"It takes skill to become an adult by skating along and never dedicating your time and energy into a specific career."

The go-for-broke Bakersfield surfer Dane Reynolds has released his latest riposte to conventional lifestyles, the sort pushed by the fundamentalist Protestant right and red-hatters, with the edit “We did a great job of doing nothing.”

“Matt and I were surfing Emma Wood – if you call it that… Anyone else feel California has dipped into a deep dark black hole that won’t allow any decent waves to reach the coast?” writes Dane Reynolds.

“Anyways, we were shooting the shit about how impressive it is that one of our dear friends had gotten to where he’s at in life without actually doing anything. It’s very impressive. It takes a certain skill to become an adult by skating along, never applying yourself or dedicating your time and energy into a specific career but somehow he comes out on top time after time.”

Dane Reynolds continues:

“‘Did a great job of doing nothing’ stuck. It’s used to describe a daily grovel that you can barely even call exercise, or a day in the shop when nothings working, ruining screens, staining clothes, no customers, spam calls, broken printer… those times when you just seem to be spinning your wheels.

“I found a stack of black and white prints at the swap meet taken by a racing enthusiast. One of em was of a Buick Regal spinning its wheels before a race and it clicked. That’s the name of the film. ‘We did a great job, of doing nothing’”

Dane Reynolds is the master of the razor-sharp riposte.

One year ago, almost to the day, came his riposte to what he described as the WSL’s “pandering bullshit.”

As always with the almost forty-year-old daddy of three, essential.

While other surfers are shaken like dolls in the big waves, Mason Ho coolly slips into the twenty-footers as if he were putting on a pair of silk pyjamas.

In this short film by Mason Ho’s faithful film jockey Riordan Pringle, we find his master madly jack-knifing multiple sets at Waimea Bay during last week’s Black Friday swell.

Mason Ho coolly slips into the the twenty-foot waves as if he were putting on a pair of silk pyjamas and pillow-propping himself against the headboard of his upholstered Californian king and glancing at the winking diamond face of his Patek Philippe.

Other surfers are less lucky, shaken like dolls, heads banged against the water until their eyes cloud.

Mason Ho is delivered to the famous Bay by his daddy Michael Ho, “one of the world’s best tuberiders in the mid- and late ’70s (he helped invent the “pigdog” tuberiding technique)”, although Daddy Ho decides discretion is the better part of valour and decides not to attend the crowded lineup.

If you want to see sixty-seven-year-old Michael Ho at his indestructible best click here. First wave, hands behind the back set at Backdoor cut to Black Magic Women, Santana. Epic.

But, back to Mason Ho.

“The way his brain works is a lot different than any of my other friends,” says Kolohe Andino. “It’s refreshing to hang out with him, and get him talking about something. It’s like he’s a complete innocent. My friends and I might get eggy about something, but I’ve never heard him bum out. He gives me some of the best vibes I’ve ever felt.”

Kelly Slater says that Mason Ho is “so psyched and happy sometimes I think he’s putting it on, and messing with everyone. But he’s always just that way. He’s a cross between in-control and in-awe at all times.”

Mason Ho has a safety word he uses if the situation ever gets sticky. “When shit gets bad,” he says, “I think of this one word, imua. And, it means, ‘to move forward.’ It’s an ancient Hawaiian saying. They’d use it right before they went to war, or begin a march. When I’m down, I yell that out instead of ‘Fuck!’ I yell, ‘Imua!’ I mean, I don’t if there’re people around. That would be corny. I ain’t a hundred percent Hawaiian, but it feels good to think about it.”

After the session Mason Ho sits in the tray of Daddy Ho’s pickup, wide-chest still dewy with Pacific Ocean, heaving smoothly.

Essential.