Watkins is doing 29 years for crimes against kids so damn awful the sentencing judge said the case “plunged into new depths of depravity.” 

If you knew Chris Cote like I know Chris Cote, you’d find the sweetest Peewee Herman-esque lover of life, gags, tumbling, surf all day, party all night, and positivity wherever he can find it.

Also a shill for the World Surf League, but we all gotta make a living, am I right? 

Now, the man once described below the line by TodaysEmpiresTomorrowsAshes as “a pre-pubescent boy trapped in the body of a middle-aged man wrapped in the wardrobe of a 00s So-Cal high schooler” has offered cash to the murderer hostage-takers of convicted pedophile Ian Watkins, the former frontman of lightly famous soft rock band Lost Prophets. 

Watkins, who is forty-six, is doing twenty-nine years at HMP Wakefield, one of the worst of Britain’s prisons, for crimes against kids so damn awful the sentencing judge said the case “broke new ground” and “plunged into new depths of depravity.” 

Thirteen child sex offences, the rape and sexual assault of a kid under thirteen, conspiring to rape a fan’s baby, three counts of sexual assault with kids, seven counts of making and possessing indecent photos of kids and one of possessing an “extreme pornographic image” involving a sex act on an animal. Yeah, oowee.

Anyway, Watkins is hovering on that fragile tight-rope between life and death after being held hostage for six hours by other inmates and subsequently beaten and stabbed on Saturday morn. 

When the story was tweeted, Cote, a father of two, responded, “Can you list the names of the guys that did this? I’d like to donate some money to their commissary as a thank you.” 

Can you list the names of the guys that did this? I’d like to donate some money to their commissary as a thank you.

— chriscote (@chriscoteshow) August 6, 2023

Vigilantism has a certain appeal, don’t it, a Clint Eastwood sorta feel where dumb laws can be bypassed if deemed ineffective, and where right-thinking citizens can dole out eye-for-eye punishments.

Of course, as the quote goes, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster”.

Greatest gal surfer ever attempts to roll 400k into 950k.

In one of the great sporting comeback stories last September, the ageing Australian champion Stephanie Gilmore sucked the juice out of the universe to win an eighth world title, bewildering her younger opponent in an all-day marathon at Lowers. 

It was the final piece in the mosaic that makes up Gilmore’s storied sixteen-year career, putting her ahead of Layne Beachley for most world titles ever and within shooting distance of Slater’s eleven. Unlikely, yeah, but weirder things have happened. 

Rightly, Gilmore has been showered in riches from sponsors and various endorsements and has, like most surfers who know the seven-figure cheques don’t last forever, has poured a chunk of her earnings into real estate plays. 

And, just listed by the champ herself, to hell with realtors taking their clip, is two-bed condo a few streets back from the Superbank; a breezy cream-brick north-facing joint that was built in the sixties for around nine hundred k Australian dollars or six hundred thou’ US. 

Ain’t no significant views but a five-minute walk’ll have you on the sand. 

On the second level of a biggish sixteen condo building and with a twin-car garage, Gilmore has hopes of turning her $392,500 purchase price (2006) into the nine hundred-plus.

Rates and body corp fees gonna cost almost ten k a year.

Gilmore, who’s thirty-five, is keeping her other condo in the place, which she bought for 442k in 2005. Mick Fanning bought into the building in 1999, paying $170,000 for a two-bedder. 

If she gets the nine hundred it’s a bullish price given the last time a condo in there sold was a three-bedder for $650 in 2021.