Alarm in Kamala Harris camp after influential surfer Kelly Slater pictured with Donald Trump advisor Tulsi Gabbard

3 weeks ago

"It’s been such a long period of uninspiring world leadership and you are the antidote to the divisive, hateful, and often stupid clowns who manage power.”

After Donald Trump threw himself under multiple buses in a slow-witted performance against Kamala Harris in the first of three presidential debates, opinion was the notoriously press shy VP was on a hot run to victory in November.

Donald Trump’s star had flown into the stratosphere after an attempted assassination attempt in July amid the sudden and obvious decline of president Joe Biden, but a mean and incoherent performance in what should’ve been an easy kill has, as the saying goes, shifted the needle.

Prior to the debate, Trump had prepped with the ex-Dem presidential hopeful and the most famous surfer in American politics since Richard Nixon, Tulsi Gabbard.

Tulsi Gabbard’s political career began in 2002 when she was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives, becoming the youngest person ever elected at 21.

Gabbard later served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, deploying to Iraq and Kuwait, and became the first female combat vet in Congress after her election to the U.S. House of Reps in 2013.

She ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, advocating for peace and veterans’ rights, before leaving the Democratic Party in 2022 to become an independent, highlighting her disillusionment with party politics.

In August, Gabbard, a common sense centrist who supports native rights in the US, but ain’t afraid to call Islamic terrorism what it is, threw her political muscle behind Donald Trump, a move that highlighted, you’d think, the parlous state of the Dems if their most rational member is running for the hills.

If you’ve got a few miles on the clock you might even remember when Ain’t That Swell interviewed Tulsi five years ago,

In a DM to the then presidential hopeful, Vaughan Dead, he of the Herculean glands and with a cock like bulging pear that would make even the straightest stud want to pry the buttocks aside and nose his way into the puckered goal, wrote:

“We are huge believers in your vision for a better America and therefore a better world. It’s been such a long period of uninspiring world leadership and you are the antidote to the divisive, hateful, and often stupid clowns who currently manage power.”

Now, the world’s most influential surfer, Kelly Slater, has thrown pollsters a wild ol curveball by posing with Trump advisor Tulsi Gabbard outside Khalil Rafati’s world famous Sun Life Organics in Las Vegas where Kelly was attending UFC Noche.

Tulsi Gabbard, Kelly Slater and Khalil Rafati. — Tulsi Gabbard and Kelly Slater hang with heroin-to-champagne millionaire Khalil Rafati in Las Vegas.

What’s that mean for Camp Harris?

Will the late middle-aged surfer demographic in the US, which numbers into the millions, discard Harris and Walz and pair up behind the Trump-Gabbard ticket?

And where does that leave the man in the carpark?

If you swing left, has Kelly-Tulsi got you leaning a little righter than you might’ve?

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Navarro (left) and Farrell (right) surf fighting.

Surf fight breaks out onstage at Jane’s Addiction concert as songbird Perry Ferrell punches lead shredder Dave Navarro near face

By Chas Smith

3 weeks ago

Fast Times in Boston.

If there was one bit of news that cheered nostalgic Gen Xers, this year, it was the reunification of iconic alt band Jane’s Addiction. The band, formed in the mid-1980s and featuring Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins has had many ups and downs throughout the years. Breakups, reformations with different members, hiatuses etc. Then in May of this year, the clouds parted and all four originals made up and the aforementioned young bloods toasted Capri Suns while smiling broadly.

The Imminent Redemption Tour kicked off almost exactly one month ago in San Diego, California with a bang before swinging oddly around the United States until landing in Boston on ominous Friday the 13th.

And it was there, at the Leader Bank Pavilion, that a surf fight broke out onstage between the two most famous members of the band, songbird Farrell and lead shred Navarro.

Video of the incident features Farrell pacing back and forth across the stage like a caged animal, grunting at the audience before moving over to Navarro, giving him the classic surf shoulder check. Navarro absorbs it before raising a classic surf forearm to Farrell’s chest. Farrell responds by barking in Navarro’s face, classic surf, and throwing a poorly time off-the-mark classic surf punch that might land somewhere in Navarro’s chest.

