If you have 19 minutes to spare, you’ll likely love “Altered Focus: Burma.” Its makers describe this sweet little film as a look at “three filmmakers and skateboarders, including rider Ali Drummond, as they travel across Yangon and Mandalay. The film explores the reaction to this activity whilst touching on the political situation there.” Watch it here:

Altered Focus: Burma from Hot Knees Media on Vimeo.

You may have seen that the awesome blogger TMcG, on her blog Full Contact Enlightenment, recently shared that she has bought a new skateboard deck from Skull Skates. Part of the company’s “True Champions of Justice” series (which also features Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Theresa), the deck pictures the Dalai Lama, accompanied by the maxim, “Be Kind Whenever Possible, It Is Always Possible.”

Some people are less thrilled than TMcG is about the deck. Blogger/activist (and friend) Heidiminx thinks it’s “disrespectful to the max” to depict His Holiness there, especially since most skaters are likely to grind the bottom of the deck. She’s encouraging online friends to write the company and share their thoughts, though she reports that “When I left a comment on their page that this was disrespectful, they deleted it.”

So what do you think? Is it disrespectful? Sure, it’s not what an adherent of Tibetan Buddhism would do, but it seems (to me, at least) like a gesture/idea made out of respect. Personally, I think it’s cool that Skull feels it’s worth depicting such “True Champions of Justice” — it’s more meaningful than much of the usual skate-deck art fare. Likewise, TMcG has followed up with a comment from Skull that seems to satisfy her sense that her purchase wasn’t ill-placed. Check it out and join the discussion here.

Via Ananova:

Photographs of a monk skateboarding inside a historic temple have caused controversy in China. [...]

“Monks should seek quietness and riding a skateboard is such a contradictory thing to Buddhist life,” said [internet commenter].

However, a spokesman for the temple said that the outside world did not understand the life of a contemporary monk.

“People get their impressions from TV or movies, where monks are praying all day long, without any motivation or desire,” he said.

“But these days monks also enjoy sports like badminton, table tennis and skateboarding in the spare time, as well as praying.

“They even use the internet and mobile phones to promote Buddhism. This is not contradictory to Buddhism but actually is part of the Buddhist spirit.”

Right on.

Just found this on-line. It’s the logo for the “Tarantula” model of wheels from the legendary Tunnel skateboarding company.

Her look sorta reminds one of the “Dharmagrrl” logo (as seen here, or here), only with more — and much hairier — limbs.

If you want the wheels (they’re for longboards, not regular skateboards), you can find ‘em here (among other places).

…that’s what it was when I stumbled upon this shot of a kid absolutely shredding while wearing his pro-Tibet gear on Boardpusher: