"The stock price for my cream was here..."
"The stock price for my cream was here..."

As stock prices for Laird Hamilton’s eponymous Superfood dip near junk territory, surfers and radical investors wonder if it might be the next GameStonk!

Get rich or die trying.

Years ago, or maybe it was just months as time is moving very quickly, Laird Hamilton took his eponymous Superfood public and the stock price soared making him a multi-multi millionaire overnight. The coffee creamer, plant-based, was meant to fill a morning ritual with health and vitality. Good fats, I’d imagine, and THC or rather MCT or whatever that nice oil that comes from coconut is called.

A captivated public, wanting to drink from Hamilton’s fountain of youth, snatched the product right up, the company went public and prices floated near $60 a share.

Riches.

But something happened on the way to the ice bath and, over the past months or weeks (who really knows anything anymore) Laird Superfood value has tanked near junk level.

Basically worthless.

Market watchers are wondering, though, if the time is right for another GameStonk. You certainly remember when the beloved video game retailer GameStop was set to go under and loving fans, disruptors and radical investors, went all in, spiking share price and roiling the market.

While, at the time, stalwarts in the investment game found the whole episode crazy Forbes, as august as any, declared:

The GameStop (GME) eruption has been portrayed as the product of wildly irrational investor behavior – a “frenzy,” a “speculative orgy” (Charlie Munger’s phrase), a “game played by losers who don’t have any idea what they’re doing” – a classic case of the Madness of Crowds.

This view is incorrect. Observers are misled by the fact that the market is obviously not “rational” in the finance-theoretic sense of the term. Share prices no longer reflect the underlying asset-value. GameStop’s mediocre, money-losing business is certainly not 4000% more valuable than it was at this time last year.

But this does not mean that the decisions of the GME traders are irrational.

The GME event is in fact the result of a process that is hyper-rational. It is based on highly accurate calculations of specific outcomes which possess a much higher degree of certainty than is the case for normal investment decisions. There is no “madness of crowds” here. It is a premeditated, predatory take-down of a cornered and defenseless counterparty.

Uhhhhhh.

So should we GameStonk Laird or what?

I’m in if you are.

Us, potentially.
Us, potentially.

Bradley Cooper (pictured) in film Limitless which I never saw but seems like it is about meth.
Bradley Cooper (pictured) in film Limitless which I never saw but seems like it is about meth.

San Diego-area surfers slow out of bed, noticeably on edge as record-breaking 5000 lbs of methamphetamine seized crossing border from Mexico to America’s Finest City!

Tough days.

5000 lbs of methamphetamine was seized yesterday afternoon in San Diego County’s southern suburbs. The bust, setting a record, got underway when officials noted a suspicious box truck crossing the border from Tijuana into Southern California. Law enforcement agents followed the truck as it wound around neighborhoods before stopping in an industrial area. Four men exited and began unloading cardboard boxes from the truck and putting them into a van.

Agents moved in, apprehending the suspects, who ranged in age from 37 to 44, and discovering 148 bundles of methamphetamine weighing 5000.

Meth and dog.
Meth and dog.

“This is a significant accomplishment by our law enforcement partners,” U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman told ABC News. “Due to stellar work by law enforcement agents, the government stopped more than 5,000 pounds of methamphetamine from being distributed on our streets.”

The first sign of this lack of distribution is being seen in San Diego surfers. Normally bright eyed and bushy tailed, excited to paddle out before the sunrise, lineups are relatively uncrowded this morning and the few surfers are sluggish and grouchy.

Mean and rude.

“Coffee sucks,” one was heard grumbling as he drug his 7’0 single fin up the Swami’s stairs by its leash.

Every La Jolla break is, reportedly, vacant, save young bodyboarders on vacation with families, and a state of emergency has been declared amongst various surf clubs.

Tough days.


West Oz longboard champ, in two gender divs, Sasha Jane Lowerson.

Australian surfing body reaffirms trans-friendly rules despite worldwide push for separate division, including from world’s greatest athlete Kelly Slater, “Transgender surfers are free to enter any contest in Australia, up to and including the National Titles”

But! If the ISA "was to decide that transgender surfers are not eligible to enter international competitions, Surfing Australia would also look to reinforce that ruling."

Two months ago, surfing’s first transgender competitor, Sasha Jane Lowerson, who won the male division of the WA longboard titles in 2019 as Ryan Egan, ran through the women’s division of the Western Australian longboard titles, snatching the open gal’s crown easily.

Prior to getting the ok to compete, the forty-three-year-old had told Surfing Australia, “We can do this two ways. We can do it together and make it amazing or we can do it terribly and it’s a circus and you guys are the only ones who are going to come out looking silly… I’d prefer to not go through that.”

Equally exciting is the success of  twenty-nine-year-old trans skater Ricci Tres, who recently won the Red Bull Boardr Open women’s division in New York, beating 13-year-old girl Shiloh Catori.

“I’m not going to go and be easy on them because they’re kids,” Tres said.

