One of the great joys of international travel
is being stuck in a hotel room with one or maybe two English
television channels. It allows the curious to dip into subcultures
he would have never otherwise considered. I, for example, have
watched a handful of Bachelorette episodes whilst stuck in
wartime Ukraine. Here I learned that very handsome American men
emotionally shift into thirteen-year-old girls if they are still
looking for love in their 30s.
I have also watched two entire stand-up routines from Gabriel
Iglesias in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Mexican-American comedian is described thusly by San
Antonio’s Express-News: “He employs storytelling, affected
voices and sound effects in his act, whose other trademarks include
references to his weight and his use of Hawaiian shirts.”
Mr. Iglesias’s comedy did seem family-friendly as regaled the
audience with tales of his size. He is a short, portly man which he
called “fluffy.”
I had forgotten all about fluffy until this morning after
reading Steve Shearer’s almost too
perfect J-Bay analysis:
I know Chas will make any apposite calls required on
fashion or
physique but did Conner Coffin look like he had been
sneaking fried peanut butter sandwiches for a midnight snack or was
it just a soggy jersey flapping in the breeze?
And I immediately returned to Addis, to Gabriel Iglesias, to
fluffy.
Doesn’t the word describe young Conner to a tittle?
Oh I don’t mean this as an insult in the slightest. I mean it as
a compliment.
Conner Coffin is professional surfing circa 2017’s perfect
shaped man!
Low to the board, round but not too heavy. He can fit into any
size tube. He can throw massive amounts of spray. He can hold a
line all the way through its arc. Smooth bottom turn? He’s got.
Quick wrap? He’s got. Little jam off the top? He’s got a lot!
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Conner do an air in competition
but airs don’t matter anymore. The judges witness a hands’ free
full rotation, shrug, and mark down 4.2.
This is the dawning of the Age of Fluffy and I am very much
looking forward to Conner Coffin’s rule.
Speaking of fried peanut butter sandwiches, they spread peanut
butter on their hamburgers in Addis. It is beyond delicious.
What is the best strange thing you have ever put on a
hamburger?
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Jordy smith and South African friends wish this week
could have been 10 days long. Don't you too? | Photo:
WSL/Tostee
Another glorious day of professional surfing this
time featuring a shark!
Do you understand anti-depression? No, me
neither. All I know is that with everything pear shaped I skipped
out of the house this morning whistling a happy tune*, took a crow
bar to the broken door of my wifes car, jimmied it back in place,
gave it a belt with the back of an axe, stretched one Dakine
legrope from the other door to it to hold it in place. Made a pot
of coffee, though, If there is a happier working gal on the
planet this fine morning then God bless her, took it into my
beloved and said, “Your car is good to go babes”.
Hang on, also what made cheerful, reading Kelly Slater this
morning: “Sometimes a bad thing is a good thing.”
Yes, of course.
His career maybe over, mine is just beginning. Or as Polish salty
dawg Joe Conrad put it “Art is long, life is short and success is
very far off”. Don’t quit Kelly. Ever.
And watching Flippy Toledo light up the southern Hemisphere last
night. That elevates. Right from the start there’s been- what
the prison warden said to Paul
Newman in Cool Hand Luke, a “failure to
communicate”, the real meaning and purpose of pro
surfing: which is quite simply to entertain the working gal; to
transcend the corporeal and temporal limitations of existence, if
you want to get flowery.
It’s not to provide a career path for “project kiddies” whose
Daddios never got to surf for money, it’s not to pacify sponsors or
attract tourists. That’s all putting the cart before the horse. The
principal thing is to entertain the working stiff. Hawaiians
understood that before Cook and the missionaries emasculated the
Polynesian culture of surfing. Speaker, not so much.
First up, to steal a phrase and give some credit to a top five
surf writer Craig Braithwaite: The WSL has been kissed on the dick
by an angel this week at J-Bay. Repeatedly. J-Bay normally provides
one, maybe two days of peak surf per waiting period thus
exposing the core deficit in the WSL long form format and reliably
producing some of the most brutal anti-climaxes in world sport. Not
this time.
