Red Bull GmbH Made The New Transworld Video So American Media Inc. Didn’t Have To

Here he is, teeth beared on the cover of Men’s Journal, Mark Wahlberg, née Marky of the Funky Bunch, sliding now into your brick-n-mortar mailbox with offers. Those biceps, and how to get them. He knows the names of 101 lust-worthy gifts and where they can be bought. LSD, and how it can cure depression. Strong and rich, yet Mark Wahlberg soon will disappear to make way for next month’s displacer, usurper of children’s dreams, as the Transworld subscription that once was runs its course beneath these dominant males’ steely, practiced gaze. So it goes.

Elsewhere, the TWS spirit remains carried forward, if under different corporate stewardship and alternate projects. While www.skateboarding.com continues to redirect toward the remaining staff’s video efforts and daily aggregations, Austrian beverage conglomerate Red Bull GmbH this week effectively released the new Transworld video. Recognizing a gaping hole once filled on an annual basis with slickly produced full-lengths staffed by pro-level grab bags, Red Bull’s ‘You Good?’ release proffers a 2019-friendly runtime while rejecting most current video conventions to throw back toward Transworld’s ’00s video heyday: A trip hop-powered opening montage, copious amounts of slow-mo, ‘retro film effects,’ a title you may well find yourself hollering to your own bros.

With ‘You Good?,’ Red Bull’s controllers seem comfortable flexing in ways accessible to soda manufacturers but not many others in the enthusiastic yet money-poor realm that is skateboarding in 2019. Pristine spots are ripped across multiple hemispheres by power pros, at all times uniformed in Red Bull-logoed headwears, at some times leisurely guzzling from the famed skinny cans — as you do. Husky Rick-flipper Jamie Foy hauls a 5-0 grind over the back and down a kinked rail, and gaps out to a ferocious frontside bluntslide, before tagging in Zion Wright for a long-spun cab over a Barcelona bannister and an immaculate frontside 180 to backside nosegrind down a different one — in this video, he is the lone Red Buller to (briefly) go hatless via a boosted McTwist. ‘Bust or Bail’ loud-armer Alex Midler exhibits his uncanny ability to take awful slams and go up against Jamie Foy for pointer grind distance, and his nailbiting ender builds on Silas Baxter Neal’s own TWS-closer from six years back.

Powered by caffeine and the courage of a cartoon ox with nothing left to lose, Red Bull wraps its carbonated hooves around a moment that would seem to favor the TWS video-making model of old. Adulting and wellness trends, the thrill of the SOTY chase and battery-powered massage pistols now make it possible and even obligatory for yung’n’hungry pros to record multiple video parts in the course of a calendar year. This has helped to fuel the full-length video resurgence as one-off parts quickly pile up and tumble down the timeline, while all the good one- or two-word names get used up. Look no further than Chris Colbourn’s criminally overlooked ‘Peace’ part earlier this year, shoveled off into the ether last January, which one could imagine closing a Transworld-style vid in years past.

Should Red Bull go ahead and expand their print media empire beyond its Red Bulletin title by launching its own Transworld-tributized monthly magazine? By requiring teamriders to wear branded hats — generally speaking an optional fashion accessory — in every clip, is Red Bull subliminally flexing on makers of shoes — which pretty much always must be worn unless you’re Jamie Thomas or Bob Burnquist? Could headwear-compulsory Red Bull sponsorships simultaneously preserve both the finances and vanity of prematurely balding pros?

Tags: 'Gief, Alex Midler, branded headwears, Bust O Bail, hubbas, Jamie Foy, McTwistin', Men's Journal, pointer grind, Red Bull, Riders on the Storm, Tha Dreams of Children, Tha Red Bulletin, the Funky Bunch that were, The Knights Who Say Née, Transworld Skateboarding, You Good?, Zion Wright