Respect

Well, someone finally did it...

This Week In Not Surfing

Two Things:

1)

Serial - It seems all my friends have been talking about it, or at least enough to make me feel like they've all been talking about it. And yes, it is worth it. As wifey puts it: this is "The Wire" of radio. More on this sort of topic here...

2)

 

Today's Other Thought

Happening : Patagonia, Wax & Surfers Healing

WAX and Patagonia Bowery are proud to present The Bowery Project to benefit Surfers Healing, part of an annual benefit auction to raise funds for the Surfers Healing Foundation. This is the seventh year for the event, which features an auction of fourteen surfboards with artwork by world-renouned artists and designers.

PATAGONIA BOWERY
313 Bowery, New York, NY 10003
Nov 19 – Dec 31

ONLINE AUCTION

Today's Thought

Click le pic.

This Exists.

Today's Thought

Today's Thought

The IndieGoGo project.

This Week In Not Surfing.

There was surfing in New York this week! And I didn't surf.

But Veterans Day! Of course the big story with that is that once more "the man" came down hard on a bunch of good people just trying to do right. Not the "man" who wouldn't let good Christian folk hand out food to homeless in Texas. No, the "man" who wouldn't let good Surfer folk celebrate the sacrifices of members of our armed services. Here at the Endless Bummer Surf Blog About Not Surfing, we like to call a spade a spade and call out the bizarre Police culture that insecurely fosters impunity, but in this instance I have to just feel a little bad for the unthinking automaton captured in that infamous picture posted on many social media streams. I mean, the guy was likely just following some sort of dumb ass set of rules, and probably enforcing them in the dumbest ass way he possibly could, but still, rules are rules and we pay these people to make sure many good rules are enforced. Like not littering. And not burning shit that shouldn't be burned. And not murdering people. Again it comes down to a cultural weakness. That beach park cop guy is employed specifically to make sure the state doesn't get sued for something. That sort of fear based decision making from the top just trickles down to the basic active DNA of the system. Like the cop culture of being bullies. So... beach park patrolmen are lame.

The internet is often lauded for making the world smaller, for bringing people together. The sad thing is that the internet fosters fads of hatred and recrimination with such facility it repeatedly makes space a touch too small, reducing any natural margin for error.

The medium is the message sometimes I guess. And that poor guy was just at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong message. And of course in one's moment of making a tremendously bad decision one's worst enemy is the internet.


So a couple weeks ago I got to peripherally partake in a podcast with Ty Breuer, an experience I immediately flagged as intrinsically "fun." Being the troglodyte I am, I am far behind in the podcast craze, but there's never a time too late. Today I made my first go at recording a podcast and hope to repeat it as often as possible. More importantly, I've been talking to Ty Breuer about him starting a podcast, which will be far more successful, especially in a surfy sense, than anything you'll hear here. But that shouldn't stop me from having a good time failing.

(I strongly recommend, no urge, you to wear headphones and to set aside a menial, brainless task that will take roughly one hour and thirty seven minutes and doesn't create too much incidental sound.)



In other news, the tattoo on my arm just got even better.

Happening

Save The Waves Recap And Foreshadow

While I could only stay for a moment thanks to some pressing personal concerns, by all accounts pinging back the hoi polloi, the Save The Waves event was inspirational. It heads next to San Francisco where there will be a "Bear" themed composting bin manned by a concertedly accrued smiling multicultural crowd of neoecofascists, which may or may not be more inviting than the faux tin can recycling station manned by surly Dominican lesbian lumbersexuals we served up at the door in Brooklyn. (Cue poorly recorded laugh track with that one guy with the horsey guffaw.) But... if you're looking for a good time and a worthy cause next week, you could do far worse Giants fans.

Happening : Tomorrow Night : Save The Waves Film Fest

Check out the lineup here...

Get your tickets here...

The Lentini Files

Lentini has been sending me the love, but I've been missing out on putting it all up for you. Here, from one of the most interesting people I know, is a quick blast of things he pays attention to. Things I generally do not, making him something even more extra important in my life.

 

And finally, this from Vice.

Dia De Los Veteranos

We have been working on a project at Picture Farm for the last year. It is in production and a wonderful journey. Click the pick.

Respect

 

This Week In Not Surfing

We here at the Endless Bummer Surf Blog of Not Surfing And When We Do Surf, Quite Disappointingly have finally entered the 21st Century. It was not enough to blog, vlog, tweet, face and insta. No, now we can nyc. Or dotnyc. Or EndlessBummer.nyc. That's right, we've invested our hard earned monopoly money in a coveted .nyc hashtag dotcom domain. All so that you, who already know exactly where we are, can find us even easier.  This in the face of not surfing for another week. Take that landlubbers!

In other news... the guy with ebola doesn't have ebola anymore. But you wouldn't know because the news cycle has passed on the whole topic. Ebola simply isn't grabbing the ratings numbers it was a few days ago. I think we might be back to the "so called" Isis now. At some point a gunman shooting up the Canadian parliament was trending, but I think we moved on from that to the utter demise of sensible, bicameral political processes.

This sort of scrupulously capricious approach to journalism reminds me of only one thing; this uncanny ability to flit between irrational peaks and desperate valleys with such startling consistency and yet with such inscrutable pell mell draws only one conclusion; there is only one other place I see these sorts of gesticulating patterns: the roller coaster called "me."

