The world's most handsome goofy foot admits to a
deeply hidden secret!
Some of my favorite days of the month are when
I bump into Rob Machado at the market. Both of us shopping. Him
growing more and more regal with age. Me with two bottles of vodka
in my cart and packages of nitrate-free salami.
I bumped into him last evening at the market. Rob’s smile, if
you have never seen it up close, is like the Buddha’s. Serene.
Peaceful. Content. I asked him, “Do you think it is better to be
dumb and know that you are dumb or to be dumb and not know it?”
The conversation turned, slightly, toward having enough general
sense to be able to survive. Rob said, “I don’t even know how to
swim but if you drop me at second reef Pipe I’m sure I’ll figure
out how to get to the beach.”
“Really?” I responded “You really don’t know how to swim?”
“I mean kind of…” he said, “…but not well at all.”
And how’s that. Rob Machado can’t swim well. He is a Pipeline
Master.
My take away? It is 2017 and we can be whatever we want to be.
Spread those wings and soar!
Find out why Jordy Smith needs to learn the true meaning
of jihad. Why Gabriel Medina’s backflip was evidence of
“tectonic stasis rather than progress”. Why the public is a bitch
and how it relates to Dane Reynolds. How Kelly Slater accidentally
represents the dark side of capitalism and why John John Florence
is the necessary catalyst for a renewed tour.
5. Jordy Smith
According to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the chief architect
of salafi jihadism, America is the most decadent culture in human
history, obsessed by the pursuit of wealth and luxury, corrupted by
a depth of moral licentiousness never before seen. On pain of
beheading I respectfully disagree.
I’m sick to death of writing that Jordy has no ticker. You can
imagine a thousand pathways to a world title for Jordy but none of
them involve winning a showdown at real Pipe.
I find Americans just about the stoutest and staunchest citizens
on Earth. My only beef is when Americans use the word cunt. From
puritan mouths it sounds queer and mean. It’s a convict term of
endearment and it should remain so. That digression because I’m
sick to death of writing that Jordy has no ticker. You can imagine
a thousand pathways to a world title for Jordy but none of them
involve winning a showdown at real Pipe.
Al-Zawahiri’s other intellectual achievement was the
sanctification of what he terms “matrydom operations”, a concept
our beloved South African/American could borrow when it comes to
hucking the ledge at Pipe. Am I saying Jordy needs a bit of
jihad in his soul to stiffen his resolve? I guess I am.
4. Gabs Medina
I know people are going to call me a glass half-empty miserable
son of a bitch, even though I’m not. In real life I’m cheerful as a
sky full of swallows. But I saw the Medina Rio backflip (what,
forgotten already?) as a sign of tectonic stasis rather than
progress. Flynn Novak pulled it off around the end of the last Ice
Age, way back in 2010. That was the era of Kai Neville and the
Kustom Airstrike, if you recall. Boat-load of the best progressive
surfers on the planet in Indo with Kai cutting edits from it. Hard
to believe they haven’t live streamed one like it yet.
Competitively, it was the last opening for a true progressive
vision of the sport to emerge. Dane had effectively welded an
avant-garde amalgamation of tail-high aerial surfing to brutal
power hacks, Kelly had risen to the challenge, bringing new lines
and fresh approaches to old venues. Natural heirs like Julian
Wilson, Owen Wright and Jordy Smith were ready to punch through the
hole into a radical future.
My heart pains to say that judges faced with radical choice
cowardly turned back to the conservatism of traditional Aussie
power surfing. Dane quit. The historical opening closed. We got
Parkinson, Fanning and De Souza. Parker’s Dead Ball Era. In that
context Medina could be the last best hope for a radical
recurrence.
3. Dane Reynolds
Seen from the perspective of an omniscient, omnipresent narrator
Dane’s career shimmers as the ultimate rock-n-roll swindle. Quit
the tour on a high and slit the throat of the Quiksilver fatted
calf with the biggest payday in history. One that forced the hand
of CEO Andrew Mooney to turn away from “athletes”, make Kelly an
offer he couldn’t accept and left a bloodless corpse to be picked
apart by the vultures of predatory capitalism.
