The Best Surfer in the World?

Would the ASP be better with Travers Adler on tour? I think so, especially if the cliche about the best surfer of a given line-up being the one having the most fun.

Eluceat Omnibus Lux

What do Borges, Dante, Mike Tyson, Ezra Pound, Lorin Stein, and deli meats have in common? They're all masturbatory fodder for my creative process. I pretty much pull my pants down and reveal all in this story...so enjoy!

Human Beings

This photo makes me wish I were a lion or grizzly bear, even a giraffe or rhino, a butterfly, a moth, a mole, a salmon, something, anything other than a human being.

So I guess Maria Menounos made a bet regarding Super Bowl XLVI. If her hometown team of the Patriots lost, she'd wear a Giants bikini in the middle of Times Square. If the Patriots won, her colleague A.J. Calloway would wear a Patriots cheerleader outfit. The fact that this is newsworthy, that it would somehow garner media space worth millions of dollars, makes me wish I were a crab scuttling across the floors of silent seas. There would be so much more dignity in that. If right-clicking such an image of Menounos and Mario Lopez has become an everyday part of the human condition, then we have clearly wasted our once-in-a-universe opportunity of genetically evolving from apes. I'd rather wank off from a tree and eat bugs.

P.S. Due to cropping you can't see in my pic that Menounos is also wearing Uggs to go with her bikini.

Thus Spoke Dane's Neckbeard

Worried about Dane Reynolds' burning out on magic markers and neck pubes? Many bemoaned his premature exit of the ASP World Tour, accusing him of excessive hipsterdom and brattiness. His Declaration of Independence raised genuine issues, but many read it as yet another ungrateful athlete unwilling to make certain lifestyle sacrifices, sacrifices that we mortals like to think we'd die for given such opportunity. Dane reminded us that he is human. We didn't want to hear this. Curren was never human. Slater is a downright god. We expected more of the supernatural with Reynolds. I was disappointed to hear of his ASP departure because let's face it, there's only a few guys on tour whose surfing talents are worth a day of sitting by your computer in anticipation of their next live-streaming heat. Reynolds' surfing is worth the 3 AM wake up time to watch him rip J Bay. Not many others are. However, Dane's heats were getting ugly. He'd score two nines in one heat and two twos in the next. People were getting upset with him, losing patience. We wanted to see him win an event. His blog was also suffering. He wasn't uploading as much quality surfing vids; instead, he was offering more and more second-rate hipster art. I was happy to see him leave tour if it meant better blogging. The last two videos, "singles. part3" and "singles. part 3. epilogue," filmed during the past few swells to hit California might consist of some of the best surfing I've ever seen. Dane is back to achieving godliness in these vids. Watch the ride at 2:07 of "part 3. epilogue." Dane is approaching video game surfing on this wave. ASP judges couldn't reward it with a number high enough. They'd have to give him a 100, which could then carry over to his scores in the next few events. So rest assure. Dane is off tour, and perhaps now he can relax and enjoy himself, and thus take his freakish talents to divine levels.
http://marinelayerproductions.com/

Mid Century

Honored to have a new story up at matchbook. Thanks to the editors!

watercolor by David Barnes

Surfing Alone at the End of the World

What it means to be alive.

Martin Potter, Wave Warriors III

Herbie Flether is the godfather, the Vito Corleone of modern surf films. Taylor Steele is Michael (trying to keep with the mafia sub-plot of Steele's mid-career hit The Show here). Steele gets most of the credit for post-modernizing surf films with his highly individualized, punked-out New School brand, but Fletcher was the first to deconstruct the old model of long-winded, spot-oriented (Padang Padang--so good they had to name it twice) documentaries with goofy voice-overs. Like Steele, Fletcher had a deep talent pool at his very fingers, son Christian and his friends Archie, Dino, and Justin Roberson. Without the aerials of Archie and Christian, without the progressive power surfing of Potter and Curren, the Poor Specimen generation could not exist. Wave Warriors III & IV, featured big airs and big tail-releasing turns. Slater, Dorian, Williams, and Machado took it from there. Steele packaged it for them.

One of my favorite sections of the Wave Warriors series was Potter's WWIII part. Fletcher's technique was to make everything "rad" as this was the motif of all things '80's. You can hear it in the voice-over and see it via Pottz' webbed gloves and the Oakley blades he's sporting. But check out the surfing! It still stands up today as absolute ripping! I am semi ashamed to admit that after watching this clip for the first time at fifteen, I had my dad drive me to Cal Surf so I could buy a pair of webbed gloves. While pumping down the line frontside with my Webbz, I'd even have the same shitty song in my head, imagining I was ripping as radly as Pottz.