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Watch: Empowered mother breastfeeding newborn publicly shamed by toxic surfing patriarchy on popular Instagram page!

Chas Smith

By

Cancel surf culture.

Welcome to America, where it’s OK to festoon the pages of surf magazines and surf-centric Instagram feeds with high-res images of breasts, but it’s not OK for a mother to nurse her baby while participating in the surf act itself.

The popular account Kook of the Day recently posted a video of an empowered mother breastfeeding on a wave and what should have been a moment celebrating the whole of the female experience quickly devolved into the very worst displays of toxic masculinity.

Comments dripping with less-than-woke misogyny began appearing right away.

bchip19: Call child protective services. So fucking irresponsible. One false move and it’s disaster.

matt_meistrell: Dumb people do dumb shit!

jonnysurfstyle: Jesus!!!! You kidding me??????? She goes down that babies gone!!!!! Stupid stupid women!!!! This annoys the fuck out of me!!!!! Even stupidity knows its limits and I am stupidity!!!!

Etc.

And it’s shameful that we still need to be having this conversation in 2020. Breastfeeding moms are not brash, unrepentant exhibitionists. Few to none of them are trying to show off their breasts to unwilling participants. Yes, some of us have fully evolved beyond the twisted hypocrisy of a culture that says a billboard of a lingerie-clad boob is A-OK while an uncovered nursing infant is offensive.

I can only hope and trust that her child did not its first experience of the life-determining effects of American society’s gender binary, swaddled in either pink or blue. Moments out of the womb and before even receiving its name being wrapped in gender. I can only hope and trust they will not be destroyed by the blitzkrieg of gender-norming as they grow.

In the meantime, may this mother’s brave display of her complete personhood be a beacon for us all.

Early Dane Reynolds. Quiksilver

Go-for-broke former world #4 surfer makes shock return to public life!

Derek Rielly

By

The man who described the WSL's Instagram account as "pandering bullshit that's exploiting surfing" returns with his dangerously purist blog, marinelayerproductions.

Dane Reynolds is an almost thirty-five-year-old father of three and former world number four surfer from Bakersfield in California known for his “go for broke style of surfing that includes many experimental and aerial maneuvers.”

It’s not a stretch to say that even with cheeks so adipose that his eyes have become mere slits, Reynolds’s bold lines on a wave still quicken the pulse of spectators.

Five years ago, or thereabouts, Dane quit his blog, marinelayerproductions, and shortly afterwards, released a torrential confessional called Chapter 11.

Talking about a panic attack he says, “In my heat, my throat started closing. I got out of the water and into my car. I was on the 405 in my Volvo doing 90 MPH to the hospital. I pulled over and called (wife) Courtney and said, I think I’m dying.”

Over the course of the intervening half decade, Dane notably quit his multi-million dollar with Quiksilver and started his own brand, Former, along with Craig Anderson and co.

Earlier today, Reynolds announced he was back in the blogging game.

“Think I’m gonna start blogging again 🤒 I know blogs are dead but still feels like the right platform to post surf videos and opinion and include my friends I surf with every day. Stay tuned 🤘🏽”

In an interview with Monster Children magazine he described the WSL’s Instagram as “pandering bullshit that’s just exploiting surfing.”

His fussy meticulousness and purism will be welcome.

In the meantime, rewatch Chapter 11.

Chapter 11 from Marine Layer on Vimeo.

Opening special: Rent indoor New Jersey wavepool for $US1800 an hour! Complimentary surfboards, 85-degree water!

Giancarlo Guardascione

By

Trunks and glassy ramps in the middle of a dirty Jersey winter.

The five-billion-dollar New Jersey mega-mall American Dream in East Rutherford, eight miles from Time Square if you’re wondering, opens its indoor wavepool to the public on April 1.

The pool is a smaller version of the fabulous Waco pool and the operator will rent you the entire pool for an hour for $US1800 on weekdays and $2100 on weekends.

You get twenty pals in the pool and it’s going to cost around a hundred bucks apiece. The joint spits out between 100 and 180 waves in an hour depending on the setting. The wave menu includes “the A- frame wave, under-the-lip-take-off barrel, or a perfect air section.”

The session is run through Will Skudin’s surf school. Will is a noted big-wave charger from Long Island, New York who once kissed a Nazaré lip and lived to tell the tale.  A smart backing with hopes that Will’s street cred will impress both the core and the unbaptized.

Surf coaches, lifeguards and wave technicians are all included and it is recommended that advanced shortboarders bring a board two-to-five liters above normal volume. Fresh water etc.

Also, according to the website the wave pool is “Perfect for Team Building, Bachelor and Bachelorette parties, before and after NYC and Corporate events.”

Some notes to remember.

