Hero Paul. Photo: Paul Myles
Hero Paul. Photo: Paul Myles

Surfer hailed as hero after picking up spastic shark off sand and returning it to lineup!

Anti-depressive!

Well, it is 2023 now and how did you ring in the new year? With a wild party filled with champagne lit strangers? A quiet affair at home in front of the fire? I enjoyed a prix fixe dinner in Hollywood, right next to either Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen, followed by a nice chat with wonderful friends upstairs while fireworks popped over the rain soaked horizon.

It was wonderful though I was not hailed as a hero during any point of the evening unlike the surfer Paul Myles.

The Australian was surfing off Victoria’s Great Ocean Road when he saw a shark flipping and flapping on the beach. Now, most of us would have either let it be or quietly cheered its demise but not Paul who marched straight up to the beast in order to see if he could help.

“I just thought I’d give it a chance,” he told the Daily Mail. “I wasn’t sure if it was just disorientated or sick or whatever.”

After initially trying to poke it back into the surf with his board, he realized that he was going to have to pick it up, saying, “I thought I’d get it out in the water a bit further out, see if it would swim out to sea but it didn’t seem too well.”

Didn’t seem too well is right, violently spazzing on the sand.

Being a hero, though, Paul picked the shark right up, spazz and all, and waded it out to deeper water where it flicked back out to its home.

The captured video has since gone viral with animal lovers and people with hearts praising hero Paul for his actions. Some are imagining that karma will reward him but isn’t there some story about a crocodile, or alligator, ferrying some animal across a river, eating it midway and declaring “it’s in my nature to do these sorts of things” or some such?

No good deed etc.


The Inertia's LA bureau struggles with the eternal shame of white privilege. "I…I…I'm filled with loathing and self reproach. I feel bloated and empty at the same time."

Surf fans left reeling after fiercely independent and scandal-prone surf-adjacent website sold to big-digital for reported millions!

"Paternalism mixed with dismissiveness ladled with passive-aggression and served warm with the emotional seasoning of a college campus safe space genre."

The online publishing giant AllGear Digital has swooped on scandal-prone website The Inertia, gobbling it up for a deal reportedly worth millions as part of its play to become the biggest online collective  in the “outdoors and active-lifestyle space.”

“Building The Inertia has been one of the most rewarding journeys I can imagine,” said The Inertia’s founder Zach Weisberg, a Virginia Beach surfer who was inspired to launch what would become the template for the vulnerable adult learner tsunami following a talk by the Huff Post’s Arianna Huffington in 2010. “Since day one, we’ve committed to forging great relationships, sharing valuable stories from unique perspectives in a culture we love, and challenging ourselves to embrace new opportunities.”

Weisberg said the AllGear sale was “an intuitive next step… I’m so excited for this new chapter in our evolution.”

It’s been a wild and not always happy climb to the number six slot on the surf website ladder for the tabloid whose audacity often shocked hardened BeachGrit readers, with its use of racist tropes, “foul bait and switch”, “singling out women surfers as perpetrators of lineup violence”, as well as its now famous blood feud with  former world number four Dane Reynolds who responded to a poor review with “In my opinion your review sucked, your site sux, and i’m relieved to never respond to your silly emails again.”

Weisberg’s reply to the charge from Reynolds, wrote Chas Smith, “will go down in history as the pièce de résistance of the paternalism mixed with dismissiveness ladled with passive-aggression and served warm with the emotional seasoning of a college campus safe space genre!”

(Read here.)

No jobs will be lost in the sale, says AllDigital.

Weisberg remains at the helm as General Manager, Joe Carberry and Alex Haro are still gonna wear their Senior Managing Editor and Senior Editor badges and Mark Sawyer-Chu is still SVP of Partnerships.


Nyong'o and Masekela enjoying their "lovely place" for now. Photo: @lupitanyongo
Nyong'o and Masekela enjoying their "lovely place" for now. Photo: @lupitanyongo

Film superstar Lupita Nyong’o and freshly-outed surf broadcaster beau Sal Masekela stun public, purchase apocalyptic “Hotel California” home together!

You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

But right when you thought that Lupita Nyong’o and Selema Masekela had lost their spot as surfing-adjacent’s hottest couple to Strider Wasilewski’s brother Mescal and Full House darling Jody Sweetin, the movie superstar and her freshly-minted surf broadcaster beau go ahead and crank the burner to wow.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the two just purchased a sprawling $4 million Los Angeles home together.

