Exciting!

Few things are currently as highly anticipated as Greg Webber’s wave pool technology. A coronavirus vaccine, manned missions to mars, Tesla becoming the most valuable stock on earth are all exciting but none have the frisson of The Webber.

You first learned of it, here, back in 2018 when the master-builder called out all-comers.

A lot of crap is going to down the second our pool proves we’ve got the best tube on earth. Then the games will really begin. I’m ready for it. There will be one company eclipses everyone else. Why would you choose a lesser version that can’t control the currents? Why would you spend the same money to have a lot less? It’s like buying a phone that was designed ten years ago? You gotta have everything, internet, a good camera, seriously, that’s how big the difference is going to be.

Extremely provocative though not much has been seen by way of practical steps toward realization.

Until now.

For now we have a “charismatic, guitar-playing environmental entrepreneur” who hopes to build a Webber in his childhood hometown of Coral Springs, Florida.

Anthony Brown, 55, grew up in what was once swampland, hunting, fishing, riding bikes before moving to the mid-west and making his living starting companies revolving around environmental remediation.

In 2008, he was flipping through a Popular Mechanics magazine when he read a story about wave pool technology and decided, then and there, that’s what he was going to do next.

Well, one thing led to another, Brown moved back to South Florida, started his company, Ocean Sports Development, which, in turn secured an exclusive licensing and patented design for the Webber Wave Pool to “create waves for all levels of training and competition.”

The company hopes to build surf parks across the nation and create a competitive surfing league at those facilities.

Last week, Coral Springs commissioners gave the go-ahead for city staff to begin formal discussions with Brown and his team to build the $20 million facility.

And can you finally see it?

Feel it?

Exciting.

I’m most looking forward to the competitive surfing league and will ask to be commissioner.

A battle royale!

But we must now turn our full attention back to politics. The lessers amongst us believe that the dance of the gods doesn’t belong in surfing but we know better. We know that surfing is the only place to discuss important political matters with a reasonable tone.

And how excited are you?

This is the one, and only, Vice Presidential debate pitting Donald J. Trump’s Pence against Kamala Harris.

I’m going to be honest here. Pence is so dull that I forgot his first name and refuse to search for it now as I am a surf journalist worth is salt, not bending to easy Google tricks.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is a rising star in her party but failed, miserably, when she herself tried to run for President.

Who has the better jam off the top?

The better barrel?

As always, that is for you to decide.

Watch here!

Or anywhere!

Godspeed, Michael Tomson.

Surfing icon Michael Tomson was put into an induced coma over a week ago after suffering a seizure at home. He has not come out of it and, yesterday, was taken off life-support.

Damn it all.

We hurried our memorials up because I wanted Michael to read them. I pictured him lounging in a hospital bed, morphine dripping, scrolling through the stories, the comments, with that Cheshire cat grin spreading across his face.

He had the best Cheshire cat grin.

I wanted him to feel his impact, his influence. Chuckle at the snarky asides, hot takes. Absorb the bookends of a life fabulously lived. To see the path he hacked through surfing’s manicured garden.

But we were too late.

Great historian Matt Warshaw wrote that Michael Tomson will be remembered in three parts: Fearlessly charging Pipeline, Gotcha and cocaine but I disagree.

He was, is, surfing’s only bonafide rock-n-roller and I called his great friend, one-time Gotcha designer, Jim Zapala to hope that Michael might have been able to read his headstone.

“No, man, I wish. He never came out of the coma. The doctors thought he would die last night but he’s still holding on, stubborn bastard. But it’s over. I knew this moment would come, he hasn’t been in the best physical shape for a while, but now that it’s actually here it…

…it’s hard. I was digging around, yesterday, for one of the first Gotcha logos I came up with. It had some cheesy 80s font but also had Michael charging Pipeline in the ‘O’ and the phrase ‘To hell with the consequences’ below. That was him…

…that was him.”

To hell with the consequences.

Michael Tomson will be remembered singularly for never, not ever, pulling a punch.

Stories of his generosity, his not-yet-fully appreciated writing, his fashion anarchy, his ability to Pipeline will certainly flow and I have no doubt, when the dust settles, he will be carved into surfing’s Mount Rushmore between Duke Kahanamoku and a pack of Laird Hamilton’s SuperFood Coffee Creamer but, until then, pour one out for an icon.

He was what we hope to be. What we are generally not.

All-fucking-in.

Godspeed, Michael Tomson.

Godspeed.

"A beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life."

But where are you on the book-to-film debate? A purist who believes the written word should never be polluted by celluloid? An illiterate who foregoes ink and paper, waiting for the pichures to moov? Somewhere in between?

Me?

I love when books get turned into film so much. I love when good books get turned into bad films, when bad books get turned into good films and especially, especially when an iconic writer is interpreted by an iconic director.

Which is why I was very excited to read yesterday that William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize winning Barbarian Days shall be written and directed by Syriana’s own Stephan Gaghan.

Per the press release:

Oscar-winning Traffic scribe Stephen Gaghan will write and direct Barbarian Days for Amazon Studios, based on William Finnegan’s bestselling memoir Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016.

Gaghan will produce alongside Ted Hope, who will produce under his multi-picture deal with the studio. Finnegan will also be executive producer.

Barbarian Days tells the story of Finnegan’s lifelong love affair with surfing. He describes it as an obsession, a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. The tale starts when the author was an 8-year old kid who caught the surf bug.

Exciting but who do you think should play young Finnegan? What about slightly older Finnegan?

Swinging 70s G-Land Finnegan?

I think maybe James Franco.

Is he still cancelled?