This promo video from 1992 packs a surprising amount of footage into its 11-minute runtime. It’s easy to poke fun at the short-lived “big pants, small wheels” era of the early 90s, but it’s the era I come from, and I can’t help but have a soft spot for it. 101 wasn’t a company I ever gave much thought to back then, but “WWII Report” has some interesting moments worth mentioning.
Adam McNatt opens things up with back-to-back songs from The Dwarves album “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” which happens to be the first punk tape I ever owned (given to me by a friend’s older brother in 1991 and later held up by a youth pastor after it fell out of my pocket as an example of the devil at work—priceless), followed by a Leigh Peterson skit in which he wears a redneck cowboy outfit and pretends to beat up a homeless person.
Also included are a very short section from Gabriel Rodriguez and a closer from Kris Markovich, but the obvious standout is a young Eric Koston, giving the world an early glimpse of the skater he would become. He even sneaks in a few era-appropriate late-flips just for the hell of it.
The wheels are small, the pants are big, the camera is shaky, the picture is horrible, and the lighting stinks. But hey, welcome to 1992.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.