How to kill a company, by Dane Reynolds. Chapter 11: Redemption.
Did you thrill,while watching Ch 11, to realise the wilderness
hadn’t been empty save cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon but was in fact a
dark night of the soul and Dane was now happy and on the other
side?
Did you think, like I, that those good ole Ventucky boys Dane
grew up with were reading from the book of Right-On when they
proclaimed pro surfing as an aberration, a weeping syphilitic
chancre on the flaccid cock of modern surfing?
The public are bitches. They turn on you in a heartbeat. In each
of us lives a person who wants to be loved for himself or herself
and not for his or her abilities, or even qualities. Value per se,
intrinsic. A dangerously anti-instrumental, anti-capital
orientation. Therein lies the motivation for Ch 11.
I understand panic attacks at pro surfing contests, having
suffered a similar malaise for years. It’s a mark of exquisite
taste that a man should feel spiritual and physical death descend
at these events. Is it now too much to ask that Dane lets C-Kat
bring the weird with the falcons and gives us what we want, what we
desire from the WSL but rarely receive: raw, elegant brutality, no
insipid 75% compromise, innovation? In short, the best surfing in
the world. You’re no huckster Dane, so the question is: Is you is
or is you ain’t going to bring the fucking gas money for the rest
of the trip?
Capitalism is an insatiable bitch, is it not comrades? Despite
being a digital entrepreneur and a sub-human redneck wastrel I hate
it intensely*, more than Noam Chomsky, more than Naomi Klein, more
than Yanis Varoufakis, more than Bernie, more even than all the
nude hippies in Morning of the Earth smoking chillums in the cave
at Ulus.
In the future, the one percent are going to own everything and
milk us dry, charging fees on everything. They’re going to shred us
all into tiny atomized monsters fighting each other in a
bottom-feeding frenzy for scraps of paper trickling down through
the gig economy.
The future is five minutes ago in the USA, five minutes away in
Oz. Granted, hating capitalism is a fashionable shape to throw in
public, one Kelly Slater loves to strike. He loves to swing for the
fences with Monsanto who, after all, did nothing more than
democratise GM seeds (true). They took jah’s seed and privatised it
for profit, he took jah’s wave and did the same thing, in a process
he described as “spiritual”.
Funny what folks find anti-depressive. Dark visions thrill me.
When I’m down I love to imagine the smoking ruins of capitalism are
nigh and the four horsemen wielding burning Merricks are galloping
over the hill ready to storm the hated symbol of corporate
oppression: the Slater Wave Tub. The blade falls and the surfing
prole hoists the white flag of freedom.
Suited greedheads have been eyeing off surfing since the
eighties, the seventies even, but we never imagined the person
delivering the Judas kiss would be the greatest surfer of all time.
Slater has finally achieved what business has yearned for but never
been able to achieve: he’s turned the essence of the surfing
experience, riding a wave, into a pure transaction. A wave as good
to be sold in the free market for profit.
For that, for feeding what was left alive of surfing to the
bitch of capitalism, and on behalf of the surfing prole I say: fuck
you very much Kelly. Kelly’s legacy is now set in stone, hitched to
the wavepool wagon for good or ill.
In the interim, while history arms itself against the rise of
the wave-machines and their “unforeseen consequences”, there is a
more pressing issue for Kelly to deal with: one last swing at a
Title in 2017. Chances? Depends on Snapper. He can’t afford to be
dead in the water after the Aussie Leg.
*Still available for freelance gigs. Special South Pacific
and wave-tub rates available now! Call me Kelly!
1. JJF
I love it when a writer handles his subject with a cool, light
touch, wields the scalpel so deftly the subject doesn’t even feel
the hot sting of the blade. But I love it more when passion for the
subject overwhelms them, when they lose restraint and start
bludgeoning everything in sight like a viking on an orgiastic
rampage. That is character. True Character. Like Dell on Israel,
Chas on Yemen and Rory on Costco workers.
