So no one told you life was gonna be this way?
Surf Splendor is a wonderful podcast. It meanders, gracefully, because time does not exist on the radio and in the most recent episode hosts Scott Bass and David Lee Scales meander right into a dark and murky pit!
The two uncover a cache of the WSL secrets. You can and should listen here but the nut is this: WSL CEO Paul Speaker and WSL executive vice president/general counsel Jonathan S. Marshall both used to work for a film company called The Shooting Gallery in the late 90s early 2000s. And it was strong, robust even, but then crashed, ingloriously, because, in simple terms, the powers tried to turn a traditional film company into a new media company. Or to quote The Village Voice, “The company got away from its core business…They had a radical philosophy change from being a tightly run, fiscally conservative company that watched every dime to turning around and trying to create a vast dotcom company…In the most simplistic terms, they tried to be a dotcom and crashed like all the others.”
The company was sued and while Speaker was not listed, Mr. Marshall was. He also maybe dated Monica Lewinsky!
And what does this have to do with the WSL? It certainly seems like the powers are intent on reliving the past by trying to make professional surfing something it ain’t… A traditional sport league/event with traditional revenue structures, desks, graphics packages and offices. And if not that then a pay to view sort of thing. But will either work? Will the ocean ever consistently perform? Will the masses ever truly crave an Adriano de Souza vs Dusty Payne round 2 heat? More to the point, why does it matter? I suppose it totally doesn’t. It is just fun/stomach turning watching ex-Hollywood dotcomies come in and try to make surfing broadly understandable/palatable. It like watching Chasing Mavericks.
If you were going to create a 90s dotcom right now what would you call it? Would you rollerblade around your offices or ride a razor scooter?
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Chas, At least your making more sense this time–it does seem Speaker has some of the scam man in him–especially after his last quote where he said that where the surfers at Cloudbreak were surfing– the waves were breaking in about 2 inches of water (count them- 2 inches)–either a blatant false hood-(on his part)-or he knows pretty much nothing about surfing and waves….
Why slap them yourself when you could simply order slaps from us at Slaps.com or Falsecrack.er
We’re thrilled you like!
I just used your segway imagery in new Slater-Firewire story! Thanks for the inspiration!
…and the question remains: Would you rollerblade around your offices or ride a razor scooter?
Neither, I would kick myself around in my Aeron chair of course
Hey, this season ADS vs. Dusty would be the best R2 heat out there. Way better than the top 5 left surfing their B game while still dominating the wildcards and bottom seeds (Not ALWAYS, of course… but usually), or the inevitable “mid seed beating the pants off Brett Simpson” heat.
My true hope for the new WSL is that it crashes and burns so horrendously, with such vigorous and far reaching fallout, that the post-WSL world of pro surfing is akin to Mad Max: An anything goes, anarchic free-for-all in which pro surfers eschew all rules and regulations (and, most importantly, all crappy waves) in order to create something out of pure chaos. So basically I think what I’m describing is Globe’s, “Year Zero,” which only serves to illustrate that Joe G may be as much fortune teller as film maker.
And Noa Deane will be worshiped as the Oracle that we saw he was at Surfer Poll.
Slaps.com was always my drea. You can pay someone to go slap a person who wronged you…
It is genius. I will buy the partner site falsecrack.us
I will come work for you because I love a good sucker punch
Also need to pick up the site under the Eritrean top level domain, so it would be falsecrack.er
So we would have Slaps.com, falsecrack.us, falsecrack.er and slap.er
amazing. amazing. amazing.