The Ocean Pacific has been alive with pleasure for multiple weeks now delighting surfers from Hawaii to California whilst terrifying beachfront homeowners. So much action. Nature’s gorgeous hammer. And any surfer, worth her salt, has certainly paddled into the XL and, likely, cosplayed as a Waimea or Jaws charger.
I certainly did, yesterday mid-morning, paddling out the front into what Surfline was calling 6 – 10 but it clearly being 20 – 30.
Oh yes, I was brave duck-diving those walls of water on my Album twin, jaw set, spinning on the first inside corner I could and getting an early score on the board but not as brave as the baby who was towed into a monster at Jaws dealing ageism a heavy blow.
The youngest person ever to catch one of the Maui beasts at 12-years-old, back in 2021, “Baby” Steve Roberson was towed into another, Wednesday, by the now legendary Billy Kemper.
“It was like a 40-foot back or maybe bigger,” Baby’s dad, Kaleo Roberson, told Hawaii News Now.
“I just saw this barrel coming and I knew I was like okay, here we go. I was like, this is gonna’ be the best wave of my life,” interjected Baby.
The beast, which initially looked like it was going to barrel, began to clamp forcing the extremely young man to straighten out and cop a heavy beating.
“It felt like I just got hit by a car or something right in my side and it put me into the water so fast and shot me up into the air and then I landed and got sucked over the falls,” he said.
After inflating his vest and getting bashed around a bit, Baby was rescued by a ski and declared, “The feeling like when I popped up is like a feeling like I’ve never had before. I just felt so alive and it was gnarly.”
Four hundred pound Powerfish, inset, and drowning VAL. | Photo: Powerfish
Instagram Influencer slammed by fans for filming drowning vulnerable adult learner surfer blames his inaction on obesity, “I’m 180kg and very unfit, we both would’ve drowned!”
You’ll remember the great Australian influencer and philanthropist Willem “Powerfish” Ungermann from his brave attempts to smash surfing’s “entrenched homophobia and patriarchal power structures” via beach theatre and Jackass-style pranks.
Two years ago, Willem terrorised a D-Bah line-up on his bodyboard, at one point accepting a beach fight only to drop to his knees and tell his surprised fellow duellist, “I’ll suck you dry, mate.”
Between waves, he said to one surfer, “I fucked a bloke like you once”, another, “You’re lucky my dad Rex isn’t here, he’d smash your pelvis”, another, “Heard of the Bra Boys? We’re the Flatty Boys. Instead of going around bashing cunts, we fuck ’em”, another, “You know why I like surfing? When guys wear wetties and I can see their dick”, another he asks if he’s seen Ross Clarke-Jones’ cock and says, “I’ve fucking sucked it dry.”
Terrific fun and many important messages.
Now, Willem has come under fire for failing to help a surfer after the man’s legrope became entangled around the pylon of a pier.
“Take your legroom off you idiot…moron!” he barks from behind the camera.
Almost a minute into the affair, a swimmer jumps into the ocean and rescues the VAL.
“Fuck, lucky that guy went out,” Willem says. “I wasn’t going to get him, no way I’m putting my life on the line.”
Commenters on the post went one of two ways.
“Typical Aussie attitude, sit on your ass and watch.”’
“There is plenty of things you can do to help a human in distress or a life threatening situation than filming it!! Put yourself into action in any way you can help build a community quickly not content!!”
“You post all these lame excuses, after the fact of why you can’t go help, however it’s easy to see through your mouth full of crap. If you truly cared (as you are playing it off) then why are you calling him an “idiot” and a “Moron” “shouldn’t be there anyway” “that’ll teach you to surf a sunami” You are probably the VERY DEFFINITION of what is wrong with the world right now!! A HUMAN BEING WAS DROWNING RIGHT INFRONT OF YOUR EYES AND YOU DID NOTHING BUT CRITICIZE, BELITTLE AND JUDGE ALL WHILE HOLDING A PHONE TO VIDEO WHAT? THE POOR MAN DYING..GOING UNDER AND NOT COMMING BACK UP? I BET….THAT YOU WERE THINKING THE WHOLE TIME…”THIS GONNA GO VIRAL” I’M TAKING THIS VERY PERSONALLY BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE WHY SOCIETY IS AS DEGRADED AS IT IS. BTW BEFORE YOU GO REPLYING THAT YOU WERE GENUINELY CONCERNED, WHY DID YOU NOT EVER ONCE SAY “I’M SO GLAD HE OK” WHY MAN, WHY? FINAL THOUGHT…WHAT IF YOU, YOUR WIFE, KIDS,DOG WERE IN A SIMILAR SITUATION AND YOU OR THEY HAD TO WATCH A GUY FILMING AND YELLING SHIT AT THEM WHILE THEY DROWN. I REALLY HOPE YOU GET YOUR DUELY DESERVED KARMA AND SOON.”
