Blacks. Photo: @petertaras
Blacks. Photo: @petertaras

Exhausted California surfers re-wax rhino chasers with noodle arms, prepare to paddle out, yet again, into “the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea!”

Big Friday (again).

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.


Cultural appropriation (pictured). Photo: The Brady Bunch
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!”

Othering and microaggression.

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?

Maybe you should.


The former model Jon Pyzel and letter home to Daddy in 1993.

John John Florence’s transcendentally sexy shaper Jon Pyzel reveals humble pre-stardom beginnings in letter home to daddy from 1993, “I love surfboards so it’s not even like really going to work! I really feel like surfboards might be my thing!”

"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.

 


Geriatric surfer (pictured).
Geriatric surfer (pictured).

Famous Los Angeles columnist telegraphs coming ultra VAL apocalypse, fulfills childhood dream by learning to surf at 70 years young: “Getting older is an epidemic. About 10,000 people turn 65 each day in the United States alone!”

Yikes.

Pithy newspaper columnists have all but vanished and thank goodness. Their musings about this, that or the other thing all wrapped up with nifty turns of phrase, dime store perspective, proper grammatical form and function in the service of feel good moments.

Yuck.

And The Los Angeles Times‘ Steve Lopez is no exception to that rule. He was written for the newspaper for many, many years, one of his columns becoming a Hollywood motion picture starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. and I’m sure is well respected but as he has turned 70, he claims that his real estate will be dedicated to musings on aging.

“Getting older, by the way, is an epidemic,” he wrote in today’s issue. “About 10,000 people turn 65 each day in the United States, and by 2035, people 65 and older will outnumber those under 18 for the first time. In California, a quarter of the population will be 60 or older by 2031. These trends will challenge and transform us in ways we’ve barely begun to prepare for. Housing, healthcare, the economy, the workforce and the design of cities, homes and transportation will all be impacted. Millennials and older people, who don’t usually end up at the same parties, could become increasingly dependent on each other…”

Etc. Etc.

All fine and well, I suppose, except for Lopez decided to fulfill his lifelong childhood dream of learning to surf at 70 (see photos here) and it must be assumed that these 65+ year olds will likely follow his lead. Will undoubtedly struggle into wetsuits, clutch at soft tops, whitewash ride straight into that burgeoning bucket list.

Is there any hope left for the grumpy local? The surfer who has toiled at her local through thick and thin?

Between Covid beginners and ultra VALs, it appears maybe not.

Though, I suppose, both can easily be paddled around. We shall really be in trouble when middle distance collegiate swimmers and/or water polo players discover surfing.

Forever a silver lining.

Always anti-depressive.


Reynolds, left, Travis and K, right, and the now devastated home in happier days.

Go-for-broke surfer Dane Reynolds’ rural idyll shattered, again, as Travis and Kourtney Barker-Kardashian’s $16.5 million Carpinteria beach house devastated by raging floods prompting new influx of paparazzi!

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.