Strider Wasilewski, the owner of the greatest tits that
ever lived! Sea Bass ain't even game to look at those attack
dogs!
History: The hottest surf words!
By Chas Smith
Attack dog tits! Chopes! Club Sandwich! Seven-mile
miracle! Who coined 'em?
You talk like a surfer don’t you? Of course! We
all do! Because we are!
We say things like punt, froth, tail waft, stab, tube, tub,
slash, carve, nip and tuck. We go to places named Chopes, the
Superbank, the Seven Mile Miracle. And we look, longingly, at hot,
hot attack dog tits.
But where did these words come from? They were not etched into
stone from God’s mouth by Moses’s hand, if you can believe. They
were, instead, coined by surf writers! So let’s give them their
credit!
Matt Warshaw: Seven Mile Miracle
Our beloved historian used it as the title of a story and I
don’t know if a finer turn of phase has ever been.
Vaughn Blakey: Punt, froth, tail waft
Where would we be if we couldn’t say punt? Air? Did you see that
air? That was a nice air? Boring! But not anymore. What a punt! I
am sooooo frothing!
Sam McIntosh: Chopes
Dear Sam elevated Teahupo’o to legendary status by dubbing it a
thing that western tongues can utter.
Derek Rielly: Club sandwich, Superbank, Strider
Wasilewski’s attack dog tits
Derek coined “superbank” referring to that man-made wonder wave
that once stretched from Snapper to Cairns, though he first
named it “supabank” because “supa” was cool back then.
When I die, writes Rory Parker, I want you to avenge
me, keep cock away from my wife, encase me in resin (to scare
children), send pointless bouquets and… clone me.
Confession: If I Die Tomorrow
By Rory Parker
Please force celibacy on my wife and encase me in
resin to scare children…
Off to Oahu tomorrow morning for yet another damn ear
surgery. Oof, no fun. But I’ve been here before,
recovery’s not a problem, just some pain and patience and before
you know it everything is a-okay.
I’m going under general anesthesia though, and I hate that shit.
Plenty of people don’t wake up, and that’s not how I want to go
out.
“Count backwards from ten…” Transition to endless nothing.
In the event that I don’t wake up, that an out-patient procedure
proves to be my pathetic undoing, I’d like to leave behind my final
requests.
We’ve talked it over, and I’ve myself very clear that she is NOT
to move on with her life. No remarriage, no finding solace in
another’s arms. In her wedding vows she swore to throw herself on
my funeral pyre so she could continue to serve me in Valhalla
(that’s what you get when you make me write them for you), but I
know she won’t.
Not that I’ll know if you follow through. If there is an
afterlife (there isn’t) I’ll be too busy haunting everyone who’s
ever wronged me (I keep a list!) to make sure my wishes are
followed
Avenge me!
Don’t worry about who deserves what, just deliver some good old
fashioned frontier justice on my behalf. I’m talking post French
revolution Reign of Terror vibe. Hold everyone accountable,
regardless of culpability.
Make sure my wife remains celibate
We’ve talked it over, and I’ve myself very clear that she is NOT
to move on with her life. No remarriage, no finding solace in
another’s arms. In her wedding vows she swore to throw herself on
my funeral pyre so she could continue to serve me in Valhalla
(that’s what you get when you make me write them for you), but I
know she won’t. Cuz Valhalla ain’t real, and if it were I’m damn
sure dying on an operating table wouldn’t get you there.
Don’t donate in my name
Send flowers. They’re wasteful, pointless, and won’t mean a
thing to the rotting hunk of meat that previously contained my
identity. And I think that’s kind of funny.
Speaking of that hunk of meat…
Disposal of corpse
I’d like my former body to be arranged in a suitably scary
position, sealed in a large block of resin, and used to scare
children. Like, kid won’t eat his broccoli? That’s two hours locked
in a closet with Rory.
Everyone wants to leave a legacy, an entire generation of
emotionally scarred children should be mine.
Clone me
I know the technology doesn’t exist, yet. But, when it does, I’d
like a few dozen Rorys grown in a lab, then pitted against each
other in a winner-take-all death match. This will create a sort of
super-me, bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, more cunning, which
will then overthrow the galactic empire and take control of spice
mining operations on Arrakis.
