From the motivation-ain’t-free department:
Come be inspired by surf luminaries!
By Chas Smith
A weekend guaranteed to change your life!
In two weeks the city of Los Angeles will host
Worldz an event self-described as “…a global summit and community
that unites tomorrow’s leaders with CEOs, CMOs & cultural icons to
create the world of tomorrow. Our 2-day flagship summit is designed
to connect, educate, and inspire you in both your personal and
professional lives.”
These sorts of things confuse me badly as do most things
business or business related. Is conference attendance a way to
take two days off work while still getting paid? Do attendees
actually expect to pick up useful information/make useful
connections?
Should I be going to Worldz? Should you be?
It costs $1650 (regular), $2650 (VIP), $4650 (VVIP) if we
purchase today. If we purchase tomorrow it will cost $200 more
across the board.
There are very many speakers, almost too many to count, and
amongst their rank are surfing’s best and brightest. What will they
be speaking about? Let’s guess!
Sophie Goldschmidt: Chief Executive Officer at the World
Surf League.
Sophie will spend her hour teaching tomorrow’s leaders how to
alienate a core base while frustrating new potential partners.
Would you like your business to fail vertically and horizontally?
Ms. Goldschmidt is a must attend.
Sal Masekela: Commentator, Journalist, Musician, Producer,
Connected Surf Groupie
Do you have famous surf friends and would you like the world to
know that you have famous surf friends? Sal will help you navigate
properly from loudly announcing that you just got an email from
Kelly Slater to loudly taking a phone call from Kelly Slater. There
will also be much talk about many other famous surf friends who
really want to work with Sal on a variety of projects.
Stephanie Gilmore: 6x World Surfing Champion
Stephanie will explain how to surf with style to a room full of
middle-aged Silicon Beach men who are excited about applying her
insights to their lunchtime Venice Wavestorm sessions.
Kelly Slater: 11x World Champion, Entreprenuer
Whatever it is, it’ll be good. Kelly will also be forced to take
a call from Sal Masekela after 11x missed calls. Sal will be in an
adjoining room showing his attendees that he and Kelly are, in
fact, friends.
I’m sure there are many, many more surf speakers but I seriously
got carpel tunnel scrolling the list. You try here!
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Surf Gambling: Your BeachGrit-approved
betting slip for the Quiksilver Pro France!
By Derek Rielly
Fantasy Surfer winner and former WCT surfer Blake
Thornton and his hot tips for Hossegor!
Do you remember our pledge last month to turn five
c-notes into many thousands of dollars via surf
gambling in the back half of the WCT season? With a modest
$500 deposit and the advice of former WCT surfer and 2015 Fantasy
Surfer champion Blake Thornton, BeachGrit planned to beat
hell out of Australia’s betting agencies. To drink from their
brackish water and emerge not destitute but triumphant; our
jackboot upon their necks and not, as is usually the case, the
other way around.
The gambling angle appeals because: All the odds for WCT events
are set by non-surfers using statistics and nothing
else. There is no insider trading, no quarter given to the
surf forecast, no nod to a surfer’s affinity with a particular
wave.
It screams advantage. It’s why I ain’t never going near the dang
horses.
We started modest enough at the Surf Ranch Pro, slow because
without the usual heat format opportunities were limited. One
hundred and fifty dollars wagered for a two hundred and fifty win.
(Gabriel, fifty bucks at five to one.)
In Hossegor, with two hundred dollars to bet?
According to Thornton, and given the forecast of middling
three-foot lefts, you gotta throw skin on Gabriel and Filipe. “The
two in-form surfers from the Ranch and with the forecast looking
the way it does you would expect ’em to be semis or better again in
this event. Not rocket science, I know.”
Who else? Thornton says if he had to look elsewhere, Julian or
Kolohe could fire up. “Julian has the full package and Kolohe is
generally strong in Europe.”
How can someone beat Gabriel or Filipe? What sorta strategies
must they employ?