The whole business was broken up by Avery, though the media is citing bad blood has been brewing for months, Variety reporting, “This emotional explosion — coming on the heels of some ‘off’ moments in other cities that have already been a subject of discussion in reviews and on social media — has some fans waiting to see whether the remaining gigs on the band’s long-awaited reunion tour, their first in 14 years, will proceed as scheduled.

All, and once again, classic surf.

But do you recall the time I surfed with Perry Farrell in North County, San Diego?

It was 10 years ago, now. The waves were small but fun, the water warm, the sun too hot. We bobbed next to each to each other waiting for set waves, which took forever to appear. He caught some lefts. I caught some lefts. I couldn’t see how good his backhand approach was (he is a regular foot) because I always waited for the better waves but I could see his head moving very very very slowly down the line. He rode a thick, too long egg. I rode my wife’s (and Dane Reynolds’) Neck Beard.

We did not fight but, afterward up near the showers, his wife yelled at their kids.

A possible sign of things to come.

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Longtime song and dance man Mark Occhilupo stars in Juju the Surf Musical with Jaleesa Vincent and Creed McTaggart, inset.

World champion surfer Mark Occhilupo stars in Jelly Vincent’s zeitgeist-busting musical for Billabong Women!

By Derek Rielly

3 weeks ago

Mark Occhilupo as evil corporate boss! Creed McTaggart as Queen of Night!

A few weeks back, while interrogating the film director Vaughan Blakey about an unfavourable review by the New York Times for his and Nick Pollet’s stop-motion epic The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe, he paused for amount and teasingly swerved into a far more exciting topic: a new surf-musical, made by Jaleesa Vincent for Billabong Women, and starring the surf stars Mark Occhilipo and Creed McTaggart.

“Soooo insanely jelly of Jelly’s surf musical, man!” said Vaughan,.

Jelly is Jaleesa Vincent, a long-limbed blonde goofy footer who is twenty-six and lives in a little town south of Coffs Harbour on Australia’s north coast.

If you’ve dived into Australia’s alternative surf scene, best exemplified by the wildly under appreciated Surfing World movie Scary Good, you’ll be acutely aware of the I Ching of Jaleesa Vincent.

She surfs, she dances, performs in a band called Cupid and the Stupids and does it all with a rare self-awareness – never ever takes herself seriously – that makes her one of the most marketable women in surfing.

The kid grew up in thrall of musicals like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Grease and, late last year, figured she and her partner Luka Raubenheimer could combine her loves, surfing, music, dancing, songwriting into one fabulous package.

The idea for Juju the Surf Musical came in December and by February this year Billabong had agreed to throw a little cash at it.

“The story line is,” says Jaleesa, “this receptionist called Juju (Jaleesa) who has a very unreasonable boss called Mark (Occhilupo), and she can’t stand working there anymore so she quits her job to go surfing.

“And then the unexpected twist happens. She’s taken to a world between worlds where she meets Creed of Darkness (Creed McTaggart). They go surfing together and he’s so impressed by a barrel Juju gets he gives her a white tooth from his mouth. The tooth takes her to a new realm where she meets the Queen of Lights (Josie Pendergast) and they go surfing in heavenly harmony in this beautiful world.

“The Queen of Lights sees the white tooth and pulls a black hair off her head and weaves it through the tooth. Once the necklace is placed on Juju, she comes back to life in the real world.”

The thirty-minute musical, says Jaleesa, plays on the ol yin and yang philosophy, light and dark forces, male and female, life and death, sign and moon, New York Times and Fox, BeachGrit and Stab.

Originally, it was gonna be a straight up quit-my-job-and-go-surfing musical but Jaleesa felt that was too mundane and wanted to hit a Lord of the Rings vibe.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: what the fuck?

To which I reply, loosen up the belt, live a little, bust into song.

Jaleesa Vincent belongs in that rapidly atrophying side of surf culture for whom surfing is a game to be played and laughed at and which includes Dane Reynolds, Vaughan Blakey, Noa Deane and Mason Ho.

She fights the good fight. A sunny Winston Churchill in a gathering cloud storm of Baby Stalins.

