The surfer and Sports Illustrated Swimwear model
reads the classic, Song for a Lady…
I’m such a sucker, and maybe you are too, for a
gal of better-than-average looks reading poetry, ideally in a
backless canary yellow swimsuit.
Last year you’ll remember Ms Ashley socking us
withFuneral
Blues by WH Auden. I haven’t cried so
much since Anne Marie was cornered into surfing Pipeline (after a
wipeout that nearly killed her) by her cruel ex-boyfriend Drew
in Blue Crush.
Last month, Anastasia reprised her poetry jams with a
recording of the feminist poem What Do Women
Want by the American Kim Addonizio. The
poem “explores the risk that women have of being
stereotyped.”
Today, we present the far more subtle, but, then again, more
sensual, poem Song for a Lady, written by the
Pulitzer Prize-winning Anne Sexton in 1969. This poem comes from
her collection Love Poems, described somewhere as “a
celebration of touch… physical and emotional touch.”
Read along!
Song for a Lady by Anne Sexton (1969)
On the day of breasts and small hips
the window pocked with bad rain,
rain coming on like a minister,
we coupled, so sane and insane.
We lay like spoons while the sinister
rain dropped like flies on our lips
and our glad eyes and our small hips.
“The room is so cold with rain,” you said
and you, feminine you, with your flower
said novenas to my ankles and elbows.
You are a national product and power.
Oh my swan, my drudge, my dear wooly rose,
even a notary would notarize our bed
as you knead me and I rise like bread.
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A beautiful moment tween Mason Ho (third!) and Pipe
Master/world champ Adriano De Souza. Even in waves so terrible it
must now force the WSL's hand to shorten events, the game's stars
sure did shine… | Photo: WSL
Parker: Pointless Speculation Re: 2016
By Rory Parker
Adriano ain't gonna back up the title, paid premium
content is on its way and… drug scandal!
I lost yesterday, somehow. I didn’t drink that
much on New Year’s eve, but I’ve been off the sauce for a while, so
I’m a bit of a lightweight. And I can only assume I decided to pop
a couple benzos at some point, not a great idea. Mixing that shit
with booze is an easy road to a pathetic lights out.
So I survived another series of bad decisions, not a terrible
way of ending/beginning a new year. I vaguely recall planning on
firing some of those spinning ground flower fireworks into the air
with my slingshot, but the pack is full, so my wife must have
talked me out of it. Or I was just so fucked up I forgot my
terribly dangerous and irresponsible idea.
Whatever happened, my brain still ain’t working so good. No surf
news to “report,” the creative well’s run dry, still need to get
something on the page. It’s my job, right?
I just don’t see it happening two years in a row for De Souza,
if ever again. The twenty-fifteen tour was plagued by garbage surf,
conditions that play perfectly to his approach. But in the coming
year we’ll either see the criteria revamped (probably not), or
better surfers mimic his steez and usher in a new era of
three-to-the-beach hell.
So here’s a low effort attempt at content. My predictions for
2016. Pretty much what everyone else is doing, but worse.
ADS won’t win the title: I just don’t see
it happening two years in a row for De Souza, if ever again. The
twenty-fifteen tour was plagued by garbage surf, conditions that
play perfectly to his approach. But in the coming year we’ll either
see the criteria revamped (probably not), or better surfers mimic
his steez and usher in a new era of three-to-the-beach hell.
The WSL will finally unleash the might of their
production house: Rent ain’t cheap in Santa Monica
and up until now it seems like the WSL has used their “production
house” for… I don’t know what. Providing a place for unpaid interns
to show up every day?
Thus far we know they’re pumping out a Laird documentary, a
brilliant decision because there’s only a million other people more
relevant to competitive surfing.
My money’s still on premium content. Going whole hog PPV ain’t
gonna work, but the WSL needs to find a way to suck money out of
our pockets if they plan on staying solvent.
There will be a doping scandal: There’s no
doubt that modern high-performance surfing is hell on your joints,
and last year saw a ton of missed heats and events thanks to
wrecked bodies. Recovery is a drag, and takes forever, a real
problem when the clocking is ticking and there are only so many
injury wildcards to give out.
Someone is going to give in to temptation and take the easy way
out, get a scrip for ‘roids and rebuild at a breakneck pace. Lots
of guys left on tour in their thirties, and speaking from personal
experience, the road back to health is a hell of a lot longer when
your bones don’t bend anymore.
The world champ won’t be from the USA: Kind of
a no-brainer, right? Slater’ got other shit going on, Nat Young
will never win a title. Kolohe doesn’t belong on tour, scrapping
for ‘QS points to avoid the cutoff portends poorly.
Nat Young, Alana Blanchard and Kolohe Andino, as
so beautifully photographed by BeachGrit’s favourite print magazine
What Youth!
As far as Igarashi and Coffin? Yeah, they both surf real good,
but I don’t see the genius. Like top-tier college recruits they’re
gonna find out it’s a whole new game at the highest level.