At some point, right about halfway through Jordy’s heat the
judges became completely emotionally overwhelmed in a day exalted
with sunshine and perfect surf. I missed his first ten getting a
beer out of the fridge but the second one, for a tailslide and a
floater, I thought, no way.
For every scoring wave of Florences you could feel the judges
getting antsy.
Was that a ten?
Looks over shoulder to Richie Porta.
Did he feel it? Nope.
And then boom, the skies opened and it started raining tens,
everywhere : all over the lineup, in the South African savannah on
the high veldt little baby gazelles grazing on perfect 10’s, lions
roaring with perfect ten smiles, Rainbow Nation on Mandela day
blowing perfect tens out of vuvuzelas all over South Africa. Vulva.
Perfect 20 for Jordy. It was a feel good pair of 10’s par
excellence. I’ll watch it again in the cold light of day but they
never quite look as good taken out of context.
Seriously I thought Julian surfed more perfectly… and
it seemed no-one else could see it. The most beautiful, critical
edge work. He got his ten, claim-called it when he got it.
The super heats kept coming. Coffin v Parko and Coffin dropped
the secret turn twice ; it’s an extended layback used as a
finishing move. He used it to combo Parko and keep him there the
entire heat. I know Chas will make any apposite calls required on
fashion or
physique but did Connor Coffin look like he had been
sneaking fried peanut butter sandwiches for a midnight snack or was
it just a soggy jersey flapping in the breeze?
The biggest super heat of the day was marked absent. Kelly vs
Filipe. Do you think Kelly faked the injury, called an ambulance
and posted a fake X-Ray (available on the dark web) to avoid
getting smoked by Filipe at perfect J-Bay, or does that sound a
little far fetched? A little too conspiracy? What odds would you
give, if responsible for a betting agency for Kelly to takedown
Toledo on current form? I say very low. And what odds that Kelly is
tested for banned substances out of competition? Again, I say very
low to nil.
After the storm of perfect tens had passed and the sky cleared
judges critically underscored Italo Ferreira. They were probably
suffering a scoring fatigue and Italo was the unfortunate
recipient. After one brilliant ride Joey Turps said, “Those
verticals, they can’t be denied.”
I was the best backhand surfing of the day and it was
denied.
Major bummer.
Every other goofy looked soggy, blunt and ill-formed by
comparison to Italo, including Medina, Duru and Wright in the
opening heat of round four.
Heat two, found four. My head was swimming, seeing double, I
could feel my old friend, a mild dose of Tourettes syndrome tapping
me upside the head. Vulva. But there was an inescapable feeling
that John Florence would score a perfect Ten. Vulva. Shithead. The
one hybrid hook, top turn, savagely tweaked into a cutback
manouevre shut the book on the question of historical high water
marks. John hit it, John reset it.
Should have been game over but Fred Morais started landing
haymakers left right and centre. Incredible huge hacks. Two mid
nines. He put John into a situation needing a frigging nine after
the best wave ever ridden at J-Bay. Nutty. Nutty nutty vulva.
John rode a beautiful wave. Throwaway deadpanned Pottz. Six.
Eight minutes remaining.
Cut to the boat out the back. A shark boat? Where are the shark
boats, the jetskis with all the shark detection gear they announced
with such fanfare last year? Gone? Has the white shark abandoned
J-Bay? Real Estate too expensive? The clock ticks down. Morais
victory.
You’d have to be a churlish little person with a grey little
soul to not appreciate the genius of round four, heat two. That was
incredible. An incredible, incredible spectacle vulva.
Huh….a horn sounds in the next heat with Jordy, Julian and
Filipe…. Turpel carries on, smooth, ….in the background we can hear
Gigs on the beach mic say we are on hold. Julian and Filipe are
ferried to a rigid inflatable vessel just out the back. Is it a
shark? A white shark? Rosie supplies the update: Safety first and
everyone seems to be in a panic deciding what the protocol is. But
what the fuck happened? A breaching shark, they say Mako, I say
juvenile white….that was a shark boat! I bet Nick Carroll never saw
that. And we’re done, and I’m done. So done. See you tomorrow.
