Breathe: Laird Hamilton appears on the Joe
Rogan Experience to peddle soft science!
By Chas Smith
"The human body craves fast food
cheeseburgers!"
Do you love and believe in science? Are you
what the “mainstream media” would call a “scientist?” Well then
you’ll love the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience where
famous professional tow-surfer Laird Hamilton swings in to peddle
super hot saunas, super cold ice machines and the glories of nose
breathing.
What is nose breathing?
Oh, simple. Breathing through your nose but better than that it
makes your body invincible, I think. You can run across the entire
contiguous United States of America then fight a man and still win
if you nose breathe.
You can have stunningly blonde hair with all sorts of gorgeous
accents and be seventy-years-old if you nose breathe and you don’t
believe me?
I mock you while exhaling through my nose. The worst sort of
mock.
Learn you ignorant beast. You non-220-degree-ice-bath-taking
fool.
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Kelly Slater, candid: “I want to take
(Filipe’s) head off!”
By Derek Rielly
The day before his epic quarter-final at Keramas
with Filipe Toledo, the 11-timer shows his tonsils are in fine
form…
Tomorrow morning, afternoon, depending on your geo-tag,
Kelly Slater and Filipe Toledo are going to tee off in the
first quarter-final at Keramas.
Waves? Two foot, maybe three.
Don’t tell me this is a heat you’re going to miss.
With nobody in his corner, nearing fifty and in zig-zagging
form, Kelly Slater is going to see if strategy and experience can
beat the man who has so far seemed unbeatable in Keramas’ little
righthanders.
In an interview yesterday, Kelly was in fighting form.
Salty, challenging, philosophical… loose.
“Well, its obvious, like, I’m not going to go out and let
him win. I’m going to go out and do my best to smash him. And if I
lose who cares?On
the Gold Coast at Duranbah, I surfed like crap. Everyone wrote me
off, I probably killed my own confidence.
“People forget that’s it’s a marathon not a spring and there
can be days where somebody looks totally unbeatable, uncatchable,
going to wineverything and then they
lose.
“Look, I love Filipe. I think he shreds. I think he’s
probably the best small-wave surfer that’s ever lived. And, he’s
outscored me in every round of the year so the chances of me
beating him are very slim.
“I got no delusions about that but I’m going to see if I can
figure out a game plan to beat him and get some high scores for
myself and get the right waves and hopefully it’s six-foot and
barrelling.
“Filipe is probably the gnarliest guy you could ever have in
a small-wave heat, especially in rights, but basically in any small
waves. But that doesn’t mean I have to sit here and praise him
before we surf, you know I want to go out there and take his head
off.
“But, it’s nothing personal.
You just to have to have that mindset as a competitor and
leave it all in the water. And I have a little bit of confidence
now and I’m going to try and use what I got to win a heat and win a
contest.”
Tell me: who’s going to have tear-stained cheeks tomoz?
Safe Space: Cape Cod activists get
“horribly inappropriate” shark merchandise off shelves!
By Chas Smith
Send more tourists... the last ones were
delicious.
Is there any cultural corner left where
militant activists won’t come swinging in, demanding that it be
turned into a safe space? Any oasis from weaponized hurt feelings?
I would have thought that cute cartoon shark merchandise being sold
in Christmas Tree Shops in New England might be that one perfect
intersection.
Who could possibly be offended?
Enough people to get that “horribly inappropriate” stock removed
while writing stinging rebukes on Facebook and let us turn our
attention to Cape Cod, the picturesque Massachusetts town best
known for its connection to the Kennedy family. Let us read
together from the Boston
Globe.
Merchandise making light of shark attacks has been stripped
from the shelves of Christmas Tree Shops around Cape Cod because of
complaints from residents who said the language and images on the
items were inappropriate following two serious incidents last year
between people and the apex predators — one of which resulted in a
man’s death.
One of the items removed from the stores was a notepad
featuring a drawing of a smiling great white shark. At the top of
the pad it said, “Send more tourists,” and at the bottom, “The last
ones were delicious.”
A second item no longer for sale was a kitchen towel that
pictured a great white shark popping out of the water, below the
words “Shark Week.” The bottom of the towel read, “Nice to Eat
You.”
CapeCod.com, which first reported on the removal of the
items, also documented a shirt that said “Come to the Shark Side
Cape Cod” and another that read, “Cape Cod, Massachusetts —
Dangerous Summer — Shark Patrol.”
Heather Doyle, co-chairwoman of the Cape Cod Ocean
Community, an active online group focused on “surveillance,
deterrence, detection, and Community awareness” about sharks off
the Cape, said members pointed out the items in a discussion on the
group’s Facebook page recently.
Members mobilized — not in a “militant way,” she clarified —
and reached out to the chain’s corporate offices about what they
deemed inappropriate products.
“Our reality is going to be sharks on everything; sharks on
this — but when you start to personify sharks as evil animals that
are hunting people and smiling . . . it’s probably not a lane we
want to go down,” said Doyle, who went to two of the stores to see
the products for herself and take pictures.
“It’s really not that funny,” she said. “It’s horribly
inappropriate and insensitive to those of us who live
here.”
