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The hype about the upcoming DC film The Batman is all about Robert Pattinson’s debut as the caped crusader, but his arch nemisis has already been set up for some post-film screentime. As Variety detailed on Monday, HBO Max has a spinoff series in the works featuring The Penguin, the bad guy played in the upcoming Matt Reeves film by Collin Farrell.

Colin Farrell is set to play the notorious supervillain in “The Batman.” According to sources, Farrell has been approached to star in the spinoff series but no deal is currently in place. Sources also say that Lauren LeFranc is attached to write the script for the project, which is in its very early stages.

The show would supposedly delve into The Penguin’s rise to power in the Gotham criminal underworld.

HBO Max has become a landing spot of sorts for alt-hero DC projects. But a gritty Penguin-themed project featuring the origin story of Oswald Cobblepot would be a departure from the more comedic standouts, like the animated Harley Quinn.

Though the report notes that the development is still in the early stages, it does seem to indicate that Warners is intent on a Marvel-like expansion between their DC movie and TV worlds. Whether The Batman will have enough juice to make Farrell’s Penguin worth investing in for fans, well, we’ll all just have to wait and see.

[via Variety]

Our collective childhoods have been forever influenced by the imaginative, heartwarming stories of Roald Dahl. Classics like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and Fantastic Mr. Fox continue to grace bookshelves, movie screens, and even the stages of Broadway.

But today, on what would have been Dahl’s 104th birthday, we’re going to share one of his lesser known- yet arguably most provocative-works of literature.

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Despite the whimsical nature of his fictional worlds, Roald Dahl took the importance of immunization seriously, after losing his seven year old daughter Olivia to measles in 1962. Once the measles outbreak made a resurgence in 1986, Dahl wrote his own gut-wrenching call-to-action in the Sandwell Health Authority. His stance on vaccinations is made quite clear:

Measles: A Dangerous Illness

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.

Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.

LET THAT SINK IN.

Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.

So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunised?

They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunisation! That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation.

So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised.

The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunisation should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.

Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG’, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.

It almost goes without saying: the subject matter of Dahl’s letter is eerily relevant even in our modern era. A proven solution to a seemingly unending health crisis is available, and yet that solution is no match for senseless and unfounded rebellion.

In a time of continued dissonance and confusion, perhaps Roald’s words can teach us to think critically, act bravely, and not succumb to fear, just as they have in his beloved creative works.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a disturbing rise in anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia where people of Chinese heritage account for 5% of the country’s 25 million residents.

A poll found that one in five Chinese Australians have been physically threatened or attacked over the past year. The problem has become so bad that the Chinese government had to issue a travel advisory for students going to Australia, warning them to take precautions.

Australians aren’t denying the issue, either.

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A study published by The Guardian found that 44% of Australians say they have “very negative” or “somewhat negative” feelings towards Chinese Australians – a nearly three-fold increase from 13% in 2013. They claim their negative feelings stem from the pandemic, the political rhetoric of Donald Trump, and a media atmosphere that encourages “creeping distrust” of Australians of Chinese heritage. Relationships between both countries were also strained when Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into the origins of the virus.

While it was originally believed that it emerged from wet markets in Wuhan, there is reason to believe it may have escaped from a virology lab in the area.

“For quite some time, there has been continuous discrimination in Australia against people of Asian origins, including overseas Chinese, which poses serious threats to the safety and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens in Australia,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.

One brave Australian of Chinese descent made a dramatic display of defiance against the rising tide of racism in the country by destroying a racist sign posed in a Melbourne suburb. The sign read “Made in China – Covid-19,” a reference to the virus’s emergence from that part of the world in late 2019.

The video was shared with a caption that read: “Say no to racism.”

“A friend told me someone posted a sign insulting Chinese people — saying coronavirus is from China,” the man told the camera.

“We have to remove it,” he said. The man then sliced it up with an electric saw and pounded it off the post with a hammer. He then took the saw and cut the sign into even smaller pieces.

The video received widespread praise when it first appeared on TikTok.

“Can’t believe this is happening in 2021. Hope the cowards responsible for this are held accountable,” one commenter said.

“No matter where [the virus] is from, it shouldn’t lead to racism – that’s never forgivable,” another wrote.

