The heat, a killer surf, and a clear shot of Hollywood's favorite shirt-eschewing leading man was a recipe for disaster this weekend. Having returned from his recent Nicaraguan escapades a proud flop-owner in search of his missing flip, Matthew McConaughey combated our city's punishing heat wave by hitting the tasty breaks of Malibu's Paradise Cove. It was there that several upstanding members of our city's paparazzo community—hoping to catch that elusive, $1 million photo of McConaughey hanging toes to the nose while clutching his newborn—were confronted, and ultimately assaulted, by an intimidating and unruly mob of board-shorted surfing henchmen. From the LAT:

"They formed a semicircle in front of his camera and they said they didn't want him to film," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore. "They got into an argument, and he indicated that he received injuries. . . . [They] took the video camera and threw it in the water." [...]

One of the group of apparent paparazzi on the x17online video appeared to argue with the surfers, saying that the beach was public property and he had every right to be there.

"This is public property, this is public property," he said.

The video then shows two beachgoers chasing one of the paparazzi, dragging him into the water and kicking him.

Two videos from the event—one from TMZ.com, above, and another at X17online.com—demonstrate the extreme lengths to which this Brotherhood of Drunk Beach Assholes Doing Righteously By Their Superstar Brah will go towards safeguarding McConaughey's access to the epic waves that sate his untamable, surf-hungry spirit. The battle has only begun.