In addition to the amazing accordion kid (having lived on Detroit’s Catholic-Polish-influenced east side, I love the accordion), here’s some more terrific eye candy to take one’s eyes off the criminal government for at least ten minutes. I’ve had some correspondences with Yassine Ouhalil, because of my interest in outdoor adventure sports. He’s a photographer with a cinematography background who directed the film, “Arctic Surf.” Eddie Bauer approached him to help out with the Arctic Surf expedition and outfitted the group with their new line of gear called First Ascent. The team consisted of some pro surfers from California (Pat Millin, Christian Wach and Cyrus Sutton) as well as a globe-trotting free surfer from Australia named Matt Whitehead. They spent over 32 days scouring the coastline of Northern Norway and Russia, along the Barents sea, around 1300 miles from the North Pole. They used state of-the-art heating wetsuits to survive the frigid waters. Yassine writes, “The clip really captures the drama of the landscape and the hostility of the environment. I really wanted to make an authentic depiction of what it was like trying to surf there.” Watch it in high definition – it’s a beautiful film. It was filmed with a DSLR (the Canon 5D Mark II Stills Camera with HD video capability) and edited with Apple’s iMovie. The adventure was also blogged on the First Ascent blog.

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