Racial prejudice in any form is completely unacceptable. But it’s bewildering that people would lash out against a group of people just because a virus emerged from the country of their heritage. An Australian of Chinese decent living in Melbourne has as much to do with the spread of the virus as a person of any other ethnic background.

The situation in Australia goes to show that when things get tough, there are always those who will look for a scapegoat. The man with the saw and hammer deserves a lot of love for taking an aggressive stand against racism. Hopefully, his act of defiance inspires others to do the same.

Justyn Hardwick clearly knows his daughter Ary is a die-hard prankster. The father of three frequently shares his family’s silly shenanigans on social media, and he knows to be prepared for every possible scenario.

That’s why, when Ary asked him to help with a “weight challenge,” his first instinct was to search for the trap. “You play too much,” he told his daughter as he looked around the room for clues that something was amiss. His instant paranoia alone was funny.

But Ary kept her cool and convinced her pop to hold two large jugs of juice on a rope over his hands. Then she started stacking things on top of the rope.

Throughout the “challenge,” Hardwick kept looking around, waiting for the prank. Then it came, and despite being prepared for it, he clearly was not prepared for it.

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Watch:

The way she immediately high-tails it out of there and the way her dad uses her full name, “ARYANNA,” at the end. Hilarious.

The video has racked up more than two million views on Facebook and has been shared widely on other social media channels as well.

David Johns, leader of the National Black Justice Coalition, shared the video on Twitter with some commentary that explains some of the appeal of the video beyond the obvious prankster humor. He wrote:

“1. I love that he knows her well enough to check for trap wires and cameras. 2. I love that she’s already considered his concerns and has planned ahead. 3. I love the ability to share media that counters the lies the media frequently tells including: Black dads aren’t absent…”

It’s always delightful to see families have good, wholesome fun together. (To see more of the Hardwicks’ silliness, follow Justyn on TikTok.)

If there’s one thing people love to see on the internet, it’s the mashup between high and low culture that usually results from the glimpses we get behind-the-scenes of events like MTV’s VMAs and the Met Gala. This year, thanks to a pair of the show’s performers and their respective significant others, people on the internet got more than enough of both all in one photograph.

The photo in question captures Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker — who teamed up to perform their emo-rock revival anthem “Papercuts” at the VMAs — and their girlfriends, Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox, all holed up in what looks to be a public bathroom before the Met Gala. Barker and Kardashian are making out, as are MGK and Fox, and Twitter is having something of a meltdown. Maybe it’s the combination of the glamorous gals — Kardashian is, of course, a member of a family of models and moguls, while Fox is a veteran actress — carousing with the decidedly grungey-looking guys — Barker and Kelly are both tatted-up rockers with roots in the hip-hop world — that has folks so fascinated with the pairings.

Fox and Kelly had fans mesmerized with her red carpet look and his reported altercation with MMA fighter Conor McGregor last night before the show, while Barker and Kardashian have been headline fodder for months, especially with the news that she helped him overcome his fear of flying after a 2008 plane crash hospitalized him for 11 weeks.

Check out some of the reactions to their photo below.

In a story that is sure to make more than a few of us incredibly jealous, we’ve now learned Oscar Isaac is somehow even more charming than we were previously led to believe. In a recent Vulture, piece, Jessica Chastain — Isaac’s co-star on his most recent project, Scenes from a Marriage — revealed the actor didn’t hesitate to do anything he could to ensure she was comfortable before the pair began filming their more intimate scenes. According to Chastain, this even included him singing songs she really liked to her in an attempt to calm her nerves.

“Oscar is such a good friend,” Chastain started. “Because I was so nervous, he played music and we drank a little bit of bourbon. He’d say, ‘Just pretend there’s nobody else here. It’s okay.’ And there’s a song I really like, so he’d start singing in between the takes. So I was like, ‘Okay, just lock eyes on him.’ The most beautiful part of one of the love scenes is the love in their eyes when they’re looking at each other. And he helped create that.”

Of course, this news comes following the pair nearly breaking the internet with their red-hot, red carpet chemistry that made more than a few folks jaws drop last month, and is all part of their press tour for the HBO mini-series Scenes from a Marriage, the long-time friends and former classmates’ second collaboration together. As for their first, Isaac and Chastain also starred in 2014’s A Most Violent Year, a crime drama that received praise for the duo’s on-screen chemistry.

HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage, a modern remake of the 1973 Swedish series created by Ingmar Bergman by the same name, follows the highs and lows of the marriage of Jonathan (Isaac) and Mira (Chastain), starting with its electric beginning and ultimately ending with its disintegration. The first of the series five episodes, “Innocence and Panic,” premiered September 12, and new episodes are scheduled to release weekly each following Sunday.

Tucker Carlson has downplayed the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and he’s claimed the FBI orchestrated it. He’s claimed masks aren’t important and told his viewers to harass those who wear them. He’s hatched bizarre conspiracy theories, including one about the U.S.’s exit from Afghanistan. The most charitable thing you could say about the Fox News host is that he builds dodgy arguments based on selective data. But Carlson swears he hates lying. Except when he doesn’t.

In a new appearance on the The Rubin Report, Carlson discussed his rivals at CNN. “How do you think they live with themselves at this point when they just lie again and again and we have the internet to expose the lies?” Rubin asked Carlson. “We can expose it now and they still do it.”

But Carlson couldn’t fully condemn CNN for the very thing he himself does, at least from time to time. “Well, it’s—I guess I would ask myself, like, I mean I lie if I’m really cornered or something,” Carlson said. He then made an admission followed by some quick backpedaling:

“I lie. I really try not to. I try never to lie on TV. I just don’t — I don’t like lying. I certainly do it, you know, out of weakness or whatever. But to systematically lie like that without asking yourself why am I doing this? So if these people ask themselves why am I doing this? And they say, well, I want to protect the system because I really believe in the system. Ok, who’s running the system? You’re lying to defend Jeff Bezos? Like, you’re treating Bill Gates like some sort of moral leader, like, are you kidding me? How dare you do that!”

If it seemed rich that a loyal Trumpist would accuse other, non-Fox News journalists of being out to “protect the system” and defend billionaires (who they want to finally start taxing), that was just the beginning. He claimed that the mainstream media had become “defenders of the powerful” who attack “the weakest people in our society.”

But even Carlson couldn’t completely condemn that either. “I have done that, inadvertently over the years because I got carried away,” Carlson said. “But I really try not to. And everyone who works on our show is very aware of the most basic rule, which is don’t piss down. Don’t attack people beneath you. If you’re gonna you know, take a punch, make sure it’s upward.”

If that’s the rule of his show, then Carlson sure has slipped often, attacking journalists with far less power than he has as well as college students, to say nothing of non-white immigrants.

Carlson’s admission was made over the weekend, but it wasn’t picked up till Monday, the same day Amy Coney Barrett claimed the Supreme Court, now stacked with far right Trump appointees, were not “partisan hacks,” to the bewilderment of social media.

You can watch Carlson’s hour-long The Rubin Report appearance below, if that’s your bag.

(Via Mediaite)

Late last year, movie fans everywhere were devastated to learn that beloved, Academy award-winning actor Jeff Bridges (True Grit, The Big Lebowski, Iron Man) had been diagnosed with lymphoma. To make matters worse, the actor then revealed he had also tested positive for COVID-19 after coming into contact with it at the very hospital he was undergoing chemotherapy at. While all this news gave us quite the scare, as of today “new sh*t has come to light,” and it seems like at long last we can finally let out that big, collective breath we’ve all been holding since last October.

In a handwritten blog post Bridges published earlier today, the actor shared with fans an update on both his ongoing medical struggles, as well as his upcoming projects. According to Bridges, both his cancer and COVID diagnoses are a thing of the past, and life is generally looking pretty bright for the 71 year old star.

“My cancer is in remission — the 9” to 12” mass has shrunk down to the size of a marble. My COVID is in the rear view mirror. COVID kicked my ass pretty good, but I’m double vaccinated and feeling much better now. I heard that the vaccine can help folks with long haulers. Maybe that’s the cause of my quick improvement.”

Bridges then went on to share that he’s “excited to get back to work on The Old Man!,” an upcoming FX drama the actor is both starring in and producing that follows a former intelligence officer who is forced back into work after he learns someone is trying to assassinate him. Bridges wrote the show is “lookin’ good,” before offering readers a peek.

Assuming Bridges is in shape to get back to work, The Old Man is expected to keep its original 2022 release date. Either way, we’re just happy “The Dude” is healthy and will be around for a whole lot more “abiding.”

