UFC hall-of-famer and survivor of horror near-death episode in wavepool, Baby Jay “BJ” Penn, to run for governor of Hawaii! “We will get rid of all vaccine passports. Hawaii will be vaccinated with Aloha!”

"I am not here to fit in with the other politicians, I am here to get our freedoms back!"

One of MMA’s greatest, the Hawaiian who took the spotlight off the UFC heavyweights and turned it onto the little guys, has announced his candidacy for governor of Hawaii. 

Hawaiian-born Jay Dee Penn, who is forty-two and of Irish-American and Korean-Hawaiian descent, posted a clip from the movie Sparta with the following call to arms, 

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but I would never run from a fight or sell out my people. As soon as I step into Hawaii’s Governor office I will remove All new federal and state mandates that have been hurting our economy, residents, and ‘ohana. We will get the best doctors, medicines, therapies, and health care the world has to offer to fight this pandemic and always keep Hawaii among the safest and healthiest states in the union. We will get rid of all vaccine passports. Hawaii will be a vaccinated with Aloha and Unvaccinated with Aloha policy for everyone. Same with the masks 😷. We will follow the constitution to the tee 👌. I am not here to fit in with the other politicians, I am here to get our freedoms back!

The election takes place on November 8, 2022, with the incumbent, democrat David Ige, ineligible to run due to govs being allowed only two terms. 

BJ was in the news two months ago when he was recounted his near-death episode at a wave pool. 

Last year when I got sucked into a wave pool engine room and thought I was going to die… I kept thinking “don’t die for your kids” I was surfing for a about an hour and the line started getting longer to catch the wave. I was sitting next to the owner of the wave pool by the “wall” where the waves come from. The first wave it shoots out is a dud to get everyone ready for the next wave. The dud wave came back and because I was so close to the wall the wave swallowed me and pushed me and my surfboard underneath a huge cement wall. I remember feeling like I was getting sucked in a pipe and at that moment I got scared. It ended up pushing me into a big dark cement room that fills up with water to push the next wave for the wave pool. It felt like I was in the movie SAW or Final destination. The room would fill up with water to the top and I would hold my breath and then it would push the water out to make the wave and it was really rough inside there. Everything I bumped up against in the room that hurt me got infected. I got a bad sinus infection and a couple facial fractures from getting knocked around the cement walls and from the fractures the dirty water got in my face and infected my whole sinus. I was on antibiotics for three weeks for my face. While I was in the wave pool engine room I knew that one of my friends outside from big island is a legendary surfer and I knew he would come in there to rescue me so I stayed calm. A lot of other people might have panicked and maybe gave up but I just stayed strong for my kids. Anyway to make a long story short I survived that mother fucker 😛😛😛 !! The name of the people and water park have been left out. I not the kine guy shows up to your house to play and gets hurt and tries to sue you so all love ❤️ to everyone who helped me get there and helped me survive 🤙 Maybe I was the first guy in history to get sucked into a wave pool engine room while it is in operation but no matter what happens in life and no matter how scary it is if I can offer you any advice I would just say to “stay calm”. If I didn’t fight tough cunts my whole life I might have panicked, but it was just another day in the office

Shane Dorian, who was the legendary Big Island surfer who saved BJ, replied,

“Happy you kept it together down there. That was really terrifying. Live to shred another day!”

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Kauai colonist, electric surf-adjacent foil enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg has “worst day ever” as Facebook, Instagram crash after damning insights from whistleblower!

Black coal, white face.

Oh but to be the world’s 5th richest man today, of all dang days. To feel his pain, to bear his pressure, to have the winsome joy of e-foiling off the coast of Kauai, a hefty percentage of which you own, not able to salve the pain of hammers.

Oh not hammers by Kauai locals looking to choke (Whoop here) but the hammers, first of a whistleblower who absolutely damned Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire on 60 Minutes, then of an internet meltdown.

(FYI I’m happy that the spellchecks don’t force me to capitalize “Internet” anymore and feel my force re-spelling “internet” is a small part of that. Fuck the Internet.)

Today, Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp crashed heaping black coals on a whiteface.

Per the Associate Press:

The massive global outage that plunged Facebook, its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms and many people who rely heavily on these services — including Facebook’s own workforce — into chaos Monday is gradually dissipating.

Facebook said late Monday that it’s been working to restore access to its services and is “happy to report they are coming back online now.” The company apologized and thanked its users for bearing with it. But fixing it wasn’t as simple as flipping a proverbial switch. For some users, WhatsApp was working for a time, then not. For others, Instagram was working but not Facebook, and so on.

Facebook did not say what might have caused the outage, which began around 11:40 a.m. ET and was still not fixed more than six hours later.

“This is epic,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world’s top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content-delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed it on a software bug triggered by a customer who changed a setting.

Oh but to be the Cesar cut aficionado, out e-foiling with this on plate.

Not a chill sesh.

Much stress.

More as the story develops.