Per the story:

Hidden securely away behind a steel-gated driveway, on over two-acres of heavily wooded land resting at the end of a secluded one-way street, the contemporary steel, glass and cement structure is described as “self-sustainable” in the listing, complete with its own solar, backup power, home automation and filtration systems. There are four bedrooms and five baths in the three-level living space — all of it boasting floor-to-ceiling walls of glass offering up sweeping ocean, hillside and canyon views.

Particularly standing out is a living room sporting a fireplace and sliding glass doors spilling out to a spacious balcony, as well as a wet bar-equipped dining area. A fireside lounge connects to a gourmet kitchen, which is outfitted with bamboo cabinetry, quartz countertops, an eat-in island, and a plethora of top-tier Viking, Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances.

Congratulations to the happy couple but a few quick worries.

$4 million dollars for a Los Angeles home, especially one sitting on 2.5 acres of land with ocean views, is… hard to comprehend. Like, truly a near impossibility especially when considering top-tier kitchen appliances.

Further research suggests the home is somewhere off Topanga Canyon but sitting at the end of a one way street?

The happy couple could only have purchased the heavily distressed Hotel California.

A place where you can check in anytime but you can never leave.

Light a candle for their safety?

 


Yves Saint Laurent (pictured) dreaming of surf. Photo: YSL film
Yves Saint Laurent (pictured) dreaming of surf. Photo: YSL film

Luxury house Saint Laurent wows high society, offers exclusive must-have $25,000 surfboard!

Invest in your future.

Christmas is over, the fattened goose consumed entirely, her bones boiled into a healthy broth that will be forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. But did you get what you wanted from your loved one or ones? A high-end leather wallet? Maybe a cardigan from Anna Sui? Well, if not don’t you worry as you are an adult who can purchase your own goods.

Some Rivvia trunks, deeply discounted?

A surfboard from luxury house Saint Laurent that, while not deeply discounted, comes in the shade of chrome.

Shaped in collaboration with UWL, a very chic French shop, the board comes in the shade of chrome, as mentioned, and retails for $25,000.

No dimensions given.

While you may guffaw at the price, imagine how boss you’d feel paddling out at your local on it and perching in the lineup.

I’d have to think it would be such a power move that many more good things would come your way. A promotion at work all the way to the tippy-top. Love interests emerging from all corners. Recognition as a man, or woman, of power and taste.

Invest in your future.


Julian Wilson, seconds after Olympic dream crushed by "judges, Brazilian bias!"

Wild discounts offered on jaw-dropping debut clothing range from surfer Olympian described as having “a vitality that mimics its creator that can be measured at the root of the belly where the phallus rises thick and arching!”

New year sale on poom-poom shorts and off-the-shoulder tees!

Four months ago, Julian Wilson released the debut clothing range of his brand Rivvia Projects, the handle a portmanteaux of the names of his two kids River and Olivia.

Rivvia Projects is an “an expression of myself, really, and all the things I’m into and passionate about,” Wilson told Monster Children, listing his favourite things as golfing, motorbiking, skating, and mountain bike riding.

Wilson, who is thirty-four, followed Kelly Slater, Dane Reynolds/Craig Anderson, John John Florence, Luke Egan into the rag-trade, Slater (Outerknown) Reynolds’ and Ando with Former, John John Florence (Florence Marine X) and Egan with Depactus, a brand that flew a little too close to the sun before the glue holding its wings melted and it was bought for a song by SurfStitch.

You’ll remember the hoo-ha back in 2020, of course, when Wilson, a former world #2 and Pipe Master, sued his old sponsor Hurley for $US1.5 million claiming they’d become “increasingly toxic” in the professional surfing world and that “Hurley [sought] to profit from the worldwide health pandemic” by claiming that he’d breached his contract by not participating in surf contests that were cancelled due to COVID-19.

As the lovely college boy Cedar Hobbs reported,

The complaint claims that “at the time . . . ‘Bluestar [was] reportedly looking for loopholes in contracts for even the most high-profile athletes to use as leverage to renegotiate terms.’”

Anyway, water under the bridge, as they say and Rivvia, which occupies the classic medium price point space, has soared beyond any imagination.

And, to celebrate the end of the year and the welcoming of all the good times just beyond, Wilson has heavily discounted a significant number of his better pieces, including the Pink Trails poom-poom shorts, the lilac Future Hood and his classic black hoodie.

Hoodies are sixty dollars, Australian, instead of a c-note, the trunks fifty-ish instead of ninety.

Medium sized gents might find it a little hard to get sizes, for fatties, 34-inch waists and beyond, there’s an abundance.