Culturewash too!

Surf fans have had trouble sleeping for the past two nights after the World Surf League announcement that it would be hosting a Championship Tour stop in Abu Dhabi. The petro-kingdom, a manmade wonderland featuring islands shaped like palm trees, indoor skiing facilities and gleaming towers lovingly built by the hands of Pakistani slaves now also stars a Kelly Slater surf pool producing the “longest barrel in the world” while precious desalinized water romantically evaporates into the hazy Arabian sky.

I have done multiple tours of the fine United Arab Emirates, first going in 2002 after spending three months in Yemen, even wakeboarding on the Persian/Arabian Gulf. A gorgeous slick of oil making a rainbow on the water’s surface.

Alas, it is the only sort of rainbow allowed as same sex relationships are criminalized and it doesn’t really rain.

Which brings us back to our World Surf League. The “global home of surfing” has positioned itself as the most environmentally forward organizations on earth what with professional surfers planting a shrub in Western Australia and others planting a coral in Tahiti. The World Surf League’s One Ocean initiative, for example, promises to focus on “WSL priorities of coastal restoration and conservation, eliminating plastic and taking climate action.”

Huzzah.

The League is also at the bleeding edge of equity, groundbreakingly supporting LGBTQIA+ surfer Tyler Wright in “using her platform as a World Champion to express a message of inclusivity” by affixing the Pride flag to her singlet. “We believe surfing is for everyone and are incredibly proud of our athletes,” the statement continued.

How, then, the World Surf League will greenwash and culturewash the Abu Dhabi Pro the most exciting bit of moral gymnastics since Sarah Jessica Parker and besties graced the desert.

You go, girl.

Trigger warning: if you are weener adverse, then perhaps this article is not for you.

I have seen The Greatest Surf Movie In The Universe (hereinafter “TGSMITU”), alone, and in a completely empty theater (though I’m still planning on the La Paloma screening this Saturday evening and giving out free hugs).

Lest that description sound a little Paul Reubens, the circumcises…ahem…circumstances, of my decision to see this movie by myself must placed within their context before I penetrate into the substance of my review. Trigger warning: if you are weener adverse, then perhaps this article is not for you.

I got out of the water this morning after a rather shit surf and was approached by an alarmingly strung-out Pier Bowl vagrant whilst I was the middle of changing with only a towel around my waist. This gentleman presented me with a half-eaten bag of beef jerky, told me that he’d bought the whole thing for $12, but that he’d sell it to me for $5.

Having no desire for fentanyl-laced jerky or to part with $5 USD (that’s like, $30 AUS for you bogans), I replied that I had no cash on me and prepared for the possibility that I’d either need to retreat or defend myself with my weener flopping about in the event my response would make this guy snap (my plan was to throw the towel at his head in that event). His eyes narrowed menacingly, he took one small, aggressive step in my direction, feigned a laugh, and moved on.

In light of my near-run brush with naked combat, and given my weekend plans to see movie that prominently features weeners (i.e., TGSMITU), it occurred to me that there have been some pretty epic weener fights in cinema history. The viking movie The Northman comes to mind as the most recent example of this, though I was disappointed to learn that Alexander Skarsgard’s hog was never actually filmed and said appendage was added in post with CGI (I would absolutely put “weener CGI” as a skill on my resume were I part of that special effects team). Eastern Promises is a film where Viggo Mortensen (a.k.a. Aragorn) fights naked in a shower with a very real, non-CGI weener on prominent display. In the comedy department, Ken Jeong’s modest package features rather immodestly in a fight scene in The Hangover.

Having seen TGSMITU, however, I can decidedly say that this film has upped the ante in the cinematic weener combat department to unprecedented levels. More on that later.

Back to my morning, though I had already made plans to see TGSMITU in Encinitas the following evening, I couldn’t help but weener…ahem…wonder, how much of a USA-based distribution this film actually has. To my surprise, not only was TGSMITU screening at the AMC Theaters at the Block in Orange, the first show was started at 10:10 a.m. in roughly an hour. This was not an opportunity to be missed.

Though I expected the theater to be packed with dozens of passionate Brazilian surf fans, I found myself the only patron in the entire theater. That being said, there is (spoiler alert) not a single Brazzo featured in TGSMITU. It is therefore little wonder why they did not show up despite commanding the Californian numbers to constitute half of the fans present at every WSL Lowers Finals Day since that dumb format was established. Pedro Scooby and/or Ricardo Toledo clearly had a hand in this boycott.

And though I was utterly alone watching a surf movie like some miserable, lonely hermit, I enjoyed TGSMITU immensely. The stop motion animation came across far better than expected. The voice acting of the surfers was decidedly sharp and edited smartly to great comedic effect. Above all, there was only about 10 minutes of actual surfing in the film, which made me realize something about a full-length surf movie lasting over an hour—an endless string of clips gets really boring really quickly.

