Bad Santa
Santa: You got some lip on you midget. Rory: Yeah? Well these lips were on your wife's pussy last night. Why don't you dust that thing off once in a while? Asshole!

Inspired: BeachGrit’s Xmas Gift Guide!

What do you buy the godless heathen? A Kendo practice sword and The History of Surfing!

We don’t celebrate Christmas in my house. The wife and I are godless heathens, so dedicating a day to some Jewish kid’s birth doesn’t make much sense. And we’ve got no children, so we don’t have to submit to pageantry just so our little one fits in with his peers.

Plus, Christmas trees are insane fucking fire hazards. Seriously, I can’t believe people merrily co-exist with a sap filled firebomb for weeks each year.

We do celebrate Chronica which, despite appearances, is not a portmanteau of Christmas and Hanukkah. It’s a non-denominational way to obliquely threaten your nearest and dearest.

I’ll write more about it in the near future. Most likely on a day, like today, that I don’t have any good ideas.

Yesterday I saw that The Inertia ran a “gifts for surfers” article and realized, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea.” Tons of people are probably searching that term, why not steal the idea, and a few clicks along with it? And maybe Mr Rielly can set up an Amazon affiliate account so we can monetize the thing.

A knife: Knives are both useful and dangerous, which makes them the ultimate gift for pretty much everyone. Whether you need to slice some cheese, open a beer, or stab a pesky hobo, if you’ve got a trusty blade on you you’re a-okay.

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I’m a big fan of both Kershaw and Spyderco brand knives. Their mid range offerings are sturdy, affordable, and set up for neat-o one handed opening.

I’ve got, literally, a drawer jam packed with knives, though my favorite, and the one I carry most often, is the Kershaw Blur. It’s heavy duty, and the sweet SpeedSafe tech means it’s basically a switchblade, while skirting laws that make switchblades illegal.

Don’t expect the cops to know that, though. It’ll still get you ticketed, and if you’re black in America, it’ll get you shot.

Mfused Vapor Oil: I’ve got a bunch of these things rattling around my house right now, and I really dig ’em. As far as drug use goes, it makes me feel like I’m in the future. My vape pen thing plugs into my computer to charge, then these viscous black tubes screw into the top.

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It’s like I’m doing some weird future drug out of Robocop or something. All the new terms for smoking weed really feed into that too.

I’m not “taking a bong hit” anymore, I’m “vaping oil.”

There’s a bunch of different types, variously for pain, or providing different highs, though I can’t really tell the difference. Marijuana culture has long been resembling wine dorks with its evaluation of the drug’s effects, unless you’re really into it I think it’s pretty much all the same.

Make no mistake, though. Even if you’re a daily smoker, like me, these guys will leave you on the floor retarded.

Kendo practice swords: Nothing says “Merry Christmas” as much as getting shit-can wasted on high octane eggnog and bashing the hell out of your friends with a set of martial arts practice swords. They won’t break bones, but they definitely leave bruises, and will raise a welt faster than your drunken stepfather the day after grades come home.

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Cressi Freedive fins: Dealing with flat spells ain’t so bad once you realize that there’s a whole ‘nother world lurking below the surface. Tons of cool shit to see, to kill, to eat.

The only problem, freediving ranks up there with golf and snowboarding as a sport mostly enjoyed by privileged white people with money to burn. So the gear is all ridiculously overpriced, and separating the useful from the merely cool-looking takes a ton of time and money.

Even though I’m a total gear whore when it comes to diving, my plastic Cressis are the fins I use most often. They’re durable, cheap-ish, and work really well. People will tell you that you can’t dive deep with them, but I’ve never had a problem.

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A subscription to Surfline: The perfect way to say “I felt obligated to buy you a gift but I didn’t want to put any effort into thinking about it so I wasted my money on a product that is just as accurate as a million totally free online options.”

The History of Surfing by Matt Warshaw: I went totally digital with my reading material a few years back, and over the course of various moves, threw away almost every book and magazine I owned.

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Why lug around a library when you can pirate pretty much everything ever written?

