X Games Skateboard Big Air wrapped up Thursday night at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, CA with the name Jake Brown once again at the top of the leader board. Brown had stiff competition from Bob Burnquist and Rob Lorifice, but was able to edge them out with a backflip on the first hit, and an Indy 540 that measured 21' 8" on the quarter pipe.

All night, the talk on and around the mega ramp was whether or not a 900 was going to go down on the quarter pipe. Word on the street is Burnquist and Brown have one in their pockets. Brown never attempted one and Burnquist threw up two, one he even set down onto the ramp, but couldn't hang on.

The 15 year-old Brazilian sensation Pedro Barros was able to stomp a run landing a backside 360 on the first hit and a melon 540 on the quarter pipe. It wouldn't give him an X Games medal, but it was quite a feat for the eighth grader.

Burnquist looked a bit displeased when Brown's score was posted, which was .33 points higher than his. He had landed a switch backside 540 on the first hit, and an Indy 540 on the quarter pipe. A very difficult run, "dropping into the mega ramp switch is a trick in itself," said mega ramp legend and commentator, Danny Way.

In the end though, it was the exact medal finish as last year. On a side note, Burnquist would not give up on the 900, and attempted more than handful more after the contest ended, to the cheers of the crowd and the chagrin of his wife.

Here are the Results:

1. Jake Brown - 93.66
2. Bob Burnquist - 90.00
3. Rob Lorifice

Jake Brown mid backflip. Photo: Harry How via Getty Images.

This past year had some stellar video releases as far as skateboarding goes. Flip finally released the much anticipated Extremely Sorry,which was certainly the biggest release of 2009, but their were a slew of other videos that were dropped. My favorite cinematic experience of the year was Alien Workshop's Mind Field, Greg Hunt killed it as usual. For some reason I thought it was released in 2008, so it
didn't make my rough draft, but after further investigation I came to find it was indeed an 09er. Here's MORINfocus's Top 10 Skate Video Releases of 2009 (now you have something to spend all that X-Mas/Hanuka/Kwanzaa/etc. money on):

1. Alien Workshop's Mind Field
2. Flip's Extremely Sorry
3. Zero's Strange World
4. Tiltmode Army's Bonus Round
5. bLind's The bLind Video
6. Black Label's God Save the Label
7. Baker Boys Distribution's Baker Has A Death Wish Summer Tour
8. Girl and Anti-Hero's Beauty And The Beast 2
9. Thrasher's Under The Bridge
10. Zoo York's State Of Mind

In case you haven't seen bLind's latest cinematic experience fittingly named, The bLind Video, it's now available on iTunes for $7.99. Come on, that's such a good deal, buy cheaper beer tonight, and cough up the money because this video is is full of hammers. You still can't get a Beatles song on iTunes because Michael Jackson owns them all, but you can get some bLind slaying click here to pick up a copy. There's a trailer below.

I cruised over to the Vans Downtown Showdown this past Saturday night at Paramount Studios, just in time to check out Creature's satanic ceation. If you were there, or watched the live feed, you know that the accult assult stop was the second to last.

Yeah, I was late, but it wasn't my fault, it was that god damn 101! If you don't live in Southern California, and don't know what the 101 is, it's also known as the Hollywood freeway, and on Saturday nights you might as well call it the Pissed-Off-Bad-Night freeway. Why? Because your not going to move for hours, you're going to get pissed off, and have a bad night.

Oh yeah, and by the way it wasn't just cold, it was fucking cold! The wind was whipping through all the alleys of the studio and it was down right torture for a cold weather wuss bag like myself.

Like expected the Girl and Toy Machine crew's were killing it. Girl won last year, and Toy Machine has been on the podium every year of the event has been held, but coming out left field this year was Blind and Jani Laitiala.

If your not familiar with the format, each team gets to design a stop, which is skated by everyone for like 20 minutes. From what I remember, Girl had the Three Bump Dump, which was three pyramids in a row. Black Label had the Dive Bar, which is self explanatory. Creature had a pentagram, and Foundation had the Lunar Eclipsey Hubba.

Some sick shit went down on the Foundation stop: Brain Anderson - three broken boards and a tre flip down the star, David Reyes - noseblunt around the moon-shaped-ledge, Alex Olson - f/s 3 the star, and Mike Mo - switch b/s flip the star.

Blind took overall team, Jani took the pro, and Jamie Towncarney took the am with a back blunt across the Black Label bar. This is such a cool concept event, can't wait till next year.

All photos by MORINformed.