It is here and now then, typing these very words, that I finally see the apotheosis of the human condition and the we-are-all-one-living-organism kind of mumbo jumbo theory coming into full light. This slap dash, incoherent and slavish adherence to such formally erratic behavior is the last and final proof that we are all one with the cosmos, baby. If libraries be our accumulated aggregate intelligence, then cable news is our wildly pulsating collective emotional response.

The Coopers Beach Cam Has Sound

Click the pic for relaxation. (Via Troastie)

Happening : RAW at PF Gallery, Friday the 7th of November

Respect

Manitas de Plata

Bummer

That last bit, 3+ minutes in? The part where Colbert goes on that "you're mamma's so fat" rant? That's how I feel about all this.

One can simply not take a wait and see-let's all hope-we'll get them next time-long view approach to the environment. Not that we had it good before. But shit, a bunch of climate change denying know-nothings. Blech.

Read more here.

Today's Deep Thought with Rick Rubin

And this:

Notes From A Surf Mag

Images from a fashion magazine found on a bench at a surf themed breakfast takeaway this morning.

Saskia Koerner : Girls Of Rincon

Another moment of New York weirdness: trying to sort out hanging our next show at the PF Gallery last night, I am in deep discussion with the curator's printer-cum-right-hand-fixer when she suddenly asks about the boards in the hall. Turns out we have a fair bit of shared history and a hankering to paddle out.

Here is a collection I found on her website, enjoy.

Respect

Sunday Styles

New York has always been the greedy melting pot, scouring the high brow and low brow then throwing the resulting cull into a mash for inspiration. Lately however, it seems the city has hit upon a new source of creative juice: the middle brow. This descent, mirroring roughly the ascendency of a broader cultural surf lifestyle fetishistic hagiography, has hit many as, well, unfortunate.  

As quoted from the "Vows" section of the "Wedding" section in the "Style" section:

The artist Steve Miller’s Snake on White, a swallowtail dual-fin surfboard that he has hand-painted, is a piece of art that can lean against a wall or be hung on one — out of season — and be pressed into service when the surf beckons; $5,000 from the Longhouse Reserve INstore, longhouse.org 631-329-3568.

And then there's this... 

It's Taylor Swift's City Now

This Week In Not Surfing

I once took part as a panel member in a round table symposium discussion convention workshop dinner salon kind of thing. A bunch of people from an assortment of professions showed up who wanted to switch their career into my profession and it was my job along with a couple other "experts" to talk about what my industry might hold for them. At one point the topic of favorite storyteller was put to us. This was right around the time Lou Reed died and we had just finished naming our dog Lou Reed out of respect so when it got to to me I felt obliged to give some other storyteller a nod. I awkwardly offered up Garrison Keillor to a very perceptible collective groan. But if there is a fact that remains, it's the fact that his brand of oddly wholesome folksy comedy variety schtick hits me pretty square. Last night's broadcast was actually the "joke" episode and it had me privately yucking it up as I drove over to pick the boy up from a play date. You can listen to it here. But save your groans, I won't hear them.

It feels like the comedy industrial complex is a very particular thing. At this point the accepted recipe seems to be a loose mix of pithy cultural commentary + awkward personal exhibitionism + ribald exposition. There is a perceived need to flit about at the edge of taste just to take the bite out of how terribly uncomfortable contemporary social interaction is. It tends to put a hyperbolic sheen on normal things, sliding quotidian juxtaposition into bits about flakey conflict. And it works, the comedian's mind is a special entertainment. Last night, just before my Prairie Home Companion corn-fest, Ty Breuer popped by the gallery with a couple surfer/comedians in tow to record a podcast called the Kooks of Komedy, a kind of a free flowing conversation about surfing from a slightly less rigid mental place. There are some Ty Breuer plums in there as the conversation (after a couple of Bronx Brewery superbeers) started to veer toward the well worked blue path of contemporary comedy. It's easy to get into a rhythm of that personal-pith-exhibition-awkwardness when the cause arises, and it arose. The episode will be broadcast at that link sometime tonight or tomorrow I think.

The other reason I mention it, besides my nominal participation and the podcast's innate worthiness, is that you'll find a surf recap from yesterday's pre-Victory At Sea session. A paddle out I was again not part of. For the third straight week.

Harold Rosenberg once talked about the "herd of independent minds" a taxon Doc Paskowitz is certainly not part of. While death is almost definitionally a non-startling concept, it is perhaps the classic case study in cognitive dissonance. Perhaps it is that we are surprised by our own surprise that causes such surprise. A reflective gasp at the emotional leadership in our brain. Whatever way, here is a guy who does things his way and you can't help but celebrate the earnestness of his life's unique and startling endeavor.

I, on the other hand, realized this week that I like Ringo's songs the best. As Wifey puts it: Paul was an annoying goody two shoes, George had anger issues and John was a flake. Or as Ben put it: "well, having grown up with it, there was moment I realized their songwriting is fundamentally dodgy."

Today is the New York Marathon, a bizarrely affirming spectator event. If you are here, you should go to there.

Here is a preview.


The Kooks of Komedy podcast...