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Witness Jared Davis describes the attack…

Witness describes banal horror of Great White attack on northern Californian surfer, “I saw the dorsal fin and the tail fin of the shark go down in the water… It definitely wasn’t a quick attack. It was nice and slow.”

"It looked like he had a red stripe on his wetsuit… that was actually blood."

A witness to yesterday’s Great White attack on a surfer at Salmon Creek, a pretty wild sorta beach north of San Francisco, has described it as “nice and slow.” 

Jared Davis was paddling into the crowded lineup with a pal around nine when a swell rose and revealed a man floating in the water. 

“When he was back into view, I saw the dorsal fin of the shark and then I saw the tail fin of the shark kind of going down into the water,” Davis told KPIX. “It definitely wasn’t a quick attack. It was nice and slow.”

The surfer screamed “shark” and “help”; Davis paddled alongside him to the beach.  

“He had kind of caught up to me and I saw his leg. It looked like he had a red stripe on his wetsuit, which is pretty common but that was actually blood,” said Davis. 

Paramedic Jonathon Bauer asked the victim, a man in his thirties, if he saw the shark. 

“And he did get a chance to see it and it was a pretty large shark that did bite him,” Bauer told KPIX. “He actually said he had a struggle with it, as well.”

The man’s surfboard, a Libtech Ringer, was marked by a ring of bloody teeth marks. 

It ain’t the first time Whites have hit surfers at Salmon Creek, although the name would suggest there might be a reason why. 

Two years ago, a local surfer, Katie Wilson, was a hundred yards offshore when a White bit her leash and started to yank it and thrash around. It broke and she got outta there. 

In 2005, another surfer Megan Halavais, was hit by an almost twenty-foot White, the shark’s bite just missing the femoral artery in her leg.

I had thought about being attacked, but never really pictured it in my head. I didn’t think the shark would be that big and yes it was very very powerful,” said Megan in an interview with Surfer. “I thought I was going to die. I screamed, but everyone said that it wasn’t a high-pitched loud scream, but a blood-curdling yell for help. I just remember thinking I was gonna die, then the desire to survive.”

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World’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater takes to Instagram, performs hours-long free form jazz concert for mostly adoring public: “I was gonna adopt a dog in Mexico at a taco stand…”

An artist in his prime.

11x World Champion Kelly Slater took to Instagram, three short days ago, and riffed and jived and found high notes and blew a few low ones too.

The ostensible reason for the one-man show was a duet with Jack Mallers, founder of Zap and Strike, apps with a Bitcoin focus. Slater revealed his love of the cryptocurrency, in May, by savaging Tesla founder Elon Musk. Five days ago, after a lengthy Instagram silence, he posted that Mallers had given him a “tip” about Strike via Twitter.

“Strike is money without borders which empowers people to send money instantly to anyone anywhere in the world. Forget the huge fees Western Union and others charge. And there’s also no fees to buy or exchange into Bitcoin. More freedom for the little guys!”

Many of Slater’s ardent fans assumed his account had been hacked with such a blatant promotion but the 50-year-old assured them that it was all him (“I’m one of those crypto guys (wide smile emoji) (big eyes emoji)”) and proceeded to ask Mallers on for a Instagram Live chat.

Their conversation was fine enough, if you care about that sort of thing, but became fantastic when Mallers dropped off after 30 minutes or so leaving Slater on stage and alone.

Fans questions, comments, salutations came pouring in while Slater, perfectly symmetrical head filling screen, blue eyes darting from comments to camera, answered, acknowledged, elucidated.

Pure free form jazz.

Fiji will likely be re-opening in December and he encourages people to book.

He misses Surfing and Surfer‘s demise, fondly recalling the first picture that he had as a 12-year-old.

He averages drinking one beer a week.

He felt like he was in a “time bubble” at a recent Pearl Jam concert and they remain one of his favorite bands.

“Growing, learning, understanding people better,” is what excites him about the future.

He won a piece of land near Shipwrecks down Cabo way but never claimed it.

He was going to adopt a dog in Mexico when he was just there. Found at a taco stand and it needed to go the the veterinarian to get shots and cleaned up but he had to get to the airport. He tasked someone to check in on the dog after he got home. The person found and sent pictures to him. He was thinking about having that person bring the dog up to California but decided it would be better for him to do it himself. In the morning he found out the dog had been hit by a car and died.

Very sad but also like a Zen koan.

Someone commented “F.U.” and he responded “Ok, you’re dropped.”

Less Zen but still powerful.

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The blissful joys of hypoxia and the realisation that Twinks raised on surf can roll with Bears! “If I could survive the sea, there was no human that I could not deal with because no man can bring the same level of panic and discomfort as the ocean!”

I think of these words every time a two-fifty pounder is grinding his knee into my solar plexus and my eyes start to leak.

There’s a moment when life slips away, when you teeter on the edge of the abyss, and as that sweetest sap serotonin floods the brain, where the divine is revealed. 

Pain, depression, all the wrongs of your life evaporate as paradise unfolds before you. 

