This time it's serious.

The holiday season is about so many wonderful things. Family, thankfulness, a giving spirit, delicious foods, being together, peace on earth etc. but it is mostly about sport. About winners and losers and sport and I’ll admit I was depressed in the days just after Italo Ferreira’s stirring win at the Pipe Masters for it officially ended the sporting portion of our favorite game. For professional surf fans, bleak winter begins early and doesn’t end until the sun comes up on Snapper Rocks this coming spring.

Sad.

But, as I was wallowing in the depths of despair, clicking across various surf and surf-adjacent media to see how others were coping, I had a powerful idea. What if we hosted a battle royale pitting different website’s “About Us” sections against each other in the sort of heat format we’re all used to and miss so much?

Oh, you know the About Us, the place on a website usually written prior to launch then left as a monument to big dreams and/or marketing-speak.

But About Who is best? About Who do you really and truly fall in love with?

There is only one way to determine.

Let’s get ready to rumble!

Heat 1 The Inertia vs. Stab

The Inertia is the new voice of surf, mountain, and outdoor culture. With a community of 2,000+ contributors, including icons as well as up-and-comers, we offer unique, energizing perspectives on all things related to the space through news, opinions, photos, videos, and art from the community’s most talented individuals. Founded in 2010, The Inertia reaches 1.5 million+ readers monthly and aims to make sustainable impacts on the world via partnerships with leading charitable organizations.

Vs.

Surfing ain’t long-hairs and doobie-suckers no more. Surfing is suited-and-booted stockbrokers. It’s university students who’ve smelt the roses and don’t swallow the evening news. It’s just-18-year-olds whose trunks end above the knee. Surfing is beavertails and logs and empowered women who ain’t adverse to a Brazilian cut, but it’s also 540s and double oops. Right now, surfing is goddamn hot and, most of all, inspired.

And Stab is inspired by it. In short, what’s this whole show about?

Big ideas and the endeavour to execute ‘em. Sometimes they don’t come off, but it’s better than wondering. Stab may be put together by a bunch of narcissistic and morally corrupt humans, but goddamn it, if we ain’t the most obsessive collective you ever did see… …while you were sleeping, our eyes stayed open.

Heat 2 Surfline vs. WSL

Our culture is founded on five core values that we treat as guiding lights in all that we do. They are: Bring Your Passion, Be Humble, Keep It Personal, Set Your Line, and Push Our Limits. These values are foundational to fulfilling our purpose for making ocean enthusiasts’ lives better.

Vs.

The World Surf League organizes the annual tour of professional surf competitions and broadcasts each event live at WorldSurfLeague.com where you can experience the athleticism, drama and adventure of competitive surfing — anywhere and anytime it’s on.

Travel alongside the world’s best male and female surfers to the most remote and exotic locations in the world. Fully immerse yourself in the sport of surfing with live event broadcasts, social updates, event highlights and commentary on desktop and mobile.

Heat 3 Surfer vs. The Surfer’s Journal

In 1960, SURFER Magazine began as the original, and with our long history of delivering on the promise we began with, SURFER has earned its moniker as The Bible of the Sport. That promise, quite simply, was to offer you a slice of the entire surfing world with each issue, through an array of provocative and insightful editorial features, revealing interviews, and most of all, our award winning state-of-the-art photography.

Vs.

As a reader-supported surf publication, The Surfer’s Journal is a truly unique periodical. It’s an independent take on the surfing experience with just six sponsors, making each 132-page issue almost entirely editorial. We delve into topics that get little attention elsewhere, covering travel adventures, surfboard design, profiles of surfing’s most colorful subjects, and the choicest surf photography in every issue. Coupled with the premium construction, The Surfer’s Journal is a product that is peerless in its quality and content.

Heat 4 Tracks vs. CoastalWatch

Tracks is the brand which blazes a trail into surfing’s future without forgetting to occasionally look in the rear vision mirror.

Relentlessly creative and restlessly innovative, Tracks will always strive to make you see surfing and surf culture in new and engaging ways.

Our design style is progressive with a strong focus on emphasizing the unique elements of every story and subject matter. Meanwhile, Tracks editorial strives to be entertaining in a rip your head off kind of way.

It is Tracks who ordains surfing’s heroes, brings colourful characters to life and captures the essence of what it is to be a surfer in the modern world. We boast the most dynamic contributor list of any Australian surfing magazine and our motto is “Boredom is The Enemy.”

Vs.

Since its inception in 1998, Coastalwatch has been committed to bringing the coast to you. With live camera vision, forecasts and news and features from around the country’s coast, it’s grown into the Australia’s most comprehensive coastal reference site.

Using our camera network and working with some of the country’s pre-eminent coastal scientists our monitoring arm, CoastalCOMS, provides vital real-time data on beach erosion, risk and surf quality for councils and governments, lifeguards and rescue services.

Decide the winner of each heat below…

And Merry Christmas to all!

*Last

Bah humbug!

I wish I was bringing you good tidings of great joy this Christmas Eve (in Australia) Christmas Eve Eve (in America). I wish I was celebrating a white Christmas but all I have are sharks. Great White sharks.

Please don’t blame me for it’s not my fault. I didn’t try to jump on a small fishing boat near famous surf break Snapper Rocks in order to eat three succulent men and then, when failing, bite the hull out of pure spite.

I am only here in very cold, very rainy southern California fearing for the lives of all Australian surfers but would you like more details? Would you like your nightmare before Christmas? It is wrapped in the pages of once proud Newsweek and let’s go there together.

Three men fishing off the coast of New South Wales had a narrow escape with a shark which tried to leap aboard their vessel.

