Matt Biolos (pictured) poking.
Matt Biolos (pictured) poking.

What if I were to tell you that surfboard shapers are evil creatures seeking to keep the whole of humanity locked into embarrassing mediocrity so that they can go to surfboard shaper conferences or hang out in surfboard shaper bars and mock and laugh and laugh?

Come ponder.

Dear brothers and sisters, what if I were to tell you that surfboard shapers are evil creatures seeking to keep the whole of humanity locked into embarrassing mediocrity so that they can go to surfboard shaper conferences or hang out in surfboard shaper bars and mock and laugh and laugh more until tears come into their eyes and wash the foam dust off their cheeks about our poor skill? Our hunchbacked rail bogging, slow top turns, non-existent bottom turns and very bad lines?

Oh, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not brilliant, but you know one can take everything as a joke. I am, perhaps, jesting against the grain. But in truth, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. Surfboard know-it-alls, those who know all about liters, rocker, concave, etc. want to cure surfers of their old habits, ordering boards that are inappropriate for their body shape or skill level, and reform their will in accordance with science and good sense.

They see a fellow surfer in the lineup straddling a high performance JS Monsta squash tail and paddle over, clucking the tongue, saying, “You, sir, are not a professional and should be on something with much more volume.” Or go on Instagram and comment, “Too little volume, too much rocker” underneath posts of a fellow surfer taking off too late and making an ugly turn.

But how does the surfboard know-it-all know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is desirable to reform a surfer in that way? And what leads him to the conclusion that surfers’ inclinations need reforming? In short, how does anyone know that such a reformation will be a benefit to surfer? And to go to the root of the matter, why is the surfboard know-it-all so positively convinced that not to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the conclusions of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous for man and must always be a law for mankind?

So far, this is only supposition. It may be the law of logic, but not the law of humanity. You think, brothers and sisters, perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself. I agree that surfers are pre-eminently creative animals, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering — that is, incessantly and eternally buying new surfboard models with tweaks and adjustments, following new roads wherever they may lead. But the reason why a surfer wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is predestined to make the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the “direct” practical man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always does lead somewhere, and that the destination it leads to is less important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the vices.

Surfers like to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why do we have such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? For sucking so badly and publicly? Tell me that!

But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it not be that surfers loves chaos and destruction and sucking so badly and publicly (there can be no disputing that we do sometimes love it) because we are instinctively afraid of attaining what we seek and becoming good and powerful surfers?

Who knows, perhaps we only love that idea, becoming actually good, from a distance, and are by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps we only love pretending to become better surfers it and once a surfboard we are riding makes us surf too good we abandon and order a board from Greg Webber that looks like a banana, tossing our other board into the yard for the use of les animaux domestiques — such as the ants, the sheep, and so on.

Now the ants have quite a different taste. They have a marvelous edifice of that pattern which endures forever — the ant-heap. With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the ant-heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their perseverance and good sense.

But surfers are frivolous and incongruous creatures, and perhaps, like chess players, love the process of the getting better, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, brothers and sisters, but is the beginning of death.

Anyway, surfers should always be afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that the surfer, especially the surfboard know-it-all, does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, that magic board, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for exactly like Kelly Slater feels, filling his time with empty social media battles and faith healers.

When workmen have finished their work they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the police-station — and there is occupation for a week. But where can surfers go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about the surfer that has attained such objects (see Kelly Slater again). Surfers loves the process of attaining, but do not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd.

In fact, surfers are comical creatures; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive — in other words, only what is conducive to welfare — is for the advantage of surfers? Is not reason in error as regards advantage?

Do not surfers, perhaps, love something besides surfing well? Perhaps we are just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to us as surfing well? Mankind is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man, or woman- a surfer- and have lived at all.

As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for surfing well seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things and surf like a complete Cro-Magnon. I hold no brief for suffering nor for surfing well either. I am standing for … my caprice, and for its being guaranteed to me when necessary. For paddling out on a very throaty day, barreling and whatnot, on a surfboard not built for barrels. Likewise, paddling out on a very small day on something that demands perfection to perform.

Suffering would be out of place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In a “perfect world” it is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a “perfect world” if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos.

Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I do believe that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.

All to say, there is no perfect surfboard for any surfer and anything a reputable shaper produces, whether a custom order or one that is pulled from the rack, is fine enough. Surfboard shapers should not be blamed for our misfortune, our poor skill. We crave it and need it and will never become Kelly Slater because Kelly Slater is miserable. Also, the surfboard know-it-all should shut his mouth.

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Glamorous trans-surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson.

Feral war of words erupts following surfing’s first trans competitor’s dominant performance in women’s longboard contest, “Trans-girls aren’t going to take over the world, we just want to be included, we’re humans too”

"More so-called political correctness gone mad for the one percent." 

