The louder the child, the greater the reward?
My wife’s law firm hosted a fancy pants wine and dine schmooze party the other night, and I got wrangled along in order to fulfill my role as dutiful spouse. The requirements of said role are mostly minorL don’t wear boardshorts, iron your aloha shirt, smile and nod and, for god’s sake, don’t offer up any of your crazy fucking opinions about class structure, the legal system, or small town political dynamics.
Not too much of a chore.
I’m nearly deaf in my left ear, with a decent amount of hearing loss in my right. Between the background chatter of the crowd and the guy playing guitar in the corner I couldn’t understand most of what was being said.
So smile and nod and try to read facial cues. Was that a joke? I think it was. Chuckle politely.
As the night wound down and people trickled home, until only employees and close friends of the firm remained. The volume dropped to a point where I could actually understand and interact with the people around me.
All of them are very nice, though if I felt differently there’s no way I’d say so here. Despite my urging the wife tells all and sundry about BeachGrit, and at least a few of her colleagues actually read it.
And thank you very much, guys. I swear that anything unflattering is not aimed at you.
The thing about lawyers, at least the successful ones, each was, without exception, the smartest kid in school. Highly intelligent, very competitive, skilled at testing and writing and putting their opinions into words.
They love to talk shop, and after a few bottles of wine every lawyer gathering devolves into a contest to see who can shout their opinions loudest. Which I find exhausting. It’s not that I don’t understand what they’re taking about, I’ve been front row center to the missuses legal trajectory, you can’t help but pick some stuff up. I just don’t care.
I’ll run my mouth for hours, given the chance. Yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap. I love attention, I just hate competing for it. Look at the shit I write for BG. Ninety percent of it is just me talking about me. Which has become my answer when people ask the awful question, “So what do you write?”
It gives off a strong silent type vibe, which is kind of cool, but couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’ll run my mouth for hours, given the chance. Yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap. I love attention, I just hate competing for it. Look at the shit I write for BG. Ninety percent of it is just me talking about me. Which has become my answer when people ask the awful question, “So what do you write?”
Self involved essays, mostly. Such a weird answer. Definitely don’t say that to someone you just met.
Which brings us around to the point, beyond just writing about myself. Something, again, I obviously love to do.
Sometimes you just don’t belong.
It’s got nothing to do with ability, the skill to play the game.It’s rooted in desire, or anxiety, or some deep-seated personal flaw that says, “This far, no further.”
Just because you could, doesn’t mean you should, and being driven by the expectations of others can only lead to failure.
Win or lose, you’re gonna lose.
Bruce Irons has no business being granted a wildcard to Pipe.
Yes, he’s a legend, brother to another whose tale has only grown larger in the telling. But he’s never been able to succeed in the contest world. Like Dane, it’s not ability holding him back, just desire. Sure, he may be able to make a few heats, mix things up, crush a dream or two. But that’s all.
There’s an entire generation of young Pipe chargers just dying for a chance, and that spot is rightfully theirs. Bruce had his time, but blew it and chose to walk away. I’ve no idea what he’s done with his life in the following years, but he’s stayed out of jail, out of the news, so whatever’s going on it can’t be all that bad.
He should’ve turned down his shot, looked magnanimous, become an elder statesman.
But it’s too late now. Whatever it is about competition that tears him apart, he’s gotta face it again.
In the public sphere, after a huge to-do, all eyes on him.
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Never got the contest thing? Been a while, but he’s got two CT’s and an Eddie. Damn sight better than your mythical up and comers.
Rory Parker, you’re growing on me like fungus in a dank place.
Why wouldn’t they do it? Having Bruce in the draw achieves many, many things for the WSL. Most obviously it creates the perfect opportunity for Turpel and co to serve up their warmed over mawkish remembrances during Bruce’s two thirty minute stints, as well as to hint at the possibility of a Hollywood fairytale to the non-surfing audience that the WSL is so enthusiastically trying to woo. (Although presumably the WSL is actually counting on Bruce and the other wildcards to not do anything silly so they get their traditional down-to-the-wire title finish.)
