Revealed: The WSL’s New Commentator! (She’s
cute!)
By Derek Rielly
Meet the World Surf League's highly credentialed
new announcer, Chelsea Cannell…
There’s a new face on the beach at Snapper Rocks but
totally unfamiliar! At least to the non-American.
In brief, Chelsea Cannell is an almost-six-foot tall,
33-year-old television reporter from Los Angeles.
Among her many achievements, she has “hosted Dick Clarks New
Years Rockin’ Eve backstage interviews with the performers, covered
the BCS National Championship game for NCAA.com, appeared in a skit
for ‘attack of the show’ and Host of a LIVE nationally syndicated
morning Program geared at a younger Demo on E!”
And she comes from television royalty! Her pops Stephen J.
Cannell was an Emmy award winning producer of dozens of television
series including The A-Team and 21 Jump
Street.
Jez Flores: “There’s nothing left to eat
but surfers!”
By Derek Rielly
Sharks cost Reunion Island $36 million, says new
report…
Tourists getting their legs bitten off and subsequently
dying on the beach is ruining tourism on that Indian
Ocean-Franco paradise, Reunion Island. Y’ain’t seen anything like
this Creole version of Tahiti, with its volcano and reef passes and
exceptional boulangeries.
And the people! Some dark, some light, most possessing some
beguiling physical characterstic, blue eyes popping out of choco
skin, for instance.
But ever since a marine sanctuary was created in 2007, the bull
sharks have taken hold of the ocean.
“From generation to generation there were always fishermen and
then people from overseas, environmentalists, came and they stopped
fishing in a 10-kilometre area where all the shark attacks are now
happening,” explains the Reunion-born surfer Jeremy Flores. “That
was eight years ago. By the time they stopped fishing the sharks
didn’t have anything to fear anymore so they started coming and now
it’s dead territory. They ate everything. There is no more life.
There is no more turtles. There is no more fish. No more nothing.
No more reef sharks. Because the bull sharks have eaten everything.
And now, because there’s nothing left to eat, it’s the surfers”
And according to a report submitted to the Department for the
Environment, Physical Planning and Housing (IEB), the island has
lost $US36 million in tourism over the past three years.
Money? Yeah, you can wear it if it starts to improve.
It isn’t improving and it it won’t.
I mean, who wants to go to Reunion Island when swimmers, surfers
and divers are being killed metres from the shore?
Does there come a point when sharks, in this case
the bouldogue, are recognised as fish and not
some mystical super creature? And are treated accordingly? ie.
served as delicious steaks in beachfront restaurants.
Or is it something else? Like waterskiing? Or……………………
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Laird Hamilton caught mocking
humility!
By Chas Smith
And saving the English language!
The Ultimate Waterman (a
competition in New Zealand. Read here!) is, clearly dumb, as is
Laird’s hydrofoil surfboard, but I must say, as cynical as I am, it
might maybe maybe look cool if he wasn’t wearing three bulletproof
vests underneath his teal sweatshirt.
In any case, the Ultimate Waterman is dumb. But the best part of
this whole video clip comes at minute 1:17 when Laird says, “Well
you know for me when I look at the ultimate waterman…the ultimate
waterman is…is…gonna be…uhhhhh humble.” And then he goes on a
cackling spree. He cackles like an evil step-mother at the massive
irony of using the word “humble” to describe anything he does. And,
if I’m going to keep being honest, I love it!
Athletes have been using the word “humble” to describe their
super humanity for so long that it has just become a part of the
post-event interview process. “Ohhhhh that victory really humbled
me…” “It humbles me to win the most valuable player award…” “I’m
humbled by being the best…” It is said so often, and so straight
faced, that the very word has lost any real meaning. But Laird
Hamilton correctly realizes the satirical nature of a man such as
himself using a word like “humble” in any context. And it is
amazing.
Thank you Laird for being a total dick. You are doing your small
part to save the English language from the likes of Russell Wilson
and Roger Federer and Sally Pearson. Humble.
CackleCackleCackleCackleCackleCackle.
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Wait! That thing about White Men Owning the
World?
By Rory Parker
It ain't true, baby!
As a frequent contributor to
BeachGrit, I was sickened to find myself
associated with the left-wing apologist propaganda posted in the
form of Beau Andrews’s recent piece, “White Men Rule the
World.”