The few physical print copies I held onto are ones that actually mean something to me. In a box in my closet I’ve got a first print Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the Rolling Stone issues), my collection of Big Brother magazines, a Farside collection, and Warshaw’s tome on surfing. Because it’s gorgeous, I love it, and I just can’t bring myself to toss it in a dumpster.


Those Florence ankles work perfectly for this but maybe not for selling sandals!
Those Florence ankles work perfectly for this but maybe not for selling sandals!

Torturous: The WSL’s Pipeline ads!

The action is sheer brilliance but those commercials? Like, gag!

I have watched almost every heat of this year’s Pipeline Masters because it has been so great and also coincided perfectly with my two-year-old’s school/nanny schedule. Indescribable joy has filled my heart!

Except.

When the action ends. It is in these brief windows that my soul is cringes for I know I am going to be served one of four things, each worse than the last!

Billabong, the event’s title sponsor, throws up a commercial that looks like it cost $12.00 and made in 30 minutes. Jingle-jangly hipster guitar, crossed out words, black n’ white…damn it all! Is this the Pipline Masters 2011? Why Billabong? Why so MarineLayer?

But Billabong is the best in class. Next comes a Point Break trailer. Fine enough the first time, aside from tacky voiceover talking about extreme athletes. But I’ve seen lots of different trailers for the film, most better than the one playing between WSL heats. Why can’t they mix it up? Why do we have to watch the same exact one 300 times a day?

But I dream of Point Break when I see Shane Dorian looking gloomily out his window, fondling a picture of his family. Qalo? An action sport medical grade silicon wedding ring available exclusively at Jack’s surf shop? The spot has so much gravitas the viewer might think it is for something meaningful. A silicon wedding band that costs $19? Who in the world thought that would be a good idea?

But I would go buy a Qalo silicon wedding ring and wear it every day if I never had to watch Nathan Florence talk about his Vans slippahs again. “I wear them here and here and here. Not here. And here and here. But never in the house.” His voice was not made to be used. And his ankles, thick and bold, wonderful for bucking chop in massive waves, were not made to be shown.

The action comes back and I thrill again but am left to wonder. This is the WSL’s super bowl and it is living up to its billing. You Can’t Script This™! So many contenders! So fun! But there is no way Qalo is paying for their ad, Billabong and Vans are sponsors and so their spots don’t count which leaves Point Break. After this whole year, after Paul Speaker going to New York and touting geo-tagging and NFL and blah blah blah, Point Break is the only paying customer. A movie with a Christmas release that is trying to appeal to the same exact market as professional surfing. A complete one off. Samsung who?

Is the World Surf League truly a financially viable property outside the 29 million Brazilians who tune in each day (READ ABOUT THEM HERE)? Yeah? It is? Really? Qalo?

But who cares! Still so much fun!

Qalo! For when your wedding is also a paintball war!
Qalo! For when your wedding is also a paintball war!

Fresh Scandal Embroils The Inertia!

What do the NRA and your fav website have in common?

It ain’t easy being the website where “thinking surfers congregate.” All those multiple orgasms under the womb stroking of Zach Wiesberg’s formidable weapon, all those swooning love stews, quickly sour if anyone deviates from the “thinking surfers” script.

Is there a demographic more prone to hysteria and rigidity of thought than one that casts itself as “thinking”?

Recently, The Inertia posted an innocuous story on Facebook called Why Every Surfer Should Know Rescue Breathing with the note, “It’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.” While guns are different story, the message applies to rescue breathing: Learn it. Hope you never need to use it.

Guns! Not at the The Inertia where Salon.com and the Huffington Post are held to the bosom of its readers as beacons of truth and righteousness!

The comments hissed like wildcats.

“Douchebag analogy!”

“Shithouse analogy. The Inertia started out as the the thinking surfer’s blog but it has become the surfer’s version of Fox News, rubbish.”

“How on earth is saving someone’s life related to guns which only cause injury and death!?!?! You are idiots!”

“As others have suggested I think you need to edit the post and get rid of the silly gun quote. Absolute idiocy to make such a comment, especially in the current climate!”