Depending on where they put him it also adds a bit of superficial ballast to the wasteland of the early rounds and satisfies those who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe absolutely in the hometown hero, the brass-bollocked charger who strikes fear into the WCT’s chickenhearted [Brazilian] small wave ponces.
Finally, and most importantly, it sends a message of iron-fisted control. Having countered the brief threat of losing audience attention to the Big Wave Tour by buying it up and shunting it into a siding and having neutered the World’s Greatest Non-Contest Surfer with a few scraps thrown from the top table, the machiavellian WSL has delivered the coup de grace of luring Hawaii’s highest profile refusenik back inside the big tent while giving the impression that they had to be talked into doing so.
2016 will presumably see a penitent Bobby Martinez paraded at each WCT stop wearing a T-shirt that simply says “I Was Wrong” and then the virtuous circle will be
complete and the primacy of contest surfing will be unchallengeable.
hhahahahahahaha……..except Bruce wasn’t a refusenik, I think he was standing outside Perrows window every night tapping on the window with the begging bowl in hand. Most heart rending.
Agree 100%, put the cunt in one of those heritage heats where he belongs if he insists on being included.
An all Ho “heritage” heat would be unreal. Coco, Mason, Mike and Uncle Derek would have me glued to the screen.
Who doesn’t like a Hodown?
hang on , did Rory just somehow draw a line between the two dots of BI’s wildcard and a drunken lawyers party? Mad.
What is he? 36? BI that is, not Rory.
Whats Slatr, Parko, Fanning they’re all in the mid-late 30’s or later but the bigger point; these young pipe chargers who deserve the spot. Fuck no. That implies some kind of orderly, meritocratic system of ingestion into the sport of surfing. Don’t work like that.
It’s not a sport. It’s an entertainment, a theatre; at it’s best a colosseum and the crowd is baying for blood, either as sacrifice or from someone who can slay the beast……but not some nobody. They want a big name, a Dane, a Bruce: someone who offers a tantalising glimpse of transcendence, an escape from the screaming kids and the nagging wife, the tedium, the slow march to death.
Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
Am I right or am I right Troges?
Like the entire surf industry, that’s the way it goes. Bros broing bros. From Strider at Quik to BI at Pipe. I’d prefer to the the Moniz kids personally.
Deserve does have nothing to do with it. And I’d never claim BI doesn’t “deserve” a wildcard. He’s obviously got the skills, if not the competitive drive.
But when it comes to building a narrative the WSL is really dropping the ball. Which is a more compelling story- wealthy semi-retired pro is gifted a spot, or young charger from the rough and tumble streets of Oahu gets his shot at the brass ring? Everyone loves an underdog story, if, say, Zeke Lau,or one of the Moniz kids, makes a few heats, you’ve got an awesome tale of a young kid with a huge future. If Bruce does, literally, the same thing, it’s just another time he failed to wrap his head around competitive surfing and didn’t live up to expectations.
Funny thing about Bruce, I always feel like he must be so much older than me, ‘cuz I fucking worshipped him as a teen. But he’s actually only got a year on me. Strange stuff.
Whats a more compelling story?
I’d say former junkie of dead junkie brother maybe greatest of all time apart from Slater starring in his own redemption tale at macking death defying wave he is known to excel at trumps a couple of no-names who no-one has ever heard of and probably won’t again.
But that is theoretically speaking.
I mean the whole hoo-haa surrounding Bruce’s wildcard is indicative of the interest in him. How many articles would have been written if Zeke Lau got the wildcard. I’d guess zero and WSL would struggle to get even the lamest surf aggregation site to reprint the presser.
But will it serve the intended purpose of driving eyeballs to the webcast? My guess is not unless he gets into the quarters or beyond.
