Feel the divine nature of surfing fill your
bones…
This relatively long-form cut of the child prodigy
Jackson Dorian, who enjoyed his thirteenth birthday in September,
was shot, mostly, and edited by his daddy, Shane Dorian, a
former world number four.
In this video, forty-seven-year-old Shane toggles between surf
footage and scenics as the little family travels
through Australia, Indonesia, the Maldives and Mexico with a
fitting exhibition and climax of wave jumping at the pool in Waco,
Texas.
Given the age of the film’s protagonist, expect little in the
way of sadistic gore and lurid sex, but do expect to feel a sudden,
desperate urge to grab your surfboard and dive headlong into the
ocean.
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Big Daddy Ho, sixty-two, the California-born
son of a Waikiki Beach Boy. Surfing since he was three, bringing
the electricity into his boy Mason and his lil girl Coco.
Watch: Big Daddy Ho and chillun in “Hush up
your blasphemin’, Lucifer, and let me loose!”
Sixty-two-year-old former pro Mike, and his kids,
Mason and Coco, sweep away the debris in any lineup…
Yeah, I know, y’seen plenty of Mason and Coco and
Daddy Ho zipping through traffic on the North Shore.
Six days ago, it was at Pipe, watch here, today
it’s at that locals-only wedge with the roll-in takeoff just north
of Sunset and that no man, especially no white man,
dare say its name.
(In stage whisper, Velzyland…)
I would recommend viewing of this four-minute short for several
reasons. One, the crossovers between Mason and Mike, and which are
recorded from the land and from Mason’s flotilla of GoPro POV
units, the Mick Jagger-like pomp in Coco’s flashy surfing (did you
know Coco is working with Jagger in New York?), Mason’s trigger
finger popping hither and yon and the miracle of a man in his
harvest years, sixty-two, still exhibiting the daily
conditioned skills that long ago almost swept him into contention
for a world title.
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Mike Feb, an explosion of warmth and good
will.
Watch: Mike February in “This surfboard
ain’t got no wrong notes!”
Lines are as perfect as a rapt baby rocking gently
on a swing…
Two months ago, the surf writer Mr James Brisick,
sometimes of Malibu, sometimes NYC’s lower east side, wrote a story
for TheNew Yorker that read, in part,
“(Mike Feb’s) hand jive, soul arches, and toreador-like
flourishes play to the camera in a way that breaks the spell of the
itinerant surfer in far-flung solitude. His style is as
self-conscious as the duck-face selfie.”
I think, correct when Mike’s on a throw-back craft because what
else is there to do except go straight and be sexy, but, as you can
see below, on a regular board, in this case a CI Happy, his lines
are as perfect as a rapt baby rocking gently on a swing and as hard
to argue with as a Saint Bernard dog guarding his master’s
bicycle.
Mike’s surfboard, if you care about such things, which I do,
measures five feet and eleven inches long, nineteen and
three-sixteenths inches wide and is two and three-eighths inches
thick for a grand total of twenty-nine litres.
Daddy Mike and little girl Coco. “I was ‘fun
dad,’” Mike says. “I’m like, ‘Surf is good, let’s go surfing. Okay,
no school today.’ Yeah, I was bad. I was a bad, fun dad.”
Watch: Mason, Dez, Coco and Mike Ho in “You
know I can’t hear you when I’m in the tube!”
Your favourite vagabonds, in the one spot, at the
one time!
Looking out, open-mouthed, at very square tubes at
Pipeline and Mason and Coco and Uncle Dez and Daddy Mike trading
sets, well, it reminds me I’ll never be anything more than a
vibration rather than a solid.
In this five-minute edit by (the fabulous) Rory Pringle, Lachlan
Peanut Mckinnon, Chaddy Witz, Andrew Schoener and Justin Rutherford
and scored to a Hendrix soundtrack from Mason’s mammy, Brian (yeah,
yeah, it ain’t a traditional name for a woman), we see the fam
treading a familiar pasture.
A little history of the Ho’s, if it’s necessary. Mike Ho, with
his Chinese-Hawaiian-American heritage, was 30 years old and on his
last tour circuit when his girl, Brian, a Caucasian American,
became pregnant.
Mike’s dad was pure Chinese. His grandmother pure Hawaiian.
Mike’s mom, Mason’s paternal grandma, was from Oregon. The brother
of one of Mike’s good friends was named Mason. Mike dug it. He
threw a little Hawaiian in there, Kaohelaulii, a middle name that’s
been carried by the Hos since Mason’s paternal grandfather. It
means: “New little bamboo shoot coming out from the old. It bends
and it’s hard to break,” says Mike.
Mike had bought land up there at Backyards, Sunset, and a small
house was constructed. The marriage broke up after the birth of
Mason’s sister Coco, two years later. And soon, the jokester and
former-pro surfer was in the serious biz of being a single parent
to two kids.
“I was ‘fun dad,’” Mike says. “I’m like, ‘Surf is good, let’s go
surfing. Okay, no school today.’ Yeah, I was bad. I was a bad, fun
dad.”
Unless it was Pipe. “‘Go to school. Dad’s going to surf Pipe
today.’”
Mike plays it down though.
It ain’t easy when the spigot of cash from pro surfing is off
and you’re thirty-something-years-old and your marriage is done.
But, says, Dino Andino, “No matter how hard it got, no matter what
he was going through, or doing, he always had ’em to school on
time, dressed and fed. He never faltered. Ever. Mike Ho is an
awesome, awesome dad.”
And, look at ’em now, all meticulously walking the Pipe
tightrope.
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Whatever you think of wave tanks, y'gotta
admit, this is about as dreamy as a lineup gets. And it's
Bristol.
Bristol wavepool: Watch Kanoa Igarashi and
Travis Rice in “Robust enjoyment at a very expensive
sanitorium!”
A new angle on the British Wavegarden tank. Better,
worse, than you might imagine.
After eight months of cold labour in the English city of
Bristol, one of the better cities in a country populated by people
with fish smell on their breath, hideous raven hair and guinea pig
faces, we have The Wave.
Recently, the Red Bull surf team, which includes Japan’s Kanoa
Igarashi, had a day negotiating the artificial seaside and The
Wave’s glistening trajectories.
A cameo from Travis Rice, the champion snowboarder, is welcome
for it gives the everyman a feel for what he’ll be able to manage
on the two-foot waves.
The backwash and onshore winds are perhaps not quite so
appreciated.
Suggestion: If you’re booking a session at a pool, get the first
wave. Always the best.
