Question: What can we “weaponize” in surfing?

Besides bad attitudes, etc.

I was very disheartened today when I learned that the Middle Ages have been weaponized. There I was, minding my own business when a failing New York Times alert popped up on my phone, reading, “Far-right extremists have weaponized the Middle Ages. Medieval scholars fighting back.”

I clicked and read:

Each May, some 3,000 people descend on Kalamazoo, Mich., for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, which brings together academics and enthusiasts for four days of scholarly panels, performances and after-hours mead drinking.

But in recent years, the gathering affectionately known as “K’zoo” — and the field of medieval studies itself — has been shadowed by conflicts right out of the 21st century.

Since the 2016 presidential election, scholars have hotly debated the best way to counter the “weaponization” of the Middle Ages by a rising tide of far-right extremists.

Etc.

The Middle Ages (roughly 5th to 15th centuries) certainly seemed like a violent time with plagues, the Crusades, etc. but I thought the study of the period was marked, in large part, by cavernous libraries and chubby, pale men with rheumy eyes.

I was not ready, nor was I even expecting, their weaponization.

And to know that they have been weaponized before surfing hurts. It stings. So let’s hurry and weaponize surfing.

But what can we weaponize?

Which part?

All of it?

Help!


Breaking: “Secret project in the works. Highly cinematic, involves the ocean and #1 female surfer in the world!”

Can you guess?

Yesterday the great Hollywood film producer Brian Grazer (Parenthood, Backdraft, 8 Mile etc.) posted a very cryptic message on Instagram. “Secret project in the works… it’s highly cinematic and involves the ocean and the #1 female surfer in the world!” Sitting on Mr. Grazer’s right was the statuesque Keala Kennelly and what do you think this secret project could be? What are your best guesses?

I had lunch with Brian Grazer once. He is a voracious collector of stories, tales, anecdotes. Inquisitive would be the best way to describe, I think. Curious. He had, anyhow, read about my best friend and my Middle Eastern adventures. We met in his office. He was kind. We ate something forgettable and he peppered us with questions. At the end, he walked us out and we said goodbye. Before reaching the door, though, we heard our names shouted. We turned around and there was Brian holding a very rococo pair of G-Unit jeans.

“Are these cool?” He asked.

“No.” We answered in unison.

I am excited for whatever he is working on with Ms Kennelly and wish them nothing but the best. I very much enjoy pop culture’s dance with surfing and wrote about it in the eponymous Cocaine + Surfing (buy here). Would you like to read?

Pop culture’s dance with surfing is always a funny thing. I suppose if surfers had any sort of understandable depth, or any depth full stop, then Hollywood would have pounced on them as archetypes and figured out long ago how to capture the specifics enough to make a surf blockbuster, but have you seen Hollywood’s surf films? Have you seen Chasing Mavericks or Blue Crush or Point Break (either of them) or North Shore or Big Wednesday or The Perfect Wave or Soul Surfer or In God’s Hands?

The best of them are laughably bad. The worst are a forgettable cringe.

Hollywood can’t get the surfer even halfway right and I think it’s a proximity issue. Many in Hollywood, many directors and producers and actors, think they surf. Their glittering town perched on the Pacific causes them to believe they know what it all means because they walk out of Malibu homes, grab a goofy yellowed seven-foot pintail and go sit in the puddle out front.

But surfing and belonging to surf are two entirely separate things. Belonging to surf, in my definition, is to be part of the surf industrial-complex. Those who either work for a surf brand in some capacity as a photographer, writer, shaper, or who have at some point in their lives. Those who have so oriented their lives around surf that they watch World Surf League events while chatting about professional surfer form on message boards. Those whose productivity slowly drains away because they surf instead of working.

Those who have pterygiums.

And that is exactly what Hollywood is missing as it relates to the surfer. Pterygiums, also called “surfer’s eye.” What WebMD describes as “a growth of pink, fleshy tissue on the conjunctiva, the clear tissue that lines your eyelids and covers your eyeball. It usually forms on the side closest to your nose and grows toward the pupil area.”