You got that arse-backwards. The strongest Bruce effect will be at the front end of the conny. With all the hype, every cunt on Earth will be tuned to see if he can cut the mustard, or whether his “deep-seated personal flaw” can be overcome. Some will be rejoicing in his failure, others hoping to see him succeed.
If he goes out early, WSL still got the eyeballs they wanted when they wanted them most. If he goes deep into the draw they get the Bonus fairytale finish, as well as the Title Race.
Gut feeling: Rnd 2 exit.
Agree to disagree. I think most expect he’ll bomb by round 2 and won’t bother to watch it. In any event, we’re taking about hundreds of people, not millions, so it’s probably much to do about nothing.
you’ll be watching Troges….
whether or not BI is there
There’ll be a special little corner of your soul ready to erupt in schadenfreude if Brucey gets less than double digits.
Likely true. But really, I’m all abut the title race – just for internet fun I hope Filipe finds a way to win it!
if the WSL has any common sense they’ll ditch the KP Commissioners Pick wildcard for next year. why does it even exist in the first place?
fucking oath
and will you fuckers stop with this bruce this bruce that bollocks. or is it the age bracket here. where’s your filler of those young pipe chargers – interviews etc.
nah. nup. nada. nothing.
it is beginning to feel like an retirement village in florida where a bunch of old white flaccid dicked ex-bros still trying to get the circle jerk to feel as good as it did in college.
…there’s a certain amount of truth in your comment, yes…But, still hard! So hard!
No, he hit the nail right on the fucking head. As much as I like hearing about Bruce and his shenanigans I really have no idea who the up and comers are from the North Shore. The Maui crew is pretty entertaining as well and they’ve upset quite a few at past Pipe contests.
Moniz brothers. Zeke. How about Kalani David? A different Florence brother?
True.
Young pipe charger interviews… “Yeah, Im like super stoked to get the wildcard, I’ve been training real hard but just going to take it one heat at time….”
Dear Mr Negatron,
There are young chargers who don’t compete, aren’t on the corporate teet, etc.They might have something interesting to say about their experiences at pipe etc. You just think they wouldn’t because they are or have been interviewed by people with the IQ of a rice bubble (not referring to Beachgrit and co here). Get a little adventurous. You have the place here to do it. I’ve seen this stuff at the fair before. Here we are, entertain us!
Lovingly yours,
A forum commentator with no life.
look to be honest Rory is BeachGrits Man on the NS… and what you are suggesting sounds like he might have to leave the house. Or at the least stop talking about himself {You read this article right?}
Also Derek blew the budget hiring the triplets for the reception desk at head office in Sydney so Rory only got a $11 phonecard this month {and a jumbo bag of peanut M&M’s} for interviews, he said he lost it in a toilet cubicle in Nicaragua whilst bumping Blow off it… but I get the feeling he wasted it crying on the phone to his wife. Sorry, Maybe next year?
kickstarter campaign?
Guarantee a Mason Ho interview would be anything but this.
‘The thing about lawyers, at least the successful ones, each was, without exception, the smartest kid in school. Highly intelligent, very competitive, skilled at testing and writing and putting their opinions into words.’
in other words, the kid who did exactly what they were told for years on end for fear of upsetting mummy, daddy and the system. highly intelligent? no. highly submissive and compliant? yes.
Bravo.
fucking lawyers. there’s a special kind of hell for them and it includes Rory’s asshole.
…said no one in the real world. Must’ve been your bad experience, nothing else…
rory’s sock puppet!
proving my point! such vitriol here in the happiest place on earth…
wow. sensitive little fella aren’t you. i’ll be gentle.
i’ll get off the rum and back onto the stout.
No please don’t! You’ll take the edge off what appears to be a budding career here for you.
Litigators are some of the most vicious, evil cunts on earth. They get paid to find ways to bend rules. Submissive and compliant? Hardly. You must only know tax lawyers.