"Shaping boards might be the thing I've been looking for as far as work goes and I may give it a try to see if I've a natural talent for it."

Jon Pyzel, as you know, has been making boards for John John Florence, who is thirty and six-foot two, since the kid was five, since his mama Alex brought the boys to see him at his old bay at Sunset Beach in 1996 and gave him two-hundred dollars for materials to build John a board.

The yellow four-six with  halo of orange rails is “hideous to look at” but now exists as a memorial to a boy destined for greatness.

Fifty-something Jon is also one of the most accessible shapers in the world.

Walk into his factory in Waialua on the North Shore or hit him up on his Instagram account, which he operates, and you’re going to talk, message, with Jon himself.

He’s like Gabriel’s shaper Johnny Cabianca. The pair are in the game to make beautiful surfboards, not to wind up sitting behind a desk commanding an apparel and hardware biz.

Now, in a post to his legion of follows, some drawn by his shaping wizardry, others by what has been described as his “diabolical and transcendental sexiness”, Pyzel has revealed a letter he wrote to his daddy back home in California in 1993, three years before the intervention of Mama Florence. 

Jon was twenty-four and earning two hundred bucks a week patching busted shooters but even at this early stage he exhibits the perseverance and optimism of a man who would eventually become the master and overseer of a multi-million dollar surfboard empire.

“Hi Dad! How are you!,” writes Pyzel. “I’pm working at  Coffee Gallery, waiting tables and also working at Country Surfboards, fixing broke and bashed-up surfboards. 

“I can work there whenever I want, and get paid by what I do not by the hour, and I am learning more about glassing, polishing, putting on fins etc.

“I really love surfboards, so it’s not even really like going to work (except for the itch). I really feel like shaping boards might be the thing I have been looking for as far as work goes, and I may give it a try, to see if I have any natural talent for it!

“I love you so much, Dad. I always will. Jon.”

My letters home, from Bali, the Gold Coast and so on, at a similar age were less floral, and more anxious, “have got a girl pregnant”, “need money”, “am in hospital again”, “hate work and love living on the dole” etc.

 

Biblical flooding smites oceanfront home of jack-in-the-box punk-lite drummer Travis Barker and reality show maven Kourtney Kardashian!

Just three months ago, residents of Carpinteria, a coastal town of thirteen thousand souls including the go-for-broke surfer Dane Reynolds, braced for legions of paparazzi following the sale of Conan O’Brien’s old joint on Padaro Lane there in Serena Cove to Travis and Kourtney Barker-Kardashian.

If you old, you’ll remember the cartoonish forty-six-year-old Travis: he was the little drummer boy in Blink 182, a pint-sized jack-in-the-box dressed up in grown-man tattoos who had a reality show with wife Shanna Moakler, a former Miss USA and nude model who once socked Paris Hilton in the jaw. Fine firm breasts and a sumptuous backside although when she smiled her wrinkled nose gave her a rabbity look.

Kourtney Kardashian, forty-three, who has the promise of lovely legs after a little of that baby fat melts off the thighs, is the eldest daughter of Robert Kardashian, the legal gun who got OJ Simpson off an impossible to defend double-murder charge.

Anyway, the pair dropped sixteen-and-a-half mill on talkshow host Conan O’Brien’s old beach retreat, a 0.41 acre oceanside parcel he’d bought in 2015 for a little under eight. 

A real pretty and subdued sorta joint, although cross the threshold and it’s fancy as hell. 

“Inside, a soaring great room displays a contemporary wood-burning stove and bi-folding glass doors spilling out to an ocean-view deck adorned with a barbecue, built-in seating and plenty of room for al fresco dining, plus two sets of steps leading down to a small grassy lawn and the beach beyond.

Back inside, a galley-style kitchen is outfitted with open shelving, granite countertops, high-end stainless appliances and an eat-in peninsula; and two bedrooms share a balcony, as well as a windowed bath equipped with dual vanities and a glass-encased shower.”

 

Waves out front are ordinary, but the proximity to father of three Dane Reynolds, who is surfing’s rampart against the milquetoast horror of the WSL’s “pandering bullshit that’s exploiting surfing”, is priceless and, perhaps, the reason the pair paid a premium for the joint. 

Now, following those terrific rains in Santa Barbara, the love nest is “a muddy mess… The 4 bed, 3.5 bath beach front property showed signs of the water-level reaching above the garage. The front yard was covered in mud and water, as crews worked to shovel the aftermath away.”

Hit worse were neighbours Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, whose live a few doors down, their joint blasted with dirt and mud and detritus.  

Papps have been all over it, including notorious British tabloid The Sun, See the photos of terrible devastation here. 

No word yet from the notoriously private Reynolds, proprietor of the Chapter 11 TV Surf Shop at 365 East Santa Clara Street in Ventura.

Anti-royal content creators The Duke and Duchess of Sussex aka H and Meghan, who live in nearby Montecito, are expected to tour the area soon.

Prayers etc.