It's a special gift, intangible, which bridges the gap between adequacy and greatness…

There are some performers, rare as blue butterflies, who carry around their own lightning. It has nothing to do with the sponsor stickers on their boards or how many contests they’ve won or how many times they’ve surfed Pipeline, although all that helps.

When the camera hits them, sock.

Kelly had it and Andy Irons. Medina and Toledo. And this medium-sized boy with “big bones and long muscles”, who turns twenty-one in three days and who has a head of hair that looks like a bale of hay that’s just exploded, named Jack Robinson.

He grew up in Margaret River, still lives there, and is the sort of surfer who will tear any visitor to shreds in a one-on-one heat.

This short film, if it was played to a cinema audience, would be greeted with rapturous applause. It’s the manifesto of a young man, told with authority.

Watch!

Come and see the now-famous "Chickens of the Sea" swell…

Four or five days ago, depending on your time zone, Mavericks shed its autumn coat for a brutal winter swell. Too big, of course, for the Pretty Big-Wave Tour’s contest which was ruled out for “safety reasons.”

In this video, made by Surfer magazine, we see tow and paddle on a day that would’ve made for wonderful viewing, especially as most of the combatants went surfing anyway, including WSL commentator Peter Mel.

From the presser:

Despite the WSL calling off the Mavericks challenge for the week, the most talented big-wave surfers from the Bay Area and around the world still took to the lineup to both paddle and tow into the famed big-wave spot. Kai Lenny continued to push boundaries in big-wave tow-in surfing with his aerial attempts, much like he did after the Jaws Challenge was called-off after being deemed “too dangerous.” Hell, if the WSL calling off a big-wave contest means an inevitable Kai Lenny tow-in exhibition, then who cares if another Big Wave Tour heat ever runs again? As you’ll see in Kyle Buthman’s edit above, yesterday wasn’t just a Lenny show but a day of charging by surfers hellbent on taming the raw Aleutian energy Mavericks threw at them. Featuring: Wilem Banks, Kai Lenny, Anthony Tashnick, Eli Olson, Grant “Twiggy” Baker, Luca Padua, Jamie Mitchell, Tom Lowe, Nathan Florence, Torrey Meister, Nic Von Rupp, Pete Mel, and more.

Best Mav's since 1993!

In this very dark, but compelling, clip, see the German-Portuguese shredder Nikolaus von Rupp get barrelled on the left at Mavericks in northern California.

“I ate shit all week, pulled my vest over 10 times and I was pretty close of calling it off for the lefts,” says Nic. “It’s a real beast that one, she’s got an anger of it’s own. Those 30 minutes where everyone got bombs were magical. Everything clicked and on this wave I almost fell three times, but I wanted to make one so bad that I powered through.

How Eddie Rothman's boy turned a relationship meltdown into a banging YouTube channel…

Don’t you love a silver lining being exposed inside the rotten heart of a broken love?

Koa Rothman, who has just turned twenty-five, owns a YouTube channel with 26,000 subscribers and between thirty k and 200k views on each of his weekly vlogs.

They ain’t Bieber or PewDiePe numbers but it’s growing, and it’s a living.

Koa is well-muscled and handsome, is good on camera and surfs with a classy style. You can see why gets the hits.

And it came to life ’cause after he busted up with his gal, Koa started posting selfies on Instagram and his numbers started to blow up.

And he figured, wouldn’t it be something if, instead of posing blonde boys doing the surfer thing, he showed the world what it’s like to a “real surfer and not some fake surfer who travels, takes cool photos and surfs on a foamie,” he says. “What if I, who actually surfs, a real hardcore surfer, shows people in the middle of America that the surfing lifestyle isn’t all blond hair, blue eyes and hanging on the beach all day.”

When I called for this interview, and for a little something on the Tanner Hendrickson v Michael Rodrigues wrestle (Read: “That was the biggest bullshit call from the WSL” here), Koa had just lost his Pipe Trials heat.

“I’m ready to murder someone,” he says. “It was two feet and, then, a six-foot set. Really, really bad. I lost first heat. I needed a one point zero something to make the heat and I couldn’t catch a fucking thing. There might be some swearing in this one (episode thirty-three of This is Livin‘, which you can play by hitting the big button above.)

Koa drops a new clip every Wednesday, which is filmed and edited by his pal Jack Germaine.

“He went to school for film and when I was starting this I asked him if he wanted to be a part of it and he said, ‘Fuck yeah.’ He knows the YouTube world, he’s all for it. He’s a fucking weapon. He can edit a sixteen-minute video in one night. He does everything. Films, edits, travels and puts up with my shit.”

Is there much shit to put up with?

“You’re about to see it in this one. We’ve kept that out so far. My whole idea was to be as real as possible, okay, well, I’m not happy all the time. That’s what we’ve been working on. I told Jack the other day, ‘If I’m snapping, film it.’

In this episode, which is called Chasing Mavericks and Pipe Masters, we see Koa’s ill-fated Pipe trials heat, the anticipation the night before when he believes the surf might be good, FaceTiming with famous pal Jason Momoa, heading to Mavericks for the big-wave contest there and the reveal of his myriad respiratory illnesses.

“I can’t believe I’m a big-wave surfer,” he says.