So, I was on my way home checking my e-mail from my mobile when I noticed that there were several notifications from Facebook about some photo that was "tagged" of me. "Well jeez, that's sorta odd", I thought, since my horrid ugliness tends to summarily destroy any lens that tries to document my feeble-minded existence.
Given that, I was totally floored when I checked my Facebook, and found this relic from the distant past in my "notification" box! (Caption by none other than Jim Gray, himself):
"Bud Stratford has since become a friend of mine and a tireless advocate for skateboarding and skateboarders and a little bit of a whistleblower on bullshit. Was tossing out a bunch of boxes with thousands of old letters from kids etc... and did a quick scour through some random ones pulling out the ones with rad art or something interesting and the professionalism and sarcasm of this one caught my eye. Yeah Bud, you had your sarcastic wit from an early age..."
It's a very little-known fact that I once had my own skateboard company that was called The Cleveland Superboard Factory. By the way: Yes, I had thought of dumber names, thank you very much. I can see Blair haggling me already: "You've always been a wordy dumbass, haven't you?!" Yes, Blair, I always have...
Well, here's an even littler-known fact: Cleveland was modeled after Acme, which was one of my favorite companies back in the early-'90s. In hindsight, I'd have to credit the innate humour of what Jim was doing, coupled with the timeless and whimsical penwork of Mr. Ron Cameron as my initial purchasing- and later, enterprising- influences.
So Jim, tell me buddy: When can we expect an Acme comeback?! I think it's time for another skateboard-industry business-model revolution. If you can do it once, then why couldn't you do it twice...?
By the way, I loved the "little bit of a whistleblower on bullshit" bit. "Little bit"?! That's kind of like saying that I'm just "a few cheeseburgers' worth of 330 lbs. fat". Hysterical...!