There were a few surprising results across the college football landscape on Saturday, from Oregon beating Ohio State in Columbus to USC getting dusted by a Stanford team that couldn’t score against Kansas State one week prior.

That latter result only further increased the chatter around the job status for head coach Clay Helton, who it feels like has been on the hot seat for the entirety of his seven year tenure with the Trojans, but every time it feels like he’s been headed for the exit, he and his team have rallied to a performance that has kept him around. This season, though, there was clearly far more urgency for the Trojans to turn things around and put together a strong season start to finish, which is why the 42-28 loss set off alarm bells in Los Angeles.

This time, Helton won’t have a chance to rebound late in the season and coach his way back into keeping his job, as USC announced on Monday that he had been fired and Donte Williams will be elevated to interim head coach.

Helton joined the Trojans in 2010 under Lane Kiffin and ultimately took over the USC program after Steve Sarkisian left in 2015, becoming the full-time coach in 2016, amassing a 46-24 record across six-plus seasons (plus a bowl win in 2013 as the interim head coach after Ed Orgeron resigned). The high point was their run from 2016-17 when they went 21-6 with a Rose Bowl win.

Last year they went 5-1 in the shortened season leading to high expectations for this season and after scuffling out of the gates to a rather pedestrian 30-7 win over San Jose State and then getting dominated by Stanford, the program has decided to move on from Helton. As is always the case when the USC job opens, it will be fascinating to see the candidate pool they can put together as it is one of the premier jobs in college football but does not have quite the same support as other elite programs. They have yet to find anyone who can get the Trojans back to where they were in the Pete Carroll era, but to start they need to figure out how to consistently be at the top of the Pac-12 again.

The cool thing about the Olympics or the Super Bowl or March Madness is that you don’t have to really know the sport you’re watching in any serious capacity to enjoy the show. It’s a grand finale, winner-takes-all, gladiator-style contest. Previous results mean nothing. You sit down, you watch, and you can see a champion crowned.

That’s pretty cool. It’s no wonder that college football started a playoff format back in 2014, the MLS changed over in 2019, and the NFL continues to tweak its setup.

Add to that list the World Surf League (WSL). Since 1983, back when it was called the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP), pro surfing has been based on a total points system. And while that’s probably the fairest method to reflect the surfing someone does across a grueling season, packed international travel, it’s not exactly the most dynamic. To the point where it was quite common to see a champion crowned without having to win a single heat in the final event of the year. The WSL had counteracted this by putting the Pipeline Masters event, the #1 “bragging rights” contest in all of surfing, at the end of the tour, but the point remained — it wasn’t a structure that really allowed for casual fandom.

2021’s final — almost certain to be held Tuesday, September 14th at Lower Trestles in Southern California and streamed live on the World Surf League site and its YouTube channel — is a sort of hybrid. It honors the work of the #1 seed with a stairstep format of heats that all take place in a single day (both the men’s final and the women’s). It’s a bold setup that flings the door open to the casual fan who might just want to sit down and tune in to this one event.

As you can see, the whole structure is easy enough to understand. And the event itself is full of cool subplots that make for good viewing, even for the pro-surfing newcomer. Here are two of my favorites:

• Gabriel Medina is rich, successful, handsome, and surfs like he sorta hates the waves (but in a cool way). You can find articles about him potentially feuding or having a rivalry with most of the best surfers alive AND he’s having his dominance this season challenged via a format that he’s not particularly thrilled to be the test balloon for. Meaning that someone is going to face Medina, a famously chippy surfer, at a time when he has a very specific chip on his shoulder and is also supremely eager to win a championship. It’s all going to happen on a wave that favors his style nicely but his likely competition, Italo Ferreira, is also Brazilian and knows his surfing better than anyone else on the tour. Jesus, you couldn’t pay me to miss that.
• Steph Gilmore is in the running for the most “household name” surfer in this final event, because of her generation-spanning dominance. She won her first world title in 2007 and her seventh (!!!) in 2018. That’s… bananas. But to win the final at this event, she’d have to systematically take down three surfers (two of which are ranked higher than her at the moment) and then beat Carissa Moore, who has four world titles of her own since 2011 and just won gold at the Olympics. Could Steph pull off a series of upsets? Yes — she arguably understands how to surf with high stakes better than anyone. Will any of the field make it easy? F*ck no.