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Where have you gone Bobby Martinez?
By Chas Smith
Our surf nation turns its lonely eyes to you!
I’ve have just come up from underneath
300,000,000 lbs of American football and the fresh air smells
sweet! No more (except Oregon later today and and Seattle vs.
Arizona on Sunday)! For our non-US friends, this week between
Christmas and New Year’s Day is crammed with football from sun up
to sun down. I’ve watched bad teams and I’ve watched good teams and
I’ve watched good teams play bad (Jimmicane, what happened to your
‘Noles?) but what I haven’t seen is any interesting interviews or
post-game press conferences.
The NFL invented bland when it comes to serving up their
personalities. Sideline reporters say into the camera, with a
completely straight face, during some quarter of the game, “I just
talked to coach and he says the team has to work harder at stopping
the run.” Or. “Coach just let the players know that they need to
stop the run.”
It is annoyingly bad, utterly drained of value or meaning. Isn’t
this supposed to be entertainment? The same is true after the game.
Players step to the mic and say, “Coach drew up a good game plan.
He told us we needed to stop the run.” Or. “My teammates around me
did a great job at stopping the run.”
Humility is a virtue on the American sport’s scene and
especially so in football. The American, on the couch, wants his
athlete humble and especially his football athlete. Apparently, he
also wants to know nothing at all, no gossip, no insider news, from
reporters during the game.
Surfing, with a number of employees coming over from the NFL and
most notably CEO Paul Speaker, has seemed to adopt this ultra bland
approach as its own. We still talk about Bobby Martinez lighting
off on the tennis tour and that was so so so many years ago. Mason
Ho is pure pleasure to watch surf, partially because when he wins
heats he gets to talk and who on earth knows what will come of that
man’s mouth? Entertainment!
I wish the product, out of the water, would be a little less NFL
and a little more pro wrestling. I wish our heroes would call each
other out, complain about the judging, make snide comments about
their competition. I wish Pete Mel and Strider, though I love their
work, would tease out some funny underlying gossip. I mostly wish
the humble would get tossed. Humility is not generally part of the
professional surfer’s DNA and when he puts it on for the camera it
is ill-fitting.
Can a new Bobby Martinez rise this year and put on a show? Who
might it be?
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…a revolutionary, a poet, a mystic. "God helped me win
the whole event!" says Filipe. | Photo: WSL
Remember: Filipe Toledo owned 2015!
By Derek Rielly
Even if his year was forgotten amid a surprising
world champ and Kelly Slater's pool fever…
“I don’t care if he is a Brazilian; he’s the
best surfer in the world.”
This, from a surfer wrapped in an Australian flag after seeing
Filipe Toledo drive Julian Wilson around the hill in the final of
the Quicksilver Pro, Snapper Rocks. Nineteen-year-old Filipe’s
near-perfect 19.60 combo-ing Julian’s 14.70.
Do you remember that final? Filipe coming through the air and
hitting and bouncing off lips as if he was weightless while Julian
looked as if he was doped up, in comparison. Didn’t matter who
surfed against Filipe in that final. He blew his cookie!
Do you remember that final? Filipe coming through the air and
hitting and bouncing off lips as if he was weightless while Julian
looked as if he was doped up in comparison. Didn’t matter who
surfed against Filipe in that final. He blew his cookie!
Hit play!
A few months later in Brazil, Filipe beat Bede Durbidge with the
same night stick he wielded on Julian. Almost same scores, too,
19.87 to 14.70.
Watch!
Two wins from four events.
By mid-year, Filipe Toledo was an orange-hot sunbeam
filtering down through a tour that had become repetitive and slow.
How could you watch the little man surf a heat and not be struck by
his bolts of lightening? Here, there, drool running down his chin,
eyes bulging and crazed like a madman undergoing withdrawal
symptoms.
Sure, there was the low moment in Tahiti when he became the
first surfer in history to score a perfect zero heat in a WCT
event. You can watch that below or you can read about it.
A month or so later, he was back dismantling the
beachbreaks of Portugal for another dazzling win. Watch his
10-pointer here! Best surfer in the world? Yes!
But despite his game-changing performances in 2015,
Filipe’s dazzling year has been lost in the smog of Adriano’s world
title and Kelly’s wave pool video.
Ain’t it crazy? That this beautiful boy with skin the
colour of buttered cocoa, eyes a soft clubhouse green, who brought
holy terror to the tour in 2015, and who is the hottest thing since
Kelly Slater in 1992, could be overshadowed?
Our memories are lousy like that.
But, remember, eight weeks until Snapper Rocks, 2016.
Filipe will re-take the spotlight, gloriously, divinely. He’ll
entertain the crowd while his competitors smile painfully as
he shucks ’em one by one.
