Paint it green!

Exactly one week ago, surf fans became absolutely delighted to learn exactly how great a positive impact our World Surf League had on the planet during the 2022 year. Tens of little bushes planted, 35,000 educated youth and maybe most importantly, emissions cut by 50%.

Well, in a possible bid to re-cut emissions by 100% in 2024, by juicing them by 150% this year, the WSL has just announced an expansion of its wonderfully green relationship with Chinese manufacturer of carbon spewing landfill-ready trucks and SUVS.

Great Wall Motors!

Per a hot-off-the-presses release:

GWM and the World Surf League are excited to announce their partnership has grown ahead of the 2023 Australian leg of events across the Championship Tour, Challenger Series and World Longboard Tour. GWM’s SUV and Utility vehicles are the perfect match for the outdoors and surfing lifestyle making the continuation and growth of this partnership with the WSL an obvious one.

A new deal between the two organisations will not only see GWM continue as the title partner of the Sydney Surf Pro and category partner across the four major Challenger Series (CS) and Championship Tour (CT) events in Australia, but also as the new presenting partner of the Gold Coast Pro and the category partner of the Bells Beach Longboard Classic World Longboard Tour (WLT) event.

“World Surf League and GWM had a fantastic start to our partnership in 2022 and we are thrilled to grow this partnership into its second year,” said WSL APAC President Andrew Stark. “The vehicles GWM produce are aligned with an outdoors lifestyle and are suitable for all types of surfers so it’s great to see them expand their investment to include all types of surfing events. We’d like to thank GWM for continuing their support and we look forward to watching this partnership grow into the future.”

In addition to elevating GWM’s onsite activation experience for fans across the Australian events, the partnership will include a broadcast integration in the form of the GWM Catch Up, a daily highlight clip that will be distributed at the end of each day across WSL’s owned and operated platform. GWM will also be provided with a custom broadcast feature at the Gold Coast and Sydney CS events.

“Our 2022 sponsorship with the World Surf League provided a valuable opportunity to align GWM with a like-minded partner and to showcase the GWM brand and our range of SUVs and utes to an engaged audience that enjoys the great outdoors,” said GWM Head of Marketing & Communications, Steve Maciver. “More and more customers are selecting GWM as their automotive brand of choice and we look forward to the second year of our WSL partnership and building our connection with the surfing community and beyond.”

Paint it green!

Not Laird Hamilton approved.

Can we be honest with each other, if just for one moment? Do you cry at movies? I will be the first to admit that an emotional scene in a well-crafted film will get me teary. Oh, I won’t sob but the sting definitely comes followed by blurred vision and then a tear, maybe two. I will try and not bring attention to myself so will pretend to stretch, or some such, while wiping away but there it is.

I bubbled up during Punch Drunk Love, Forrest Gump, The Empire Strikes Back. I did not during Titanic though it Is considered, by many, a very sad picture.

The James Cameron blockbuster, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, is set, of course, on the ill-fated steamship that went down after striking an iceberg in the north Atlantic. Cameron fictionalized a tale of a large bauble, held by a headstrong social climber, that might be amongst the wreckage captivating Bill Paxton, and takes us into those final doomed hours where she shakes responsibility in order to make pornography with a poverty-stricken doodler.

But might they both have fit on that door and both survived?

The question, which has been haunting fans for years, was hours ago squished by Winslet herself on a recent podcast.

“I don’t fucking know. That’s the answer, I don’t fucking know,” Winslet said at first, according to Insider, before lending a considered answer after explaining that she has an “understanding of water” from SUPing.

“If you put two adults on a stand-up paddleboard, it becomes immediately extremely unstable,” she explained. “So the reality is, it was a door. I have to be honest, I actually don’t believe that we would have survived if we had both gotten on that door. I think he would have fit but it would have tipped and it would not have been a sustainable idea.”

Who knew that stand-up paddleboarding would be valuable for anything at all much less explaining great cinematic truths?

Laird Hamilton, that’s who.

Except he famously proved that two adults can, in fact, be put on a stand-up paddleboard, even naked, and soar.

Try to justify your selfishness again, Kate.