YWS Video Review: Flip Extremely Sorry

Flip's always been a really weird company to me. On the one hand, they have/have had some of the gnarliest dudes to ever step on a board on their team. Whether it's Rowley and Arto going bigger than anyone, or reclusive dudes like Ali and Penny as the gnarliest party animals, Flip has had tons of straight up legends on their team. Flip's supposed to be this elite international dream team. But their ads, image, and graphics are all obviously targeted towards 10-12 year olds. How the fuck are you going to have such a good team, but have such a lame fucking company?! Ask any skater on earth "Does Flip have a good team?" and they'll tell you "FUCK YES!", but ask anyone over the age of 15 "Would you wear a Flip shirt or ride a Flip board" and they'll tell you "FUCK NO!"

But regardless of the contradictory nature of the company, at least they have always come through with the goods when it comes to skating. And although Sorry and Really Sorry may have had some corny shit in them, they were both really good videos. Annnnnnnd then now there's Extremely Sorry. I'm gonna go through the video section by section and then let you know how I feel about the video as a whole.

Shane Cross:

This kid was really really good at skateboarding. It's a damn shame that he had to die in such a senseless manner. Also a damn shame is that they took what will basically be his only section ever and ruin it by putting a bunch of lame animation over it like sloths riding his shoulders in lines, and flowers shooting out of his boards as he grinds rails and shit. Seriously who the fuck could possibly think that ruining this kid's footage was a good idea? This actually shocked me.

Geoff Rowley:

Pretty much the only section in the video where the music didn't suck shit. Lemmy and Dave Lombardo from Slayer doing Stand By Me is pretty fucking cool. Still, the second part of the music combined with the edit on this section that included way too many non-skate shots like Rowley standing on a roof with a cougar, and way too many friend cameos made this section drag on when it could have been condensed into a short and sweet little banger of a section. (Pretty much a euphemism for the entire video.) Rowley, like many older skaters who have pushed skating as far past gnarly as they could in the past has obviously gotten a little older and has partly relegated himself to low-impact ditch skating, but he still has his trademark footage of grinding down kinked things he shouldn't be grinding down and ollieing into steep things he shouldn't be ollieing into.

Louis Lopez:

You know how it sucks watching little kids skate with their small little legs and all that, but some of them just have such proper style that even though they are small they are rad to watch anyway? This is not one of those kids. This kid looks exactly like Nyjah Huston if he took his dreads out. And that's not good.

Rodrigo TX:

TX is so fucking proper. For all you 90s enthusiasts out there, you should be revering TX as your messiah for keeping it real on tech manuals, ledge combos, and the most insane lines ever. Some of the shit he does on those high marble Barcelona benches is un-fucking-believable. However, this section also contains probably the worst song in an entire video of worst songs. Some sort of techno/world-beat mash up, AKA diarrhea funneled into my ears. In another video and with another song, this section could have been legendary. (Also pretty much a euphemism for the entire video.)

Ali Boulala:

Oh yeah I forgot about this music. I also kind of like this song. I've thought the Pink Panther theme would make a good section song since my friend Bones suggested it like 10 years ago, and the Thunders-esque version of it in this section suits Boulala pretty good. I love Boulala sections, so obviously I am stoked on this one. Sometimes he's so sketchy, but when he does something proper it's fucking magic. His switch flips and switch heels are immaculate, and the kickflip he does into a mellow bank in one of the red-pants lines is so perfect. It's a real shame that this will probably be the last section we get to see from him. But I'm stoked it's a classic Boulala section with skinny ledges, big drops, and funny footage of the original punker skater gypsy pirate himself.

Bob Burnquist:

What can you say about Bob? He moved here from Brazil and landed on Anti-Hero, changed the face of vert skating as far as switch goes, still killed it at street, got an Anti-Hero tramp stamp, started riding for Hurley, started wearing yellow sunglasses while skating, quit Anti-Hero for The Firm, quit Es for Hurley shoes, did the loop switch with a gap in it, did some sort of corkscrew loop, did a natural loop, bought a farm and started growing a bunch of organic shit, built a crazy vert ramp, built a fuckin mega-ramp, jocked out Jake Brown after he almost died, grinded a rail to base jump into the grand canyon, quit Hurley shoes for I-Path, then got on Flip. Wow, that was a lot of typing.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a huge fan of megaramp, but this section is straight up mindblowing, and undoubtedly the best section in the video. Not only does he actually make me like watching megaramp, but he also blew my mind with the tricks he does into the mega quarter, and has tons of super tech 90s Colin and Danny-style regular vert ramp coping tricks. My favourite and the one that had me gasp out loud with awesomeness was the fakie flip pivot. So good.

