Land the key!

The upcoming 2021 Australian Boardriders Battle National Final at Newcastle Main Beach will not be just another Australian Boardriders Battle National Final at Newcastle Main Beach this year, no way, no how, for this year, for the first time in recorded history, it will also host The Hyundai Electric Air Show somewhere in the middle.

The Hyundai Electric Air Show?

Yes.

The Hyundai Electric Air Show in which 24 competitors will paddle out and attempt to grab a set of Hyundai car keys being dangled from a blimp, thus winning an electric Hyundai car for a year.

Per the press release:

Huge airs will be thrown down over the two days as one athlete from each club competes for the keys to a Hyundai Kona Electric for a year. It’s a massive prize – and the bigger the prize, the bigger the airs.

A Hyundai blimp will hover above the line-up, dangling the keys to the new Kona Electric above the break. Anyone in the heat who gets high enough to get their hands on the key, WINS!

The Hyundai Air Show will run before the semi-finals on Sunday 16th May, with $1000 going to the winner’s club.

I suppose winning an electric Hyundai car for a year beats having to own one outright but let’s get serious here. The World Surf League should certainly adopt the electric hovering blimp but what do you think would motivate the world’s best surfers to leap and grab?

Joe Turpel’s golden microphone?

Ron Blakey’s baritone?

Other?

A film within a film.

There are two families that come directly to mind as surf cinema royalty. The Browns (Bruce, Dana) and the Oblowitzes (Michael, Orson).

Oh, you are most certainly aware of Michael Oblowitz’s body of work, one of the finer of the last decade plus. His Sea of Darkness, whispered about in hushed tones from Sydney to Paris. His Heavy Water an award winner. His yet-to-be-released Sunny Garcia documentary certain to cement his place in history.

His soft core vampire porn for Showtime already having done.

His son Orson is a cinematographer, producer, writer, director of much note who also worked on each of his father’s surf films but hitting worldwide headlines, these past few days, for directing one Zach Avery in the 2018 horror film Trespassers.

Avery, whose real name is Zachary Horowitz, was recently arrested for running an over $600 m Ponzi scheme in which he raised money from investors in order to buy the rights to films that were to be purchased by Netflix and HBO.

A can’t miss deal except…. the contracts were allegedly forged, investors hung out to dry, Horowitz awaiting trail.

690 million United States dollars.

Wow.

The Los Angeles Times has called the classic Ponzi scheme “the most audacious in Hollywood history” and I reached out, directly, to Orson, who is from New York but lives in L.A. for the surf, for more.

“Fuck, dude…” he laughed a disbelieving laugh into the phone. “All I knew was the guy could not act. A terrible fucking actor. He came attached to Trespassers and I just assumed he was a rich kid who had put up some money to be in it but he was awful. A nice kid, though, and we spent a lot of time together on set then doing press. Went to London and all that.”

I asked Orson if he had any idea that he was working with a criminal mastermind.

“Not at all. I mean, once the story came out I just thought, ‘If you were bilking people for $600 million dollars how can you not act?’ My dad always thinks he’s the Prince of Darkness, cinematically, but I think he’s met his match.”

I would say so, seeing as Michael Oblowitz has never unwittingly directed a lousy-acting criminal mastermind unless we can consider Nathan Fletcher such.

Orson has another film coming out this summer, The Five Rules of Success, and I am looking forward to it but first shall watch Trespassers. It is on Hulu here in The United States.

What luck.

Can we turn BeachGrit into a Ponzi scheme?

$690,000,000.

Think about it, will you?

Give 'em hell, Lucy Small!

Longboarding competitions are usually not the times nor places to witness explosive fireworks but that commonality was radically challenged, this past weekend, when the very talented Lucy Small called out both event organizers and sponsors from the stage for paying the women half as much as the men.

Small, who won the Curly Mal Jam Pro, dubbed Australia’s premier one-day long boarding surfing event, was handed the microphone, along with an oversized cheque and beautiful glass trophy and wasted no time getting right to it (slide three).

https://www.instagram.com/p/COJuKjIHOdu/

“Hello… I finally won something,” she began, sun shimmering overhead. “Thank you so much for having us, super stoked to be here. I just wanted to point out, thank you so much to the sponsors for all the money for the event, but I would say it’s a bittersweet victory knowing that our surfing is worth less than half as much as the men’s prize money.”

Groans rose up from the audience but, undeterred, she continued.

“It costs the same amount to fly here, accommodation costs the same, and our surfing is worth half as much so maybe we can think about that for next time.”

The groans turned to half-hearted applause but, in my opinion, should have turned into wound up arms pelting those event organizers and sponsors with rotten fruit.

It is unbelievable, in this day and age, that the prize money would be different for the men and women. I understand how, if there are less women, the purse might be smaller, but not the amount paid winners.

And how does a statement asking equal money for equal work cause groans?

Has being a father of daughters blurred my vision?

Caused me to miss some key element where damned male longboarders deserve more a priori?

Nonsense, all of it, and I would go so far to argue that the women should get twice as much as the men in the world of professional longboarding.

Three times as much, even, as it is far more graceful, compelling, a spectacle.

Prove me wrong.

And bravo, Lucy Small.

Give ’em hell.

Give ’em all hell.