Photo: @DuaneShootsToys
Photo: @DuaneShootsToys

In shock moral flap, noted surfer and social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg exhumes slain rapper The Notorious B.I.G. from grave, forces him to perform concert for nerds in Metaverse!

The Notorious B.I.G. Wednesday.

Do you recall when Meta née Facebook introduced its grand vision of the future to us simple plebes? A whole Internet world that straps onto the head, freeing the hands, and plunges us all straight in to three dimensional bits and bytes. CEO, and noted surfer, Mark Zuckerberg shared the first peek into this submersion with a foil rip session between him and one-time BFF Kai Lenny.

Well, things have not gone so great since. According to The New York Times, “In the year since (its rollout), Meta has spent billions of dollars and assigned thousands of employees to make Mr. Zuckerberg’s dream feasible. But Meta’s metaverse efforts have had a rocky start. The company’s flagship virtual-reality game, Horizon Worlds, remains buggy and unpopular, leading Meta to put in place a ‘quality lockdown’ for the rest of the year while it retools the app. Some Meta employees have complained about frequent strategy shifts that seem tied to Mr. Zuckerberg’s whims rather than a cohesive plan.”

And now?

Well, now the world’s 11th richest man has resorted to exhuming dead rapper The Notorious B.I.G. and is forcing his corpse to rap etc.

Per Engadget:

On December 16th, a hyper-realistic avatar of the late East Coast rap legend Notorious B.I.G. will be holding a concert and performing tracks from his catalogue in Meta’s Horizon Worlds. The show, which will use a virtual recreation of 90’s era Brooklyn as a backdrop, will also feature performances by guest artists like Bad Boy Records founder Sean “Diddy” Combs and a narrative journey of Biggie’s life by American music journalist Touré

Not everyone’s impressed that Meta is bringing an artist back from the dead in avatar form, of course, and the effort was met with a deluge of criticism in HotNewHipHop’s tweet about the project. Meta said, however, that it received the blessing of The Notorious B.I.G. Estate and that the concert will celebrate his life and legacy. Touré, who was in charge of the narrative aspect of the concert, also said that he “interviewed Biggie’s mother and sat in her kitchen, so she knows that [he loves] her son and will take care of his legacy.”

Surfers, everywhere, began worrying that deceased wave sliders might be next. Probably not Chris Davidson due certain posthumous revelations but maybe Jan-Michael Vincent?

The Notorious B.I.G. Wednesday.

I think I must head into Horizon Worlds soon to make sure all is ship shape, surf-wise.

David Lee Scales and I did not speak about this, anyhow and unfortunately, but did discuss how Kelly Slater is singularly responsible for destroying domestic surfboard shaping.

Very much worth a listen.

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"I'm gonna keep calling it Ponto South until they drag me to jail!"
"I'm gonna keep calling it Ponto South until they drag me to jail!"

Popular forecasting site Surfline outrages traditionally conservative subscribers, follows “radically woke” San Francisco School Board lead in renaming offensive waves!

Save our spots.

Surfline, which until recently was the largest surf-based website in the world, has long enjoyed the relatively stable support from its subscribers. For a fee, the faithful are served up sensible stories about surfing and surf travel, tide charts and cameras recording the current conditions of favorite breaks.

The only flair has been comically exaggerated wave heights.

The only flair, that is, until yesterday.

For yesterday, Surfline’s top brass decided to follow the radically woke San Francisco School Board’s lead in renaming offensive breaks.

You certainly recall, nearly two years ago, when the powers that be in the City by the Bay scrubbed naughtiness from schools in its districts.

Per The Atlantic:

On January 26, the San Francisco school board announced that dozens of public schools must be renamed. The figures that do not meet the board’s standards include Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Revere, and Dianne Feinstein. A panel had determined that the 44 schools—more than one-third of the city’s total—were named after figures guilty of being, variously, colonizers; slave owners; exploiters of workers; oppressors of women, children, or queer and transgender people; people connected to human rights or environmental abuses; and espousers of racist beliefs.

The “School Names Advisory Committee” had done its research, discovered that “the majority of Lincoln’s policies proved detrimental to Native Americans,” Washington had owned slaves etc. and their names were instantly vanished from school walls.

In a similar vein, Surfline sent out an email last evening reading:

We’re updating some spot names to better describe their locations, which may affect spots in your Favorites, Surf Alert preferences, and Sessions clips. One example of a spot name that changed is Ponto, San Diego CA.

Previously, we had three spots here: Ponto Jetties, Ponto North and Ponto South. They are now combined as one spot and cameras viewable as multiple angles. Because these three peaks are in the same location, they’ll have the same forecast, and you can view all the information you need in one place.

Generations of North County, San Diego surfers have grown up calling Ponto Jetties Point Jetties, Ponto North Ponto North and Ponto South Ponto South. They will now be forced to call them all just “Ponto” or be faced with cancellation.

It is unclear how many other spots have been sanitized but protests are already being organized on Oahu’s famed North Shore to keep Backdoor Backdoor.

If your local spot name has fallen afoul of the times, please complain to Surfline or organize a social media campaign in support.

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American surf fan (right) lost in despair.
American surf fan (right) lost in despair.

Australians weep with joy, Americans with bitter jealousy as Australian broadcaster inks deal to air every World Surf League tour stop plus eleven extra highlight hours for free!

Haves and have nots.

Americans woke up early to the most bitter shock, the sting of pure 24 carat jealousy burning hot, for morning headlines blared news that little Australia, far across the Pacific with a GDP but a fraction as much, had secured free-to-air broadcast rights for World Surf League programing on 7Plus television plus eleven extra hours that would be dedicated to a WSL highlight reel.

