In terrifying development, zombie website Surfer Magazine exhumes rotted corpse of Instagram account and begins posting unfortunate content!

Day of the living dead.

Strange times etc. The very strangest, in fact, where any semblance of sense has gone right out the window. Florida has declared war on Disney World, Kelly Slater is on the verge of becoming kicked out of professional surfing and I am in New York City on a grand ballet adventure.

A woman, loud and obnoxious, got escorted off the flight before it departed for calling various people “cunt” and not in the way you, friends, use it here. No, she spat it at stewardesses and others who dare turned their necks to see what the commotion was about. She was angry, ostensibly, that her carry-on bag was at the back of the plane and not above her seat. Well, she was spoken to, warned and then on came some deputy and shuffled her right off while she continued to slaver combative words.

Ugly.

Maybe not as ugly, though, as the zombie corpse of Surfer Magazine, recently exhumed, dripping puss and gross, hours ago, exhuming its Instagram account.

You’ll recall when the business was shuttered, some 128 weeks ago, after a post declaring that, for the first time in history, Surfer would endorse a political candidate, who happened to be Joe Biden. At the time, the “bible of the sport” was owned by Donald Trump pal David Pecker and surf watchers assumed that its death was tied to the lightly leftist turn.

It was not, just a simple nasty business move of loading various debt from elsewhere onto the title then killing it dead, where it should have remained if not for a “tech powered” media company with an alleged naughty CEO.

Very quietly the Instagram account has been reanimated with a post of Kelly Slater. That was followed another silly offering which was followed by a third.

Comments are almost non-existent but concern is growing that vulnerable adult learners will become deceived and think the decomposed nonsense is representative.

Unseemly.

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"The ruling is simply moral preening, knowing that the exclusion of any potential (see fool’s bet) Russian surfers from competition will have zero impact on the war."

Surfing’s governing body accused of “moral preening” following ban of Russian surfers from international competition!

But silence over China "that little country known for tucking its lovely Uyghurs away neatly in dark spaces".

The International Surfing Association has extended its competition ban of Russian surfers running up to the 2024 Olympic Games.

Apparently, the ISA wants to show you its morals much the way the Dali Lama wants Sam George to show his secret spots.

The continued ban is in reaction to Moscow’s attempted reclamation of Ukraine, its former sister state. If you haven’t heard, the year-long aggression in the East hasn’t gone over well in the West, as the razed cities, estimated 30,000 civilian casualties, and the kind of general vulgarities associated with invasions pile up.

According to the ISA, “these decisions are the result of the ISA’s strong condemnation of the Russian Government’s invasion of Ukraine – a war which has been fought for more than a year. As a top priority, the ISA is ensuring the safety of the public, athletes and officials, and is protecting the integrity of its competitions. The ISA continues to express its solidarity with the people and surfers from Ukraine.”

However, the International Olympic Committee, from which the ISA takes its guidance, makes exception for Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag as the IOC has “serious concerns” over excluding athletes “strictly based upon their nationality.”

Cheers to a world without bias.

Yet here’s where the ISA deviates stating, “There is no provision in the ISA rule book for the participation of individuals outside their national teams, including for World Surfing Games and other events that play a part in athlete qualification for the Olympic Games via their National Olympic Committees.”

Hard line tactics here from surfing’s world governing body.

Does the ISA believe that the barbaric Wagner Group eating up Bakhmut will see this, drop their guns and pick up their rosary beads?

Of course, this could be the rare moment in history when every voice screams, “This ain’t right.”

It’s a fool’s bet that we’d see a surfer with the hammer and sickle on the sleeve in Teahupo’o next summer, anyway.

It makes one think the ruling is simply moral preening, knowing that the exclusion of any potential (see fool’s bet) Russian surfers from competition will have zero impact on the war?

Afterall, the IOC, and by extension the ISA, continues their silence over China’s participation in sporting competition, that little country known for tucking its lovely Uyghurs away neatly in dark spaces. Since 2014, over one million Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang territory have been killed or imprisoned in “re-education camps.”

And remember Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai? In 2021, after accusing a senior Communist party official of sexual misconduct, she disappeared. IOC president Thomas Bach shrugged and Peng is still gone.

The expressed goal of the Olympic movement is to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without a discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity, and fair play.”

Considering this mission statement, should not the ISA let surfers compete regardless of where they happened to drop from mother’s womb?

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Online surf sleuths declare Kelly Slater’s surprise visit to rival Melbourne wavepool a psy-ops play, “Guaranteed he wasn’t surfing; he was evaluating!”

"I wonder if we will see a collaboration between Urbnsurf and Slater’s Surf Ranch."

The greatest athlete of all time, as determined by The Outsiders star Rob Lowe, has sent surf fans, conspiracy theorists and online sleuths into overdrive after a surprise visit to the Urbnsurf wavepool in Melbourne, Australia. 

Fifty-one-year-old Kelly Slater, along with fluid mechanics engineer Adam Fincham, created Surf Ranch in 2016, a one-off pool near Fresno, California, that has become the go-to for tech millionaire birthday parties and home to the tour’s own Coachella-esque event and festival. 