I frolic in a meadow with my children back at an age when they still wanted to hang out with me.

Look over there, a happy chimpanzee in a t-shirt and diaper bounces up and down! A pitcher filled with freshly squeezed lemonade sits on a small wooden table! A chihuahua with patches of fur missing dances on her hind legs! The setting sun throws a golden glow over the tableau! 

I’m here, paradise, so take me God. 

Then, your legs are getting shaken, a couple of slaps paint your face and you realise that ten seconds ago your head was wrapped in the flexed gastrocnemius muscles of a man whom you’d only just met. 

Getting choked in a jiujitsu class is the closest you’ll get to drowning in a controlled environment and it is, I suspect, one of the reasons, although not the only one, why so many surfers are driven to the sport. 

A little over a year ago, I signed up for unlimited classes at a flashy joint down in Maroubra, Sydney (click here to join, tell ‘em I sent ya, maybe I’ll get a cut. You can also click, here, to listen to a jiujitsu podcast I do to pay for training.)

The play was I’d get in there, get dirty, report back if it improved my surfing and if there was a connection between the two sports. 

It was a nexus I’d examine attentively. 

I began by watching the documentary Choke about Rickson Gracie, a surfer, and son of the creator of Brazilian Jiutjisu Hélio Gracie, and who was earning a million bucks per MMA fight twenty years ago. 

A formidable creature. 

My new crush Peter Maguire ghost wrote Rickson’s book, Breathe, and, in an earlier interview for The Surfer’s Journal, snatched this quote. 

“Surfing taught me, probably more than anything else, how to deal with the infinite power of things that are beyond our control,” Rickson said. “All of the emotional, physical, and spiritual elements I needed to surf big waves also applied to fighting. If I could survive the sea, there was no human that I could not deal with because no man can bring the same level of panic and discomfort as the ocean. With fighting I am only fighting another man. I only have to be precise, smart, and at some point, impose my will on him.”

I think of it every time a two-fifty pounder is grinding his knee into my solar plexus. 

No…man…can…bring…same…level…of…panic.

Breathe, just breathe. 

Now, jiujitsu, like surf, don’t come easy. 

You start off as a white belt and via a grading system that is casually observational rather than formal, at least where I roll, you gather stripes as you improve in your live sparring. 

Don’t tap so much? Escape the clutches of a  bear? Finish your own submission? Stripe. 

A stripe is a piece of tape that is wrapped around the black end of your belt. Four stripes and you’re one step away from an upgrade. White to blue, blue to purple, purple to brown, brown to black. 

Train six days a week for ten years and you’re close to black. People in the biz joke about it being a more demanding course than neurosurgery. 

Like surf, I’m slow to improve despite hitting the gym six days a week.  The concepts of leverage and angles don’t come easy. 

I get tapped more than I should. 

I get pretty busted up: ears flare up from being locked in triangles and being squished into the mats and give me the appearance of a weathered elf in Christmas photos; three black eyes from accidental flying elbows and knees; I hurt my back when I don’t warm up and my fingers ache at every joint.

An eye gouge from my son puts me into the Sydney eye hospital and off the mats, and water, for three weeks. 

I feel like a machine that has slipped its cogs. 

But it’s so in my head I’m thinking armbar escapes and chokes when I surf. 

My lil WHOOP strap records it all, under a plastic sleeve on my wrist when I surf (designed by John John etc) and a neoprene bicep wrap when I roll. 

First bit of disturbing data is my lack of sleep. I figured I was hitting eight hours a night, easy. Bed at nine-ish, up at six.

Actual figures were closer to five. 

I might be in bed by nine but I’m staring at my telephone for the first 45, then maybe a book, some more phone, text a few people, asleep by midnight, apparently. 

A few nocturnal wanders, fifteen “disturbances”, bad dreams, whatever, and oowee, now I know why I don’t feel real flash some morns. 

If I want to train, I have to get off the phone, learn to treat bed for rest.

Get on it and snatch only a few hours sleep and your recovery number is going to be in the red. Bigger the stressor the less able your bod is gonna handle getting smashed.

Like this, three hours sleep and I’m at twenty-six percent. Stay it bed, it advises.

Sure, I respond.

What surprises is how much better a workout surfing is.

Easy paddle out via a channel, cruise around the lineup, trap a wave here and there, avoid a few VAL rocketships and I hit a “strain” of anywhere between ten and sixteen. 

Quick explanation: the WHOOP records strain on a scale from zero to 21 over the course of the day, zero being David Lee Scales, 21, Kai Lenny. Twenty-one re represents the max cardio load you can handle in a day. The WHOOP doesn’t measure miles, steps, so much as how your body is responding when you do it. 

After one hour of jiujitsu sparring where I think my heart is gonna explode, I’m swimming in sweat, eyes are bulging, veins appear on the surface of my legs and arms, and I’m lucky to score an eight.  

A victory for surf. 

And you don’t get injured. 

Next week: Finding common ground, even empathy, with, for, VALS! 

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