Surfing’s first transsexual competitor Sasha Jane Lowerson has come out swinging on day one of the Western Australian state longboard titles, almost tripling the score of one of her fellow competitors.

Sasha Jane Lowerson, a forty-four-year-old Fly-In-Flight-Out worker in Australia’s lucrative mining biz, was one of Australia’s leading male longboarders before transitioning a couple of years ago and joining the women’s div.

“Trans-girls aren’t going to take over the world, we just want to be included, we’re humans too,” Lowerson told AAA. “I’ve been hiding in this male shell up… for 42 years. To still be made to be that guy that I’m not, it’s shattering,”

The “FIFO Queen” who is a “Rope Access Level 3 Painter & Blaster” up there in the wild north-west, has written about the struggle of being a gal in the rough and tumble game of mining.

“We arrive at site to sometimes be the only girl in our work crew. The challenges we face can be hard and sometimes feel like this isn’t worth it. But we get up and do it all over again and again day in day out. So to all the other strong women out there that live this life also I applaud you all and at the end of your shift today look yourself in the mirror and say ‘thank you!’”

Very inspirational, and I mean it ‘cause I like my trannies, the elfin faces, the flashy sexpot outfits, the way they like to catch ‘emselves in reflections so they can admire their irresistible new visions, the service pistol tucked between legs, sometimes operable, sometimes no.

Not everyone is so in thrall.

On a Facebook thread of Steve Del Rosso, the very good Western Australian surfboard shaper, opinion was a ninety-five-five split against, at least in my estimation.

Del Rosso’s opening gambit.

“I would like to know peoples opinions here but I am watching men dress up as women and competing in women divisions. As far as I am concerned if they still have balls they have no right as they are still a man. Sorry to say that but that’s how it is. That’s saying all man can dress as a woman and compete in lady’s divisions. The Eastern Europeans got banned from having to much testosterone in there systems in the 80’s. So now does that mean women can cheat and get high levels of testosterone to compete with these men saying they are women.”

The response.

“To me it’s easy if any sport has balls, have gender division & they can compete against each other. A male is born with more testosterone & shouldn’t compete against naturally born females.”

“More so called political correctness gone mad for the 1 percent.”

“Yeh it’s bullshit. I see it in a work environment too, we are built the way we are born. Men are way stronger muscle wise unless you a woman Russian weight lifter on the roids and women aren’t I watch them trying to swing sledgehammers at work. Women hold their own though can handle more pain than men, like to see a man try having a baby we carry on like we’re dying when we got the flu. Yeh 3 divisions the go the WSL would love that, then they can get more money off the government for having the events like they do with hitting the Tourism angle.”

“I don’t understand the rationale or the threshold that Surfing WA uses to determine Open ‘women’ division. Surely not it’s not biological?!?”

“I was down there today watching a bloke dressed a woman surfing against girls it was fucked up I had spew in my mouth.”

And so on until brave Lucy Small, the Sydney-based longboard and feminist, grabbed the mic.

(Lucy you’ll remember from Dirty Water. Over the course of an hour or thereabouts, we all agreed that white men are the worst and we recalled with gusto the wonderful Valerie Solanas and her Society for Cutting Up Men, SCUM.)

“I competed against Sasha a few months ago and we welcomed her to the womens division. Posting this is horrific and harmful and this issue seriously just doesn’t even have anything to do with you Steve.”

And,

“What is just as infuriating is that all the men commenting here and saying this type of thing are operating under the assumption that because someone grew up biologically male they are automatically better than everyone in the womens division. This says less about it being unfair and more about your sexist attitude toward womens performance level in surfing.”

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Blanco (left) celebrates being the best surfer in the world alongside Zeke Lau.
Blanco (left) celebrates being the best surfer in the world alongside Zeke Lau.

Caitlyn’s son, Kendall and Kylie’s brother Brody Jenner in committed amorous relationship with Ultimate Surfer Tia Blanco: “The pair had an instant connection over their shared love for the ocean!”

Hot couple summer!

It has been a hot minute, or two, since one of our kind, a surfer, officially dated a Hollywood celebrity and especially an honest-to-goodness Hollywood celebrity hailing from the most important, current, celebrity family but here we are, famous-adjacent. Page Six is reporting that Ultimate Surfer, and current world number twenty-two, Tia Blanco is officially dating Brody Jenner.

You, of course, may remember Jenner from his 2005 reality program The Princes of Malibu in which he, and his brother Brandon, lived the very good life in their mother Linda Thompson’s husband’s spacious home, much to his chagrin, but are more likely to recognize the classically handsome 38-year-old as half-brother of Kendall and Kylie Jenner who are, in turn, half-sisters to Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian.

