Just in: Women to Titan of Mavericks!

California's premier big wave surfing event pulls from the dark ages!

The Titans of Mavericks is a big wave surf event that thrills like no other. Dane Reynolds, THE Dane Reynolds, will be surfing in it this year and now also the ladies! Nobody respects women more than Cartel Management, the event license holder. Nobody. Let’s read about it!

The Titans of Mavericks big wave surf contest apparently will offer a women’s competition after all.

The announcement of the women’s heat was made on the contest’s social media accounts Wednesday afternoon, a little more than 48 hours before the opening ceremony for the 2016-17 contest is scheduled to be held Friday at Maverick’s Beach near Half Moon Bay. It also comes less than a week after Cartel Management, Inc., submitted a permit amendment application that included no plans for a women’s heat until the 2017-18 season.

“I’m pretty excited about what’s going on, especially since Friday I was pretty pissed off,” said Sabrina Brennan, who has been a driving force for the inclusion of women in the competition.

Six women will throw down for an hour during the main Titans of Mavericks competition for a share of a $30,000 purse, according to Brian Waters, the chief operating officer for both Titans of Mavericks and Cartel Management. The surfers will be selected by Nov. 1 by the contest’s Committee 5 — a group of five Maverick’s patriarchs, including pioneer Jeff Clark, who were also tasked with selecting the 24 invitees to the main event.

The contest window opens in November and will run through March 31.

Waters said the contest board had no reason for its seemingly sudden decision to include women this year other than, “It’s quite simply the right time.”

“There was no compelling driver other than it was the time to do it,” Waters said.

Titans of Mavericks organizers have been facing increasing pressure to add women to the lineup or give them their own heat since Cartel acquired the contest last year.

Brennan, a San Mateo County Harbor District Commissioner, made her initial push for inclusion when she appeared before the California Coastal Commission during its local meeting in 2015. She asked the CCC to make including women in the contest a requirement for obtaining the commission’s permit, which allows the closure of Maverick’s Beach, the nearby parking lot and a trail connecting the two. The commission voted to adopt the requirement for future permits.

When the contest released its updated list of 38 on Sept. 29, no women made the cut. Then came the proposal for a women’s heat next season. Many female big wave surfers felt that was Cartel pandering to the commission while seeking a four-year permit extension.

Brennan said Wednesday’s announcement is good news. Still, she noted that the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing — the group founded by pro surfers Bianca Valenti, Keala Kennelly, Paige Alms and Andrea Moller — will continue to push for equal treatment.

“It is great news. I’m very excited about it,” Brennan said. “I think having the dialogue is very important.”

“Whoever holds the permit needs to include a professional event,” she added, “and that means including equity for women.”

And why do you think that Cartel Management change their minds? What was the spark for such a 180 turn? Whatever the reason it is good and right. Now just include Pete Mel and Twiggy and the ship shall be righted!

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Clinton, Trump
The gal with the shady past or the stud with the dumb ideas? Which way you gonna swing?

Parker: “A vote is like a gun!”

So come play a presidential debate drinking game! Starting…soon!

Tonight, at 9PM EST, the world will watch in wonder as the final presidential debate of the 2016 election stomps its way across the vestiges of American democracy.

What a time to be alive!

The system’s rigged. Of course it is. Always has been. Always will be. People in power don’t relish sharing control. Gonna put up whatever road blocks they can find.

The wife has begun spinning the conspiracy theory that Trump is a plant. Clinton campaign recruited him years ago. Positioned him to take the fall in our current election. Act the fool. Be so crass and unlikable that Hillary seems benign by comparison.

Nonsense, of course. But it did work out that way. Go Hillary! First woman in the White House! Bill Clinton as first lady! I desperately hope he makes a public appearance wearing Jackie O’s iconic pink Chanel dress.

It would be a magic moment.

“I’d prefer to be called the first lady. The greatest woman I’ve ever known was first lady. It will be an honor to fill the same role.”

The days following the election, which anyone with more than a single brain cell rattling around upstairs realizes will go to Hillary, should be interesting. Crazy shouts, even more poorly considered conspiracy theories.

“The fix is in!”

“Revolution!”

Rates of self-inflicted gunshots wounds will skyrocket as the dumbest among us arm themselves for the coming rebellion. The problem might solve itself. Death by self-inflicted stupidity, or medical debt so severe it pushes them even deeper into the underclass. Which is where they belong.

Democracy is like the value of money, or the concept of basic human decency. Essentially a willingly shared delusion. It only works when everyone agrees to believe in it. And we’ve been painted into a corner.

A large portion of the population is buying the notion that a halfwit caricature of a evil businessman is being cheated out of his due position.

Another portion, which includes myself, may be forced to admit that democracy is for the birds.  Sound in theory, terrifying in practice.

A vote’s like a gun. Totally benign on its own.

But I think we can all agree you shouldn’t hand out loaded rifles to humans too stupid to guess which end the bullet comes from.

Feel free to join me in my Presidential Debate drinking game.

I’ll be taking a shot each time Trump says the game is rigged. Each time he calls Bill Clinton a rapist.  Each time he interrupts with nonsensical platitudes.

I’ll probably end up dead.

But, you know, if this is just a taste of what’s to come, fuck… I might be better off.

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Clay Marzo
Marzo, 27, lost his home and his life savings and was left $30,000 in debt, his mother, Jill Marzo Clark, said in a phone interview Tuesday. Clark said that she also lost a significant amount of money. “It’s been a year of trying to get to this point,” Clark said Tuesday. “It’s bittersweet; it’s awful that she did what she did because she was like a family member. She was close with us and worked with me for a long time.