Head of Network Sport at 7Plus, Lewis Martin, mocking American pain, declared, “Surfing is a sport that draws a lot of passion from people all over the world, particularly Australians, so we’re stoked to continue our partnership with the World Surf League. As we sit at the precipice of a new era of surfing, it’s an incredibly exciting time for the much-loved sport. The nation’s golden girl of the waves, Steph Gilmore, is showing no signs of slowing down after claiming her eighth world title this year, and who could forget the greatest of all time, Kelly Slater, making history in the Pipeline last year? With the future of Aussie surfing in the hands of newcomers Molly Picklum, Isabella Nichols and Ethan Ewing, 2023 is set to deliver more stories and moments that you cannot miss, and you can catch it all right here on Seven and 7plus.”

Americans, on the other hand, forced to sit in front of small laptop computers to enjoy the precipice of a new era of surfing.

Required to hold smaller telephones up to faces, squinting, attempting to discern Griffin Colapinto from Kolohe Andino.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright. The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout. But there is no joy in coastal towns or other surfer—heavy enclaves our national broadcasters have made us pout.

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Italo, on wave and carrying surfboard. Inset, a movie representation of a shark attack on a surfer.

World champion surfer Italo Ferreira thrown from surfboard by shark in wild near-death encounter, “The shark appeared and knocked me out of the water!”

"I was alone, I was his only option! It's crazy."

The electric life of the 2019 world surfing champ, a man who already has the countenance of a surprised big-eyed animal, took a wild turn earlier today when he was attacked by a shark while surfing alone in Brazil.

Ferreira, who is twenty-eight, and a noted shark-phobic, alarmed his 150k followers when he wrote,

“In the best part of the surf session yesterday the shark appeared and knocked me out of the sea. I was alone, I was his only option! It’s crazy. The animal was about 2.5 meters.”

One sage fan wrote, “Lesson taught by an Australian: never go alone in the sea where there are sharks, you have a 100% chance in case of an attack.”

You’ll remember, Ferreira’s mortal fear of sharks following a couple of minor-ish hits around Margaret River, resulting in the cancellation of the event.

The Australian writer Tim Winton, whose surfing-themed book Breath had just been turned into a movie, described Italo and his countryman Gabriel Medina’s lobbying for the contest’s cancellation as “conniving”, as if their concern was contrived for competitive advantage.

If you could see Italo now when you start talking hits by Great Whites, the panic in his eyes, the stutter in his voice, you’d know the fear isn’t a confection.

“The energy is bad,” he told me.

Less existential, though no less alarming, was a post the day before where Ferreira spoke of a mysterious heartbreak.

Prayers etc.

 

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Surf Journalist does hardest yards of life, heads into exclusive therapy session with “Heir to Miki Dora’s Malibu Throne” Jonah Hill for deep understanding of journey on learning to be happy!

Is your mother worried? Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother?

Jonah Hill, actor famous for playing sexless butterballs, has also been famous at this BeachGrit since he discovered the profound glories of surfing, some few years ago, and thus staked his claim as heir to Miki Dora’s Malibu Throne. There was an attempt, earlier, to have him on the on-again-off-again podcast Dirty Water and a back and forth that ended him wishing this surf journalist “I hope you enjoy the journey of learning to be funny.”

As salient today as it was then.

Apt.

Hill, in any case, has continued his stratospheric rise in both surfing and pop culture, signing on to play the Grating Dead’s Jerry Garcia in an up and coming biopic, transitioning to electric trucks for local longer board sessions, signing on to play golfer John Daly in another biopic.

Dating surf instructors, breaking up, dating others in the surf.

Releasing his directed and starred in Stuz on Netflix though bravely following Filipe Toledo’s lead and refusing to promote it publicly.

The film is an ostensible vehicle to share the wisdom he has learned from years of therapy with noted shrink Phil Stutz and before commenting upon felt it my duty, as a surf journalist, to watch the entire thing instead of just the trailer.

Hard yards.

And so, today, I sat down to do the work.

The film opens with Hill and Phil Stutz in a room, black and white, therapist explaining his philosophy, “tools,” Hill responding and reacting, attempting to deflect from himself, insisting this is a story about Stutz.

It quickly becomes a film about Hill.

There are bobs, weaves, peeks behind the fourth wall and purposeful tweaks of that fourth wall. Honestly, I’d image there is something to the overall message. Oh, it all smacks hard of the hero’s journey, which I loathe and purposefully mock in the properly uncelebrated Cocaine + Surfing, but Phil Stutz seems epic.

Hill?

He seems gorgeously likable if not entirely obsessed with himself and his own journey of learning how to discover his own happiness.

Hell.

Childhood trauma, self doubt, self realization, self, self, self, self, self, self, self, self, self, self, self, self, self, self.

It smacks of pure luxury.

Having the time to spend worrying and fixating upon the self, and the fourteen-year-old self, instead of having to get out of bed each morning and doing what it takes to get to bed each night.

Is your mother worried? Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother?

I don’t know. I’m neither certified nor qualified to be offering mental help but ain’t a fixation upon self part of the problem if not the problem in its entirety?

Also, who amongst us looks upon our fourteen-year-old selves with great admiration? I was a straight kook at fourteen. Mark Hacker, quarterback, was not but who knows where that bro is now? I’d imagine nowhere. Both of us grew up in Coos Bay, Oregon.

Back around, though, ain’t that what has infected lineups, worldwide, in this the era of the Vulnerable Adult Learner?

Me.

A me obsession?

Me and my shit skills and my lack of understanding, research, care of me in a broader context?

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

Me floating in a glorious universe of me.

Ugh.

But also watch the entire film, yourself, and react.

Me is certainly off in me’s opinion.

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