Completely undeserving, sick man with sick liver (pictured without yellow beanie) being cast out of applicant pool.
Completely undeserving, sick man with sick liver (pictured without yellow beanie) being cast out of applicant pool.

Opportunity: Describe how you would cover “the biggest surf industry story of the last decade” and earn chance to be Stab’s new senior editor!

Dreams come true.

When opportunity knocks you’d better drop what you are doing and answer that door and right now, knock, knock, knocking is a very handsome plus-sized model in a stylish jaunty beanie. Very punk rock tee. The knock is extra loud, thanks to the many rings that adorn his salchichas. Impossible to miss. The rhythm reminiscent of T.S.O.L.’s Sound of Laughter.

You’d better drop what you are doing and answer because you just might, just may, just could get to be Ashton Gogganses’ second hand.

His senior editor.

Oh not so fast. You think the last hire just raised a delicate French hand and was allowed to sit in the presence of greatness?

No.

And we must go directly to the source for more. To a Stab job offer.

Put Your Thinkin’ Caps On, Kids: Here’s Your Homework:

1. The Nike/Hurley sale is perhaps the biggest surf industry story of the last decade. How would you cover it, what stories would you want to read?

2. You can interview one current A-List surfer. Who do you call and what questions do you ask?

3. Pick two products from brands that you think would be good fits for Stab’s audience, and give us 150-300 words about each.

4. Grab your two favorite short surf clips from the last year from YouTube or Vimeo, and give us a 300-word write up for a post on our site.

5. Send a one-page cover letter and single page resume to: [email protected]

I would have failed the first question, even though Ashton will likely win a Pulitzer for his wall-to-wall coverage of the “biggest surf industry story of the last decade,” as I would have accidentally answered, “You should look into Hurley’s new beard oil offering as yours was feeling very rough when I last felt…

It would have been a lie, a pure vicious lie.

Ashton’s beard felt as soft as a chinchilla. As potently delicious as cotton candy and any man, any woman, who has the honor, the privilege, will count themselves lucky.

But that’s why I am completely undeserving of the senior editor title for, you see, I am a sick man. … I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.

Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand.

Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well–let it get worse!

My diseased liver and I will also never be Stab’s next executive editor.

Go, dear reader. Run to the light and bring venti white chocolate cremé frapaccino on your first day.

But also, Ashton will be reading these comments so you will be very well served to post Cliff’s Notes version here.

Pick two products etc.


Terrifying: Surfer in his late-20s, elderly woman hit by lightening within ten minutes of each other on suburban Sydney beach

NSW Ambulance Inspector Carolyn Parish said the circumstances were “extraordinary.”

Four weeks ago, a surfer in his late-20s leaving the water at northern suburban suburb Dee Why was hit by lightening. Ten minutes later an elderly woman, standing under a tree in her yard was also struck. Both were transferred to nearby hospitals in serious and critical condition.

Yesterday, the surfer, Josh Bush, who survived after his brother performed CPR he’d learned on the television show Bondi Rescue, was released from hospital.

According to news.com.au:

NSW Ambulance Inspector Carolyn Parish said the circumstances were “extraordinary” and credited the first responders. “This is the first time I have ever come across two lightning strikes within 10 minutes – it’s terrifying,” she said in a statement.

“How you react to being hit by lightning depends on the circumstances and where you have been hit. “Most people, however, will go into cardiac arrest so those first moments of CPR are vital.”

And lightening… ugh.

I have been out in the water before, surfing alongside Derek Rielly in fact, when bolts shot from the sky and hit Cardiff by the Sea’s Pacific horizon then moved closer to where we were putting on a very wonderful show. I had assumed, I suppose, that getting hit in the water was a rare thing and didn’t hurry to get out of the water but have never lived in a place where electrical storms are regular occurrences.

What is protocol?

What is the right thing to do and wrong thing to do other than standing ramrod straight in a field?

Damned lightening.


Lucky man (pictured) getting scanned in before being shuttled off to the surf vacation of his dreams!
Lucky man (pictured) getting scanned in before being shuttled off to the surf vacation of his dreams!

Australian government offers to evacuate citizens from “Heart of Coronavirus” Wuhan, China and take them on free, forced, 14-day surf trip!

The softer side of fascism!

Oh to be an Australian living in the “Chicago of China,” known to us as Wuhan, were industrialization flows up and down the mighty Yahtzee River and exotic snakes etc. dance in fabulous live animal marketplaces. The sights, sounds, smells and wonders.

As you know, China eleventh largest city is currently in a spot of trouble with an exotic new disease, allegedly born in those live animal marketplaces. There are travel bans throughout the country with Wuhan being completely shut off and many other countries, around the world, are refusing to allow anyone traveling from China in.

But to be an Australian living in that Other Windy City, for that government is offering to take its nationals on a two week surf trip and let’s turn to the BBC for more on this unprecedented act of generosity.

Australia has begun evacuating its citizens trapped by the coronavirus outbreak in China to an immigration detention centre on a remote island.

Evacuees from Wuhan are en route to Australia’s Christmas Island, where they will be quarantined for two weeks.

Canberra said 243 citizens and permanent residents, including 89 children, were on board. A second flight is also scheduled for this week.

Pictures on social media showed queues of families waiting to board on Monday.

“We have prioritised vulnerable and isolated Australians,” Foreign Minister Marise Payne told reporters in Canberra.

The nation’s flagship carrier, Qantas, is operating the chartered flight.

All those on board would wear masks and other protective clothing, and interactions between staff and passengers would be minimal, said chief executive Alan Joyce.

Critics had last week questioned the state of medical facilities on the island, and the holding of citizens in an immigration detention centre.

Nations such as the US, France, and Japan have repatriated their citizens to the mainland.