Quite basically, pterygiums are scales. Scales that begin growing over the eye because surfers sit out in the water long enough thinking about where to put their hands and so God, in his transcendence, knows that they will go blind and puts scales over their eyes to protect them from the sun’s fiery wrath as it bounces off the water. They don’t generally cause blindness, but they cause blurriness of vision.

Surfers have scales covering their eyes. I have never met a director or producer with scales covering his and I have only met one actor who might be close to having them—Jimmy Caan’s boy, Scott. But almost every real surfer, every professional surfer or surf brand manager or executive vice-president to the bros has either full-blown pterygium or the beginnings of pterygium, or bones covering the inside of his ears, also known as “surfer’s ear.” He has chosen surfing over clear eyesight or over hearing. Sometimes over both. Scott Caan went one better, too. He chose to star in the remake of Hawaii Five-0, just so he could surf.

Can you imagine starring in the remake of Hawaii Five-0? For seven seasons?


Momentum Generation review: “Softens criticism that Kelly Slater is a narcissist who can’t let go of the spotlight!”

Our reviewer approaches HBO surf documentary with trepidation. Expects schmaltz on epic scale.

Everyone thought he would go on forever. And even now, with the retirement called and “one last lap” started (disastrously) we still can’t quite accept Kelly Slater might one day be gone.

Momentum Generation, a movie-length documentary, as you probably know, takes a retrospective look at the First Act of Kelly’s career, and puts the supporting cast of New Schoolers into context with him during that phase.

It’s a story of friendship and death. It does illuminate the last lap, softens judgement by critics who see the current Legacy phase of Kelly’s career as a textbook case of a narcissist who can’t let go of the spotlight.

I approached it with some trepidation. Expecting cheese and schmaltz on an epic scale.

The film was being played at the Byron Community centre and the organiser had asked me to attend; he wanted me to prepare some questions for a post-film Q and A.

But, what if it was epically lame and all I could offer up were platitudes or the kind of questions I’d love to ask him man on man but that would turn off a loved up audience here to pay homage to the GOAT?

That dilemma about how to review continues, sharpened in the context of current events like the suicide attempt of Sunny Garcia. Presenting a truthful account versus the potential hurt caused by unkind and insensitive comments.

Kelly’s got a lot, far more than I’ll ever have: world titles, loot, fame, celebrity etc. But I’ve got what he hasn’t and may never have. Kids who know that Dad, even if the Point is pumping, will show up to the cross-country race. A dad who might need a couple of brown sangas to get through the school play but he’ll be there.

Every time.

They know I’ll back them up, even if, especially if, they are in the wrong. 

The most poignant revelation in Momentum Generation, or maybe Kelly revealed it in the Q and A was the fact that his Dad never showed up to watch a single CT contest he was in.

Can you imagine what a kick in the guts that would be?

Dad never showed up to witness who he was, his greatness, his whole being. 

That theme runs strong through the opening scenes of Momentum Generation. Absent Dads, overbearing, aggressive, asshole Dads.

“They’ll fuck you up – your Mum and Dad,” claimed English poet Phil Larkin. It describes the damaged Lost Boys who coalesced around the genius of Slater perfectly.

There are some jarring notes in the opening scenes.

The film makes a major point about surfing still being a renegade, anti-social activity. Kelly claims he didn’t even know pro surfing was a thing.

The Momentum Generation inherited all the benefits of a fully developed surf-industrial complex built by an earlier generation. A major premise of the film, that the Momentum Generation brought surf into the mainstream, is built on a very shaky foundation.

While the non-surfing world still swallows the myth of surfing being a radical activity outside the bounds of normal society, even today, it’s a trope worth selling, the truth is far more prosaic.

Tom Carroll had already signed a million-dollar contract with Quiksilver in 1988, while the Momentum crew were tweens. Kelly was groomed and courted by big money before his teenage years. He was carefully cultivated as “the one”, an updated and improved Tom Curren that could be sold to Middle America.

The Momentum Generation inherited all the benefits of a fully developed surf-industrial complex built by an earlier generation. A major premise of the film, that the Momentum Generation brought surf into the mainstream, is built on a very shaky foundation.

