"He (Assange) put out information people didn't want being put out but it was all truthful and I don't know how you fault a guy for putting out the truth."

There’s good news and then there’s great news and today’s announcement, that the 11x world surf champion Kelly Slater will be narrating parts of new Julian Assange documentary THE TRUST FALL, is absolutely fabulous news. News worth mixing a fussy French 75 and hoisting it to the sky whilst saying “huzzah!”

Per the press release:

We are stoked to announce that 11 time world champion surfer Kelly Slater will be doing some narration for The TRUST FALL: Julian Assange – Documentary!

There are very few celebrities who have brave enough to speak out on Julian’s behalf, such is the strong adherence to the establishment amongst A-Listers. No-one wants to be black-listed or excluded, so conformity is the modus operandi of the vast majority of high profile people.

Slater is one of the few celebrities who has been willing to voice his support for Julian, as revealed in an instagram video in March this year where Slater stated:

“He (Assange) put out information people didn’t want being put out but it was all truthful and I don’t know how you fault a guy for putting out the truth”.

Slater will join our celebrity narrating team along with legendary rockers Roger Waters and U.K. rapper M.I.A. plus Aussie voice-over artist Jonathan Oldham.

Having a professional surfer sportsperson may seem like a strange choice for a political film, however please bear in mind that this film aims to educate a very wide audience about the important issues surrounding the Assange predicament, and one of the best ways to reach a wider audience is through role models and people with a large following and fan base who might otherwise never take the time to watch a political film. So this is a strategic move and somewhat of a marketing move to have the involvement of people from a variety of walks of life.

The project is now nearing completion, however there are some crucial steps remaining before we can do the worldwide cinema release include making the all-important final trailer, additional colour and sound grading, making a website, translating the film into many different languages, having the film classified, and entering the film into festivals in order to obtain distributers to help with the theatrical release.

Thoughts?

Me?

Oh.

As a surf journalist, I was always surprised that the public, celebrities included, hated on Assange which, I suppose, means I stand with Slater.

Who knew?

You can support the film here.

"You just confirmed you’re are retarded."

The three-time longboard champion, and father of its modern old-school iteration, is nothing if not prolific. Just yesterday saw him dividing the internet after a cryptic post written in Spanish denied the catastrophic effects of climate change. And today sees him embroiled in a wild economics debate, going nuclear on opponents with antiquated slurs.

The whole business got underway on a post from the Instagram comedy account Toby Honk wherein he poked fun of the high cost of surfboard pricing. Tudor swung in with “Airbrush was 50$ …..thanks to bidenflation it’s now about 150….ohh what difference 4 yrs make,” to get the debate started which began slowly at first, all agreeing with the elder statesman’s stance.

#JoelTudorsAmerica etc.

Until Shea Somma, a shaper from California’s central coast, suggested, “Maybe it shouldn’t have stayed the same price for decades.”

Tudor wasted no time going to his arsenal, finding a very powerful but outlawed word and dropping it from altitude, declaring, “You may be retarded! Price of materials being stable benefits the builder and keeps cost low for customer …basic win for everyone involved!”

Ouch.

Somma took the explosion and responded, “My point wasn’t that materials cost going up is a good thing, my point was that price remaining artificially low over the course of multiple decades is a bad thing.”

Tudor, seemingly satisfied with the first use, came back with, “you just confirmed you’re are retarded.”

Somma, dazed, asked, “So prices and wages remaining the same for glassers while cost of living steadily rises… is a good thing? I’m pretty slow here as you’ve pointed out so please explain…”

But Tudor was finished.

Others engaged, however, and the conversation is both interesting and informative, as it relates to the nuances of the surfboard industry.

Very inside baseball, as it were.

But, in any case, do you have opinions on Bidenomics? Did you like when he went to Maui and made some yucks with a dog wearing shoes?

Fun.

The Satanic Bible of the Sport.

The World Surf League, from its birth in 2015 circa 1976 to today, must be utterly confused. Purchased for free by a billionaire and promising more fans than America’s National Football League, the WSL née Association of Surfing Professionals has been met with embarrassment after embarrassment.

Paul Speaker.

Backward Fin Beth.

Erik Logan.

To name but three of many including Jessi Miley-Dyer and Dave Prodan, who allegedly killed surfing.

Dirk Ziff always had his collaborationist surf media though, supporting through shame, buoying false narratives, turning blind eyes to utter nonsense. Hoping, waiting for drippings from that table, were premium surf blog Stab, The Inertia, an absolute affront to anything good or decent in this world, and the remains of Surfer Magazine, which didn’t critique because it was dead.

Months ago, however, the Bible of the Sport reanimated as an AI zombie after shuttering under David Pecker and part of its mission, appears, to include burying the World Surf League.

In a recent social media post celebrating the final Top 5 men, who will head to Lower Trestles sometime in early September to watch Filipe Toledo hoist a trophy* minus one who has a broken back that, for some reason, won’t be recognized, the World Surf League dubbed number five Jack Robinson “Jack Ronbinson.”

Par for the course considering the misprint on Kanoa Igarashi’s jersey as “Igarshi” and also Erik Logan’s entire run.

In any case, Surfer’s weird corpse has decided to pile on the World Surf League, noting the spelling error and putting it on blast.

Proto surf bot penning:

Oops.

In the official Instagram announcement of the upcoming World Surf League Finals, to be held at Lower, Trestles September 8th – 16th, someone made a whoopsie.

Jack Robinson, the west Australian hard charger and pre-heat bellydancer, who had a stellar season with two wins (Pipeline and Teahupo’o) barely made the cut into the one-day, winner-take-all event, despite a knee injury, which forced him to withdraw from his home event at Margaret River. And the WSL did him dirty with an unfortunate typo.

Apparently “did him a dirty” not quite fully understood by the robot.

Surfer, while dead, still has a substantial social following of people who don’t know/don’t care and I feel it must hurt the Santa Monica-based “Home of Professional Surfing’s” feelings much.

When will the buy-off be attempted and how much will John Severson’s once proud organ take to flip Wall of Positive Noise?

I’m guessing $1,000 and next week with the machine being redirected to criticizing broken backs before it is redirected again to praising all things WSL.

Can’t wait.

More as the story develops.

"But the trail of Hilary took an interesting turn Sunday night..."

Southern California is putting itself back together after a historic hurricane, named Hilary, formed in the Pacific and slammed into the state. She was, by then, a tropical depression and maybe named something else but no matter as her terror was unleashed. Green waste trash cans brutally tipped over. Hedges kind of getting bent.

Disaster.

And as I was driving home, after potentially straining social services with an entirely ill-advised sail trip, dodging people driving 40 mph in the fast lane with their hazard lights on while the rain lightly sprinkled, I wonder if this was the center of the storm.

Meteorologists had thought the business might make first hit in Encinitas then travel east but mostly north. In truth, she touched ground in northern Baja then did cruise east and mostly north until Sunday night when… well, let’s let the Los Angeles Times take up this unfortunate tale.

For days, forecasters have tried to determine the path of Hilary as it morphed from a Category 4 hurricane in the Pacific Ocean to an exceedingly rare tropical storm that entered Southern California.

But the trail of Hilary took an interesting turn Sunday night, as the storm made a trek from the Inland Empire to the heart of Los Angeles.

The center of the storm went from being east of Murrieta in Riverside County at 5 p.m. to above Compton around 8 p.m., according to the National Hurricane Center.

Compton, as anyone who watches movies or listens to music knows, is a culturally rich, predominately black community.

The Inland Empire features, mostly, U.S. Open of Surfing attendees.

Racism?

Hard to say but science is science.

More as the story develops.