Watch John John Florence’s archly compelling vlog: “I’m gonna suck the life outta ya sugar!”

Look over the shoulder of the two-time champ during his Gold Coast campaign…

Dignity. Where did it go?

It ain’t in oversupply.

Girls with chubby baby legs posing in bikinis for Instagram accounts and weeping when the pitchforks come out; goddamned spoilt brats being patted on the head and told they rip, can sing, dance, write, whatever, little monsters, all of ’em.

John John Florence is a work of extreme originality.

Who knows what lurks in that heart? In that head?

This short film, which is wildly outdated given it was short during the first event of the year, is a maverick work that is exciting, genuine and funny.

John John does this, John John does that.

“I’m not aggressive enough,” he says at one point.

“John only talks to me when the camera is on,” says Kolohe Andino.

A wildly comic tour de force.

Highly recommended.

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Watch: Italo Ferreira in “Folks can smell sin on ya!”

Watch and gasp, maybe sob.

There ain’t a lot Italo Ferreira, twenty-five and the world number three, can’t do. He can spin like a bottle and he’ll raise the seat on a Teahupoo barrel and rain down his powerful stream.

In these two-and-a-half minutes, which were filmed around his home of Baia Formosa in north-east Brazil, we get rocketship Italo seeing who can go fastest to the moon.

I asked Timmy Patterson, the American shaper of Italo’s surfboards since he was fifteen, what the secret was.

“Look at how centred he is,” says Timmy. “Surfers are usually forward surfing or tail heavy and he’s so centred. He gets boards to fit into tight little pockets. The flat spot is right between his feet. He can get speed out of anything. He’s got those low centre of gravity tree-trunk legs. I mean, when you watch him, he doesn’t pump or wind up. He stiffens his legs, pushes it and he’s gone. He’s not really sinking his board, just planing. Italo is all natural ability. Guys like Italo have the freest mind to go where they want.”

Watch and gasp, maybe sob.

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Watch: Jordy Smith in “I say yes to corporal punishment between consenting adults!”

Occasional world title contender goes ding-dong on famous sand-bottom Mex rights…

This little hit of Jordy in Mex might be sufficient motivation to turn off the Bugs Bunny cartoons or quasi-cinematic television you binge watch on damn Netflix.

Bang on its door and you’ll find two-and-a-half minutes of Jordy Smith, occasional world title contender, going ding-dong on that noted stretch of coast, a few clicks off the Pan-American highway.

If you visit the area, which I encourage you to do, you’ll hear things like, “No prostitutes here, amigo” and “I need your love, Daddy” and “Ungrateful little bitch” and “You motherfucker” and “I wanted to be a pretty girl”.

At some point, late at night, you’ll whisper, “We’ll go away, baby, just you and me, somewheres nice and fancy.”

At least from my experience.

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Virginia Beach surfer wins $20,000 from obscure sticker and magnet company for frontside air!

Notes of Kustom Air Strike from a decade ago. Very big airs etc.

Heard of the sticker, magnet, keychain and pin company Life at Sea? Don’t ring no bells? Yeah, me neither.

But.

Over the past year, June 1, 2018 to June 1, 2019, the Santa Cruz-based co, owned by the surfer, artist and environmentalist, Tim Ward, ran a contest that offered twenty-gees for the best air, three for second, two for third. All y’had to do to be in the game was to tag your clip @lifeatseaco and #planetary punt.

It had notes of Kustom’s Air Strike contest a decade ago that gifted Hawaiian Dusty Payne fifty-gees minus the accompanying hoo-ha.

Sidenote: In that instance, I gave the cash to Dusty in a Bondi bar but only before extracting a promise that…if…he won he’d spend ten percent of his earnings on booze and visually strong women. The plan was abandoned when we realised it was Good Friday. Even the best-laid plans etc.

In this case, VB surfer Lucas Rogers won with an outburst in Panama, Australian Reef Heazlewood came second and Maryland’s Brad Flora got third.

The contest was judged by Santa Cruz’s Jazzy “Ratboy” Collins and Flea Virostsko, both of whom are looking relatively well despite age and track records

I just looked at the play count on Planetary Punt and it was at a paltry 329.

I think it deserves a little more, don’t you?

 

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Watch Italo Ferreira in “This is your new daddy!”

Get your levers yanked!

First thing. I can’t get enough of Italo Ferreira, the twenty-five-year-old Brazilian who has won a remarkable four WCT events in eighteen months and who controls his board like bait on a fishline.

A pivotal shift in surfing, still coming, will be the way we approach a wave on our backhand. Don’t you think it’s crazy that the same turns that won world titles for Barton Lynch and Damien Hardman in the nineteen-eighties still gift Owen Wright and co nine-point rides thirty years later?

Do you think, like me, that new lines have to be drawn at the highest level?

And here’s where Italo fits. His backside turns yank on different levers, his combos gut and rope waves.

In this promotional video from Billabong, we see Italo in the Maldives, I think it is, first, terrified out of his head on the puddle jumper plane to the island they visit, and, later, blasting his horn like an interstate trucker on the pretty three-foot waves.

 

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