roast beef

The roastbeef is a type of skateboarding/snowboarding grab that is relatively advanced, and can leave you looking mighty stupid if you don't do it right.

To do a roast beef grab, you can use a half-pipe, quarter-pipe, kicker, launch, or other aid to get plenty of air. When in the air, you simply reach toward the heelside of your board with your leading hand, and grab it. Simple.

"But wait," you may say. "Isn't that just a melon grab? What's so special about that?" Well, I did neglect one minor detail. When you reach for the edge of your board, instead of dropping your hand behind your back, you reach between your legs! Isn't that exciting? Then tweak it a little, and everything looks cool.

The risky part is, dropping your hand between your legs can be a risky proposition, especially when you are on a skateboard. This is because you can knock your skateboard away with a poorly timed grab. Also, taking your hand out from between your legs must be done smoothly. Failing to do so may leave you with a fairly mangled paw that resembles, well, the sandwich meat this grab is named for.

Roast Beef is the name of a character in the online comic strip Achewood, drawn by Chris Onstad.

His place in the Achewood world is of the depressed tech support guy, reduced to making cries for help with crappy chimichangas and buying t-shirts with slogans such as "It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a good day," though he never wears thems.

Roast Beef, like the rest of the Achewood cast, is a stuffed animal-in his case, a cat. He has an older sibling named Ray (a party animal/swinger personality) whose hobby is to "get his bone on", and a younger sibling, simply named "little nephew." Since he is the middle cat, he was introduced as such, with the phrase

"Roast Beef, the middle cat"
"Not Ray and not Pat."

With credit due to a BBC programme on the subject I heard in March 2003 during the "freedom fries" incident in the US.