Masekela (right) into the light. Photo:
@lupitanyongo
Surf broadcaster Sal Masekela one ups best
friend Kelly Slater in stunning year end turn, made “Instagram
Official” boyfriend by movie superstar Lupita Nyong’o!
By Chas Smith
Mazel tov!
But who could have seen that coming? Which surf
fan might have put their hard earned money here? While we have been
busily lighting candles for months now dreaming of a Gisele
Bündchen x Kelly Slater reunion in order to usher in an era of
prosperity last seen in 2005 – 2006, the surf broadcaster Selema
Masekela was all the while dating movie superstar Lupita Nyong’o
who just allowed him to become public.
Whoa!
Beyond whoa!
The Kenyan actress, who became mass famous after her turn as
Nakia in Black Panther, is deservedly loved by all. A bright light
in her prime with exciting work in a gilded future.
Nuyong’o announced Masekela, who just finished announcing the
Pipe Masters, as her boyfriend in a moving instagram post with the
two dancing in various clothings.
Webby, who grew up in Geelong in Victoria but soon moved to
nearby Torquay, HQ of the world’s surf industry, was the artist who
redefined Quiksilver in the nineteen-eighties with radical
hand-painted and wildly coloured prints that became the measure of
cool not just within surf, but within fashion.
Where surf graphics had long been sunsets and waves, blues,
yellows and reds, a continuation of the Endless Summer dream from
1966, Webby’s Ghetto Dog, Warpaint and Surfers of Fortune graphics
for Quiksilver shifted the game a hard left.
In 2012, and after twenty seven years, Webby split from
Quiksilver.
“It’s like being kicked out of the house and you didn’t fall out
of love,” Webby told ABC. “They’ve cut down and I guess I was an
indulgence for them.”
He sure wasn’t precious about his ability to throw paint on
canvas.
“It’s a hard thing to say, ‘you’re an artist’. It’s such a wank!
It’s not like you’re a doctor saving lives.”
However,
“Society without art is morally bankrupt. I just hate talking
about it, explaining paintings. I don’t like doing it. I like
hearing other people doing it though.”
About his iconic prints he said,
“We thought we were creating something; we thought we’d
conquered the surf world and we did in a way.”
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Santa. Photo: @barton_lynch
“Papa Surf” Barton Lynch sets internet
ablaze as children mistake Australian legend for North Pole
fixture: “Mama, how is Santa Claus ripping so hard?”
By Chas Smith
Feliz Navidad.
It very much goes without saying that Barton
Lynch is a gift to surfing. From the BL Blast Off
Challenge to his various podcastings, Instagram
messages and general tone, the Australian legend brings a sort of
genteelness to our space. Something typically in short order.
Now, it would be thought that his admixture of experience, his
trained eye and his ability to speak about nuances would have make
Lynch the ideal color commentator for the World Surf League.
Indeed, he did spend a year, or such, shoulder to shoulder with Joe
Turpel, Ron Blakey et. al. giving surf fans the most aural joy of
all but then, like that, he was brutally disappeared. Told that
“his services were no longer needed.”
Why?
Well, rumors percolated through the industry that his “politics”
had become an issue.
His politics?
Surf fans scratched their heads furiously trying to figure out
which of his “politics” were off-brand for the WSL. Which would
cause troubles. Or scratched their heads furiously until days ago,
that is, when an image was leaked featuring Lynch engaging his rail
in a picture-perfect bottom turn at Sunset, white beard fluttering
in the stiff breeze.
While the connection to Karl Marx and his various theories on
production and workers etc. is readily apparent to adults, children
around the globe made an instant connection to an earlier hammer of
naughty and nice.
A pre-industrial revolution red.
Santa Claus.
Now, anyone who has ever studied political theory is well aware
that the aforementioned is the ideal communist. An authoritarian
who delivers gifts created in factories where no wages are paid or
collected to everyone who has kept their heads down during the year
and stayed off his enemies’ list. A singular figure who works to
banish scarcity by delivering toys, without cost, to homes
everywhere in the world.
A beacon of egalitarianism.
It is odd that the World Surf League would be so anti-communist,
especially in this day and age where many more pressing troubles
boil and bubble, but at least children can enjoy Santa absolutely
ripping.
Feliz Navidad.
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Kelly Slater, inset, croons while interlocutor
David Scales and Joel Tudor rake over the ancient bones.
Three-time world champion surfer reignites
decade-old jiujitsu blood feud with Kelly Slater in explosive new
interview, “You’re embarrassing yourself! You’re embarrassing
surfing!”