As for writers, same for musicians and surfers. When they let
loose, when are they completely overcome in the moment is when the
real shit happens. That’s why watching JJF in Rio and in the
Portugal Final was so viscerally satisfying. There was no holding
back. No “mind.”
How’d you like your world champ’s year? This’ll be as popular as
a turd in the sangria bowl but I found it a tad… under-cooked. The
biggest tour cheerleaders would find it hard to spin a narrative
claiming the tour brings out the best in JJF. Low-energy lineups
orphan his surfing in a haze of opioid indifference.
He sits there, and he waits, and he sits. As for Fiji, apart
from round three did he not underwhelm, slightly but ever so
surely? Well-beaten twice in succession in perfect
six-to-eight-foot surf by Matt Wilko.
More than Pipe, more than Teahupoo, more than any other
reefbreak in the world, CB demands a cerebral approach, a constant
thinking and rethinking that just seemed to be beyond JJF. Easily
surrendered to Fanning in the J-Bay Final, Slater at Chopes.
What he has is the inverse of what Damien Jurado sang about in Return to
Maraqopa: Out there is nowhere but inside is
endless-taking up room till you run out of space. He has endless
space out there but inside is limited.
An algorithm can’t create now, or ever, the kind of surf which
elevates him from the amazing to the sublime. What he did in the
chaos of Rio, in Portugal, at Pipeline is a supra-intelligent
transcending of chaos.
The tour must be restructured, in format and location, to do
justice to the talent or suffer the slow burn of potential
greatness dying on the vine. The Slater Era is dead. The JJF Era
must proceed in a different biosphere. He is the greatest argument
for renewal.
Does the dream of a man surfing a 100 ft wave
thrill you to pieces or leave you cold and confused?
It leaves me cold and confused!
Oh I don’t mean to take anything away from brave souls combing
nautical charts, calculating wind, fetch, ummmm Fletch, in order to
find and conquer the biggest waves on earth but the number 100 just
seems so arbitrary.
Like, do you remember when Garrett McNamara claimed that he had
done it, done the 100 ft, at Nazaré in 2013 but it maybe turned out
that it was 60 something? A little embarrassing.
It is impossible to really measure a wave. Isn’t it?
CNN just did a nice story on the fabulous surfer Andrew Cotton
that pushes the 100 ft narrative but it seems that Mr. Cotton might
not care so much about the number. Let’s read!
Andrew Cotton is on a perpetual quest, the thirst for which
he admits will probably never be truly quenched.
Two years ago, the English plumber was fixing dripping taps
— now, as a professional surfer, he is tackling the world’s biggest
waves.
His obsession is twofold: To beat the unofficial record size
of 100 feet high; and to track down treacherous waves in waters
that have never been surfed before. Combining the two is the
ideal. “I think what drives me is the biggest wave,” Cotton says.
“That’s the dream isn’t it, in a place where you’re not going to
have 50 surfers? That’s exciting.”
If he breaks the record, and in uncharted waters … what
next?
“The thing about big-wave surfing is that it’s not like you
climb Everest and say, ‘That’s me done’,” he says. “There’s lots
more Everests to climb; with surfing you have no idea when the
bigger wave will come. I’m searching for the biggest wave, and that
search is never ending.”
That sounds like the right attitude. It doesn’t really sound
like he cares about “100 ft.” That’s CNN’s trip.
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Joel Parkinson can rack up two sevens all day long.
What about a detailed filmic exploration of Joel doing what he does
best? Surfing J-Bay. Working title: Portrait of the Artist as
Pointbreak Surfer. Set him up for months, allow total freedom of
quiver, allow every minutiae of style and technique to reach it's
fullest flower and fruit. Is that a boring concept? Not as boring
as watching the great thoroughbred grinding through the low gears
of another year or two on tour for diminishing returns. | Photo:
@worldsurflols
Joel Parkinson through Albee Layer, Ryan Burch and
Filipe Toledo!
