Baby D doing it better than you.
Baby D doing it better than you.

In wildly provocative turn, professional surfer “Baby” Dion Agius included in vaunted ranks of celebrities who can do no sartorial wrong including, but lightly limited to, Slash and unfairly maligned Johnny Depp!

But what would you wear, if you could?

Making a wrong fashion turn should haunt you, and I know that it does, even though the vast majority of you, here, will pretend never to consider such contrivances. Leaving the house in spats, for instance, or suspenders. Oh it feels provocative in the mirror, seems the right choice but then out in public in those spats and/or suspenders?

Disaster.

Few but few of humanities males can pull off anything. Any sartorial flair. Included in this tiny fraternity are, of course, Guns n Roses guitarist Slash who was able to wear a top hat without wince and Johnny Depp, who is currently being drug through the court of public opinion not because he regularly features cravats but due… I don’t exactly know. Are you following that trial?

In any case, and in a wildly provocative turn, it was revealed today that professional surfer Dion Agius is in their ranks.

The man who can wear anything.

But do you wish you had both the confidence and/or ability to pull off any fashion dream like Baby D?

If you had, what would you wear?

David Lee Scales and I discussed, today, along with the World Surf League’s performative ecology and other such important matters.

You must listen here then weigh in what you would wear, if you could below.


Makua Rothman, running for Honolulu City Council. | Photo: @makuarothman

Big-wave world champ, scion of North Shore strongman and #1 Billboard artist Makua Rothman to follow UFC hall-of-famer BJ Penn into Hawaiian politics!

“I decided to turn down the opportunity for awards or money and use the platform to speak about issues that were of concern to my community."

The storied Makua Rothman, big-wave world champ, winner of the Billabong XXL award for riding a sixty-six footer at Jaws when he was eighteen, is following neighbour and pal BJ Penn into Hawaiian politics with a tilt for Honolulu City Council.

Rothman, thirty-seven and from Sunset Beach, filed papers on Wednesday for District 2, the twenty-five mil stretch from Mililani Mauka to Kahaluu.

 

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The impetus for the run, says Rothman, came after riding the biggest wave of his life last year.

“I decided to turn down the opportunity for any awards or money but rather use the international world platform to speak about issues that were of concern to me and to my community in Hawaii,” Rothman said.

“Today’s the day for me to step in there and put my name up to run for office. I’ll be holding some conferences soon and obviously the traffic and management of tourism out there and working with the state and everyone on this island and working together with the other constituents.”

As Rothman prepares to fight for a seat on Honolulu City Council, UFC hall-of-famer and survivor of worst wavepool accident in surfing history, BJ Penn, is heading into the home straight for the Hawaii gubernatorial election, to be held November eight.

The current gov of Hawaii, Democrat David Ing, is ineligible to run for a third term, leaving the field wide open for Penn, a Republican, to get his hand on the levers.

Penn has promised to disband the Transportation Security Administration and give hell to the bureaucracies and red tape, he says, is strangling the Hawaiian economy.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but I would never run from a fight or sell out my people,” says BJ. “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!”


Thankfully, the most marginalized of groups, middle-aged white surfers, have seen the benefit of guarded thinking and congregate at the safer space swellnet.com amongst likeminded, like-believing, like-socioeconomic, like-racial others. | Photo: Step Bruz

Safe space for middle-aged white men baits religiously devout Brazilian surfers with paternalistic “open letter” from God!

OMG!

The idea of a “safe space” or “positive space” sprung into vogue a decade, or such, back as marginalized peoples sought out corners amongst the dominant culture at colleges or the workplace where they could chit-chat without fun-making. The concept soon spread online and these “safe spaces” became ruthlessly protected with any sniff of opposition being put to the sword before spreading like cancer.

Thankfully, the most marginalized of groups, middle-aged white surfers, have seen the benefit of guarded thinking and congregate at the safer space swellnet.com amongst likeminded, like-believing, like-socioeconomic, like-racial others.

Equally thankfully, an anonymous writer on the website penned an open letter from “God” to “Devout Brazilian Roman Catholic Surfers of the WCT” decrying their behavior through the tried-and-true truncheon of undergraduate (private) liberal arts philosophy best served alongside a lukewarm bed of early mushroom experimentation.