“A surfer has to do what what they do well. eg. If it’s a
four-foot rip-bowl left and Willy Cardoso is on point with his
backhand cracks then that formula could put these guys to the
sword. Surfers try and overdo it against Gabriel and Filipe and
feel they have to go above and beyond to win. However with this
year’s judging they can be beaten if crew stick to their strengths
and just do it well.”
Dark horses? “My dark horses are based off what I think these
guys will be surfing so I am looking at strong surfers in lefts at
three-to-five foot who aren’t the regulars. Connor O’Leary grew up
in left rip bowls and has all the tools. Michael Rodrigues, he has
a fast backhand and hasn’t really clicked yet and the beachbreaks
could suit him. Adriano has had a crummy year by his standards and
has a crisp backhand attack. Plus he generally rises to the
occasion against Medina and Toledo.”
Our wagers.
To win, $50 on Medina, $40 on Toledo, $30 on Julian, $20 on
Kolohe $20 on Adriano, $20 on Connor O’Leary.
The smart gambler knows the multi-bet, picking multiple heat
winners, is where the cash lies.
Round one?
A twenty on Adriano into Kolohe into Willy. That kinda swing
could earn around fifteen to one or that twenty turns into three
hundred.
And an editor’s
note:BeachGrit isn’t affiliated with any betting
agency. Oh we tried. Of course we tried. Anything to
generate a little passive income, even if the money came red with
spilled blood. (The deal is, affiliates get a cut of a gambling
man’s losses.) Anyway, didn’t exactly fire so here we are. Putting
our bread where our mouths are, as they say.
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Breaking: Famous athlete apologizes for
believing conspiracy theories!
By Chas Smith
For all the science teachers, everybody coming up
to me like, 'You know I have to reteach my whole curriculum!' I'm
sorry.
Last evening at a Forbes magazine event, the
Boston Celtics’ star Kyrie Irving apologized for saying that he
believes the earth is flat. He once told a teammate, “This is not
even a conspiracy theory. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. …
It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you, it’s right in
front of our faces. They lie to us.”
The basketball player was on stage as part of the 30 under 30
summit and was asked by the interviewer to weigh in on his previous
statement.
“Even if you believe in that, don’t come out and say that stuff.
That’s for intimate conversations because perception and how you’re
received, it changes. I’m actually a smart-ass individual,” he
said.
“At the time I didn’t realize the effect. I was definitely at
that time, ‘I’m a big conspiracy theorist. You can’t tell me
anything.’ I’m sorry about all that. For all the science teachers,
everybody coming up to me like, ‘You know I have to reteach my
whole curriculum!’ I’m sorry. I apologize. I apologize,”
Hmmmm.
Professional surfing’s Kelly Slater has a reputation for
peddling in conspiracy too, though he is virulently anti-flat
earth. Huck magazine once
asked him specifically about his love of the darker corners and he
responded:
I’m into the truth. Not conspiracy theories. If you look at
the big picture, somehow it all actually makes sense. For example,
if I were a doctor, well, if everyone’s not sick, my job doesn’t
exist anymore. I’m not saying doctors are bad, but if people aren’t
sick, there’s no need for them. So we have this ‘self-creating’
society. There are a lot of pieces that work together. It’s like a
big jigsaw puzzle. […] Look at cancer, for another example. There’s
a lot of shitty food out there. Look at what’s happening with the
environment and our food sources, and who’s controlling what. There
are new diseases that didn’t exist a hundred years ago. A hundred
years ago there wasn’t one out of a hundred and fifty kids being
born with autism. There are a lot of really heavy things that are
happening in the world, and you could pick any one of them and
spend your life trying to fight for the whole cause, but number one
you’ve got to look out for yourself and the people closest to you.
I think, generally, the people who make the biggest changes in the
world are the people you don’t even know. Obviously there’re people
like Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, but the people working
behind the scenes – the people they get their information from –
are generally people who are working with just small groups of
people trying to understand what’s going on around them, rather
than someone who’s looking at the bigger picture. I’m not really
sure where I’m going with that, but basically, you can get too
involved in big things and forget about the real things that
matter.
Hmmmm.
Should Kelly apologize too?
