Gleeful defiance. Feral wit.

But what is your dream, your deep down dream that is more fantasy than anything else? Your chimera with almost no chance of coming true but the almost haunts you? That you could be discovered, whilst walking down the street, and made a famous actress on a hot new daytime soap? That air-reverses will enter your regular, consistent repertoire? Steph Gilmore will see you landing all those air-reverses and fall madly in love?

Mine, that I’ve harbored for a few years now, is to turn the award-nominated book detailing life on Oahu’s North Shore Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell into a Broadway, Off-Broadway or even Off-Off-Broadway musical.

The opening number, featuring many ukuleles and steel guitars, swells as the lights dim. The scent of coconut and rot sprayed into the audience from hidden chambers. Curtains open to a rococo set design featuring palm trees, passion fruit bushes, a large Volcom Stone. Think Baz Luhrmann in Strictly Ballroom.

Thunder rattles the auditorium but… that’s not thunder it’s… crashing waves. It’s…

…The Pipeline.

Billabong’s vice-president of marketing Graham Stapelberg can now be seen lurking in the corner, stage left, behind one of the passion fruit bushes. Shifty eyes. Nervous. He begins to dance a very nervous dance. Twitchy. Modern.

Pipeline’s thunder becomes drum and bass techno track and Graham Stapelberg continues gyrating, nervous, scared. Think Bob Fosse.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

I have no experience in musical theater other than once being married to a musical theater actress. No playwright, songwrite, choreography ability but I shared by dream, anyhow, with David Lee Scales today.

He mocked it.

We also chatted about which current tour surfer will be our world’s Aaron Hernandez.

Who do you think?

And even though David Lee Scales mocked my dream, do you believe it is remotely possible? That we might someday see actors playing Eddie Rothman, John John Florence, Kolohe Andino and Dave Prodan dancing, singing, expressing the passion of Da North Shore?

Do you know any playwright/songwrite/choreographer?

I’ll cut you in on the box office.

Listen here!

The sunshine state!

Oh it is good to be number one. To be able to tilt chin back, slightly, puff chest out, a touch, and walk down the street with extra long steps, arms swinging robustly. And today, Florida is metaphorically strutting its stuff having once again topped Australia, Reunion, South Africa and the entire rest of the world combined for most unprovoked shark attacks on human men in just-wrapped 2019.

Feel free to pop a bottle Yuengling and read the report yourself:

For decades, Florida has topped global charts in the number of shark attacks, and this trend continued in 2019. Florida’s 21 cases represent 51% of the U.S. total and 33% of unprovoked attacks worldwide. However, the state saw a significant drop from its most recent five-year annual average of 32 incidents.

Unprovoked shark attacks also occurred in Hawaii (9), California (3), and North Carolina (3), with single incidents in Georgia, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and the Virgin Islands.

In Florida, Volusia County had the most shark attacks (9), representing 43% of the Florida total, in line with the five-year annual average of nine incidents in the area. The remaining incidents occurred in Brevard (2) and Duval (5) counties, with single incidents occurring in Broward, Martin, Nassau, Palm Beach, and St. Johns counties.

By way of comparison, Australia had 11 attacks, Reunion had 1 and South Africa, once brave and proud, had 0.

Hang your metaphorical head in shame, South Africa.

Deep, profound shame.

But surfers in South Africa celebrate and travel to Florida. You are snack number one!