The film is on much firmer footing when it explores its other main themes: friendship, vulnerability and the pressures that competition puts on people in close contact.

Leaving out an earlier incarnation of communal living where the Momentum crew had gathered at the Hill House behind Laniakea under the tutelage of Brock Little and Todd Chesser the film spends much of its narrative capital exploring the relationships that developed at Benji Weatherly’s Pipeline crib.

Todd Chesser, Cheese, remains the alpha male and spiritual leader of the group. A Dionysian father figure with a mad passion for big waves.

Cheese takes the flawed, molten characters of Slater, Dorian, Benji, Kalani Robb, Ross Williams, Machado et al and steels them in the furnace of the North Shore into a force that took over the world.

A classic tale of bildungsroman in filmic form.

World titles follow, the world is dominated etc. You know the story.

Chesser was a pivotal figure not just for surf stars. He called me into the biggest wave of my life, at Haleiwa. I’d slept on the beach, in a cheap suit, after a party and woke up in a sleeping bag underwater getting rolled down the beach into the shorebreak.

Then Todd Chesser goes and dies. Drowned on a massive day at Outside Alligators. And the close knit world of the Momentum Generation falls apart.

The emotional impact of Chesser’s death still reverberates today. Kelly took the stage for the Q and A in an Oatmeal-Heather Odyssey Reversible Crew ($US68) in tears. Through sobs, he recounted how hard it still was for him to watch the film and reflect on the passing of Chesser.

Chesser was a pivotal figure not just for surf stars.

He called me into the biggest wave of my life, at Haleiwa. I’d slept on the beach, in a cheap suit, after a party and woke up in a sleeping bag underwater getting rolled down the beach into the shorebreak. A massive swell had hit in the night.

I paddled out sometime mid-morning, in a state of high anxiety, on an 8’2” Rawson. The Toilet bowl was like a scene from a Poe short story. Gothic apocalypse. Cheese was out there , toying with it. That sideways arrogant grin making it seem like surfing big waves was about as risky as buying a carton of milk.

At some point, the apex of a huge peak came to me and trying desperately to elude it Cheese looked me straight in the eye and screamed “Go!” He had an internal force within him that made obedience mandatory. So I did. Like all the Momentum crew did when he turned them from scared young kids into Pipeline maestros.

Chesser wasn’t the only father figure Kelly wept over during the Q and A. He broke down when discussing the influence of Jack Johnson’s Dad, Pete Johnson. The crowd was gushing, people weeping openly.

The film had made a fair fist of painting Kelly as an over-competitive dickhead but this display of male vulnerability was melting the hardest hearts. Kelly’s last lap will be as much about these public unburdenings of emotion as it will be about surfing.

Kelly and his crew ran a straight edge campaign and avoided the excesses of a Tour where dark spaces lured other damaged youth into toxic drug culture. The ghost of Shane Herring haunted the film. The arc of redemption from rags to riches is an American tale but the Australian experience was as much a mirror image with a darker outcome. Lost boys who did not find healing in their tribe.

Certain things are dissected forensically. The famous 1995 Pipeline High Five, for example.

A view is presented that Kelly somehow orchestrated it to throw Machado for the rest of the heat. Kelly claims it as an organic display of joy. Having witnessed it from the beach, ripped to the tits on LSD, I side with Kelly.

The whole heat was so surreal, so perfect; it would be inhuman not to try and wrest a high point and commit it to posterity. Which is what happened. Kelly the preternatural showman created more of these unforgettable high points than any pro surfer in history.

Other things are left out.

The film is scrubbed clean of sex, drugs, Australians. That surgical insularity aims the film squarely at a mainstream American audience but leaves more questions than answers for global viewers.

Kelly and his crew ran a straight-edge campaign and avoided the excesses of a Tour where dark spaces lured other damaged youth into toxic drug culture. The ghost of Shane Herring haunted the film. The arc of redemption from rags to riches is an American tale but the Australian experience was as much a mirror image with a darker outcome.

Lost boys who did not find healing in their tribe.

