Sizzlin’ Summer Surf Movie-“Riding Giants”: This killer homage to the history of chasing the world’s biggest waves is about to hit wide release. It broke box office records at Sundance 2004, and will no doubt inspire a run on surf lessons and baggy swimsuits. So why is director Stacy Peralta depressed? “I need to go surfing?” he tells Surfer magazine, in a wide-ranging interview about life, skateboarding, surfing and movie-making. Here’s some of what Peralta had to say about “Riding Giants”:

“I knew it was going to be tow-in surfing and I knew it was going to be Maverick’s and I knew it was going to be the whole history of the first big-wave riders, from California to Hawaii to Makaha to Waimea…When we started the film there was a couple of mandates that my editor Paul Crowder and producer Agi Orsi and I talked about. And the Number One mandate was no interviewee will ever say the words: “Surfing is just so bitchin’ but I can’t tell you how bitchin’ surfing is unless you do it.” No one would ever be allowed to say that on camera. If we had to cop out by just telling people they couldn’t understand surfing unless they did it, then we would have failed as filmmakers. We refused to do what has been done in too many surfing films. It’s a cop out.”

And… “There is so much surf pornography out there—watching guys slash and burn on waves over and over and over. To me that is not filmmaking. That is just putting together trick catalogues. Surfing is such a cherished piece of American culture and I wanted to get that across in a movie. I wanted to not just show surfing but to have surfers talking eloquently about it. What’s it like to get caught inside a 25-foot wave? What’s it like to wipe out and get rescued? Surfing is really misunderstood out there in what Sam George likes to call “the civilian world,” and I felt it was my responsibility to get it right.”

This civilian, for one, can’t wait to see this thing. I bet it’s bitchin’. Oops. Sorry, Stacy…



Filming Giants: “Uh, Pilot-Dude? Unless this bird’s also a submarine, you might want to pull up a bit…”

Amin Brakk BASE Jump: Looks like getting to the Great Tower is almost as hard as climbing it. The Russians got to Islamabad and Skardu okay, but on the way to Kande were stymied by a washed out road. There was no way to get their jeeps across the 30-meter ditch that a torrent of water had carved so they dumped all their gear and ferried it across by rope, piece by piece. Then they crossed themselves and managed to get some cars to drive down from Kande and pick them up on the other side. Just goes to show how the Karakorum is still a very wild, very remote region, and getting to the mountains (K2 and Masherbrum, among others) is also a worthy adventure. Now the Russians are a two day trek from Amin Brakk and the start of their wildass attempt to climb and jump off the Great Tower…



End Of The Road: “Hey, Rozov, what should we ferry across first: your parachute or the vodka…?”

Have A You-Know-What Weekend…

Annals Of Inanity–Luna Lunacy: The oddest, most absurd tug of war on the planet right now is taking place on Canada’s Nootka Sound. The object of the insanity: a killer whale called Luna. Seems Luna was separated from his pod when he was 2 years old and found his way to Nootka Sound. There, he swam, ate, lived it up and became remarkably friendly with the boaters and fishermen on his new home’s waters. Sounds okay, right? Well, cue ridiculously well-meaning–and inevitably stupid–government plan. Canada’s Department of Fisheries (DFO), apparently lacking enough to do despite a multitude of significant fisheries issues, decided that Luna was becoming (oxymoron alert) “dangerously friendly.” So the desk jockeys at DFO decided that Luna (now 5 years old and topping 4,000 pounds) had to be trapped in a pen, subjected to a week of medical poking and prodding, craned into a big tank and trucked a couple hundred miles down the coast where–if all the stars aligned perfectly–he would be reunited with his family pod. Sounds pretty unpleasant if you happen to be the whale in question. Luckily, a rag tag group of Mowachaht-Muchalaht aborigines decided that Luna was inhabited by the spirit of their late chief (is this a great story, or what?). Why? Luna turned up in Nootka Sound just weeks after the chief made a deathbed wish for his spirit to live inside a whale. So off they went, paddling and kayaking around the Sound in bad trucker hats. Singing and drumming, they coaxed Luna away from the pen constructed by the fisheries goons, and out toward open water. And every time Luna shows any interest in following the fisheries boats and the food that they are tempting him with, the natives paddle like crazy and start their singing. So far, Luna seems to prefer the aborigines. He’s been filmed by the growing media horde swimming alongside their boats as they stroke him and even rub his teeth. Wow, sounds like a seriously dangerous predator. Of course, the DFO mooks have no idea how to handle this growing PR disaster. There are laws against interfering with a whale, so they could try to arrest the tribal troubadours. But of course there are all those cameras to contend with. Here’s an idea for the Department of Fisheries: leave Luna the hell alone, let him live wherever he wants, and devote your overtapped budget to something useful, like, say, saving the salmon. It’s called N-A-T-U-R-E, and mostly it’s best left alone. Sure, Luna may eventually take a taste of some overzealous tourist in neon spandex. But would that necessarily be a bad thing…?



