This life is short. This life is long. The vast and deep sea that is the Internet greatly increases both of these boring statements. It’s up to you on how you use it. Which holes you crawl into. Which buttons you push. Or what experiences you actually have. It’s always up to you. But seeing’s that you’ve continued to support and follow us, we’re quite certain there are things we come across that you will enjoy.

Which leads us to why we created What Youth Recommends: To offer some of the more fruitful searches we’ve had during our never-ending quest for inspiration, experience, creativity, entertainment and motivation.

And while our number one reason for existence at What Youth is to entertain and inspire through original content brought to you by the countless interesting personalities, trips, surfing, skating, shooting, documenting, writing and living that we do, we often look to introduce and inspire you through some of the people who inspire us as well. Today we’re offering a variety of rabbit holes to jump in. Enjoy the void.

Here are a bunch of things we have collected, watched, read, searched, forgot and/or remembered over the last few days. If you have any What Youth Recommendations for us, email us at hello@whatyouth.com with the heading WY Recommends.

ANDY IRONS FROM RAW IRONS: HAWAII SECTION
This was our first glimpse of Andy Irons. A rare segment from an early MCD video called Raw Irons that was as good a movie as you’ll ever see. It was just, that, Raw and full of early Andy footage. For those who have seen it, you are no doubt agreeing. This was our first look, and our most important, of a surfer who epitomized the spirit of what it means to exist as a human being. Raw. Passionate. Real. Kind. Caring. Spirited. Psyched. And Rad. We miss him a lot every day and there aren’t many days he isn’t remembered, but we’re very thankful for all the things he left us — especially this little treasure. (And yes, we still have the VHS).

DAVID GONZALEZ: THE SABBATH
Sometimes you don’t have to say shit. Sometimes just by hitting play you’ll understand why this appeals to us. And we don’t feel the need to apologize, explain or say anything to anyone about it being a skater. This will make you excited to live. To surf. To skate. To run. To jump. Get hurt. And the most fucked up part is it’s a commercial. By far the first and only piece of “branded content” I’ve ever seen that works. I’ll buy what this fucking guy is selling. No wonder he’s Thrasher Magazine’s Skater of the Year.

FRANK (JUST FRANK)
One spring, Kai, Scott and myself found ourselves in New York City. One evening, after dinner, we were walking down a random street in the city and we bumped into Ozzie Wright. He was sitting on a stoop, waiting for his lady. This was a completely random run-in by the way. Not having an itinerary for the night, Ozzie invited us to follow him to a club he was going to. The place was called Home Sweet Home. There was a man wrapped in a carpet, lying on the ground and you had to walk on him to get a beer. The walls were covered with dead animals and this band, Frank (Just Frank) was playing this song (“Die in Bed”) when we got there. Girls with pretty eyes and a ton of eyeliner walked round and we sipped beers with Ozzie and had one of the raddest nights of our lives. Just thought we should share. We’ve been blasting this band around our office a lot lately. Here’s their performance at WIERD. If you like check their new album, The Brutal Wave.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: FOREWORD TO NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN
I read this over the weekend and I have to share. I understand it’s tough to settle into reading something online, but if you do, and if you pay attention, I think you will notice some interesting similarities to what he’s talking about and why we have plunged in and created What Youth as an alternative to the other offerings in surfing. And I will add that this has ignited a large fire in all of us. All thanks to an old drunk with a typewriter we read too often.

More than a year ago John Bryan began his underground paper OPEN CITY in the front room of a small two story house that he rented. Then the paper moved to an apartment in front, then to a place in the business district of Melrose Ave. Yet a shadow hangs. A helluva big gloomy one. The circulation rises but the advertising is not coming in like it should. Across in the better part of town stands the L.A. Free Press which has become established. And runs the ads Bryan created his own enemy by first working for the L.A. Free Press and bringing their circulation from 16,000 to more than three times that. It’s like building up the National Army and then joining the Revolutionaries Of course, the battle isn’t simply OPEN CITY vs. FREE PRESS. If you’ve read OPEN CITY, you know that the battle is larger than that. OPEN CITY takes on the big boys, the biggest boys, and there are some big ones coming down the center of the street, NOW, and real ugly big shits they are, too. It’s more fun and more dangerous working for OPEN CITY, perhaps the liveliest rag in the U.S. But fun and danger hardly put margarine on the toast or feed the cat. You give up toast and end up eating the cat.

