Parko and Mick’s Tahitian Blood Feud: “I’m gonna go steal that trophy from his house!”

Derek Rielly

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Joel still teary-eyed over bad loss to eternal rival…

Don’t you love it when a couple of big-names retire? Gone is the solemn head nodding, the gruff humourless laugh, the long slow blinks and those post-heat platitudes slathered over everything like jam on stale bread.

In this five-minute short made by Joel Parkinson’s sponsor Billabong, Mick Fanning and Joel take us back to 2012 when they met in the final at Teahupoo. After scoring a nine on his first wave Joel comes so hard he almost blows out his retinas. Oh he just saunters around the lineup as if he is Teahupoo and world champ already.

You don’t think Mick can come back.

But as is his wont, Mick does. He builds a little house and then shut the doors loudly on his sometime friend.

Joel’s eyes still burn over the loss.

“The judges got overexcited… he knows I flogged him.”

Mick invites Joel to inspect the trophy at his house to remind him who the winner was.

Joel pledges to steal the bauble.

It’s all very good.

But is it as good as…

 

Tyler Newton and Nias star in “Here’s to decapitating Barbies!”

Derek Rielly

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Kauai surfer slaps Nias during swell-of-the-century last month.

The consensus from last month’s south swell that flicked every switch in the Indonesian archipelago was that it was Nias or nothing. It turned the joint into something that produced Nathan Florence’s homicidal tube, threw a charter boat onto its back proved the value of expensive cameras and as the auteur Chris Bryan explained, made Nias look like a cross between Waimea and Mavericks.

If you have enough juice in your imagination to put you in the lineup, this video short, which features the Hawaiian Tyler Newton, will put runs in your stockings and turn your face the shade of turnip tops.

Heavy etc.

Noah Beschen in “If the Bible is true, then I’m Christ!”

Derek Rielly

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Son of nineties superstar decapitates and delimbs Waco surf park…

Business must be slowing down in Lemoore, you would think, ever since Waco unveiled its killer tank during the Founders Cup in May. 

The US team chose it as its practice tank for the Olympics; Seth Moniz backflipped into history there; every jibber from Hawaii to Australia and so on has made or is about to make a pilgrimage there. Try and book a session there. It ain’t gonna happen. It’s a sell-out.

In this sub-three minute short, made by Aaron Lieber and featuring the seventeen-year-old son of Shane Beschen, we see Noah lay the joint flat and rip its clothes off.

There’s a sequence in the film where Noah, who grew up on Oahu and who may never have to work a day job, holds a broken board and looks very sad. The mystery is never explained.

Kid don't flinch. @matthipsley

Watch: Lochie Rombouts in “The Gun-Slinging Size Queen!”

Derek Rielly

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Living miles from the beach polishes a man's character… 

I remember when this shot of Lochie Rombouts electrified my spinal cord. It was a year or two ago. Didn’t know who it was. Figured it was some kid in Hawaii, maybe Pipe. The shot was backlit; I didn’t see the wetsuit.

It wasn’t until this short here, the second in O’Neill’s three-part O’Riginal series, that I learned the name of the pilot. Lochie Rombouts. A surfer from out in the sticks who took it upon himself to make the hour-and-a-half commute as a kid to the ocean. To learn. To fall in love with surf.

Lochie made his name as a surfer with guts when he took his twelve-foot gun out to big North Avalon and grazed circles all around its nipples. Grabbing waves in fast little nips as if he were grabbing pinches of salt.

From the press release:

As soon as he was old enough he moved closer, but along with the increase in surf time came the trappings of being a young man fresh out of school, living the party life. Lachie struggled to balance the so-called good times on land with the actual good times in the water and eventually his mental health nosedived. Until, one day his home break lit up with the swell of a lifetime.

He’s one of the good ones. Watch.

Jamie O’Brien in “I just drove seven hours to get kicked out of Rick Kane’s Arizona Wave Pool!”

Derek Rielly

By

Pipeline heartthrob and pals get booted from tank that starred in classic eighties film North Shore…

In this episode of Jamie O’Brien’s weekly vlog, we follow the gang, which includes the skater and snowboarder Skummy Diener, to the wavepool made famous in the 1987 movie North Shore.

The arrival of Jamie O, a Pipeline Master and mentor of John John Florence, makes the pool owners and staff very happy, caressing Jamie’s face, kneeling before him and kissing his hand. Moaning like self-flaggelated monks and so on. The biggest thing to happen to the shitty pool in shitty Tempe for thirty one years.

Or so you would think.

Instead, pool attendants’ hands are held to heads as if they are having a migraine, the arrival of the Hawaiians seen as the gravest adversity.

Jamie and pals, which also includes Ben Gravy, are told they have twenty minutes in the pool.

They are warned they are taking too many waves.

When Jamie finger flips his little Catch Surf foamie into the pool, a whistle is blown and they are told to leave, that filming must stop etc.

Absurd but indicative, I think, of a world full of little men and women boozed on power.

Earlier in the film, the gang goes skydiving and Jamie gets terrible nerves and vomits.

Photo: Jack English
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