Willem had responded with the very prosaic, “I’m about 100m up the beach zoomed in and besides that I’m 180kg (four hundred pounds) and very unfit, we both would of drowned. I’m trying to lose weight at the moment just in case something like this happens again and I can help.”
Others supported his decision to stay dry.
“Good on ya dog, is no use two of yahs in the flatly hole.”
“Absolutely right there bro ya got to be fit and have experience in the sea to pull something like that off one lucky dude.”
“Smart move knowing your abilities and not going in mate. Too many blokes end up dead trying to help a situation above their capability.”
“Some people don’t realise how difficult it is to swim in the ocean. Add on the fact of trying to save another person who is in distress. Well done to the guy who jumped in.”
Your response?
VAL wrapped around a pylon, he ain’t too far out.
Stay or go?
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Open Thread: Comment Live on Finals Day of the World Junior Championships as children are marched in to California’s menacing “bomb swell!”
Exhausted California surfers re-wax rhino chasers with noodle arms, prepare to paddle out, yet again, into “the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea!”
Any surfer on any shore, either hemisphere, is certainly aware of the run of nearly unprecedented swell that California has been served over the past few weeks. An unrelenting, never ceasing stream of Surfline 10 – 12 feets+. Monster waves that necessitate a steeled spine, girded loins and step-up boards preferably in the “rhino chaser” range.
Exhausted.
California surfers are exhausted but what can they do? Where can we turn? Oh, there is no sympathy from any coast, neither east nor south. North nor northwest. An embarrassment of riches is what it is but how best to indulge?
David Lee Scales and I discussed, in depth, during out weekly chat. He was of the mind that there is no requirement to paddle for the middle-aged. Nothing left to prove. I was of the opinion that there is simply no choice. When surf hammers the shore, the surfer must pull on wetsuit and take a beating even if there are only straight-handers, even if arms have turned to noodle.
But what is your opinion on the matter? Do you thrill when blobs of extreme color show up on your preferred forecasting website, what James Joyce calls “the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea” or do you pull a blanky up to your chin and shudder?
Tell true.
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Cultural appropriation (pictured). Photo: The Brady Bunch
Axe finally falls on use of word ‘aloha’ by non-native Hawaiians: “It’s about time that culturally appropriating haoles kept our word out of their pasty white mouths!”
It was only a matter of time and, honestly, a pure miracle that we have all gotten to enjoy the word “aloha” for so long. Gotten away wearing it on trucker hats, plastering it to the back of Teslas in sticker form, saying it to each other when landing at Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport smiles spreading across pasty faces in anticipation of that first Mai Tai.
A surprisingly long run but, alas, now officially over.
Into the cultural appropriation bin where it probably belonged all along.
Maile Arvin, director of Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Utah, explained to USA Today, “‘Aloha’ doesn’t just mean hello or goodbye. It’s a greeting or a farewell, but the meaning is deeper. One of my Hawaiian language teachers taught it to me as ‘Aloha means recognizing yourself in everyone and everything you meet.” And when non-natives use, it comes off as mockery.
Aloha isn’t the only word that we should keep out of our lily mouths, of course. The piece continues:
“We live in a multilingual world where we’re always influencing one another’s language practices hand where we might come into contact with a variety of terms or language practices that we have not grown up in,” says Nikki Lane, cultural and linguistic Anthropologist.
Intention matters most. Dropping an “hola” or “shalom” to someone you know who speaks Spanish or Hebrew, for example, isn’t something to worry about. Actively don a fake, exaggerated accent and say those words? Therein lies the problem.
Like saying “ni hao” to someone Asian-American who isn’t Chinese; this could be both othering and a microaggression.
So there you have it, amigos, I mean friends.
Nyet on dropping foreign words into bland English sentences.
Khalas.
Also, are you now considering applying to the School of Pacific Island Studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City?
