It is the most disturbingly honest podcast yet!
I have been here and there and everywhere over the past month. Florida to West Hollywood to Venice’s own Abbott Kinney, almost near Stab, The Inertia and the World Surf League’s adjacent homes. Yes, everywhere except on the Grit! podcast sitting across the reclaimed wood coffee table from David Lee Scales. Podcasts require a physical presence in the way writing doesn’t. I can write or give interviews or write some more from a variety of places but the podcast means being in San Clemente at the Surfrider Foundation offices at the same time as David Lee Scales.
And that moment finally happened this morning. The sun shone brightly, the air had that humid snap wherein it seems like things can turn sideways at a moment’s notice. David Lee and I started light, chatting about the Florida Surf Film Festival before he brought up the deletion of my Instagram account @reportsfromhell and the subsequent creation of my new Instagram account @surfjournalist.
David Lee mentioned that friends and listeners had reached out to him, re. the new account, concerned about my mental health. I laughed, briefly, before admitting that I am truly in an odd state. An overwhelming feeling of failure hovers over everything I have done.
Failure, failure, failure.
How’s that for a little Friday the 13th pick me up?
Listen here! It is the most disturbingly honest podcast yet!
For sure was the post you did (multiple times) about the guy playing ping pong with his penis!
Don’t suppose you were logging-in to Instagram while switching VPNs?
I think you’re losing sight of the real issue. It’s not free speech, or whether this was justified. It’s that social media platforms can now with zero warning basically take all your photo albums, diaries and correspondence of years–and never give them back. Not letting you publish them is one thing. Not letting you have access to them is unconscionable. And that they’re not giving you a reason is freaky AF, and leads me to believe shenanigans are at play.
Theon Greyjoy looks like a non surfing John John Florence having a bad hair day ?
It’s also the podcast where you most talked about yourself. Correlation?
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
go surf
Take solace in knowing that you would have for sure spontaneously combusted if this had happened when you were 21. At 41 you have a fighting chance to prevail. Just dont fucken oft yourself, there are other ways my precious people.
Chas when I’m feeling down I do a Pros and Cons list (my therapist when I was 13 made me do them, he was a cunt but sometimes they can sort of assist); here let me help you create one now.
Pros:
You have an awesome family
You live in Cardiff by the beach
You surf when there are waves
You have your health
Your writing is genius and quite entertaining
Beach Grit is the #1 surf website on planet earth and you have found a way to monetize your favorite sport
You have a career that affords you to drink in the AM and sport visible tattoos
You are kinda friends with Eddie Rothman
You havne’t lost your hair yet
You are not a size 44″ waist
You enjoy fashion
You have a keen ability to make fun of yourself which is quite endearing to others
Cons:
You live in Cardiff by the beach
Your Insta account was smoked by some tech slut up in the Bay Area because you had too many followers
You hurt your shoulder in a pool surfing
All in all I’d say you are on the right course Chas. Keep your chin up! You are the Ben Mezrich of the surfing community…
And Bolton’s Bastard didn’t cut your penis off and send it off with a hostage note to your family . Cheer up .
Failure – fuck me I thought you were riding in dizzy giddiness on the back of your book success!!! Do I need to buy a copy to keep failure at bay – I haven’t yet?
Having any weird dreams yet? That’s when you really know you have Post Book Traumatic Fuckwit Disorder
Yes! Totally bizarre!
But where would success leave you, Chas? Too horrible to contemplate.
How not surprising that @surfjournalist was available
Time to take on SUPing. Creative juices have run dry? Existential dread? Time to hit Cardiff with your new 8’6″ Stand On Liquid board and rule the lineup!
13 Thoughts:
1.) Acquire the infamous coffee table from Surfrider for the best of many reasons that if the DA demands you produce the coffee table as physical evidence, you can truthfully say you burned that bridge, if you torch it of course.
2.) Instagram. Is that short for Instant Gram? Like an instant endorphin hit. Like cocaine. That’s more cocainey than promoting a book with Cocaine in the title.
3.) Never trust a Vegas hotel that has no 13th floor. They’re the House. They don’t need luck like the poor plebs that grace their casino.
4.) Don’t hide from anything.
5.) You’re hiding from completing Major Ghamdan’s story.
6.) Knock Knock. Who’s there? Atch. Atch who? You sick or did you just do Cocaine?
7.) US Open, Surf Ranch and Longboard Trestles Comp. Bringing the suck to summer for years to come.
8.) Fuck!
9.) Time to write about Yemen.
10.) Rory’s best story on BG was the time he wrote about going to Central America with his wife to hunt for threesomes in hostels, only to return to muddy footprints in his house and an unnerving realization that his neighbors are hostile while he’s hostel. And he never connects the dots.
11.) Tara Tara quite contrera.
12.) Did you buy that coffee table yet?
13.) Your next book should be about Yemen. The story deserves to be told. It’s not your call.
“The individual who goes to Beach Grit … we speak to a certain target and that’s the target I love. The guy or girl who loves surfing and is somewhat marginalized by what’s out there. By the condescending spoonfedness of not only the WSL but of Stab and the Inertia. Just this spooning of crap all the time.”
Mission Statement.
Also been thinking you goin a bit cray cray Charlie but your penis drawing has markedly improved
Bummer that Chas died in 2007 according to Google … https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
It’s been a rough couple weeks!
Realizing the game is completely rigged?
Mmmmmmmmmmm…. Part of it is maybe a natural let down after finishing a project but…… hell. I don’t know. Just feel.
well, that is totally normal, dude. especially in our line of work.
It’s just the mid-40’s I hope?
It’s normal. Down time is okay. You just busted ass, finished some projects. Time to reflect and then get past it, and move on to the next project.
Well,don’t dude,the book is hilarious.i am enjoying it so much
You’re flying so high you don’t even realise it!
Look around.
C’mon man, cheer up. Your book has 22mm of girth and cheery blue letters (in Aus. paperback)
A good pick me up is viewing “drawing dicks on the herald sun” which makes a mockery of a once good Melbourne paper turned right wing that actually has more Facebook followers than the actual paper itself, the penis drawing is truly remarkable and the home some epically wasted artistic talent.
yikes that’s hella creepy
Honestly I was just looking to say, “Hey Chas you’re 45 years old, why bother with social media at all.” Then that came up. Still don’t know his age.
I would so love to kick it all to the curb but the damned socials are, I felt, a way to control the distribution. Boy was I wrong! And I was born in August 1976 so…. am I 41 or 42?
The year Mary Zerkey took my flower.