An aside: thank god for frequent flyer point upgrades – 72,000 points and you can desert your peers and enjoy the company of the rich scum up the beak end of the jet. And a note to terrorists: smash your champagne glass on the arm rest of your Marc Newson space bed and the plane is yours! Allah Akhbar!
A happy by-product of our Caribbean junket was the chance to kill a little time with Bobby Martinez. You remember the kid? Five years ago, he was the biggest thing in American surfing. He was going to take over where Slater left off, rule the world, all that sorta stuff. A label called Counter Culture threw hundreds of thousands of dollars at him, milking his Mex looks and gang banger coutoure in their own quest for world domination. Then, Bobby (and Counter Culture) disappeared. In Bobby’s case, he busted his shoulder, blew his knee out and his brain went up in a purple haze. This year, however, Bobby Martinez is up the beak end of the WQS and in 2006 we’ll be seeing a lot more of his flawless backhand (Snapper) and his righteous forehand in the Pacific. I wrote the profile so expect a strong beginning (I love writing the lead of a new story and spend many days admiring my words) but watch it meander to a lazy ending as I bang out the final 2000-words half-an-hour before deadline. This approach may be slack, but can you fault my honesty? American Chris Straley shot the portraits and some action in those few rare bursts of activity between drinking triple rum punches and burning up the dance floor with his exciting, but limited, repertoire of robotic dance movies at Bridgetown nightclubs.
The biggest thing about this magazine, however, is the movie in the bag. Passion Pop. The latest hi-fi flick from Billabong. If you haven’t got a crush on Jordy Smith or Goodall or Woody or Loz Towner, you will when you feed this disc into yoru DVD player.
Keen readers will have noted our opposition to cover-mounted DVDs in the past. Our (flawed) philosophy was, we wanted readers to buy our magazine and not pick it for the tawdry bauble hanging off the front. Then came the realisation that we actually want to rule the world. And not just occupy a niche market among the cool kids oblivious to any bonus extras.
So to kickstart the whole DVD-on-Stab, we figured, we’d better do it good. And Passion Pop marks our debut. Lights my fire. How about you? – Derek Rielly.
