Calling Ben Gravy.

Hours ago, a 7.3 earthquake rumbled some 35 miles off the coast of Fukushima, Japan triggering much alarm and worry. Fukushima, the historically semi-literate will remember, was site of a nuclear power plant that became extremely damaged then leaky after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the same faulty lines in 2011.

Officials are saying there has been no new damage to the plant though, according to local news, “NHK TV reported that a fire alarm went off at the turbine building of No. 5 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi, while water pumps for the spent fuel cooling pool at two of the four reactors at Fukushima Daini stopped, though there was no immediate risk of overheating.”

The earthquake has also led to an issuing of tsunami warnings that have, in turn, excited surfers who love novelty waves.

Two months ago, an earthquake set off by an underwater volcano caused many such novelty surfers to paddle out leading to embarrassing near drownings in San Francisco. 

Authorities are warning that any attempt to surf a tsunami can be dangerous but also to use soft tops if the urge for oddity is too great to overcome.

“Learn from Ben Gravy,” they say, “not Mason Ho as Mason Ho actually rips. Like, proper rips.”

Smart.

Extreme activism.

What times we live in, what wild unprecedented times. There, in the skies over Australia, surfers are becoming heroes. There, in Southern California a surf journalist is being lauded, or at the very least examined, by The New York Times. And there, in Kelly Slater’s Florida, the Grim Reaper is running for the state’s attorney general.

Oh not the real Grim Reaper, I suppose, but rather a lawyer who dressed up like the Grim Reaper and wandered Florida’s beaches, at the tail end of the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to warn sunbathers that they were still about to die and/or kill others.

Per local news reports:

Daniel Uhlfelder made the announcement by tweeting a campaign video where the Santa Rosa Beach lawyer calls himself a lifelong activist. In the video, Uhlfelder lists his public advocacy, which included organizing the removal of a confederate flag that was flown outside a Walton County courthouse.

His most recent example of activism thrust him into the national spotlight. Uhlfelder strutted along Jacksonville Beach prior to the Fourth of July weekend decked out in the black robes of the Grim Reaper — he even included the scythe. The reason he said was to spread awareness that Florida is still battling the coronavirus despite the state’s phased reopening at the time.

“Floridians deserve an attorney general who actually wants to do the job of an attorney general, not be the governor’s personal attorney,” Uhlfelder said in his campaign video.

Uhlfelder is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Florida College of Law. As an attorney, his law firm’s website says he specializes in real estate law, divorce, foreclosures and family law.

Do you think Kelly Slater is registered to vote in Florida?

Hawaii?

Australia’s Gold Coast?

More questions than answers.

“The only thing that made me do it was the fear of dying. There’s no one up there to help you."

Two Australian surfers have been awarded bravery medals after tackling and choking the hell out of a hijacker armed with what he told passengers was a  bomb, but which would turn out to be Bluetooth speakers.

The surfers, Troy Joyner and Fabio Contu, were on a Malaysian Airlines bird out of Melbourne and en route to Indo to hit the “swell of the decade” when Sri Lankan Manodh Marks ran past ‘em to the cockpit yelling, “I’ve got a bomb!” 

Joyner, a military guy who knew how to disarm explosives, told his buddy a terrorist was about to bring down the bird. 

“I said, ‘Mate, that guy’s got a bomb’,” Joyner told News.com.au. “It was dark. The cabin crew in front of us starting to talk in Malaysian. More people were starting to move around. I could hear a heap of yelling. They flicked the lights on and I could see he had a singlet on with a device under his singlet that stood out, sort of two inches from his stomach. He had a remote in his left hand that looked pretty legit. I thought, ‘This guy is pretty serious’.”

Contu, who was enjoying the airline’s award-winning entertainment system via headphones, wasn’t convinced. 

“Troy tapped me and said, ‘He’s got a bomb’. I was like, ‘You’ve heard him wrong. He’s probably going to the toilet’. He’s like, ‘I know what I heard’.

Marks tried to get into the cockpit but was forced back by flight attendants.

As he got near the Australians, Joyner grabbed the cunt and threw a choking arm around his neck, soon extinguishing consciousness.

On the ground, Contu lifted Marks’ singlet.

“I pulled his shirt up and there’s this big round plastic thing staring at me with wires coming out of it. I put my hand on it and went ‘stuff it’. I ripped it off him and it didn’t go off. I gave it to a passenger and said to put it at the back of the plane. Troy had him choked out. He was out cold so I searched him for a trigger. There was a phone so I took that off him, too. We handcuffed his hands and his feet with cable ties and secured him to the frame of a seat so he couldn’t move.”

Obvs, choking out a crazy man with bluetooth speakers taped to his guts is funny now, but terrifying in the moment. 

“The only thing that made me do it was the fear of dying,” says Joyner. “There’s no one up there to help you. You either help yourself or let it take its course.”

Not that it scared ‘em enough to stay off planes. 

“We got on a flight the next day,” Joyner, who along with Contu will be awarded an Australian Bravery Decoration, says. “Got the waves of our life.”

Marks got twelve years for the hijack attempt although the Victorian Court of Appeal subsequently reduced the sentence to eight years at the top, five at the bottom. 

Oh what might have been.

The sun rose over Santa Monica, this morning, shrouded in mist and despondency, as it was officially revealed that flavored alcohol beverage White Claw will be releasing its new flavor line, titled “surf,” without first securing a partnership deal with the World Surf League.

Forbes is reporting, “White Claw Surf is being rolled out nationwide in a mixed twelve pack format backed by a wide-ranging advertising campaign to introduce the line extension quickly to drinkers. It is the company’s first attempt as a premium line. As one of the pioneers and leaders in the ever-expanding and ever-popular hard seltzer category, the brand is betting that consumers are looking for products that offer more flavors while still toeing the line at 5% ABV and only 100 calories. The Surf line will be a standalone entity inside their portfolio of brands and follows on the heels of last year’s successful launches of their Iced Tea and Surge lines.”

Flavors include citrus yuzu smash, tropical pomelo smash, watermelon lime smash and wildberry açaí smash.

The World Surf League has never met a 5% ABV canned drink that it did not love and is ruing what might have been though extreme sadness is quickly turning into blame with various departments pointing the finger at various other departments.

While the buck usually stops with the most powerful person in an organization, confusion reigns after the recent suspension of longboard champion Joel Tudor as to who, exactly, that is.

Jessi Miley-Dyer?

More as the story develops.