You can likely find some usable DNA in one of the crusty socks
under my bed that the wife is always telling me to clean up because
“they’re fucking disgusting.”
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Surfer Magazine fan enjoying the latest edition. |
Photo: Matt Warshaw
Rumor: Surfer drops Mag!
By Chas Smith
And it only costs $40,000.00!
Your favorite elderly gentleman’s leisure
lifestyle publication is, allegedly, going to have a radical
make-over! That’s right, the surfermag.com come that you
know and love is on its way to becoming……drumroll…..just
surfer.com! And that bit of cosmetic surgery cost, maybe,
a mere $40,000.00!
Where Surfer came up with $40,000.00 is one very good
question but why they did not own surfer.com to begin with
in the first place is maybe a better one. The magazine is our grand
dame, in existence since 1960, long before the Internet was a
twinkle in Al Gore’s eye. Did maybe Steve Hawk or Sam George,
editors in the 1990s and early 2000s think that the World Wide Web
was a silly fad or did they like the trendy sounding mag
tail that was trendy in the mid-2000s but now clearly dated?
Who can ever say, but what is more, how will the new
surfer.com look? Will it feature an online store selling
comfort boardshorts and Old Guys Rule t-shirts? Will it host a
forum where grumpy octogenarians can complain about never
being respected/listened to/cared about? Oh wait! That’s already
there! forum.surfermag.com!
Will the print magazine disappear entirely? And is the squatter
who owned surfer.com going to use his $40,000.00 to build
a real life Star Wars Speeder Bike and visit Comic-Con for the
first time? So many questions! Hopefully answers coming soon and,
as always, we’ll keep you up to date.
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How to: Live with Fear!
By Rory Parker
…and ignore that pussy little voice inside your
head…
I spend a good portion of my life afraid. It’s
a part of me I try to ignore, that little pussy voice that says,
“Be careful, you could get hurt, maybe die.”
But it’s always there in the background, whispering, chipping
away at my self confidence, trying to turn me into a play-it-safe
loser who lives forever.
But, you know, there’s fear, then there’s Fear. The real deal,
capital letter and all. That one’s not so typical. The last time
that old friend visited was during the triple hurricane heaven/hell
swell we got hammered by this past summer. I’d been cleared to surf
two weeks prior, after two years of an almost totally sedentary
life.
I spent the first day of the swell watching triple-overhead
perfection fire while hating myself for being a coward. Couldn’t
handle it two days in a row. Woke up the next morning, waxed up,
rolled the dice, and got very lucky paddling out. Timed it right,
threaded the needle into the lineup.
Ruined a shoulder at Pipe (not on a huge day), thought of waving
for help, put my head down and swam in one armed. Which was the
right decision, since I’m obviously not dead. I think. Let’s not go
down that rabbit hole.
For the majority of my life I’ve felt confident that there was
almost no situation in the ocean when I couldn’t self-rescue. I’ve
never had a lifeguard drag my ass up the beach, which is a point of
personal pride.
And I could swim for forever. Broken leash, broken board, no big
deal. Just ride the current, take your beatings, let it push you to
the beach. Ruined a shoulder at Pipe (not on a huge day), thought
of waving for help, put my head down and swam in one armed. Which
was the right decision, since I’m obviously not dead. I think.
Let’s not go down that rabbit hole.
That day, though, as I felt the water each set pushed in get
sucked back up the point and out the sea I realized I was being an
idiot. Wave-riding skill aside, if I found myself in trouble, I was
gonna really be in Trouble. Again, capital letter stuff.
I caught three waves over about five hours, drug my exhausted
ass up the beach, made it home before the adrenaline dump, and
proceeded to get very, very, drunk.
It’s supposed to get big today. Very Big. Paddling out into a
rising swell is one of the things that gives me the capital
“F.”
How big? How fast? Surf reports are more or less non-existent
for Kauai, which is a good thing. But I haven’t lived here nearly
long enough to intuit what certain swell angles will do, how each
little hunk of reef is going to react to the Pacific Ocean heaving
massive amounts of energy at our shores.
