by The Editors on January 16, 2009
The cover story of the latest issue of Fast Company Magazine exposes Shaun White’s amazing sponsorship aptitude: his ability to take money from the right people and keep his personal brand rolling strong.
I was so fortunate to have had some success before the Olympics,” he says. “So when the time came for everyone to come at me, I was able to step back and say, ‘Do I really want to do that? Do I want to be known for airing over some dude who is going aaaahhh! with his teeth gleaming?’ ” . . . White has sought out companies he truly connects with. Working with a tight team of advisers that include his 29-year-old brother, Jesse, and his agent, Mark Ervin of IMG, White sees these deals as a long-term investment portfolio, something that will outlast his knees. Each corporation meshes with a discrete slice of his actual life, and with each one, White dives in and takes a central role, from the design of specific products to pulling deals together among his various partners.
Shaun has been playing it smart from the beginning and it looks like the long game pays off. And we had to laugh out loud when writer Mark Borden described Shaun as having a “strange equine beauty,” because we’ve always thought of his beauty as more simian.
[Link: Fast Company]
by The Editors on January 16, 2009
Kelly Slater is on the list of celebrities to play in the AT&T National Pro-AM at Pebble Beach February 9-15, 2009. He’s joining Bill Murray, Carson Daily, Greg Kinnear, Kenny G, on the most beautiful course on the continent.
Seems like it would be pretty hard to concentrate on the game knowing that Ghost Trees is firing and no skis are allowed in the water. But Kelly is good that way, and what better way to rest up for the 2009 kick off event on the Goldie which begins February 28.
[Link: AT&T National Pro-AM Photo: Daylife]
by The Editors on January 8, 2009
The amount of money going into the promotion of the Mathew McConaughey film Surfer Dude DVD release (it is currently selling for $5.99 on Amazon) could have financed a couple years of round the world surfing for someone. And now they’re stepping it up by giving away Surf Prescription boards on Movieweb.com
One lucky grand prize winner will win an actual surfboard from Surf Prescriptions, which will be signed by the film’s star Matthew McConaughey himself! We are also giving away a few posters for the film signed by McConaughey as well. These prizes will surely go super-fast, so be sure to enter this contest today!
So we guess in Hollywood speak an “actual surfboard” means a Doc Lausch surfboard.
[Link: MovieWeb.com]
by The Editors on January 5, 2009
Hot celebrity snowboard new: Aussie disco diva Kylie Minogue and male model Andres Velencoso Segura spent last week in Chamonix according to reports on Thaindian.com.
Minogue, 40, and Segura, who is ten years her junior, were seen snowboarding and partying together for a week in Chamonix, with locals saying that the two looked like loved-up teenagers. . . .Andres had never been snowboarding before but Kylie loves it, the Sun quoted a source as saying.
She did exactly what she should have done: she hired an instructor and put Segura in a lesson while she tore it up on her own.
[Link: Thaindian.com]
by The Editors on December 27, 2008
We’re glad to see our favorite old supermodel still trying new things (with Rusty Miller no less). Elle Macpherson is 44. Can you believe that? But she still looks good in the water.
Click the link for the entire photo gallery.
[Link: The Daily Telegraph]
by The Editors on December 23, 2008
Ben Stiller must be a little handier at acting than he is at snowboarding. The creator of Tropic Thunder (the funniest movie we saw last year) apparently broke his hand while snowboarding last Sunday.
. . . the star went to New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital Sunday where he was treated for the injury, but released from the facility later that day. . . . “One of the hospital’s top hand specialists was called in to treat him,” the New York Daily News quoted a source as saying.
Hopefully, he doesn’t give it up. We could use a good “Shredding Vacation From Hell meets Zoolander” next year.
[Link: UPI.com]
by The Editors on December 22, 2008
Facebook and eBay have joined to help seven celebrities (including Tony Hawk) raise money for their favorite charity. It’s called Re-Gift The Fruitcake on Facebook, according to a story on VentureBeat.com.
“It’s an incentive to get the Facebook generation into philanthropy,” Hawk said. “It encourages people to pass along the message about the charities and donate money.”
Sadly, we ignore all apps. If we didn’t, this would probably be a cool way to make a donation to the Tony Hawk Foundation.
[Link: VentureBeat]
by The Editors on December 21, 2008
Australia’s Herald Sun is reporting that the Bra Boys are having some trouble as two “bikie clans” have begun moving in on the surfers’ territory in Maroubra Beach. Most recently was a 20 person brawl at the Maroubra Bay Hotel last weekend.
Police are investigating several violent clashes between members of the Bra Boys and the Bandidos in recent weeks at the renowned Maroubra Bay Hotel. . . . Police said they have observed the Bandidos and another bikie clan, the Comancheros, establishing an unwelcome presence in the Bra Boys’ stronghold.
Bra Boys co-founder Sunny Abberton (right) says there is no war going on with “the bikies.”
Mr Abberton also denied any Bra Boys involvement in Saturday night’s brawl. . . . “I didn’t hear or see anything,” he said. “I was in the Maroubra Bay Hotel earlier and it all seemed pretty quiet.”
[Link: Herald Sun]
by The Editors on December 19, 2008
According to story on Gamespot.com reviewers have not be kind to the Shaun White Snowboarding games.
Despite an avalanche of hype, the game wiped out with critics on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, earning less-than-gnarly respective scores of 63 and 62 out of 100 on Metacritic. GameSpot’s own reviewer was even less kind, giving the two games just 5.0 out of a possible 10. . . . This afternoon the Reuters news service reported the game sold 259,000 copies in the US in the two weeks after its November 16 launch. The figure, which was supplied by Arcadia Research analyst John Taylor, says sales of the game racked up $13.6 million during the month. France-based Ubisoft declined to confirm the sales numbers.
Looks like Ubisoft might still have a ways to go before they recoup the $10 million they spent on advertising in the first weeks of November. The company won’t comment, but it sounds like Shaun is planning on a follow up.
Now that I have the knowledge and I can speak to programmers better and I understand a lot more about what’s possible and what’s not possible, this will all help with the next game,” White explained.
Ubisoft says “no comment.”
[Link: Gamespot]
by The Editors on December 17, 2008
Sam Bottoms, the actor who played “California surfer-turned-GI Lance Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now has died from brain cancer. He was 53,” according to a story in the LA Times.
Bottoms was 20 in 1976 when he was cast to play surfer Lance Johnson in “Apocalypse Now,” in which he was one of the young sailors who accompany Capt. Benjamin Willard ( Martin Sheen) up river in a gunboat for his rendezvous with Marlon Brando’s renegade Col. Walter Kurtz. . . . Bottoms died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles of glioblastoma multiforme, a virulent brain cancer, said his wife, Laura Bickford.
Bottoms helped create some of surfing’s most iconographic moments in serious film. And he will be missed.
[Link: LA Times]