Are you new to the BeachGrit Global Power
Rankings? It’s a top twenty of the best surfers in
the world, including those who chase contests, those who chase
clips, boy, girl, binary neutral etc. Read part one
(surfers 20 to 15, here) and part two
(surfers 14 to ten) here.
And, now…
9. Joel Parkinson
Thoroughbred racehorse being flogged to go around a track one
more time. The argument is the CT produces the best surfing on
earth, from the best surfers. I argue the opposite: too often the
CT forces the best surfers on earth to down tune their surfing to a
level of excellent mediocrity, to make heats.
Joel being exhibit A.
He can rack up two sevens all day long. What about a detailed
filmic exploration of Joel doing what he does best? Surfing J-Bay.
Working title: Portrait of the Artist as Pointbreak
Surfer. Set him up for months, allow total freedom of quiver,
allow every minutiae of style and technique to reach it’s fullest
flower and fruit. Is that a boring concept? Not as boring as
watching the great thoroughbred grinding through the low gears of
another year or two on tour for diminishing returns.
8. Albee Layer
Take the Snowdonia wave tub victory, add it to the Peahi Finals,
under the lip take-offs to otherworldly tube-riding during the El
Nino winter, throw in the recent backside 540 and you get a
convincing case for Layer being the best surfer in the world over
the last two years.
Put him up against Adriano, imagine any surf from two-foot to
twenty and tell me who was the best during 2015. That’s no
convenient truth for a sport that relies on the production and
global acceptance of a continuous series of more or less agreed
upon world champions for it’s credibility. John Florence restores
the global balance for now but Albee Layer remains a fly in the
ointment.
7. Ryan Burch
Hand on heart, I wouldn’t swap my hand-to-mouth existence,
economically useless, taxpayer-subsidised higher education, loving
family and surfing life at one of Australias best pointbreaks in
the most consistent sub-tropical wave zone on earth for a single
day of a competitive pro surfer’s life.
The futility of surfing to a subjective criteria and being
judged in an incomprehensible manner would bring me to a
homicidal/suicidal fury in weeks, even if I had the talent, which I
do not.
But there are paid surfer mocassins I would cut a left nut off
to walk a mile in. Mostly Ryan Burch’s. Psychic Migrations shat all over
View from a Blue Moon, for feels.
That South American light, so Californian, but a California with
hollow lefts and no strip malls. A better world. Heaven.
I keep imagining that Burch could be the most influential surfer
of a generation and I can’t understand why Burch, best
surfer-shaper in the world with daylight second, is shaded by
androgynous Aussie millenials like Craig Ando in terms of moving
picture and editorial coverage.
Can you?
6. Filipe Toledo
When you have the world on a string, like Toledo had in 2015,
with a small/medium wave game that simply erased opponents like
irrelevant amateurs then you keep doing what your doing, right? And
fill in the missing pieces with the hollow lefts. Which he was on
the way to doing.
But last year was mystifying. Take the injury out of the
equation and he mostly tried to power surf to victory, with a few
rare exceptions. What is that: a failure of will, of strategy, of
intelligence in the Toledo camp?
Judges had already lost their marbles for him, no need for him
to look backwards and try and meet them halfway back along a path
he needed not traverse.
Daddy Toledo, take your boy back to 2015. Follow that template.
There’s your Title.
Just as likely to ruin your life as make it
better.
Money’s a crazy thing. Just as likely to
ruin your life as make it better.
I once knew a woman, very advanced alcoholic. Talented artist,
but hellbent on drinking herself to death. Thought she was in her
late forties/early fifties. Turned out to be early thirties.
Wretched, haggard, pathetic.
She got her foot run over by her elderly landlord. Don’t know
who was at fault. He was a doddering old man on the verge of
dementia. She was a stumbling slurring mess of a human ninety
percent of the time. A true gem that remaining ten, though.
She came into work limping. That’s how I learned about her foot.