It can go from two feet to twenty in the course of an hour out
here, so my palms are sweating and my heart is racing and the wind
is starting to blow and I secretly hope it turns on so hard I have
an excuse to stay dry.
I’ve been putting in the hours, trying to hammer my body back
into shape. I’m not there yet, but I think I’m close enough.
It just sucks that you can’t be sure ’til you’ve been
tested.
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Photo Steve Sherman/@tsherms/Photo Union
Worker
Part Two: Pre-Pipe Power Rankings!
By Longtom
Brutal!
“Board I break you!”
Photo Steve Sherman/@tsherms/Photo Union Worker
12. Filipe Toledo
The most to lose by winning? A queer concept
that seems to have acquired a certain orthodox authority amongst a
large portion of the fan base. The thinking is that due to the
scoreless heat at small Chopes in round five, Filipe has
abandoned any claim to a credible Title.
What to with that fact. Riot in the streets if he wins?
Appreciate the greatest small-wave surfer alive or dead if he does
manage to huck the ledge at Pipe? It’s galling for grizzled Gen
X’ers and decaying baby boomers (Hi Carroll, Warshaw!) to have Dad
(a far more virile one at that) on the beach whistling at
Filipe like he was starring in the U12’s soccer match. It’s a
reminder of their own bitter disappointments and failures, an
imposition of their own toxic aura. Such is life.
13. Miggy Pupo
When the critic stabs his subject he stabs
himself. But behind the blackest heart of the eternal
cynic lurks a latent desire to affirm, to praise, to offer the
eternal Yes.
I come to praise Miggy Pupo. Best goofyfoot stylist on tour.
Smoother than silk. Could body double for Lopez or some other slim
hipped matador, such as Antonio Ordonez, described so
memorably by Hemingway in The Dangerous Summer.
What would Hemingway say about Poops? That he surfs purely, with
respect and grace, that his surfing tightens the throat and makes
the eyes dim? Why is Miggy Poops stranded in the back half of the
ratings like a refugee? Someone maybe able to enlighten us all in
the comments.
Fixed his grill, can surf Pipe.
14. Wilko
Photo Steve Sherman/@tsherms/Photo Union
Worker
Despite the laggardly ratings performance this year
Wilko would/should be one of the first picked for a Top 16
Tour. When he’s on, his backhand is best on Tour, relying on an
ascending series of rhythmical high hooks that produce an emotional
response like listening to the best music.
With Tom Curren, he was the best in the lineup at J-Bay last
year. Hamstrung by format, when his rhythm breaks down he falls. A
lot. Evolution is not a straight line of progression. It has its
backwaters, cul de sacs and reversals.
Wilko has been stranded in one of those murky swamps. Like the
test pilot Chuck Yeager in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff he
needs to find a Plan B, C, D, whatever it takes to find something
that works when the plane is in a flat spin, when the rhythm breaks
down. Something that puts him back into pushing the envelope of
performance surfing.
He’s too good to be a backmarker. A final placing at Sunset is a
step in the right direction.
15. Nat Young
Where to place this man in historical context?
It’s a challenge. I think of California I think of stylists,
products of an extended continental shelf; slow predictable waves,
products of far off storms, counter-culture, Nixon, American
post-war affluence,Vietnam, Steinbeck.
I think of Ryan Burch, Tom Curren, Joni Mitchell, whom Nat
Young’s Mum is a doppelganger for.
Maybe we need to go as far back as Jim Hogan to parse a similar
anti-stylist from the California milieu. What he lacks in style he
makes up for in tow-headed apple pie grit. When the Box gave him a
bloody nose he could’ve indulged in a Gabby Medina sulk but he
paddled out and went deeper and harder.
Christ-almighty, though, couldn’t a coach, Gerlach maybe?, do
something about the stink from that style? It crosses Oceans,
transcends webcasts.
16. J.Flo
Joseph Conrad from Lord Jim, where the
narrator meets a French Naval Lieutenant:
“The honour, the honour, monsieur! The honour.…
that is real, that is! And what life may be worth when the honour
is gone. I can offer no opinion. I can offer no opinion because,
monsieur, I know nothing of it.”