As the former world-number-one-rated surfer Brad
Gerlach told me after Snapper when Filipe looked as he
might win every event: “Filipe’s technically superior. And he’s not
thinking. He’s surfing so spontaneously you don’t know what he’s
going to do. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. And that’s
fucking awesome.”
Fucking awesome. Yes he is.
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Mason: “This is going to sound weird, but for a second,
I think you took on the shape of a unicorn.”
Rory Parker’s Fond Memories of 2015
By Rory Parker
Freddie P melts down, Mason Ho is everywhere, the
New Yorker loves BeachGrit and more!
Another year of living the dream gone for good,
an ever dwindling number left. I always get a little maudlin on New
Year’s eve, feel like I’m racing the clock to get in as much fun as
I can until my body finally breaks down. Probably got at least
another twenty good ones left, but I’ve noticed that life speeds up
as you get older. Pretty cliché, that realization.
Lists are easy, end of the year lists are lazy. But like Chas
mentioned yesterday, there ain’t a hell of a lot going on. But I
don’t feel like dredging up a video and clamping a half-assed
paragraph to it, so I’m gonna write one. Not for you, for me. I
smoke maybe a little too much weed, it’s always good to write shit
down so you can look back and manufacture the memory.
Here’s a few fond memories of 2015.
Freddy P’s retirement: His Snapper
meltdown was legendary.
Going out on a ten at Trestles even more so.
Surviving: A skull infection came damn
close to killing me in 2014. That sucked, rattled my cage hard. But
that type of shit doesn’t happen often, once in a lifetime for
most.
But I’m special, so this year I got to go under the knife for an
infection in my shoulder, then spend a hellish week locked in the
hospital while a series of nurses poked, prodded, and pumped me
full of a melange of opiates and antibiotics. Pretty sure one of
them caught me jerking off, late one night.
But I’m still here! Maybe immortal? Whatever the case, life
doesn’t seem so crucial anymore, much easier to let the small shit
go. After all, it could be lights out at any moment.
Pretty cool, a New Yorker level scribbler reading
our stuff, and liking it. Definitely gave me a little ego boost,
even if the discussion centered around Chas and Derek. I’m a hard
working part of this thing too, you know!
Oh well, maybe next year, instead of “Derek and Chas’s site”
it’ll be “Derek, Chas, and some dude named Rory’s site.”
Mason Ho: Clip after clip after clip after
clip. Each one different, magic, adorable. His post heat
interviews, the best in the business. A semi-final finish at Pipe!
Here’s to hoping we ain’t seen nothing yet!
The WSL: Plagued by bad surf, constant
injuries, terrible calls, and a total inability to lock down
sponsorships, 2015 was not good for professional competitive
surfing. Which sucks for me, as a person who truly wants to watch
the best surfers in the world go head to head. Bit it’s also great
for me, as a person who loves to write critical shit on the
internet that’s read by a handful of people.
Sustainable: Such a great buzzword! Sounds
nice, but really just means that something can go on for forever.
Like poverty, or American cops shooting unarmed black people. The
Turtle Bay Resort scored a sustainable PR coup when they got
permission to develop a parcel of pristine land, but spun it as a
conservation effort. Well done, bravo.
#vanlife: Being a bum has never been
hipper. Sure, living in a car sucks, and there’s a huge chance
you’ll get robbed, maybe raped, definitely hassled by cops. But it
birthed an entire group of people who will soon self destruct as
they realize their terrible decision, and it lowers rental prices
for those of us who enjoy hot showers, fast internet, and a place
to shit that isn’t frequented by degenerate hobos.
Kauai:My first full year on the
Garden Isle, and, man, do I fucking love it here or what? Best
place on earth, my wife’s gonna have to drag me kicking and
screaming if she ever wants to move off island.
Money: For the first time in my life, and
all thanks to my lovely wife, I’m not broke as fuck all the time.
It’s an amazing thing, paying bills on time, fixing your car when
it breaks, buying food you want instead of what’s on sale.
And, yeah, I’m anti-capitalist, loathe anyone who self
identifies as an entrepreneur, recognize I’d be among the first
against a wall when the revolution comes. But I’m a creative type,
so I’m sin free. I get to benefit sans accountability, and having
your cake while eating it is a beautiful thing.
Beach Grit: It’s corny, lame, and more
than a little self-congratulatory, but I’m so fucked stoked to be a
part of this gig. When Derek asked me, out of the blue, to be a
part of it I was pretty amped. The way it’s grown over the last
year has been amazing. I think we’re making something special here,
and we’ve somehow got a community of commenters who actually say
intelligent shit. On the internet! And some of them are people who
I grew up reading, sucking down every word, hoping to one day be a
part of the pack. Fuck, Matt Warshaw sent me a complimentary
Facebook message the other day, Derek hooked me up with
Surfer’s Journal. It’s, literally, a dream come
true.
Twenty sixteen will be here soon, I’m gonna get drunk and light
off some fireworks.