Brody, Brandon, Kendall and Kylie share Caitlyn Jenner as a father.

Kim, Khloe and Kourtney share the late Robert Kardashian who successfully defended O.J. Simpson against his 1995 double murder charge.

Brody and Tia were, anyhow, photographed yesterday afternoon outside Erewhon Market in Calabasas, California just inland from the aforementioned Malibu.

According to the respected gossip page, the two met while Jenner was on family vacation in Hawaii and have been in a committed, amorous relationship since the middle of April, declaring:

The pair reportedly surfed together and had “an instant connection” over their “shared love for the ocean,” the source said, adding that it is “already a real relationship.”

It appears the Puerto Rican-born surfer still spends most of her time in Hawaii, so it has been a “long-distance relationship” so far, according to the report.

Jenner’s mom, Linda Thompson, posted about their “long awaited family vacation” to Hawaii on Instagram on April 11. She shared photos of Brody and his brother, Brandon Jenner, along with other family members.

Thompson, it goes on to say, regularly comments on Blanco’s Instagram page.

Blanco, you might recall, won last year’s The Ultimate Surfer competition guaranteeing her a certain amount of wildcards into World Surf League Championship Tour events. She recently became defeated by Carissa Moore and Stephanie Gilmore in the first round of the MEO Pro Portugal then became defeated by Tyler Wright and India Robinson in the elimination round.

Exciting days ahead as this spring love blooms.

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Breakout Jackass star Poopies favoured to win Best Kiss at MTV awards over Robert Pattinson & Zoë Kravitz despite PETA labelling stunt with Texas Rat Snake “cruel” and calling for LA county prosecutors to “take appropriate legal action”!

Zoophilia hits the mainstream!

Carlsbad stuntman and former JOB fall-guy Sean “Poopies” McInerney has become the short favourite to win Best Kiss at the MTV Music Awards, held this June 6 at The Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. 

The kiss appears in Jackass Forever’s The Quiet Game sequence, where RachelnWolfson, Steve-O and Poopies are dressed as the French mime Marcel Marceau and are forced to do stunts without reacting to them. 

Poopies is asked to kiss a Texas Rat Snake, a non-venomous serpent popular in the pet trade, which bites him on the face. 

A second attempt yields the same result. 

Other nominees for Best Kiss include Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz for Batman, Hunter Schafer and Dominic Fike for Euphoria, Lily Collins and Lucien Laviscount for Emily in Paris, and Tom Holland and Zendaya for Spider-Man: No Way Home. 

PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, were made very sad by the man v rat snake stunt and called for a thorough police investigation.

If Poopies wins it’ll be the first time in MTV history a bestial love scene has won the prestigious award thereby mainstreaming the gentle art of Zoophilia.

Poopies was lucky to even make the movie after only just surviving a Jackass stunt for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week where he jumped a shark enclosure on waterskis.

Poopies ate it straight off the ramp, the sharks hit, panic ensued, Chris Pontius wept, divers scattered the reef sharks and the kid was thrown in a speed boat and rushed to hospital for surgery.

“I thought I was going to die. There were ten sharks around me and… (pauses, breathes out)…there’s like ten sharks around me, I’m trying to swim out… (pause)… And I  I couldn’t swim out, dude, I knew I got bit and I thought I was going to be attacked by six more sharks.”

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"End the wave with another layback snap!"
"End the wave with another layback snap!"

Professional surfers jumping back and forth from Challenger née Qualifying Series to Championship Tour support Albert Einstein theory of insanity!

Change is good.

You have certainly heard the quote, misattributed to the great thinker Albert Einstein, that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In truth, there is no record of Einstein ever uttering such a thing, the earliest reference likely being recorded in a 1981 Knoxville, Tennessee newspaper describing a meeting of a local Al-Anon, the organization that helps families of alcoholics.

It is, nevertheless, a nice quote and I was thinking about it, today, while chatting with David Lee Scales during our weekly get together.

I had watched very much of the just-wrapped Boost Mobile Gold Coast Pro. Too much, perhaps, and was left with the impression that those who filter in and out of the Challenger née Qualifying Series to the Championship Tour are insane. That is, they surf the same exact way but expect different results.

It’s exactly good enough to get out of the second tier, exactly bad enough to drop them right back in.

Why don’t any radically experiment with technique, board choice, strategy? The great Kelly Slater, love him or adore him, has never been afraid to throw absolutely wacky design into the mix. Sometimes it serves him, other times it does not but it certainly keeps things interesting.

No?

But wouldn’t you be refreshed by an angry Leonardo Fioravanti back-paddling everyone and causing water fights or an airborne Sally Fitzgibbons committed to launching whenever and wherever possible?

Change is good.

Yes?

Listen here.

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