Coach, shaper and wizard test surfboards prior to Snapper…

“The more sassy John is, the faster he’s going to surf,” says John John Florence’s coach, Ross Williams, in this compelling six-minute short, which examines his surfboard testing prior to Snapper.

Jon Pyzel, you know, has been making boards for John John Florence, who is twenty six and six-foot two, since the kid was five; since his mama Alex brought the boys to see him at his old bay at Sunset Beach and gave him two-hundred dollars for materials to build John a board. The yellow four-six with  halo of orange rails is “hideous to look at” but now exists as a memorial to a boy destined for greatness.

Pyzel, Williams and Florence present as a comedy trio who’ve forgotten to take their medicine, the gags flying like electric sparks.

I enjoyed this exchange. The camera closes in on John evening up the heel dents in his surfboard.

“Stop! Stop! Stop,” commands Pyzel, “Stop, no no stop, you’ve gone too far!”

“No, I haven’t,” says John.

Pyzel, who looks like someone who replaces the bedspreads in the rooms every year, sighs heavily.

“Stop! Stop! Stop it! You’ve gone too far already!”

Pyzel drags John away by the arm.

The film continues in this vein.

Highly, highly recommended.

MJ Smith gets a hunk of that rarest treat, the wave made famous in 1964's The Endless Summer…

Fifty, sixty years ago, whatever it was – who can count? – filmmaker Bruce Brown slacked jaws around the world with footage of two surfers riding “the most perfect wave in the world” in his film The Endless Summer. 

Shot in November, 1963, Bruce and surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August, rode a mechanical righthand point Bruce would later describe as “so good it was almost unbelievable… It was the kind of wave that at first you’d start giggling, then you’d start laughing, then you’d start screaming at the top of your lungs, until you felt like you were about to snap your twig.”

Cape St Francis. 

“What every surfer dreams of finding is a small wave with perfect shape. What we call a perfect wave. The odds against finding that are 10 million to one,” said Bruce in the film’s voiceover.

Turned out the joint is rare as hell.

And last week, perennial world title contender Michael Jordan Smith, in town for the J-Bay contest which is held twenty clicks north, got his slice of Cape St Francis.

Bruce’s Beauties, as it’s called. 

This clip is so short you’ll barely have time to puddle your Superman pyjamas and reach under the blanket.

But it is an interesting curio.

A beautifully mindless shred reel from the world number three…

And, here, Filipe Toledo, on a recent vacay to Sumbawa, a large island in Indonesia that forms a sort of cultural bridge between the Hindus of the West, including Bali, and the Muslims of the East.

Of course you’ll remember, one week ago, watching Filipe canter to a win in Brazil. There’s a certain mix of conditions that almost guarantee the 24-year-old from Ubatuba, Brazil, will place third or better, and Saquarema fulfilled those requirements.

In this short, we find Filipe like a lusty Jupiter assuming the shape of a surfer.

All with the irresistible physicality, spirt and an effervescent energy that captured our hearts five years ago.

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.