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!”

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.


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!”

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.


Surfers ride empty perfect waves as COVID ravages Indonesia; 21,000 cases per day, 58,000 dead; country “on edge of catastrophe!”

The season of darkness and light.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. Yeah, Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

It could easily describe Indonesia in the COVID era. The country worst hit by the virus in south-east Asia, twenty-one thousand cases a day, fifty-eight thousand dead. A nation “on the edge of catastrophe.” Scientists say the number of daily cases is, likely, ten times higher but who can afford a test? 

But one man’s death sentence (an Australian environmental scientist describes people “hacking up black stuff” on the streets and ex-pats paying twenty gees to recuperate at international hospitals while locals die in the back rooms of their family’s hovel), is a surfing bacchanal for others like Mason Ho and his pal Sheldon Paishon, and which we can examine in this wonderful short film by Rory Pringle.


See: big-wave surfer Russell Bierke’s tiny antlers sucked dry in, “Seething electric ecstasy, spasms of delirium, frictional satisfaction!”

Russell is twenty-four years old, diminutive and old world, with a tight mouth and very plain-face that have the ferocity of an angry cuckold, a cranky Italian denied his lunchtime siesta.

The deceptively fragile looking Australian big-wave surfer Russell Bierke commands such a reputation he needs very little introduction, although a little background never hurts, does it? 

Russell is twenty-four years old, diminutive and old world, with a tight mouth and very plain-face that have the ferocity of an angry cuckold, a cranky Italian denied his lunchtime siesta.

He is the son of the noted Californian-born shaper Kirk Bierke whose boards are sold under the label KB Surf and made in Ulladulla, three hours south of Sydney. 

Russell’s earliest memories are of watching his dad run out the door whenever the surf was big, going to the beach and seeing him ride these big, blue-water reef waves, and wanting to be part of the game.

In January this year, as much of Australia’s east coast was raked by a powerful south swell, Russ was dragged along the bottom of a fav reef and a hole was cut near his arm’s brachial artery, the limb’s flexor muscle exposed. 

In 2017, he was blue as a Smurf” and “on all fours spewing” after a wipeout in fifteen waves in Victoria, an injury that put him in intensive care.

The last six months have been relatively blood free.

This video, which premiered yesterday, will be of interest to any jury looking for evidence of who might be Australia’s best big-wave surfer. 


Watch: Australian filmmaker smashes surfing’s crushing insularity with all-girl full-length film, “Rowdy, Brash, Smart-Mouthed!”

A propulsive and vivid paean to the surfing of Stephanie Gilmore, Nikki Van Dijk, Tyler Wright, Macy Callaghan and Dimity Stoyle.

The Gold Coast filmmaker Dan Scott, noted for his slow-motion cuts on Instagram, has released, after much ado, his paean to the surfing of Stephanie Gilmore, Nikki Van Dijk, Tyler Wright, Macy Callaghan and Dimity Stoyle.

Over the course of twenty-seven minutes, “Surfing” centres on the extreme athletic action of the aforementioned surfers, with particuliar attention paid to the seven-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore, whose cool reserve masks a ferociously competitive will.

Propulsive and vivid.

Watch here. (Or click the play button above.)