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From the marital-innovation department:
Newport Beach man pleads guilty to waterboarding wife!
By Chas Smith
Immediately sentenced to 10 years in prison!
“That’s illegal?” is the first thing I thought
after reading the My LA headline Newport Beach man pleads
guilty to waterboarding newlywed wife. “Waterboarding
is illegal?” Then I realized the story was not about surfing but
continued reading anyhow.
A 37-year-old man accused of waterboarding and beating his
65-year-old wife of two months in Newport Beach pleaded guilty
Monday and was immediately sentenced to 10 years in
prison.
Richard David Schlosser II pleaded guilty to criminal
threats, false imprisonment and corporal injury of a spouse, and
admitted sentencing enhancement allegations of committing a crime
while on bail. As part of the plea deal, a felony count of torture
and a sentencing enhancement for causing great bodily injury to the
victim were dropped.
From Jan. 5 through the next day, Schlosser attacked his
bride for hours, while under the influence of drugs and alcohol,
Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark Geller said.
“He did this for hours,” the prosecutor said. “He kept her
captive in the apartment for hours … He actually waterboarded
her.”
At some point, after he “sobered up,” the victim managed to
contact a friend, who called police, Geller said. The victim had to
be hospitalized for her injuries, according to the
prosecutor.
For sure he surfs. How do I know? Because he lives in Newport
and looks like this.
But I bet he surfs in Huntington and I bet he rides an epoxy
Rockin’ Fig. Or maybe a Lib Tech waterboard.
"A pair of French-Canadian gals, wielding
harsh accents and peachy buttocks like weapons of war take over the
line-up, paddling straight to the inside wave after wave. The
display of aggression, overt and implied, is stunning. Flailing
limbs and basic positioning errors ruin many waves but the gals
resolutely paddle straight back up the inside to the top of the
line."
Opinion: “The Mentawais now belong to the
kook!”
By Longtom
A trip to Indonesian playground reveals startling
truth, "the new line-up politics of adult learners and aggressive
Europeans!"
Despite the darkness an opening ride at Macaronis feels
as inalien as walking down the main street of a
hometown.
A wide awake dream come to life.
Not a single original thought, word or deed is possible after 30
years of hyper-saturation. My trachea are filled with Indonesia’s
finest clove scented tar and nicotine; liver with barley, hops and
fermented sugar cane, bloodstream with the molecules imbibed after
a friend scraped the rendang excreta off a rubber surgical finger
swallowed and carried across oceans.
Soft pulses of light chime around thunderheads arrayed in a
purple bruise which rings the horizon. Megalithic fauna
wanders amongst the mangrove roots and dead trees to the last low
rumble of the night. Mugwumps and plutonium wives slither out from
coral crevices. Blood warm water envelopes like a jade green sap;
the feeling of homecoming, so familiar to every Australian surfer
at least, is almost over-powering.
Florid language is white noise to the working gal. We return to
the prosaic.
Two, three or four hours later a pair of French-Canadian gals,
wielding harsh accents and peachy buttocks like weapons of war take
over the line-up, paddling straight to the inside wave after wave.
The display of aggression, overt and implied, is stunning. Flailing
limbs and basic positioning errors ruin many waves but the gals
resolutely paddle straight back up the inside to the top of the
line.
We portray global lineups poorly whenever harmony is implied.
It’s more accurate to view them in biological terms: full of
dominance, aggression, uneasy truces and, in non-gendered lineups,
sexual sovereignty. Biogeographer Tim Low wrote about the uncommon
aggression inherent in Australian birds and made the case that the
abundance of flowering Eucalypts was a resource worth fighting
for.
“Nectar”, he wrote, “rewards aggression”.
So too, perfect surf. Adult learners master that before a basic
skill set. Like screaming lorikeet flocks fight tree by tree to dab
tongues on sweet nectar heads; lineup politics in the Mentawais are
negotiated boat by boat, day by day, hour by hour, set by set,
bikini by bikini.