To preview the finale — stream it here throughout the day Tuesday, Spetember 14th — I spoke with the WSL’s Head of Competition, Jessi Miley-Dyer. Check out the following trailer for the event and see my full conversation Miley-Dyer below:

First and foremost, I want the newbie surf fan to understand that you guys have really in many ways created a prizefight environment where it’s a true five-way duel. As in five men and women step into the water; one man and one woman walk away champions.

It’s never been done that way in the WSL. Can you add some context there?

Winning in the water is… It’s such a big moment. And that’s for sure what we’re trying to do with this one-day event. Is to have a world champ and especially to have the men’s and women’s together. It has become hard to kind of understand how we’ve crowned world champions in the past, because of what we’ve had previously — these situations where someone’s reaching the pinnacle of their career and becoming the world champion, but they’re on the beach during the finals of the last event of the season.

This is a prizefight, as you say, winner takes all, that you’ve got to have that experience of winning in the water and kind of testing yourself against the other competitors on the biggest stage.

I think that’s so cool and I think it’ll do exactly what you want, which is bring surfing to a new audience and make it clear to people what the stakes are in every single moment and not have someone walk away and go, “Yeah, I just won this contest, but I actually, I was behind on points so the champion was crowned three weeks ago and… whatever.”

Totally.

Before we get to the plot lines of the contest, the WSL did something that not everyone knows about that is incredibly progressive — creating equal prize purses across genders. This felt like a proactive decision more than a reactive decision, at least from the outside in. Especially in a sport where, whether or not the biggest sponsorship deals have historically gone to women, women have been used to market the sport over the decades in ways that are both positive and exploitive. So anything less than financial equity feels egregious.

Can you speak about that and how powerful that is and how much support it got across both men and women among the top pros?

It sounds really corny, but you can’t even overstate how powerful and symbolic those kinds of decisions are. I look at other sports here in America and I watch soccer, and those women still striving to be paid the same. And so for surfing and for us as the WSL to publicly put up a really strong message out there — that we value the men’s and women’s competitors equally — it’s a really important one for us. And one that was hugely well received.

I had so many people in tears on the day, because they just didn’t think that they would see something like that happen. It’s amazing for the WSL. To have them stand next to each other at Trestles and be equals as world champions — it’s huge for us. I’m hoping that it’s one of those goosebumps moments for the next generation of young women who have been watching what we’ve doing in the sport because they’re going to see a really… what’s the word? It’s a really obvious visual of the two of them standing next to each other at the pinnacle of surfing.

I remember when that decision came down, that it had very vocal support from everyone and just has been so powerful and such a great way to show that surfing is progressive. There’s also been a lot more visibility with the Black surf movement — with a recent piece in the New York Times and a huge paddle out coming up. How do you see surfing evolving next?

Something that I’m going to spend a lot of time doing, particularly as we come into 2022, is that we are regionalizing the first tier of qualification. By doing that, we’re hoping to open up access to different communities for the pro tour.

What will happen now is that you can compete within your region no matter where you are and you will be able to stay close to home and not spend so much money having to travel internationally. There’s obviously COVID, which has made travel harder, but we know that when you’re coming from different places, it could be hard to get visas. There are all sorts of logistical kinds of pieces to international travel.

So what we’re doing now is, each region will have an allocation of men and women who will compete locally — whether or not it’s in your own country or the region more broadly. You will then be able to qualify into The Challenger Series, which is the new tier that we’ve created. And that’s how you’ll go on to the Championship Tour. The idea that you can stay close to home, live in your community, and then give it a crack to be out there in the Championship Tour.

I love that.

It’s really cool.

So moving onto the finale event, what big storylines do you see coming into this event for the newcomer — the new fan, who maybe doesn’t understand all the context and history, but wants to know some of those exciting stories that help them get invested?

When I’m looking at the one-day event and all of the kind of excitement around it, I really find… To be honest, I like your wording of this being a prizefight. The fact that we have the regular season, number one at the very top, waiting to be challenged for the world title, is something that I really get antsy about to watch because it’s going to be such an amazing moment. And everyone understands in pro sports, the idea of a challenger facing the leader.

