Tomson, torrid.

Barbarically sexy surfing world champ famous for his torrid glares reveals new career as marriage celebrant, “The bride and groom were radiantly in love, glowing in front of the crashing surf!”

"Holding hands and kisses are absolutely necessary every single day."

The great Shaun Tomson, a man who redefined backside tuberiding at Pipeline in 1975 and who won a world title at twenty-two, has revealed his new turn as a marriage celebrant.

Tomson, who is sixty-six, and who once told Tracks magazine he could remember tubes where “I was so in control of my mind and body, that it actually felt as if I were controlling the wave itself”, explained the career switcharoo on linkedin.

A few days ago, I officiated at my first wedding and married Erin and Patch O’ Brien, right on the sandstone reef at the beautiful Windansea Beach.

The bride and groom were radiantly in love, glowing in front of the crashing surf.

This is what I read…

Many years ago, I wrote out a simple Surfer’s Code – a list of values – to inspire young people. The Code was 12 lines long – each line beginning with the words “I will.”

Surfer’s Code was a distillation of everything I had learned from surfing and ultimately was a primary reason that my life moved down my current path of empowering people.

Simple lines of metaphor like I will always paddle back out and I will take the drop with commitment.

Now, hundreds of thousands of people around the world write their own Codes to inspire themselves, their colleagues, and classmates. 

However, the Code is about self – words beginning with I will.

Marriage is about a collective, about we rather than I.

So, with the experience of my 35 years of marriage to my beautiful girl Carla, through happiness and sadness, hope and despair, and most of all deep and profound love, I thought I would create a Marriage Code for Patch and Erin.

M – MUTUAL MISSION We will be on a mutual mission to make each other happy – because happiness is one of the fundamental goals of our life

A – AFFECTION We will be affectionate – holding hands and kisses are absolutely necessary every single day – Physical connectivity keeps us together and sustains and maintains our love

R – RELAX, RENEW AND REFRESH – We will relax, renew, and refresh together and separately – sometimes separate time is needed to make together time even more special

R – ROCKSTAR We will both understand that we are a married to a rockstar and sometimes rockstars have to get their own way so we will let the small stuff slide so we can rock on another day. Some arguments are not worth having, and some battles are not worth waging. Rather just turn up the tunes and rock on with the rockstar.

I – INTELLIGENCE We will understand that no matter how intelligent we think we are, we will only be right 50/% of the time No one likes disagreements – when you dig your feet in, sometimes that ground turns to quicksand that will swallow you whole, giving you a mouthful of mud

A – ACCEPTANCE We will accept each other the way we are because that is who we both fell in love with. Like Billy Joel sings in Just the way you are: Don’t go changing, to try and please me, I could not love you any better, I love you just the way you are

G – GOOD & GOD We will be good to each other and to others too and remember God in our lives and relationship. Goodness and God means faith and hope to sustain today, tomorrow, and always.

E – EMPATHY We will have empathy and be understanding of each other during tough and challenging times – there will be tough times but when one of us, or both of us fall, together we will lift the other up, and rise together.

All very nice, although I do think of the famous quote from Ms Jerry Hall, OG supermodel, married to Mick Jagger and Rupert Murdoch, and one that does pay note to a man’s evil lizard brain.

“My mother said it was simple to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. I said I’d hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit,” quipped Hall.

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"Go back to your rock."
"Go back to your rock."

World Surf League insults audience with sharply worded email ahead of possible contest start: “In case you’ve been under a rock for the past month, the Margaret River Pro will decide the Mid-Season Cut.”

A new day has dawned.

Riding high on the impending success of Apple+ Television’s much ballyhooed Make or Break, the World Surf League has adopted a new aggressive tone. On its back foot for the better part of five years, the League has broadcast an either apologetic or pathetic timbre in communiques though all that changed with the suspension of longboard champion Joel Tudor via an excoriating missive from Senior Vice President of Tours, Head of Competition Jessi Miley-Dyer.

“Hello everyone,” it began before turning sharply caustic. “I wanted to address a post that our 2021 Men’s Longboard champion made on his IG account yesterday that was both inaccurate and misleading related to the WSL’s approach to equality. Joel created confusion and called into question whether female athletes competing on the Longboard Tour receive equal prize money. It is important that you know, and that you hear directly from me, that we take great pride in the fact that our male and female longboard athletes all receive equal prize money.”

Ouch.

World Surf League CEO Erik Logan continued the bold resonance in Bells where he cut mutinous petition-signing surfers down to size with slashing barbs such as “It is inconceivable that we could, should, or would eliminate the mid-season cut, which is the foundation of our redesigned Championship Tour.” And “I feel obligated to say that the petition was painfully untrue in many respects – and wrongly attempted to portray an adversarial relationship. I have a lot to say about this.”

Burn.

Now, professional surf fans are feeling the heat.