The screaming 50’s and roaring 40’s have shrunk the globe for a
second time – not as ends to drive the spice trade – but as means
to ends where a new wave of European expansionism finds common
cause in energetic by-product on the reef breaks of the Mentawai.
Sipora, Siberut, Pagai-Utara, Pagai-Selatan. Kepulauan
Mentawai.
Here you’ll find Germans, German Swiss, Austrians, French,
Italians, Russians,Slovenians, Slovakians, Portugese, English.
Australians remain the dominant force, for now. Perplexed and
enraged, as my Bribie mate was, by the new line-up politics of
adult learners and aggressive Europeans.
“What the fuck are these kooks doing here?” he asked.
The world belongs to them now, I answered.
Why and wherefore this desire to get fucked up in Indonesia?
We hadn’t been in Padang more than an hour when I turned to my
oldest friend and said, “For some reason, I feel like getting
really fucked up.”
He said, “Me too.”
Hours later he was engaged in the kind of stupidity which makes
a family man squirm with shame. Mike Oblowitz’s redacted 2008 doco
Sea of
Darkness offers clues. It charts the course of
Indonesian exploration and exploitation and the dark temptations
that wandered, like Neil Young’s beggar, from door to door.
Filmaker and Indonesian veteran Dick Hoole spoke in the film of
the Asian sense of freedom and the difficulty in returning to
normal life after tasting it. The dream, according to Martin Daly
associate and convicted drug smuggler Jeff Chitty, was “60 feet on
the waterline”. A boat to explore an endless oceanic playground.
Chitty spent most of his adult life doing hard time, Daly veered
left and steered the Indies Trader to fame/infamy. It’s stunning
how easily the dream is now obtainable.
Apocalypse Now/Big Wednesday writer
John Milius called bullshit on the whole program.
I paraphrase, because I was drunk when watching, but his
observation was that the outcome of living this lawless dream was
to become, not larger than life, but smaller than life. It
diminished a man, in his eyes. That scarcely rings true, and if you
look at the vision of Mike Boyum, whose life the film commemorates,
you’d have to say it exerts a greater hold now than ever before.
It’s scarcely possible to imagine an Australian surfer,
fr’instance, who doesn’t have this virus embedded deep within,
ready to take over the organism at the first whiff of clove
cigarette.
Even with a scrappy forecast, the bang for buck on a boat
cruising the Ments is immense. Day three and I’ve surfed into a
state of almost total oblivion. Compared with a three-week passage
between Honolulu and the Marshalls where the board didn’t come out
of the cover and the salty taste of seasick pussy was all that
sustained.
“Maybe you should go back to Kansas,” I suggested.
“Screw Kansas,” she said.
The family man does experience sudden shocks of panic in
Indonesian perfection. He forgets home. Then forgets that he has
forgotten and the whole thing starts to seem like a dream from
another existence. He can’t touch his childrens’ faces, feel their
little fingers wrapped around his neck, see his wife’s naked body
in the moonlight.
Games without frontiers, ay. Family man now though, ay.
The family man does experience sudden shocks of panic in
Indonesian perfection. He forgets home. Then forgets that he has
forgotten and the whole thing starts to seem like a dream from
another existence. He can’t touch his childrens’ faces, feel their
little fingers wrapped around his neck, see his wife’s naked body
in the moonlight.
Is it still there? Or gone.
Another set shimmers in the sunlight and all memory evaporates.
Perfect surf is remorseless.
Feelings of home are counter-factual. The Mentawais remain
remote. Shit can turn pear-shaped in a heartbeat. Clashings of the
Burma, Sunda and Eurasian plates create the most tectonically
unstable area on Earth. It’s probable more than possible that
everything built to satisfy surf lust in the Islands will be one
day smeared into rubble by a wall of water. These facts don’t alter
feelings I have spending hours roaming freely alone up the outer
edge of a central Mentawaiin reef, safer and more at peace than I
do surfing a kay from my house. It makes no sense.
But we are who we are, as Nick Carroll said to Chas Smith at
Lemoore, I think a version of Marcus Aurelius statement: “Whatever
may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee for all eternity.”