En route to Margaret River, where the 11-time world champ will attempt to keep his spot on tour, Slater visited the two-year-old Wavegarden pool a short taxi ride from Tullamarine airport. 

And while the Champ’s jumping and swerving was adored, as always, online gumshoes were quick to point out there may be more to his visit than a simple rinsing after Bells.

“Been there, surfed it, seen others surf it in real life and posted! No one, no one has ever destroyed a wave like that… Kelly your a legend! P.S. don’t think I have ever seen you do that at your surf park, must be a better wave here.”

“I wonder if we will see a collaboration between Urbnsurf and Slater’s Surf Ranch. Guaranteed he wasn’t surfing; he was evaluating.”

A psy-op or psychological operation is the use of propaganda, disinformation and other psychological techniques to twist the minds of a target audience’s behaviors.

Think, Operation Mockingbird from the nineteen-fifties when the CIA recruited journalists and editors to spread propaganda and disinformation in support of US government policies or the wonderful MK-Ultra, when the CIA, responding to claims of Commie-brainwashing in Vietnam, used drugs and hypnosis to get into their subjects’ heads, Charles Manson a famous test pilot.

 

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World Surf League likens Surf Ranch Pro to Coachella in increasingly desperate attempt at selling tickets!

"Festival atmosphere."

Anyone with a phone featuring social media applications knows that this past weekend hosted Coachella. The very popular music festival, a stone’s throw from Palm Springs, California, is a must for Gen Xers, Millennials and Gen Zers alike, each donning various wide brimmed hats, rose colored sunglasses and poom poom shorts.

A place to see and be seen.

This year’s offering, which will reprise next weekend, featured headlining performances from Bad Bunny, Blackpink and Frank Ocean. Tom Sandoval, made famous by Scandoval, was in attendance along with Leonardo DiCaprio, apparently now dating Bradley Cooper’s ex-girlfriend and mother to child.

Very cool.

Trying to grab some of that glam disco light and shine it north, the World Surf League released a new promotional package around its upcoming Surf Ranch Pro. The least popular surf contest in history, hated by participants and viewers alike, will unfortunately kick-off next month after living legend Kelly Slater is unceremoniously beheaded in Western Australia. I just watched an interview with him post-loss to Kanoa Igarashi at Bells Beach, by the way. He told Rosie that being below the cut line “sucked” and blamed a shoulder injury suffered at Bells last year for throwing him into a nasty slump. He also said that he was going to spend the week-ish between contests on the Gold Coast maybe surfing, maybe not, and not at Coachella.

But back to baldfaced World Surf League nonsense, though, their new promotional package reads, “Watch the WSL Tour take place in a festival atmosphere.”

Ticket prices, as recently learned, have been slashed from the inaugural run five years ago causing much wonderment in economic anthropologist circles.

Let’s real talk. How much world the World Surf League have to pay you to go to its “festival atmosphere” and catch the Surf Ranch Pro live?

$100, two free burritos onsite and a night at the local Motel 6?

More?

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Slater, main photo, wins Pipe a week before turning fifty and, inset, Rob Lowe love makes with sixteen-year-old girl and her twenty-two-year-old pal.

Hollywood heart-throb Rob Lowe famous for sex tape with sixteen-year-old fan ends Greatest Athlete of All Time debate in bombshell podcast, “No one has dominated a sport, any sport, individually, ever, in history than Kelly Slater and surfing!”

"Everybody talks about people being the GOAT. Tom Brady’s the GOAT, Tiger Woods is the GOAT. They’re…GOATS… but they’re not The GOAT."

The still beautiful eighties heartthrob Rob Lowe has ended the age-old debate roiling the sports world in a bombshell podcast just released.

On “Literally! With Rob Lowe”, the fifty-nine-year-old actor famous for being part of the eighties Brat Pack in movies The Outsiders, St. Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night, and for starring in a sex tape in a Georgia hotel room at his 1988 peak with a couple of fans, one of whom was sweet sixteen, intros Slater with,

“I’m geeking out, man. Everybody talks about people being the GOAT. Tom Brady’s the GOAT, Tiger Woods is the GOAT. They’re…GOATS… they’re…GOOOOOOATS…but they’re not The GOAT. Today, we have The GOAT Kelly Slater. The greatest surfer who ever lived. Eleven-time world champ. Youngest world champ and then oldest world champ. No one has dominated a sport, any sport, individually, ever, in history than Kelly Slater and surfing.”

I’m on the side of Lowe, in this instance, although you’ll remember in February last year when JP Currie wrote fifteen-hundred words on why Slater ain’t the best athlete ever.

Sport is just sport, at the end of the day. But as we know, in the most elevated and spectacular moments – the realms where GOATs play – it can be an awful lot more.

When we talk about those who are worthy of being called the GOAT, we should be talking about people whose sporting performances have transcended sport. We should be talking about figures who are globally recognised and historically remembered, people who are idolised by children and worthy of that status.

What has Kelly done for the world? What has surfing?

How do you compare his impact to Muhammed Ali, for example?

You could argue we should ignore everything Kelly has done and said outside of surfing, but I don’t think we should.

At the highest level of sport, the kind of level reserved for people dubbed GOATs, sport influences culture, brings people hope, and instigates change.

Where do you stand, reader?

Listen here!

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