I woke up to a message from my mother-in-law this morning. “Happy Four Year Anniversary!”
What?
We don’t really celebrate, the wife and I. Dated for eleven years before tying the knot, really only did it for insurance and tax purposes. We don’t wear rings, she didn’t take my name. Lobbied hard to make me take hers, though.
Other than the aforementioned tax and insurance implications, marriage is largely bullshit. Doesn’t change nothin’. Unless you’re a member of some weirdo cult and never got in each others’ pants. Then I’m sure it comes with a bunch of awkward fumbling, sexual malfunction, and eventual divorce. I only ever fucked one virgin, and it was terrible. Swore I’d never do it again, only skeevy sluts from thereon out.
While I had no idea that today’s our wedding anniversary, I’m not about to miss a chance to win a marital battle.
“Happy Anniversary, baby?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s been four years! Don’t tell me you forgot?”
Got inside her head for a minute, but I forgot to delete the text. It was on her phone, since I’ve still never owned a cell. Totally blew it, could have used her supposed insensitivity for all sorts of leverage.
Fun Fact: Our dog died the morning after we married. Very auspicious.
Good thing I don’t believe in that stuff. Yeah, I spout plenty of colloquial nonsense about luck or karma, because it was beaten into my head by society, but I’m aware that life just happens, not much you can do to control it.
Which is too bad, life’d be a lot more fun if magic really existed. Every time something bad happened you’d be thinking, “Who’s responsible for this? Did someone put a hex on me?”
The investigation into Phil Toledo’s broken dick would be a treat. Especially when the WSL discovered it was ADS who hired some brazzo witch doctor from the deepest darkest to conjure up a dong curse.
But life is boring, the mundane reality most likely involved lurking on the wrong side of the official WSL Competitor Area glory hole with a hammer in hand.
Do you remember when Wavegarden’s first commercial pool opened in the little Welsh village of Dolgarrog last August? The pool, called Surf Snowdonia, was built on the site of an old aluminium smelter, cost $US17 million, and for a moment, was spangled with the gold of expectation.
The energy drink company Red Bull held a contest there (Albee Layer won), surfers engaged back and forth on its merits (one surfer wrote eloquently about having his “worst surf in two years” , another said, Welsh surfers should learn to shred not complain) and, it seemed, everyone was making plans to jump into its frigid fresh water next time they were near Europe.
In December, Kelly Slater appeared with a wavepool that was merciless in its superiority. It was enough to sap the morale and break the will of a king!
Andy Ainscough, managing director of the Surf Snowdonia, says: “The number one thing we wanted to get right during our winter downtime was the addressing the reliability of our Wavegarden, and we’re confident that we’ve delivered on that. Leitner has made some very specific modifications to the motors which have optimised the mechanics of creating consistently powerful waves, day in, day out. The last six weeks have been entirely dedicated to putting the motors through their paces and testing their resilience under pressure.”
Does the idea of surfing a Wavegarden still excite you like it did three years ago when it was still a secret in the Basque hills?
Or are you holding your cards until you can get to a Kelly?
Broke and cry-baby pals, choking turtles to death…
Rory Parker’s new series What Would You Do coiled BeachGrit reader Travis Bible into action. In a recent email, he wrote: “It brings me back to my days at college talking about ethics, but with surfing. While we used to ask big questions, like, is it acceptable to allow the Warren Jeffs and his FLDS crew to run entire cities or is it ethical to keep large marine mammals in zoos, the topics were too abstract to really matter.
“The questions posed by BeachGrit are accessible to me. They are the kind of bar-room philosophizing my sunburned cohorts could comprehend. But I found that despite the realistic premises, I had never actually been in any of the circumstances. Maybe it’s my boring life, but I figured we could use more benign What Would You Do? scenarios.”
And which point, Bible surrended his own What Would You Do’s…
Scenario #1
You’re driving to the next major surf spot over from yours (about an hour away) and want some company. The aspiring artist musician type tags along, but conveniently forgets his wallet. While a few bucks for gas would be good, it’s not too big of a deal. However, you find that after a marathon five-hour session you’re starving. With the long drive ahead, and knowing you’ll have to feed the penniless friend as well, what do you do?
Scenario #2
It’s a top five day of the year at your local spot. The sun is out, the crowds aren’t bad, and the water is perfect. One of your buddies is going through a rough patch and is telling you all about the wife that is leaving him, his shaky job, his sick mom, when the set of the day pops up on the horizon. Do you listen contently and let perfection pass you by or paddle towards the set?
Scenario #3
It’s a cold winter day and you have an hour to get your surf fix. You make it out into an empty line-up and find a clear plastic bag floating right next to you. You know turtles frequent your beach. Your wetsuit has no pockets and the bag is falling apart so you can’t tie it around yourself. There is a bit of a current so you have to choose: do you summon the eco warrior within or say fuck it let evolution sort out the wheat from the chaff?
Parody is such a fine form of comedy don’t you think? The most wonderful author of Lolita, Vlad Nabokov, sure did and once said, “Satire is a lesson, parody a game.” And who don’t want to play a game? The chuckles, the back slaps, the soaring spirits!
