A Surfing Life.

It’s impossible not to love Jonah Hill. The actor, a very funny man, first popped onto my horizon starring alongside Martin Starr, Seth Rogan, Michael Cerra etc. in Superbad. From there it was Moneyball, 21 Jump Street, The Wolf of Wallstreet, on and on.

The only dog, maybe, was Get Him to the Greek alongside Russell Brand but I only say such critical things because I watched it on an airplane and was possibly not in the right mood.

In any case, six shorts months ago Jonah Hill faced his fears and went surfing. Via Instagram he declared:

Been terrified to surf my whole life . Totally random fear and at the same time always been a secret dream of mine. Turned out to be one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had. Not only was it so fun and challenging but more so I’m like “damn, at 35 you can start doing shit you’ve always wanted to do.” Thanks @patmillin and Franco for taking me and @88surfboards.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0ybtWPA-Js/?utm_source=ig_embed

Well, if you believe you can achieve and Jonah Hill just went out and slayed Malibu.

Don’t believe?

Per celebrities-in-the-wild website TMZ;

Jonah hit the sand with his surfboard just before 10 AM Friday near the famous Gladstones restaurant in Malibu.

Pretty impressive … considering the waves there can be pretty intense.

Whoa!

Click here for many pictures of where six months of training can take a purpose-driven VAL.

But, quickly, does it surprise you that James Franco (above) rides a wax-free Tomo much taller than he?

It does me for some reason but should it?

Haute cuisine!

To my eyes, climate change is like a glass half filled. Oh, I know the trendy take is to call that same glass half empty and bemoan the various troubles, calamities, signs of the apocalypse etc. but where is the anti-depression in that?

No, climate change is a gift, a beautiful bounty and some lucky New Zealand surfers were just feted at a Michelin-starred beach with a mega-serving of  moules-frites as 500,000 mussels became cooked to death on a beach thanks increasing ocean temperatures and hotter skies.

Shall we fasten our bibs around our necks and travel there ourselves, digitally? I can almost smell that delicate white wine sauce now.

New Zealand resident Brandon Ferguson posted a video on Facebook from Maunganui Bluff Beach, located on the country’s North Island, showing hundreds-of-thousands of dead mussels that had washed up on the shore.

“I’m local to the area so I’m always out on ‘the coast’ gathering food for the family,” he said. “That day I was out with friends and family while they were fishing. We waited for the tide to turn so we could gather mussels.”

But instead, Ferguson saw hundreds of thousands of green-lipped mussels that had turned up dead.

“It smelled like dead rotting seafood,” Ferguson said. “Some of the mussels were empty, some of them were dead … Some were just floating around in the tide.”

“There were well over 500,000 mussels and shells littering the coastline.”

A 2019 report from the New Zealand government supports Ferguson’s theory — climate change has been warming sea temperatures, devastating the country’s native marine plants, animals and habitats.

World going to hell etc. but, really, my problem here is Mr. Ferguson criticized nature’s effort at a difficult Belgian classic with the whole “smelled like dead and rotting seafood” line. I imagine that he was poorly raised and never learned the “if you don’t have anything nice to say…” good manners.

In another note, one-time professional surfer Carissa Moore credits moules-frites for helping her “surf like a goddess.”

Small world.

Very un-Valentines. Very mean.

This political season, this wild, wild United States of America political primary season is fraught. Fraught with tension, lies, cheating and surfer hating. And who could have ever guessed that hating surfers would become a political way forward. A way to get votes but we are mostly grumpy. Mostly grouchy. Territorial, rude, bastards.

Shhhhhh.

Are you?

Don’t answer.

No.

Anyhow, beating up on surfers has become an easy way to get votes. Who will care if we are beaten up? White and men. Who will even begin to care?

Nobody.

All fine and good. We deserve it but also ouch.

Hillary Clinton has thrust many daggers in but her young charge, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Democratic presidential front runner etc. has taken it to a whole ‘nother level by stealing potential mates from our ranks.

Who loves us?

Nobody, you are right.

And now really nobody.

Crickets.

But if I’ve learned one thing from podcast impresario and mid-length advocate David Lee Scales it is that surfers can find theoretical empty love in only one place.

On the dating application Hinge.

He used it exclusively while also swearing by it.

“It’s literally the only place anyone will even think about having a relationship with a surfer…” he would often tell me through moist eyes. “…It’s rough out there.”

Now, I have never used a dating application but this news was very welcome to me.

We can pretend to belong.

We can pretend to find love.

Until David Lee Scales told me just today that Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Democratic presidential front runner etc. found his husband on Hinge and I realized the insidiousness of his hatred for our surfer kind.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Democratic presidential front runner etc.

Per Markets Insider:

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg’s personal success on Hinge helped to more than triple global downloads of the dating app last quarter.

Hinge, which pitches itself as a tool to find relationships instead of hook-ups, received a boost in press coverage “thanks to the presidential candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who met his husband on Hinge,” Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of parent company Match Group, said on the earnings call this week. “This has increased national attention on the brand and provided more buzz to the already strong growth we’ve seen.”

Buttigieg — currently mayor of South Bend, Indiana — found high-school teacher Chasten Glezman on Hinge and married him in June 2018. He explained how they met in a CNN interview at the end of March. The story sparked a 30% surge in the number of gay men on Hinge between the start of April and mid-May, while growth in other demographics was stable, Hinge told Fortune.

“We’re proud of all of the relationships we’ve helped set up — including Mayor Pete and Chasten,” Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod told the magazine. “We’re happy to see that their love story has encouraged even more members of the LGBTQ community to find their person on Hinge.”

And imagine, just imagine, the destructively evil intentions of dipping in to the relationship application most favored by surfers, the only place we can turn for love.

Vicious.

A Harvard grad and leading Democratic presidential candidate has his pick of the litter. Anyone, everyone. Handsome, young, political, smart.

To steal from us?

A purposeful slap hard to recover from.

Impossible to recover from.

More as the story develops.