Aside from being one of the smallest islands divided among two nations (France and Netherlands), Saint Martin is a
YouTube has a host of amateur videos, and I’ve scoured through the lot to find the cream of the crop. Have a look, after the jump:
Alex Nicks and Tweaking the Nose of Terror
Alex Nicks is probably the best white water kayaker I’ve ever paddled with. Perhaps that’s not saying much, as I’ve only been white water kayaking about a dozen times, but the fact is Alex is a phenomenal kayaker. He is, as I understand it, one of Britain’s best.
I took a clinic with Alex a few weekends ago in the frigid waters of High falls near Kingston, New York. We paddled in very small boats, which I believe are made for freestyle paddling. Either way, they were much smaller boats than I was accustomed to.
So Alex took me through a series of Class II rapids (ripples, really) and then we ran a quick Class III that was one fine hoot. It had been a while since I paddled on a river (I’m mostly sea kayaking these days) so the experience was a reminder of how much fun it can be. Then we came to a wicked class IVish rapid that I had to portage around. Alex did not. Alex plunged right into the rapids and spent five minutes doing graceful pirouettes in the maw of the beast. I was amazed. Blown away.
Anyway, all of this is to make a further plug here for Alex’s work. You see, he is not only a superb kayaker, but he is an excellent filmmaker. He not only shoots for Jon Bowermaster’s awesome paddling series for National Geographic – the highly regarded Ocean’s 8 series (which I’ve blogged about before) – he also makes his own films. I got a copy of one of these DVDs and can tell you it will take your breath away. The DVD I have is called Tweaking the Nose of Terror and features a “terrorizing 43 minutes” of the most amazing white water footage you will ever see. From Patagonia to Iran to a run down the exceedingly treacherous stretch of the White Nile, this is a DVD that both amateur and extreme paddlers should own. I’m going to re-watch mine several times and, in fact, and going to try and get it autographed. ;-)
Shark Info.org – Photos and Video
Sometimes I wonder whether the Discovery Channel should start an entire network and call it The Shark Week channel. I seems every time I flip through channels with my remote control, I encounter another program about sharks, which inevitably show dagger-toothed Great Whites prowling around a couple of caged divers. The thing is, I usually can’t pull my eyes away. We are a strange species in that way: we love to watch real-life monsters who could, in unfortunate circumstances, eat us.
Well if you can’t get your fill of man-eating fish on TV, you can always pop over to a site like sharkinformation.org, which has got a multimedia chum line of shark videos and images. The videos, especially, culled form the BBC and YouTube, will pretty much ensure that you won’t be going in the water again any time soon. If you’re like me, you may also develop a sudden sympathy for seals, those lovable mammal snacks who always seem to end up caught inside the jaws of, well, Jaws.
World Sound: More Desi Boy Bands
If you were to give me a pop quiz right now on Desi pop culture I’d flunk horribly. I’d like to think my crooning Asha Bhosle’s version of Ina, Mina, Dika would score me some points in the Desi community, but the song is centuries old and the world is need of a fresh new sound from young Desi boy heart-throbs. According to my favorite and really the only Desi culture blog I read, Sepia Mutiny, the planet could use a few more boy bands. Desi boy bands. My initial thoughts were quite opposite and not so much the Desi part, but the boy band part. However, I decided to read further and listen.
JoSH is a Montreal based Desi duo. The one they say resembles Lenny Kravitz (Q) is kind of cute to me and the other (Rup) rocks the turban while delivering the vocals that make the hearts of women melt. Okay, not so much melt, but you know the ladies are feeling it and shaking their tail-feathers, swinging their hair all wild and what have you and so it seems that the world needs more of this Desi boy band business, right? If you’re not familiar with JoSH (long O like Joe, not Joshua) you’ll want to see the videos they’ve included in the blog. The first one sold me, but the second one almost lost me. I’m a sucker for world music though so I’d probably pick it up or download a few tracks.
Seriously, if you’re into tuning your global ear to new things give JoSH a try. They’ll be opening for Nelly Furtado in Bombay on New Year’s Eve if you happen to be around India end of year.
Worldhum on Endless Summer
Even though I’ve never met him face to face (we did do a podcast a ways back, however) Worldhum‘s Jim Benning and I share a few things in common. First, we both write travel blogs. Worldhum, which Jim writes with Mike Yessis and a host of other top travel scribes, is IMHO, one of the best travel sites out there. Another thing we share is a Southern California upbringing. And more than that, it seems, a very beach-oriented Southern California upbringing.
Now, it’s hard to describe exactly what that means. To me, being a wee lad in So Cal in the late 70s and early 80s didn’t seem very special. But now that I look back on it, I know that it was. I lived in a sleepy, sandy beach town near Newport Beach, a middle class place where surfing and being on the water was a way of life. So was skateboarding. I spent a gazillion hours perfecting my kick turns on So Cal sidewalks, and another gazillion learning how to carve sweet turns on the face of a wave on my Boogie Board. Those times are now almost mythical to me, brimming with innocence, glimmering with fresh sunshine, a time of absolute childish joy. It is often difficult to describe to people in New York City what it was like growing up in Southern, California.
But sometimes when I try ,I tell them to take a look at a movie that was made back in the 60s called Endless Summer. The film celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and according to Worldhum’s Benning, it’s popularity lives on, Benning calls it one of the greatest wanderlust-inducing documentaries ever made. And he’s right. And while the movie chronicled a small group of surfer’s quest to find the best waves on the globe, I still think of it as a California film, because the surfer’s sensibilities are all So Cal.
In this nicely done piece from Worldhum, Benning talks at some length about the impact of the best surf film ever made, and why it remains both an excellent bit of filmmaking and a relevant cultural artifact for our fast-paced times.