In New Jersey, right now, the water temp is hovering around forty-one degrees (five celsius) and today’s wind chill brings us to about nineteen degrees (minus eight C) outside. The temp inside the wavepool, which is indoors, is seventy-five degrees (twenty-four C). No wind either. Pure glass.

Also worth noting is the the pool is located to the left of the Kung Fu Panda Water Temple of Awareness and just behind the Thrillagascar fifty-foot freefall.

Post-Session, you can  “live it up like royalty at King Julien’s Pineapple Jam Swim-up Bar”.

Live adventure here. 

"What you gonna do about it Kelly?"
"What you gonna do about it Kelly?"

Terrifying: Experts declare uncommon gathering of Great White sharks off the Carolinas suggests they’re “preparing for an unprecedented feast!”

Chas Smith

By

Our feet are the Orange Chickens of the Sea.

Oh no. Oh hell. Do you live in one of the two Carolinas? Either North or South? Both are some of my favorite states in this union, I’ll admit, because have you ever visited? Have you ever tasted pimento cheese dip? Ever wandered Charleston’s streets? Ever whooped and hollered for the Demon Deacons?

I weep for you, for me, for us because a whole mess of Great White sharks are amassing off the coast of both North and South Carolina preparing themselves for what scientists are calling a “feast.”

A “feast” of what?

Male surfer feet, obviously, as they are apparently as tasty to “man-eating” Great Whites as Panda Express’s Orange Chicken.

Don’t believe? We must immediately turn to South Carolina’s most revered local media.

That notorious gathering of satellite-tagged great white sharks off the Carolinas has shifted.

Data from the nonprofit OCEARCH shows they’re still enjoying each other’s company, but now their predatory union is off South Carolina — between Myrtle Beach and Charleston.

Seven great white sharks are now “pinging” in that region, while two stragglers remain off North Carolina’s Crystal Coast.

The sharks, all of which are fitted with satellite trackers, range in size from 9 feet to nearly 13 feet, with the biggest weighing 1,420 pounds.

Great white sharks are known for using the East Coast as a type of highway, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, but such a satellite gathering is uncommon among the tagged predators, experts say.

OCEARCH was the first to bring attention to the “big grouping,” with a Feb. 8 Facebook post that asked why these sharks might be segregated from others on the coast.

Commenters speculated it likely has to do with an abundance of food, and OCEARCH experts believe that is likely the case.

However, no one has speculated on what they’re apparently feasting on.

Oh I’m speculating right now. I’m telling you directly.

Male surfer feet.

Sprinkled with talcum powder that acts similarly to MSG.

The Orange Chickens of the Sea.

Oh drat.

"I'm voting Warren now!"
"I'm voting Warren now!"

Analysis: New study ties vicious “man-eating” shark attacks to impending Coronavirus pandemic to Donald J. Trump’s re-election odds!

Chas Smith

By

Everything is sharks.

Adam Smith who uttered the now iconic phrase, “All things relate to vicious man-eating shark attacks, more or less…”, couldn’t have known how right he actually was back in those bucolic 1700s. The Father of Capitalism, prescient, though hit that nail straight on its head. In a new-ish book titled “Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, two political scientists, Larry M. Bartels and Christopher H. Achen, examined how the terrifying 1916 New Jersey attacks that inspired the film Jaws sunk President Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.

Let’s sample from the Boston Globe.

With sharply declining tourism revenue, and no system in place to prevent shark attacks, local communities turned to the federal government for help. President Woodrow Wilson, who had previously served as governor of New Jersey, convened a Cabinet meeting, but his own Bureau of Fisheries told him there wasn’t much to be done. By the time he mobilized Coast Guard resources to patrol the waters, the sharks had moved on and the fear and controversy had faded.

But local voters, adversely affected by the economic consequences of the attacks, still took their anger out on the president. According to Bartels and Achen’s calculations, in the communities most impacted by the attacks, Wilson underperformed by 10 percentage points.

Etc.

And, I’m sure you can guess where this is going, no? Exactly correct. To what many are calling “The Great White Shark of the Lungs.” Again we turn to the Globe.

The more the new coronavirus outbreak, and the government’s response to it, becomes politicized, the worse things are likely to turn out for Trump. Since Trump has already gone out of his way to blame Democrats and the media for exaggerating the potential impact of the virus, the politicization train appears to have left the station.

Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to minimize the impact of the rapidly spreading virus for fear that panic will negatively affect the economy may backfire spectacularly. Now his actions and response are tied directly to the crisis.

If Covid-19 causes major dislocations, Trump will inevitably pay a price for any resulting economic slowdown, even if blame for the underlying pandemic can hardly be placed at his feet.

So do you agree that Great White sharks will essentially undo Trump’s political fortunes or do you think this is MSM straw-grasping to an unprecedented and rude degree, stoking fear and division and blaming the prehistoric beasts for all our problems?

Rude, if true.

More as the story develops.

Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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