Bryan is a type of crazy idealist and romantic. He quit, or was fired, he quit and was fired — there was a lot of shit flying — from his job at the Herald-Examiner because he objected to them airbrushing the cock and balls off of the Christ child. This on the cover of their magazine for the Christmas issue. “And it’s not even my God, it’s theirs,” he told me.

So this strange idealist and romantic created OPEN CITY. “How about doing us a weekly column?” he asked off-handedly, scratching his red beard. Well, you know, thinking of other columns and other columnists, it seemed to me to be a terribly drab thing to do. But I started out, not with a column but a review of Papa Hemingway by A. E. Hotchner. Then one day after the races, I sat down and wrote the heading, NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN, opened a beer, and the writing got done by itself. There was not the tenseness or the careful carving with a bit of a dull blade, that was needed to write something for The Atlantic Monthly. Nor was there any need to simply tap out a flat and careless journalism (er, journalese??). There seemed to be no pressures. Just sit by the window, lift the beer and let it come. Anything that wanted to arrive, arrived. And Bryan was never a problem. I›d hand him some copy — in the early days — and he›d flit through it and say, “OK, it’s in.” After a while I’d just hand him copy and he wouldn’t read it; he’d just jam it into a cubbyhole and say, “It’s in. What’s going on?” Now he doesn’t even say, “It’s in.” I just hand him the copy and that’s that. It has helped the writing. Think of it yourself: absolute freedom to write anything you please. I’ve had a good time with it, and a serious time too, sometimes; but I felt mainly, as the weeks went on, that the writing got better. These are selections from about fourteen months worth of columns.

For action, it has poetry beat all to hell. Get a poem accepted and chances are it will come out 2 to 5 years later, and a 50-50 shot it will never appear, or exact lines of it will later appear, word for word, in some famous poet›s work, and then you know the world ain’t much. Of course, this isn’t the fault of poetry; it is only that so many shits attempt to print and write it. But with NOTES, sit down with a beer and hit the typer on a Friday or a Saturday or a Sunday and by Wednesday the thing is all over the city. I get letters from people who have never read poetry, mine or anybody else›s. People come to my door — too many of them really — and knock to tell me that NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN turns them on. A bum off the road brings in a gypsy and his wife and we talk, drink half the night. A long distance telephone operator from Newburgh, N.Y., sends me money. She wants me to give up drinking beer and to eat well. I hear from a madman who calls himself “King Arthur” and lives on Vine Street in Hollywood and wants to help me write my column. A doctor comes to my door: «I read your column and I think that I can help you. I used to be a psychiatrist.» I send him away.

I hope that these selections help you. If you want to send me money, o.k. Or if you want to hate me, o.k. too. If I were the village blacksmith you wouldn’t fuck with me. But I am just an old guy with some dirty stories. Writing for a newspaper, which, like me, might die tomorrow morning.

It’s all very strange. Just think, if they hadn›t airbrushed the cock and balls off the Christ child, you wouldn’t be reading this. So, be happy. —Charles Bukowski, 1969

STANLEY KUBRICK: LIFE IN PICTURES
If you mention Stanley Kubrick around Kai Neville he tends to malfunction. He starts looking to the sky and speaking in a high voice muttering, STANLEY KUBRIIIICCKKK!!! And he’s always snapping his fingers as he looks up. I’m pretty sure it’s just an overwhelming level of “psyche” that enters his brains causing him to short circuit. And the fact that there is currently an incredible exhibit at LACMA in Kubrick’s honor — which Kai has yet to see — nearly kills him daily). Kubrick was the king of controversy. Often called one of the most brilliant filmmakers of all time. And if filmmaking, photography, creating or existing interests you, it’s worth checking out. Here is some information to wet your whistle on the exhibit, as well as a “must watch” according to Kai. A documentary called: Life in Pictures. Settle in for the long haul on this, it’s over 2 hours long, but as we said, if you’re hitting play, there’s no reason to stop. It’s more than worth it.