Luan Oliveira:

When I first started seeing pictures of this Luan Oliveira kid, I wrote him off as just another little kid Brazillian who I didn't care about. But then I saw a sequence of him doing a 360 flip noseslide 270 shove it, and then saw some footage of him and realized that this kid is good. Real good. This is another section that with a different song could have really been a great section. This kid is good.

So why do I use that screen grab of him above doing a bird call if he's so good at skating? I don't know, they put it in his section twice for no apparent reason so I figured it must be really important.

Curren Caples:

You know how it sucks watching little kids skate with their small little legs and all that, but some of them just have such proper style that even though they are small they are rad to watch anyway? This IS one of those kids.

Ben Nordberg:

Who the fuck is this kid and why haven't I ever heard of him before? Super sick tranny tricks, super sick style. I think he's just flow trash, but his 5 trick section was definitely 10 times more fun to watch than Louis Lopez's.

Willow:

So is this guy fully on the team now, or is he still relegated to the Flip international team, which is obviously the most confusing fucking thing ever since the entire team is international? This guy is so insanely good that it blows my mind if he's not fully on the team. Come on Flip, a bunch of your riders are getting old, quitting, dying, in jail, or under the age of 16. This guy is one of the sickest people you have right now. Give him a fuckin board and a full section.

Rune Glifberg:

This guy... you can't talk shit on this guy. Rune made pools and vert cool when pools and vert weren't cool. Jeans and t-shirts with no pads hucking 540s in pools? So fucking sick. I wonder if he's ever done the mega-ramp and if so I wonder if he wore pads. As far as the non-skating part of the section goes, is it even worth bothering saying again that the music sucked? I mean yeah Rune used that Prodigy song in that other Flip video, and it was fucking awesome, but that was Prodigy, and that was that other Flip video. If you're gonna try it again for fuck's sake don't use some Prodigy knock off bullshit.

Tom Penny:

You know, this is going to come off as skateboard heresy, but I'm not a fan of Tom Penny. Never was. Well actually, that's not true. Back in the 411 Europe 95/Etnies High Five days, I thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But those days didn't last long, and after his first disappearance I was never really stoked on him again. The Tom Penny I'm stoked on is the clean cut, polo-buttoned-to-the-top Tom Penny like this guy here:

Definitely not stoked on the XXXXL clothed, matching beanie, shirt and shoes, drugged out whatever it is that this thing has become:

I understand that the dude is a legend, but for me legend status only lasts so long. Maybe if he had just disappeared that first time, and never came back I'd think different, but he just keeps coming back more and more fucked up than before, and to tell you the truth, I don't think his skating is backing up his legend status anymore, this most recent section in particular. I don't know, people act like he is some sort of elusive, selective, hermetic legend who strategically dips in and bows out of the skate scene for dramatic effect. I think more likely is that he's a fucked up druggie who goes on binges, gets clean and skates, and then falls off the horse again. Not my kind of legend.

But as far as the huge clothes go, I guess I can't make fun of him too much for that as really he's just going back to his roots:

Lance Mountain:

Everyone loves Lance, and I certainly am no exception. I'm stoked that to this day there are companies out there like Flip and Nike who will give legends like Lance the respect he deserves and put him full on the team instead of just sending him boxes. It's also rad to see that in the late 00's that someone can film an entire section in one session. Lance is rad as fuck.

