Kelly Slater APolitical
And here we see the work of Florida mixed-media artist Bruce Reynolds.

Watch: Vice Does Kelly Slater’s art show

Derek Rielly

By

Illuminating four-minute short on Kelly Slater's recent artshow, Apolitical Process.

Yeah, sure, we’ve been milking the hell out of Kelly Slater’s art show in Venice last week. But what do you do? Where I found the event, viewed from far, as smooth and as licked as bathroom porcelain, BeachGrit‘s writer for the night, the noted broadcaster David Lee Scales found it irrational and unpersuasive.

The New York-based, born-in-Canada magazine, Vice, just published a four-minute short on the event, one that, to me, gives the best window into the show. We see the anti-Sea World painted boards of Kevin Ancell (the sharp-eyed reader will note Vice gets Ancell’s name wrong – accuracy, or balance for that matter, aren’t Vice strong points), the surreal and mutated sculptures of Florida’s Bruce Reynolds and Todd Glaser’s monochrome photography.

If you, like most, recoil at the likelihood of a Trump presidency, you’ll love Bruce Reynolds’ eloquent The Great Wall of Trump.

“This is a cautionary tale… I sometimes feel that our leadership is selected, not elected,” says Reynolds.

Watch here.

Turtle Bay Oahu
Gorgeous Turtle Bay on the North Shore.

Two teens dead in Turtle Bay shooting

Rory Parker

By

One more incident proving that we shouldn't be allowed guns.

There’s not much real violence in Hawaii. Plenty fights, but usually nothing too serious. Just some guys scrapping over something dumb. Pretty easy to find some fisticuffs outside a bar post-midnight, but that’s the deal pretty much everywhere. Young men get drunk, don’t get laid, get in a fight.

Almost no gun violence. Because there aren’t many guns. Too hard, too expensive, to get your hands on them. And I’m cool with that. I dig guns, in theory. But in reality I think the average person is too stupid to handle the responsibility of owning a hunk of metal that slings chunks of lead at a million miles hour.  I’m definitely too stupid.

A study in 2014 showed that Hawaii has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States. Lowest household gun ownership numbers as well. )  Which makes me happy, makes me feel safer.

Yeah, there are always lunatic criminal types, but they mainly go after each other. Like the violence on Kauai. Tons of violent crimes in Kapaa, just down the road from my house. But it’s just chronics bashing each other over chronic drama. Garbage humans hurting other garbage humans over the garbage bullshit they think is important. Pretty much victimless crimes.

So it’s crazy to hear that two people, a seventeen year old girl and nineteen year old boy, were shot in the Turtle Bay parking lot last night. 

It’s apparently some sort of suicide. Or murder suicide, more likely.

Damn tragic, as always. One more incident proving that we shouldn’t be allowed guns. No matter how awesome they are, how fun they are, how well they can supposedly “protect” us.

I wish we lived in a world where we all could own guns. But we don’t.

Revealed: Nate Tyler hates boobs!

Chas Smith

By

Finger painted ones!

I have never met anyone who hated curry. It is a staple from India to Thailand to Japan and very sought after in New York City.

But Nate Tyler hates curry.

Why?

The smell of curry reminds me of finger-painted boobs. My dad is a hippie and when I was young we would regularly travel to festivals and fairs in Oregon. There was everything that you’d expect from hippie fairs. Music, arts and crafts, expressions of free love and finger-painted boobs. Topless women would wander around with saggy boobs and swirls of paint, rushing and whirling toward unattractive nipples. And everyone was eating curry. I loathed the sight of those finger-painted boobs and now I loathe anything to do with curry.

Oh. I would hate curry too.

A dour looking young Kelly accepts defeat.
A dour looking young Kelly accepts defeat.

Victory: Hamilton wings Slater!

Chas Smith

By

There is a new most popular kid in town!

Who is the most popular surfer in the world as measured through the fine, though imperfect, lens of social media?

Wrong!

Kelly is certainly very popular and the most popular man but the most popular person, as revealed by Transworld Business, is Kauai’s Bethany Hamilton!

Let’s look at the stats!

Beth has 4.3 million followers across platforms with an average engagement of around 17,000 fans per post.

Kelly wins Instagram (how could you not follow him? He’s a brilliant artist!) but Beth wastes him across Pintrest, Facebook, Twitter and GoGoInflight with her fans liking, commenting, not swearing… engaging so very often!

And does this surprise you? Surfing is, after all, still fairly to very misogynistic. Maybe it is changing? Maybe it is becoming more open, more even? Let’s hope!

While we’re at it, who do you follow on the socials?

Or do you not give two shits?

Watch: Kelly Slater Sing Like An Angel!

Derek Rielly

By

Get filled with the soft notes of Kelly Slater!

Do you remember the hoopla, justified in my opinion, surrounding Kelly Slater’s art show in Venice Beach last week? The multimedia exhibition was an examination of the prevailing stench coming from the US Federal election and featured the work of artists Bruce Reynolds, Kevin Ancell and Todd Glaser.

Kelly, of course, believes that big business and government are poisoned by the machinations of unseen evil. The show was called “Apolitical Process: a vision by Kelly Slater” and was, he says, “an artistic journey through the chaotic and sometimes inflammatory 2016 election cycle. It is our aim to explore and expose the underlying truth, hypocrisy, danger, motivations, misinformation and effects of this process.”

Apolitical also pointed out the cruelty of keeping killer whales in captivity.

The noted broadcaster David Lee Scales attended the event for BeachGrit but found his gaze more on Kelly’s Gucci sneakers than the exhibition.

“The vast majority of the exhibit was Bruce Reynolds’ work; which was very uninteresting to me. It’s an attempt at a political statement, a commentary on the absurdity of the 2016 presidential campaign in the US. The works are essentially sculptures, made of found items with a lot cultural touchstones and corporate brand references. I don’t get it. I wasn’t provoked. It just simply didn’t compel me… Kelly arrived midway through the evening and was swarmed with fans trying to get iPhone photos. His silly shoes were the highlight of the evening for me.”

Unfortunately, Mr Scales missed the highlight of the show, which was Kelly’s extended version of the Bob Marley standard One Love. Fortunately, for you, me, the great movie director Michael Oblowitz snatched the jam on his phone. 

And you can watch here!

 

Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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