Strider Wasilewski
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!

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.

More importantly, first called Strider Wasilewski’s gorgeous chest “attack dogs” in a story headlined:  Strider’s Steroidal Tits Overwhelm Day One Fiji! Kelly is deposited into round two (so what’s new!), Gabriel makes a sharpish return and we gaze at Strider’s attack dog tits! 

That was six months ago!

And six months before that, there was this! 

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Watch here as Strider makes those those tits dance and announces that his “attack dogs” are open for biz.

And now you know!


when I die
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

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.”


Surfer Magazine fan enjoying the latest edition.
Surfer Magazine fan enjoying the latest edition. | Photo: Matt Warshaw

Rumor: Surfer drops Mag!

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.


How to: Live with Fear!

…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.


Photo Steve Sherman/@tsherms/Photo Union Worker

Part Two: Pre-Pipe Power Rankings!

Brutal!

 

"Board I break you!" Photo Steve Sherman/@tsherms/Photo Union Worker
“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

Miguel_Pupo_3_Lifestyle

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
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

natlead3

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

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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

Wiggolly-Dantas-Wins-Volcom-Pipe-Pro-Contest

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

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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
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

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.

Farewell Ricardo, we barely knew ye.