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.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ricci (@yosoyricci)

Not everyone is so in thrall to the very special magic of gender jumping, howevs.

After Lowerson’s win, Kelly Slater opined, “Make a trans division and we don’t have this confusion.”

And, following the success of swimmer Lia Thomas, a towering twenty-three-year-old Texan who held various high school records as a male in high school and who only transitioned in her freshman year of college, the world swimming body FINA has now adopted a new “gender inclusion policy”.

Unless you transitioned before you hit twelve you ain’t gonna get into the gals. Instead, FINA has proposed an “open division”, formerly called the men’s, I guess.

Anyway, earlier today, Surfing Western Australia released a statement confirming, at least for the time being, their commitment to letting trannies surf.

“Surfing Australia have ruled, as per the current policy which they distributed to all states in Dec 2021, that transgender surfers are free to enter any contest in Australia, up to and including the National Titles.”

There is an ominous caveat, however.

“If the International Surfing Association (ISA), who make global rulings for the sport, was to decide that transgender surfers are not eligible to enter international competitions, Surfing Australia would also look to reinforce that ruling via the states for State and National level competitions.”

 

 


Slater (left) gifting a bomb to young charger only to have the whole thing blown right up.
Slater (left) gifting a bomb to young charger only to have the whole thing blown right up.

Living legend Kelly Slater on wrong side of public opinion, called “soy boy” by omertà-abiding surfers for attempt to publicly out older man burning younger boy at plus-sized Kandui as drill-gate stretches into third day!

Strange days.

I am usually a prescient surf journalist, able to hold a tanned finger to the warm winds and divine the general consensus and so you can imagine my confusion in getting the most recent earth-shaking surf-based episode entirely wrong. For those living under a rock, days ago adventure-based listicle blog The Inertia posted a video on its Instagram account featuring living legend Kelly Slater calling a 14-year-old boy into a Kandui grower.

New evidence has surfaced that the boy received a slight shove from his father but, nonetheless, the drop was steep and he fully committed. Then, out of the sky, dropped an elder man wearing what appeared to be a trucker cap, forcing the boy to straighten out and get drilled into the reef while the man continued his ride to the end.

It was captioned, “That’s @kellyslater backing off of one and calling teenage local @thariq_inanuttshell into an absolute bomb, only to end up on the receiving end of the most egregious burn you’ll see this summer (not to mention a near disaster and serious bummer). We’re told the culprit was promptly shown out of the lineup after this one…”

Slater promptly responded with “@captain_kook_berry_crunch tag him.”

Now, being blocked, I was only sent a screen grab of the exchange and assumed that Slater had tagged the surfer himself. I was very wrong. Slater was asking for the captain of the boat the elder man was traveling upon to do the tagging and not outing @captain_kook_berry_crunch as the offender.

Very confusing handling these matters in the black outerknown.

In any case, Slater calling for Internet mob justice was not met kindly by most omertà-abiding surfers who called him a “soy boy” for not dealing with the issue, himself, in the lineup.

Mano-a-mano, as it were.

A wild turn of events and one that I did not see coming. I imagined loyal fans combing various social medias, finding the offender and gathering outside his virtual doorstep torches and pitchforks held high as opposed to rounding upon the world’s greatest surfer, teeth bared.

Strange days indeed.


Clever surf journalist solves sphinx-like riddle involving apparent error on current world number one Filipe Toledo’s commemorative tattoo!

No regrats.

Last week, current world number one professional surfer Filipe Toledo thrilled his countrymen by winning the 2022 Oi Rio Pro in front of a throng World Surf League CEO declared to number in the twenty-thousands. He was passed, shoulder to shoulder, all the way to the stage where roars drowned out anything Chris Cote was attempting to say.

A beautiful moment and one, days later, Toledo would ink upon his lower calf in commemoration.

The tattoo featured a lovely hillside church, four palm trees, a barreling right with a thick, foamy lip and the years 2018, 2019, 2022 underneath.

Filipe Toledo as art (pictured).
Filipe Toledo as art (pictured).

Surf fans immediately grew concerned. Yes, Toledo had won the Oi Rio Pro in 2018, 2019 and 2022 but he also won it in 2015. A four time champion.

Why had 2015 been disappeared?

A simple accounting mistake?

Early onset dementia?

A cryptic numerological message meant to signify some great, likely troubling prophecy?

As panic begin to set, one brave surf journalist took it upon himself to solve the sphinx-like riddle thereby comforting millions.

The background scene is, very clearly, Saquarema. There is no Sugarloaf nor Christ the Redeemer. No festival nor Morro da Urca. Very clearly not Rio de Janeiro proper and, even though the event is named Oi Rio Pro only the 2015 event was contested on those sands. 2018, 2019 and 2022 were all out front the aforementioned Saquarema. I would imagine that Toledo has another tattoo celebrating his first victory, somewhere else on his body, and, aside from mass shootings, assassinations, war, pestilence all is right with the world.

Right?