About this item
For Tony Hawk, it wasn't enough to skate for two decades, to invent more than eighty tricks, and to win more than twice as many professional contests as any other skater. It wasn't enough to knock himself unconscious more than ten times, fracture several ribs, break his elbow, knock out his teeth twice, compress the vertebrae in his back, pop his bursa sack, get more than fifty stitches laced into his shins, rip apart the cartilage in his knee, bruise his tailbone, sprain his ankles, and tear his ligaments too many times to count. No. He had to land the 900. And after thirteen years of failed attempts, he nailed it.It had never been done before. Growing up in Sierra Mesa, California, Tony was a hyperactive demon child with an I44 IQ. He threw tantrums, terrorized the nanny until she quit, exploded with rage whenever he lost a game; this was a kid who was expelled from preschool. When his brother, Steve, gave him a blue plastic hand-me-down skateboard and his father built a skate ramp in the driveway, Tony finally found his outlet--while skating, he could be as hard on himself as he was on everyone around him. But it wasn't an easy ride to the top of the skating game. Fellow skaters mocked his skating style and dubbed him a circus skater. He was so skinny he had to wear elbow pads on his knees, and so light he had to ollie just to catch air off a ramp. He was so desperate to be accepted by young skating legends like Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, and Christian Hosoi that he ate gum from between Steve's toes. But a few years of determination and hard work paid off in multiple professional wins, and the skaters who once had mocked him were now trying to learn his tricks. Tony had created a new style of skating. In Hawk Tony goes behind the scenes of competitions, demos, and movies and shares the less glamorous demands of being a skateboarder--from skating on Italian TV wearing see-through plastic shorts to doing a demo in Brazil after throwing up for five days straight from food poisoning. He's dealt with teammates who lit themselves and other subjects on fire, driving down a freeway as the dashboard of their van burned. He's gone through the unpredictable ride of the skateboard industry during which, in the span of a few years, his annual income shrank to what he had made in a single month and then rebounded into seven figures. But Tony's greatest difficulty was dealing with the loss of his number one fan and supporter--his dad, Frank Hawk. With brutal honesty, Tony recalls the stories of love, loss, bad hairdos, embarrassing '80s clothes, and his determination that had shaped his life. As he takes a look back at his experiences with the skateboarding legends of the '70s, '80s, and '90s, including Stacy Peralta, Eddie Elguera, Lance Mountain, Mark Gonzalez, Bob Burnquist, and Colin Mckay, he tells the real history of skateboarding--and also what the future has in store for the sport and for him.
About the Author
Tony Hawks, is a British comedian and author, famous for his Quizotic travel accounts undertaking bizarre wagers with friends. Hawks performs stand-up comedy, and is a regular on TV and radio panel games in the UK, including I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Just a Minute, The Unbelievable Truth and Have I Got News for You, although he first came to prominence as one of two resident performers ?? the other was Jo Brand ?? on semi-successful BBC monologue show The Brain Drain. He first attempted to break into show business as a serious singer-songwriter, but it was with a novelty record that he had his first brush with fame. As leader of the trio Morris Minor and the Majors, he reached number 4 in the UK charts with the Beastie Boys parody, Stutter Rap (No Sleep Til Bedtime) in 1988. It went on to sell 220,000 copies, and was number one in Australia. The follow-up, a pastiche of Stock Aitken Waterman called This Is the Chorus, fared less well. The full-length feature film version of his book Round Ireland with a Fridge, starring Tony, Josie Lawrence, Ed Byrne and Sean Hughes, was released in Autumn 2010. Filming on the follow-up, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, with Steven Frost, Angus Deayton, Morwenna Banks and Laura Solon, has just been completed. In March 2011 Tony travelled to Japan to appear at the Okinawa International Film Festival where Round Ireland with a Fridge was nominated for Best Comedy. Tony Hawks donated half of the royalties from his book Playing the Moldovans at Tennis to a trust fund for Moldova, which was used to open the Hippocrates Centre, a medical centre that provides rehabilitative therapy for disabled children from socially vulnerable families. Hawks continues to support Hippocrates through fundraising and personal involvement. Hawks is the co-founder and public face of the "Tennis for Free" campaign which aims to make Britain's existing municipal tennis facilities available to all. He is frequently confused with Tony Hawk, largely because the latter's video game franchise uses the possessive apostrophe ("Tony Hawk's") . Hawks maintains a list of emails intended for the skateboarder and his mischievous responses to them on his website. On 2 January 2008 he appeared on an edition of Celebrity Mastermind, with Tony Hawk as his chosen specialised subject. Hawks noted that his correspondents "might be able to do backside varials but they can't spell to save their lives. "In September he will begin his first National Theatre tour since 2003 with a new one man show called Random Fun.