Oh yes, “White men rule the world,” says the wide-eyed child,
half a semester into his first gender studies class and positive he
knows it all.
“The books and teachers say I’m bad because of how I was born,
never mind that I’ve no real life experience to draw from in order
to make an informed judgment. Please, please, I need to know how to
atone for the white man’s sins! There’s no one who can better tell
everyone how to live than some self-hating, cloistered intellectual
type!”
Guess again son. Let me tell you how hard it really is to make
it in this world.
“You grew up relatively well off, were told you could do
anything, got a good education and most likely, got a decent paying
job. “
I’ll have you know that my wife works her fingers to the bone to
earn my money. She slaves away in the local courthouse from before
dawn ’til four-ish, dedicating her life to putting away the worst
that society has to offer, unrepentant criminals who glory in their
defiance of the compact we call society.
I can hear you now, “But the system is biased. Mandatory jail
time and exorbitant fines for minor offenses only serves to create
situations in which people become trapped in the system due to bad
luck and lack of financial resources.” Well, then I guess you’d be
okay living in a world where forgetting to renew your car insurance
or being too busy to replace a lost drivers license is no big deal.
Where maniacs driving ten miles over the speed limit on isolated
country back roads is just fine and dandy. Where law flouting
minorities run rough shod over what makes America great – its
ability to enact and apply bureaucratic requirements and
consistently punish those who run afoul of them.
“…no one picked on you because of your race, gender or
sexuality.”
Mr Andrews has obviously never encountered the racism
rampant in our beloved Hawaiian islands. The word haole is dropped
without a second thought on a regular occasion, perpetrators
completely unaware of the pain that it causes. To be constantly
identified and judged based on the color of your skin is an
agonizing experience, a daily reminder of your outsider status.
The questions, “How are you enjoying your trip?” and “Where are
you visiting from?” spill from smiling mouths, secure in their
belief that I must be a tourist interloper. Fleece me and
send me home, that’s all they really want to do. Guess what? I live
here. Just because I choose to dress in an aloha shirt and
khaki shorts doesn’t make me some second class citizen. I’m a human
being, I don’t deserve to be judged solely on my skin tone and
fashion sense.
Let’s not forget the joy of eating out. All I want is some spicy
ahi poke, a piece of fried chicken, and two scoops of white rice
without being reminded of my inferior social status. Yet, every
time, there’s the fork. The three guys in front of me get
chopsticks, the lady behind too. But every time I go to pay,
there’s that plastic fucking fork. I know how to use chopsticks,
damnit! This is exactly what Bill Cosby meant when he
talked about the subtle racism of lowered expectations.
Then there’s being forced to show identification in order to get
a kama’aina discount… I can’t even begin to explain how the
humiliation eats at your soul.
“…if you are dark skinned, stand with a wider stance,
and don’t speak English well (in short, you are Brazilian), then
you are likely to be vilified with a religious fervour
[sic].”
Oh, how they are vilified! Forced to suckle the sweet
teat of government assistance, qualifying for low-cost insurance
coverage, being gifted section 8 housing in the finest of
neighborhoods; that sure sounds terrible. Meanwhile I sit, an
underemployed freelance writer who doesn’t get a dime, ostracized
by the very system my wife pays into because we “earn enough to
support a family of four.” Everything we have, we earned. We pulled
ourselves up by the proverbial bootstraps, fighting our way out of
a Southern California beach suburb, only a dream and sheer
determination and parents who paid off our student loans to make it
possible.
Your domination is under siege, so make the most of it
while you can.
My domain is under siege. There was a time when this
country was great, when true men ruled the roost and the rest of
the world knew to heed our demands or be punished. It was an age
when the color of your skin didn’t matter, when anyone could
achieve to the utmost of their potential. Life was a sink or swim
proposition, the cream rose while the worthless masses supported
the great.
We live in an era of excuses, where mollycoddled degenerates
bemoan a fate created by their own bad decisions and lack of drive.
I say to them, stop looking for a hand out, start looking to your
betters. They are the stewards who will lead you to a brighter
tomorrow.
And stop blaming my success on the color of my skin. My every
day is a struggle and no one could possibly have it any harder than
me.