Some Chinese-Australian evacuees feared they were being treated differently to “white Australians”.

However, Canberra strongly rebuffed suggestions of a bias on Monday.

“[The plan] is only founded on medical advice and any suggestion otherwise I absolutely reject,” Ms Payne said.

Evacuees will also no longer have to pay A$1,000 (£500; $670) fee for the evacuation after Canberra reversed an earlier decision.

Fabulous and free. Christmas Island, as you well know, was featured in a Rip Curl Search adventure and let’s watch a video of what the lucky Lucky Country visitors are in for.

My goodness.

According to ChristmasIslandSurf.com:

What surfer hasn’t had that dream. You know the one, about going back 50 years in time and being ‘That Guy’ who first discovered a new surf destination….then surfing endless sunny days on uncrowded waves witnessed only by the dolphins….Well make that “the dolphins and some of your mates” and you’re pretty much in the Christmas Island picture.

Do you think if we fly to Wuhan we can catch one of the Qantas flights out?

Should we try?

Yes?

More as the story develops.


WSL Fantasy Surfer Champ Predicts Winner of Today’s Democratic Primary in Iowa!

And it ain't crazy Uncle Joe.

Two weeks ago, BeachGrit peeled back the curtain on the WSL’s Fantasy Surfer champion Shane Starling, a forty-eight-year-old cycling enthusiast and occasional surfer from Perth, Western Australia, and who now lives in Berlin, Germany.

Shane, you’ll recall, picked ten of the eleven event winners in 2019 using a visualisation technique, and a little astral travelling, that puts him on the podium where he can identify the winner.

It was only the absurdist Freshwater Pro that muddied his water “because the system was so different,” he says.

With the Dems going into primary season to choose their candidate to face-off against the Orange Man, we figured we’d get Shane to pick the winner of each primary.

I wrote to Shane for his take on the opening primary in Iowa.

This is his response.

Feelin’ pretty psyched after visiting the Perth Observatory last night. The starry night was still, warm and some 60 of us were wowed by all those nebulae and globular clusters the volunteer astrophysicists enthused about as we peered through those gigantic seeing machines into the endless crazed folds of space and time.

Orion, the Taranatula, the Red Jewel…my nieces seemed bored…it was hard to fathom…I tried to explain that the telescope was a kind of screen not unlike the other ones they were so very addicted to…they just laughed and ran off…

Anyhoo,

So it’s off in the US innit…eight months of freak politics. The Donald v The Democrats. As an Australian living mostly in Berlin, today’s Iowa Democratic Primary is very close to my heart.

I’m feelin’ the Bern’ here and not just because Bernie and Berlin is only one little letter off a sweet anagram. They love Bernie in “poor but sexy” Berlin as a mayor called the city awhile back.

Mit dem sozialismus sind wir frei!!!

(We are free with socialism!)

Bern’s lookin’ good in Iowa too, way out in front of Liz, Pete, Joe and the other minor Dems at the bookies, a HEAVY FAVOURITE in fact. 

Bernie lost by an imperial bee’s whisker to Mrs Clinton last time out in Iowa and she then went on to get thumped by The Donald in the presidential election (un)real later in the year.

Sad.

So yeah, Bern. This may be one of the easiest Primaries the bunion-faced bodysurfing lover faces all year. Go on Bernie!

Tomorrow, Shane explains how to astral travel and reveals the winner of the Quiksilver Pro at Snapper, three months away.


WARNING! DO NOT PREPARE THIS SHARK WITH A SIDE OF AVOCADO!
WARNING! DO NOT PREPARE THIS SHARK WITH A SIDE OF AVOCADO!

Beware: An injury worse than Great White shark bite, worse than even Tiger shark bite, lurks in the shadows waiting to maim unsuspecting surfers!

Out of the water for at least a day. Maybe two.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, in America. Just another Manic Monday in Australia. And though surfers are not typically football fans the two do share one love. One glorious passion.

Guacamole.

The avocado-based delicacy is one of the most common foods at Super Bowl parties where men grow fat and loud, women grow loud and fat and everyone turns into comedians, riffing on the television commercials that are also supposed to be funny.

Well, as you know, I was on a historically unprecedented ironman streak, having surfed six days in a row. It ended today. With Super Bowl Sunday on the horizon I thought, “I bet Big Bear will be empty….”

Southern California’s local ski area is a complete dump but my daughter is a complete ripper and any chance I can get her on any hill I take.

So there we were driving north as the sun peeked over the horizon, illuminating the inland valleys sad and depressing, daughter playing Roblox on her phone, me listening to NPR when a story regarding “Avocado Hand Injury” came on.

I turned the volume up.

Is it your turn to make the guacamole at the Super Bowl party this year?

If so, be careful. You don’t want to join the thousands of people who’ve ended up in an emergency room for avocado-related injuries.

“These injuries are exceedingly common,” says Dr. Matt Aizpuru of the Mayo Clinic.

Aizpuru is the co-author of a 2019 study published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine that found that as avocado comsumption has gone up in America, so too have avocado-related knife injuries.

He and his colleagues looked at emergency room data and found that between 1998 and 2017 an estimated 50,413 people paid a visit to the emergency room for an avocado-related knife mishap. Aizpuru says that in 1998, there were around 650 such injuries. By 2017, there were nearly 6,000, close to a 10-fold increase.

The most common demographic injured were 23 to 39-year old women, according to the study, and injuries were most common on the left — and likely non-dominant — hands of patients.

“Whew. 23 to 39-year old women…” I thought while turning the volume back down. “…Not us surfers.”

But then my mind flashed to my recently broken ironman streak and I swear over fifty percent of the surfing population these days is 23 – 39-year old women.

Shark attacks may be trending down in the near future, as men vacate the lineup, but will Avocado Hand Injury be trending up?

More as the story develops.