Tony Hawks: The Tony Hawk Letters

[TJ]

Apparently, Tony Hawks the comedian gets tons of emails every week intended for Tony Hawk the skateboarding champion. Here's a compilation of his replies: http://www.tony-hawks.com/skatemail_archive.php

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

How hard was it to do the 900?
Quite hard. Especially since around 750 of them said 'no' at first. I needed to be very persuasive.

Thanks for this link!

[SimonJT]

Q: How do you make a half-pipe? A: Take a whole pipe and cut it down the middle.

[TJ]

Look out for the one on the last page, from the bloke saying "I suppose you think this is clever"...

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

hey man are you the tony howks that skates if you are man god dam were good

i love your playstation games man they are cool
bye  


-Hey man to you too. I am not the Tony Howks that skates. In fact I am not even Tony Howks. Such is the extent of your error.

[James A]

dear tony hawk i hate u u know why beause my wish is about u coming to my city and my wish do not come so ilike u before but now i hate u

This is not as disappointing for me as you might think.

[Lee]

peace tony
you are a werry good skateboarder.I come from Switzerländ.
I play your game every day.I hope you can rhite a e- mail to me. i am 14 years.(sorry i can not good English)

bye bye Fabian  

Fabian

Your English is werry good.

I'm not surprised you play my game every day. I'm told that in Switzerland, unless you ski or launder money, there's fuck all else to do.

Tony Hawks

[Garfield And Friends]

Stupid, stupid children.

[aaaaaaaaaargh!]

I kiss your face, thank you so much for pointing me in the direction of this

[Utter Shit]

Don't know if this is legitimate or not, but if so it's not particularly funny, just a bit cuntish. Not that being a cunt to children on the internet can't be funny, Maddox proved that. But yeah, most of those were a bit crap IMO.

[23 Daves]

I have to say I agree - it's not even mean spirited in a particularly amusing way.  I'm sure most of us could have thought up the vast majority of those flippant responses within a few seconds.  I know I could have.  I just don't see what the point of it all is, really, a professional writer and performer really ought to know better than to put this kind of bollocks up online.

[rudi]

Whereas I thought it was just mean spirited and amusing enough.

But then, try as I might, I rather like his stuff, damn me.

[Carlos Tevez]

Yeah, the replies are a bit weak.

[DJ One Record]

Aw, c'mon, give him a bit of credit. It's not like he's given much to work with, is it?

[23 Daves]

Aw, c'mon, give him a bit of credit. It's not like he's given much to work with, is it?

Then he needn't have bothered in the first place.  Or, at the very most, the joke could have been left to die after a couple of pages, the point having been made.

As many people said at the time of "Smokehammer" (and I agreed), just because it's a free website, that's not an excuse for drivel.

[Frinky]

At the age of 10, I would have known the difference.

Stupid people get what's coming to them, regardless of age.

[TJ]

Maybe I'm a bit biased about this, but I can entirely sympathise with him. Having been involved with running a couple of sites, I know exactly what it's like to get the same rude, aggressive and ill-informed email queries ("send me all of brass eye plz" and all its close relatives, not to mention the fucking hoaxes that people are still trying to perpetrate) in large numbers week in week out, all of which could have been answered with a quick cursory look at the actual site itself, and believe me you do start to feel like sending wind-up replies after a very short while. Given that for several years he'd had a special 'looking for the skateboarder bloke? sorry I'm not him but here's a link to his site' page on his own site, and people had still ignored that despite having to wade through the site to get his email address, I can understand his frustration.

Plus I think some of the replies are quite funny.

[sam and janet evening]

As many people said at the time of "Smokehammer" (and I agreed), just because it's a free website, that's not an excuse for drivel.

In fairness, these correspondences don't seem to have been put up as a stand alone concept (I don't know the smokehammer stuff very well, but I gather it was presented in this way, certainly the thing in the observer was), more as a vague aside, a 'look at all this stuff - mad innit?' type thing. I think we're encouraged to laugh at the original e-mails as much as the replies too. If he decided to release them as a book or even as a full -on 'my world of humourous correspondence' website I'd be less enamoured, but they strike me as little more than blog entries and as such I can't really see a problem with them.
Also, I agree that having a go at kids and their sloppee gramma is a little cheap but, as TJ pointed out, a lot of the e-mails are rather rude to start with and he'd made every effort not to be confused with skater-joe.

[DJ One Record]

And with that mad sense of duty that sees him compelled to respond to what appears to be every misguided e-mail that comes his way, it's only natural that quality control takes a battering (a few too many quips about grammar).

And if it takes a 16-page archive to make the point, then so be it.

[John Williams]

Maybe I'm a bit biased about this, but I can entirely sympathise with him. Having been involved with running a couple of sites, I know exactly what it's like to get the same rude, aggressive and ill-informed email queries ("send me all of brass eye plz" and all its close relatives, not to mention the fucking hoaxes that people are still trying to perpetrate) in large numbers week in week out, all of which could have been answered with a quick cursory look at the actual site itself, and believe me you do start to feel like sending wind-up replies after a very short while. Given that for several years he'd had a special 'looking for the skateboarder bloke? sorry I'm not him but here's a link to his site' page on his own site, and people had still ignored that despite having to wade through the site to get his email address, I can understand his frustration.

Plus I think some of the replies are quite funny.

I concur with an alarmingly high 100% of this.

[Bert Thung]

Dear Tony Hawk

I know your busy, but after your done could you talk to me.Could you tell me the special tricks for Tony Hawk pro skater 1 for N 64 also I was thinking that if you can send me a skate board if you have any extra that you don't need . Because I use to skate board but someone stole my board ,and I was pretty good on skating and Im talented too I could play the ukulele If you know what that is, and the piano too . thank your for time reading my e-mail , hope to hear from you soon.

Aloha

Byran
Dear Byran (or do you mean Bryan? - you skateboarders are such shocking spellers).

I would like to say that I'm sorry that your sketeboard got nicked, but I'm not. Can't you see that this is a good thing? Instead of wasting your time trying to work out how to do an N 64 trick (not a good one anyway - the G 45 is miles better and doesn't involve jelly) you could be spending your time doing what all young men of your age should be doing - yes, Playing The Ukelele!

Yes, byran - well done for plating the ukelele! I never wanted to fritter my life away on skateboards. If only I could play the uke! My life would not be the empty sham which it is now.

Yours Tony Hawks

PS. Do you know 'Leaning on a lamp-post?'