Juju the Surf Musical premieres in Byron, October 9, Noosa, October 11, Sydney, October 12 and Melbourne , October 18.

Ain’t no trailer yet, film is being colour graded so here’s a little hit of a song from the film called Wild Fire and performed by Ms Jaleesa Vincent.

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Raygun (left) Gravy (right).

Question: Is Ben Gravy the Raygun of surfing?

By Chas Smith

3 weeks ago

No. 1 in the world.

One of the lasting sensations of the 2024 summer Olympics, hosted gorgeously by Paris, is Rachael “Raygun” Gunn. The Australian breakdancer burst upon the scene thanks to a widely-shared performance in which she received zero points but won the attention of the entire world.

Now, typically Olympic stories are snuffed along with the torch, only to reappear as questions on trivia shows or four years later as footnotes in the next Olympics. Raygun, though, has busted the trend, memes continuing to populate various social medias, important interviews delivered to important outlets.

And now, mere days ago, it has been revealed that she is the number 1 breakdancer in the whole world as tabulated by the World Dance Sport Federation or WDSF.

Per The august New York Times:

The ranking is based on events over the past year, the federation explained. During that time, the majority of breakers were focused on qualifying for the Olympics.

But because they have limited fields with a small number of competitors, Olympic qualifying events and the Olympics themselves do not count toward the world rankings. Therefore, Raygun’s low-scoring performance at the Games did not hurt her ranking at all.

Further complicating the rankings, there were hardly any events in the last 52 weeks that weren’t Olympic qualifiers. The federation said that no official breaking events were held in 2024 before the Olympics, to allow “athletes to focus solely on the last part of their Olympic qualification without the added pressure of additional ranking events.”

So there you have it. David Lee Scales, in any case, brought up Raygun’s performance during our now twice weekly chat, today, in reference to a listener letter wondering if the Australian had succeeded in “breaking” dancing, as it were, likening it to Dave Parmenter famously paddling out at the 1988 Op Pro in Huntington on a longboard because the waves were so terrible.

An act of rebellion.

I argued that Raygun was not rebelling but had, through fate and weirdness, unwittingly become the face of breakdancing. Ma and Pa at the store having never watched, nor thought about, breakdancing before knowing her name, her moves, maybe even her current number 1 status as it has been reported everywhere, including The august New York Times. No, she ain’t Parmenter, she’s Ben Gravy. The beloved New Jersey novelty wave enthusiast who certainly has a bigger following than almost all professional surfers, especially amongst people who have never cared nor thought about surfing. He fills large movie theaters with his special blend of everyman and stoke. A hero wide and far.

Do you disagree? Well then who would you nominate as surfing’s Raygun?

Enjoy the episode, in its entirety, here.

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Ivanka Trump (pictured) squatting. Photo: Instagram

Fox-owned website declares powerlifting Ivanka Trump training to “surf some serious waves in the near future”

By Chas Smith

3 weeks ago

Calling Nathan Florence.

The great United States presidential election of 2024 is still two-ish months away but are you thrilling at every turn, every bob and weave, in this reality program? Did you, for example, watch the debate? Opinions on the back and forth? While you’re thinking, it must be reported, here, that a Fox-owned website has reported that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is in training for big wave winter surfing.

After new clips surfaced of the former first daughter doing some squats, the culture and sport portal opined:

Over the last couple of summers, Donald’s daughter with Ivana has spent time behind boats and at surf experiences like the Flow Rider surf simulator in the Bahamas, but we haven’t seen her on the real deal. The back squatting workout might be an indication that we might be seeing Ivanka tackle some serious waves in the near future. Name another daughter of a President who is or was this athletic.

Before you get to naming another daughter of a president who is or was this athletic, it must be wondered. Is Ivanka’s weight training inspired by notable big wave surfer, and powerlifter, Nathan Florence? It must be thought “yes” and, following logic, must then be thought that Ms. Kushner is not just training to tackle big waves but, as actually referenced in the piece, serious ones.

Slabs.

This all might seem pure conjecture except, again, the source is Fox which has a very unique relationship with the Trump family and would not actively spread disinformation or “fake news.”

All to say, Ivanka Trump likely to join Florence Marine X.

Thrilling days.

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