A sampling:

Don’t get me wrong, cocksure globetrotting wave-rider, there’s some top advice in those books, we’re all fans of the decency, love, and forgiveness parts of the Bible and the Quran etc, but there’s no secret, exclusive moral code contained within that can’t be practiced using your basic, garden-variety, secular common sense – treating others how you’d like them to treat you, etc. It’s not rocket science.

But I get it, young Latino Firebrand with sticker-laden surfboard, much religious faith comes from perfectly understandable human traits, many of them very sweet. We love our family and friends, the grief we feel when they die is so sharp and painful that we wishful-think heaven into existence, so we can be consoled by imagining a heavenly reunion one day. And certainly, the idea of an afterlife makes it easier for us to contemplate that fearful day we too become a corpse. And so, smart cookies all through human history looking for power and social control have levered these two emotions – love and fear – into different versions of the same fantastic story – do the right thing and the reward of eternal life is yours, misbehave, or be born into a heathen society, and hellfire awaits. I won’t point out the resemblance that such a hell carries with the earthbound volcanic lava that inspired its imagining. And let’s not get started on the idiocy of different subsets of the same supposed faith turning on each other. (Could anything more sharply betray the human origins of religion? FFS)

So, for your sake and Mine, let’s stop for a moment and think, together, about what you’re actually saying when you give Me credit for, say, answering your prayers and sending you a heat-winning wave.

First of all. You’re fond of attesting to the power of prayer. It can produce miracles! Infinite Glory! Yes? Yes! You are also, presumably, not oblivious to all the messed-up crap out there. You’re aware of the 80 million people in the world right now who’ve been forced to flee their homes, 25 million of which are refugees. People trapped in lives of misery, boredom and danger, whose various prayers to various Gods (humbly asking just to be able to live at home or whatever) are seemingly not being answered as yours are. What are they doing wrong with this prayer malarkey that you seem to be doing so right? Has your virtuosity on a wave somehow magnified your virtue of prayer, and mysteriously unlocked a clear line of comms to the Divine?

Religion worked well when humanity was starting to ask questions and figure stuff out. It was understandable that gods were conjured to make sense of floods and famines, natural phenomena, locusts and loss. It was – and still can be – a good set of training wheels for decency and charity.

Dear talented, hardworking, fortunate athlete. You’re not at all a bad person. You’re great! You mean well, and of course you’re welcome to reach out to Me any time. But let’s keep those convos humble, and between us.

Etc.

Devout Brazilian Roman Catholic surfers, much less ones on the World Championship Tour, have not, nor never will be allowed to mingle amongst the swellnetters giving the “open letter” the exact sort of universal praise and applause it deserves.

A further sampling from the comments:

Surfcarter: Seriously that is the and best most common sense article ever written. Thank you for a long awaited and realistic explanation of every religion ever conjured up. and don’t get me wrong everyone needs a little belief in something better than them but this is 2022 and people don’t levitate to the heavens and so on.

Fcalmon: This is gold. The best ever article in history. Whoever wrote this (God?) is a bloody genius.

Andy-mac: Excellent article… Thank you Sir, err I mean God….

Memlasurf: OMJ this one was well overdue and brilliantly written. Take it for what it is, a great summary of religious beliefs and it is only about ‘don’t take the Lords name in Vain’ or something like that. I think GOD is pretty busy in Ukraine at the moment and couldn’t give a toss about who wins some surf contest in the colonies (if you believe in the supernatural which I don’t).

Etc.

Like a warm downy blanket fresh from the dryer.

Like chocolate cookies, cold milk and a Longtom contest report wrap at the end of a long day.

Oh. Is Longtom at swellnet?

Dang.


The World Surf League and Swedish disposable furniture giant IKEA team up on another exciting environmentally-conscious surf-inspired line: “The surfing lifestyle has many important insights about being constantly on the go, such as organising, mobility needs and handling humidity!”

Watch now. Buy later.