I couldn’t help but try and calculate the influence of the Momentum Generation while watching Bells. Kelly’s quarter-final with Ryan Callinan was being watched live by a global audience of around six thousand, maybe a few thousand on the beach watching live.

The era officially ended in 1998, less than a decade after it began, with Kelly’s sixth world title and subsequent retirement. The high-water mark of American pro surfing rolled back from there and twenty-one years later, the American coastal market has not been able to sustain a single CT event.

Only Kelly’s own creation remains. For now, at least.

As far as pure influence on the surfing culture, both Andrew Kidman’s and Jon Frank’s 1995 rebuttal to shopping mall punk and ADHD editing, Litmus, as well as Tom Curren’s post-tour wanderings in the Search movies seem more enduring.

The blowback was stronger than the movement. Only Kelly’s Pipeline surfing from that era seems destined to ring through eternity.

To be fair, and accurate, each member of the Momentum Generation did step up and achieve something close to their full potential. Ross now coaches the heir to Kelly’s throne, John John Florence.

Dorian became the greatest big wave rider of his and any era.

Machado has continued to invent and reinvent a marketable persona and stay stoked.

Taylor Steele was the last man standing to sell a squillion DVD’s and so on.

Kelly’s Third Act, taking control of the waves, may yet prove to be the defining move into the mainstream that twenty-seven years of pro surfing mastery could never provide.

Friends heal and make whole, that is the message of the Momentum Generation, but in the final analysis a father-sized hole in his psyche can never be filled.


From the Surfers-rule-jocks-drool Dept: Malibu High School drops 11-man football, keeps surfing!

My, how times have changed!

Once upon a time surfers were outcasts, deadbeats, ne’rdowells, trouble-niks and their sworn natural enemies were jocks. Big, strapping, buzz-cut’d, part of the system, man. For years and years these two groups fought a asymmetric war. Not asymmetric like modern surfboards, no. Asymmetric in that jocks had muscles and strength so that the surfers, skinny and addled, could not go mano-a-mano with any hope of success. The surfer would rather attempt to make the jock feel lame.

My how times have changed.

For now it is the mighty jock who has been shunned by society. The once-proud football player maligned. His game criticized as “retard-making.” His way of life erased and the once lowly surfer raised up and seated upon the throne of “things parents want their kids to do.”

Let us now read about the sad fate of 11-man, or real, football at Malibu High School.

It’s clear that surfing — not football — has become the more attractive sports option to Malibu students. The school has a surfing team that’s more than twice the size of the football team.

“We’re on the coast, so it only makes sense,” (one time Malibu High football coach) Lawson said. “The whole demographics of football and all the concussion concerns have changed things. Going eight-man football is better than dropping football.”

High school participation in 11-man football declined for the second consecutive year nationwide in 2017, according to the annual survey by the National Federation of State High School Assns. The decline was 21,465 out of more than one million participants. Football is still the No. 1 participatory sport by a wide margin, but signs of trouble can’t be ignored.

Practice rules have changed to include less hitting, which might reduce concussions. But there’s a lot more to be done. There are so many sports options to have fun. Football can’t rely on the past. Coaches must innovate and lead.

And these are the days of our lives.


Occ, Kelly, Vaughan, Jed etc. | Photo: @kellyslater

Listen: Vaughan Dead vs Kelly Slater vs Jed Smith!

Ain't that Swell hits apogee at dirty ol Victorian bowling club… 

During the recent Bells surfing carnival, the podcast Ain’t That Swell put on a live show at the Torquay Bowling Club, a sports joint for old people on the waterfront there in that lizardy surf town.

Over two-and-a-half hours, Vaughan Dead (Goons of Doom frontman, bro of Ronnie, writer, surf identity etc) and Jed Smith (likes weed and getting jerked off on massage tables) made a very good interview with Kelly Slater, who licked his lips and opened his mouth wide to catch Vaughan and Jed’s consecrated whiskey rainfall.

Kelly explains why he jumped on Adriano’s world title with the pool reveal (“I wanted to put it out before Pipe even happened!”) and various other things and Vaughan talks of making out with Layne Beachley at the Rip Curl Media Night some years ago.

Some of the stories will make you weep, some whimper.

Substantial.