“How much did the NRA pay for this Facebook post??”

“Nobody ever needs a gun! All the mass shootings that happen in the USA prove that the pro gun argument doesn’t work! If it did as soon as a maniac pulls his gun out then John Wayne walking down the street would shoot the bad guy before 10’s or 100’s are killed!! The world is a different place to 1787! Wake up America! Wake up the enertia!!”

“What the hell, Inertia, did you really post that analogy? I had to read it twice. I strongly consider unfollowing the page – not that you care, but i hope more followers will do the same if there’s no respond to all the comments.”

“Like when your 3-year old accidentally kills you with rescue breathing.”

“What kind of idiot uses a gun analogy like that, in these times, to make a point about being an improved human? If that’s you Guillaume Barucq, you’re an effing tool. The Inertia, you need to check it before you wreck it.”

“Create a headline that gets attention. Check…Social Media 101. Gun violence has been in the news a lot lately. Get as much publicity and followers seems to be the Inertias goal. Also, You know surfing is becoming mainstream when media outlets, like this one, get paid to run articles for companies. How else would they get money in an industry where even surfboard builders give up and have machines make their boards for them. Not saying it’s wrong, but surfing is Losing its soul.”

This is my fav: “Why is everybody so butthurt? If someone came into your house with a loaded gun, how else would you protect yourself but by being PREPARED. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Do you want to join in the voluptuous bonanza?

Click here! 

Scandals at The Inertia are nothing new, of course.

Do you remember when one of its writers begged to have the Brazilian world champ Gabriel Medina suspended and fined? A racist intrigue!

And, when Kauai locals threatened to besiege their Venice Beach office? 


Matt Biolos
More secrets of surfboard design as revealed by the shaper Matt "Mayhem" Biolos, seen here spiking a speedball of pure watermelon. | Photo: Derek Rielly

Biolos reveals: More Surfboard Secrets!

For one, did you know your leg length determines your board's dimensions?

It was around this time last year when I shot an animated portrait of the shaper Matt “Mayhem” Biolos. The short film was for the effervescent energy drink co Red Bull and was intended to reveal the full arsenal of Biolos’ opinions on design.

Thirty years a a shaper is a dope stash you want to raid.

What can you learn?

How about the importance of your stance and leg length to your shaper?

How about the worst design fad of the last five years?

Did you ever wonder what board someone like Biolos would ride if he couldn’t jam on his own design?

Hit play!


Fast times: Jimbo’s even wilder ride!

The world's number one jumbo surfer goes to court!

Remember James “Jimbo” Pellegrine the world’s most wonderful plus-sized surfer? Earlier in the year, as reported right HERE, he was driving around hometown Kauai when things went slightly pear shaped. Like, maybe the hood of his car (bonnet if you are Australian or English) flew up while he was driving after enjoying a few drinks with friends…maybe only Cokes…who knows! But anyhow his hood flew up and blocked his view and so he had to stick his head out of the window but a car came whizzing by and whoosh! His arm fell off! And then he went to a police substation for help.

He went to jail, after going to the hospital, charged with multiple things like DUI, reckless driving, inattention to driving and driving without a license but his bail was set so high, over $5o,000.00. Why? Because, apparently, he also made terroristic threats to the ambulance drivers transporting him to the hospital. But his wonderful lawyer, in trying to lower the bail told the judge last week, “Curse words were used. If you lost your arm, your honor, if anybody lost their arm, and were requesting pain medication, you may say some words you may regret later on.”

Except it maybe wasn’t curse words. It was maybe, “Once this is over, I’m going to put a bullet in your head…” the prosecuting attorney told the judge.

Whatever the case, Mr. Pellegrine’s lawyer, as part of the plea to lower bail, told the judge, “He’s considered one of the top five jumbo surfers in the world…” but Jimbo spoke up and said, “I’m number one on that list, actually.”

Which brings up the most important point. Is the World Surf League getting in to the jumbo surfer game? Is there going to be a jumbo surfer world tour? Will Jimbo win and inspire like Bethany?

Read the whole news story HERE! It’s even better than this curtailed version!

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