PHOTO: Screenshot from Pretty Sweet

I think it’s the scene in the new skate video Pretty Sweet where they are spraying, toasting and blasting beer into the air. It’s snowing and it’s shot on RED, just a brilliant moment. Someone must have stomped a sick one. It’s unfiltered fuck it! Right there on the screen. I felt it. I finished the rest of the film, which is co-produced by Spike Jonze and has a sick soundtrack, and somehow manages to keep a high-end, high-budgeted production feeling bad ass and a cross between Crusty Demons of Dirt and Where The Wild Things Are. And once I watched Elijah Burle’s part and then the final section starring Guy Mariano, I was pulling kick flips in the warehouse. First-try Tuesdays!

After that, running on happy adrenaline and psyche, I logged onto the Internet and popped my own balloon. With a sword. Dane lost at Sunset. Something about Nike not making shoes for surfers anymore and oodles of stories about Kelly and Joel battling it out like they have since 2002. Bruce left the Bulls, I mean Jordan went to Fox or whatever. Lots of things that don’t matter when you’re surfing. I was sad. I was frustrated. I was confused. I was…But then I talked to my friend who works at Volcom and he said they’ve been partying and rocking and skating and surfing more than ever over there. Which is exactly how I picture the Volcom funhouse to be all the time. So I’ve decided to write a press release about that, because that matters more to me right now than Hurley’s acquisition of the Dream Team. Meet Mikey G at Volcom and you’ll know what I mean.

After this roller coaster of emotion slowed, I got on the phone with photographer Nate Lawrence and Kai Neville and Kai kept saying,”The industry has lost it, let’s go surf!” So we looked for some purple blobs and what not and hit play on a few brand new What Youth trips.

Come 2013, the youth is back on the run. Spike Jonze will be calling Kai. Dane will keep winning…at life and losing in comps because a 7.33 doesn’t turn a heat. But no one will care, because we’ll be gone, on the road, in the water. Somewhere. Do me a favor, go skin your elbows today doing something. Press releases are boring. —Travis