This Week In Not Surfing

1. There is this thing happening on other continents. Death and migration, wrapped up in a burrito of mismanagement of misbegotten mistakes. And there is anger. Justified anger with unjustified reactions. On every side. And this has extended to this continent where these sorts of mistakes are so common place and entrenched in our system of thought thanks to an earlier extension and an ensuing bizarre game of hubris riddled one-upmanship. People have gone mad. It is a mad mad world. And this is the biology of it. This is the evolutionary checks our planet desperately puts upon us in a continuous stream of last ditch efforts, setting of smoke fires and pointing at smoking guns to smoke us out, figuring in some sort of nonthoughtcosmic way that perhaps this time we'll get the message. And some do, maybe. I can't tell. I think some do. Some seem like they do. But you'd think the knowledge that grows into wisdom would be some kind of unignorable scorching white light of truth. You'd think something so true and real and unimpingable (their word not mine) would be simply too much of all these things to be dismissed. And yet this seems not to be the case. It's a real puzzler.

2. When will they figure out that Jose Mourinho's stale concoction of acridly defensive tactics and putridly negative psychological tricks is simply toxic. Its like an injection of steroids that inevitably make the joints weak and the balls small. I am not a schadenfreude filled person under nearly any circumstance. It is not part of my make up. But this part about Chelsea falling apart just tugs at those particular lonely, rigor-mortized heart strings inside.

3. I surfed this morning for the better bit of an hour. The better bit of just over an hour. Clean, lined up peelers in Long Beach Long Island New York State. Slipping into my wetsuit this morning the zipper pulled out of long standing treaty designed to ensure my warmth. It was a shock to see the whole thing in tatters after so many years of harmonious collaboration. I soldiered on of course, accepting the flushing rhythms of late November Atlantic seawater to keep my mind clear of unnecessary thoughts.

4. Thanksgiving this year was full of love and gratitude on a scale I have become accustomed to being surprised by. From EBNY to you, we hope you've had a great one. And if not, we hope the perspective is strong to know there's another one next year. And if you know for sure there won't be another one next year, we hope you are satisfied with the part you've played helping those around you enjoy a gentler ride in your presence.

Ah the memories...

This Week In Not Surfing

Today's Thought

Well Sabrina... Here You Go : View From A Blue Moon in NYC

"Proud to announce the first showing of John John Florence's new movie View From a Blue Moon will be at Unsoundsurf on Friday 11/13/2015 at 6pm. Good times , giveaways and much more don't miss it ....the movie is nuts."

  Unsound Surf

Today's Thought

Jair Bortoleto : Wisdom in the Lens

I don't know how many Brazilians read this dumpy rag of a blog, but if you are of that persuasion, and around Santos in November, and want the brush up from a great photographer... this is your spot.

Petty-o-Rama

It's Dean Petty hour on the internet! I ran into him coincidentally in Halifax in August. He was standing behind his coffee counter minding his own business when I recognized him from his stint putting Zak Bush's photos up on the walls of the gallery.

He was nice the first time, nicer the second time and extra nice the third time when he loaned me a board and pointed me in the right direction just in front of his hand built house.

Click the pic for his recent turn for Outernknown and the triangle below for a bit of moving image and sound.

15 minutes of fame look good on him.

This Week In Not Surfing

1. A handful of days ago I met an old friend for a drink, awkwardly. I hadn't seen him in a few years and once he was maintained the locus of a good part of my social life, a role that benefitted his need for an entourage with whom to surround himself and mine a group within which to fit. It was an odd meeting. I went into it with the same sort of intellectual shrug of the shoulders I adopt when trying watermelon for the umpteenth time, a rite of summer passage that always ends in failure. Or I suppose success for the consistency of my tastes. At some point I fell out with this old friend in a quiet way, realizing, or deciding that his friendship wasn't quite worth what I'd thought it was (or had been attempting to convince myself it might be.) So I met up with him in this state. And I left not long after with a familiar, alkaline taste on my lips, wondering at the time I'd just wasted. I fumed at his inability to speak to me. I muttered at the dearth of his interest in me. My stomach turned at the blank look of expectancy on his face. And as I rode my bicycle home, something shifted inside me. I realized, not suddenly but with enough surprise, that I had nothing to say to him. His was not a diabolical disinterest, but mine was a stupefied displacement. This realization both comforts me and scares me to death.

 2. I am confused that the media refers to the process by which we vet our presidential candidates as "debates." These are not debates. They are cheap buckshot cartridges of emotional callowness. Open classes in insensitivity, stupidity and intellectual depravity. In the end I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Not because she has the ideas that closely hew to how I think the world should run, but simply because she would present a fundamental change that outstrips any other change on the table. Trump's monumental stupidity is surely interesting and somewhat different in its baldfaced admittance. Bernie Sanders' quasi-socialism certainly appealing in its quasi-socialism. But in the end, no one presents the dramatic shift to a status quo that is in such a broken state. Let's at least get a new gender in there. 

3. Dresses with zippers. Blech! Why not employ buttons. It is always a sore to my eyes to see a big silver zipper mundanely stretch up the back of an otherwise pretty dress form. Why not try buttons? I know they are harder to sort out in the assemblage, but in that lies at least some sexiness. Either that or go whole hog and flop a wetsuit style zip cord to the thing and let it dangle as ostentatiously tantalizing opportunity.

4. What makes one think one has the moral authority? Who died and made you god? Or me. Who died and made me the regulator? Yesterday I was surfing poopy fun little waves, struggling in a premature six mil, a sorry case of the month offs and a severe case of the one-year-old sleepless nights. Someone said something, or did something, or intimated at something that irked my precious sense of justice and I acted on it. Who said that was my right? No one. I took the right as given and did my best to implement proper etiquette. I'm not too sure about it all. Things confuse me in my middle years.

5. So here's to change. Blessed change.