Every so often when angels appear on the Earth Pro surfing
transcends sport, not because of itself, but in spite of itself. So
it was today in Jeffreys Bay, Republic of South Africa.
* Liftr Pullr Flex and the Buff result: You know the chain
smoker, he called the stock broker, he said “Hell I hate to
sell when we’re doing really well but I need a little liquidity,
you know I think they might be onto me.”
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Little did the Shaka Cops know, Kelly held a deep
disdain for their inadequate training regime!
Kelly Slater is many things, but if there’s one
thing he’s definitely not, it’s afraid to share his opinion on the
internet.
By soaking up yesterday’s headlines with a crook foot, Kelly had
fulfilled his weekly attention quota. Not bad for a Monday’s
work.
That’s why, when he left a controversial comment on a
lesser-known (internationally) Aussie slab-hunter’s Instagram, I
find it unlikely Slater was seeking further notice.
Nevertheless, by some stroke of misfortune, Kelly happened to
comment on the Instagram of a lesser-known (internationally) Aussie
slab-hunter who is my friend. So attention he will get!
First, some back story.
Justine Ruszczyck, AKA Justine Damond, was an Australian-born
woman living in the States. By trade Justine was a spiritual
healer, but according to friends and family, she spent much of her
time volunteering at animal shelters and making people laugh.
The other day, Justine called the cops to report a sexual
assault — something she believed was happening in an alley behind
her Minneapolis home. When the cops arrived, Justine, wearing
pajamas, reportedly ran to the cop car to speak with the policemen.
She was then shot — not by the cop she approached, but by the cop
sitting on the farside of the vehicle — right in the abdomen.
Dead.
Australians are furious and confused. Americans are furious but
slightly less confused. Nobody seems to know much of anything.
Now the post, from lesser-known (internationally) Aussie
slab-hunter @benjserrano:
For those who don’t enjoy reading the fine print, @kellyslater
commented:
American cops are poorly trained psychologically and end up
trigger happy out of fear or control. They escalate situations and
overreact. I was so sad to hear this news. Police have killed over
543 people in the states this year in the US. I wonder how many in
oz? Sorry, Benny.
One study found that,
in 2010, Australian police fired six fatal shots. I can’t find any
recent data on the subject.
On the other hand, there are multiple sites with a running tally
of cop-on-civilian killings in America for 2017. One lists a number as high as 664, while
the Washington Post says
543. Somehow, and I say this with no disrespect to the dead, the
effective difference between those two numbers is zero.
Because whether the body count is 543 or 664 or 1902309128390218
it’s absolutely appalling. Especially when, in the age of modern
tech, we’re able to witness many of these atrocities with our own
eyes. And you’d be brainwashed to believe these cops are always
acting in a legal or ethical fashion.
Now, I won’t sit here and attempt to intellectualize the
monolithic chasm, in regards to cop-on-civilian killings, between
the United States and other developed, democratic nations. But if I
were to attempt such a thing, I would certainly consider
our Constitutional traditions of bearing arms and
marginalizing people based on skin tone, not neglecting the
compounding effects those practices have on a society. But again, I
won’t do that.
What I will do is agree with Kelly. American cops are poorly
trained and trigger happy, the latter probably related to fear,
which lends itself back to the former.
Some people won’t like that assertion, but the way I see it,
it’s either that or cops just like killing people. Or it’s the
guns/race thing. Or some combination of it all. Take your pick.
Surely I won’t have to pacify with a “Cops have a very difficult
job and I can’t possibly understand the stressors they endure on a
daily basis” disclaimer, right? I’d hope we’re beyond that.
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Australian bodyboarder James Kates, only five feet tall
and ninety pounds in wetsuit, has the heart of a lion. | Photo:
Luke Shadbolt
Meet: Bodyboarder who killed Kolohe’s J-Bay
dream!
