Video Review
King of the Road 2003
Thrasher Magazine, High Speed Productions
DVD. 2004

I probably would have reviewed this a while ago, but Thrasher definitely takes their time sending things out to you. The normal allow 4-6 weeks for delivery becomes allow 4-6 weeks for delivery (after we charge your credit card 2 weeks after you place your order). The holdup was because the King of the Road video suddenly became out of stock. Anyway, what am I bitching about?? This video was $9.95 and packed with some pretty damn good footage. What a deal.

King of the Road. Do you know the concept? Did you get the magazine? It's actually really a great idea. For those uninformed: 4 skateboarding teams (Deluxe, eS, Tum Yeto, & Volcom), each made up of 5 team members, a team manager, a photographer, videographer, and Mystery Guest, make their way across the country scoring points by documenting themselves accomplishing various team challenges. Points are scored by doing tricks listed in a book (distributed to each team), performing challenges relative to the city they are in, by picking up their Mystery Guest, doing the highest, longest and gnarliest things (as judged against the other competitors), and accomplishing a list of other various miscellaneous challenges. At the end of the competition, the team with the most points wins the competition and bragging rights in 2004, where supposedly they are to defend the title.

The skating in this video is pretty good. You have guys like Koston, McCrank, Rune, Ernie Torres, Dennis Busenitz, Diego, Adrian Mallory, Gareth Stehr, Darrell Stanton, Tony T, Drehobl, Black Arm and a cast of many others pretty much skating everything they come across, whether it's a skatepark, a parking lot, a ditch, a pool, or a manual pad. Probably the best part about the whole video is the variety of terrain the skaters ride (or in some cases are forced to ride). Also it's kind of interesting to watch the skaters adapt to different terrain they normally don't ride or to different tricks they normally don't do.

Unfortunately, the video is not at all what I expected it to be. I kind of thought the video would be a little more comprehensive, maybe narrated with a chronological plot. If you don't have the magazine, which lists the rules of the game & all the team & city challenges, you won't understand much of what's going on. There really is no rhyme or reason to each team's video part. After a while of watching the video, you forget that they are playing a game. The quick edits leave you to believe that the video is just another team 'road trip' video. The skating's good, but it becomes a chore to determine which things are worth points and which are not; the video parts are really just pure chaos. The Deluxe video part did a better job than the others at putting captions at the bottom of the screen, but nonetheless it was still just an afterthought.

I like the Road Rage mix, which is an extra on the DVD. Here they had random clips of each team on the road, both skating and during the down times. You get a little better idea of how things were like on the road (Tony T blabbering while drunk, bartering with a mom for a make-out session, scuffles in the back seat of the van). I think if each video part was more of a mix of miscellaneous video footage, it probably would have come off better. Oh well, there's always 2004.

Still don't know what kind of messed up rating system we have, three stars.