It is particularly great because we can laugh laugh laugh while winking at general truths. Donald Trump’s candidacy is a grand parody of American politics, for example, and ADS’s championship run a pitch perfect parody of the World Surf League’s judging criteria. Do you remember the Lunada Bay parody posted by Rory Parker just days ago? Of course you do! You loved the way it lampooned the aggressive/weird/silly brand of localism festering just outside of Los Angeles.
Apparently readers of all-inclusive mountain/beach website The Inertia did not love it though, nor did they understand it at all. They took it completely seriously and raged against the terrible form portrayed.
“Real tough standing on a cliff so this loser can run away to his mommy before these two guys busy him up. What a punk. I’m 6’4″ 230. Try me assholes.”
“This is rediculous hes lucky a real man doesnt come by and shut his mouth !”
“It’s KOOKS not COOKS …you kook.” (Because the title of the piece was COOKS GO HOME)
“Without cooks we’d all starve.”
“Inertia I am glad you have the anti localism attitude as well. We are all locals to the Earth!!!!”
Etc. You must do yourself a great favor and read the rest of the comments here!
Oh how funny! But also begs the question…does reading The Inertia regularly cause dementia or other major neurological malfunctions?
I like to read. If you’re here, then you must as well. Pretty text heavy, BeachGrit. Someone once called us “cerebral,”by which they meant they thought we had too many words. Keep it short and sweet, more photos, more videos. But I’m not a photographer, I have no interest in filming people. I’ve just got a laptop and a love for blathering on.
The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley
It was recommended by Matt Warshaw, and I adored Thank You For Smoking and Boomsday, how could I resist?
The Relic Master is a heist caper set at the dawn of Lutheranism, focusing on the sale of indulgences, the venality of the Roman Catholic Church, and an absurd reliquary based arms race. You wouldn’t necessarily expect concepts like simony and translation to lend themselves to a comedic romp, but in Buckley’s hands they do so, and well.
The Reformation reshaped the western world, led to widespread literacy, delivered a crushing strong blow to the might of the corrupt superstition that was the Holy Roman Empire.
An unexpected result of the novel is my new found appreciation of the importance the Reformation. I attended a Jesuit college, and whichever dimly remembered professor was tasked with beating the information into my mind did a piss poor job. The Reformation reshaped the western world, led to widespread literacy, delivered a crushing strong blow to the might of the corrupt superstition that was the Holy Roman Empire. I’ve always felt total contempt for theological scholars, seeing as how they waste their lives arguing the minutiae of bogus belief systems meant to control. But there’s something there, a relevance not based on some all seeing man in the sky, but in our modern reality and how we react to it.
So, yeah, buy it, read it. It is very good.
Carter & Lovecraft byJonathan L Howard
I was disappointed to learn that Howard didn’t plan to write any more novels about Johannes Cabal, his lovably evil anti-hero necromancer protagonist. Great books, the Cabal series, made better by their self contained nature. Howard’s decision to write stand alone novels that didn’t end in a cliff hanger and lead to years long waits between installments was a good one. It’s a terrible trend in the fantasy genre, no one wants to write stories that end between a single set of covers. It’s all grand world building and largely futile efforts to build a franchise.
I blame George Martin.
Howard’s decision to write stand alone novels that didn’t end in a cliff hanger and lead to years long waits between installments was a good one. It’s a terrible trend in the fantasy genre, no one wants to write stories that end between a single set of covers. It’s all grand world building and largely futile efforts to build a franchise.
Carter & Lovecraft is a treat. A self-aware noir horror in the world of Cthulhu, Howard spins gold from H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, filled to the brim with the uncanny eldritch. Dealing, lightly, with the nature of reality, C&L follows a retired cop, now private dick, as he unwittingly unravels the sheer terror of an existence that lurks just beneath our own, voraciously waiting outside of time for an opportune moment to devour us all.
The Red Son Rising Trilogy byPierce Brown
A gross offender in the cliffhanger club, especially in book two, the trilogy is finished and it’s time to read. Yeah, the protagonist is a bit of a Mary Sue, and it deals in long standing tropes without much new to offer, but god damn is it fun. Violence and spaceships galore.
Humanity has moved beyond the shackles of Earth, picking up a dystopic caste system along the way. The planets are ruled by Golds, genetically engineered super human sociopaths created in the wake of an all out war that occurred centuries earlier. And now, finally, the masses have had enough.
For all the travails the protagonist suffers, the ending is never really in doubt. But Brown excels at engaging. Sure, you know it’ll work out somehow, especially when there’s a book or two left to go, but the fun’s in the voyage, not the destination.
Yeah, the protagonist is a bit of a Mary Sue, and it deals in long standing tropes without much new to offer, but god damn is it fun. Violence and spaceships galore.
If you prefer scifi of the hard variety, in the vein of Clarke, Asimov, Anderson, or Niven, it might not be for you. But if you’re looking for a fun read that never slows down, the kind that keeps you up well past your bedtime, you’ll love Red Son Rising.
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