Isn’t that French Lieutenant just Jez to a tee? It’s totally,
completely him, a hundred years ago! The little Frenchman surfing
for honour. The crazy attempt at a Teahupoo bomb on the Code Red
year, the victory in the helmet this year. The sense of honour is
real.
Jeremy looks horrifically dated with his club sandwich
trick but when it’s heaving he’s the man. And Pipe will be
heaving.
17. Wiggoly Dantas
Came on Tour like a fully formed Minotaur
emerging from the labyrinth of the QS and has savaged a few
reputations and hastened retirement plans, hopefully. Gnarly
backhand, forehand charger. Five-nin, 165lbs is the ultimate
height and weight for a pro surfer.
18. Kolohe Andino
Do androids dream of electric sheep? Does
Kolohe Andino dream in beige? Does he dream at all? Or is his inner
world so suffocated by the psychic refuse of Snips and Big Daddy
Andino that there ain’t no room to dream.
Would his life, his ranking be improved by an inner life, by
reading a book? Probably, possibly, maybe. We recommend the Art
of War by Sun Tzu, or Target Practise: Why success on the
QS doesn’t predict results on CT , by Rory Parker (as yet
unwritten).
Is Kolohe the ultimate product of technological capital, a
“dispersed, decentred network of libinidal attachments”, with every
move predictable, over choreographed, lacking in emotional and
aesthetic impact.
What’s that? An objection from the back of the room? Say it
then: “Kolohe is flesh and blood, just like you and me.”
To which I say, prove it.
Kolohe won’t disgrace himself at Pipe, defeat will be
honourable, as befitting the stature of his entourage. But it will
be early.
19. Josh Kerr
Photo Steve Sherman/@tsherms/Photo Union
Worker
Everyone has their kink. Mine is philosophy,
particularly the dark vision of John Gray, although I’m partial to
the German perspectivists. I’m a bum, and it does no harm, so I
indulge whenever I get the chance. Which isn’t that often seeing as
I’m already holding down a surfing and fishing habit and trying to
raise a family. Make an honest living. Just like Josh
Kerr.
For some reason, I find Josh’s heats as boring as batshit and a
great time to read up on some John Gray doom and gloom. Last time
Josh surfed I indulged in this pithy Gray-ism: “What we are
witnessing is the rediscovery of an essential truth: our freedoms
are not free-standing absolutes but fragile constructions that
remain intact only under state power.”
Take that!
Just like our freedom to enjoy public spaces and the ocean can
be taken away under the aegis of WSL edict and hired muscle. And we
love it! All your waves now belong to us!
How can it be that such a harmless and nice man, a man whose air
game is now a bit decrepit, whose rail game has always been a
sandwich short of a picnic, whose tube-riding remains state
of the art, can inspire such passion-less realism?
Reading my notes for Josh I found scribbled on the back of a
parking ticket: Stephen Hawking…rise of the robots…..AI, state
support , future shock. Alvin Toffler. Leisure.
Nup, makes no sense to me either.
20. Ricardo Christie
I’m a dreadful aesthetic and linguistic snob
for a bum who struggles to keep the bills paid. S’why New Zealand
offends me on two levels: that milky green water ( I prefer Pacific
Blue) and the ridiculous accent that makes people sound dumber than
pig farmers from Dorset.
Still, I have to admit NZ is a bastion of some kinds of
progressive thought and it makes a nice backdrop for Hollywood film
with a favourable exchange rate against the greenback.
As far as being a breeding ground for pro surfers, yeah, but
nah. You’ve got to feel sorry for Christie though. One long, lonely
unlamented year. He barely got to the dance floor let alone got the
boogie on.
Pro surfing hates an unsponsored journeyman, it offends their
sense of righteousness at a cellular level. There’s the backdoor
cuzzy bro, don’t let it hit you on the way out.
For the sake of justice, I hope Christie picks it up and belts
them over the head with it at Pipeline. For the sake of future Kiwi
hopefuls, get thee to Australia early and make whoopee with
Australian money.
Or colonise Hollywood. They love the accent there.
