in no "write-ups". However Lee got nominated 5 or so times for working really hard and being super amazing and had his name put in a drawing which he won. That is the polar opposite of a disciplinary write-up and therefore I win the battle... sorry Lee! Have fun with your gift card.. there's a new bad boy in town.. for the final nail in the coffin. Here is another lame video for my aforementioned "super lame" crusade.. enjoy!

Happy Holidays from $N

Merry Chri..err, I mean Happy Hanukk..err, Happy Holidays? In this politically correct world, I just don't know what to say anymore. So I came up with a new one, Happy Cold Wintery Party Your Ass Off Eat A Lot Of Food Embarrass Yourself In Front Of Your Co-Workers Holiday Season! I hope you all have a great one!
P.S. Skateboarding Santa rides Krux! Holla!

I'm blowing it this year on posting up these top videos of the year, sorry! Here we go...

Number 8 is "On The Road" Independent In Oz..

which on a self prop level is my favorite screengrab that I made this year..

For number 7 we have Taylor Bingamen's "Movin' Up"..


In other news someone in Portugal got their ride pimped!

Seem like our server's power supply had a hissy fit and went out on me yesterday so the beginning of our to 10 videos of 2007 start is a day late. what ev's... here we go!!

Starting off the list at #10 is Independent Rider Greg Lutzka's "In The Park"


Next up at #9 is Krux's own Jon Ngyuen's "Movin' Up"

side note about this clip is that 87% of people polled recognized that he's eating Cheez It crackers in the the screengrab above.. what's up with the 13% that didn't?

more tomorrow.. stay tuned!

First things first.. Starting monday I'll have start the countdown of top watched StrangeNotes clips of 2007. Get hyped.


Second off Lee and I are in the middle of a battle. We're trying to see who can be the first to get a disciplinary action write-up. I don't think its take too much to recognize that I'm kind of the underdog here. See, Lee's kind of an "all talk all action and then some" kind of guy.. wheras I'm more "all talk no action and maybe some php and mysql". Lee's been going big by having fake weapons and getting girls to pose naked with nooses for the pre-book catalog. Meanwhile I haven't really done anything .. I'm going to go a different route because I don't think a StrangeNotes ad with a naked girl in it would get the green light around here. What I'm going to do is just be super lame and see if I can get written up for being just too lame... here's my first move.

I think I'm off to a good start..

Oh also when I went to stand up a little while ago my foot was asleep and I almost fell onto the Purchasing Guru's new flat panel monitor... how lame is that? super lame...

After the breakthrough smash-hit that was my first blog, I had been trying to figure out what to blog about next. Let me tell you, it was rough. I had absolutely no idea what to blog about. I needed help so I consulted the WebWiz, He gave me some inspiring words like; "Keep On Truckin'", and "Cast your level 5 wordsmithery spell"
Then like magic, Chuck Rich a.k.a. Heavy Metal Chuck, So Cal Sales Rep Extraordinaire sent this over to Strangenotes HQ: Awesome! Great job Chuck!
If you're in Simi Valley head over to the Skatelab Skatepark and check out the new Indy wall. Maybe you'll get lucky and bump into HMC himself. Careful though, this is how he rolls: Also, first person to send me a photo of themselves skating on the Indy Wall gets a free pair of trucks. Boo-yeah!

First off. Independent Northwest Tour is now also available as a Podcast


Second we just figured out that the heater that I've sat next to for 4 years works!

Good week guys!
We started out w/ Independent's Northwest Tour video, then a Dutch kid did 566 kickflips, we also got a new blogger who didn't mess up on his first blog, and I went and saw that Joy Division movie..

Next week's looking pretty good to.. we got a new online timeclock that we get to party with on monday morning. Its got special buttons for when you take lunch and all kinds of super-dopeness! I bet I'll have trouble sleeping all weekend in anticipation!!

Have a good friday! Here's a picture of a x-mas light Sea Serpent to stoke you all out..

Thanks Wiz, for the kind introduction. 2 weeks probation huh? Well, I better pull the rip-cord on my ass kicking machine and fire it up.

OK! Now I'm ready.
My blog will be mostly devoted to all things Sales, which means sweet shred product that the kiddies are sure to love, as well as the folks in sales that bring it to the masses. First up:

RICTA 53mm Chad Muska Chrome Cores! So sickening! Need proof? Brad Oates, East Coast, Rocky Mtns., Hawaii & Guam sales slinger loves 'em!

Yeah Brad! Way to go! However, I don't think people die everyday on HWY 17. Anyway, if you want to skate like Brad, go get some Muska Chrome Cores. They'll add some bling to your steez & drive the ladies wild. Well, I think my first blog went pretty darn well. See ya next time everybody.

As avid strangenotes readers you probably know we're heavily into Quality Control. That's why we have dudes like this checking everything out to make sure it's up to snuff

Coming soon to strangenotes we'll have an all new blogger. His name is Joel (a.k.a. Jellis) he works in sales and apparently does a lot of stuff with tradeshows. If you aren't in the action sports industry, tradeshows are places were there are lots of girls in bikini's and drinking and stuff. Or at least that's what I've heard, the web wiz has never been to one... but anyways its totally serious biz.

However, here's where the Quality Control comes in... he's on a 2 week probation. So if he blows it he's out! I'm pretty sure he'll do alright but thems the new rules @ strangenotes HQ.

Joel, welcome to the frontlines of the blog world...

you'll do good..

Indy's first ever video series has been posted up on an interweb microsite at the address of northwest.independenttrucks.com so check it out... Oh did I mention it is presented in glorious 640 x 480!!! Insane...