"I can’t say that I was terribly surprised..."

Four weeks ago, the surf world fell into deep mourning as it was revealed that Matthew Perry had drowned. The beloved Friend had, just months previously, run afoul of the aforementioned watery group after he wished Keanu Reeves dead in his acclaimed memoir. “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die,” he penned “but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?”

Surf fans, of course, venerate Reeves as a saint after his portrayal of Johnny Utah in Point Break, which remains one of the best surf movie ever made and were ready to march upon Perry’s Pacific Palisades home with pitchforks. The 54-year-old quickly realized his error and apologized to Reeves, declaring he would remove the line from forthcoming editions of his book.

The surf world breathing a sigh of relief.

Now, the other best surf movie ever made is certainly Fast Times at Ridgemont High which brought to us Jeff Spicoli marvelously portrayed by Sean Penn. The star turn, really, created the surfer stereotype which has survived until this day.

Penn recently sat down with Piers Morgan and reflected on Matthew Perry, saying, “What a talented guy. I can’t claim to have known him well, but I liked him very much.” He then went on to praise him for his book, the people it would help etc. before adding, “It’s tragic, I can’t say that I was terribly surprised. I don’t know what the whole coroner’s report things and everything, but I know he had done a lot of damage to his organs over the years.”

Surf wisdom, I suppose, and it certainly is interesting that Matthew Perry had direct ties to the two greatest surf actors in the last days of his life.

More reasons to love and cherish.

700 years of data, over a billion waves, 1 OMG.

To be honest, I don’t know if Laird Hamilton actually surfs big waves any more but he sure used to. King Poseidon taming the wild seas with quadriceps the size of watermelons, abs like a washboard, a jaw made from an old timey lantern. Who could ever forget his OMG Teahupo’o wave?

OMG.

Now, that I think about it, I only really remember him surfing big waves during his strapped years. Jaws etc. Though was that him or Derick Dorner or that other guy?

Well, back to the issue at hand, big waves and how to find them. In years past, hunting beasts required much knowledge of weather data and swell blah blah plus a premium subscription to forecasting site Surfline. Overnight, all that has vanished.

For scientists at the University of Copenhagen and University of Victoria have plugged 700 years worth of data about “freakishly large” rogue waves into the artificial intelligence machine and can know predict when, and where, they’re going to strike.

“Basically, it is just very bad luck when one of these giant waves hits. They are caused by a combination of many factors that, until now, have not been combined into a single risk estimate. In the study, we mapped the causal variables that create rogue waves and used artificial intelligence to gather them in a model which can calculate the probability of rogue wave formation,” scientist Dion Häfner told phys.org.

“Bad luck,” of course in the eye of the beholder. Shipping companies losing containers on the burly ocean etc.

Good luck if you are Laird Hamilton

“Our analysis demonstrates that abnormal waves occur all the time. In fact, we registered 100,000 waves in our dataset that can be defined as rogue waves. This is equivalent to around one monster wave occurring every day at any random location in the ocean. However, they aren’t all monster waves of extreme size,” explained other scientist Johannes Gemmrich.

One monster wave every day? This all really forces the question: what has Surfline been doing all this time?

Like, these Danish bros have plugged in over 1 billion waves to their algorithm and, as far as I can tell, make no money from premium subscribers.

WTF?

Let’s now turn our attention to Sam George discussing OMG.

The once lightly-esteemed boogie board now king of all craft?

Heroes are made, they say, not born but the adage is under scrutiny, today, as new evidence suggests six preteens and preteen-adjacents just foiled a mass drowning in Australia. Max Laird, Braith Davidson, George Griffin, Harrison Smee, Alex Norris, and Zach Marsden were getting their boogie on at Kiama Beach, a beautiful cove south of Sydney, when they heard screaming.

“My first thought was this can’t be happening,” 12-year-old George Griffin told ABC News. “It was 20 minutes after the lifeguards had packed up and we were just boogie boarding, so all six of us went over.”

They realized that two teenaged girls plus a mother and her three children and become caught in a vicious rip current that was pulling them out to sea.

Without thought for personal safety, the gang jumped into action, kicking out to the distressed. “I got to an 8, 9-year-old kid called Matt, and by the time I got to him he was completely under water, just his hand above the surface of the water, so I was pretty worried,” George continued. “It was shocking, but we just had to do what we could.”

The boys had actually been taking lifesaving classes at the local club and quickly reverted to training, saving all souls, boogie-ing them to the warm safety of land.

And if this isn’t yet another example of how the once lightly esteemed boogie has quietly become a force. I was in a local pizza spot, the other day, and a boogie video was playing on the overhead televisions. Absolute mad men belly flopping into the angriest slab monsters I have ever seen.

Completely transfixing.

Enjoy some here.

I wonder if the moment the boogie began its rebirth was when Kenny Powers kicked into a Florida lineup on one and terrorized the local surfers?

Hmmmm.