Some Predator: “Hey, Mom. He’s tickling me. Sing some more…”

“Don’t Try This At Home” Stunt #463: Call it dedication to their work. Call it more Russian craziness. Call it vodka-induced….oh, never mind. But a team of ten Russian climbers is headed up 10,700-foot Mt. Shiveluch on Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka peninsula. “So what?” you say. Well, Shiveluch is a volcano and it’s currently spewing lava and ash up to 3 miles into the sky. In fact, it’s been erupting non-stop since 2001. The cover story for this thrill-seeking gig is that there are some vulcanologists on the team who plan to study the thing close up…very close up. Yeah, right. Turns out that there are 141 volcanos on the Kamchatka peninsula, 28 of them active, and climbers from all over the world are constantly adding a little spice to their climbing by scaling the smoky ones. In fact, last year a Czech climber was killed there. Not to worry, say officials associated with this current expedition, scheduled to be completed by June 25, if the thing really blows, they’ll head down. Good thinking…



Sizzling Shiveluch: “Hey, guys. I’ve got an idea. Let’s go climb that one with flame coming out the top…”

“Mekong” Mick O’Shea–Where Is He? Just Ask His Mum: Last month, TWC wrote about adventurer Mick O’Shea, who had trekked to the headwaters of the Mekong River and was about to set off in a kayak to try to make the first descent ever of the 3,000 mile “Mother Of Waters,” the twelfth longest river in the world. O’Shea posted a great, fact-filled dispatch on May 7, after he had arrived in the Tibetan headwaters region. The Wetass world waited eagerly for his next report, from the wilds of the river. But, nothing. Mekong Mick had gone offline. Readers wrote in asking where he was. TWC had no idea. But yesterday, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from Mekong Mick’s Mum (say that 10 times fast), who had bet her thrill-seeking son that by the time he was off the river someone, somewhere would have dubbed him “Mekong” Mick (glad to oblige ma’am). Anyhow, I asked Mekong Mick’s Mum–her friends call her Lynley–where her bouncing baby was. And she replied that she had, in fact, just received an update from him, which she was kind enough to forward. Seems Mekong Mick had run into sponsor trouble and had to do some scrambling before he jumped into the Mekong. But he’s finally on the river, after some hair-raising escapades among the yak herders of Tibet. It’s an extremely colorful report (read the whole thing here), which is to be expected if you take an Australian of Irish descent and give him a pen. It picks up Mick’s story as he closes in on the headwaters and features Mick’s, umm, interesting encounter with a massive and vicious mastiff dog, owned by a yak-herder family with whom he spends the night:

“The following morning I discreetly snuck out of the tent to make a nature call. There was really nowhere that was out of sight of the camp so I chose a small hill nearby and began to attend to business. I was 3 quarters done when I heard a dreadful growl and bark. I looked down the hill to see Coujo [as Mick has nick-named the monster] bounding up towards me. Someone had obviously taken him off the chain during the night to look after the yaks that were standing in a large group nearby. Mist exploded from his mouth with each bark . He looked like the meant business and was closing in quick so there was not much time to react. I had time to either pull up my pants or reach for some rocks. I stood up and pelted a fist sized rock towards Coujo as a deterrent and rather than slow him down this seemed to inspire a more rapid attack.

I quickly reached for another rock and with my pants around my ankles flung it at him several seconds before he would have been upon me. It hit him solidly on the left shoulder and he let out a semi bark/yelp and hesitated for a moment before closing into within two meters. I screamed at him as aggressively as I could and faked throwing another rock as he snapped toward my hand. This close range stand off with me screaming and him snapping went on for a further 2 or 3 seconds that seemed like an eternity before I heard a yell from down near the tent. The headman was running up the hill towards me and numerous bodies began emerging from the tent flaps to see what was going on. Coujo looked visibly concerned and backed off a few steps. A couple of seconds later a hail of rocks rained down in the vicinity of Coujo and me as the whole family came to my rescue. Coujo was now in full flight and with him out of my face I reached down to grab some more rocks just in case. It was then that I realized that my parts were still around my ankles and modesty took over from malice as the family looked on in concern. By the time my pants were back up the entire family burst out in laughter and I kind of wished that I could disappear.”