When we’re looking at people in the first match in the men’s and women’s, we have Stephanie Gilmore who’s our most successful woman. We also have a rookie, Morgan Cibilic, and the fact that they going to have the chance to win their way through to get the right to challenge for the world title, I think is something that’s really cool for us.

Obviously, you mentioned Steph and just the endurance of excellence, the consistency of excellence. It’s amazing. Are there any other athletes that you want to preview for people?

We have Clarissa Moore and Italo Ferreira who are coming off their Olympic gold medals. So they’ll be here competing for the world title, and that’s a cool one for us. They’re also the defending world champions. And it was a proud moment too, for the WSL to see our champions take gold at the Olympics. It was an amazing achievement for them.

With Steph… It sounds crazy, but I think, to be honest, someone like Steph is most definitely the underdog to be winning the world title. The two in the yellow at the very top of a ladder, Gabriel and Clarissa, I think they’re very tough matchups.

Speak real quickly about Clarissa’s style on the wave.

Clarissa is an amazingly powerful surfer but technically, just very precise as well. And she really made a name for herself when she was younger by pushing all the boundaries of progression in women’s surfing. I remember watching her, I’ll date myself with my age, but I remember watching her as a 12-year-old and seeing her doing aerials and things, and I’ve never seen a young girl doing maneuvers like that before. So she’s always been at the very top of progression of the sport. And I think that as we come into a wave like Lowers [Lower Trsetles], for her to have that in her arsenal and her kind of little bag of tricks that she’ll pull out is something that’s immensely valuable on a day like that.

I’ve surfed Lowers a fair few times and I usually go out on days where people like your top five are not going to be there. I went out before a tour stop with Kelly Slater a couple of years ago and it’s a hyper-competitive environment. The waves were firing. I was out there with Kelly and Bethany Hamilton and just being amazed by them and never actually catching any waves, it’s such a fired-up environment. But speak to people about that wave and what that wave presents for people and what they can maybe see or expect to see. It’s not Tahiti, which is so monstrously heavy; it’s not Hawaii, where it’s a barrel wave all the time; but it’s… There’s a lot that people can do on Lowers — it’s an open door for linked maneuvers. Can you speak to that a little?

Lower Trestles is the most high-performance wave in California. It’s an A-frame peak, so a lot of people favor going right but, my other thing is that, when we look at Lowers, it’s just one of those canvases where people feel like they can do any turn that they want, and that’s why coming into the event, it’s really exciting because you kind of have the option to do all the big tricks. You have options to do air, you have options to carve. And it’s one of those waves where we’re not going to see big crazy barrels, like Tahiti, but what we are going to see is definitely high-performance surfing and it’s quite a long line too. So, you’ll definitely have… I think definitely we’ll see people kind of having to pull out the variety of the maneuvers as well.

Right, it’s a wave people will surf through to the end and link maneuvers together.

Totally. If you want to be the world champ you really going to have to surf that wave perfectly.

This exact finals lineup gives you some of the best aerialists in the world, do you… First of all, can you speak to people to help them understand how going into the air has revolutionized surfing and really shifted the entire, really the perspective of the sport, which I’m sure you grew up watching certain surfers who were power surfers and that has been decentralized as people who have gone into the air, but also just preview some of the aggression and some of the aerial moves that people might be taking a shot at?

Aerials have definitely changed surfing for sure, and the level of skill that people are bringing to some of these maneuvers, particularly the full rotation. We see someone like Italo Ferreira. He just… to have so much speed and power that is needed to launch yourself so high up… It’s kind of crazy, to be honest. And one of the things with the aerials, in particular, the men are doing is that the level of risk that is there, not only injuring yourself if you fall a little bit funny on the landing, but it also puts your entire ride at risk, which is why when people pull such huge ones off and then continue to ride down the line, it becomes these amazing kind of moments in sport because they’re basically… You only get as many waves as the ocean decides to give you or allows you at the time, so if you see someone just drive down the line like in lunatic and launch themselves 10 foot, 15 foot into the air, it’s like, “Oh, if I make it, it’s going to be a huge score but if I miss I’m in danger of losing the heat.” We’ve seen a couple of the men as well in the past very occasionally do a backflip. Gabriel did it quite famously in Brazil a few years ago. So it definitely is exciting to see the guys that really push it.