Is there anything you’d like to see removed from shelves? What
about little shot glasses that have “One tequila, two tequila,
three tequila, floor” written on them? If we muster our Facebooks
do you think we could get them banned from kiosks since they
encourage excessive drinking and/or perpetuate an incorrect
spelling of the word “four?”
Let’s try!
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Keeping pushing, brother. Steve
Sherman/@tsherms
Report: Sunny Garcia “surprising
doctors!”
By Derek Rielly
The clouds part a little in Portland, Oregon…
It’s been three weeks since Sunny Garcia, world champ
and perennial Triple Crown winner, was found unconscious at his
home in Oregon, almost dead, and supposedly by his own
hand.
In the interim, a drip-feed of reports of his condition have
come from the family.
Five days ago, we heard that Sunny was off sedation, but still
in a coma, with doctors treating his kidney and liver with
dialysis (an induced coma, where the body and brain is
anaesthetised often results in further complications).
Today, we received the news that Sunny is “surprising doctors as
he continues to get better.”
According to our source, despite the pessimism of doctors,
Sunny is breathing on his own and responding to stimuli.
When asked if
there was news of any permanent damage the source said, “No
report. THAT’S the question.”
Ten years ago, the filmmaker Mike Oblowitz set out to document
Sunny’s life in a film called Death and Taxes. A lot can
change in a decade.
“During the 10 years of filming, Sunny has lost so many people
close to him. Marvin Foster, Andy Irons, Buttons, Jay Adams. People
so integral to his life and that’s just so hard,” Oblowitz told
BeachGrit’s Chas Smith. “I regard Sunny as one of the most amazing
people I’ve ever met. Where he came from and what he achieved? I
mean, a lot of great, great surfers came out of Makaha but only one
of them won a world title and what Sunny had to go through to get
it, the racism, abuse, cards stacked so high against him, it is a
tremendous work.”
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The International Surfing Association and
International Canoe Federation locked in vicious custody
battle!
By Chas Smith
SUPing or SUCing? The courts will soon decide.
I know your first instinct is to laugh here but
it is very sad that the International Surfing Association and the
International Canoe Federation are locked in a vicious custody
battle over stand-up paddle surfing which may well keep it out of
the 2024 Olympiad which will be hosted by Paris, France.
Of course I’ve written about
this dispute before and stand-up paddlers, or SUPs,
became known as stand-up canoers, or SUCs, for a brief moment but
the drama has turned particularly nasty in light of the Games.
Sports and pastimes must have a governing body in order to be
included in the Olympics but stand-up paddling is being claimed by
both surfing and canoeing making it impossible to “qualify.”
The SUPer/SUCer caught in the middle like a sad child whose
divorcing parents hate each other and will go to any length to
shame the other but don’t take my word for it. Let us turn to the
important international news service Reuters for up to the
minute details.
Paddle surfers could yet be racing for gold medals down the
River Seine at the 2024 Olympics if a row over who controls the
sport is resolved soon, the head of the Association of Paddlesurf
Professionals (APP) believes.
The International Surfing Association (ISA) and the
International Canoe Federation (ICF) both claim it and last year
placed their dispute over the running of the booming sport into the
hands of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
“We are waiting to see what happens with the CAS arbitration
which is unfortunate for everybody,” APP chief executive Tristan
Boxford, a former professional windsurfer, told Reuters in an
interview at a World Tour race on the River Thames on
Saturday.
“Now we are late for Paris but it’s still possible. I was in
Lausanne the other day and I had a good conversation with the
(International Olympic Committee) guys there who said it was still
possible to get this resolved and we could get fast-tracked to
Paris.
It is easy to see why a dispute arose as the sport has
elements of surfing and kayaking, with participants standing on a
board propelling themselves forward with a paddle which, according
to the ICF, means it should fall under its auspices.
With the rise in popularity of the sport showing no sign of
slowing down, Boxford said it was frustrating that its progress had
hit choppy waters with the ownership dispute.
“Suddenly the ICF came and saw an opportunity with stand-up
paddling grabbing everyone’s attention,” he said.
“They have had sports that have been around for a long time
but are not necessarily growing and then they saw a sport that is
growing exponentially and saw an opportunity, which I understand,
because it’s a business opportunity.
“But the athletes are the losers because there is
confusion.”
Last year the ICF’s attempt to host a Stand-Up Paddling
world championships in Portugal was scuppered, but it will stage
the event this October on China’s Yellow Sea Coast.
Very, very sad but, like wise Solomon before me, I think I have
the perfect solution. You certainly remember the story where two
women living in the same house claimed a baby was theirs. One had
died, one was living and they were fighting over which was whose so
they went before the king and kept fighting and fighting until he
came up with the perfect solution. He’d split the live baby in
half. The woman who wept and said, “Just let the other have the
baby….” as opposed to “Chop away…” was clearly the mother and the
dispute was justly solved.
I think we should split SUPs/SUCs in half. Like, literally and
physically. SUPers/SUCers too. Someone else can sort out the bloody
pieces but I think it is the only solution and I hope that’s what
the Court of Arbitration for Sport decides too.