Tom Curren, fore, Jackie Doz, aft.

Jackson Dorian’s latest short film, set in Oaxaca, Mexico, and starring Tom Curren is funny, full of wonder and “suggests a post-pandemic tone!”

Derek Rielly

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Magic lurks around every corner if you leave yourself available to it.

This week, Jackson Dorian, who is the fourteen-year-old son of the man who pulled BJ Penn from certain death at a wavepool, brings his cache of turns to Oaxaca, Mexico.

Dorian balances a virtuosic sensibility and a naturally cheeky disposition to captivating effect, his mix contrasting with the serious jazz-esque instrumentalist Tom Curren, a three-time world champion and the son of homeless big-wave pioneer and shaper Pat Curren. 

The climax feels a little undernourished but Dorian, and Curren, are so genial and is directed at such a gallop by daddy Shane that you can forgive it almost anything.

Essential.

 

Ain't this a beautiful little piece of turbulence.

Watch Mason Ho’s Mexican tuberiding masterclass, “This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it!”

Derek Rielly

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If popularity can be measured by collective madness, and madness by the number of women in estrous weeping at his mere appearance, Mason Ho is the most popular surfer on earth.

One of the heroes of surfing, and certainly my favourite, is Mason Ho. He is thirty-two years old with light-tea coloured skin and hair so curly that many believe he wears a woollen wig.

And not since, I don’t know, early Kelly Slater maybe, has there been such an amorous cannibalism for a surfer. For if popularity can be measured by collective madness, and madness by the number of women in estrous weeping at his mere appearance, Mason Ho is the most popular surfer on earth.

He has the mysterious beauty of things seasoned by storms, lines engraved by the wind and the North Shore sun.

In this short video, Mason spends his work day examining, via POV camera, the insides of Mexican tubes.

In his trademark signature Rip Curl trunks Mason surfs and surfs and surfs until he falls exhausted into the arms of his guy-pal, New Jersey vlogger Ben Gravy.

Suckers!

Watch Mason Ho raise hell and beat the goddamn out of Mex points in “Them damn burritos ain’t good for nothing but a hippie, when he’s high on weed!”

Derek Rielly

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"We're fortunate to have Mason Ho in our lives."

With his family, Mason Ho could’ve been a fucking prick, Bruce Irons told me once.

Well, he ain’t!

Mason’s shaper, Matt “Mayhem” Biolos says he’s “a savior from the fucking corporate, straight-laced, uptight, fucking, pre-planned-interview-answer surfing world we live in today,” he says. “He’s everything that people think surfing is, and should be, when you think of all the beautiful stereotypes, like from the fucking Beach Boys to fricken’ Sean Penn to Big Wednesday. Mason is fucking incredibly fun to watch surf two-foot junk and 12-foot Pipeline. He’s what everyone’s selling, without trying. He’s the most real guy out there. We’re fortunate to have him in our lives.”

Well, ain’t that true.

Sister Coco says, “I sometimes wonder, ‘How does he stay so happy?’ In times when someone should be so down and negative, honestly, I don’t know where or when it came on so strong.’”

Here’s Mason, in Mex, with his boy pal, Sheldon.

“I am not an educated man,” says Mason, echoing Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, “I never had the opportunity to learn anything  except how to surf.”

Lobotomy.

Surf brand formerly owned by Saint Laurent and Gucci releases stunning surf film, “I went to the asylum and I all I got was this lousy Lobotomy!”

Derek Rielly

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Let it absorb you. Like absinthe.

I went to Lobotomy, the new film from Volcom, a surf brand started in 1991 by an ex-employee of Quiksilver disgusted by how corpo his employer had become although the new brand would soon move in the same direction, expecting vulgarity, eardrum-endangering screeching from an array of guitar bands playing boring songs about angst, sex and teenagers behaving badly, and an interminable armoury of charismatic surfing – and that’s exactly what I got.

Essential. Let it absorb you. Like absinthe.

Poopies, pulled from shark pen by divers. Note arterial blood.

Watch: the moment Carlsbad stuntman Poopies is pulled, bloodied, from shark pen in Happy Days-inspired shark jump stunt gone wrong for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, “I need a 911 emergency call!”

Derek Rielly

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Poopies eats it straight off the ramp, the sharks hit, panic ensues, Chris Pontius weeps, divers scatter the reef sharks and the kid is thrown in a speed boat and rushed to hospital for surgery.

After much ado, the American pay television network Discovery Channel has screened its Jackass-produced shark-jump stunt, which went very wrong, but sorta right if you enjoy stratospheric ratings, nearly killing its stuntman, Sean “Poopies” McInerny.

The Carlsbad-born stuntman, who earned his nickname as a 13-year-old after a Jackass-inspired stunt where he evacuated his bowels at a busy intersection and was subsequently arrested, attempted to emulate a 1977 episode of Happy Days where its star Fonzie jumps a shark on waterskis.

The “Jumping the Shark” episode became s shorthand for desperate measures employed by TV writers who’ve mowed through every reasonable storyline, and who shift into the ridiculous.

Anyway, Poopies eats it straight off the ramp, the sharks hit, panic ensues, Chris Pontius weeps, divers scatter the reef sharks and the kid is thrown in a speed boat and rushed to hospital for surgery.

See the episode here and listen to Poopies talk about it below.