Tech Deck: Fingers of Fury (1999)

Famous fingerboarders Darin Langhorst, Damien Bernadet and Tony Pauthex showcase their skills on a variety of obstacles, such as a mini railing, a wooden box and, well, more railings and boxes.

After a two minute and thirty second compilation including all three athletes' arsenal, we're treated to a feature dubbed, "learning how to do what you want your fingers to do," featuring Darin Langhorst. In this section, Darin explains the succession of tricks that you should learn, each supported with slow motion illustrations. After covering the basics, Langhorst describes the importance of ollies: a lifting of the board, using the "g-forces" exerted by your fingers. These miniature skateboards are proving to be more scientific than I anticipated. Anyway, he goes deeper into the how, when and why of implementing certain tricks for a bit longer.

Inside a park littered with a variety of somewhat terrifying statues, we're greeted by a clown, full costume and all. The circus performer is promptly used as a obstacle in a leg-based skateboarding trick, which, fortunately, lands without a hitch. The strange incident is never discussed or acknowledged again.

Next, Damien Bernadet and Tony Pauthex, two fingerboarders in their early twenties, share a segment together. The pairing stems from their close proximity to one another geographically, as they share the hometown of Dijon, France. To illustrate the area's regional specialty, Tony proudly displays a jar of Amora brand mustard for the camera. After the condiments are put away, we learn that the duo are both converted skateboarders who left the sport because, quote: "sometimes skateboarding is too hard." Fortunately, they mastered the art of Tech Deck tricks, going so far as to put some miniature ramps on a turntable. Their talent seems to be a step above the guy from the first segment, as they showcase a wide variety of innovative tricks. Despite the level of difficulty, Damien explains that "there's no way you can get hurt, it is almost impossible."

Darin soon returns to get a proper profile of his own. Turns out, his fingerboarding abilities are much better than those documented in the first segment. He's from Canada, further proving that America doesn't have any VHS-worthy representatives for finger-based extreme sports. He recounts times where he has "seven hours a day to kill," and rather than going to work or school, he spends 25 cents on duct tape and builds ramps to implement new tricks. After years of the hobby, he eventually mastered the construction of these tiny obstacles, explaining that "building stuff is almost the funnest part." He shares some sage advice with aspiring boarders: discipline, finger pushups and 10-hour per day practice sessions. Fortunately, he quickly revises the advice to simply include practice without a specific timeframe.

Skateboarding and fingerboarding highlights are then shown back-to-back, illustrating how similar the two talents are to one another, although, the full-sized tricks do seem to have more of a wow factor. They go on to plug some actual skateboarding tip videos, but, unfortunately, it doesn't look like any other fingerboarding tapes were produced.

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