Mark Appleyard:

You know I have to admit, I also never used to like Appleyard. I used to think his lazy style was more calculated than natural, and it bugged me. (Believe it or not I used to be even more critical than I am now.) But whereas my dislike for Penny is based on logical reasons, I admit that disliking Appleyard IS definitely skateboard heresy, because this guy is just great skateboarding right here. I was stupid. This is a great section and surprisingly the music doesn't want to make me smash my balls with a hammer just to distract my ears from hearing it. Obviously I disapprove of his usage of nollie bigspins, but I do greatly appreciate that he did a 360 flip lipslide down a handrail and came out REGULAR! I fucking hate it when people do that trick to fakie! Skateboarding is about circles, not zig-zags. Circles bros, cirrrrrcles.....

David Gonzales:

This kid is GNARRRRRRLY! He goes big time on the rails and the drops, and he wears AC/DC shirts and he throws up the horns and he spits on dead birds!!! That's SO REBELLIOUS!

Actually I'm just kidding about that first part. (Sort of, but not really.) This is a kid who I used to also hate because he was one of those little kids going big and I don't like those kids. But now the Colombian supermodel is growing up and his newer footage is a lot more palatable to watch. I think I would actually be pretty stoked on this kid if he could still grow another 5-6 inches and stopped repping AC/DC so hard. Seriously. AC/DC is the worst fucking band in the history of music. Blech.

So that's all the sections. There was lots of them huh? With the lengthy outro/credits section the video rounds out at a nice, succinct hour. Too long. If you haven't figured it out by now, I thought this video blew my balls. And this is exactly what I was talking about in the Sus Monts review about how these big name companies feel the need to Hollywood their videos by adding in a bunch of redundant, superfluous footage. This video easily could have been cut down to a 30-40 minute banger by cutting out extended and lame as fuck claymation intros, moving the shitty artsy mini-ramp/grand canyon section to the bonus features, kicking Louis Lopez off the team, and cutting out all the useless shots inbetween tricks like Rowley standing on the roof with a cougar.

Another thing I found particularly annoying is the effect that they laid over all of the footage to try and give it that ethereal, skating-in-purgatory feel. Just leave the fucking footage alone! If you're unsure if what I am speaking of, please refer to the white halo around Rune in this screen grab:

Now I'm not saying Flip shouldn't try and make the video their own, but this was just a botched attempt. Sorry had the right mix of skating and personality in it, and Really Sorry to a lesser extent was also a good video. But this newest one, especially combined with probably the worst skate video soundtrack ever, I feel is just a failed attempt from a brand that is already a sinking ship.

Now as a bonus review, Pulv sent me his thoughts on the video awhile ago entitled "Extremely Sorry (For The Shitty Soundtrack)":

So stoked to see the Shane Cross footy. Holy fuck he was crazy at skating rails. Wasn't that nosegrind down El Toro 1st try? Mein gott. Rowley's section was sick too, as expected. After watching the first 2 sections, I was pretty amped for the rest of the video, but would soon figure out that I was in for a long ride.

Worst.

Soundtrack.

Ever.

I enjoyed watching all the skating in the video, but jesus horsecock christ, I've never wanted to stab myself in the ears with hot rusty knives so much in my life. The first time I watched the video, I watched it with some non-skate homies, and ended up having to skip through 50% of the video until the credits, where the thing we wanted to see the most was what band did the music for the video so we knew for the future to avoid anything that has anything to do with "Baron". I really can't grasp why Ewan Bowman would make such a sick video such an agonizing pain to watch. I suppose with all of the claymation, the target audience for the video is 8-10 year olds, and 8-10 year olds will listen to anything.

I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the actual skateboarding in the video. I usually hate watching kids skate, with their little midget legs mob-flipping all over the place. But the Flip kids, Luan Oliveira, Curren Caples, Louie Lopez, and most notably the young charismatic Columbian rock-and-roller David Gonzales, all rip with proper style. Bob Burnquist is a fucking superhuman half-bird. Lance's still got it, and I think his 1-session-section was cool. It's always a pleasure to see some Penny and Appleyard footy. I've always been a big Rodrigo TX fan, and his section was definitely one of my favourites.

All in all, I've talked to many people about this video, and everyone says the same thing. The soundtrack was bullshit, and the claymation dragged the video out for way too long, but the skating was super sick. So, unless you're an 8 year-old boy, you'll have to watch this video on mute with your thumb on the fast-forward button. ...Now excuse me while I watch Arto's section from Sorry with the volume on blast.