Well here we are, again, enjoying each others’ company, winding down the day or maybe winding up the day, thinking thoughts about our surfing and its surf-adjacent bits. Like Make or Break, the upcoming Apple Television program which will feature Kelly Slater and also reigning champion Gabriel Medina chasing his next crown exclusively in Brazil. And IKEA’s newest collaboration with our extremely environmentally conscious World Surf League.

I tried not to think about the latter, really tried, but have been direct messaged, emailed, propositioned by agencies so many times over the past few days that I think you must enjoy.

So here.

By teaming up with WSL, IKEA wanted to learn more about the needs and demands of surfers. The surfing lifestyle has provided many important insights about being constantly on the go, such as organising, mobility needs and handling humidity.

“These needs are relevant for many more people than surfers and inspired us to create products that enrich everybody’s lives with similar demands. With this collection, we hope to spread the joy of the surfing lifestyle in the home and everyday life of many people”, says Wiebke Braasch, Designer at IKEA of Sweden.

The range of KÅSEBERGA includes more than 25 products intended for the home or wherever life takes them. Among those are a hand plane for body surfing, a beach chair, a portable grill, a coffee table and a bag uniquely designed to function well for beach clean-ups.

Together with the World Surf League and the reputable surfers Kassia Meador and Rob Machado, the design process has revolved around including functionality, more recycled materials and promoting a more circular lifestyle. As a result, a big part of the products in the KÅSEBERGA collection are made of recycled polyester, while others are made of renewables, such as bamboo and cork.

“It has been an honour and a pleasure to team up with Rob Machado, the WSL and IKEA to create KÅSEBERGA. A collection of ocean-inspired home goods and on-the-go surf essentials in the most functional high vibe low impact way. For the ever-growing global community of earth-conscious surfers and beach lovers”, says Kassia Meador, surfer and business owner.

“Watching the IKEA KÅSEBERGA collaboration come to life and working with their designers on developing these sustainable products has been a truly rewarding experience for us at WSL,” says Cherie Cohen, WSL Chief Revenue Officer. “IKEA’s sustainability initiatives align closely with those of the WSL and our fans. We are confident that these products made using recycled and renewable materials will be hugely popular with surfers, ocean lovers, and design enthusiasts.”

KÅSEBERGA, named after a small city in Sweden with one of the most southern surf breaks in the country, will launch globally in May 2022. Availability may differ depending on the region. For more information, contact your local IKEA.

Buy soon.

Be inspired now.


Feral monkey wars continue at iconic Uluwatu in Bali after “rare and sacred” white monkey returned to wild after savage attack is nearly killed, again, by rival troupe!

The white monkey is being forced into retirement. A permanent enclosure will be built within the Uluwatu temple, complete with a pool and a garden. 

The villagers of a traditional market that caters to surfers in Bali are dealing with a violent and very different sort of localism.

A large wild Macaque, having staked a claim in one of the empty stalls during the pandemic, is refusing to leave and is threatening anyone that comes near his “spot”.

“That thing has taken control of the fruit basket line-up, says” Surfer/Juice bar owner Sam Gavin. “He reminds me of those fuckin’ angry locals in South Oz that I know. Teeth baring and chest beating and all”. 

And speaking of sacred apes, the sacred white monkey of Uluwatu can’t catch a break.

You remember him, the brave leader of the Uluwatu troupe during the pandemic monkey wars up in the Bukit.

Terribly wounded after the final territorial confrontation due to the defense of prime locations of the returning tourists, the white monkey, who is believed to be a mystical manifestation of Hanuman the Monkey God,  was taken under care and nursed back to health.  

Since then he has also become a mascot to visiting surfers, who bring him bananas in hope of swell. 

Anyway, an easy target.

And, when released, the white monkey was again jumped by marauding members of a rival troupe just outside the Uluwatu Temple. 

Captured and treated, the sacred white monkey is being forced into retirement. A permanent enclosure is being designed for him within the Uluwatu temple, complete with a pool and a garden. 

“Given that the white monkey’s new role is as a mascot for Pura Uluwatu,” says one temple official, “and has become a valuable tourist attraction, such a special enclosure is justified. The surfers love him.”

The latest is the job offer is for someone to become the white monkey’s security guard.