Amped is a book that explores the reasons why every asshole you encounter on your skateboard calls you Tony Hawk, or asks you if you know Tony Hawk, or if you can do a 900 with a Bagel Bite shoved up your ass. It's about the big, no-HUGE money that flows through the action sports industry.

Some of the chapters I found less interesting, mostly the ones regarding BMX and motocross, cuz I don't really follow those dudes anyway. There is a chapter on Tony Hawk's Skatepark Tour which is more interesting, and its a good companion piece to the ESPN footage of said tour that you have probably already seen because it was like 3 or 4 years ago now. There's also a look inside Camp Woodward, a heavily routinized conflict of worlds where skating and structure are mixed together - and like oil and water, it doesn't taste right.

The most riling part of Amped reveals the corporate side of the extreme sports boom, with the story of Right Guard Extreme Sport deodorant. A well paid adviser told Right Guard that the word "extreme" was a faux pas, but they brushed those warnings aside and went with the wording anyway, stating that it didn't matter anymore. They didn't care about alienating the hardcore action sport participant, for it was the couch-potato-fat-kid-Playstation-masses that they wanted to sell in the first place.

I remember getting a sample of that Xtreme Sport shit at the Warped Tour or X Games a few years back. The deodorant was a small size, so initially I was stoked because full size deodorant takes up a rather large chunk of space in the ol' toiletries bag when traveling, and I could take it on the road with me.

However, when I finally got around to using it, that shit burned my underarms like it was napalm. I threw it off the hotel balcony and into the street immediately following that experience. It exploded into shards of plastic shrapnel accompanied by a big white streak of corporate deodorant death on the asphalt.