The trio from Appin Mine were several miles off Shellharbour last Friday, when a 15-feet-long great white shark tried to clamber aboard.

One of the crew, Jason Dunn, said that the fish suddenly appeared after his crew mate had dropped his fishing line off the back of the vessel.

“It came out of nowhere—he had to sprint to the front of the boat,” Dunn told the Illawarra Mercury.

“It then slid back into the water, and we could feel it go under the boat, we could feel it bumping it.

“Then it came round to the driver’s side where I was and started pushing it sideways and then took a bite out of the boat.

“You can see the serrated teeth marks where it’s been gouged,” Dunn said.

And look, look at the gouged hull and the bent railing where the great Great White flopped aggressively, heedless of our modern cultural climate where unwanted advances are very much frowned upon.

Again, I’m sorry but have you ever even conceived of something so… rude?

So… scroogy?

On Christmas Eve or Eve Eve?

Me neither.

No Christmas surfing in New South Wales this year.

Or next.

More as the story develops.

Extremely surf.

I have always been a great Nicole Kidman admirer. Her work in Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge, Days of Thunder etc. is inspired, powerful, but I never imagined the Australian as “surfy.” Her skin, the color of bleached ivory, translucent as pre-cooked egg white, looked like it would catch fire in the sun. Her disposition stately, upper class, seemed very much above our middle to upper-middle class game.

So imagine my surprise, just yesterday, when I learned that she is actually Hawaiian!

Ho brah!

This discovery came circuitously. I clicked on an interesting story about how she recently sat next to Russell Crowe on a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Sydney, Australia and let’s start there together.

A year after the release of their film “Boy Erased,” stars Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe have reunited — but not on the screen.

Kidman, 52, shared a photo of herself with Crowe, 55, at Los Angeles International Airport, reminding fans that their friendship goes back much farther than their recent collaboration.

“You never know who you’ll run into on your way home for Christmas,” said Kidman in the caption. “30 years of friendship.. and counting @russellcrowe.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6XPMuQp6xj/

The two starred as husband and wife in the Golden Globe-nominated “Boy Erased,” a story about a young man whose Baptist parents force him into a gay conversion program.

Crowe shared the same photo online, expressing his excitement to see his pal.

“Hey @qantas thanks for getting me home in time for Christmas out of the craziness that is LAX,” he wrote in the caption. “And thanks for the pure gift of sitting me next to one of my favourite people in the universe.”

Wonderful, yes? Filled with palpable holiday cheer. Russell Crowe, as you know, voiced the Bra Boys movie O Brother Where Art Thou?

In any case, the article caused me to visit Nicole Kidman’s Wikipedia where I read:

Kidman was born 20 June 1967, in Honolulu, Hawaii,while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on student visas. Her mother, Janelle Ann (née Glenny), is a nursing instructor who edited her husband’s books and was a member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.

Her father was Antony Kidman (1938–2014), a biochemist, clinical psychologist and author, who died of a heart attack in Singapore aged 75.Kidman’s ancestry includes Irish and Scottish heritage.

Being born in Hawaii, she was given the Hawaiian name “Hōkūlani”, meaning “Heavenly Star”. The inspiration came from a baby elephant born around the same time at the Honolulu Zoo.

Who would have ever guessed?

Who could have ever guessed?

And I wonder what Hōkūlani Kidman’s position in the Pipe lineup is?

Can she go when she wants on any wave she wants?

Also, while you’re here, what is your position on gay conversion therapy?

More as the story develops.

Land of the Rising Fun!

When it was announced, some months ago, that surfing was being considered for the Tokyo 2020 Games, it was assumed that a wave tank would host and that wave tank would be Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch or Sāfu Bokujō in the native tongue.

Japan is known for many things, sushi, Harijuku, harakiri, etc. but not known for consistent surf.

Well, as imagined, the World Surf League soon announced a pool near Tokyo which was then quietly abandoned as the Japanese Olympic Committee declared that surfers would surf in the ocean, like God intended or Kami in the native tongue.

Now it appears that American Wave Machines, maker of the Waco technology, has beat Kelly Slater and his WSL, and is building a “Surf Stadium” in the Land of the Rising Sun (buy here) but let us learn all we can from the press release then speculate wildly.

American Wave Machines, Inc. (AWM) announces a project with Surf Stadium Japan (SSJ) in Shizunami. The project is underway with surfing anticipated in June 2020. The project location is not far from Makinohara in Shizuoka Prefecture which was chosen to host training facilities for the U.S. and other surfing teams.

SSJ selected PerfectSwell® technology, the world’s premiere performance wave pool, to facilitate competitive training as well as foster a rapidly expanding and enthusiastic surf community.

“This project is the realization of a vision 4 years in the making. Our goal has always been to contribute to the deep and vibrant surf culture in Makinohara,” said Tooshihiko Adachi, CEO of SSJ. “With our project we will be able to expand the surfing community by offering recreational surf and at the same time contribute to athlete development.”

“In the near future wave pools will be a key part of optimal training with repeat made-to-order waves.” said Kimifumi Imoto, Director, Nippon Surfing Association. “PerfectSwell Surf Stadium Japan will offer international Surf Teams the opportunity to train in an environment that closely mimics ocean conditions with natural sets at similar wave and set frequencies found in the ocean.”

“We are well aware of the level of effort to have surfing approved for the 2020 Olympics. Hats off to the International Surfing Association for this extraordinary accomplishment.” said Bruce McFarland, CEO of AWM. “Surfing will be on the world stage in Japan. AWM is extremely honored to work with the visionaries at SSJ and participate in the growth of the local and global surf community.”

So, what do you think?

How does this make you feel?

Will the Surf Stadium host if the ocean forecast is absolutely dismal?

Speculate wildly!