In an email sent out this morning signaling the potential running of today’s men’s round 1, the WSL communication department hissed, “In case you’ve been under a rock for the past month, the Margaret River Pro will decide the Mid-season Cut. Every surfer in the draw will be looking to put up big scores to stay inside the cut line. Lucky for them (and us), WSL rules and judging expert Rich Porta is here to break down how they can do just that. Watch the crucial event live April 24 to May 4 on worldsurfleague.com.”

Those who choose the active under-rock living lifestyle viciously and publicly shamed.

Porta, in any case, tells the surfers to “surf big” and to go for “big combinations.”

We’d all better watch. Or else…

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Jacksonville, Florida man grows wildly irate, threatens city manager after volunteer lifeguard force disbanded: “You sir are a jerk go back to New York or California. Don’t come here with your (expletive) and (expletive) things up. I hope I see you out in Jax Beach it won’t be good for you.”

Scary.

A Jacksonville, Florida man received a stern talking to from the police after he became textually abusive, via Facebook direct messages, toward the city manager for disbanding the volunteer lifeguard force. The trouble began after Mike Staffopoulos had made the tough decision to kill the volunteer lifeguard’s honorary status following a series of meetings earlier in the month.

Thinking the issue settled, Staffopoulos logged on to Facebook only to discover he had a scary direct message reading, “You sir are a jerk go back to New York or California. Don’t come here with your (expletive) and (expletive) things up. I hope I see you out in jax beach it won’t be good for you.”

It was followed up by an even scarier message reading, “Come (expletive) my home town because you feel like you should. Well a lot of people are (expletive) and going to take action.”

The police were immediately contacted and spoke to the man, who admitted, upon review, that he was wrong and should not send scary messages to anyone, much less the city manager, regarding the status of the volunteer lifeguard program any more.

But what, as a surfer, is your relationship with lifeguards? Do you abide by posted signs or paddle out when/where you shouldn’t in open defiance of the law?

Would you listen better if Sam Elliott (pictured above) was your lifeguard?

I find most of his films/roles compelling but his turn as “the stranger” in The Big Lebowski might be my favorite.

Which is yours?

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Bruce Raymond's old joint at Bilgola Beach, Sydney.

“Dark-eyed and sinister” Quiksilver patriarch and pro surfing sex symbol Bruce Raymond sells redundant forever house on prized cliff-top land for over $5 million, “He would have made a good con man, hustler or gigolo!”

Come walk the halls of a clifftop and beachfront paradise… 

Bruce Raymond, do you know?

He’s the brutal looking stud with the open jacket and open container of beer in hand from the famous Quikilsver ad, reproduced below.

Bruce Raymond bare-chested, foreground.

To know the great Bruce Raymond, superstar businessman, former world number sixteen, therefore, is to love him. 

Surfing’s original surf journalist Phil Jarratt knows. 

In 1977, he wrote, 

“(Bruce) has that dark-eyed sinister air about him that appeals to women and makes men wonder. He would have made a good con man, hustler or gigolo.”

If Bruce’s achievements in the water, North Shore and tour shredder, and out, co-creator of the Quiksilver Pro at G-Land, The Crossing, keeping Kelly Slater, Tom Carroll and Lisa Andersen on Quik during their careers, aren’t enough, Bruce has collected various houses along Sydney’s northern beaches, cleverly buying low and selling high. 

His latest sale is his joint at 65 The Serpentine, Bilgola Beach, which recently went under the hammer two weeks ago for well over five mill (the agent was guiding $5,375 mill-plus), roughly two mill more than he bought it for in 2017.

The four-bedroom house on nearly eight k square feet features a self-contained guest suite which Kelly Slater utilised on visits to Sydney, a heated mineral water pool (a delicious mixer for guests’ wee-wees), pizza oven out the back and, best of all, it squats on the northside of Bilgola Head which means y’don’t get licked by the southerlies that tear the hair off everyone else’s heads whenever fronts pass through the city.

No word yet on Bruce’s next move.

He says he’s gonna stay in the area but downsize a little.

In the meantime, get a little taste of the Bilgola place.

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Beaked!

World title favourite, Olympic gold medallist and tour firebrand Italo Ferreira breaks nose in wild collision with surfboard at Margaret River!

The handsome face of the ultra-vibrant former world champ Italo Ferreira has been brutally rearranged following wipeout.

The stubby, handsome, friendly face of the Brazilian surfer Italo Ferreira has been re-arranged after a collision with his surfboard following an aerial gone awry at Margaret River. 

The pint-sized 2019 world champ and Olympic gold medallist whose Bells campaign was marred by a wild storming of the judging tower amid accusations they were “ruining the sport” took to Instagram to announce the injury. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Italo Ferreira (@italoferreira)

The ultra-vibrant Ferreira, who enjoys dressing in zoo-animal prints that are the hallmark of ebullient resort wear and who is two rungs outside the cut-off for the September final, will still compete at Margaret River.

 

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