Arto Saari is a fucking Viking Warrior. This dude is the shit, straight up. I am a huge huge fan of the Epicly Laterd series, but this was without a doubt one of my favorite in a while. I've been such a huge Arto fan since I was a little kid, since before Menikmati came out, but that video certainly cemented him in my mind as one fo the gnarliest dudes ever. That video was kind of pre Bam weirdness and I remember thinking the CKY song in Arto's part was so hype, and it fitted his skating so well. I used to watch that on repeat on the daily. The back crook on that up, metal triangle ledge and the back crook through that entire cement curved ledge were the most proper shits ever, the sw bs 180 down the Santa Monica triple set made me want to try sw bs 180s down everything in my town and to my 12 year old self that looooong ass back blunt to fakie was bonkers. I don't want to for a second even try to say that my admiration, respect and love for Arto and his skating waned at all over the last few years, he just hasn't been on my radar as much as he was when I was a little youth. I used to be straight obsessed, but since there are sooooooo many skaters and sooooooo much content that comes out these days, my interest was diverted predominantly elsewhere over the last few years. That's why watching this episode not only got me super hyped to go skate and to re watch all of his old parts, but the first part of the Arto epicly laterd was also super nostalgic to me. A lot of people talk a lot of shit about Menikmati, and perhaps not entirely for naught. I mean the intros were super long and a lot of the music was pretty craze, but I think a lot of people also tend to forget how fucking amazing the team was and how rad and progressive all that skating was. I was reminded of that today when I watched this episode. Not only that, but being a skater growing up outside of Toronto in the late 90s, I wasn't really exposed to Arto until he really started making waves in big American publications and videos, so it was really informative and entertaining for me to learn about how he got there in the first place, his involvement with Platinum and the eventual joining of flip. The archive footy of him when he was super young is sooooo funny, it really shows the extent to which his fish out water situation was accentuated. It's also pretty ironic to think that Arto's sponsor me tape got denied by Cliche, lol wtf were they thinking. People, myself included, make such a big deal about the prominence of contest skating these days and how so many skaters define their careers by them, but this episode was also a reminder of how this has always kind of been the case. When Arto was coming out, the contest circuit in Europe was a huge part of the pro scene, and it's cool to see footage from this. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult of a situation that would be for a young skater, being surrounded by people representing all the companies you look up to, and all the skaters you look up, trying to talk to you and get you involved and not being able to understand or communicate with them all. I think it's pretty indicative that he was able to emerge from that and make an almost seamless transition into the American professional skateboarding industry. I'm so psyched for the rest of these episodes. There are so many interesting topics that could be touched on here (flip, sorry, Bastien, Shane, the Workshop, pools) and I can't wait to see what Arto delves into in weeks to come.