Told me what happened, but she was fine. Foot was just bruised, no
big deal. Lots of little bones in there, better go to a doc. But
she wouldn’t. Because she was in the US illegally, wanted in her
home country for some crime she wouldn’t explain but sounded pretty
sordid, and didn’t have insurance anyway. Which was fucked, because
she was essentially a full time employee. Real easy for employers
to dangle 1099 status, or cash under the table, and make people
think it’s to their advantage. Which it almost always is not.
She shambled along drunkenly for weeks, foot never got better.
One day I noticed a dirty bandage on it.
What happened? Hurt your foot again?
Not a surprise. Drink that much, as in all day every day, you
fuck yourself up. Even us junior alkys in training wake up with
mystery injuries.
Nope, still from the car. Foot’s not healing, there’s a little
cut on it now.
She peeled off the bandage and exposed horror. Purple green
sausage toes, wide open weeping wound. It fucking stank.
You have to go to the hospital.
I can’t. I don’t have any money.
You’re gonna die. Get in my car, we’re going now.
I can’t afford it, Rory.
It doesn’t matter. Get in the fucking car.
I took her to Wahiawa General, closest ER on Oahu. Not ideal,
but you deal with what you’re served.
Turned her over to the doctors, sat out front and waited.
An hour later got pulled aside. Fucking gangrene, about to lose
her foot. Checking her in now, don’t know when she’ll be free to
go.
They discharged her a month later. They saved the foot. The
period of forced sobriety knocked a decade off her appearance.
Lucid, intelligent. This was a woman I’d never met before. But she
was pissed. At me! Huge amounts of hospital debt, no way she could
ever pay. Couldn’t exactly understand why she was concerned. When
you’re in the country illegally, don’t have a pot to piss in,
receive most of your wages under the table, large amounts of debt
aren’t exactly a problem. Just don’t pay. What’s gonna happen?
Hit up your landlord’s insurance, I told her. That’s what it’s
for. They’ll pay your bills. Maybe even toss you something
extra.
She did, and a few weeks later came up to me smiling. The
insurance company had paid off. Worryingly quickly, from my point
of view. Ever tried to recoup cash from an insurance company? Those
fuckers will drag their feet forever over a pittance. So I kinda
knew the answer, but asked anyway.
How much’d they pay you?
Ten thousand dollars!
Oh, no.
Ten thousand dollars ain’t nothing, in the larger scheme.
Wouldn’t zero out her hospital bills. You can’t do much with ten
grand. Not enough to really improve a life. But sure as hell enough
to totally ruin one.
Flush with dough she began living large. El Patron tequila and
fruit punch became her go-to drink. A stupid choice, made more so
by her inclination to buy in mini bottles at the local liquor
store. Picked up a crew of addict friends. Like coyotes, those
people. Sniff out the weak, drag ’em down as a group.
She was back on the bottle immediately. No surprise. Kind of
sad, but what’re you gonna do?
Flush with dough she began living large. El Patron tequila and
fruit punch became her go-to drink. A stupid choice, made more so
by her inclination to buy in mini bottles at the local liquor
store. Picked up a crew of addict friends. Like coyotes, those
people. Sniff out the weak, drag ’em down as a group.
Turned out she had a taste for meth, kept in check previously by
poverty. Given the choice between booze and crank she went with the
former. But now that she was flush it was game on. She stopped
coming in to work, when she showed up she’d be hammered. Was always
drunk before, totally incapacitated now. Covered a dozen freshly
shaped blanks in pink spatters one day. Came in sloppy, ended up
slathered in pigment. Somehow managed to transfer it to nearly
every surface in the factory.
The money lasted two weeks. Pissed most of it away partying, was
robbed of the last couple thousand. Some of her new friends held
her captive and forced her to drain her accounts over the course of
a few days. She ended up homeless, playing hide and seek with
security at the sugar mill where she’d bed down in the bushes at
night.
The last time I saw her she was sitting on the ground surrounded
by her remaining possessions. What little she had left fit in a few
plastic bags. She was bawling her eyes out.
I said hi, talked for a minute. Lied and told her things would
get better. Handed her the remainder of a pack of smokes, the
fifteen bucks I had in my wallet. Gave her a hug, wished her good
luck.
