Matt Gerdes has a new book out, “The Great Book of BASE.” Awesome title, and awesome video from him with some of his recent escapades. That’s right, “escapades.” The word just rolls off the tongue so nicely. Much like the drool that comes after watching the video.

God bless a bastion of journalistic excellence like the New York Daily News for leading off their story (note awesomely snarky URL) with that line. And making it seem as if his lawyer’s response to “Will Jeb try to jump any other New York landmarks?” is “He’s going to jump out of a plane and land without a parachute while wearing a squirrel suit.”

In any case, the verdict is in and Jeb Corliss is not welcome at the Empire State Building. Ever. Again.

AP: Judge bans daredevil Jeb Corliss from ever stepping foot into Empire State Building

BASE jumping.  The activity itself is often shrouded in mystery, especially for the uninitiated.  We skydivers are vaguely aware of them, but the where/when/how is usually not shared and therefore rarely witnessed.
That elusive hour, just when the hint of dawn begins to color the sky, belongs to the BASE jumpers.  At least here in Florida.  As a sub-species of the People of the Sky tribe, I think we can all agree that responsible BASE jumpers are like, totally cool.

Director Marah Strauch of Scissor Kick Films is working on putting together a non-fiction feature film, aiming to capture what it feels like to jump off a building, cliff or a bridge, and walk away alive.  She wants to capture the essence of life, of freedom, of what it feels like to defy gravity for a moment and fly.
This is a huge project and Marah and her team are currently working to raise funds to be able to complete the work – specifically they are launching a fundraiser focused on the restoration and transfer to HD of the Carl Boenish film archive.

Please visit their Kickstarter fundraising page, where you can also get more information about the project.  In Marah’s words, this film is meant to be more than a simple history of BASE, it is to be a film that will inspire BASE jumpers and non-BASE jumpers alike to follow their dreams.  And here is her brand new blog.

Best of luck to the Gravity film team, we look forward to see the final product!

The month-long Baffin Island BASE Expedition is on right now! Check out that link for a lot of cool information, including an up-to-date blog, mission info, team member profiles and photos and videos from the last trip to the island in 2008.

The team includes some pretty big names in the BASE world, including the PD Factory Team’s own Jay Moledzki. We were also really psyched to see so many chicks on the team. Yay, chicks!

Good luck to the whole expedition!

Jump4Heroes are just back from BASE jumping in Switzerland. Supporting The Soldiers’ Charity they did some proximity flying and some extreme curry eating. Similar to the extreme ironing board concept where people take an ironing board to all kind of weird and extreme places, the gauntlet has been laid down for extreme curry eating.  The Charity is looking for people to do better so, if you think you’re up for the challenge, then send them your pictures or video.

See the TV interview below and a short edit of the jumps below that.

Skydive West Virginia recently opened up and they want to know:

Lots of news covering this jump by Omar Al Hegelan and Nasser Al Neyadi, but this one is my favorite: Man Falls from Burj Dubai – Worlds Tallest Building. Like, whoops, I fell!

Enjoy the video—and particularly MSNBC’s spectacular journalistic reporting of the building’s height as 27,017′ (the smarties at MSNBC changed out the video on us and they’re correct now! – it’s 2,717′):

Some more links to fill up what remains of your Friday workday:
BBC
CBC
Daily Mail