"You can't see it on the footage but he actually
nose dives…"
A little scene setting.
As round two of the J-Bay contest turned on yesterday, surfers
like springboks in flight on the vast green plains, one bodyboarder
took exception to a wave of Kolohe Andino that promised to yield a
ten. Far, far down the line, with Kolohe vulnerable inside the
tube, a bodyboarder kicked into the wave, a decision so reckless
many believed it cost Kolohe the heat.
Today, the bodyboarder was named as James Kates,
an Australian bodyboarder, a very good one, stickers and so
forth, who had apparently timed his South African vacation
perfectly.
His board sponsor dragboardsco made the
announcement via Instagram.
Encouraged by his sponsor’s antagonistic behaviour,
BeachGrit called James, who’d miraculously flown from
South Africa to his Thirroul home in Australia in less than a dozen
hours, for his version of the event.
Rule of thumb: If you can shove your whole arm in
it, you probably don't want to be inside!
I was waiting to post this, out of respect for
Longtom’s contest-wrap territory.
From a writing standpoint, the offense of diluting someone
else’s topic warrants nothing short of a SharkAttack, and I’ve
already enough issues in regards to vital limbs.
(Somewhat) thankfully, Shearer touched on the
very topic I wish to discuss, if only in passing. He said, in
regards to Filipe Toledo’s 19.63 performance, “Judges got the score
order wrong: the first wave, given a 9.63, was the Ten.”
And while I don’t agree with the general sentiment that either
of those waves deserved a ten, or, as Longtom says, the
judges should have felt a ten, I believe the point within
his point was this: tubes are being overscored at J-Bay.
And I would agree, to the nth.
Now, this argument is built upon the feeble shoulders of
subjectivity, meaning that you have the right to lambast, ridicule,
and poke fun at every facet of my person. But doesn’t it bother you
that guys are getting eights, nines, tens even, for flimsy,
stall-heavy tubes? The types of tubes that you’d claim to your
friends for weeks, but also the types of tubes would warrant fours
and fives at Cloudbreak?
J-Bay is a performance wave, plain and simple. Can you get very
barreled? Yes, but when we think of J-Bay, we think of Fanning and
Curren drawing impossibly long lines, not Johnny Pintail threading
a double-up down the end.
The barrels at this event have been mostly high, tight, and
unimpressive, aside from the surfers’ abilities in limberness and
“speed management”, noted also by Long T. But do we remember
Snapper, or any other event for that matter, where Richie Porta has
said, without equivocation, that the judges don’t want to see soft,
stally tubes? That they want to see freight trains running down the
track and the surfer, the symbolic just-too-late lover in this
instance, chasing down the locomotive for his last chance at
romance?
Then why the hell did Jeremy Flores get a nine for his top
third of the wave, nose sticking out the whole way, capped off only
with a non-commital drop wallet barrel ride?
Keep in mind Jeremy is on my Fantasy Team when I say, that was
complete and utter bullshit.
The same is true for Leo F. and Filipe T and maybe even
John.
The way I see it is this — most anyone can luck into one of
those long, tight, J-Bay runners. The pros ride them exceptionally
well, but to equate stalling and squeezing with driving off the
bottom and turning the lip inside-out is a travesty, especially at
a wave with such an incredible canvas for maneuvers. I often feel
they’d be better off dodging the barrel altogether, unless it’s one
of the throaty runners down the end.
In making this argument, I feel it’s necessary to divulge one
important fact: given the timezone disparity between CA and SA,
I’ve not been able to watch any of the event live. Watching in
realtime, I think, is a vital component to wholly understanding the
judging scale of any given day, or heat.
But let me ask you this — when 2018 rolls around, and the WSL
drops a 2017 highlight package to hype the upcoming J-Bay event,
what clips do you think they’ll use? John threading a waist-high
tube on an overhead wave, or John laying down a vicious,
fin-flashing frontside hack?
You know, like Gabby’s 6.97 at
Cloudbreak that has broken the WSL’s VHS…
Stick that in your judging criteria.
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