Crime: Clay Marzo stiffed $400K!

Loses house, life savings. Manager indicted on 13 counts of wire fraud… 

File it under You Can’t Trust Anyone. Clay Marzo’s bookkeeper was indicted recently on 13 counts of wire fraud after allegedly stealing more than $400k from Clay and his mother. 

Felicidad Rivera, 51, pleaded not guilty during her arraignment Monday in U.S. District Court in Honolulu. Her bail was set at $50,000.

Marzo, 27, lost his home and his life savings and was left $30,000 in debt, his mother, Jill Marzo Clark, said in a phone interview Tuesday. Clark said that she also lost a significant amount of money.

“It’s been a year of trying to get to this point,” Clark said Tuesday. “It’s bittersweet; it’s awful that she did what she did because she was like a family member. She was close with us and worked with me for a long time.

“I hope that it all goes the right way, but it still doesn’t feel good. I’ve been sick to my stomach since Friday when she was arrested.”

According to the federal indictment, Rivera wrote herself 193 checks from January 2010 to October 2015 totaling more than $330,000 from the accounts of Marzo and his mother. Rivera also paid more than $75,000 of her own Chase credit card charges from Marzo’s account in 87 transactions from May 2010 to September 2015.

Rivera concealed her transactions through phony entries in QuickBooks ledgers that she was maintaining, court documents said. Clark and her son had difficulties monitoring Rivera’s activities due to disabilities from which they both suffer.

What can you say to that?

Fucking brutal. Everything gone. Left in debt. Gotta hope for restitution, but that shit never amounts to nothin’.  Not much high paying work out there once you’ve been caught stealing from clients. Marzo will most likely be paid back in drips and drabs over the rest of his life. If at all.

Bright side?

Clay still fucking rips. He should be able to earn some of it back. Dig his way out of a situation he’s done nothing to deserve.

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Happy belated birthday to JJF!

Our boy wonder turned into a man yesterday. Come revel!

Here is a present! The first 1/3 of the award-winning Surfer’s Journal story Look at John John! It won many awards and was great. And huge. It was the most award winning story ever published. Rigged. SAD.

Look at John John! Look at John fucking John! Look at him roll all loose into that wave sucking and ledging and scary! Look at him pump without any effort and his face all bored and look at that speed! Like a racecar! Like a rocket ship! Look at him hit the section and soar like a kite up up up and look at him land! Can you believe he landed? Look at that too-cool-for-school lack of emotion. Look at the lack of claim, the narcoleptic yawn. Where did he learn to surf like that? So totally cool. His mom? His brothers? While we’re at it, look at his mom and brothers and a house right on Pipeline’s sand and childhood with that long bleachy hair and Monchichi face. Look at him get barreled at Pipeline as an eight-year-old. Look at him get barreled today, dragging is bulbous bottom into the wall and disappear for…..ever. He’s gone. He’s not coming out. There’s the spit. And there’s John John! Look at him! John fucking John.

And when was the last time anyone ever looked at you for anything at all but specifically for something you did physically? When you were one and started eating by yourself? Four and tied your own shoes? Six and made a three-pointer from the college three point line? For me it was four and tying my own shoes. Those bunny ears, bunny ears were playing by a tree before crisscrossing it, trying to catch me.
Those bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole,
popped out the other side beautiful and bold. And that was it. I have proceeded to wade through the rest of my existence corporeally insipid. I don’t fall. I don’t fly. I am like you. Are we jealous? Do we despise John John for his extraordinary skill? Do we look at him defy the laws of human locomotion and cheer, roar, praise because mankind needs John Johns or do we look at him with eyes tinted green, wanting to take what he has for ourselves?

Oh, I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am not a physically gifted man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and don’t know for certain what ails me though it might be jealousy. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. My liver is bad, well–let it get worse. And John John, yes, somehow John John is getting better with each and every passing month.

Look at him! Just look at him! John fucking John. Look at him on tour, as part of the World Surf League. What? You don’t watch the World Surf League? Oh, sure, maybe not when it’s Nat Young vs. Caio Ibelli or Jack Freestone vs. Joel Parkinson but when it’s John John? You can’t help it because even if you don’t catch it live someone will inevitably pull out a phone at a party or work or dinner and say, “Look at this! Look at John John!” And there you will stand, squinting into a 4.7 inch screen looking at him take off under the lip, free-falling to the trough, barreled, barreled, barreled. He’s gone. He’s not coming out. There’s the spit and there’s John John! And would be impossible to believe if you hadn’t seen it with your own green tinted eyes.

Buy the rest here!

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#TourNotes: Wilko + Sir Glenneth Paltrow!

Discover the the squads, the teams, the mini-federations that surround your favourite pros!

I don’t want to wrap you up in too much expectation for this episode of Peter King’s #TourNotes. It ain’t Taxi Driver. It ain’t A Dog Day Afternoon. It ain’t even on the same scale as King’s earlier beats. Emblematic, perhaps, of a general drift among filmmakers to throw anything live.

But, a contest swings around and you want to know what’s happening on the ground. As King says, “I’ve been around the tour, I know it. I was on tour for three-and-a-half years, back when girls wanted to hang with Shaun Tomson and Rabbit Bartholomew and were 35 years old and wore high-waisted bikinis, do cocaine and all those things I didn’t know about. And what do I remember about my time on the tour? It isn’t the heats. I wanna show the fun. I want to show the silly little conversations.”

This episode, mercifully, is saved by Matt Wilkinson, the former world number one, and his suave virtuosity in front of the camera.

Watch here!

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