Do you love French Bulldogs? Of course you do
but guess who has the grandest French Bulldog ever? That’s right.
Best surfer in the world (2004-2011) and his falconer and designer
girlfriend Coutney Jaedtke! Over the course of the last three
months, Ask Pam, an advice column that has covered topics as
diverse as the insignificance of life and the Solange-Jay-Z rift,
has become a much loved and much visited part of BeachGrit.com.
At first, Pam’s answers were simple keystrokes. I’d send
Courtney the emails; she’d fire back Pam’s replies. Then Pam wanted
audio. And so we set-up a little soundcloud account for Pam to
upload her answers.
And, now, thanks to the computer skills of her master Dane
Reynolds, Pam has become… animated!
You may have seen this before, here, nowhere else, but you
should see it again, for sure. And if you’d like to be
included on Ask Pam, send an audio file (voice memos on an iPhone
works perfectly) and a photo of y’self to either [email protected]
or [email protected].
I grew up on Oregon’s desolate central coast.
The weather was bleak and wet. The waves were stormy and windblown
and cold and filled with sharks and cold and freezing and windy and
very cold. I would wear two wetsuits. Two. One over the other.
After every surf I would get a large hot chocolate at Davey Jones’
Locker in Charleston and it would not warm me up so I would also
get a Hostess apple pie that I couldn’t taste. When I went and got
a physical examination my resting body temperature was two degrees
colder than normal. Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
But it seems as if cold water surfing is all the rage these
days. Freezing water surfing! Chris Burkard has, of course, made it
his thing for years and today Wired Magazine honors him
with a big feature. He tells them, “I felt like the photos I was
shooting weren’t going to outlast me. I realized that I needed to
look other places. I needed to look north and look south and find
places where there weren’t a ton of people.” Do you know why there
are not a ton of people very north and very south? Because they are
frozen to death. They cannot taste hot chocolate nor Hostess apple
pie and their resting body temperatures creep downward and they
die.
Read the whole Burkard feature here.
And stay warm, my friends.
Sometimes sitting at home in California or New
South Wales or Florida or Brazil we dream of tropical waters and
bigger waves. But how big? It is easy to mentally surf still images
and even easy to place oneself alongside a hero, dropping in to a
throbbing beast. But there is always a pleasant song overlaid,
isn’t there. And always a feeling of possibility. But, really, how
big? How big would you go and still feel fine?
This little clip by Ryan Moss takes us from dreamy to uh-oh in
Tahiti. Tahiti is magical and her waves are magical but think, as
you watch, about yourself here. In which minute would you tap out?
One? Two? Three? Me? I’m out after the first wave. But what a wave
it would be!
I’m more than willing to admit that from the
outside, Makua Rothman is more of a man than I am. (Though
I’m fairly certain the arbitrariness of fate is responsible—I was
born in Florida, a gentle, pacifist, mailman’s son; Makua is North
Shore royalty.)
Makua charges. Pipe, Chopes, Jaws, shitty, massive Chile,
freezing cold Oregon. He goes for it. He sees what he wants and he
takes it. And he’s won most every award a Big Wave Pro Surfer can
win. Billabong XXL’s! the first WSL Big Wave World Tour
Champion!
And doesn’t this make him deserving of a coveted Teen Choice
Award? One of those amazing surfboards, the history of which was
documented beautifully by surfing’s scrappiest scribe, Lewis
Samuels? (here)
Today a press release arrived in my inbox, penned by his media
contact Klint Briney, titled “TEEN CHOICE 2015: MAKE PRO SURFER
MAKUA ROTHMAN CHOICE MALE ATHLETE. Big Wave Tour World Champion
Rothman Yearning For Choice Male Athlete Nomination”
The release went:
Hawaiian Professional Surfer and the #1 surfer in the world
as crowned by the World Surf League, Makua Rothman is longing for a
coveted TEEN CHOICE Surfboard Award as FOX has opened up requests
for nominees in various categories, including Choice Male Athlete.
The first step is getting Rothman nominated in the
category.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Teen Choice and win a
Surfboard,” said Rothman. “I mean, I surf for a living, so it’s
only fitting to be apart of Teen Choice, right. I’d truly be
honored to just attend. I’m hoping the surfing community rallies
around us to continue to push our sport even further…”
Let’s get him there! I am going on Twitter right now and casting
my vote like this:
My #TeenChoice nominee for #ChoiceMaleAthlete is world #1 Surfer
@MakuaRothmanhttp://www.teenchoice.com/nominate@TeenChoiceFOX
I suggest you cut and paste and do the same. I strongly suggest
it.
I’m not proud of it, but I was in more than my
fair share of fights when I was younger. If you’d asked me then I’d
have sworn they were all justified, but if I’m being honest it was
really all because I had a chip on my shoulder and pubescent levels
of testosterone coursing through my veins. And also because I was a
greasy little punk and no women would have sex with me.
In the decade and a half since I’ve only hit someone twice. The
first time was an unfortunate mishap at a baby shower that I won’t
delve into right now. The second involved me squaring off with the
senior partner of my wife’s law firm in a Honolulu parking lot. I
won that one, but the dude was in his sixties, so I feel like it
deserves an asterisk.
On a related note, did you know you don’t have to hit an old man
very hard to hurt him pretty badly?
While I’m not an advocate of using violence to solve problems, I
do think that, sometimes, not often, you’re justified in delivery a
stiff right to the center of someone’s big stupid mug. And I do
enjoy watching other people fight, especially over surfing. It’s
just such a stupid thing to come to blows over, watching two guys
bash on each other over a totally inconsequential part of life puts
a huge smile on my face.
El Porto is such a garbage spot. A shitty closeout 364 days a
year, home to worst ten million freaks, boomers, egos, and assholes
that LA has to offer. I just love how the guy throws his nice white
…Lost on the ground before they go at it like two dudes who’ve
watched a ton of UFC but never actually tried to translate their
sweet mental karate into action.
Getting mad at a little kid is such wasted effort. The little
shit can run his mouth at you, even take a swing at you, and
there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Because, if you try,
Richie Collins is gonna come flying out of nowhere and kick your
ass!
I take back what I wrote earlier about surfing always being a
stupid thing to fight over. It’s a little more nuanced than that.
For instance, I feel like Nathan Fletcher’s reaction in this clip
is totally reasonable.
Thank the good lord for giving everyone video cameras, otherwise
I’d never have seen a guy come pretty close to drowning a dude
while two foot mush crumbles softly in the background.
There’s a moment in here when he realizes, “Oh shit, I’m way too
old for this to end well for me.”
Remember, keep your chin down and your hands up and, until next
time, here’s an old man falling down an escalator.