Perhaps TGSMITU’s crowning achievement, though, is the weener fight at the climax of the movie. In this instance, it is not merely stop motion animation of naked dolls fighting each other—the weeners themselves are the weapons. The fight choreography in that regard is also martially sound were one to assume that a weener could be implemented as a weapon of self-defense. There are weener thrusts, weener slashes, and weener parries that might otherwise be mistaken for a machete fight. And though most real weeners would obviously be incapable of such violence, it has made me seriously consider obtaining a sturdy dildo for home defense purposes.

The Hobbit Hemsworth is also delightful as the narrator, clearly having fun with his deadpan delivery. Even the otherwise annoying voice of Joe Turpel is used deftly within the comedic framework. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard sitting all by myself since watching breakdancing in the Olympics last week.

Is this a movie that a non-surfer would find funny or even come close to understanding? Certainly not. Is this a movie that a casual surfer unfamiliar with the WSL and the world of professional surfing would appreciate? Not really. But would your average, below-the line BeachGrit denizen enjoy this movie? Absolutely.

Above all, TGSMITU is a surf movie that practically demands to be seen in a theater, whether you are sitting there by yourself, or within a packed theater with grown men insisting on giving out free hugs.

Either way, just don’t expect the Brazzos to show up.

Kick rocks, Caity Simmers.

Shockwaves, this morning, through publishing as Surfer Magazine has returned to print with the bold declaration that surfing, today, is most wholly represented by a 53-year-old white man. The “Sport of Kings” is oft criticized for being retrograde and cloistered, though a shift toward progression is certainly underway. The women’s wild learning curve at waves like Pipeline and Teahupoo, for example, names like Caity Simmers and Vahine Fierro etched into history.

Or Morocco’s Ramzi Boukhaim flashing brave brilliance and earning worldwide respect. Maybe Australia’s Sasha Jane Lowerson cross-stepping right into the now.

Etc.

But no, the AI-enhanced editor-in-chief “Jake Howard,” crunched data and determined that the best visual representation of what surfing is, at this historical moment, is Kelly Slater.

Surfer, you will recall, died a miserable death at the hands of the National Enquirer’s David Pecker some handful of years back. Its corpse dumped in a shallow pit. Grave robbers calling themselves “The Arena Group” came under shadow of darkness, scooped the bones into a wheelbarrow, hustled back to a murky office building and re-animated the rot with AI. Soon, “Emily Morgan” was “writing” about Surf Lakes from Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains.

After getting in big trouble for dressing bots as people, Surfer hired the aforementioned overlord, “Howard,” who almost presents as a real boy, and then announced it would return to print.

The question “What is surfing today?” hovering in the upper lefthand corner of the first Arena Group issue cover answered by the 55-year-old Slater crouching in tube then gracing readers with a lengthy interview where he lets slip “The sporting side of surfing is just a small aspect for the average person, if at all. You have 20 million people around the world surfing, maybe tens of millions more than that, and the sporting side is non-existent for almost every one of those people.”

Korbel bottles popping, cigars lit in Surfer’s various home offices, toasting bold vision and wild trend forecasting.

Welcome to the bleeding edge.

Cowboy hat into the five rings.

The ’24 Paris Games is just barely in the rearview, the joys still reverberating across valleys, around mountains and over oceans. Surfing’s second Olympic offering, conducted in French Polynesia, was a mixed bag. An iconic image of Gabriel Medina going viral and a day so big and terrifying that the King of Teahupoo Filipe Toledo became too scared to paddle, on one hand. Small, inconsistent, lully days, on the other hand.

At the end, the other hand seemed to have a firmer grip with such stalwarts as JP Currie claiming that if surfing is to, indeed, have any Olympic future, the only real option is to throw it into a tank where

To wit, an impeccable source has shared that Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch has thrown its cowboy hat into the ring to host the surfing shortboard portion of LA ’28.

The plow, some 200 miles up the 5 freeway from Los Angeles in the middle of an industrial farming hellscape, is not the palm tree’d postcard Southern California beach scene

Thoughts?

I have a solid feeling that Huntington Beach will win, at the end, even though brave LGBTQ+ Olympic hopefuls will be very discouraged. Surf City, USA didn’t come by the moniker lightly, flashing teeth and biting Santa Cruz hard in order to win the dub. Lemoore, I’d imagine, would experience a greater grape of wrath.

Back to Olympic surfing, though. If Huntington doesn’t snuff the flame right out, do you think Brisbane ’32 will re-ignite it bigly?

Mick Fanning coming out of retirement to ride for the Southern Cross?

David Lee Scales and I did not discuss Mick Fanning, specifically, during our weekly chat, but did get into a savage Layne Beachley story. You must hear to believe.