Whew. And Mick thought the Mekong would be dangerous…

TWC Quick Hits…:

Meteor Lands in New Zealand Living Room: Toddler in house appears to be developing super strength and X-Ray vision…

Small Village In Turkey Welcomes Spring With Annual Whipping Festival: Fetishists take note: they use…silky scarves.

British Underwriter To Offer Insurance Against Chest Hair Loss To Unnamed Macho Star: Policy excludes war, revolution, radioactive contamination and terrorism. Umm, who’d be worrying about their chest hair after all that…?



The Settlement: “What! I pay you premiums all those years, and this is what you give me…?!

The Voyage Of The Sardine–Anne Quemere Versus The Atlantic: A lot of ocean rowing, like any sport, can be a bit, well, boring. So TWC has been pretty picky about what to follow. But when there are rowers out there doing something either totally ridiculous (Jim Shekhdar trying to row the Southern Ocean) or first (Maud Fontenoy becoming the first woman to row the Atlantic west to east), we’re on it. And so we’d like to direct your attention to a scrap of ocean some ways south and west of Nova Scotia. There, plugging away at her oars, is a gutsy French woman named Anne Quemere, 37, who has already crossed the Atlantic east to west (in 56 days, setting the record for a woman). If she gets to her native Brittany in France, she’ll become the first woman to row an ocean both ways solo. Anne’s been out there two weeks now, after departing from Cape Cod, and of the two Atlantic directions this one is much more brutal. The route takes the rower north, into cold and the Atlantic storm track (the east-west route is downwind in the tropics). It took Maud Fontenoy an incredible 117 days to complete her row, and it almost killed her in one storm she capsized 18 times). In addition to Anne’s website, the venerable Ocean Rowing Society is tracking her progress. The tracking chart there shows a little loop where she was blown backwards in a recent storm. But her latest report describes perfect rowing conditions:

“After a short, restless sleep, dawn finds me dashing by in the current, pushed by a 20 to 25 knot wind. The centerboard low and the ballasts filled with 130 liters of water to stabilize the Connetable and increase its energy, at times, we go at more than 7 knots along that racing track where I am the only pilot. The speed is made ever more pleasant by the feeling that I am regaining the time lost.”

Anne’s track will cover 2700 miles and she hopes to make the voyage in under 90 days. Yes, 90 days would be a good time. That’s how hard this is…



The Sardine: “It’s half boat, half sub, and I’m gonna need the sub part…”

Amin Brakk Expedition: Well the Russians, God bless ’em, are at it again. It’s not enough that two Russian climbing teams just pulled off two of the hairiest climbs ever (Jannu North Face and Everest North Central Face). Now a team of four climbers, a video cameraman, a photographer, and a doctor (the Russians always need to have a good doctor with them) are on their way to the Karakorum. They constitute the “Russian Extreme Team” (“Extreme” after “Russian is a bit redundant, I think), and their plan is to pioneer a new route on the 5850 meter Amin Brakk tower. Amin Brakk features a 1200 meter granite face, and is considered to be the most technically difficult rock tower on the planet (more difficult than the better known Trango Tower near K2). Amin Brakk (which means “Great Tower”) was first attempted in 1996. But the bastard wasn’t climbed until 1999, by a Spanish team which took 34 days to get to the top and had to haul up its own water because the sheer face doesn’t hold any snow to melt. The Russians will attempt a new route up the West face, but they’ve added a twist. There’s always a twist, and that’s why you have to love the Russians. When (if) they get to the top, climber Valery Rozov will descend the fast way. In other words, he plans to jump off. Yes, jump. Okay, he will have a parachute (they are Russians–insane but not suicidal). But it will be one of the most absurd, extreme BASE jumps ever attempted, and a potential Wetass Video of The Decade. Stay tuned…



Amin Brakk, the Great Tower: “Holy sh*t! Rozov plans to do WHAT?!

Wetass Video Of The Week…: TWC Assistant Editor Dave Ross (Postage/Retro Music) sent this in. And it has to be sort of wedged into the Wetass genre. But it made me laugh out loud more than once. So click here if you want to watch some seriously deranged, umm, kittens in action…



“I’m going to kick your ass…”