By Derek Rielly
"(Slater) was putting a blue belt on and he was
literally doing it because he didn’t want to look like a white
belt. And in this sport, that is the corniest thing you could ever
do."
The three-time world longboard champion and jiujitsu
black belt Joel Tudor has breathed new life into his wild
decade-old blood feud with the world’s greatest athlete
Kelly Slater.
Tudor, who owns the Surfight Jiujitsu academy in Del Mar,
California, was enraged by the photo.
“Crock of shit – the guy has been wearing a blue belt for years
in pics and always made excuses when I would call him on it! If he
wants his belt , tell him to go sign up and put in the work like
everybody else who starts at white and goes through hell to
graduate to blue – anybody on here talking shit to me more than
likely doesn’t train and has zero clue about Jiu Jitsu.”
For those who don’t know, or care, the blue belt is the second
rung in the jiujitsu ladder, white, blue, purple, brown and black,
and takes at least two years of training five days a week to
achieve.
Now, in an interview with Dave Scales on the Surf Splendor
podcast, Tudor, who is forty-six, has reprised the famous feud
explaining,
“In the jiujitsu world belts are fucking important and how
people earn ‘em is super important. The hardest belt to earn is
white to blue because you get fucking destroyed in the process to
do it, the whippings you take is nothing you’ll ever forget.
(Slater) was putting a fucking blue belt on and he was literally
doing it because he didn’t want to look like a white belt. And in
this sport, dude, that is the corniest fucking thing you could ever
do. And we’re friends so I was just telling him, dude, you know how
legitimate I am in this shit, you realise how fucking corny that is
that you’re doing. You’re embarrassing yourself, you’re
embarrassing surfing. You know how many surfers have gone through
the wringer to their belts? It’s kind gnarly.”
Tudor then described the hoots of derision Slater would receive
in his Surfight gym “if I explained to everybody, what if somebody
gave themselves a blue belt?”
The famous flickering pointed tongue comes out and Tudor
hisses,
“They’re gonna get smashed! They’d have a target on their
heads!”
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Surfing's only Nepo Baby (left). Photo:
Supplied.
As “Year of Nepo Baby” controversy grips
Hollywood, professional surfers jealously ponder which amongst
themselves has benefited from ill-deserved gain!
By Chas Smith
Or is professional surfing a perfect
meritocracy?
Those, here, who indulge in more than simply surf
news are certainly aware of the “Nepo Baby” controversy
exploding throughout Hollywood. Long simmering, New York magazine’s
Vulture released a cover featuring children of movie stars, who
have become movie stars themselves. Children with a path to fame
and fortune, connections and name recognition already pioneered for
them.
Like psoriasis, the label was something you were born with,
and those who had it found it equally irritating. Maude Apatow
(daughter of Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann) told Porter magazine the
term made her “sad.” It filled Zoë Kravitz (daughter of Lenny
Kravitz and Lisa Bonet) with “deep insecurity.” Gwyneth Paltrow
(daughter of Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow) commiserated about it
with Hailey Bieber (daughter of Stephen Baldwin and niece of Alec)
on the latter’s YouTube channel: “People are ready to pull you down
and say, ‘You don’t belong there.’” Scratching the itch could only
make it worse. At 16, the model and actress Lily-Rose Depp landed
her first campaign with Chanel, the same house her mother, Vanessa
Paradis, worked with; the year before, she’d made her film debut
alongside her father, Johnny Depp. In a November Elle profile, she
brushed off suggestions that her path had been cleared for her: “It
just doesn’t make any sense.” The response was swift. On TikTok,
floating heads begged Depp to “shut up and stop being delusional.”
Her fellow models castigated her on Instagram. “i have many nepo
baby friends whom i respect,” the top model Vittoria Ceretti wrote
in an Instagram Story, “but i can’t stand listening to you compare
yourself to me. i was not born on a comfy sexy pillow with a
view.”
And erupts from there. A full historical analysis, current
cultural ramifications, what it means, where it’s going.
In the aftermath, celebrity nepo babies are lashing out. Ice
Cube’s baby saying he “gets his ass up and works everyday.” Kate
Moss’s sister Lottie “so sick of others blaming nepotism for their
lack of wealth.”
Etc.
While many fingers are being pointed, professional surfers are
busily patting themselves on the back. There are currently only two
males on tour from professional surfing stock (I think): Kolohe
Andino and Seth Moniz. Maybe none on the female side (unless I’m
missing one).
Thus the question is begged, is surfing a paradise of
meritocracy where hard work and devotion are the only things that
matter and will bust down any door?
Should Hollywood turn its eye toward the beach and learn
valuable lessons?
