Happy Birthday Dane Reynolds!

But do you know the world's favorite-ish surfer's backstory?

Here’s a big Happy 31st Birthday to everyone’s favorite surfer, Dane Reynolds!

Conceived while his father, a demolitions expert and amateur tattooist, was on furlough from the Vietnam War, Danethon Leroy Reynolds is the oldest of fourteen illegitimate children.

Reynolds first rose to national prominence as a brash MFA student lauded for his series of groundbreaking science fiction erotica. Dane was, somewhat controversially, thrice nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards, leading Isaac Aasimov and Arthur C Clarke to publish open letters denouncing both institutions.

The New York Times called his final work, Boner from the Stars, a 1400 page tome featuring experimental formatting and totally lacking punctuation, “A stunningly self indulgent screed that confuses at every turn. Lacking both form and substance, [Reynolds’s] latest work could have been written by a proverbial two monkeys in a mere twenty minutes.”

Contrarily, The Paris Review praised the novel, saying, “Intentionally befuddling delivery aside, [Boner from the Stars] is Heinlein with half the fascism, but twice the misogyny.”

What came next was a decades long struggle with food addiction and compulsive public nudity. Reynolds largely disappeared from the public eye until he became embroiled in a series of Hollywood A-list wife swapping scandals which ended in a highly publicized trial and six month period of involuntary commitment.

The period was documented by Gay Talese in a series of columns for The New Yorker titled, Man in the Box: A Boner Falls to Earth. Talese was widely criticized for his work, which was called by various sources, “Sensationalized,” “Nearly totally lacking literary merit,” and “Unnecessarily racist.”

Following the successful completion of his therapeutic stay Reynolds spent the next few years supporting himself with a series of odd jobs. Rarely able to retain employment for longer than a few weeks Dane worked, at various times, as a little league baseball umpire, longshoreman, unlicensed contractor, short order cook, unpasteurized dairy advocate, and motivational speaker.

In 1972 Reynolds suffered a relapse and was arrested on Sunset Blvd when he was found wandering the street nude demanding change from passers-by.

Due to his high blood alcohol content Reynolds was sentenced to three days in county jail. During his incarceration he suffered from a number of terrifying re-occurring nightmares he has often publicly mentioned, but refuses to fully discuss.

For unknown reasons Reynolds believed the dreams were a sign he should pursue a career as a professional surfer. After a mere two seasons of competition he was signed to a lucrative contract by Quiksilver, making him, for a time, the highest paid professional surfer in the world.

In 2011 Reynolds retired from competitive professional surfing, announcing he would be devoting his fortune to supporting the emerging French Bulldog social media market.

Dane briefly made headlines again in 2013 when paparazzi captured footage of him urinating in a public drinking fountain. Following a plea deal, which saw him sentenced to house arrest, Reynolds retreated to his Ventura County compound.

Reynolds house arrest eventually turned to voluntary hermitage. In 2015 Buzzfeed reported he would soon be releasing the first of a series of hip hop albums loosely based on the Kama Sutra, but the album failed to materialize.

Other than a series of bizarre profanity-laced Twitter rants in January of 2016, in which he blamed “dinosaur jew monsters” for the majority of society’s ills, little has been seen or heard of Reynolds in recent months.

Happy Birthday Dane Reynolds! (09-07-1985) (Instagram) from Norwell9 on Vimeo.