Progress: Hollywood VAL emerges fresh from chrysalis as “grumpy local!”

Matt Damon shucks #VALlife for aggressive localism.

I was wrong about Matt Damon. Recently converted surfer. Byron Bay fiend. Friend of Thor.

I tarred you with the VAL brush and I was wrong, wrong, wrong. 

What we saw at the Pass was just a show. It had to be a show.

What else could explain this? 

Matty D was recently paparrazi’d wearing a hat emblazoned with the postcode of Carnarvon, Western Australia. For those not familiar with the area, Carnarvon is base camp to some for some of the heaviest waves in Australia.

Turns out he and Thor just got back from a trip out there to the desert North West. Where death comes in a thousand forms.

Sharks. Cyclones. Gun-swinging locals. Lips as thick as Ben Affleck’s post J-Lo waistline.

Tombstones. Motherfucking Tombstones. The place even pros fear to tread

And our boy Damo tamed it all.

Just look at the hat.

According to the Newcastle Herald:

The hat is branded with Carnarvon and its postcode 6701. This reflects the concept of localism in surfing culture.

“We do that on T-shirts as well. Locals love it because they can get shirts with their own postcode and images of their surfing breaks,” he said.

Did you read that? Jason Bourne is a local. Possibly grumpy. We cannot confirm. But a Carnarvon local, there’s no doubt.

So what does the hat tell us?

It tells us he can take two wave hold downs like you or I take a morning dump. It tells us he could send in apex predators with the faintest of sideways glances.

It tells us he would look down the line at a triple ledge with the insouciance only a lifelong shredder could possess, shoving his middle digit upwards at mother nature.

Look at my hat. Read the post code. Six seven oh one. I’m a Tombstones-adjacent, Carnarvon local.

So what’s left for Damo’s transformation to be complete?

I do feel he’s overplayed his hand. The first rule of the North West is you don’t talk about the North West.

It worries even me, a low-level purveyor of nostalgic surf twaddle, to mention it online. So that bridge may already be burned.

But he is obviously keen. Byron is taken (Hi, Thor!).

How about he goes a little further south?

Lets get him to Iluka. There’s plenty of property around there. Nice and cheap.

Or if he wants to, he could move into an onsite caravan at the local trailer park. Like any true grumpy local closing on to the wrong side of 50 would do.

Maybe he can buy an excavation business called Damo’s Demo’s (sic) to run into the ground, wasting his time checking the Wall but never actually surfing, complaining instead about the tide/wind/swell, while slowly but surely dismantling the few truly genuine and good relationships left in his ever-dwindling circle.

I can see it now. Damo. Old. Leathered. Faithful healer bitsa by his side. Playing out his evenings there at Sedger’s Reef bistro, drunk on cheap port and wine, worrying about the lump in his neck and the pterygium in his eye and wondering where it all went so fucken wrong.