"I can't stand repeating any more of his staggering hubris."

Five days ago, the Australian Press rounded on Kelly Slater for being sceptical of COVID-19 vaccines after the champ lit up on a little-known website popular with ocean athletes. 

Slater, who turns fifty in a few months, told of friends dying from the vaccine, either from side-effects of suicide. Even his mum Judy Moriarity “thought she was dying and fears her quality of life has changed in the past few days for good,” wrote Slater. 

Now, Peter FitzSimons, a star columnist for broadsheet The Sydney Morning Herald, has mauled Slater in a brutal opinion piece, published yesterday. 

A few of the choicest cuts, 

Ummm, Kelly. Do you get this is not just about you, but about the community you are a part of? That getting the vaccine is not just about keeping yourself safer, but also limiting the likelihood of you passing it on to those less healthy than you.

You don’t get that? OK, if you must, do go on.

“If something happens to me it’s on me, not someone else.”

(See above. You risk passing it on! Seriously, how hard is this?)

The next bit from Slater is all about how 99.7 per cent of all people who get COVID are fine, so what is the big deal, particularly when “this is clearly a disease of obese, unhealthy, and elderly”.

This is too obvious a nonsense to spend any time on it. The healthy people who go down to COVID are too myriad to dwell on. And as to 99.7 per cent being fine, that is just – what that’s word again? – bullshit. In fact, globally, a little over two per cent of those who contract COVID die from it – so you’re about 700 per cent out. But it is not just those who die that count. What about those, having survived, who are still suffering from it, including fatigue, foggy brain, and difficulty in breathing!

Anyway, let’s get back to Kelly Slater so he can unload this pearl.

“And for people saying listen to the doctors, I’m positive I know more about being healthy than 99% of doctors, but I wouldn’t trust me. But most of my COVID info comes directly from doctor friends, many of them in disagreement with the official ‘science’.”

Hello, United Nations? World Health Organisation? The medical establishment around the world?

Yeah, look. Call off the jam. Despite the 735,000 now dead in America from COVID and the millions around the world, turns out it’s no big deal at all! Yes, you heard me! Kelly Slater the surfer knows more than 99 per cent of all of you, and he not only won the world surfing championship 11 times – so he should know a lot about medicine, I think? – but is supported by some doctor friends! So I guess it’s all a hoax after all!

I know. Go figure.

Enough. I am not sure I can stand repeating any more of his staggering hubris.

Read the remaining crumbs, here. 

"LFG. Let’s foxing go. This would be a dream come true. Oh my gosh."

Oh but The Ultimate Surfer is a gift that certainly keeps on giving. Most recently, winner on the men’s side Hawaiian Zeke Lau has officially qualified for the 2022 World Surf League Championship Tour with a fair finish at the just-wrapped Quiksilver Pro, France.

Many bravos but you will certainly recall that the present for becoming The Ultimate Surfer was three wildcards into the aforementioned tour.

The selfsame Lau no longer needs.

Though what to do with them?

The Ultimate Surfer runner-up, or Penultimate Surfer, Koa Smith has decided, by right, that they belong to him and is going on a scorched earth campaign in order to take and hold.

In an attempt to shame Santa Monica’s WSL into submission, the blonde Hawaiian took to Instagram and declared, “Ok Zeke requalified for the Championship Tour. That means his Ultimate Surfer wildcards are just floating in the air, up for grabs. Should I get them as runner-up to The Ultimate Surfer? If you think so, repost this story and @ the WSL. LFG. Let’s foxing go. This would be a dream come true. Oh my gosh. Let’s storm WSL.”

A potent mix of common sense, shame and heartfelt-ness.

Burning the potential competition to the ground.

Smith has 261,000 followers on Instagram, a fine amount, and no doubt they are doing their very best to help him reach his dream but I think Alejandro Moreda should be gifted one. He only has 14,000 followers but is a wonderful boy.

Listen here. 

Spicoli vs Wright!

Rumour to hand via the miracle of inside sources is that Vans has taken the legal sword to Quiksilver for that company’s re-release of their trunks, The Original, which feature a checkered stripe running down each femur. 

Vans, makers of checkered slip-on shoes ever since ol Pauly Van Doren, god rest his soul, saw skaters using Sharpies to draw ‘em on their kicks in their seventies, is fiercely protective of what they regard as their company’s trademark. 

And, last year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sorta agreed with Vans after the company filed an application to register the checkerboard mark, on shoes, on pants, sweats, trousers, leggings, capris or shorts. 

Sorta ‘cause even though they told ‘em checkers “do not function as a trademark to indicate the source of applicant’s clothing” the USPTO granted ‘em the registration to use it on “apparel, namely, bottoms.” 

Ten days after that, Nike, a company with a thousand times more legal heft that Vans, said hell no, arguing that since the eighties it “has sold and continues to sell” apparel products that include “checkerboard patterns of various sizes, shapes, and colors placed in various locations on shirts and pants, such as the front, side, back, and inside thereof.”

Anyway, our Quiksilver source, hunkered over their (note use of pronoun) machine in Huntington Beach there, ears popping, says Vans came after ‘em, hard, following The Originals campaign.

Tried to take ‘em to court but lost ‘cause Quiksilver has been running that same print for forty years. 

And, says our source, allegedly, Vans told ‘em they will not sponsor any Quiksilver surfer with shoes and that Quik can’t use any Vans products in shoots or marketing. 

Good to see a lil fire between companies now that Quik and Billabong, once the most vicious of enemies, sit cheek by jowl in the same Huntington Beach office, same masters etc.